None of us can do everything but each of us can do SOMETHING.

An emblematic back-to-back on my feed.

WATCH: ‘Portland Frog’ pepper balled by ICE agents

Something bleakly funny that the tyranny that infects America is not some kind of nouveau 20th century authoritarianism, but truly 17th century monarchic "rule without parliament"

Your reminder that they cannot arrest millions of people no matter how hard they try. They lack the infrastructure, they lack the personnel, and the economy would straight-up collapse They are going to try to scare us by making examples out of a few people, and our job is to not fall for it

The pundit class's notion of "free speech" is predicated on a division of humanity into those who *participate* in debates and those who are the *topic* of debate, where treating one of the former as if they were one of the latter is seen as the direst of all threats to "free speech".

It absolutely matters here that Pritzker was effective at sounding the alarm and plainly stating this would be unconstitutional in a profoundly radical and fundamental way, and showing he could rally practical popular opposition, which then gets spun as backing out over "legal headaches."

This is simply untenable. There is no way forward with media and political classes captured by the right. Every time someone commits a crime you have to pray it's not an undesirable or it's purge time, then when it turns out to be themselves again they just shrug and wait for the next one.

another corollary of “it’s a regime, not a government” is that its allies are also regimes, not governments. bsky.app/profile/reut...

JUST IN: Virginia State University is on lockdown, and Hampton University says classes are canceled, and students are urged to stay inside. *As well as Alabama State Stay safe 🙏🏾 www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/t...

So again, one might ask how an empirically-grounded journalist who wrote an entire book lamenting the polarized state of American politics, might describe one of the most intentionally polarizing fabulists of our era as someone who did "politics the right way." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We%...

There's a reason Kirk rarely engaged with his fellow adults who knew things about things. It's because Kirk was not interested in or adept at knowing things about things...which, IMO, is not an admirable quality in a figure whose entire brand is to engage in public/political debate.

One final thing. It's odd to see Ezra Klein, a total policy nerd, say Kirk did politics the right way when Kirk had almost no interest in either policy, or the empirical rigor necessary to get policy right. Kirk's approach to politics was 99% culture war rage stoking w/ almost no policy content.

“awful people don’t deserve to be killed, but they don’t deserve to be praised, either” is apparently a thought too complex for the pundit mind

I think today is gonna be a no Bluesky day

A couple more thoughts on this. There is exactly one crime defined in the U.S. Constitution: treason. The first definition is levying war against the United States. Trump is explicitly threatening that. U.S. soldiers are not only permitted, they are *obliged* to refuse an order to commit treason.

Looking forward to the glorious future where these things are everywhere and we spend all our time yelling “is there a human I can talk to” like when you call customer service

so what if the reason they aren't letting Trump talk is that he had a Fetterman stroke and now he is woke

You need to put more on the table than “we’ll kill and or oppress less groups of people overall, or at least do it quietly so you don’t have to see it.”

One might have guessed that an aspiring American dictator would need to lock in the substance of authoritarian rule while being very careful to avoid the appearance of it. Kind of fascinating that we got the opposite

lol didn't even occur to me how stupid this is bsky.app/profile/theo...

Horse race coverage, but the horses are democracy and authoritarianism

Oh shit 👀👀👀

I watch it every time it comes by and every time I laugh

I’m to sleepy to figure it out exactly but these feel like the same thing

Goorge Bush

Think we should do more straightforward rejection of the concept of gender roles. There are simply no traits that are good if a man does it but not if a woman does, and vice versa. Being a courageous provider or a caring nurturer are good regardless of your gender identify.

Something monstrous about seeing more and more news confirming intentional deliberate starvation in Gaza and still see people center themselves by saying it makes them ‘uncomfortable’ to acknowledge that this is what it is

I'd genuinely be interested in an explanation of this, it sure seems important to understand

If we want men to be less lonely, we should start by socializing them in boyhood to be part of a shared project of care. Give them dolls, toy kitchens, and tea sets. Ask them to help care for younger children. Expect them to clean up after themselves. Let them feel the work and value of care. 1/

According to this Supreme Court, President Biden's Department of Education was exceeding its power by trying to forgive peoples' student loans. President Trump, on the other hand, has the power to just completely dismantle the entire Education Department.

When you are feeling weary or despairing, remember that there are people in every corner of the world taking life affirming action in the direction of more justice. The fact that you can't see it all is a comfort because it means there is an excess of positive actions happening all at once. #onwards

I'm not going to repost any of the insane antisemitic conspiracy bullshit that grok is spewing today, but it highlights how absolutely essentially is that we not let LLMs become a form of epistemic grounding for our society.

My latest. urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=htt...

everyone will see the initial images of them trying to project force, but they got chased out by a bunch of normal americans bearing fruit and foul language

Here are the leaders... people like this person.

Show of occupying military force. No purpose other than to inspire fear. We need to make sure it inspires resistance instead.

the stories that come out of the ICE camps are going to look like the stories that come out of every camp system; rampant corruption, epidemic disease, physical and sexual abuse on a vast scale, a death rate far higher than normal, and medical abuses.

The path is very clear: Republicans are creating a system to allow anybody—you, me, whoever—to have their citizenship revoked, sent to a prison camp in the Everglades, then exported to a labor camp in a third-world country. That entire pipeline could be in place in 24 hours.

The singularity is awesome

Just some creepy armed Mad Max guys trying to gain entry to Dodgers Stadium. ICE says it wasn’t them. DHS says they were Border Patrol. But honestly who the hell knows? They’ve given permission for any psycho to put on a ski mask, point a gun, grab people & throw them into an unmarked vehicle.

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

I still can't get past the idea that people in America are now supposed to accept that this is a valid form of law enforcement and just assume it's fine when random dudes in groups with face-coverings, no ID, no warrant, & no uniform grab people off the street and force them into unmarked vehicles

lmaoo never gets old

Been reading history of the run-up to the civil war, and it feels like we’re really starting to mirror fights over fugitive slave laws