This is one kitchen table issue that I wouldn't put a politician on my permanent do-not-support list for trying to fundraise on right now. There aren't many of them.

The US has developed hypersonic imperial boomerang technology.

I now think the most important factor in making good group decisions is to identify everyone with a strictly financial interest in the outcome up front and get them out of the room right away.

The bottom line is that belief that current genAI is a good tool to use for a job is just belief that that job is not worth doing. The broad adoption of these tools reflects widespread belief that almost nothing we do matters (outside of needing to generate activity in order to redirect money)

Digging into carbon accounting, and holy cats could we ever simplify things if we weren't so attached to pretending bullshit was going to matter. (Partially bio-derived conventional fuels, I'm looking squarely at you first)

Oh no! If we can't maintain laser focus on cost of living, a Democratic party leader might be forced to say controversial radical left things like that we shouldn't start a war against NATO!

I guess the plan is US = Oceania, Russia = Eurasia, and China = Eastasia?

Morality includes a set of heuristics for long-term consequences. One role of religions is to prevent people too lazy (or dumb) for foresight from destroying society. A big chunk of US Christianity has abdicated.

The thing I want to hear from a congressperson seeking funding is "I will not approve any appointees or any appropriations until Trump is impeached and removed" Other messages are irrelevant at this point.

Very bleakly funny that circa-2012-2015 conservatives have been totally vindicated in their arguments against the postmodern turn in parts of academia, the embrace of ‘ways of knowing’, rejection of bureaucratic rationality, etc.…because they embraced all those things and it was indeed a disaster

The consequences of lying and getting caught at it should, other things being equal, be worse than the consequences of telling the truth

I'm sorry, but if you don't think Republicans looked at Biden delivering substantial victories on student loans only to be loudly rejected by the most vocal contingent in his base and didn't think, "They will not fight to defend this, this is an opportunity," you're a fool.

Political axis: Left: billionaires are dragons Right: billionaires are lindwyrms

We might avoid a war with NATO if we make sure the maps Trump sees don't use Mercator projection

I think I have a new, simpler set of requirements for politicians: 1. is not stupid 2. is not evil 3. doesn't insist their constituents are stupid 4. doesn't insist their constituents are evil The only problem is this rules out almost all current politicians.

What's the over/under on 2026 being the year Trump actually shoots someone on 5th Ave in order to prove his point that it wouldn't cost him support?

I see a few reasonable alternatives for accountability for CSAM on X 1. X is liable, for publishing the material 2. xAI is liable, because we decide Grok is de-facto an employee of xAI with agency, and it creates the material 3. Individuals are liable for the results of their prompts.

"We all support stopping drugs, but the Trump admin isn't doing it" is questionable framing. It's certainly true that Trump doesn't give a shit about stopping drugs, but: Libertarians in principle oppose the government stopping drugs. Many of them support Trump.

The best argument I've heard so far that this isn't really an oil grab is that Trump said it's an oil grab.

It’s useful to think of the Internet as a medium where consequences for anti-social behavior go to die, which partly explains why our politics got so much worse over the last 30 years.

Nothing says "absolute futility" like asking Ryan Zinke to let himself off Trump's leash, but maybe if enough of us call, he'll at least be forced to spend the day thinking about his forsworn oath to the Constitution, and that's better than nothing. #mtpol

Most of us don't really have freedom, but it's still an interesting question whether our social system could allow us to get it. Our main system is that we buy stuff, so could we, as individuals, buy freedom? Could we buy the means of production? In a solar/battery world, yes. In an oil world, no

To be clear: In a well-defined game, I think "bad-faith actor" commonly means someone who breaks the rules. Politics isn't a well-defined game though. IMO the most common political bad-faith actors are people who systematically lie about what they really want (or why).

For a bad-faith position, using bad facts and bad logic isn't an error, it's a tactic. It tricks people into arguing the facts and logic rather than challenging the framing. That's futile, because a bad faith position can change facts and logic at will with almost no cost.

A functioning Congress will have articles of impeachment drafted by the end of the day. Our Congress will just go to social media to basically say “We don’t like this, but what are you gonna do?”

One thing we'll learn now is whether any of the voices saying Trump was for peace actually believed there own bullshit at the time. (I assume almost none of them did, or at least that even if they did, they won't admit to a mistake and so will choose to be grouped with the self-aware liars)

i do not like my country being unambiguously wrong yes, i know this is not a new or unique state of affairs. but im a patriot and i hate feeling ashamed of my country, no matter how often i do it

I think a big part of the Teump effect is the public demo that crime does pay. The whole rest of the culture has been pushing the message that whatever pays is good for so long that it only took a few public examples of lucrative, consequence-free corruption to bust the moral compass up good.

I had to watch a YouTube video today. I don't pay for youtube, so I had to watch an add. It was more deranged than I could have imagined. (Jesus wants us to use linen, which vibrates at 5000 hz, unlike cotton, which is 15 hz, which is the same as a corpse) We're, how do you say? Cooked.

I just encountered an add for a LinkedIn course on "strategic decision making for C-Suite" and I'm not able to stomach the implication that someone is worth paying $10M/year for a skill, but could meaningfully improve it by watching an internet video.

It is raining at 5000' in Montana on 1/2

All ~30 Dem campaigns that sent out fundraising emails with the subject line "Is there anything I can say?" need to understand that, yes, there are *many* things you could say to get a large donation. It's your choice to incorrigibly refuse to say any of them.

I just read a post saying "I like spinach" and almost responded "So you hate broccoli" as and internet call-and-response game. Like marco/polo. That's just the rule. Probably not a good sign.

I'm starting to get the impression that a large fraction of bluesky came from rich families. Not just "doing well," but absurd private-school-grade wealth.

Great product: people use it on their own Good product: sellers advertize what it does Bad product: sellers advertize its association to an enviable lifestyle Terrible product: sellers make threats and lobby for policy

The most annoying sort of bad-faith argument is where someone who's arguing an allegiance (or a tenet of identity or faith) pretends to be arguing logic or principles.

"AI mangles ERCOT" will be funny, iff nobody dies.

Not wrong...

I'm mostly a pacifist, but if I met someone in person who admitted to selling vehicle extended warranties, there's a decent chance I'd punch them in the face.

"Continue reading with a subscription to ... " *closes out window I know we need to pay for good journalism, but too often paying for good journalism includes paying for exceptionally bad journalism too (looking at you NYT, WP and Atlantic)

They say nobody thinks of themselves as the villain, but it's rather striking how stridently the surveillance tech folks keep insisting that no, we (and our customers) really are the villian. Literally the dark lord who wants to crush all life.

Good thread

Temerature range over the last 72 hours was +65 to -14 (F) One reason to run logging temp sensors everywhere is so when this happens I know whether it's me or the sky that's confused.

"moral and spiritual tenor" Trump can make almost anything look good in that respect, but I'm old enough to remember the neocons. Their main idea was thay the US should re-assert world dominance by starting a war.

Friends don't let friends put touchscreens in cars

I'm skeptical that recent campaigns have better uses for the money as well. Dem campaign messaging is almost uniformly offensively bad. A well-resourced campaign just means I have to see more terrible messaging and hold my nose tighter when I vote.

the recurrent line that has always stuck out to me, "name any issue and i'll tell you how cars make the problem worse", is extremely true because once you See cars you cannot unsee them.

Someone sent my mom an internet order of cheese. We stepped through the likely causes in probability order: scam, bug, weird marketing campaign, (failed) hack, before reaching "poorly labeled gift," which turned out to be correct. I don't love the culture we've built.

I used to think the main economic political axis was how high you set the discount rate, but right now I think it's whether your view of wellbeing is absolute or relative.

The implication that web software shipped in 2015-2025 prioritized perfection would be ROFLMAO funny if it hurt a bit less. For that matter, implying that its design constraints could conceive of perfection, or ever stand on a hill where they could glimpse perfection on the horizon...