Got questions from @conorsen.bsky.social and others about generation gaps on the spanking question. GSS says that there's been broad decline that looks similar across all age cohorts.

You can literally just help people www.slowboring.com/p/give-yours...

I also liked this interview, note the thoughts on the value of finding more candidates like Jared Golden. sociologica.unibo.it/article/view...

We're all used to it by now but it's pretty weird that the guy getting rich selling electric cars and decentralized solar/battery systems is a die-hard republican.

Probably some of Mayor Pete's problems in South Carolina right here.

I count 10 cities in 2025 that are on track to have the fewest murders since at least 1970. Newark is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1956 (though only have data through Oct this year) and San Francisco is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1942.

As a white college educated Democrat, I think we are correct about this and the majority is wrong. But it’s a reminder that I live in a bit of a bubble (and met most of you on here are in it with me) in terms of people’s views on things.

In Santa Monica, the FPPC has disqualified pro-housing Councilmember Jesse Zwick from all future housing votes. They said that because he works for a housing non-profit, he’s “conflicted” and must recuse. Pretty absurd. The NIMBY deep state strikes again. www.smdp.com/state-regula...

Claude Code is very useful even if you are not a computer programmer

A fun "times change" fact about Calvin Coolidge is that when he was governor of Massachusetts, police unions were left-wing and elite college students were right-wing so he broke a Boston Police Department strike in part by using Harvard undergrads as scabs.

One of the big changes from print periodicals to digital analytics is we now know that people mostly read stuff when they're at the office pretending to work. www.slowboring.com/p/nobody-wil...

I just uploaded @jasonparis.bsky.social 's recording of the segment CBS News pulled from "60 Minutes" to YouTube:

Chicago murder rate over the past ten years has been a wild ride

You can’t teach kids to read without teaching them to read

This is some insane shit from Bari Weiss

If voters want lower inflation and interest rates, maybe Democrats should run on taxing the rich to reduce the deficit. www.slowboring.com/p/the-case-f...

Is “MAGA all the way” a good brand for running statewide in New York in a midterm when the president’s national approval rating is underwater?

Of course I don't "receive money from the fossil fuel industry" — I run a subscription newsletter.

Chocolate rations increased to 20 grams

Using Claude Code to make charts out of GSS data

Tariffs are Trump’s least-popular idea. They’ve totally failed substantively. But a little circle of brain-poisoned leftists hate “abundance” so much they want to defend Trump on trade.

Did not realize Japan flatlined in labor productivity this dramatically

Per a Fox News poll support for bans on cell phones in school very high as is support for vaccines. Sure do wish use of national guard and bombing boats in Venezuela were more negative but I’ll take negative at all.

I think bigotry has become a kind of loyalty ritual among young republicans, it’s how you show you’re one of them www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

To try to sidestep the endless WAR wars on here, a response to @seancasten.bsky.social purely focused on the substantive issues and setting the senate map aside (though I still think winning in PA/OH/TX/AK/KS is inportant). Politics aside, his actual analysis is badly flawed on four scores.

“Heritage Americans” stuff is so bleak but maybe some of the older Jewish people I know who Bari Weiss was recruiting to the dark side will see what they’re really being asked to sign up for.

Love the kinder, gentler social media site

The correct optimal level of American-ness is for your ancestors to have arrived at Ellis Island in precisely 1885, and also for them to have been anthropomorphic mice. #nocatsinamerica

The @seancasten.bsky.social thread on @mattyglesias.bsky.social's O&G article gets basic stuff wrong. - "keep it in the ground" is an outcome, not a strategy - US net exports of O&G are good for decarb, particularly if we redistribute producer earnings and invest in clean energy + electrification

Seems bad jewishinsider.com/2025/12/jere...

I really miss “Jesus is the reason for the season” as a conservative Christmas take

Guest worker visas for prison guards. Incredible things happening in the UK.

At least Andrew thinks the genocide part of Hitler’s legacy was bad

Everything’s coming up YIMBY

There’s a weird MAGA/leftist consensus that Trump won in 2016 because of some profound economic issue rather than normal third term curse stuff, egregious coverage of emails, electoral college quirks, and some boring-but-important technical problems with the Clinton polling operation.

Good take www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/o...

This is what's tedious about internet beefs. Elliott wrote a post that is not about immigration and I agreed with the post, though the post was good, and recommended the post. It is true that, separately, we have a disagreement about immigration. But can't we just agree to agree on this?

All I said was that Amazon and Google, specifically, are extremely popular so I don't think it makes sense to orient politics around hating those companies (à la Lina Khan). How about we make rich people pay more taxes, use the revenue to bring down inflation and interest rates?

I think it's a little odd how people go in for this kind of nuclear-strength rhetoric over a disagreement about what issues it is most advantageous to talk about at the margin.

I have some doubts about the specifics of this, but I would more generally question the idea that the architects of Bidenomics have the key to political success — wasn't this a big flop?

Liberty, 1776-2026

Trump's bellicosity toward Venezuela is a betrayal of everything that the FIFA Peace Prize stands for.

I feel like we do a new version of this argument every day, but everyone’s data agrees that Trump’s weakest issues are health care and cost of living and that those are the things that are most useful to Democrats trying to flip GOP-held seats. Sincerely don’t even know what the debate is.

Can I get a whole column out of “male politicians should wear a suit and tie”?

Trump approval under water, generic ballot D+2 emersoncollegepolling.com/december-202...

What I say in the price is that the Biden administration tried to halt new oil and gas leasing, lost in court, and after that the industry thrived. I don’t think that’s a caricature.

Hosting a party in your 40s hits different

Access to capital 🤔🤔🤔

This, from @mattyglesias.bsky.social, is very obviously correct. Not running a serious candidate in FL-Sen would be malpractice. www.slowboring.com/p/democrats-...