these people are genuinely idiots

They're afraid to say the phrase "radical conservative terror", much less denounce it, and now they're trying to erase it.

I think it's worth clarifying that you do in fact retain free speech while you're in the military. You are in fact allowed to say what you want in a private capacity, including political speech. I don't know where people go the idea otherwise, but it's not accurate.

both Klein’s piece in the NYT and the Burgis/Day piece in Jacobin pretend they are about recognizing that each human life is a human life but actually what they are doing is validating the way some human lives are socially valued more highly than others The example they set is white supremacist

That ostensibly liberal publications like the Boston Globe are lionizing someone as despicable as Charlie Kirk is the triumph of process over substance. As long as you go through the motions, then the fact that you are calling for violence against marginalized people is just a difference of opinion.

Acts of political violence aren’t acceptable. Non-political school shootings aren’t acceptable. Sacking the legislature isn’t acceptable. Military occupation of peaceful American cities isn’t acceptable. Abductions conducted in courthouse hallways by masked agents of the state aren’t acceptable.

One of the bitter ironies of American politics is that nobody is more committed to political correctness, in the traditional sense, than the reactionary centrist/classical liberal set. The People can't be trusted with revisionist or deviant sources, which might lead them astray.

This isn't the standard story we've had about Trumpism, but it's pretty typical for the rise of authoritarian movements and then consolidating authoritarian regimes. The elites are targeted and cave first, leaving the popular base of liberal-democratic opposition without leadership and coordination.

Congrats on your regime propaganda, ABC News.

R.E.M. “pushed the boundaries” of alternative rock Herbie Hancock “pushed the boundaries” of jazz Trump & RFK Jr. are “destroying public health & will be responsible for killing people” What is journalism, anyway? 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

i'm kind of blown away by how obvious it is if you're, like, literate. at all. i don't even mean for books, i also mean for movies. i mean that if you have understood things at any point in your life, this is obvious. so it's weird to see people act like they don't understand it

wrote about utilitarianism and about how it is not things that it is not

Iris Murdoch on AI art being bad, truly a visionary. like actually

if I was to be very mean, I would say that some of the praise heaped upon Disco Elysium by gamers was because it forced them to read a grown-up novel for the first time ever, and if your brain has been rotted by gamer culture experiencing a very good novel will be ecstatic.

Unquestionably the most dangerous and corrupt attack on the independence of US economic data in American history. Trump is firing the head of the BLS, a longtime civil servant confirmed 86-8 by the Senate, simply because the job numbers came in below his expectations today

Some people on this website seem to confuse attention being given to a problem with that problem being solved. Yes the endless talk about "male loneliness" is tiresome, but to some extent it's warranted as long as lots of individual men are still lonely. Same goes for many other social ills

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting down operations after loss of federal funding:

Buried in Columbia's agreement/bribe with the Trump regime (and not reported by the news) is a section which agrees to segregate trans women from women's housing, sports, and bathrooms. Functionally, trans women are no longer welcome at Columbia University.

because he tried to cover it up, it's sexual, and so the political media is capable of recognizing it as a story in a way that it can't acts of open cruelty and evil against the poor or vulnerable

Right-wing lack of agency is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you act like someone's a baby, they'll begin to perceive themselves as one. Not sure how we get out of this other than by RW elites gaining a sense of responsibility + some standards

Of course, Kamala Harris didn't need to be the one. It could have been a surrogate. It could be some rando running in a house seat. The point is that a culture of trying random shit is actively stifled by "data driven" decision-making on all levels. So *nobody* tries anything outside the norm.

The Democratic Party's approval ratings are terrible, a young Democratic politician solidly wins a primary in the country's biggest city by generating enthusiasm and high turnout, and Democratic leaders think the move is to publicly distance themselves, even denounce him, do I have that right?

i have really come to believe that this — treating the public like its too stupid to understand anything complex — is one of our big problems.

A culture built on virtue signaling can create problems when done wrong, both in ignoring moral goods that aren't all that praiseworthy and in cloaking dubious behavior in virtuous-seeming verbiage, but virtue signaling is still a necessary if not sufficient condition for having a good (sub)culture

It's just remarkable that the president of the United States is running an extortion racket in broad daylight and not only is the nation apparently unable to stop it, hardly anyone will even call it what it obviously is.

Really was one of the dumbest and most harmful things possible for “virtue signaling” to become some kind of epithet. Sending externally visible signals that you are engaging in pro-social behavior is normal, natural, and good, it’s how society works. Other people can’t read your fucking mind.

me in 2015: billionnaires have an intolerable social cost because they can spend a lot of money on superpacs me in 2025: billionnaires have an intolerable social cost because they're insane cretins with the ability to monopolize public fora and induce people to conform to their personal neuroses

unjudicious steelmanning and its consequences have been a disaster for the United States

a corollary to this is that going to a top-top college is increasingly unimportant for receiving a good education or professional connections (especially as grad school becomes more relevant career-wise). ivies used to have a plurality of the "good students" with career goals--not the case anymore

ignoring the political valence of this statement, it's just terribly, terribly confusing to me why europeans' kneejerk reaction to the idea of having air conditioning is that of moral disgust

Israel bombed an Evin, an Iranian prison that housed dissidents and political prisoners. They ended up destroying the trans wing and murdering over 100 trans people incarcerated there, many for simply being queer in Iran. This is unspeakable evil. archive.ph/PA2n5

Yep. This is illegal and unconstitutional on its face. The budget and appropriations are laws. The President "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed", according to the express dictate of the federal constitution. His "priorities" are literally irrelevant.

A big part of this is the failure of Dems to instill properly targeted fear in the wider population. This is why “oh but they are secretly nice people” or “I’m the adult who can have MAGA friends” strategies are so flawed. It helps to minimize and normalize the threat posed by right wing politics.

Brad Lander is the exact kind of politician we need more of

If the next Democratic presidential nominee doesn’t run on expanding the Supreme Court, I’m not sure what use that campaign will be to restoring democracy. This lawless Court must be reined.

Douthat: I think you’d prefer the human race to endure, right? Thiel: Uh — Douthat: You’re hesitating. Thiel: Well, I don’t know. I would — I would — Douthat: This is a long hesitation! Thiel: There’s so many questions implicit in this. Douthat: Should the human race survive? Thiel: Uh — Yes.

Wrote about philosophy 😲 open.substack.com/pub/outpacin...

Ecclesiastes, the book famous for its confidence about human agency and that just, thoughtful action will be duly rewarded lmao The verse right after (3:9) is literally "All this toiling; what payoff is there for the one engaged in all these things?” The misinterpretation has gotta be intentional

Good morning. We knew the answers to questions like these when the JCPOA was in effect. Again, in a more serious country, unilaterally withdrawing from that agreement would have immediately ended Trump's first presidency & destroyed the GOP's reputation on national security policy for a generation.

This is absolutely insane shit to write down and publish. The left scared her. This might beat allll the other NYT headlines. Truly spectacular. The GOP banned abortion, the GOP said they would prosecute doctors providing abortions, the 6 Republican appointed SCOTUS judges overturned Roe.

Found a little note/receipt in a used book I picked up, evidently from 2011. The little traces of domestic life we don’t even know we leave.

Nice day we’re having

wrote about the sabrina carpenter controversy for a change of pace open.substack.com/pub/outpacin...

(Essentially no) remedies for plaintiffs against Federal government misconduct for plaintiffs -> basically a halfway Enabling Act, can’t stop the executive from doing shit! This bill likely violates due process and the equal protection clause tho, see cases like Boddie v Connecticut

More people should be talking about the utter freak that is Stephen Miller and his white nationalist worldview. He's the architect behind most of this chaos as Trump is golfing, falling asleep during meetings, making money of memecoins and tripping while climbing stairs.

Everything that’s happened over the past six months has been a response to an imaginary crisis. There is no immigrant invasion. No trade crisis. No scientific or governance crisis. Just people completely high off their own supply trying to fundamentally reorder society. None of this had to happen.

An underrated, uh, “cool” thing about AI is how, because of the way it’s trained, it adheres to a naïve prescriptivism about phonology. middle school English teachers everywhere would be proud

As a once-naive utilitarian and now a jaded consequentialist, experience has only increasingly convinced me of the necessity of adhering to the proper rules of doing stuff in almost every context. You inevitably poison interpersonal relations on any given level by treating people as mere means

The DOGE mindset, perfectly encapsulated in one tweet. Destroy incredible public assets for a short term sugar high that would not come remotely close to ending the national debt