some identify publicly with the left because they hate oppression, others because they hate being oppressed. things will make more sense when you keep in mind that these are not the same - or even similar

One way to describe the collapse of American democracy is to say the Presidency and Supreme Court have taken all the power. Another way to describe the same problem is to say Congress is supposed to be the most powerful and representative branch of government, and it’s failing on both fronts.

Like, Trump isn't going to restore the White Revolution and Reza Pahlavi isn't going to come from the heavens on a white horse. Instead the White House is going to welcome whatever IRGC General approaches with a planning permit for Trump Tower Tehran.

okay so they literally expect to run another country by truth social post, I can’t see any way this could possibly go wrong

This should be banned. gothamist.com/news/nyc-weg...

For all that the media has spent years freaking out about what social media does to our brains, I don’t understand why there appears to be little effort to grapple with the fact that these chatbots are, for some not insignificant portion of the population, literally psychosis machines

Good article this. Racism really is the reverse of a performance-enhancing drug, the mad, stupid shit it leads people to believe in and to do:

Hand them to the ICC like the Philippines did to Duterte

No matter how dumb things seem, they can apparently always be dumber: "Mr. Maduro's regular public dancing and other displays of nonchalance in recent weeks helped persuade some on the Trump team that the Venezuelan president was mocking them and trying to call what he believed to be a bluff"

New euphemism for "bottomless corruption and naked abuses of power" just dropped

I thoroughly resent the fact that the last ten years have been wasted on Donald Trump rather than building this vision of America.

we got so played

the modern media environment also favors controversy, conflict, and cheap shots—this is a good environment for an opposition party to operate because the lawlessness and incompetence is off the charts

Edgecombe is already so good that the thought of him taking a sophomore leap is kinda mindblowing. And yet it's the most likely outcome!

I think people are usually wrong about the direction of the distraction. I think it’s seldom an intentional distraction by Trump; Trump doesn’t do strategy. He lacks, among other things, the necessary impulse control. Mostly it’s Trump gets distracted, & he’s influenced by people w access to him.

The reason you feel so overwhelmed and hopeless is exactly this; part of you realizes that absolutely everything needs to be torn down to the studs and rebuilt from scratch. Which is, you know, daunting. But here we are.

Trump now literally plagiarizing from the neocon playbook on Iraq:

You ever think about how the Roman Senate kept meeting centuries into the reigns of emperors. Hanging out, shooting the shit, giving speeches, and play-acting that their positions of privilege remained positions of power.

Either it was a limited operation merely to arrest Maduro and move on, or, it is an ongoing major regime change committment that will open up a transition including international and private sector partners. It really can't be both

They're going to *throw out* one-of-a-kind NASA archives?! Not even a year since the Inauguration & we're already at the 2nd-time-as-farce version of the burning of the Library of Alexandria.

The casualties already coming in. Grandmothers in their apartments….

Not every Chotiner interview is him making some blowhard look foolish. Sometimes he has experts explaining complex situations in clear terms. Also good discussion of the comparison to Noriega, which was my first question this morning about all this...

Places that were habitable in previous generations are no longer habitable in today’s climate as rising seas threaten low-lying coastal communities. www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/f...

Have any of you all ever fallen asleep standing up? It’s harder than it looks

I keep saying it but chopping down the Presidency’s unilateral powers needs to be the #1 priority of the next real Congress.

babe wake up, they're doing insider trading on war crimes

DNC chair somehow capable of a more full throated statement than any Democratic leader in congress

this hit too close to home, the group chat has been like this for far too long 😂

The incentives for states to acquire nuclear weapons are a lot stronger in a “might makes right” world.

the photographer was definitely like, "ok everybody, look tough!" but we know they're all just reading tweets with their arms crossed in a country club dining room divided up by bedsheets tacked to the beams

So does Trump think this is like Crusader Kings where if you capture the enemy leader you get to press all your war goals or something?

For those keeping track at home: Since Christmas Eve the United States has bombed or carried out raids in Syria, Somalia, Nigeria and now Venezuela. And Congress' response has ranged from nothing to support.

Man eats a flight of McDonald's sandwiches for every meal and is very proud that he can remember what a horse is called, we're not looking at a thousand-year reign of the God-Emperor of Dune here

8/10 Mexico is in a tough position: its closest trading partner just invaded a sovereign neighbor under a doctrine claiming hemispheric dominance and a strategy that threatens military action against "cartels." If “narco-terror” can justify military action in Venezuela, why not Mexico's border?

If this was the case, then why knock out Venezuelan air defenses and do an extraction mission from the palace, rather than handing himself over at a less secure location? Would the presumption be that he was effectively a hostage of his own government?

Like I’ve said before: Republicans are useless, but if Dems take control of Congress next January a first item of business should be a prohibition of military force resolution — consider it the inverse of an AUMF — written to apply wherever Trump and his clique appear to have itchy trigger fingers.

hey remember when a bunch of middle-aged drunk korean lawmakers climbed the locked gates to the national assembly to hold an emergency session after the president gave illegal orders to the military, all of which ended with said president being sentenced to prison

I’ve long been in favor of prediction markets for research purposes. But *at minimum*, it’s clear that they need strong price caps per market to avoid people profiteering off of insider trading - much less shaping important events to match their bets

Something I don't think folks have fully clocked is the degree to which just about everyone under the age of 45 in any natsecs adjacent space to the left of groypers is flatly saying "this is illegal as shit, that's all there is to it"

Even if you didn’t vote for this, if you are an American this has been done in your name and you have a responsibility to do what you can to renounce and stop it. It’s not fair, but it is the duty that has been placed on us.

Seems like a good time to bring up this article from 2022

So that's why it feels like everyone got rich except me

There are literally 25 year olds in some of these positions lmao

Paul Graham has been having a several months long “Are we the baddies?” moment on X. Here he concedes that people have had their fears come to pass when it comes to tech billionaires misusing their wealth to capture political power.

I've long thought the Palo Alto food scene is wildly overrated/lacking affordable options, but Arsicault's a great get www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaur...

Most of the derangement about Mamdani is for the obvious reasons but part of it is also that a surprising amount of people were committed to the Cuomo rehabilitation project because they hated the idea that anything could have consequences for men of the right class.

If we assume Musk and Ellison are motivated to maximize profits, then we might do things like boycotts which aim to change their behavior. If we assume Musk and Ellison are motivated to maximize power, our goal should be to entirely discredit the outlets and platforms they own.