Like, I feel multiple things are true. A) No more acquisitions/mergers like this, please. B) Paramount is WAY WORSE. C) Netflix likely doesn't interfere w/ WB's ways. D) Netflix CEO makes a lot of dingus statements about theaters E) Theaters sabotage themselves as much as streaming supposedly does

Well that's good. I'm sure there was plenty of pro-Paramount propaganda suggesting that he'd mess things up with an already messy movie giant, but yeah... However, I worked at a multiplex in a suburb for a decade, and got people from all the neighboring towns. Two-three towns away, even!

Filoni in charge of Star Wars is going to be a self referential disaster.

Over the past three days he has gone from "I am going to have my armies take Greenland and there's nothing anybody can do about it and if you say no you'll be sorry!" to "I'm gonna tariff you until you let me buy Greenland!" That is a backoff. That is a *massive* backoff.

An agency doesn't take orders from tweets, the tariff collecting authority will need to be provided the authorization and instructions to do what he's saying. Like, there isn't some big lever Trump pulls that just goes "TARIFF GO UP" Source: all the other fucking tariffs he's done.

Like I really wish people would put it together in their minds that Trump's tweets do not actually have the force of law (even though DOJ keeps twisting itself in circles about this lmao) and he can say "I'm doing this" and he still has to actually like, sign the piece of paper and direct the agency

this is genuinely incredible

JVL fundamentally is deeply invested in a defeatist narrative where the Democrats are either active collaborationists or utterly helpless before the GOP and Trump is striding the Earth like a colossus, and he uses his personal columns and his editorial control to enforce this narrative on the paper.

Imagine being a Brit and saying this. "No, no, *America* should be abandoned for repeatedly electing moronic fascists to high office, *we* should be swiftly re-embraced by the EU with open arms."

That isn't a strategy, that is burying your head in the sand.

We- liberals, leftists, communists, anarchists, anyone who believes that there is intrinsic value in human life- need to follow suit, instead of succumbing to the belief that if we just haughtily dismiss enough of the world the fascist threat will simply go away.

It is stupidity, and suicidal stupidity, to think that pursuing a policy of containment in a situation where the wolves are already at everyone's doors is going to be effective. The illiberals, while they hate each other, understand that they are natural allies until the liberals are crushed.

The Scandinavian world which was once the pioneers of mass immigration are now pioneers of mass remigration. France and Germany are building ever-more-tenuous and fragile coalitions to hold off their far-right. Italy literally has Mussolini's granddaughter as a major government power-player.

This is the whole game here. We can sit around and argue about which organ the cancer originated from, but it is fully metastatic in the Western world. Every country in NATO has been fighting against a rising tide of far-right reaction and mostly losing.

For a site that constantly talks about how the reactionary capitalist elites pit people against each other when they have common interest in opposing those elites, they sure do love doing exactly that.

For all the talk of internationalism and solidarity there is no meaningful interest in it. Indeed, there's only interest in nationalist jingoism, in blaming every person in a nation under tyranny or capitalist capture for the actions of a government those very theories say is unrepresentative.

What really embitters me about this site is not so much the furor over America- our government is and has done much evil, and people are right to be angered and worried- but no real interest in addressing the problem in a practical way.

This is only news because The Bulwark has chosen to make it news, and they have chosen to make it news because Johnathan V. Last wants you to hate Democrats and feel as helpless and despondant as he does.

Searchlight Institute, the authors of this memo, were stood up in July last year and are one of the endless revolving-door of "Third Way" consulting firms that have very limited traction on Capitol Hill. This is all that needs to be said about them.

you can't actually suppress away a wave of discontent. (relatedly, i think a lot of you have no idea how large this country is and how small its various military and security forces are relative to its population)

when the current term of the 119th congress ends on january 2 (or 3, i forget) 227, mike johnson ceases to be speaker of the house bsky.app/profile/gran...

ICE can't even deal with irate middle-aged midwesterners. how does he occupy hundreds, if not thousands, of polling cites and precincts? trump v. illinois clarified that he has no legal authority to unilaterally commandeer national guards, how does he move forward from there?

what does he do about the fact that in most states midterms and statewides are on the same cycle, so "canceling the elections" might mean that tennessee doesn't have a governor next year. how does he convince tennessee republicans to give up power in their own states?

the question to ask about this is, okay, he wants to cancel the midterms. how does he get the VA state board of elections to cancel the midterms? how does he get the georgia board of elections to do it? how does he convince republican house members to quit their jobs and give up their paychecks?

Bluesky is angrier at Democrats than it has been in months, and at the same time, Democrats are polling better than they've been in months. I think the takeaway isn't exactly what people On Here want it to be.

The man who predicts one of the past three recessions is a fool- the man who predicts nine of the past three recessions is a prophet. Both have a 33% success rate.

This is simply the negativity bias (wrong predictions of a good outcome are treated as far worse than wrong predictions of a bad one) combined with false negatives being treated more seriously than false positives.

I remember the doomers predicting that the COVID vaccine would be hoarded for red states only, that 01/06 would become a biennial tradition, that by now we'd be seeing the public execution of AOC, that the people of the US would meekly acquiesce to ICE, that Trump would be very, very popular.

No, that is the wine moms. I remember the doomers predicting that Trump simply would suspend elections in 2020. I remember the doomers predicting that Trump would never do a vaccine for COVID. I remember the doomers predicting that the COVID vaccine would be poisonous.

Frost: For so long, the right wing has held up patriotism as a vibe, as an aesthetic. But patriotism is more than bald eagles and flags and beer. Patriotism is about loving the people who live in the damn country — every single one of them.

If Ken Jennings is the Emily Post of the internet I would love for him to do a thread on how incredibly inappropriate it is to comment on behaviors or mannerism of a person you don't know and diagnose them with neurological and/or developmental disorders.

This kind of thing does point out a real ethical dilemma: block or mute?

there's institutional reforms i'd like to see, don't get me wrong. but even with a janky, outdated structure, a normal political party can make the legislative side of governance work the institution that's fundamentally broken is the republican party - its really important we say it like that

even on anti-fascism, where i've been most critical of dems, 'congress' did not fail to act after 1/6, 'congress' would've impeached trump, the *republican party* insisted we couldn't, even with him out of office

& when dems have majorities, they pass bills, govern, act like a normal political party - biden passed a massive aid package, invested the gdp of italy in clean energy, reformed infrastructure, etc with 2 years of a functionally minority government

this isn't even to say democrats are doing a great job or anything, but there would be oversight & pushback if they had majorities

language note: don't say 'congress' when you mean 'congressional republicans'

Friendly reminder to please donate to your local PBS (and NPR) station

Taps sign: They’ll never control the culture www.tumblr.com/kylesvarious...

Most of the movies being made today that are called “woke” by angry hollow eggheads make an episode of ‘Captain Planet’ from the fuckin early ‘90s look super revolutionary Lol.

This is literally what numbskulls thought in 2022, 2023, 2024, AND last year, and it hasn’t really been working out great for the lot of the studios and their output. Most moviegoers just want stories they’ll like, regardless of how “woke” it is.

NEW YORK (AP) — Democrat Zohran Mamdani sworn in as mayor of New York City.

Happy new year, everyone. 2025 really kicked our ass. Now let's kick 2026's ass.

My 2025 wrap-up post (2/2)

My 2025 wrap-up post (1/2)

Draining the Kennedy center of whatever prestige it had and then complaining when acts stop showing up is a great way the right wing outrage cycle is self-perpetuating. They’re always mad that their attempts to infiltrate the arts always ends with people bailing and not coming back

Zootopia-themed Holidays poster from Walt Disney Animation.

this is the fault of the tech bros that decided to call whatever all of this is "AI" because it really isn't anything like intelligence

still one of the funniest redactions I’ve ever seen in the Titan investigation interviews MYSTERIOUS SUBMERSIBLE EXPERT: “well I’m sure you’re familiar with my film Titanic”