Big Brother-style totalitarianism may be oppressive, yes, but isn't it obvious that a political system involving healthy civil society - a lot of voluntary intermediate groups between the individual and the state - is going to be worse. Why isn't Obama out there denouncing Tocqueville today?

The Floyd-Kirk comparisons are getting stranger.

The US is not one or two election cycles away from being OK even if they’re blowouts.

It says something about Trump’s all-out war on free speech that the New York Times couldn’t find a more credible person than “presidential historian” Craig Shirley to defend it. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/u...

I can't believe things have got this crazy.

Please, sir, don't release the Epstein files.

A woman without, her man is nothing.

But the bag didn't have a dollar sign on it. Also, he wasn't wearing a top hat.

AI is so philosophically fascinating. Yet it's being developed by conmen and hucksters. It's Plato's Cave, Searle's Chinese Room and Descartes' Demon all rolled up into one, plus 'what-if it were a priori that every thought-experiment comes with pop-up ads you have to click, to think about them.'

The 2nd Trump admin shares typical narrative unrealism - plotholes - with prestige organised crime tv. Namely, just as it doesn't make sense that the cops aren't MORE mixed up in it - they aren't in every episode - so it doesn't make sense that the Dems aren't more important to US politics in 2025.

It seems fitting that when authoritarianism came to the US, it would express itself in the form of mad libs.

Crockett: "I'm gonna honor someone who decided they were going to proclaim I was involved in the 'great white replacement'? Yeah, I'm not honoring that ... it's unfortunate more of my colleagues even on my side couldn't see the amount of harm this man was attempting to inflict upon our communities"

Armenia waging classic, expansionist 'lexkrieg', systematically invading countries close to itself in the dictionary, existent or not - Albania, Aberbaijan. Trump could see the threat and so, when they got greedy and jumped to 'C' ...

John Roberts's "there's no such thing as corruption" and "the president has the right to use the DOJ as his personal law firm" jurisprudence is really working out well for us.

I was reliably told celebrating political violence was cause for government reprisal and private sector termination.

Once again this just goes to show conservatives were foresighted the whole time, standing athwart the Fab Four, shouting Halt! This isn't a right-wing extremism thing. Normiecons are responding to musical extremism they've endured from the left for decades. www.rockatnight.com/2025/03/a-hi...

An ideological ransom for returning to the air? "[Conservative broadcaster] Sinclair is also demanding that Kimmel issue a personal apology to Kirk’s family and make a 'meaningful donation' to both the family and Turning Point USA, an organization the late political influencer co-founded."

AOC: We should be clear about who Charlie Kirk was. A man who believed that the civil rights act that granted black Americans the right to vote was a mistake… His rhetoric and beliefs were ignorant, uneducated, and sought to disenfranchise millions of Americans.

‘Your argument has these bad implications.’ ‘Look, it’s my argument. If it’s bad then that’s all on me. I’m the victim here. So why are you blaming the victim, me? And is it really fair for these bad implications to follow just because my argument is ‘too provocative’? That’s like stalking.’

I know the case law. I also think the language of “jawboning“ makes this more complicated than it should be. everyone knows what coercion means. threatening to do X or else is coercion. if the government coerces people into shutting up or shutting others up, it’s a free speech problem.

New picture next to the "but I'm an orphan" kid in the dictionary next to "chutzpah."

There is such a difference between ‘cancel culture’ in the private sector - that’s basically free association and counter-speech, possibly obnoxious but legal - and ‘cancelling’ of private citizens at the behest of the government. This is so much worse than the worst ‘woke’ mobbing ever could be.

I mean, what can you say?

www.newstatesman.com/world/2025/0... Good piece by @lioneltrolling.bsky.social

Use of the word "evil" in official congressional e-newsletters, over time, by party

By robbing banks & police stations & shooting police, Dillinger tested the robustness of financial institutions' security measures against robbery, while simultaneously exploring the limits of law enforcement's capacities to respond to Dillinger, and of the human body to survive injury.

Never been an especial Redford fan but one night I came home late, turned on the TV and enjoyed snarking out to the last two thirds of "Little Fauss and Big Halsy", then later finding out what it was. Great leather jackets.

The two responsible views of AI are that it will kill us all when the singularity hits, if it works, or crash the markets when the bubble bursts, if it doesn't.

Bertrand Russell, at 89 years old, to Sir Oswald Mosley, a man most famous for founding, in 1932, the British Union of Fascists. I'm all for civil discourse. But everyone can and should draw a line at who they will talk to. Notice that Russell did not demean himself with incivility, either.

'Don't call the other side fascists' is a good norm. But it only makes sense against a normal background in which another good norm is respected by both sides: 'Don't go fascist - don't go near the stuff. Don't do it, or vote for it. Not even the trolling joking/not-joking stuff.'

You perform a bit of self-criticism - lightly, being careful not to touch the real problem. You fold it into 'Bondi is failing Trump' when, obviously, if Bondi is bad, how comprehensively terrible must Trump be? It's a very good day on which he is ONLY as terrible as Bondi is in this case.

[Still looking through the archives.] My older daughter, when she was just 6 (!) copied the cover of the Morrison-Quitely "All-Star Superman". Dr. Quintum is like 'I'm so sorry Superman your cells are super-saturated with absinthe."

I'm going through some archived stuff and I just found my favorite ol' character from the Codex Nutall. It's weird when you realise how long the Simpsons has been running. examinedlife.typepad.com/.shared/imag...

Eh. Maybe not.

Ultra the Multi-Alien solves a lot of problems with his lightning leg from Mystery in Space #104, art by Lee Elias

November 17, 2021 www.mypanhandle.com/news/local-n...

There literally isn't a single example of a prominent Dem or leftist even making a significant verbal mis-step, post-Kirk killing. Usually this is the time where you do the thing where someone mouths off and we have to talk about 'policing our own side' and someone points out that's impossible & ...

That Vance speech. Usually 'every accusation a confession' is this bite-sized thing.

This is false. For example, the libertarian @cato.org breaks down the numbers, showing about 6 deaths from right-wing politically motivated attackers for every 1 from left-wing attackers. Moreover, the claim that shooters represent anyone other than an unhinged fraction of society is the deeper lie.

It’s not just that this is wrong. There are - so far as I am aware - no examples, not a one, of prominent D’s saying anything objectionable, in any way, in the wake of the killing. Meanwhile not a single prominent R has denounced the unhinged hate fest on the right, from Trump down.

I just stumbled on this video from last year. I did not know about 'Dracula'. I am a bit hurt they don't cite my prior research in the area. (Rescued from over at the Bad Place.) www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKm_...

Second least monstrous.

"The spice extends life. The spice expands consciousness. The spice is vital to space travel"

I approve this win. It's always tough - impossible - to fairly divvy credit between the actor and the writer(s), who came up with something new and great for the actor to work with. Milchick is a great character, on paper. What makes him different? He's a minion, a company man.

I dunno, man. Link to the bad place. There is so MUCH of this stuff. x.com/Rightanglene...

This may explain why there’s an aggressive response to people who merely post Kirk’s own words. It threatens the existence of the alternate Kirk - the motivational speaker that had been marketed to young kids and white Christian groups through selective quotation & clips.

I was reliably informed by Christi Noem just a week ago - that this was a teachable moment and the Koreans - and other unnamed foreigners - had learned a good lesson about their bad behavior thanks to this good story. apnews.com/article/kris...

I wrote this story because the case of the Guatemalan children hasn’t received nearly as much media attention as it deserves. I wanted to highlight the full extent of the government’s depraved conduct. I hope you’ll read and share. Don’t look away. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...