Personal Top 4: 1. London Calling 2. Unknown Pleasures 3. The Specials 4. Inflammable Material The first five seconds of the opening track of each album… simply iconic. Locks in a vibe immediately.

Douthat: "Is there not a certain unique potency in the monarchy that some ambitious figure might try to revive and use before the end?" Summon Orwell! www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-f...

Give Rosalind Franklin a tenth of the advantages he had and she’d be recognized as the “discoverer” of DNA. As it was, he and his colleagues had to use her (stolen!) notes to get there.

Rod Dreher: “I sleep in a racing car. Do you?”

No matter how productive your Saturday is, it cannot beat mine: I concluded that I cannot replace a 3-way light switch on a house wired in the 1980s, and therefore I did not burn my house down. In essence, I built a house today.

<I_Am_Your_Audience.gif>

Presidentialism itself remains a major problem in the US constitutional order. Whether it's the main one is hard to say, since it boasts such an embarrassment of riches in fatal constitutional defects

My read is not different, necessarily, but perhaps more qualified. My opposition to PR + presidentialism is inspired primarily by three cases: Argentina, Brazil, and Indonesia. Although all three are electoral democracies, I don’t think PR advocates in the US are hoping the US becomes like them 1/

Perhaps you would be interested in this crabby take on PR in the USA which has sat unedited on my desktop since fall 2020

I would put more money on continuing to harvest infinite energy from the sun over assuming that forcing everyone to use The Machine The Lies To You is the steady basis of an entire economy

Make no mistake: Gen X is in charge of contemporary capitalism

who knew that it would prove difficult to hold together a movement whose philosophy is hatred, division, and judgment?

🧵The gender views Douthat is platforming are widespread on the right, y'all. 1/X

No hot dog, only khlav kalash (laudatory)

Heritage Foundation’s endorsement of Haman may be inconsistent with stated agenda of Project Esther.

Camp Hill, PA Bluesky must not be very big. It might be just me and @jrslu.bsky.social and @anildash.com. But Christine Line winning a judgeship as a Democrat is an amazing fact about yesterday www.facebook.com/people/Chris...

FIFA launches participation trophy for special losers

Seeing Like a Nate.

so delightful to realize that Tommy “Bag of Hammers” Tuberville supports invading Nigeria to support Christians but not accepting Nigerian Christians as refugees in America

[bursts into the room] [extremely elder millennial voice] You know, Milwaukee is the only American city to have elected three socialist mayors. Also, “Milwaukee” is from “mili wau kay,” which is Algonquin for “the good land.”

This is the most profoundly American thing I have read in a good long time. The one true thing about this country is that we are a noodle bowl of entwined diasporas, and the genius of the arrangement is that “I’m an American” applies universally anyway. Go watch An American Tail with your kids.

my household 16 year old, for whom this is the first election where non-presidential races were at all salient, sent me some instagram reels this AM of the NYC mayoral debates and told me that “Cuomo sounded like Biden”

rather terrifying that Bluesky Political Scientist is the emerging conventional wisdom

This candidate was also a former Governor of New York, and also the son of a Governor of New York. Just completely inexplicable.

“I am going to run for mayor of New York on a platform of being a racist and hating everyone who lives there except for Staten Island” was a campaign strategy in 2025

Thank you for your participation in this experiment by the Harvard Political Science department. The study has now completed successfully, with a positive result in finding the maximum amount of losing that is possible for new york to inflict on Cuomo

I wonder if Douthat will write a column about the completely obvious explanation with the completely obvious conclusion that the GOP needs to run to the center

Charlotte Court House, VA is the closest thing I have to an ancestral family seat, and this result explains why just about everyone related to me moved away

New Normal Men! thanks @ed3d.net for heroic efforts to get this out before all the elections are over. @peark.es goes downhill, @ed3d.net feeds the hungry-- call that a ginger SNAP-- and @rickywlmsbong.bsky.social takes us through the election omens. www.podbean.com/eas/pb-nv9z4...

‘I could smell the onions and mustard'

the robots box with the grace and agility of Tom Pepinsky

Out on the road today, I saw a

The thing is, the American two-party system would be quite robust and competitive if it were liberal democrats vs social democrats. A Schmittian would say that U.S. liberals and social democrats should team up on the same side of a friend-enemy distinction. The other side: national socialism.

“Saying we can’t cancel someone is safe space wokeism,” offered a third. ….

The popularists are out there tut-tutting about how the Democrats must do popularism, but are silent about what the GOP ought to do in response to its own demonstrably and wildly unpopular policies. “See this new poll showing the president is negative a billion on everything? Democrats need to…"

2004: fried tempe, lettuce, avocado, and tomato on chewy seed bread with Kewpie mayo at a long-gone bakery called Suparman in Solo, Central Java. The classic Australian BLAT, adjusted for the Javanese palate. Crispy tempe gives it just the right crunch. I haunt this earth in search of its equal.

I wrote this because I feel a responsibility to speak clearly and honestly about what U.S. politics means for allies and partners in Asia Pacific. But it is also a reflection on the state of things, and a measure of the challenges to come for the American state in the world 1/

The idea that Hegseth and Rubio will lead any war-fighting and diplomacy in Venezuela should stop you dead in your tracks. Clown time is over: no country should go to war so that the leader’s inner circle can make Tiktoks

Piercing analysis from @tompepinsky.com on the US in the Asia Pacific: "They must prepare for a future in which the United States cannot lead, regardless of who is in power." In a forthcoming @iojournal.bsky.social piece, @sdhyde.bsky.social & I conclude the same for US global leadership generally.

Curtis Sliwa was disqualified from a matzah ball eating contest for cheating, but was pickle eating champion five years running

Want to read what I really think about the Trump administration and the Asia Pacific? Here you go. It’s a goddamn catastrophe for U.S. national interests and for the regional economic and diplomatic order.

Want to read what I really think about the Trump administration and the Asia Pacific? Here you go. It’s a goddamn catastrophe for U.S. national interests and for the regional economic and diplomatic order.

University president and head football coach share the distinction of being extremely hard leadership positions that university trustees routinely give to famous nincompoops

Hockey moment has arrived

I really never watch baseball on TV. This game, though, is an event. Two future hall of famers starting, great dramatic storyline, once-in-a-lifetime athletes

Thanks to everyone at @purduepolsci.bsky.social for a great day, and for hosting the one-night only midwest reunion of the Andy Baker Sound Project

Hanover PA is a racist shithole, 2025 edition

<local hero> YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE??

🧵👇🎯