far and away the most compelling argument for pro-natalist policy is how fucking dysfunctional greying countries are becoming politically. can't cut elderly benefits. can't raise taxes. can't let in workers. no throw only fetch politics until something collapses.

Blood libel, the conspiracy theory that Jews crucify and drink the blood of Christian children, was started by a dude who wanted to con his neighbors out of their livestock and feel important. I’m not kidding. He was willing to burn the world down to feel like a special little guy.

I know everyone loves michelle obama but it's possible that "when they go low, we go high" was one of the most destructive utterances in american politics

Oh is it the rapture again? So soon?

I once met a relatively well-known gay adult film actor/escort who told me that he used to follow GOP events around the US in the late 90s, because they were always the best paid gigs, but grew tired of always being a dom top. 😂

Well, what do you expect them to do, when they are away from home and without the dog that they have to give very, very long walks to every couple of days?

original is an all-timer

they're not even bringing a knife to a gun fight. they're bringing one of those joke guns which fires out a hankie reading "Bang" except it doesn't read "Bang" it reads "he's right, vote for us", this metaphor doesn't work at all I know I'm just really fucking mad okay

Christian persecution in America is best defined by this image: No actual struggle, wearing clothes that cost more than my entire wardrobe, polished cross instead of rugged, and surrounded by crowds of fellow hypocrites cheering on bigotry who believe they're the victims.

Keir Starmer’s spokesperson asked for the PM's response to Nigel Farage’s plan to deport hundreds of thousands of people living and working completely legally in the UK, replies that he thinks it is “unworkable” and “unfunded”. So his objection is that they’ve got their sums wrong

My book w/@profsorelle.bsky.social will be out in January! These ideas have brewed since I interned at Queens Legal Services 20 years ago. The book is for anyone who cares about people, justice, power & democracy. Much more to share more in the coming months! press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

And that absolutely is about the government's agenda setting power - everything they do is couched in shallow electoralism, so everything is assessed in those terms, too.

It just straightforwardly *insane* how much political chatter in the United Kingdom is about the next general election, an event that is a long way in the future, and how basically none of it is about 'uh, this policy agenda doesn't look adequate to the scale of the inherited problem'.

Miller’s Crossing is 35. Albert Finney had such a good time making Miller’s Crossing that he turned up on his day off to appear in drag when Gabriel Byrne bursts into the ladies room.

Sorry, I'm now told that Baby Yoda is being forced to donate to Turning Point USA and that in the place of this movie they will now air two-hour pyrotechnics-laden memorial for Hero of the Empire, Orson Krennic

It's obviously true unless something unexpected happens, but a) the incumbent government needs to actually have *delivered for its coalition* to lead a republican front b) the leader needs to be a plausible leader of it and c) they do need to actually be able to say 'Vichy was bad'.

1. Sinclair, which owns dozens of ABC affiliates, played a key role in forcing Jimmy Kimmel off the air. Sinclair's "news desk" then produced a special on Charlie Kirk, which was supposed to air during Kimmel's time slot It presents Kirk as a prophet

You have to love the way the response from the DWP at the end blandly denies the reality of anything that they've done to him. This is what you get from them. www.theguardian.com/money/2025/s...

Reform's ‘plan’ to revoke the legal status of millions of UK residents is morally abhorrent & economic madness The public believe in fairness & mutual respect, not this cruel Trumpian policy that would leave us all poorer. We are not America - we must resist this dangerous turn in British politics.

13. Just like “Unite the Kingdom” in London last week, it shows that copying the far right and letting them at the agenda does not weaken the far right. In fact, it seems to only embolden and further radicalized the extremes.

Incredible work here, subscribe to Wired www.wired.com/story/silico...

Openly genocidal speech from the acting president, attempting to produce martyrdom while merch ads scroll along the chyron

To be clear: this entire “we’ve got to run more pro-lifers” insanity is because literally a week ago polling showed that Democrats would prefer politicians like AOC and Mamdani over Jefferies and Schumer by, let me emphasize this, a 20 point fucking margin. www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

“What do YOU HAVE? You have NOTHING, you are nothing. You are wickedness, you are jealousy, you are hatred, YOU ARE NOTHING. You can build nothing, produce nothing, create nothing."

Also, why now? Well, I woke up and thought, “I spent seven damn years on this book and didn’t make enough of a racket about it.” Here’s Jennifer Szalai on the book. She really got what I was going for: www.nytimes.com/2024/11/27/b...

If you'd like, here's the book. Religious nationalism, the takeover of government, bonkers technocrats, propaganda, armed groups of young men, and the remaking of society. It's all in here: www.amazon.com/New-India-Un...

...the project was deemed so vital that critics were silenced and regular Indians were coerced into signing up. I quit my job and tried to understand the system. One of the first things I did was look into the starvation deaths that occurred in rural India when the system failed.

Introducing myself properly. (Only took a year, but here goes.) Last year I wrote a book—THE NEW INDIA. It was on NYT's 100 Notable Books list, as well as on NPR's 2024 Books We Love list. Then in January it won non-fiction book of the year at the Kerala Literature Festival, Asia's largest. (1/x)

Vertical rows are the agrivoltaic winner! “The vertical panels produce slightly less electricity—but with higher value, as generation peaks coincide with morning and late afternoon demand…The crops don't seem to mind the presence of solar panels and they like the wind protection they provide.”

This Day in Labor History: September 22, 1862. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared slaves in all parts of the U.S. in rebellion free on January 1, 1863 if they did not rejoin the United States. Let's talk about what this did and did not do!

He also did not believe in a “good God,” what the actual fuck he literally pissed everyone off because he refused to affirm a personal or providential deity ok I’m done

this is the rare article whereby if you read it, you will end up knowing less about its subject than if you had never heard of its subject at all

If my university marketed my course (which they refuse to do) and wasn't also hooked on AI like a magpie with a milk-bottle top, I'd be promoting it as 100% Organic Artisan Thinking. But what do I know?

For 56 minutes Sky News and BBC News interrupted everything else and carried a Reform UK feed live, uninterrupted, unchallenged. The stream spluttered, froze, pixelated - dozens of times - still they stuck with it. FOR ONE HOUR. This is an editorial choice. No other party gets this coverage. ~AA

Thing about this sort of answer from the BBC is that I don’t remember them adjusting their coverage much in 2022-24 when the polls were in Labour’s favour. I may be misremembering, but I thought they kept to the proportions from GE2019.

I never know if he's using filler words for senility reasons or doesn't give a fuck reasons It's about Charlie Kirk so really a toss up I guess

With Labour literally running on a manifesto emblazoned with the single word "Change" & then immediately assuming the mantle of Continuity Austerity Officers, they've done the most legwork possible in proving the Monoparty is not a barking conspiracy & the modus operandi & status quo of the UK.

The only way this is possible is because the Monoparty Establishment of the Tories and Labour have debased and discredited themselves so much *by the actions they took of their own volition* that they are electorally dead in the water, and Reform can stand as the only "change" candidate.

Reform UK have a win-win formula every time they make a policy statement: 1) Say the most extreme thing possible 2) The moribund Tories & Labour will either match you or adopt a slightly less Draconian position In that way, they constantly shift the framing rightwards & take the battleground.

The Aaron Swartz production function www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-aaron-...

It is genuinely absolutely bonkers that one year into a massive new government majority, all the discourse is about what will happen under the allegedly inevitable majority by another party. Much of it is the govt’s fault but not all - this very much has not happened under past unpopular govts!

signal-noise-ratio can fall even as signal increases if noise increases at a faster rate and your ability to filter noise does not improve

Small boats: TV coverage - day after day after day after day.... PPE scandal: TV coverage - let's stick this powerful, enraging documentary on at quarter past ten on a Sunday night.

The fact they don't have detailed plans. The fact it's ethically repugnant. The fact that it would be an economic disaster. All of these things are what chaotic authoritarianism looks like. As we're seeing in the US.

To remove indefinite leave to remain from people who already have it they'd have to dismantle our entire system of rights legislation and probably end judicial independence. But they could do that with a majority. They've said they'd do that.

Apropos of nothing in particular, here's Walt Disney's testimony to HUAC in 1947, where he named employees he believed were communists, condemned labor unions, and accused "commie" groups, including the League of Women Voters, of smearing him. 🗃️ archive.org/details/walt...

"Tasteless" does not even begin to describe what is happening here.

Just 2 gun rights advocates sitting behind a wall of bulletproof glass while enjoying a memorial for a gun rights advocate who got murdered by a gun.

sometimes you see something so evangelical that it takes your breath away