from 1868 to 2025 there was little dispute about what the birthright clause meant and the idea that the past year has been some great scholarly debate is absurd. a handful of partisans and hacks have churned out junk so that the president can get what he wants. that’s it.

The thing that bothers me about people outside of Bluesky complaining about people on Bluesky is that we’re exactly as annoying as they’re saying but for completely different reasons

you 🫵 the person reading this post on bluesky the sports app would do a better job running the nations military than these assholes

Robert E. Lee got his ass beat at Gettysburg by a professor of rhetoric and oratory from Bowdoin College and generations of reactionary fantasists have died mad about it.

A large and under-discussed aspect of this regime is how they're staging a Truman Show version of the presidency for Trump to exist inside of. It's not Mussolini's face on the Palazzo Braschi. It's putting up pictures of the birthday boy at his birthday party.

Jesus, they weren’t bloody joking.

I would just like to note how Fox News framed this:

The key to squaring getting to root for upsets with wanting a good bracket is to forget who you picked in every game.

March Madness feeling like March Madness tbh. Rich schools would be pretty smart to change enough of their ways to make sure their most valuable shared property never stops being this

"What other trillion-dollar problem is AI trying to solve?" Expertise. They're trying to use it to solve having people who possess expertise. If you have expertise, you possess knowledge on a subject. It wasn't free to gain, but it's free for you to keep. That means they can't sell answers to you.

I've built a socioeconomic system that depends on everyone to do useful work and act ethically except the people at the top, who get unimaginable rewards for being antisocial frauds and criminals. And I think it will stand the test of time

I know I've said this a trillion times but I have to say it periodically to keep from going insane: The right ran a huge, well-funded, & ultimately successful campaign to completely take over political media & the infosphere more generally. This is by far the most important political development...

*smells like teen spirit voice* venezuela

The more self-serious a person is, the more it feels like an attack on their ego to have to engage with (and often lose to) someone as basic and gutter-stupid as Trump, so they have to invent a more human, competent opponent.

Mothra Field

This is a performative war of macho posturing by third rate figures who mistake the audience of social media and right wing cable TV for the gravitas (?) of diplomacy and foreign policy. It would be comic if it was not so painfully tragic.

[Sade voice 🎵]

Who needs the American Healthcare system when you can just get punched in the face in the pit.

There’s nothing more obnoxious than when people celebrate being an asshole or “just saying what everyone’s thinking” Yeah, dude, most people have edgy thoughts, and learn to keep them inside. It’s called control. What you’re doing is like being really proud of constantly shitting yourself.

“When disinformation is constant, the everyday cost of knowing what’s going on rises. People spend more time verifying the basics, or they stop trying."

Me the first time I saw Tenet

“whoops, turned out trump didn’t actually have a historic mandate to rule like a king and people were just mad about inflation” is a thing that basically every politics reporter knows but none wants to admit

The Singularity is upon us: Apple's AI summarized a text message that read "I'm still down to clown if you are" to.... "clown event still possible."

If you get into a “who can cut taxes more” battle with the GOP, you’re going to lose because they are far more shameless and antagonistic to the idea of living in a functioning society. Don’t concede to their framing that taxes are nothing but a problem to be solved.

Even among his haters there’s a kind of mythology around Trump that unfortunately still makes him seem more impressive than he actually is. I think it’s understandably hard to grasp just how stupid this is

The fundamental tension between the Batman and the Penguin is that a bat is a *mammal* that can fly and a penguin is a *bird* that can't. So you have competing, and inverse forms of weaponized imposter syndrome

listen all y'all, it's a

CHESTER BENNINGTON (chorus) I'm Elmo's 𝗗𝗔𝗗 I'm tall and 𝗥𝗘𝗗 MIKE SHINODA (quietly) Tall and red all the time still I can't believe the son is mine

10yrs old: a slam dunk is the coolest thing i’ve ever seen 15yrs old: these slow, emotional songs just “get” me 25yrs old: literature explores the human condition, but the visual storytelling in film reaches a much broader audience 35yrs old: a slam dunk is the coolest thing i’ve ever seen

Jacked action hero with goon in headlock, in raspy yet firm voice:

it's funny you can see how much the New Deal fixed macroeconomic stability within the United States, and the elite hated FDR for it

The lust people have to argue online is in itself a weird bubble. I don’t wake up hoping to have arguments with people, I wake up with the idea that I’m probably going to talk about sports or movies & say weird shit and sometimes arguments arise but usually from annoying assholes, it’s not a virtue

Appreciate the clarity

I’m so tired of seeing people bash Bluesky for being an echo chamber when X is an actual intentionally constructed echo chamber that is demonstrably radicalizing people across the political spectrum who still use it

I wonder if this company is fuckin furious at the prediction market with a nearly identical name

trying out a new feature, lmk if it works

The 2000s was just like the 1980s but more stupid. The 2020s is just like the 2000s but more stupid.

kind of amazing that everything trump does can be understood through the lens of narcissism and it's related needs (e.g., self aggrandizement, revenge, domination, grievance validation). i don't think any character has been so one-dimensional, not even wile e coyote or scrooge mcduck

And this is a general life lesson: most people’s behaviors are not about you; you’re not that important. No one is, and you should take solace in that fact.

when you’re talking about Aqua Boy but can’t remember his name

There are a bunch of these that come to mind: Nancy Pelosi saying we have to pass the ACA to know what's in it. Wildly out of context. Obama's "you don't build that" line in 2012. Obama's "cling to guns and religion" line in 2008(? I think?) Pushing out of context lines is for propagandists.

You don't have to stop posting but you do have to stop posting THERE. It is a uniquely, fundamentally detrimental website to you as a person. It incentivizes racism, violence and — the worst crime of all — vagueposting. You are living in a permanent teaser ad for the 11 o'clock news.

The Roberts Court has a clear set of guidelines: the president can do anything he pleases, so long as it does not violate the rights of the owning class.

Literally my entire adult life, the mainstream media has fallen for a massive bullshit campaigns from the right again and again and again and again. At no point do they hold it against the right. At no point do they change the way they deal with the right. Where is their pride?

One of the things that has gone most wrong with US media is that the penalty for falling for right-wing bullshit has steadily dropped to zero. You can just buy the latest thing, shill it, and when it turns out to be BS like all the rest, move on seamlessly to the next one.

So, so many people fell for the bullshit these guys were peddling. No one has recanted, apologized, vowed to change the way they do things, anything.