thinking about how, in the Russian history elective I took in HS, every time a tsar was facing domestic weakness the teacher would turn to the assembled students and ask "so what is it time for?" and we would chant "stunning territorial annexation!" and she would respond "well, DUH, girls"

Maybe the most illustrative sentence about what’s going on that I’ve read in weeks.

The Washington Post and LA Times editorial pages have gone full MAGA, MSNBC has purged all of its anti-Trump anchors, and Twitter is owned by a literal Nazi. Here's why liberal media bias is still a problem.

"The beloved bard of Black America’s struggle against police violence," writes @dancharnas.bsky.social, "will take a stage erected by a partnership that effectively sidelined Mr. Kaepernick. Anything that he does or doesn’t do on that stage will either be undermined or underlined by this history."

As a listener of both this and Southlake, can confirm: he ain’t lyin’.

“Biden will now be remembered as the champion of the working class who lost the support of the working class for his party,” writes Peter Coy.

Just try on for size: "I cook because I like it." Or "I don't cook, because I'd rather spend that time playing a video game." Maybe not every personal preference is about your moral superiority to everyone else on social media.

This is being turned into inter-generational war, but really, I think the social pathology here is about social media. There's something about social media that causes people to try to spin basic human flaws (too lazy too cook) as if they're superheroic feats of superior logic.

Obama wins 53% of the popular vote and a statute that passed with a Senate supermajority is treated as some kind of illegitimate abuse of the legislative process. Trump wins 49% of the popular vote and Democrats gotta hand it to any ludicrously unqualified crank he nominates to a cabinet position

people who have never experienced open racism — or open bigotry of any sort — do not appreciate the way it can be psychologically destabilizing. and on the main, it actually isn’t healthy to be so resilient and thick-skinned that you don’t react to slurs and dehumanization

It's all tied together and don't let them trick you into thinking it's for safety

Trump’s campaign is almost entirely identity politics and it’s extremely effective!

these people hate children and want them to suffer. they target trans kids because they think can get away with it but they’ll destroy any child’s life if they believe it will serve some greater good www.yahoo.com/news/mom-tra...

even after all these years i still don’t really understand what trump supporters see when they look at trump www.nytimes.com/2024/05/04/u...

i think there’s a decent chance that this supreme court elevates the old idea that the “right” of states to exercise broad police powers trumps the rights of actual human beings to live and exercise their freedoms slate.com/news-and-pol...

In fairness what some of those people actually mean by this is “if you prosecute trump we will kill you,” but this us also a small group of people bsky.app/profile/osit...

I love this kind of issue because it’s one of those things where it makes clear right wing “freedom” talk is just about church and capital imposing themselves on everyone bsky.app/profile/mmas...

Exceptionally warm March weather propelled Washington’s cherry blossoms to their second-earliest peak bloom in more than a century of records Sunday, reflecting the growing influence of human-caused climate change on the famed trees.

While in Boston in 1979, Bernadette Devlin McAliskey explained influence of Civil Rights movement on Irish Republicanism. "There is nothing sadder to people struggling against oppression in Ireland to look towards Boston and see our people.. being used to oppress the black people of this city.."

for all the navel-gazing arguments about whether Trump was a fascist the first time around, Trump 2024 is increasingly hewing closer to "standard" fascist rhetoric and aesthetics

eg the "poisoning the blood" rhetoric, which is more straightforwardly eliminationist. last time around he was missing the redemptive violence and cult of youth aspects, but J6 fills the role of the first and (imo) the far-right tilt in Silicon Valley is coming to fulfill the latter

Jacob is right but the reason it’s phrased this way is that conservatives are not allowed to acknowledge something *Trump* said was bad because he is infallible, so the reasoning has to be, “the libs will use this against you,” not “why are you saying monstrous things” bsky.app/profile/jaco...

Aw shit, here we go again.

i’m watching this frontline documentary on the january 6 committee, and they are recounting and quoting and showing the testimony of trump aides, who all seem genuinely shocked that their boss didn’t try to stop the mob. and my only thought is: these people are buffoons and rubes.

To most, that price tag probably sounds absurd. But "in the minds of many, Harvard, Stanford, and Yale are analogous to Louis Vuitton, Ferrari, and Hermès." That's what these parents are buying for their kids--a luxury brand. (www.cambridge.org/core/books/a...)

I kind of think the Jordan Peterson types are right that there’s a deep hunger among some young men to explore their masculinity and it’s pretty unfortunate that they’ve been duped into thinking weeping beef Professor and homophobic UFC fighter are better options than “guy in town who is good dad”

I’m just begging you: When somebody posts something about “the media” isn’t covering something, please make sure, before you internalize that idea, that the person is saying something more than “this is the first I have personally heard of it.” Which is a very different thing.

Abortion ban "exceptions" don't exist. They never existed. Not for rape. Not for incest. Not for the life of the mother. The only people they're designed to protect is the politicians who tout them as a fraudulent defense of an inhumane policy. Exceptions are a talking point and nothing else.

“I think it’s the clearest message you could have possibly received from an anti-abortion state that they never meant the medical exemption to mean anything at all.” www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/o...