I’m old enough to remember the crypto industry pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the 2024 campaign to defeat Biden, and I think a lesson — which will not be learned — is that burning down the stable world that gave you riches beyond your wildest dreams is not good for business.

As a side note, it’s funny to see so many of these emails with thirsty academics repeatedly enact Marx’s bit in the 1844 Manuscripts about the power of money. “Oh Mr Epstein, your house in New York is enormous and, unrelatedly, your questions at dinner were so intelligent, so insightful, so deep.”

I hate living in the Asshole Cinematic Universe. “So the King of Pedophiles got the 4chan guy to make the Nazi board and that’s why the host of Celebrity Apprentice was made immune to laws by the Tradcath Illuminati. This has something to do with video game journalism, maybe?” Fuck off.

every epstein file drop underscores how elite power operates through shared socio-economic networks, regardless of people's ideological differences, populist posturing, or public feuds

The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.

Bonhoeffer on the “reasonable ones” who “want to do justice to all sides”:

"What should I be if not-a-cyberpunk," well, you have to confront your actual, contemporary, existent cultural problems and make up something modern *Find some interested friends, that's helpful

*Probably not enough attention is paid to the "entropic rot" of words and ideas #entanglementtheory #IanHodder *That ideas are not Platonic and static, that instead ideas have to be actively maintained, that they crumble and drift, meme-like

The Nobel Peace Prize becoming so prestigious that wars are fought over a head of state coveting it is some real monkey paw stuff for Alfred Nobel.

i think this MLK day the thing to focus on is the strategic focus and tactical brilliance of the civil rights movement and the way it was laser focused on a set of achievable goals

Democrats waiting for polling to tell them whether having a gestapo is good or bad, wonder why everyone hates them

Folks, Trump has brought the full force of ICE to bear on a mid-sized city and he can't even stop the demonstrations there. He's not going to be able to cancel the midterm elections by fiat or station his goons outside more than a handful of polling places.

He was very weary; the day had been long, and full of dragons.

It’s true. We shouldn’t pretend that. Trumpist culture is not the same as American culture and not equal. Trumpist culture is proudly ignorant, defiantly against America’s founding values and subsequently developed values, venomously bigoted, and generally despicable.

“The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!" 'Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical... There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness." ― Ursula K. Le Guin

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.

Cowards die many times before their deaths, The valiant never taste of death but once.

"The future offers us little hope for those who expect that our new mechanical slaves will offer us a world in which we may rest from thinking. Help us they may, but at the cost of supreme demands upon our honesty and our intelligence.” ~Norbert Wiener, God and Golem (1964)

remember this: tyrrany requires constant effort. it breaks. it leaks. authority is brittle. remember this: try.

We finally created the Great Gatsby from the classic book, Do Not Emulate the Great Gatsby.

“Tell your children who the cowards were.”

Omelas already exists: no need to build it or choose it. We already live here –in the narrow, foul, dark prison we let our ignorance, fear, and hatred build for us and keep us in, here in the splendid, beautiful city of life...

Adam Silver wondering where all these chickens have come from and why they’re roosting in his office

Nothing is yours. It is to use. It is to share. If you will not share it, you cannot use it.

If I had explain American history in one sentence, I could do worse than "John Brown was hung for treason, but Robert E. Lee was not."

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.

We are ruled by bloggers, podcasters and con-artists. And they are all maximally WEIRD people.

he had spent his life learning how to choose to do what he had no choice but to do.

Autism is not a disease. You can’t cure autism. "Some people don’t care what we want. They want a cure for autism, and they spend a lot of time and money looking for it. This is bad for autistic people. People should spend time and money helping us live good lives." Words by @autisticadvocacy.org.

A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it.

We are all dead, and we spoiled the world before we died. There is nothing left. Nothing but dreams.

The answer: Germany, UK, and Korea should invest a bit of money into Bluesky. Governments should see that this is critical civil communication infrastructure and invest in it like they do roads, health, and mail services.

Whether they're blaming vaccines and Tylenol, or selling dubious "remedies," what they're really doing is promoting the perception that families (and especially mothers) can prevent and treat Autism. And thus also the perception that people with Autism and their families don't need social support.

Autistic and neurodivergent people deserve far better than a government looking to prevent their existence, let alone one that will invent fictitious ways to do so that puts everyone in danger

Once again we wearily tap the “Lando and Vader at Bespin” sign

But when we crave power over life—endless wealth, unassailable safety, immortality—then desire becomes greed. And if knowledge allies itself to that greed, then comes evil. Then the balance of the world is swayed, and ruin weighs heavy in the scale.

“Every morning brings us the news of the globe, and yet we are poor in noteworthy stories. This is because no event any longer comes to us without already being shot through with explanation.” Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller

wrote about the “national conservative” vision for america

The MSNBC commentator saying that most political violence has historically come from the left just once again showed how we suffer from failing to learn history. Lynching, pogroms, race riots, the political violence that ended Reconstruction, and against the Civil Rights Movement. Come on.

One of the requirements of being a conservative is that you have great reverence for the past while what little you happen to know about the past is more likely to be fairy tales or just stupidly wrong

surely we can come up with something better for 7 billion people than being lorded over by a bunch of plundering elderly murder and torture enthusiasts who whisper to each other about printing spare organs so they can immiserate others in perpetuity

Ruin a movie by making it about Gary Gary! Gary! Gary!

It's a rare gift, to know where you need to be, before you've been to all the places you don't need to be.

Remembering when the NYT went on a weeks-long bender covering a decades-old real estate deal the Clintons were involved in, in which they *lost money*.

Robert E. Lee killed more U.S. troops in battle than Adolph Hitler and Osama bin Laden combined