he was an authoritarian ideologue. He tortured and murdered people.

Che Guevara was bad

this song really hitting these days

Every time I see Hasan on my feed he's having a Heated Gamer Moment and I just think it's astonishing that anyone takes a 34 year old who acts like this seriously

I watched his whole stream about being questioned by DHS at the airport and my takeaways (aside from DHS being out of control) were that this dude is an intellectual featherweight & malignant narcissist

This is the way.

I find it incredibly notable that the same people who were arguing 4 years ago that the Russia threat was overblown are now arguing that taking the Russia threat isn't crying wolf, but is rather being neocon or whatever. It's almost like they're only real opinion is helping Putin.

Of all things to criticize AOC about, boilerplate on Taiwan gets people upset? Sorry tankie leftists, she didn’t say everything bad in the world is America’s fault, and indicated that deterring Chinese imperialism could be good. Sorry, fake China hawks, she was measured instead of fire-breathing.

Look at this. Imperial spheres of influence bad, Trump Latin America policy bad, Putin aggression against Europe bad, global engagement good. What's the problem supposed to be? Which of those bad things is actually good?

But in all seriousness its profoundly silly to say that AOC is a neocon because she believes in some kind if rules-based, counter authoritarian foreign policy

Upstream from this is an entire industry of kids’ entertainment and toys that feels gambling adjacent…e.g. Pokémon packs are sold from vending machines right next to the scratch-off machines at stores in my state. Kids and adults hoping to score big. www.liberalcurrents.com/from-pill-mi...

Look at Alan. Look how cool he is. This could be you.

The Illinois Accountability Commission is gathering precisely the kind of evidence that will hold ICE and the Trump Administration responsible.

We are creating the next opioid crisis, it's already clear, it's pulling in *kids* for God's sake, and a real country would do something about it.

This is the piece you need to read right now about Trump’s election subversion. Yes, he’ll try it. But most of the likely methods just won’t work. The states still run their own show. So do the courts. Of course he’ll cry “rigged” again, but only the usual gullibles of the GOP base will believe him.

Can Trump successfully subvert the midterm elections? Probably not. Will he try? He already is. Elections & constitutional law expert @andycraig.bsky.social assesses how much we should & shouldn't worry.

His attacks on the midterms are real and dangerous… and aren’t going to work. Running down the case for an optimistic threat assessment @theunpopulist.net :

As @aselrod.bsky.social says, the reality of this administration is enough to drive you mad, when the fact is that it is reality that is mad www.liberalcurrents.com/youre-not-cr...

Trump is saying that he will disregard Congress and issue an Excutive order that will violate the Constitution. Here is my promise: If he does that, we will sue and we will win. Just like we did the last time. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

"Leagues are insisting that they take the integrity of their games seriously and that they don’t want to see them spoiled by gambling’s grim associations with criminality and addiction. But this rings hollow when players are featured in DraftKings and FanDuel ads"

It’s disturbing to see the thousand little endorphin hits all the side betting provides to keep addicts addicted.

People in gambling debt quickly become as unpredictable and untrustworthy as any other addict. They are incredibly vulnerable to manipulation, blackmail and basically becoming full blown criminals. This is a MAJOR problem globally, not just in US. Even here in Ireland it's out of control 😬

Many are already over the edge of bankruptcy (as someone who sees a lot of bankruptcy filings for work)

Addiction is their business model! Casual players who go to Vegas once or twice a year with friends and blow a few hundred bucks are not funding this industry.

“Too many people have a view of the Nazis as rigorously empirical and scientific thinkers whose crime was that they applied this in service of their devout racism. But Nazism was also a mess of inconsistencies, irrationality, and bad science.” www.liberalcurrents.com/youre-not-cr...

"We have to stare at the abyss and dare it to stare back. We can be realistic about how dark things have gotten and retain the hope necessary to fight what could well be a long, even generational struggle to reclaim American democracy." www.liberalcurrents.com/youre-not-cr...

If you want to see the scale of the social impact of sports betting and online gambling, take a look at what happened in Brazil. It’s a full blown public health and economic crisis in the making.

Are you familiar with the whole CS:GO lotto saga, Roblox gambling, etc? I don't often see mentioned how many 18 year olds have been gambling for a decade already. That's not even getting into the normalization of loot boxes & gacha game elements that most popular games now feature.

A book I highly recommend on electronic slot machines—which fully convinced me they should be illegal for how they systematically mislead our brains—is Natasha Dow Schüll‘s ADDICTION BY DESIGN Gamified online gambling seems much worse, & is becoming much more ubiquitous It will immiserate so many

I have learned to be extremely cautious about characterizing any kind of game as “addictive.” Too often, it is a way to demonize playful dedication. So when we say that gambling is addictive and dangerous, I am in.

So, I can authoritatively state that this figure is too high and likely due to methodological bias in the sampling AND it’s still probably way higher than most folks realize. If it’s even half of that implausible 19%, it’s a generation defining phenomenon.

NY legalized online gambling and cannabis on the same day and I was worried about one of those things for the sake of my teenaged son

Gambling addiction has a high suicide rate

America is just a giant casino right now. Is what it is. This is what we wanted apparently. Probably won’t end well.

This, exactly. (You can support some casinos and also support state action against online gambling apps! For the same reason I support drug decrim and state action against the Sacklers!) @massago.bsky.social could really lead here....

I see no reason not to look at the online gambling and prediction market craze as a new opioids crisis. It will wreak havoc on lower-income Americans and leave a trail of destruction and despair in its wake. The companies are just Purdue Pharma 2.0 www.liberalcurrents.com/from-pill-mi...

This is going to be dire when the full impact hits.

This is a significant and totally preventable, however I would note that "I can beat the house!" is a pervasive mindset in American dude culture that preexists and goes beyond online gambling.

"I worry we are condemning countless problem gamblers and the people around them to lives marked by addiction, financial insecurity, and even deaths of despair. In twenty years’ time, I suspect we will wonder how we ever allowed this to happen." www.liberalcurrents.com/from-pill-mi...

“Stories are not universally bought and cannot be imposed on others at the point of a gun or by other forms of force. John Locke was not wrong when he argued that force can only grant you submission, not belief.” www.liberalcurrents.com/politics-is-...

YUP

"Surveys have found that nineteen percent of 18-to-24-year-olds qualify as problem gamblers, and 37 percent of Gen Z gamblers self-report as having an addiction." Via @aselrod.bsky.social, we have a problem...we're creating a terminally online generation: www.liberalcurrents.com/from-pill-mi...

yep. you can’t overdose on gambling but it’s also pretty hard to blow your entire life savings in 5 minutes doing opioids

Always worth giving @aselrod.bsky.social a read. Its not a perfect comp but I get where he is coming from. Gets to the core of *gestures at all of this hot mess*: structuring a society that lets people be free while still having enough of a structured society to clean up the mess of that freedom

Great piece. Sport betting is toxic not just for sports but for society and comparing it to the opioid crisis is spot on. 🎯

As @aselrod.bsky.social says, the reality of this administration is enough to drive you mad, when the fact is that it is reality that is mad www.liberalcurrents.com/youre-not-cr...

this is truly excellent piece from @gregsargent.bsky.social that i strongly encourage you to read

I was promised cheaper groceries and tariff rebates and all I got was this lousy pogrom www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-magi...

No wonder these guys don’t like democracy