if you spend any significant amount of time on X the everything app, your brain is being cooked

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We recorded this before the killing of Alex Pretti, but the contrast is instructive. A significant number of people who saw videos of Good's killing as vindicating ICE's story are more disturbed by videos of Pretti's killing. A key reason: for many in that group, it is easier to identify with Pretti

Thanks to @josephcox.bsky.social of @404media.co for a wonderful conversation about social identity, misinformation, collective knowledge systems, and what it all means for democracy. (See also: blog.apaonline.org/2025/11/12/t... and academic.oup.com/book/55806)

Exactly right. Bovino's leaving? Great, get Noem to resign. Noem resigns? Great, defund and dismantle ICE. Go after Stephen Miller too. Bring charges against ICE thugs at the state and local level. Lawsuits. New state laws restricting them. Every possible angle.

Alex from our time working together, while he was in nursing school. Later, he moved to ICU, working as a nurse to support critically ill Veterans. He had such a great attitude. We’d chat between patients about trying to get in a mountain bike ride together. Will never happen now

It’s time. I want the see Steve Kerr’s Warriors and Minneapolis’ Timberwolves agree that they simply cannot play this game tonight. A strike in solidarity with the besieged city and its murdered and abducted residents.

I know Will wasn’t the first to say it, but I cant stop thinking about “we will never have as many guns as they have/they will never have as many people as we have” and how easy that makes it to pick a strategy

Just staggered by the complete moral void of not even *pretending* to wait for more information before pivoting to “the opponent of the state deserved it.” It is so insanely depraved. Soulless.

“Everyone should be allowed to carry a gun for their safety but the government can murder you in the street if you have a gun” is an incredible endpoint for the conservative moment

1. Shoot people like dogs 2. Unrest 3. Martial law The plan is that transparent. Don’t let them

A perfect (and terrible) example of how "state capture" does not always mean *using* state power for private ends -- as it's usually understood -- but can instead mean *destroying* the state's capacity to pursue broadly public ends.

Schumer needs to be defeated as leader in January 2027. There is real rancor in the caucus with him; this is an achievable goal. Call your senators, ask your candidates - do not support Schumer for leader.

"i serve the Lord, not a draft-dodging coward" is the kind of phrase that would be slightly cringe online and is incredibly badass when being stated by a man surrounded by armed men threatening to murder him

the most important thing in 2028 is electing someone who is a true believer in the project of dismantling right-wing power. if you don't get that, then nothing else will matter very much.

I see this take around from time to time and totally disagree. ICE just murdered a woman standing up to them. No Kings is among the largest protests in history. The complacency is coming from elites in media, business, universities, and the Democratic leadership

I am begging Democratic leadership to recognize that funding and legitimizing your authoritarian opponent’s secret police is a bad idea. This should not be a difficult concept.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

"You deserve to die if you disagree with us" is their position. bsky.app/profile/atru...

Here’s some things that can be done by a party out of power - file impeachment articles every day in the House - withhold unanimous consent in the senate and filibuster every nominee - be everywhere with comms saying this is lawless and impeachable

I don't know who needs to hear this, but cops are not allowed to shoot people just because you didn't do what they said. That is called murder when they do that. Some cops are working hard to convince people otherwise.

Make it viral.

I hate to break it to you, but heavily-armed government militias are roaming unchecked through US cities and shooting human rights observers dead in the streets. That's happening in our country.

keep thinking of a vocally anti-woke reporter who insisted that the term "environmental racism" was nonsense

In which @volts.wtf coins the phrase “Bagg-pilled” 🙃

I'm not a podcast listener, but there's a transcript of this with the link, and it's a *very* good discussion that I know I'm going to refer back to in the future.

I did in fact miss this last month...so I'm glad I saw this ICYMI! A really important and fascinating conversation. Well worth the listen.

ICYMI: I sat down with political scientist @samuel-bagg.bsky.social to discuss the crisis in our information environment and its roots in social identity.

24 hours ago, journalists were wondering aloud what "deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty" could possibly mean

My whole life, advocating war has been fed to me as “the adult position,” akin to drinking your coffee black or reading the business section of the newspaper. Let’s be very clear — war is the childish nonsense of impulsive destructive idiots playing baby-brained video games with real human lives.

People are going to try and lure you into debates about whether Maduro was a good guy or not and the thing is, it doesn’t matter for the purposes of discussing whether violent kidnappings and extrajudicial murders by the US government are ok. No, they aren’t! End of convo.

Belatedly watching Mamdani inauguration& Jumaane Williams speech: “That’s the thing about uncertainty- anything can happen. But also, anything *can* happen. We could make NY more affordable, more safe and more just. We could, we can, and we have to try.” That’s it, y’all. That’s radical pragmatism.

These are also some of my favorite posts of the year, by anyone!

like 75% of dem messaging right now should be “the party led by epsteins best friend is breaking into pre-k childcare centers so they can record your toddlers and put the videos on internet”

SERIOUSLY, WATCH THIS: If you really want to understand how huge SUVs and pick-up trucks have ended up being MOST of the vehicles out there in our cities, and the absolutely INSANE consequences of that, watch this easy-to-watch video by #NotJustBikes. Then please share it as much as you can.

It really is very good. There is a transcript if you prefer to read rather than listen. (It's a discussion between @volts.wtf and @samuel-bagg.bsky.social about how people adopt political views based on identity/group/social factors, not rational policy assessments.) www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/oy0u8...

it's fine for efforts to fail but you do have to at least playact at rule of law being important

Such a treat to speak with @volts.wtf about social identity and the epistemic crisis. David is really sharp and does a fantastic interview - no small feat to make a plodding academic sound like a lively conversationalist! Highly recommend the podcast to anyone (like me) who didn't know it before.

This may be the best interview I've done about my book. Many thanks to @rafkhach.bsky.social for sharp, insightful questions pressing me to relate normative theory to our big-picture historical situation. (Recorded in February, but no less relevant today.) mitchellcenter.libsyn.com/episode-710-...

On Wednesday, I'm talking with @samuel-bagg.bsky.social about the post linked below -- about our current epistemic crisis, its roots & possible remedies. Got any questions?

Keep physical media. Download movies. Share them. Because they could be erased by the powers that be.

We're half a decade into studies finding that improving airflow in classrooms will reduce disease transmission enormously, and that bleaching surfaces etc. does very little. And yet nothing changes. Waves of flu and colds wash over schools, and the schools pretend it's an act of God.

Succinct and important summary of what we know about money in politics, and why it’s so different from the conventional wisdom.

New Paper 🚨: In this thread I teased a new paper with @briandfeinstein.bsky.social that brings hard empirical evidence to bear on emerging critiques of public participation's role in administrative decisionmaking. The paper is now public on @ssrn.bsky.social: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

We're all like "why does Gen Z feel so nihilistic when they're not actually poorer than older generations at that age" but like everything in society is about hustling and cheating your fellow human beings for a market edge

Biden & Harris were already speeding up permitting -- not by slashing regulations or imposing arbitrary timelines, but by fully funding & staffing the offices involved.

"At least $5.9 trillion will be inherited by billionaire children over the next 15 years, the bank calculates."

Imagining that the climate battle is about *information* -- that those who have good information will act; that those who aren't acting must be lacking information -- has been utterly disastrous for decades now, but advocates & pols can't seem to break out of it.

People do not use information to determine their social identities; they use their social identities to determine what counts as information. The climate fight is, and has always been, an identity fight. Gonna talk with @samuel-bagg.bsky.social about this soon.

I agree wholeheartedly with this proposition, and I think one of the reasons Dems have had so much trouble is their neglect of the kind of social organizing discussed in this piece.

This is an EXTREMELY important thread regarding how to tackle disinformation and lies. If both validates and further educates the way I’ve been address such lies and conspiracy theories in the city-making arena. Please read, share and consider.