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.

Black Friday sales are tempting, but remember unions are calling for a mass shopping strike for national chains, esp. Amazon, Whole Foods, Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Starbucks, & Apple. If you shop between now & Dec 2, please support small & local businesses & avoid crossing the picket line 💪

Friends don’t let friends buy from corporations that enable Trump’s fascist agenda: weaintbuyingit.com/?utm_source=bluesky

🚨We analyzed 138 million geocoded property tax records to quantify how municipal boundaries spatially overlap onto economic segregation in every US metro area—creating disparities in localities’ ability to fund public goods. And we made an interactive map of our results! [1/16]

Misinformation, democratic breakdown, social identity: An excellent set of reflections from @samuel-bagg.bsky.social

Ok, pretty funny of Zohran’s people to put out the absolute model of the sort of statement that drives Bluesky absolutely *insane* to be studiously ignored On Here because of the source

Would love to see someone from the moderate, Majority Dem faction really address and wrestle with the political effects of what Labour has been up to.

This was very good

Excellent post. ⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇

Now where did I put my Fanon with laser eyes jpeg…or my Sylvia Wynter with laser eyes for that matter…

I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I think it’s exactly right. Read it

this is really good

An important piece on this theme: forgeorganizing.org/article/we-s...

We say we want to save democracy. But we’ll never make real progress if we keep attacking the symptoms rather than the disease.

“effective campaigns of democratic renewal will thus focus on reshaping the meaning of certain identities that have been captured by anti-democratic forces—such as rurality or masculinity—and shifting the relative salience of others—such as class.”

Five stars, must read for life in the 21st century

How do we mostly make our highest-quality judgments? By “trust[ing] the right people at the right times.“ We are, and ought only to be, suckers for knowledge.

"Workplace organizing still has a unique ability to bring diverse people together in pursuit of common aims: a revived labor movement must therefore be a central part of any project of democratic renewal." @samuel-bagg.bsky.social blog.apaonline.org/2025/11/12/t...

Excellent piece from @samuel-bagg.bsky.social. Brought clarity to my thinking over the past couple years. Who and what we trust is the driving force in the vastly different world views and perceptions of reality that is contributing to the political divide.

"Modern humans cannot make [most] quality judgments [] using only our own direct experience. Instead, we mostly trust what others tell us. The difference [] is whether we trust the right people at the right times. And this is where social identity comes in." Important read about #misinformation 👇

A really important point. You can't "solve"misinformation without understanding the ways beliefs function as identity markers more than attempts to represent reality accurately gone awry.