The banality of evil

True politicians campaign for voters and govern for donors

Here’s a video from the same podcast as linked in my previous post where you can hear the audio too. I love this because it really lays bare how LLMs fool us - but really they’re just slotting words into linguistic patterns that we’re familiar with. Genres like a podcast or LinkedIn post.

There are fuck-ups, and then there's this krebsonsecurity.com/2026/05/cisa...

“Having four strangers living in our county and having the ability to wander is a concern of mine,” said Vice Chair John Moyer.

”Seize the seats, damn the courts” only works for Republicans in places like Ohio if VA Democrats remain too timid to do the same. When the GOP does it it’s a novel approach, but if the Dems do it, it becomes a crisis. Make it a crisis because it *is* a crisis.

wow www.reuters.com/legal/litiga...

This is a moral, legal, and policy failure on so many levels. I hope a full and transparent investigation is done and that this woman gets the justice she deserves, although nothing can truly remedy such dignitary harms

Such a funny headline dailyprogress.com/news/local/e...

I've been trying to think who Altman reminds me of and he's the spitting image of Burke from Aliens

And that concludes my lifetime tolerance for video conferencing.

Has anybody refused to serve John Roberts yet?

”Clarke said she regretted not recording the arrest scenes but feared drawing attention to herself after thinking about the Jan. 7 killing of Renée Good during a tense roadway confrontation with ICE agents in Minneapolis.“

As a gift, Xi gave Trump Chinese rose seeds, for his “Rose Garden”. 🫠

Xi bringing up Thucydides while talking to Trump is so hilarious and mean

So far the only America250 merch I've seen is a branded 5 gallon bucket at Home Depot which seems apropos.

So: Trump imposed tariffs, then brought CEO’s of companies that struggled bc of his tariffs with him to China to advocate for eliminating tariffs — adding to China’s anti-tariff argument. He closed up the strait by attacking Iran — leading to China using this as leverage over Taiwan. Genius.

Only Trump could give Taiwan to China

Zohran Mamdani has fully balanced New York City’s $12 billion deficit — an uncomfortable reminder to the political establishment that governments can, in fact, function when taxpayer money isn’t funneled toward lobbyists wealthy benefactors

Saw an AI bro refer to "brain-only writers" lol

Check out my OnlyBrains page 💋🍑

The radio host said Hakeem Jeffries should "get [his] cotton-picking hands off of Virginia" And this Republican congressmember, Jen Kiggans, enthusiastically replied "That’s right. Ditto, yes, yes to that” Retire bitch

Fucking cowards, @vademocrats.bsky.social

Another headline: "How to cut AI costs by 2x or 3x." Republican math is infecting everything. You might cut costs to half or to one-third of your previous costs, but you are not "cutting by multiplication."

You can also play the games online at epicfurious.com, according to Secret Handshake. From the group: "Just to save you time, the only way you can lose is by trying to hold Melania's hand. But its the Middle East, so you can't win either."/

NEW: Secret Handshake installed working arcade games called Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell at the DC War Memorial. The game features "furious tweet battles against Iranian schoolgirls, low-flow shower heads, and other threats to American freedom like DEI and The Pope..."

This hit me so hard this week.

There was a time where humans were like, “you mean I can put any design or words I want on a tshirt and wear it?” and they feasted upon this custom tshirt shop buffet for a generation.

this is the closest I've ever come to actually suggesting a "one neat trick" suggestion for anything, but I'm so serious here. the Virginia Constitution gives the legislature the power to set retirement ages for judges "REGARDLESS OF THE TERM TO WHICH ELECTED OR APPOINTED." make it 54 right now.

Larry has backslid to “both sides”

Can‘t not see today’s VA Supreme Court ruling in the context of yesterday’s FBI raid of Sen Louise Lucas’ office in the context of SCOTUS vanquishing voting rights act.

TURN THIS UP

Gotta love the Dem move of “reaching across the aisle” which always works as well as bringing a hug to a knife fight.

What the VA Supreme Court did today was also “unprecedented” like the referendum but unlike the referendum it also threw out the will of the people.

Politicians campaign for their voters but govern for their donors

My sense is the Virginia Supreme Court kicked a hornet’s nest and Virginians will probably beat the record 74% voter turnout from 2008. Also VA Dems should immediate move to increase the size of the court to water down the MAGA majority that just thwarted the will of the people.

Truly funny a City that polices architecture so hard has had this smack dab in the middle of downtown for 18 years with zero plans in place for it to ever change.

I feel like an overnight low of 32.4 is unusual for May 8

was searching for something sciencey in the nyt archives and found a form of eugenics i'd never even heard of www.nytimes.com/1927/03/27/a...

The Downtown Mall peaked when we had a Thomas Kincaid gallery/store and the The Cat House

Oh, the people who blow up ships are the bad guys? Huh.

“The dismantling of USAID, according to models from Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols, “has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children,” Gawande wrote.” hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-s...

When she told him yeah but the AI is programmed to agree with you and flatter you, he writes, he had never thought of that

Local artist Chicho Lorenzo was inspired by what he saw walking home last evening and made this!

After decades of reminding people that Presidents aren’t responsible for high gas prices here we are with a President who found a way to do it.

Two things I was told yesterday. - Elon Musk has reduced traffic deaths by 95%. - RFK Jr has legalized using AI to create personalized peptides which will cure all disease.

trying to play peekaboo with my child but he's a European diplomat: me: where'd daddy go? baby: we must articulate a post-daddy vision of strategic autonomy me: peekaboo! baby: my historic relationship with my father is stable despite recent troubles

What do conservatives always say when liberals criticize a Supreme Court decision? "Get Congress to pass a law," right? That is EXACTLY what happened here. In 1982, Congress explicitly overruled a Court case that narrowly interpreted the VRA. Today, Sam Alito said, nope, we were right all along.

In the past we had “Jim Crow“ laws. The next phase should be called “John Roberts” laws