far and away the most compelling argument for pro-natalist policy is how fucking dysfunctional greying countries are becoming politically. can't cut elderly benefits. can't raise taxes. can't let in workers. no throw only fetch politics until something collapses.

Farage's new proposal is simply "cancel ILR" (green cards), replacing them with renewable temporary visas this is probably where the global far right is going; it will obliterate the economies of the states that fall into this trap, but obv they don't care would reexamine moving to the UK, tbh

Not sure if week 1 or this week was the Jetsiest football ever. Or possibly week 2. Really all three are pretty high up there

Polymarket valued at 9b (and turning it down?!) means, ultra-conservatively, their upcoming airdrop will never start sub $1b circulating market cap and will probably be much higher lifetime site volume: in the $25b range as of today implied airdrop value at $1b MC: $40k per $1m lifetime volume gg

itt, a christmas goose is celebrating the death of a thanksgiving turkey

The way to tell what level of a poster you are is how much your groupchats are feeding you updates without you having to seek them out.

The dislocation between the true odds of Mamdani to win the runoff, the odds of Cuomo to finish second, the of Sliwa going anywhere and the price of these things on Poly/Kalshi across multiple contracts is as high as anything I’ve seen in a while

the 2026 swing seat Senate candidate lineup, in rough likelihood of winning: Ossoff (GA) Oyster guy (ME) Cooper (NC) Paralympian guy (IA) Harvard trained preacher who went on Rogan (TX) Sheldon Brown (OH) this is a murderer's row of candidates, even if the terrain is normally very red

the way that the 2024 UK election allowed Labour to win via a Reform/Tory vote split meant Labour got a massive majority but with 250 of their 400 seats in areas where 3/5ths of the voters hate their guts picture a 2022 Dem Senate with 250 Manchins in it and you'll get the problem

labour is basically all of the worst elements of the Democratic Party with none of the promise; 200 Joe Manchins in a conference of 400, outnumbered by the right by 20 points outside the bubble, and fundamentally unable to appeal to the left either

I like hanging out in my corner of bsky, because the rest of it is filled with people who looked at the last several sets of Dem primaries and decided that the problem was far too much opposition. oh no, an Old might run vs a 40 year old who looks good on paper that we never heard of 2 weeks ago?

there are a lot of things wrong with the Dems, but many of them are external; for example, because the Rs are captured by fascists, in a two party system there is an external need to oppose them that overrides bipartisan impulses that normally make sense everything wrong with Labour is internal lol

this is my favorite SK book and I would unironically pay several times the going rate for a ticket to do this (for charity)

the avg twitter user in 2025 is nazi adjacent / the avg bluesky user actively wants an echo chamber; neither gets voters fact: the median 2026 voter is a suburban housewife who wants to destroy the GOP forever fact: the median 2028 voter has an IQ of 100 and wants number to go up plan accordingly

“In 2024 all AI in America collectively consumed as much water as the lifestyles of the residents of Paterson, New Jersey.”

just copy pasting @mattlevineofficial.bsky.social from yesterday because it is all extremely funny

look, the Democratic Party is in the wilderness, we have a fash takeover in progress and god knows whether we can even come back, and this doesn't feel like the time to do an internal struggle over how many PhD programs are scams but we're here because shit broke and felt unfixable. so.

*49* out of 122 schools in this discipline, effectively 40%, have "PhD programs" that have produced a combined 0 tenured professors in the past decade (which had an average unemployment rate of, like, 4%) in other contexts, we call this a scam

SCOTUS thought they could ride the tiger and get what they wanted ideologically. In exchange, they would give him everything he wanted except the Fed. Just leave the Fed alone and you can ignore all federal law. But it ended the same way it has for everyone who tried to ride the tiger since 2016.

early Dem primary calendar chat (from politico) p much confirms that Dems will be going younger white male

okay, I get it, nobody wants to see entire already-niche career paths burned down to zero overnight but if the best neo-luddism can do is "I thought hentai enjoyers were in it for the text" and "I don't think AI will ever be able to accurately translate puns"? ruh roh

this type of take is extremely conspiratorial but is directionally correct anyway: if a)the SEC is completely hands off and b)is telling everyone in sight to put their product onchain, then c)there are -many- trillion dollar markets with 5-15% fee middlemen about to be slaughtered

the average democratic voter in 2026 is going to crawl over broken glass to vote in person for fear their mail ballots somehow won't count, so the mail pattern will shift back to what it was pre-Covid e.g. low propensity voters will stay away wonder whom that's a problem for

the reason I viewed Bernie Bros with suspicion at best in both 2016 and 2020 is because everyone around him was this person, deeply into never winning or accomplishing things in even the slightest non-performative sense

On the macro / equities side, tariffs on everybody = Inflation up Stonks have many winners and losers, idk, tough one Asset values up (can’t buy/build new stuff) Dollar -up- Trade deficits -up- (short term) Ironically the winners here are Trump hating rich urban libs. GL to the avg MAGA

fox news / equivalent vibes make you *+46%* to vote extreme (left/right); your brain sees higher status Others doing better than you and turbo switches you to your preferred deranged -ism this is worse on the right because they're extremely stupid, but I won't discount AI-luddism, etc on this site

Haven’t posted recently because 1)vacation 2)full blast self improvement project (have been learning a language at 200% speed for a few months) 3)polymarket will be boring for a while 4)social media detox is generally just a good idea in the first place Probably back next month

the left is actively abandoning the new means of production

“They”, in this case, means a couple of million people who, in 2024, were the most reliably Dem voting and donating bloc possible The class struggle is real, except that the coalitions flipped & the Left Discourse is the struggle against the Manhattan ruling class *does not check how they vote*

Personally I tend to think it’s pretty bad for countries to fudge labor statistics because the president who really wants three incompatible things throws a tantrum

It's a bizarre and frankly alienating feeling realizing that if you know the basic fact that the murder rate has gone down significantly since 1990 you're in the ~90th+ percentile of fact-knowers

Because federal funding now explicitly depends on how much Trump likes you, Kamala turning down CA Gov is potentially somehow a $10b+ W for California as a state While this isn’t good for us as a country, on the flip side, it’s not like Kamala was somehow +EV as a governor

Crypto: [x] scam AI: [x] scam Polymarket: [x] scam Economics: [x] megascam The replies on this very leftist website re:tech/science/anything zoomer men are into are indistinguishable from Free Republic circa 1999. The worst thing about the left is the Nazis have somehow stolen the utopian vision

100% chance; I won’t predict when, but it’s going to happen (On vacation for a while and not posting partly because I’m gonna enjoy the free money)

oh

50000 foot view, Bluesky-heretical take: GENIUS is long overdue regulation that was desperately needed for years CLARITY is...iffy. Some good stuff, but obv the Trump self-dealing is horrendous. OTOH if we wanted it banned we'd have passed it in 2023; The CBDC ban is chemtrail level dumbassery

begging bluesky never to listen to ed zitron about literally any AI related content, but especially not when he decides to talk about how they can't possibly raise enough money inside the biggest bubble to hit the world in 25+ years

The role of gambling (prediction markets) in dictating the news, punditry, and conventional wisdom is only going to increase as newsrooms shrink and AI improves. Like, that’s what’s going to take share from CNN.

Good thread on the other website; the tldr is that a loosely organized band of memelords has managed to bet an aggregate several million dollars, at very high odds, on a dispute over whether Zelensky wore a suit. This wouldn't be that notable if it weren't for the fact that *it's already settled*

The existence of the America Party, which is going to peel off the tech bros from MAGA proper, is going to do a lot of weird but positive things to the House and Senate maps if Elon spends enough money - and if there’s anything a pissed off Elon will do, it’s overpay for things

A lot of the grifters are going to go America Party because it’s better for the grift

As someone who thinks he'll be a shitty, ineffective mayor and would have grudgingly ranked him fifth solely to block Cuomo, I now identify as a Mamdani spite golem

*chuckles* we're in danger

The gambling tax change buried in the BBB is going to destroy winning (and even some losing) gamblers with W2 income, which means American gambling sites <<< Polymarket (and Kalshi because, for reasons, those are swaps) Not that it matters compared to the rest of this, but it does have UIGEA vibes

From many years of federal criminal practice, careful reading of the jury notes, and a deep understanding of the jury instructions I can confidently predict that the jury hanging on count one means the verdict on the other counts is /1

Elon simultaneously starting EMAGA -and- primarying random senators, or even just one of those two, is going to be enough to completely break the Senate map because it is surprisingly possible a Dem wave drowns everybody; he could easily pick off a dozen vulnerable incumbents and then half get owned