If anyone supports this on the grounds that Maduro sucks, they are endorsing an end to all attempts at a post-WWII international legal regime, no matter how flawed that system might be. Accepting this means endorsing pure unilateral might makes right.

@genadoesthings.bsky.social: You should make a gritty slasher movie based on "Animal Crackers" Me: Eh, there's already a slasher movie with a Captain Spaulding

Having admittedly used the former phrase multiple times in the past 36 hours, I'm starting to feel that "good-faith" and "bad-faith" are used here on the ELO site in a way that borders on claiming to read minds

Y'know, fair

The purpose of government is to spend money. Not willy-nilly, but without worrying about the financial ROI

How is this different from the WSJ take people are having kittens about? Or do the same people think Jamelle is also a reactionary bigot looking for reasons to snipe at Mamdani?

It's people who can't imagine different people living differently, and so imagine making cities more liveable is part of a plot to prohibit non-urban living

She makes a good point. It's enough that he was elected, we shouldn't care if he "accomplishes" anything. Measuring success by material change is for shitlibs

You heard it here, folks: holding left politicians to their promises is "right wing garbage"

gotta be this one tbh

If this is going to be his approach, I hope Sterne is right that the choices are false and the compromise unnecessary. L

On line behind David Cross at a Duane Reade

All said articles will be based on the assumption that Mandami's Administration is inherently illegitimate.

“Experience” is a euphemism for “white dude”

look we're all making a big bet on AI! and if it pays off as big as we hope, well, it's going to make a handful of people super rich and you're going to lose your job but get to watch mickey mouse fuck geralt from the witcher. if it doesn't pay off well then you get to pay for the bailouts

I don't see the appeal there. Anyone who can't say no also can't say yes. I am aware that there are people for whom that's not a problem. Alas, there are probably more such people than I would hope

Another tell: AI “writers” don’t like writing. AI “artists” don’t like making art.

Alger Hiss and the Trial of the 20th Century (and today). casssunstein.substack.com/p/the-trial-...

Mixed relationship tableau: a darkened room, lit only by a yahrtzeit candle and a Christmas tree (It's fine, Dad loved Christmas decorations)

If someone uses a Star Trek-style replicator to produce a meal, are they "cooking"? Where is the line between "cooking" and not cooking?

a society in which there is increasingly no such thing as a reasonably sure-bet career or profession anymore AND which has no UBI and a minimal social support system is not going to remain stable for long, I'd suspect

I assume answering "Confederacy of Dunces" is prohibited

I was just thinking about how a priori requirements can cause you to miss out, but at the same time you do need to filter

I was born in April 1805 Napoleon was master of Europe Only the BRITISH FLEET stood before him Oceans were now battlefields

Wishing a meaningful #Nittel Nacht to all of us who observe 🫠 For the players: May all your chess move lead towards the perfect checkmate. For the traditionalists: May your toiliet-paper-cutting be effective. For the Medievalists: Don't believe everything you read in Toledot Yeshu. Thread 🧵

🧵 And to be clear, as the thread says, there is nothing wrong with Christmas, nor is there anything wrong with it being a Christian holiday. But it is one.

TIL the Loke language is spoken more widely in NYC than it is in it's origin country (Nepal). I also learned that Loke is a language www.elalliance.org/languages/loke

I'd be delighted to have a hairstylist or a youth soccer coach visit for a night

Safe Nittelnacht to those who observe

tbh starting to take “voting doesn’t matter, force does” as “I want to abdicate civic or communal responsibility and have Someone Else take on the burden of politics for me”

This is vile and @rweingarten.bsky.social and the @aft.org are responsible. Zero mention in this article about the fact that "A.i." BY DESIGN constantly spreads made up bullshit. Zero mention that racist billionaire control this tech and have demonstrably influenced its outputs for fascist purposes.

This is just a note to say that I have eaten the falcon in a widening gyre and that you were probably saving for anarchy Forgive me it was delicious so rough and full of passionate intensity

The Kurt Cobain-ing of every celebrity suicide has to stop. All it does is further inhibit the understanding of suicide and “what kind of person” does it.

Oh curséd spite

"Wind broke time" is the perfect way to close out 2025 (no alt text but it's a screenshot of groups.google.com/a/list.nist.... )

I didn't worry about the economy im the '80s because I was a kid and my parents dealt with that stuff. Of course, how much you have to talk to your kids about the household finances is a measure of economic privilege, but 7-year-old Ger wasn't worrying about how to pay the bills

Except that in 2032 leftists with terminal Merc's Law brain will notice that we as a nation are not better off than we were in 2024, much less 2016, and somehow express this as "Democrats don't do anything"

Extremely tired of turning on the news and spinning the roulette wheel of grown Republican people talking about children's genitals as a matter of course. This is obsessive and gross.

on the bright side three years from now will be boom times for businesses that specialize in removing garish brass letters from buildings

I've long thought it useful to think of laws not as "what do we want people not to do" but "what do we want to punish people for doing"

He's still a murderer but good on defense counsel for getting the prosecution to withdraw these from evidence. Asserting your right to an attorney should mean something.

I just saw a supposedly positive review of #YNAB that called it "a tool for self-actualization" and I don't know if I want to give a tool for self-actualization access to my bank account

Douthat's language is very telling. Why should someone be rewarded for having a particular race or gender?

I feel like the sort of person who uses Firefox will have especially strong opinions on putting AI into things, and (though I admit I'm less certain about this part) the balance of that opinion will be negative

The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

horror at the abuse of children became a social norm *within my lifetime*. you can see this even in some crime writing from the 1970s and 80s where a suspect being a pedophile is treated like a pecularity rather than an aberration.

He's a Fisher King if he's anything. I think a lot of his animus towards immigration and tourism is driven by that plus germophobia: the idea of foreigners in the US (or his immediate vicinity) feels to him like the thought of "germs" in his body

I've been saying "when he finally shits himself to death," is that wrong?

Out of touch, or trying to roll society back to the 1950s, which means no Internet?