Authoritarian personality cult watch

In authoritarian regimes, the government uses its regulatory powers to pressure the media to refrain from questioning or criticizing its leaders and actions

Iranian schoolgirls have faced more bullets and violence than Donald Trump. So have South American fishermen.

By itself, this is nearly two Teapot Domes.

“A US vessel intercepted them and forced them aboard. Once they were detained, their fishing boat was blown up,” said Fernando Bastias Robayo, a lawyer with the Human Rights Council. “They were arbitrarily hooded and later abandoned on the Salvadorian coast." www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Can you feel yourself falling behind as other countries move forward into the future?

Update on Zorro Ranch investigation. www.internazionale.it/ultime-notiz... thehill.com/homenews/sta...

Working class voters in Pennsylvania diners talk about nothing other than the White House ballroom these days.

The Reconstruction Congress faced a hostile president, impeached him, and sidelined him as a political force. It then turned its constitutional vision into the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. @jamellebouie.net believes Democrats should study that playbook.

we need to be able to say these two things at the same time: “violence isn’t an acceptable response to this” AND “these people have 24/7 security details, which we pay for, while they terrorize the nation and incite violence against everyone who opposes them”

The Great Helmsman will triumph in his cultural counter-revolution against these secret-capitalist-roaders!

The most beautiful word in the world…

Academic Freedom* *Warranty void if product is used to challenge systems of privilege and power.

This is what AI is going to do: Create oversupply in “symbolic analysis” and unemployment in the “creative class”.

She's like Evita Perón without the singing voice or interest in helping the poor. bsky.app/profile/bgru...

Those familiar with domestic abuse and intimate partner violence will likely notice close connections in language, framing and tone. They are not the same thing, but these things are often related and, as they say, intersectional.

“…data centers are a wake-up call. A surge in demand could fuel the kind of investment that the grid has needed for decades. …” 🔌💡

It’s the age of electricity and America isn‘t ready. Virtually every goal Americans care about requires making big changes to the grid. I’m in @nytimes.com today writing about why power bills are going up, whether AI is to blame, and what we need to do to fix it: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

‘…The words “pedophile” and “rapist” clearly triggered Trump during the interview, because he immediately went into full-on denial mode and attacked O’Donnell simply for repeating the shooter’s manifesto. An assassination attempt is a gravely serious event, but those words made Trump quickly gro…’ 🗺️

Helped?

I’m old enough to remember when the Obama administration passed a tax cut as part of an economic stimulus, but decided to direct-deposit it instead of mailing out cheques, simply out of principle. 🗺️

When you live in an oligarchy, the only thing left of democracy is ritual.

Congrats to Melania for Streisand-Effecting Kimmel's joke that she has the glow of an expectant widow, a joke I wouldn't have heard if she hadn't made a stink about it

This is what authoritarianism looks like: doubt everything, all the time. In this respect, Trump has surely won

A profound threat to one of America's world-dominating industries, which makes us richer and healthier (higher ed) academic-freedom-index.net/research/Aca...

Unprecedented corruption

Exactly why we should be moving to a multi-party system per @leedrutman.bsky.social and many others. The binary choice our system requires locks too many people in place who can see what's wrong but won't vote to put the other side in power.

Europe—not US—first to authorize Moderna's combo mRNA flu-COVID vaccine flip.it/.vRk.1 utterly putinous how determined we are to punch ourselves in the face & burn💰. After 🇺🇸(lawlessly) withdrew funding, Moderna nevertheless persisted & thus billions of US tax 💵 will aid European public health.

1) had no clue coffee was worse than pork on this measure 2) do you have a moment to discuss the Good News of seitan

That was my first thought - A $60,000 vehicle running over a $250,000 vehicle in the parking lot of the store where you buy six dollar slacks says…something

Petro-state murder-suicide pact. Oil is a helluva drug. 🗺️ 🔌💡

Clean energy nerds have been excited for decades about the idea that developing countries might leapfrog fossil energy systems, much like leapfrogging land lines for cell phones. Very cool to see it becoming a reality!

I had no idea that Orban spoke Afrikaans!

At long last, after ten obnoxious years in the political limelight, I think Donald Trump may finally have broken something he can't convincingly pretend to fix. Domestic costs are high and only going higher, and there is no resolution to this situation that will be favorable for the US.

Maybe the Global Economy should have studied International Relations and Political Science. 🗺️

The Vietnam comparison is not one presidents usually go for.

First Amendment? What First Amendment?

You may not be interested in energy transition, but energy transition is interested in you. 🔌💡

Getting Kaisered?

‘… He said he knew that fewer fans would be coming to his Italian restaurant in the East Village with 🇮🇹 not in the tournament. Still, he said, maybe not qualifying would help the struggling 🇮🇹 team in the long run: “We need something to change. We need a slap in the face; we don’t need a caress.”’ ⚽️

The mother's story is a stark example of how immigration policy can change drastically with each administration — and transform the lives of immigrants.

"AIDS Creeps Back in Parts of Zambia, a Year After U.S. Cuts to H.I.V. Assistance" "A once-robust H.I.V. treatment and prevention system, credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives, has begun to crumble."

The would-be assassin, a white supremacist, was sentenced to five years, but the judge suspended three of those years immediately. This left a mandatory term of only two years, of which he served 18 months. For stalking a civil rights leader, lying in wait, and shooting him with a 16 gauge.

Circular ones seem especially esteemed.

This is a cool story about how they made the 95-year-old Empire State Building more energy efficient. abc7ny.com/post/nyc-ear...

“The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or 1 party, or 1 Nation. It cannot be just an American peace, or a 🇬🇧 peace, or a 🇷🇺, a 🇫🇷, or a 🇨🇳 peace. It cannot be a peace of large Nations—or of small Nations. It must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world”

"You see what the model predicts will hold your attention, not what your network shared."

I honestly don’t know how well this take from Timothy Garton Ash will age.

Yeah, smol bean America cannot make any decisions about going to war.