1. Bluesky doesn’t downrank links 2. You can choose your own algorithm from among thousands 3. The whole app is open source This keeps it a free and open platform by design, leading to better click-throughs and traffic to your site. We 💙 the open web.

Also, remember that at this time the administration is targeting a ton of perceived enemies because they may have made a misstatement (or maybe didn't really) on a mortgage application to no actual benefit. “For my friends everything, for my enemies the law”

I'm trying to understand how the Trump Administration is able to end the diversity visa program (signed into law by George H.W. Bush) and create a new visa category, without Congress. Someone explain the constitutional and statutory basis for this like I'm five.

Democracy isn’t a spectator sport. If you don’t persuade your neighbor, someone else will—and they may not believe in democracy at all.

ILLINOIS — Trump’s Gestapo violently throws female congressional candidate @KatAbughazaleh to the ground to the ground

Rep Eric Swalwell (D-CA) asks Kash Patel if Patel told Attorney General Pam Bondi that Trump's name was in the Epstein files This was what happened next =====>

We are falling now. The vertigo is real: institutions collapsing, lies becoming official truth, violence creeping into political discourse. But the fall is not inevitable. The wire still holds for those willing to walk it, and the candles are still burning. What comes next depends on us.

Murder is wrong. Pogroms are wrong. Using a murder to incite a pogrom against a small and vulnerable group in society is wrong. (If I’m not mistaken, an assassination was the excuse for the wave of mob but state-sanctioned violence in Russia in 1881 that gave us the term “pogrom.”)

Setting aside the bloodlust of many insane extremely online MAGA figures who are pining for trans pogroms and the mass murder of liberals, it does need to be said: anybody who cheered the murder of Charlie Kirk or supports political violence is seriously morally deranged.

We’re frogs in the pot about this, I think. We’re so hardened to eliminationist, fascist rhetoric from the right that it hardly makes a dent when a prominent host on a major network suggests exterminating a large group of people. But he did. And nobody on modern Right gives a shit.

In a functional small-L liberal democracy every one of these people would be summarily drummed out of public life.

There are MAGA folks who are basically calling for a liberal genocide this point. And the influencers go are egging them on are going to have a lot of blood on their hands.

Foreign policy "strength".

Nicely done, America

They are so fucking good at gaslighting, it never ceases to amaze.

Note the one-way logic: They are allowed to mock and joke when violence happens to Democrats, and their incitements to violence are defended as “free speech.” But now everyone must be reverential and offer praise, and be threatened with a loss of constitutional rights. Why?

We are just people. Humans. With skin. We bleed. Moving around the world. Re-arranging the environment around us. That last part is important. We built our world. We live in a world we built. Our world is constructed. By us. But some of us want to dominate others. That's bad.

Political violence is incompatible with democracy. But so is exploiting it to seize authoritarian power. Charlie Kirk’s assassination is tragic. Using it to justify crackdowns would be catastrophic. I fear we're not going to step back from the brink.

Charlie Kirk was like a son to me. Many yrs ago, I helped him get @TPUSA started. We went our separate ways bcuz of Trump, and we went after each often on social media. My heart breaks for him & his family right now. We must ALL get off this dangerous road of political violence. PLEASE STOP THIS.

They're going to blame the Charlie Kirk shooting on "the left". They're going to pin it to every Democrat. They're going to use it to justify taking away our civil liberties. I wish it was enough to condemn political violence. But the right is going to politicize this.

Donald Trump's letter to me, April 13, 2006:

In other words: the British had it right their "writs of assistance" in the colonies. The Fourth Amendment just puts too much restraint on the executive's ability to enforce its will.

I'm going to call it treason, and I don't care people think that's irresponsible of me. This cuts to the heart of one of the main grievances that led to the American Revolution. And the right-wing in this country is destroying the constitutional order. www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-suprem...

"Justice Brett Kavanaugh and a conservative majority have constitutionalized the general warrant logic that sparked the American Revolution—ruling that demographic statistics can justify stopping anyone, anywhere, to demand proof of their right to exist in their own country." @brockm.bsky.social

The Court that claims to defend the Constitution just murdered it. A ruling that echoes King George’s general warrants now forces American citizens to carry papers on their own streets. This is a constitutional crisis.

Basically, Thiel's theory is that the welfare state is the antichrist. And his anarcho-capitalist fantasy is the way to true Christianity. No, seriously.

To call Trump’s foreign policy an improvement is to confess unseriousness. It marks you not as a thinker but as a reactionary, obsessing over cultural enemies while the barbarians tear down the gates.

There's this weird shibboleth that "serious" commentators do sometimes when trying to show their objectivity bonafides vis-a-vis Trump, where they shower Trump in praise for "Project Warp Speed"—the effort to rapidly get COVID-19 vaccines on the market. 1/2

Washpost news headlines this am: - "Toughest time to be searching for work in America in years" - "Russia’s largest ever drone attack on Ukraine" - "Rising costs force families to choose: Buy pencils or pay bills?" - "ICE begins crackdown in Massachusetts" Washpost Editorial Board this am:

An experiment in self-government, bought with blood. Sold to a con man for tariff carve-outs and tax cuts. Congratulations, America.

“Each tech CEO arrived with their scripted lines, their choreographed praise, their fabricated projections… “They’re not making independent business decisions—they’re participating in coordinated performance art” 🔥 Via @brockm.bsky.social www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-hot-mi...

Sometimes, there comes a moment that reveals the whole truth. For us, it was the hot mic: oligarchs whispering to each other what they’d never dare admit to us. That whisper is history’s verdict.

"You can't policy your way out of a propaganda problem" is such a good line. Policy matters, but how you communicate stuff matters more right now.

Authoritarians thrive on your silence — be loud — for America.

Seem to recall when the Biden admin was (misleadingly) accused of putting pressure on social media companies to change their editorial policies (most of which were rejected) we were told by a large segment of the population (and a few judges) that it was the worst violation of the 1st Amendment ever

“.. If a single political idea has tied Americans together .., it is that one-person rule is a mistake. “.. And yet that is what this president is doing: sending in the troops, slapping on tariffs, .. taking stakes in companies, scaring citizens into submission.” www.economist.com/leaders/2025...

In one week: extrajudicial executions, military jets silencing witnesses, DOJ obstruction, pandemic denial. And at the end of it, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, and Satya Nadella raised their glasses to toast the man dismantling American democracy.

The anti-woke reactionaries of the so-called center, claimed to be defending freedom. In reality, they enabled fascism by inflating the wrong threats and downplaying the real ones. They killed proportional thinking. And now we all pay the price.

“Their entire media empires depend on leftist excess being the existential danger, making them professionally invested in inflating threats from the left while minimizing threats from the right.” open.substack.com/pub/mikebroc...

Here's what I think about that:

They never believed in free speech as a principle. They believed in speech protection for their allies and speech control for their enemies.

Never been a big Dalio fan. But he is being courageous, here. He said this knowing he could face retaliation from Trump, when nobody else in the capitalist class will. That's important. It says something about his moral core. And he should be applauded.

At the risk of being dogpiled, I'm forced to share concern here. While I agree that social media is killing children and destroying social life, and that it is a moral crisis unto itself, these verification schemes being deployed have the potential to become authoritarian weapons.

Never been a big Dalio fan. But he is being courageous, here. He said this knowing he could face retaliation from Trump, when nobody else in the capitalist class will. That's important. It says something about his moral core. And he should be applauded.

The technocratic establishment spent decades convincing itself that better data and cleverer models could save democracy. Then Trump came back. The experts are still optimizing spreadsheets while the house burns.

The tragedy of Trump isn’t just the chaos he creates. It’s the people who convince themselves they can manage it—for access, for relevance, for proximity to power. Rubio isn’t the adult in the room. He’s proof that access costs integrity.

By all accounts the Trump Administration is going to be trying to sue to stop California and other blue states from redistricting while actively encouraging red states to do so. This has turned into a full-on cold civil war in America. That is not good.

NEW: SSA CDO Chuck Borges says he was 'involuntarily' forced out Friday, days after filing a whistleblower complaint. About 30 min after his resignation email went out, it vanished from inboxes. w/ @davidgilbert.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/charle...

It only took Nick Clegg eight years of apologizing for Facebook's recklessness (while making millions) to realize what had been obvious for at least a decade before he worked there. Will his next job be determining if it hurts while smashing one's face with a hammer?

We are going to experience the collapse of the U.S. dollar, aren't we? These motherfuckers want to tank the dollar so they can be crypto feudal lords. Americans should be CRAZY alarmed about this.