The accusation of "you're a f***** if you don't do what I want you to" is rigged to be unaddressable and literally beaten into many (but in 2026 by no means all) young men like a sleeper agent to be activated whenever reactionaries want them to do something like join the marines or buy a fancy truck

more and more people are saying #GiveTheIRSaNuke www.liberalcurrents.com/actually-col...

I am totally over the perennial “is it LOGICAL for Americans feel bad about the economy” argument on here. Because we have clear evidence that they DO feel bad about the economy, whatever we may think about how grounded-in-data that feeling actually is. And I care about what we DO about that.

They didn't die while serving in the military, but they died protecting our freedoms from those who would destroy them, nonetheless. Remembering these heroes on this Memorial Day.

Another reminder: if there exists *any* class of people who don't have due process rights, then *nobody* actually has due process rights because the government can always just say you're in that class.

People have had children and given them hope and joy in the worst circumstances humans have ever faced (which is not, hate to break it to you, in America in 2026, bad as things are/feel).

This is doomer horseshit and I’m appalled that as many people subscribe to it as do.

generally think that if your response to "this is loser shit" is "are you triggered?!?!?" then you're just demonstrating the truth of "this is loser shit"

This sort of anti-intellectualism is inherently reactionary even if you dress it in a Che Guevara t-shirt

(the actual issue is because Stancil talks about vibecession stuff, people see this as a centrist vs leftist debate with "chart perverts" on the centrist side and everybody else on the left. its actually chart-perv civil war. if you didn't bring a chart, you're just a spectator)

you don't have to enjoy the game they're playing but you shouldn't walk onto the pitch unless you're prepared to kick the ball around

you wouldn't walk into a meeting of the geological society and say "i think the grand canyon was created when the ground fell into a big hollow space underneath" and then call all the geologists erosion-perverts when they say that doesn't comport with the data, would you? leave the chart pervs alone

the issue with vibecession discourse is that it's a deeply chart-pervert problem to its bones. we're arguing about the residual of regression models of an index generated by a survey. that's as chart-pervert as it gets. but it has vibes in the name, so everyone wants to apply cultural critique

i like science

“America has always been like this” responses to “Orange Man Bad” posts annoy me. Obama didn’t post a video of him dumping his own fecal matter from a F-18 on his critics, then threaten to go to war with Denmark. That isn’t true.

his haters think his point is “actually, you aren’t poor”, but his point has always been “it is literally impossible to meaningfully practice politics as we know it in today’s information environment”

the only person i know who is (correctly, imo) screaming that the joystick has snapped off in our hand and no one even *can* fly the plane anymore is will stancil

Dude, stop encouraging feelings over facts. Individuals can be struggling. This is why we use statistical indicators as an overall measure of society. You're doing the equivalent of someone rejecting statistics on rising global temperatures because it happens to be cold that day.

to put this on main feed: 1) this specific data center actually did completely fuck the local water supply during construction 2) that this didn't immediately get them crushed in court and forced to provide everyone with infrastructure for clean water is bad 3) that it's a data center is incidental

The divergence in opinions on AI is between tech workers who use Claude Code and back office workers who use Copilot

A different but somewhat parallel example: in Albuquerque, there was a statue of the conquistafor Don Oñate in Old Town until 2020. Oñate's subjugation of the Acoma pueblo was so violent that the Crown banned him from returning to New Mexico. Or, as Sister Catherine puts it,

happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,

I really thought the MAGA guy I knew would be given pause that the President was settling his own lawsuit to the tune of billions of dollars but he didn't care at all. Not at all.

it's genuinely crazy that Elon got free reign to do the exact thing that every "just cut spending" dipshit has wanted to do for decades, it failed catastrophically, and they're still running the exact same script like nothing happened

I do not care who the landlords are or whether or not they make a profit, so long as tenants have decent homes at prices they can afford in the places they want to live.

yeah unions are like economic defense attorneys: you can believe as a first order principle that everyone deserves access to them, and that they overall make society better, without having to root for them to win every specific case.

Just a lot of this

Honestly idgaf if bluesky is "dying." Posting with pals is the point, getting lots if attention is for crazy people.

this is absolutely worth remembering: when the abolitionists began the struggle against the slave power, the slave power looked unbeatable. they fought anyways--a long, difficult, often thankless struggle. they fought anyways.

It's time to have a nice lunch

In theory it should be insanely difficult to start a war for any reason but the imperial US president can just be like "hello yes I would like to commence an offensive war of choice" like he's ordering a fucking pizza. And if you object to this people treat you like a fringe weirdo! Madness

If a Mamdani can win the primary (aka an AOC) then you will get a Mamdani. If not, you won't. "The Dems" don't do shit; it's the will of millions of primary voters who you need to convince. And remember that your "I love this politician" candidate is someone else's "hold my nose" candidate

hot damn we got jeffries reconstructionposting

Guys I have bad news for everyone, but eliminating capitalism and having a master planned economy is going to require *more* math and spreadsheets and understanding of microeconomics than we currently need bsky.app/profile/kuug...

I would never crash out on the TL and start fedposting over bad national political news. I only do that for moderately unfavorable local transit project updates

Yep. This is the best way to understand the events of the past couple weeks. They have to dispense with the artifice of principle, because the risks of Dems winning and coming to power bent on accountability are simply too great. www.offmessage.net/p/republican...

I think a lot of how people talk about public belief is like getting excited every May because we’ve finally beaten the cold once and for all, and then falling into a depression every October as it comes creeping back. I think it betrays a profound misunderstanding of the systems at play.

We get stuck in these cycles of triumph and despair because we want to see public opinion as an argument we can win, rather than an ephemeral creation of the social and informational structures and incentives that exist at a given moment.

Tapping the one and only sign again bsky.app/profile/pete...

When you ally with MTG against Trump, you're just ensuring that MAGA ideas can colonize both sides of the political spectrum. Any victory won with the likes of her would be pyrrhic: we'd escape the man but not the nightmare.

And like, that's not because it's inherently evil to hire a maid or whatever, it's because we want our economy to be so fair and so productive that the supply of maids falls and the price of maids rises because the potential maids all have more lucrative options.

"No servants" is in part to make clear that in our dream economy, certain non-essential, labor-intensive services — food delivery, chaffeurs, maids — will become *less* available as we succeed, the same way post-war prosperity after WW2 ended the practice of live-in servants bsky.app/profile/anti...

Something I've been thinking about is kinda a one sentence description of a left-wing economic vision for America and I think it's "a life of leisure and luxury for Americans, with no servants and no slaves."

“We’ve just pushed 4.5 million people further into poverty. Congrats to us”

i actually think "the 14th Amendment was adopted by a constitutionally defective process" is a colorable argument which lost by force of arms, and if anyone makes it i invite them to lose that argument at gunpoint again

Fascists succeed in general because they are willing to take stuff, break rules, get violent, while most of their opponents are not Fascists lose, in general, because they pick (at least) one fight too many with someone they didn't expect to fight back

I think 'earning' or 'deserving' or 'good' billionaires or 'bad' billionaires are all sort of missing the point tbh. There are decent people who are billionaires and there are unobjectionable ways to make lots of money but that's not the point. The point is that level of unaccountable power is bad.

like there are a lot of private philanthropic efforts to help poor people around the world funded by the wealthy. those efforts are real and the people that they help are real. but Elon Musk has probably single handedly obviated all the good of at least a dozen of those. the risk is just too great.

I keep coming back to kings when I think about this. there were decent people who wore crowns who gave a shit and tried to make things better and the difference between them and the despots was real and mattered. but we moved away from the divine right of kings for a reason. too much tail risk.