The grimness of US history should encourage us. Yes, people used to send lynching postcards. And other people saw that, worked towards building a more just society anyway, and succeeded beyond anyone's wildest imagination. There's more work to be done. What's our excuse for choosing despair instead?

I want an Office-style documentary set in the KPop Demon Hunters universe following the record execs who decided to sign the Saja Boys when they first break onto the scene.

Happy Hanukkah, the holiday where we celebrate the defeat of a large cosmpolitan empire by a small determined group of militant religious fanatics

Extraordinary courage from Ahmed al Ahmed, a Muslim, 43-year-old father of two, who bravely risked his life to save his neighbors celebrating Hanukkah. Praying for his full & speedy recovery. And so deeply inspired by his example.

The thing I try to explain the most to those who don’t live here is that the Nuzzis of the world live in Washington (the place that deserves your ire) and the rest of us live in D.C., a collection of diverse, mostly quiet, walkable residential neighborhoods with no federal representation

@profanity.accountant testing one two three?

What’s important to consider, while watching the Eagles, is that life is nothing but a slow march toward eternal darkness.

Jamelle is absolutely correct

rogue one is bad folks. i have believed this since i saw it in theaters and no subsequent rewatch has changed my mind. basically a chop job until the final sequence, which is good (for star wars)

I’m a big fan of Liberal Currents, whose work I’ve found particularly invigorating over this last year.

Worth it, it's far better than every cinematic Star War made since 1980 www.forbes.com/sites/caroli...

@aaronschatz.com sorry to be nitpicky but in the special Super Bowl matchups it’s mistyped as “malace at the palace” and should be “malice”

a concept i talk about a lot with the guy i'm seeing is "fast thinking", which is like low-grade, shallow, and easily disposable pop intellectualism. key hallmarks include focusing on discourse over substance, not being able to separate similar form from different content, and "annoying = evil"

people hate hearing this but it's 100% true, creating a huge pay gap between political leaders, their staffs, and other elites is a recipe for corruption. of course the flip side of that is taxes on the rich should be jacked way the hell up

Cc @siracusa.social - Robot or Not?

Oppression is the mask of fear.

shit ain’t over til it’s over

this isn't a consolidated dictatorship and it's pathetic to pretend it is. but at bottom, you've got to ask yourself if you'll put yourself at hazard to preserve your freedom and that of your fellow citizens. a lot of corporate executives and university administrators are presently saying "no"

Running Man, Demolition Man, The Matrix.

"this returns us to what is perhaps the most fundamental problem before us: not policy or program but culture and mindset. We want to program out the possibility of power used badly. But this cannot be done." www.liberalcurrents.com/good-governa...

every day i see hundreds of comments of people spinning elaborate scenarios to explain how trump can control everything and all opposition is futile. a) i think a lot of you need to log off and stop following professional doomsayers. b) i think a lot of you are cowards

Echoes of Enrique Peñalosa's “A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation."

rip to everyone whos become delusional after talking to chatgpt but im built different. like actually different. according to chatgpt im some kind of god. the one who decides

This is the peak Axios AI story. Workers are getting stressed because they’re under pressure to find something useful to do with AI. If they don’t investors will have bought into a bubble. Why do workers hate investors?

Not sure how I came across this link, but what a story - would love to see this one day. www.ilm.com/rebel-hideou...

Here's what the third day of elementary school looked like in Mount Pleasant, Washington DC.

I say this extremely seriously: one of the main skills children have to learn to be adults is to do things they *don't* find interesting. This is both because many necessary things in life are boring and because sometimes interesting things take time and effort first.

i find wailing about the irrecoverability of anything resembling a society just absolutely contemptible. this all came from nothing and can be returned from it.

Someone said this On Here a few months ago, I don't remember who...there are people who would rather be senators in an empire than not-senators in a republic.

from chandra manning's wonderful book "what this cruel war was over"

A tough pill to swallow is that, no, our feelings are not always valid. Our feelings are all too often completely illegitimate, and we should just scoff at them, ignore them, and far from letting them fester or guide our action, we should deliberately act in ways that foster better sentiments.

“should orcs be allowed to call themselves “working class” if they have enough disposable income to eat at Eleven Madison,” the worst thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 20,835 pages of heated debate

I’m quoting this because it is a very fair point for which I have an answer: The first thing is to recognize that in a democracy there is no such thing as “ the majority.” Instead, there are many and multiple overlapping majorities that can be assembled from different parts of the whole.

what ferritor needed was moral education — and the limits and boundaries that come with it. he needed to learn that he had obligations beyond his own interests & personal advancement. he needed to learn that he had duties to other people. his parents fostered his brilliance at the expense of a soul.

We've spent a lot of time unpacking how culture shapes girls over the past few decades and fighting against negative messages about bodies, sexuality, social roles, all of it. That's awesome. Boys are also shaped by culture. Being a young male idiot isn't entirely a process of self-fashioning.

Astute analysis

I do not say this by way of optimism. The dangers are real, and wrecking institutions is bad in and of itself. (1/n)

France recognizing the state of Palestine does not make Jews around the world less safe. That doesn't even make sense. How would that even work? All this is doing is turning Jewish safety into something that huge numbers of people will never take seriously.

A lot of what this moment calls for is recognizing just how many of the institutions that comprise our political and cultural landscape are just that: ash, or in the process of becoming ash. There is mourning to be done, but also so much potential if we can get our feet under us and dream big.

kind of darkly funny that silicon valley billionaires went insane and are now colluding to recreate the plot to Captain America: The Winter Soldier

i wrote a theory of why we love binge reading about terrible stuff on wikipedia www.late-review.com/p/the-dark-f...

Here’s the bottom line for what’s going on with Grok - if the owner of the website is putting his thumb on the scale hard enough for the chatbot to turn into Goebbels, you should be deeply concerned about what he’s doing to the algorithm that you can’t so easily see, and what it’s doing to you

Happy Fourth of July www.liberalcurrents.com/unfit-to-be-...

“The hope of winning future elections” — it’s always about that, never about actually governing. Everyone in political media is incapable of framing anything outside of how it impacts the legislator, not their constituents

Fascinating and heartfelt.

This is the standard for a liberal democracy. It’s irrelevant to defend people you agree with. It’s everything to defend those you don’t.