I'm not sure that these are exactly movie material lol but two classic works I read this year that I found to be examples of especially compelling scholarly prose were Ronald Numbers' The Creationists and Timothy Brooks' The Confusion of Pleasure

The other thing I’ll say about the UCSD stuff is that I’ve seen absolutely nothing that makes me think removing SATs wasn’t a huge mistake, should really go back those.

MARIST: new generic midterm ballot. @maristpoll.bsky.social maristpoll.marist.edu/polls/a-look...

Ironically the suburb I live in is much more friendly to building apartment complexes than the city we're next to. The apartment complexes come with giant parking lots, but hey, they exist.

Someone found an mp3 of the creepy "Jailbait" song Olivia Nuzzi released when she was 16 🫣

I've been arguing against the left most of the day so here's something different: 1) Yglesias isn't particularly pro-predistribution 2) This is where US-UK differences matter. Very little predistribution legislation was passed at the federal level under Biden-ie PRO Act is not law.

I'm not White sorry.

I've been arguing against the left most of the day so here's something different: 1) Yglesias isn't particularly pro-predistribution 2) This is where US-UK differences matter. Very little predistribution legislation was passed at the federal level under Biden-ie PRO Act is not law.

If Will Stancil is a "racist white supremacist", the term is meaningless.

Again, the sweet spot here seems to be, essentially, dense suburban development: townhomes and denser single-family, places where most people do have cars but are still compatible with walkability. Of course there are other considerations (climate!) but it balances affordability with consumer choice

People keep saying "Americans prefer the suburbs so they can get away from people of color" but one of the main trends of US housing over the last four decades has been people of color reaching the middle class and moving to the suburbs. Because they want a house and a yard like almost everyone else

in my hometown of Milwaukee it was the Socialists who lead the charge against urban density and even started building the freeways www.jstor.org/stable/20174...

Right, this is true, but the OVERWHELMING evidence of the past 100 years of American life is that vastly more people want space and a car than a smaller unit and a car-free lifestyle. This is mostly why the suburban share of US population has grown relentlessly for the entire 20th and 21st century

Something like 60% of America lives in a suburb. It's possible most of them want to pile into a city center and are simply being blocked out by various market-distorting regulations, but I think a better possibility is that this inconceivably vast pool of wealth is simply getting what they want.

I think there's inherent reasons for urban areas to be more left wing than rural areas under modern conditions but its still contingent. Rural Brazil voted to the left of its largest cities for much of the 2000s and 2010s.

...whereas Crosland, Healey – and eventually Blair and Brown – lean more towards the idea of a muscular, redistributionist, national state, coupled with a liberal market economy. It's ultimately a difference in focus. Participatory economic democracy vs. welfarism.

@npjgarland.bsky.social 's article here does a good job of explaining the difference: Jenkins, Marquand and much of the SDP were advocating localism, decentralisation, expansion of democratic participation (whether or not this delivered egalitarian outcomes)... bsky.app/profile/npjg...

it's darkly funny that independents hate people who take a strong stance for israel *or* palestine

it is sort of funny to me that i find a lot of value in daniel bell's self description of "conservative in culture, liberal in politics, and socialist/social democratic in economics" because that just cashes out to being a radical social democrat now

Big scoop by my colleagues, this:

Enrollment by major in the UCSD remedial math course teaching “elementary and middle school math concepts”. Bad news for anybody planning on seeing a human doctor in 2060 and onwards:

if they don't fix Obamacare credits and/or fuck it by replacing it with HSAs, next year is going to be uhhhh a healthcare election

are people attributing how terrible the parties in the post-2022 danish govt is polling on immigration policy? bc i don't think danish immigration policy has changed significantly since 2022.

NEW YORK (AP) — James Watson, co-discoverer of the double-helix shape of DNA, has died at age 97.

www.gotoquiz.com/who_are_you_... made a quiz

The story of civil rights is that African Americans were integrated into existing democratic urban machine politics and then took over/created their own machines over time

Baffling how someone could miss the entire African-American vote swap to FDR's New Deal or the Double Victory campaign, even with Dixiecrats shaping *how* New Deal policy was implemented

They literally wrote a book about it! www.amazon.com/New-Deal-Bla...

This is just garbage history. Blacks started voting Democratic under FDR because they benefited from New Deal programs even if unequally!

Median voter is pro food stamps and air strikes on alleged drug boats

Net-Support: Strikes On Alleged Drug Boats: +3% Mass Deportations: Even National Guard Deployment: -2% Mass Layoffs Of Fed Employees: -21% Tariffs On Canada/Mexico: -24% Removing Federal Back Bay: -29% National Park Funding Cuts: -35% Blocking Appropriations: -41% Clarity Campaign / Oct 23, 2025

I don't think you can read Jimmy Carter as a radical liberal when he was the guy who started the deregulatory turn

On what moral grounds can you oppose Trump's USAID cuts?

"Oaf white leftist populism" is infinitely superior (morally and otherwise) to your sociopathic ethno-narcissism btw. You have to forfeited all right to demand solidarity.

Dan Osborn, the one WWC coded candidate from a blue collar background and who was a union leader has had very minimal drama unlike Platner. Imo union leaders are a good way to recruit working class but vetted candidates. You need to win over your peers to get elected one!

This is why on a tactical level Dems should embrace ballot initiatives which reduce the impact of policy bundling and party ID. Also running independents is probably a good idea in Red states without large Black populations.

Oh boy. Graham Platner’s national finance director has resigned "In a Friday morning post on the networking site LinkedIn, Holmes said that he feels his “professional standards” are “no longer fully aligned with those” of Platner’s campaign." #mepolitics www.bangordailynews.com/2025/10/31/p...

reading a biography of the naval officer-turned-leftist historian William Appleman Williams and man would i never admit this happened to me

There's an emerging divide in the populist/nationalist right between parties and figures who focus on issues with mass appeal like immigration and those who buy into the whole package of conspiracy theories and sibboleths from antivax sentiment to crypt0currency.

This is the sound of candidates losing the struggle against the crushing weight of partisan gravity. This is nationalization and polarization and presidentialization swallowing everything else. This is the dangerous collapse of dimensionality, in one chart leedrutman.substack.com/p/the-modera...

Politically, the landscape is shifting too: 🔴 Nearly all platforms have become more Republican 🔵 But they remain Democratic-leaning overall 🏃‍♂️ Democrats are fleeing to smaller platforms (Bluesky, Threads, Mastodon)

A lot of discourse on here is just people arguing if x has done enough to condemn "class reductionism".

Bernie Sanders is not a Starmerite.

Pop culture references in US politics went from "Pokemon Go to the polls" to this in the span of a decade.

VATs are regressive in isolation but VATs paired with a robust safety net can be quite progressive. And considering you need broad-based taxes to build a social democracy ("tax the rich" alone will maybe get you a decent Anglo-American welfare state) they are worth considering.

a running theory i have is that only right-wingers can really capitalize on MMT primarily because left-wingers will get hit by the electorate for not being credible enough

i'm a classical social democrat. i think we should raise tax on the upper tax brackets, increase broad-based tax enforcement, and provide universal programs on transit, housing, and healthcare. this apparently is viewed as neoliberalism