In short, every shithead you don't ban costs you ten other customers. "A [potentially regular] customer doesn't say anything but never comes back" doesn't register with you as An Event the way that kicking someone out (temporarily or permanently) does, so it's extremely easy to miss it.

Synopsis: You need to kick more people out. You will actually have a larger base of customers/attendees if you kick more people out. You will make more money. I am dead serious.

I spent an excessive number of years moderating a gaming forum and I learned a great deal about community spaces and cultivation, whether I wanted to or not. I have critical advice for anyone who runs a game store or gaming convention. Please share this thread with people who run those things.

The funny thing about the Vances of Republican politics is that they'll be the first ones opining about the so called tolerant left the minute people start being less than civil with him. Because he's that trite.

Trump doesn't seem to realize or care maybe that a lot of the global institutions he loathes were largely created to further US interests. He wants a more obvious form of dominance.

"Households from the lowest income quintile that have access to a private vehicle — often because their car dependent landscapes force them to own or lease a car just to get to work, school, or the grocery store — can expect to spend around 40 percent of their after-tax pay on their cars."

One of the things that in particular aggravates me to no end is that even though these are FAKE images, it's still the targeted women who are made to feel embarassed and shamed for the nudity, instead of the pathetic incel losers who create such shit.

Car dependency is the affordability crisis. But there's such a profound denial about it in America so the rage is directed at grocery prices. Before you say housing...transit and housing are the same issue and if you don't understand why then go for a walk and meditate on it.

Especially in an administration that unabashedly has so many increasingly obvious white nationalists in key positions. Homeland security coms hasn't exactly been subtle.

In a functioning system with reasonable incentives, the bloodless ghouls should have eaten Chump. He lost in a landslide and was and is incredibly unpopular. Why he wasn't eaten will be the subject of a lot of books but the basic truth is that he's the best they've got.

it's hard to remember now but five years ago people really thought the GOP was done with Trump and now election denial is a core plank in the party platform

The irony of Kevin McCarthy bending to embrace Trump after the insurrection being that even then the MAGA wing of his party ended his career all the same. And begat the end of a functioning Congress for a year by bringing in Johnson.

Questions NPR is asking this morning about Venezuela after the oil "deal" was announced: Does Trump have a plan? Is this legal? These are questions you can and should ask about basically everything Trump says or does.

Telling isn't it that all the "protect our girls" people are still on X despite what Grok is doing.

50% of the UK media is variations on the Drunk Driving Dril tweet. The other 50% is the Racism Dial Dril tweet.

Bloomberg's X account has more than 800k followers. Their most recent post was shared five times It would basically come at close to zero cost for outlets like Bloomberg to delete their X accounts, and "We don't want to use a non-consensual deepfake abuse app as a comms platform" is a fine excuse

there is one large prison in equatorial guinea. it used to be guinean policy to simply execute all the prisoners when it filled up. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

As Chris Hayes breathlessly goes over the dangers and lawlessness of Trump, a reminder that in 2016 Hayes invited his comrade Susan Sarandon onto his TV show so she could tell his audience that HRC was more dangerous than Trump

This is wrong. Many don't drive due to age, ability, income, etc. An NRDC report estimated 1/3 of Americans can’t rely on cars & 16M have no access, including kids, seniors, & people w disabilities. These folks often have less representation in decision-making spaces. www.nrdc.org/resources/wh...

This is why dedicated groups like bike/walk commissions are important, to provide a focus & help the county stay on target w adopted plans & policies, even when the outcomes are controversial. It's critical to craft each group's structure carefully, increasing representation & access for more people

At yesterday’s Unincorporated Alameda County meeting about their proposed bike/walk commission formation (which has now been shelved), one of the supervisors made a comment along the lines of “we are all drivers”, as a justification for why bike/walk issues don't need a dedicated focus.

I was listening to @thebulwark.com's Next Level podcast today and they were thinking through the chance that Trump actually tries to seize Greenland and there was a @jvl.bsky.social sort of 'I kinda hope he does it to drop the mask entirely' and I just cannot scream loudly enough: No, You Do Not. 1/

I depended on RIPTA to get myself to URI and my daughter to Brown-Fox Point preschool. I remember being terrified of missing the bus because she would freeze at Kennedy Plaza waiting for the one. Keep the busses coming. #publictransport

I think Hakeem Jeffries should push to do this *now* because as we've seen with Venezuela, these guys will try to 'steal a march' by doing their illegal wars by surprise. Get out ahead of them now.

People who fancy quoting the Melian Dialogue ("the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must") ignore the fact that Thucydides was clearly portraying this as the kind of hubris that squandered Athens' primacy and paved the way for a devastating peer war that it ultimately lost.

THUCYDIDES: In my book I invented the Melian Dialogue as a cautionary tale DIPSHITS TALKING ABOUT IR WHO WANT TO SOUND SMART: At long last, we have done the Melian Dialogue from the classic book Don't Do the Melian Dialogue

Donald Trump, who rapes children and is the sitting US president, spent the day imploring pregnant women take the advice of his handpicked charlatan over guidance developed over decades by professionals, followed by declaring Venezuela his personal piggy bank.

Adamantly against our military reducing the pension of any soldier without the process afforded citizens. Targeting individual citizens long after they’ve served is wrong and anti-democratic. Obviously. I don’t know why this needs to be said.

Today I was promoted at work. I am now a Principal Game Designer for Magic: the Gathering.

A guy lectures people in my comments saying he's been in comics 20-something years and he knows yadda-yadda-Africa-Bambaataa and I'm like, guy, I'm closing in on 40 years in this bargain basement rathole built on a foundation of jello. Nobody cares, Moby. Sit down.

It’s a good day to ask Matthew Yglesias if he still thinks January 6th was “kayfabe that got out of hand”

Yglesias has posted more about Tim Walz than Musk creating a child porn bot in the last week.

Whew🔥 “I wasn’t ready for a president of the United States to incite an insurrection against the Congress of the United States, against the Constitution, against the capital of the United States. No, who would be ready for that? But we are ready to save our democracy.” ~ @pelosi.house.gov

Reminder: in 2022 J6 hearings 1. coordinated riot with violent groups 2. Trump's inner circle knew he'd lost election & told him 3. Trump pressured Pence to subvert the election 4. Trump put pressure on local officials: AZ, GA to throw out votes 5. Trump put pressure on DOJ to subvert election

You wanted ruthless bastards who would uphold this system of American military dominance and stomp its critics to oblivion, lads. You spent years demanding it! Here it is: exactly what you ordered, more successful than you could possibly have imagined.

The left liberal block is comfortably ahead now, 48-45. The UK is not actually in a bad place politically, if we had a proportional system we would say things were at least as healthy as France or Germany. Our only problem is that the Labour Party is determined to "hold its nerve".

Comparing the US and an EU country on social safety net spending is massively misleading, because the EU has, as just one example, much stronger unions, so corporations pay there instead of in taxes.

why I've become against 'directionally correct' lies. you can't control where this shit goes. here the misapprehension that defense is half the budget is being used (not by OP) to partially *justify* invasion and imperialism. I know it kinda sucks to be the 'actually' guy, but the truth does matter

maybe another way to frame it: is there any part or tactic of the 10s social justice movements that failed to achieve their goals, and participants need to reconsider, or all the shortcomings and missteps due to environmental conditions that have now changed?

have seen some folks mention or contemplate that there were parts of “Woke 1.0” that were inept, too much, ham-fisted, etc. Without putting anyone on the spot, has anyone more concretely described what, exactly, they think were the inept or too much parts?

Stephen Miller is there to remind us of the dignity & class of Nixon's criminals.

Despite the Trump administration’s efforts to memory-hole Jan. 6, thousands of videos from the riot live on ProPublica’s website and other places. Additionally, much of the deleted DOJ database can be found on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. (Published Jan. 2025)

Kids these days.... Creativebyrovelo.com/therovelorecord

The 7-year “Weston Whopper” saga grinds on. A Superior Court judge has rejected the Weston ZBA’s appeal, upholding the State’s Housing Appeal Committee’s approval of a 180-unit Chapter 40B project on 10 acres. This was originally filed in 2019 with 275-units. 📍Weston, MA

Disgusting ... but also evidence Trump & Co would readily attack Congress again, if necessary www.cnn.com/2026/01/06/p...

not to go all identity politics but I think it’s also because the victims are women

one takeaway from the grok noncon porn thing is that much of the media just isn't interested in an issue they can't pretend has two sides or that doesn't give them an opportunity to shit on the left. Also it would be uncomfortable to justify remaining on twitter after acknowledging it

he should be impeached for this alone

Samuel Alito flew two flags used by insurrectionists. Clarence Thomas' wife plotted to overturn the 2020 election. Both justices refused to recuse themselves from SCOTUS cases related to the January 6th plot. It's a stain on our nation that this has effectively been forgotten.

For the record: the American military was the world's strongest, most lethal fighting force decades before Kamala Harris uttered the phrase as a 2024 presidential candidate. Speaking those words does not prove she would've wielded that power as impulsively and recklessly as the guy you helped win.