Competing thoughts: personalized mis/dis will further weaken discernible reality VS increasing the information deluge will cause people to retreat to curated trust agents.

I’m taking Cinnabon’s side to not employ people who abuse their customers.

Exactly. Coddling them is not helping them or anyone else, and makes things worse for others. Hard times are war, depression, tyranny. Not "I saw on my smartphone that people I don't know are reading books at a library in another town at a voluntary family event that I didn't attend." FFS.

I don't know what to say to make you understand that, however many handcrafted chair makers there are, there are many many more chair marketers and wood sourcers and distribution managers and all the other email jobs you need to put chairs under asses

i think a (perhaps underappreciated) aspect of this whole situation is the extent to which every elite profession is filled with people who excel at drawing attention and want to be famous more than they want to do the actual job

#Redistrict 🇺🇸

Good news, the Trump era is extremely clarifying about who among our chattering class actually believes in things and which are just in it for the blind power worship Bad news, the Trump era is continuing specifically because the distribution is extremely lopsided toward the latter

No one can control a movement built on lies and conspiracy theories, at least not for long. The leaders might be cynical liars willing to say anything for power, and therefore readily stop pushing a given piece of nonsense when it’s no longer useful, a bunch of their marks actually believe it.

What if they constantly want culture war because policy war is complicated and hard and culture war is stupid and easy

a lot of effort was spent in the 20th century trying to make "nothing is true, everything is permitted" into a positive, liberatory vision and we are seeing anew every day that it sucks, actually

It doesn't make a blind bit of moral difference if someone is doing dreadful things because their heart compels them to do dreadful things or out of perceived pragmatism, but it does obviously affect how you deal with them (person B is open to all kinds of persuasion, A only to blackmail or removal)

It is more than a little bit insane to recall that the foundational structure that makes this happen is that modern post-industrial economies are so insanely productive that this sort of dedicated scam compound makes economic sense in countries with weaker economies and institutions.

157 years ago, on the 9th of December 1868, the world's first traffic lights were installed outside the Palace of Westminster in London. It used semaphore arms during the day and green/red gas lamps at night. It had to be operated by a constable. It exploded on January 2nd 1869. #otd #history 🗃️

Fuck *anybody* who formula-shames.

The Dear Leader conditional…

Same headline. Seven years apart. 🤡 @politico.com www.politico.com/news/2025/12...

Wanting people to spend the money you refuse to pay them is wild.

I dunno man the concept of actually owning something you pay for must be like a drug if you're under 30

In the era of slavery, free black people had to carry their "free papers" with them so they could prove to the authorities that they were free, or else they would be thrown in jail and sold.

Helluva a conditional for a Trump voter….

I generally get frustrated at blame Dems for GOP malfeasance, but I think that this is true on many fronts, if the goal of the Administration is to create an alternative reality, Dems should absolutely be engaged in reinforcing actual reality.

It's hard to explain to normies how much effort Trump is putting into anti-trans policies. This is like the 12th thing just this week. And there were 12 things the week before, and 12 things the week before that. There will be 12 things next week. This is almost everything the government is doing.

all a bit esoteric and it's not exactly a messaging winner, but: america is a religion, and a proselytizing one. that's what being a creedal nation means. come to america, endorse the principles of the declaration and the constitution: congrats, you are an american. www.patreon.com/posts/109838...

again: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Just legal Calvinball. Obviously lawless.

This is not some harmless joke. This is the “Hafez gives us wheat” billboards of my early visits to Syria.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Sun Belt Championship. (CC: @sickoscommittee.org)

“The president inhabits a position of moral leadership. When the president and his officials sell their policies, they’re selling a version of what it means to be an American” I wrote about the Trump administration, the boat strikes, and St. Augustine. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/o...

When I bought my toilet with a camera that watches me shit I never dreamed it would be used for something weird.

I can’t stop thinking about how all the focus of research on so-called information disorders as being something targeted at citizens really missed the picture of what was happening in the intra-elite information environment and its influence on their collective beliefs and attitudes

📣🎬 Calling all filmmakers & artists! Celebrate Public Domain Day in January 2026 by making a 2–3 min short film using public domain works from 1930 & earlier. 📆 Deadline: January 7, 2026 💰 First prize: $1,500 ℹ️ Details 👉 blog.archive.org/2025/12/01/2... #contest #filmmaking #publicdomain

This article provides more data showing how easy it is to manipulate humans on social media. These researchers rerouted the algorithm on Twitter to push some users toward “antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity”. It only took 1 week to elicit changes that used to take 3 years.

Thinking I should set up a playlist of Mexican folk music to play all day while I am at work to help burn their budget.

Faith alone…

This was handed in for a PSYCH CLASS & when the prof said she didn't use empirical sources but rather submitted op-ed she whined about religious liberty + prof got suspended. I was a *Religious Studies* major; in my time she would have been rightly BBQ'd had she dared to hand in this absolute drek.

NFL talking heads are the worst. Yeah, Buffalo beat a .500 team with receivers that have *combined* fewer yards than a receiver they traded, and “this is a statement win”

Maybe another way to think of it is as the "participation line" - the income one needs to fully participate in expected aspects of US life without worrying about plunging into deprivation one way or another (gift article) wapo.st/3MeOGki

lol. lmao even

So the administration's position is: - that he was radicalized only after arriving in the US and - that the vetting process (which was all Biden's responsibility) was a failure? I know we shouldn't expect consistency, but come on.

The core problem is that in a state, something has to be sovereign - in a democracy, it is the people - and you can design and tinker as much as you like but there is no way to design around a loss of virtue in that sovereign entity. If the people keep elected maniacs, no guardrails can hold.

Insanity. Hugely self-destructive. Un-American. Ask which countries.

Former US military lawyers speak out: "The Former JAGs Working Group unanimously considers both the giving and the execution of these orders, if true, to constitute war crimes, murder, or both." Statement on Media Reports of Pentagon “No Quarter” Orders in Caribbean Boat Strikes 1/2

our media is so obsessed with the five famous assholes who unapologetically fucked up instead of all the people who didn't what about everyone who doesn't "need" a second chance because they didn't expose themselves or assault anyone or move a former student into their house right after graduation?

I guess we’re just shouting NOTAMS into the void on truth social now

Let's not confuse the people giving the stupid orders with the people who have to deal with following them, who are often good and decent people.

Seems like a pretty big limitation on a paper modeling out Gen Z homeownership rates at retirement!

Crony capitalism, with a side of sedition

How could I see this as anything other than a direct threat to my foreign-born wife and children?

It's striking how some members of the administration want to create a worse, poorer, American ethnostate and think they need an authoritarian kleptocracy to do that and some members of the administration want an authoritarian kleptocracy and think they need white supremacists to do that.