I think one big upshot of LLMs is a lot more bespoke software. Suddenly it becomes practical for even non-practitioners to make little one off utilities to solve a problem and so that's going to push digitization of processes much deeper down the value chain where before it didn't make sense.

Speaking of political malpractice, Collin County Democrats evidently did not bother to field a DA candidate this year. The POS misogynist who failed to indict Kris Harrison is running unopposed.

I will say again I don't care if Democrats literally say Abolish ICE as long as they communicate an understanding the whole thing is rotten root and branch and the entire idea of law enforcement dedicated solely to removing brown people is fatally flawed because of who it attracts to power.

So what's the insurance hike going to be for "car may be totaled by out of control ICE pursuit?" now that that is a measurable risk?

Talking about LLMs at really high levels of abstraction is not helpful. They're a tool that exhibits weird spikey intelligence. When you have a use case that fits well they enormously accelerate productivity (eg some kinds of coding).

A note on that awful Texas case: in Texas you need 9 out 12 votes on a grand jury to secure a true bill. So it only takes 4 MAGA psychopaths (pretty likely in fucking Prosper) to get a no bill. Also the Collin County DA is a piece of shit. Here's hoping 2026 is the year the county flips.

I don't think the Trumpers are monkeying with employment data tbc. I just think the models aren't working well for a variety of reasons, including falling response rates to their surveys, and this is a really difficult problem even with full staffing by the best and brightest let alone now.

Anyway, even if nothing nefarious is going on at BLS revisions have been pretty extreme lately so it might be wise to take the headline reports with a shaker of salt. We may be seeing indication of reacceleration. Or it may just be statistical noise that will go away with more complete data.

We over focus on the evil for good reason, but it's always important to remember the people in the government are also very stupid. Our government is a malevolent but epileptic monkey that does a lot of random flailing with no regard for who it hurts.

We need to revive the idea of solar energy being the ultimate tool for manly off grid living so right wingers stop committing ecocide to own the libs.

I think it's just as likely the MAGA guys are frontrunning the market as trying to do any even semi-legitimate spin so we'll see. Insider trading by government officials ought to be punishable with a lifetime ban from any government role and real prison time, with no statute of limitations.

I think we can be pretty confident Trump doesn't have enough consolidated control over the military and courts to pull off an autogolpe. It doesn't mean he won't try and doesn't mean he won't do incredible damage beyond what he's already done (in particular riling crazies into comitting violence).

I don't know what the exact appropriate messaging on ICE is, but we should appreciate that Republicans are doing national Prop 187 and not interrupt them.

I think it's important to remember viruses are not a eugenic filter and even survivors of a highly lethal disease like ebola almost universally experience devastating post acute sequelae. Whatever a cynical antivaxer might think they're doing they're wrong. Pathogens aren't doing us a favor.

Prediction is always dangerous, but the data right now is really pointing to the big narrative for 2026 being "how Trump lost his base" and that will be how anti-Dem punditry will paint it. Not a Democratic victory, which would require acknowledging they're good at politics, but a Republican loss.

In 2024 people got too worried about a stole election when the big risk was Democrats losing outright like almost every other incumbent party that year.

I think something the doomers are ignoring is the magnitude of flips needed to know the outcome. Democrats needed 23 in 2018. This year they only need at most *3* so the chances are overwhelming we will be able to project once the east coast comes in.

Untreated 2020 trauma is a big problem for commenters. I feel pretty confident that was a once in a lifetime thing caused by the perfect storm of COVID adaptations plus Trump's weird strength with rust belt low info voters plus his shameless disregard of democratic norms.

I've lived through more than 1 midterm. The state that counts excruciatingly slow is always California (due to accepting late mail ballots) and if we're looking at a true blowout Democrats will cross 218 before that becomes a factor. In 2018 we knew before sunup Wednesday Democrats won.

The joke most of my adult life was "libertarians are just Republicans who want to smoke pot" and the Trump years have sure as hell confirmed that.

But the big reason I lean Talarico is the job of a Senator is legislation and oversight, not posting. And Talarico's resume is a bit thicker on actually getting things enacted (granted even the horrible Texas state legislature is a bit more pragmatic than Congress)

I'm going to say there isn't enough data to be freaking out about Crockett winning primary, and Talarico has been running a conventional progressive campaign complete with the extremely annoying pleas for donations.

MAGA hates it when the wrong people adopt patriotic iconography and attach it to broader narratives about inclusion, unity, and joyful celebration so we should do more of that. Triggering the cons is in fact a useful heuristic because they have embraced vice so thoroughly under Trump.

There is such an obvious megabucks market for a home security company that explicitly says they'll religiously follow the 4th amendment and never turn over recordings without a judicial warrant or explicit owner permission and yet Silicon Valley just keeps doubling down on the panopticon dystopia.

Seems like my beloved Pacific Northbest has the mandate of heaven. I'm definitely taking that as a good omen for Woke 2.

All I'm saying is if we make Puerto Rico a state and bribe Hollywood to move there we can fix the dour vibes we find ourselves stuck with.

I think partisan gerrymandering is terrible but also you can't have an equilibrium where one side is creeping toward PRI style one party rule and the other high mindedly refuses to fight back. Politics ain't beanbag and tit for tat is the only way we can keep a reasonably competitive system.

Hot take: Republicans wouldn't be spinning so hard on "evil Obama was so unfair to Mittens" if they didn't know deep down supporting Trump is wrong. The strong need to deflect and rationalize is what we call a tell.

The problem with 2024 analysis has always been the problem of overreading a historically weak victory to fit a preconceived narrative. Even the Biden era backlash to immigration was mostly backlash to perceived border chaos and asylum abuse and not a strong desire to deport everyone.

We talk about the importance of civics education, which is true. But one of my bug bears is we don't cover reconstruction and its unraveling nearly well enough in history classes. And in particular how damned long it took to consolidate Jim Crow and suppress the Black vote.

My hot take is when people talk about the evils of neoliberal globalism they really mean the evils of GWBs mishandling of the China Shock, bank deregulation, and the subsequent mediocre 2000s economy that ended in catastrophe, and they haven't updated their priors since.

I'm not fretting about the midterms. The only force in history that has ever stopped thermostatic backlash is the overwhelming popularity of the president: FDR & JFK basically. Not even Saint Reagan could hold back the tide. No amount of marginal fiddling is going to make fetch happen.

Something we've kind of stopped talking about is the way healthcare ate a lot of the gains for workers and since Obamacare largely left ESI alone as part of the coalition management to get it enacted we haven't really addressed that issue at all.

How would you even voter intimidate in a vbm state anyway? What, you're going to shake down post offices and all the additional drop boxes as well as regular polling places too?

Really important than any DHS funding bill restrictions needs a rider that says "and the OBBBA money can't be used on this either" or they'll just use accounting gimmicks to get around it.

They're already having to gut real criminal law enforcement to divert bodies to rounding up abuelas. If they try to police polling places they'll have to stop rounding up abuelas and I think that might make even the racist Trumpers in ICE grumble.

Anyway, it's not great that apparently the Times is going to be the last elite paper standing with the rest of the space dominated by farthet right wing agitprop. The lack of a response from allegedly liberal billionaires has been quite blackpilling on the whole class interests thing.

Have we considered the possibility Bezos is just a huge fucking moron and MacKenzie Scott was the real genius in that relationship?

It's also important to remember Congress can issue regulations (with or without funding) but even then the federal government has practically zero role implementing them. You aren't going to see your friendly neighborhood precinct grandmas replaced with ICE.

My read here is Congress basically has unlimited power to impose mandates on states but they'd have to blow up the filibuster to do it because neither side is going to compromise and in fact has irreconcilable priorities (expanding vs restricting the franchise).

I frankly don't care about sloppy historical analogies to ICE/CBP. They are constitutionally evil and whatever communicates that point to normies is good. Historians can nail down the exact DNA later.

I'll say again, the Trumpers cannot suppress one midsized city and can't even hire enough people to start. They aren't going to be able to nationalize elections at gunpoint. Worst case scenario red states go all in and risk substantial unintended consequences as enraged libs get hyper activated.

I think disbanding BORTAC and the ICE & CBP SRT units would be a good down payment toward full abolition that would significantly reduce the murder rate.

Sure would be great if Republicans would stop intentionally spreading paranoia about how things like *checks note* counting a thing over time works. Our low trust society was engineered.

Anyway, I think we're getting an object lesson in why getting rid of the legislative filibuster is so hard because it really is a useful veto point. But I still maintain the current level of majority thwarting is long term bad for democracy and empowers the imperial presidency.

Honestly with Talarico vs Crockett in getting the feeling Democrats should experiment more with ideological & policy positioning because the other arguments inevitably turn into destructive mudslinging and narcissism of small differences.

Since Scouting is a feeder program for leadership cadres it's hard not to conclude among other things these assholes are just unreconstructed misogynists who would rather destroy everything than give up their rape and child fucking perks.

Today feels like one of those days confirming even very good non-algorithmic social media is essentially a mass psychosis machine because we aren't wired to handle this intensity of social stimulus.

The whole tempest in a teapot over what Talarico may or may not have said is so dumb. He came out for completely eliminating the filibuster and abolishing ICE in the debate and those are huge red lines. I really hope Texas Democrats don't lose the plot.

By 2006, Hillary Clinton was the overwhelming frontrunner for the 2008 nomination (last time we had a truly open contest) by an even bigger margin than Newsom and we know how that went. At this point you're mostly polling name recognition and media presence. Campaigns matter.