My main opinion on Graham Platner is if there was a 41 year old guy running in the Republican primary for the Maine Senate seat and it turned out that he had a Nazi tattoo for 15 years and then he claimed that he just didn't know it was a Nazi tattoo, none of you would ever stop screaming about it.

I really gotta break through this problem. I somehow believe that if I were to write anything at all that wasn’t the product of a half decade of research that it would basically amount to irresponsible conspiracy theory slop; and which is not a standard I hold other people’s writing to.

it's so wild that people on here will label you a narcissist for controlling your replies when they are basically asserting that you should have to read whatever they want to say

The vibecession was primarily driven by lower sentiment among the upper and middle classes, not the lower classes.

As Tolkien intended it to be.

I’m not exactly sure what set off the wave of online anti-Korean hate among Malaysians. I’m kind of reminded of how the backlash against the Hallyu is a subject in itself…

Tomino: "Fuck the big three, it's just big me"

Because the morons have entered my replies - if you're giving an interview on video and there are ~any photos if you online, you're trivially findable via free online facial recognition tools. It is not "praxis" to deny this and pretend like we need to preserve secret identities.

Your strategy of vigorously opposing authoritarianism even when it means having to support less-than-ideal candidates pales in comparison to my plan of complaining on Twitch.

This is actually a decent, accessible, and--most importantly--coherent primer on what the Dark Enlightenment is and how it's infiltrated contemporary politics. Most of this is contingent, however, on Thiel and Trump maintaining influence and power. cc: @aelkus.bsky.social ridl.io/the-dark-enl...

People also frequently bemoan how useless philosophy and humanities degrees are…but software is currently the most lucrative profession for them? They transition very easily due to their formal training in Logic.

I think this applies to the hypothesis of MAGA being a death/suicide cult (ie Fascism). People will die for him but they won’t live for him. (I’m unsure if this applies to his admin, staffers, or family…)

once you realize most politcal discourse issues are just people that appear to not actually have jobs that are glued to thier phones that think political media strategy could be invented/dispersed instantly after you saw a thing, it makes it alot easier to not get upset

math discourse is coming up again. I think one of the errors of the education system is that they (correctly) train you to believe that the time of a solution is a metric for intelligence. However, this causes students to just give up if they fail.

Time is a flat circle.

Didn’t occur to me until recently that James Sunderland from Silent Hill 2 was very likely modeled after Bill Pullman’s character in Lost Highway.

Counterpoint: Groypers are bullying him into developing a weird form of body dysmorphia.

Police in Bloomington, MN just announced that one of the guys they arrested in an underage sex trafficking sting was a **background checker for ICE agents.** He had a high security clearance in the Trump administration... and he was caught trying to abuse children. Sickening.

so much of the dirtbag left just turned out to be a revolt against republican virtue. really just virtue in general, which explains red scare

I think the Japanese call it Funiki or Kuki

Yud and his weird acolytes think that its their mission to defeat the final boss in Xenogears

She is the worst example you could have possibly chosen lmao.

Chris Rufo doesn't have a career outside of being a "culture warrior." This is his movement. He made his bed. Now he gets to lie in it.

This is correct. (This is also why the Anglo understanding of the LDP drives me insane. Along with how this site and Twitter understood Nippon Kaigi.) Sanseito's the closest to a "Western New Right" party, but even then the brainworms it has are more Japanese

Watching the Paul Bros get dog piled on Ex Twitter for their half time takes is a good measure for where the winds are shifting

When I worked for Reason magazine during Trump's rise to power in 2016, I was explicitly forbidden by the editor in chief from writing about Trump's racism, or the violence and racism at his rallies. It was a "sideshow," I was told.

Per usual, this post by Lind is good. Narratives of hawkishness and militarism in Japan are thin gruel when China is a de facto Totalitarian Regime and America is an unreliable ally. blueblaze.substack.com?utm_source=n...

A lot of the people in Trump’s administration know and feel like they’re going to peak under his “leadership” which partially explains some of their behavior

Fwiw, J-Twitter is sending a lot of "serves you right" vibes towards Minshuto for abandoning cooperation with the communists and Reiwa in favour of that idiotic "centrist alliance" with Komeito. Doubt it would've saved them, but embracing the full my-mate-Liz-Cheney playbook maybe didn't help.

yeah i watched the TPUSA show too

That’s too easy. Let’s try this. What about the best conservative artist over the past 25 years? Two writers who I’ll concede some credit to are Naoki Hyakuta & Michel Houellebecq.

A summary of Japanese politics

No Kings includes Draft Kings

The fundamental issue with leftist Japanese parties is they have nothing to stand on. They really have no vision of progressive economics that’s differentiated, and their messaging about gender equality/LGBT rights fall flat because the LDP isn’t *coded* as anti-those, fairly or unfairly.

A lot of the people who lose their mind over Neoliberalism struggle to define it. And then there’s Noah Smith who produced 1/991 Ex-Twitter threads on the most Neoliberal anime’s during the aughts.

Daily Reminder: Very Online American identity politics is significantly weirder than anything originating from Japan.

it's more productive to apply clown make up than to endorse a post or substack by Jake adelstein or his clique

Kinda surreal to watch old Japanese television shows and see J-Phone listed as a sponsor.

Your Bluesky experience will be immensely improved simply by browsing Will Stancil’s replies and blocking everybody being a freak. This takes out like 90 percent of the shittiest people on the site and makes everything better.

I think we’d be a lot less “mad” if Moyn hadn’t spent years attacking everyone to the left of center — especially “liberals” — who had already figured this shit out.

Unpopular opinion: some of the localized dubs are funnier than they have any right to be: youtu.be/23Tsgvby5L8?...

Not to overindex on someone mouthing off on social media but y'all need to take human rights more seriously.

I respect my Canadian mutuals way too much to learn about their political system.

“What the fuck is an Aella?” My father asks me before I explain and he disowns me.

Wing-nut influencers sincerely think that roided fitness instagrammers are more athletic than Navy Seals and NFL players.

Same energy

I'm pretty convinced that the only thing that *might* have changed the outcome of 2024 is if 1.)Biden agreed to only serve 1 term and 2.)If the Democratic Party was allowed to have a conventional primary. And that's a big maybe.

If your response to normal not online people effectively protesting and organizing against ICE is a variant of 'OH THEY THOUGHT IT WAS FINE BEFORE NOW HUH' you're a completely insane crank and a tarpit of a human who cannot affect positive change in the world, only negative change. You are blighted.