This is not how morality works.

Leading symptom of my Seasonal Affective Disorder: I’m back on Bluesky. 😆 (One of my best friends, years ago: “I get the ‘seasonal’ and ‘affective’ part, but explain ‘disorder’?”)

This makes me physically ill. All hail the plagiarism machine that is destroying students’ ability to do everything: read, write, do research, think critically. There’s still time to beat it. But not if administrators are determined to join it.

Hey authors! Check to see if Anthropic stole your book to train their slop generator on. You’re entitled to $1500 per stolen Work. Look up your work, and if you’re in the database, file a claim secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup/

Picked a good night to do it—but signing back off now. Be well, Bsky peeps.

This is a hell of a speech.

Mamdani starts his speech by quoting Eugene Debs, and talking about how calloused hands that were never supposed to hold power have now seized it. Like it or loathe it, this is sounding like a fire-breathing socialist speech.

John King on CNN just now describing Republicans’ likely reaction to the election, and I quote: “Holy Shit.” (Didn’t know you could say that on CNN.)

the thing that I find frustrating/enraging is that this is the really boring polisci explanation. it's not some secret code; like, it's what you learn if you just follow political scientists on social media, or read a few books. 1

Hm. This is disappointing. Odd-year elections are designed to suppress turnout. I get why progressives may think that works in their favor right now, but I'm not a fan of voter suppression in any form. The housing props all seem likely to win, tho. But this is too bad.

I know a lot of people are excited because Democrats are winning But tonight I'll sleep easier knowing that its much harder for these proto-autocrats to consolidate their authoritarian regime after extremely strong public signals of discontent.

Cuomo was drummed out of office 4 years ago for sexual harassment. He then lost the mayoral Dem primary. He then employed rank gutter racism to win as an independent -- winning Trump's endorsement! -- and that didn't work either. Few modern politicians so richly deserve obscurity and exile.

this is the most successful a CIA officer has been at toppling a government in years.

It’s totally routine for the biggest city in an advanced democracy to have a (pragmatic) Socialist mayor. It’s actually odd that it hasn’t happened in the States till now. #AmericanExceptionalism

I'm happy that Mamdani won. But I won't let that get in the way of my celebrating Cuomo losing.

Looks like the Dems will pick up 12 seats in the VA House of Delegates, which will go from 51-49 to 63-37 D-R. That's an honestly shocking result.

Came here to say this, but Jamelle Bouie has this covered. 👇 When the Democratic tent includes candidates like Spanberger and Mamdani, there is no crisis, or fight, for the party. IT’S A COALITION, NOT A POINT ESTIMATE.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few more Conservatives switch parties this week.

Ok, this wins the evening.

the future of the democratic party is a coalition of the wokest people on tumblr and absolutely dead-eyed pursuers of the national interest and the maximization of GDP

Pennsylvania voters retain three state Supreme Court justices, preserving Democrats' 5-2 majority 👇 www.nbcnews.com/politics/ele...

Spanberger’s acceptance speech speaks directly to those who supported her opponent, says she plans to work for all Virginians. This is how a democrat (and I don’t mean “Democrat”) speaks.

NYC is on pace to see its highest voter turnout since the 1960s. Nearly 2 million New Yorkers have already cast their ballots in the mayoral race between Mamdani and Cuomo — and the polls are still open.

Dems winning in Virginia will directly lead to thousands regaining the right to vote. Spanberger can reverse GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin's reinstatement of a Jim Crow-era lifetime voting ban for felonies. Dem lawmakers can also put a constitutional amendment on next year's ballot to permanently end it

Jumping temporarily off the social media wagon for U.S. odd-year election night (and maybe some Canadian budget news).

Taking another grass-touching break from here.

There's going to be a lot of focus on the topline -- that polling was more accurate than in 2016 and 2020 but still biased towards Dems on average by 2.7 pp -- but I want to highlight some of the other findings I found most interesting

there was a big package of post-trump reforms on the table in 2021/22 that would have enhanced congressional power against an overreaching executive. it didn’t go anywhere, in part bc the Biden White House didn’t want to give up power and congressional Dems didn’t want to buck the party leader

for those who haven't been following the details of this story, it's primarily about pushing black men out of the military

This is a good illustration of what’s happening tonight re ICE leadership purge. Posts and caption identify this dude as ICE, but his uniform says Border Patrol. A LOT of the most aggro stuff that has been casually attributed to ICE (esp in Chicago and LA, and in Portland in 2020) was actually CBP.

Call me crazy, but what if the U.S. were to accept the jurisdiction of, I don’t know, an international court with jurisdiction over such things….

The last eight words explain why not everybody can, in fact, write books.

The entire amount of money both parties combined spent on the 2024 election would pay for about two weeks of SNAP

I think very often people do not realize the sheer *scale* of government, particularly the US government.

worth applying to politics as well. when you're criticizing an action people take "taking the better action next time" is only one of the alternatives people will consider, and worth remembering that "not bothering at all" is another.

The alt-text is priceless. 🤣🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

Dems just need to find a candidate named Bob America to run in 2028 and they’ll be set

Someone threw a huge bottle of omega-3 pills at me But I only suffered super fish oil injuries

I just gave blood (a double unit of red cells). There are shortages of all blood products everywhere, and it’s delaying or preventing life-saving treatments. Please consider donating.

Why did Indiana University attack and cut its own student newspaper? Well, in a twist of irony any English professor would call clichéd, it turns out IU did it because they were angry about the students' reporting on a FIRE report naming IU as the worst public university for free speech in the US.

Important update from two months into my “experiment” (lol) assigning college juniors and seniors to read whole physical books and then having a seminar where they use the physical book and physical notebooks and their ideas and questions to fill three hours of class time: It rules

It’s a little known fact that Eaton Centre in Toronto was named after this guy. (The original spelling was considered confusing.)

In fact, Stephen Miller has a philosophy degree. Plato wept.

like a toy chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse, that’s how much it hurts spotify.link/5CtPfZuWJXb

A lot of people here claiming to channel “normies” really mean “my fellow *Jacobin* readers” and these are…not the same thing.

With anemones like this, who needs friends?

This is a major step forward. Thirteen countries still impose the death penalty for ‘blasphemy’ or ‘apostasy’ – where simply being openly humanist can be a death sentence. Yet awareness of persecution against the non-religious remains low. humanists.uk/2025/10/23/u...

On Threads, the usual suspects are telling ppl about to lose SNAP benefits to just start a garden. As a gardener, I had to laugh. You need at LEAST an acre of land to feed a family of 4. Start-up costs are enormous. But yes, subsistence farming on the balcony of your rental apartment is the answer