It's incredible to me that anyone looks at Eastern Europe, defined above all by difficult compromises in the face of subjugation or outright genocide by nationalist empires from either side in the last two centuries, and concludes they're just too stubbornly nationalist to know what's good for them.

I maintain my position that when people mostly talk about Fukuyama, they are really talking about Baudillard.

"Is Putin about to go to war with Europe?" - this is not a knock on the journalists or the publication itself (it's a good discussion), it is just that he has already been at war with Europe for years. And I fear that his successors will continue this war too. www.theguardian.com/world/video/...

Transphobia, like other bigotries, comes from an assumption that the world as we know it is the best way things can be arranged. Anyone trying to change the way things are must therefore be trying to cheat the system to make up for their lack of ability

hey what an interesting wikipedia article en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz-W...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrent... Miller knows, just from glancing at the last century of US history, that the US doesn't punish its Berias

My reach on socials doesn't = Ryan's, but I feel need to continue drumbeat. THESE WERE ALREADY ILLEGAL strikes. The doubletap makes it MORE OBVIOUS, not MORE ILLEGAL. (ok. it's a bit more illegal; since it opens a whole new category of illegal). (we tried people at Nuremburg for crimes like this).

Hegseth absolutely expects to face zero justice whatsoever for his war crimes because *that is not something the US has ever really done*

Think about how much easier it would be to prosecute Hegseth for war crimes if Kissinger or Cheney and Rumsfield had been. Can you even imagine how different the last few decades would be if Kissinger had faced literally any form of justice for his crimes.

"Trump, meanwhile, doesn’t care what happens to Ukraine. He is motivated only by a pathetic and delusional desire to win the Nobel Peace Prize."

trying to explain the academic mindset--

libertarians belong in a zoo

Old enough to remember when they said it was "unclear" if Putin would invade Ukraine while he was moving thousands of troops to their border.

This was my last straw with giving any grace to "good" Russians, to be honest - especially paired with the fact that they tiptoed around humanitarian concerns with Ukraine (e.g. only supported children's charities based in Lithuania or something, but never fundraised for ZSU or expressed support for

Let me just repost this: even old people don't get maintenance MRIs. He had this because something went really wrong.

My “I am not a malformed creep who groomed a child for years and then abducted her to my secret dungeon, I’m just a misunderstood tragic romantic” playlist is raising a lot of questions already answered by my playlist.

I've been watching a certain cross-section of (usually reasonable) accounts calling author Sarah Kendzior some variation of "hysterical" for speaking up about her temp suspension from bluesky, and I want you all to know that you are being misogynistic assholes and need to stop. Shame on y'all.

I hate pedos and I don’t care what team they’re on. Jail them all and throw away the key

It feels like we are already moving on from the implications of the Epstein emails. As Judith Herman observed: “The knowledge of horrible events periodically intrudes into public awareness but is rarely retained for long. Denial…and dissociation operate on a social as well as an individual level.”

Shoutout to @djinnandtonic.bsky.social

Maybe it’s just the Humanities professor in me, but let it be noted that events of today (ahem) have demonstrated the value of being able to assess a large volume of qualitative data and do careful textual analysis with deep attention to context.

Meanwhile, “did women ruin the workplace?”

Well I can see Bluesky is handling a PR crisis in their normal competent manner

someone got banned literally for posting this historical image from Wikipedia on the grounds it was a "death threat" there's only one kind of person who takes this photo as a death threat

people gotta lose their positions of power and influence people gotta be shunned from their prestigious social circles above all, people gotta go to jail

the biggest lesson from the emails today is that powerful people are so unafraid of consequences for crimes as bad as “raping children” that they will just talk about it openly in emails the only path to a better society is one where that is no longer true

Just did a live TV hit on the potential for US military intervention in Venezuela. One of the questions: "Do these additional Epstein revelations increase the likelihood of a US attack on Venezuela?" What a time to be alive.

"bluesky will suspend you for anything vaguely resembling a death threat" is maybe the single most consistent moderation policy they have I don't know why anyone is surprised by this one yes, even if it's a reference to song lyrics

Note to self: riffing on Johnny Cash lyrics may be problematic.

She was referencing Johnny cash…. Song lyrics are song lyrics not a threat You’re intentionally lying about this

No sense of context, no sense of responsibility - your moderation is not human, period, and reflects no values. I now see that the website is run by sсumbags, and will behave accordingly.

"All major game studios are using generative AI" the fact this is a lie aside, the ones that are using it aren't doing so willingly. It's meddling managers and CEOs with no understanding or attachment to game development forcing it on devs who end up not using anything it outputs anyway.

This is hugely disturbing. @support.bsky.team - you need to immediately address this.

40 years ago we’d have congressional hearings falsely accusing metal bands of putting backwards messages in their songs that told kids to kill themselves & now we have a planet-killing chatbot that’s all like “bet you won’t commit suicide chickenshit bitch” & the government is like here’s $5 billion

Microsoft hates computers AND everyone who uses them, whereas Apple only hates computers, and Linux only hates the people who use them. In this essay I will

what a great day

Strange seeing the same people who denounce Wikipedia believe generative-AI that's half plagiarized from that encyclopedia and half from dubious sources. Almost like complaints about Wikipedia were ultimately about how reality didn't conform to their ignorance

Shou Tucker has endorsed Andrew Cuomo, and his little dog, too.

We are being ruled by absolute losers

Sarkozy is going to jail but he’s not the first one. In our new dataset we track modern leaders who have been prosecuted by their own states. There are 215 of them. Turns out leader prosecution is a common & healthy practice in democracies. Full access link: foreignpolicy.com/2025/10/28/d...

Chotiner: So you decided you were going to make a joke post— Me: —in the form of a Chotiner interview. That’s correct. Chotiner: And you thought it was funny? Me: I mean, I didn’t think it wasn’t funny. Chotiner: Sure.

There's been endless talk about an AI bubble, but less about exactly how, why, and how much it's a bubble. So I turned to the framework put forward by scholars Brent Goldfarb and David A. Kirsch, authors of "Bubbles and Crashes," for assessing tech bubbles. Spoiler: On a scale of 1 to 8, AI is an 8

Captain Beefheart to Huxley: I did sell Aldous Huxley a vacuum cleaner in the desert, in Lano. An Electrolux. I have a hard time selling anything. He could hardly see, you know, he was very tall, and he looked down like this and said, “I want that” I said, “Well I assure you sir, this thing sucks.”