A politician’s position on a single issue can be aligned with the majority as expressed in polls and ballot measures and still not be pareto optimal for the general election This fact could be used to excuse all kinds of bad ideas, I admit. But fundamentally: you need the voters at the margin

Good to get everyone’s numbers grounded but this does not seem that crazy to me. Rates have exploded and so have associated media narratives. We’ll hit an equilibrium at some point but we are clearly not there yet and it seems totally understandable that people aren’t sure in the meantime

NEW: The Pentagon told journalists it will require them to pledge they won’t gather any information — even unclassified — that hasn’t been expressly authorized for release, and will revoke the press credentials of those who do not obey. @washingtonpost.com

Good/correct. Killing people is bad, and that is genuinely all that was required in the post-assassination commentary cycle. www.joshbarro.com/p/your-disli...

I think there is a good answer to this: the McCarthy era was excessive and abusive—my own grandfather’s career suffered because of it—but it was also motivated by a real foreign adversary that was actively pursuing a propaganda war. The comparison would give Trumpists too much credit, frankly.

survived waymo! very late to the party of course but they aren’t in DC yet and I have too many children to go anywhere

impossible to pass by these and not be overwhelmed by the intrusive thought that yes, I want to smell like that old man

today in "work emails I am drafting"

This is as dystopian a move as possible right now

this discord does not really sound like the fractal abyss of nihilistic irony I was promised www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/u...

Looked at my data collections for state-backed activity. If the report were a picture:

STEPHEN A: Skip I do not ask for whom the bell tolls [BAYLESS nods] You KNOW each man’s death diminishes me BAYLESS: Absolutely STEPHEN A: BUT!

the sublime satisfaction of telling a lawyer to buzz off over a specious takedown request, using maximally obsequious language

hot take: it is good that the aftermath of the killing of a political actor, including that person's subsequent unmerited valorization, is profoundly annoying to the actor's political enemies. keeping the cost/benefit of political violence so negative that even dummies understand it is for the best

The aging, latent police reporter in me can't help put pause to remark on the unforced error of the SAC in Salt Lake's FBI field office making the unforced error of announcing they have recovered a “footwear impression.” A shout-out to toss or destroy those shoes, ASAP. That's a detail you keep.

from my feed, bluesky did a great job yesterday. lot of folks succumbing to petty nonsense today. genuinely accomplishes less than nothing at this point

an interesting read as usual from @dylanmatt.bsky.social but I never really understand the focus on shrimp. there are smaller but more complex organisms that we kill in larger numbers. shrimp strike me as being at kind of a sweet spot for "killed in vast number but still anthropomorphizable"

In this scary moment, it matters for each of us to affirm that political violence is wrong and will destroy our democracy.

I'm sick after seeing the video of Charlie Kirk being shot. Violence against civilians is never okay. Political violence — no matter who is hurt — will always beget worse political violence. And it has no place in our country.

If you're one of the online ghouls celebrating a man's death, you're part of the problem. Don't @ me unless you're just looking for a quick block.

Political violence is evil. I don't care how angry you are at your opponents. We have a ballot box. We have courts. We have free speech. I'm sick with grief for Charlie and his family. I'm sick with concern for this country.

This is a fantastic skit where a woman pretends she's in every space movie www.instagram.com/reel/DOMVQId...

Over 20 yrs of flying insect counts at a remote high(3000m)-mountain meadow in Colorado (by a very dedicated observer) shows insect counts fell by an average of 6.6%/yr, overall a 72.4% drop. The main culprit was rising summer temperatures, especially warmer nights. ½ www.earth.com/news/remote-...

Trump going to Joe’s is an endorsement of walkable urbanism

The House member who wants to let Trump appoint D.C.'s attorney general (currently elected by residents) mistakenly says it was the city's AG who didn't prosecute two-thirds of arrests in D.C. That was actually the U.S. Attorney for D.C. – who *is* appointed by the president.

this is less hemispheres than before

adding "let people watch CCP-approved short form video" to the list under "stabilize Parisian bread prices"

Apple event video stiltedness has reached a new level: I no longer believe those are these people's real legs

it's always wonderful to see new work from my former Sunlight Foundation colleagues. this was an interesting read! I've seen another side of the political influence universe since working for a business, and the distinct nature of PAC giving/lobbying is consonant with my experience.

Check out our new little paper with a simple but surprising (to many) fact: most “special interests” that lie by the govt don’t have a PAC for campaign donations. All too often lobbying and campaign contributions are conflated. With @clarebrock.bsky.social and @alexanderfurnas.com

ICE in Carver Langston DC, 20th and H st NE. 2 Men taken. Seeing people being kidnapped is about as horrible as you would expect. Reported to @dcmigrantmutualaid.org

imagining michael caine on a caribbean island sipping a piña colada while reading this script and then slowly sitting up, removing his glasses to wipe a tear, and calling his agent, “i’m coming back”

I'm going to put aside the weird feeling of seeing a saint born after I was, but since we know the guy was big on halo 2 there are now people who in 2004-2005 got fragged by a saint on xbox live

Again, I know this will upset some AI haters, but I worry that in our efforts to stop all AI, we're going to end up shutting down the open internet in ways we won't easily get back.

my ANC helpfully defining one pole of the "symbolic & ineffective" >> "calculated and unsatisfying" political spectrum. this is a totally appropriate thing for them to do imo. where other levels of government should sit on the spectrum is a matter of opinion

Unfortunately, I expect that the fact they won a pretty resounding fair use victory is going to be lost in much of the coverage. They lost on downloading & storing the LibGen dataset (straight infringement!), but the act of training on copyrighted material (+ making their own ebooks) was a win.

the replies are all about Twitter!

as much as I love @ggwash.org I think it's noteworthy that the cited examples of things we've lost under the mayor's strategy of appeasement are decorative crosswalks & a prospective ban on right-on-red (if Trump's forces remain past next week I'll have to update) ggwash.org/view/100690/...

i don't trust people my age who start calling it a pfp. that's not your term. we call it an avatar, god damn it

This trans gun thing is a really impressive piece of bad faith wedge issue ratfucking. Puts their enemies in a position to vigorously defend putting guns in the hands of a group at high suicide risk. Negative polarization can make people fight for basically anything

this is great, lovely to see the policy working and lovely to see the @51st.news finding its groove

President Trump says he wants to make D.C.'s parks beautiful again. But actually doing so will take more than new grass or streetlights – the federal government may have to accept that it kinda sucks at running parks in D.C., and maybe the city would do a better job. 51st.news/trump-wants-...

ugh now I have to write a postapocalyptic screenplay just so I can put this audio over the pre-title montage, thanks a lot

I think this makes the mayor’s strategy clear. Next week the 30d Home Rule Act emergency expires. Dropping this suit will be one more incentive for the Trump admin to declare victory and GTFO.

hard for me to take these guys seriously — and i know i should — because they all sound like such fucking idiots.

without defending it even slightly, it's easy to see how presidents have gotten the idea that it's OK to kill people with drones whenever they get sufficiently mad about what they imagine those people to be doing. it's just usually not this hemisphere, and usually not so callously publicized

"[Residents] are concerned that MPD has been compelled to participate with ICE. This is a requirement of the Home Rule Charter when the president requests," says Bowser on MPD working with ICE. "We’ve got to get out of the emergency. The framework I laid our is a pathway out."