When your player character shows up in a cutscene

What can trip you up is that a lot of rank-and-file conservatives do not themselves know this. They have not analyzed their motivations; they are just taking their cues from the people above them. They trust those people and assume their received worldview is sincere and viable.

Much is being made of prosectuors' claims that he was in a relationship of some kind with a trans person. But, as I wrote in my newsletter yesterday ... theracket.news/p/has-trump-...

Just a reminder: they were never actually against cancel culture. They were against the cancellation of people they agree with or like. They’ve always been enthusiastically in favor cancelling people they don’t like. If you took them at their word you’re a useful idiot.

Now that Kirk's killer seems to be caught, maybe the news could spare a moment's attention for the right wing, from the commentariat up to the GOP and president, whose immediate reaction was not mourning, but to seize the opportunity to try to incite violence against groups they hate

/5 But if I am willing to go anywhere and tell anyone that black people don't deserve to be where they are, that Jews are funding the destruction of America, and that gay people should be stoned, does that make me a hero? Seems like a low bar.

My sense is that most Americans had not heard of Charlie Kirk until yesterday. The first and perhaps only thing they're going to hear about him from the most trusted and important voices in American politics is that he was a model and constructive participant in good-faith political discourse.

rarely have I more acutely felt the dynamic by which Dems are held responsible for the rhetoric of every random left-leaning person on the internet and Republicans are not even asked to answer for their own personal words

I don't remember seeing any calls for violent retribution after a Minnesota state senator was assassinated, and it would have been nice not to see any today.

it’s possible to 1) note that the shooting of charlie kirk is the direct result of a culture and politics that he spent every single day of his adult life cultivating, without 2) celebrating the act of violence itself. but some people are going to do 2, and also anyone doing 1 will be accused of 2.

I'm not saying crime isn't a problem but I am saying that the sort of crime that conservatives are terrified of is entirely fake.

simply ask oneself where the toilets are in an apartment building versus where the toilets are in an office building, and suddenly the problem doesn't seem so simple

"In fact, the extent to which a society has low poverty seems to be almost inversely related to how much of their welfare state is specifically focused on “the poor” through means-tested benefits." www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2025/08/29/t...

I am for debate. Vigorous, principled, candid debate about the things that matter most. And in good debates about things that matter, people may frown at you. In fact, they might do worse. This is the price of being a serious person. Embrace it, or shut up.

If we're going to talk about crime we also need to consider that concerns about it have risen as more people have begun consuming short form video all the time. One video of a crime completely outweighs whatever statistics you can cite for a lot of people.

So much of the grievance politics of the far right is basically "I remember things being nicer when I was a child and now they're different" and then projecting that anxiety onto your enemies.

The ghoulish fixation on preexisting conditions and starving children in Gaza is bizarre. In all modern conflicts the death toll is measured in excess deaths. This is something I wrote about Congo's civil war almost 20 years ago:

It’s wild, absolutely wild, how for EVERY. SINGLE. CITY. Trump wants to militarize I can post data showing how crime is plummeting in all of them without any federal invasion… … and the press KEEPS stenographing the naked bad-faith claims about “fighting crime!” in the headlines. Infuriating.

The case against worrying about pre-transfer poverty

Can't believe how many times I've seen arguments that are based entirely on Dems losing big because of BLM, Defund The Police, trans rights, and COVID lockdowns. The actual results of the 2020 election went straight down the memory hole.

just thinking about it makes me so angry. the worst kind of open race baiting in american politics since george wallace.

Obviously that number is false, but pretending it's true, it basically would mean, if the murder rate was roughly the same as 2024, that there were 2 murders in 9 days instead of 3. Even pretending 9 days is a sample size of any value, touting that number is absurd to the point of parody.

leftists are not generally frothing lunatics spouting the worst take you heard (or imagine you heard) on chapo, and libs are not generally shitforbrains guys posting "cheeto" and jerking off to ai newsom pics in your replies

All I'm saying is there are perverse incentives everywhere for even regular people to propel the narrative that anytime you step outside you will be blown to bits by an Antifa bazooka. The platforms have incentivized it to drive engagement, and creators can live a middle class lifestyle on it.

there's "charitable interpretation" and there's "being a mark" and the inability or refusal to distinguish between the two is practically a credential in some circles

As an historian, I think it's bad when "blood libel" goes from denoting a very specific part of anti-Jewish history rooted in particular forms of medieval Christian anti-Judaism, to just meaning any criticism of Israel. A whole generation won't understand just how bad the actual blood libel was!

A) Rent controlled apartments barely exist, and Mamdani doesn't have one. B) Mamdani does have a rent stabilized apartment. Rent stabilized apartments have no income limit, and make up over 40% of the NYC rental market. C) This shows a profound misunderstanding of the NYC housing market by Cuomo.

Freedom to cause offense without being jailed or sued is a thing. Freedom to cause offense without being criticized, shunned, and despised is not. The very concept is incoherent.

screenshot because this person is being earnest and I don’t want to encourage a dogpile, but this is exactly the kind of thing that I just increasingly have no fucking tolerance for. snake oil bullshit comes from all cultures, and it’s still snake oil bullshit. I don’t find it funny anymore!

Literally EVERY crime tracked on CompStat, except one of two definition of rape and other sex crimes, is down YTD. Murder and shootings are down 25%. Murder rate, in fact, on track for lowest recorded. Robbery down 12%. This is just a bald lie. compstat.nypdonline.org

I don’t know how to explain how utterly unusual this is. People so very rarely do this.

the liberalizing power of education is not so much what you are taught but who you are taught among: which is to say, a large array of diverse people you've never met before

True crime content can result in what, for lack of a better term, I call "pornbrained for crimes" which strikes me as a bit of a problem, societally

Really was one of the dumbest and most harmful things possible for “virtue signaling” to become some kind of epithet. Sending externally visible signals that you are engaging in pro-social behavior is normal, natural, and good, it’s how society works. Other people can’t read your fucking mind.

yes, this is a great point. and i'm glad that Nicole is alive today because the police famously stopped OJ from murdering her

I would call myself a professional pessimist and "extremely depressed about the future" but god, please stop going into people's mentions to tell them that the law/courts no longer matter or post "AND YOU'RE SURPRISED???" at them, especially so if they are actively engaged in making the world better

we’re about to find out if loving SimCity makes you a better mayor Mamdani was asked in 2002 by NY Mag what he wanted for Christmas and said SimCity 3000

ICE crossed a line in LA

You either believe that we should rule ourselves or you don't. Doing so is a burden and a grave responsibility. This is not a fair-weather commitment. It is an incredible pain, more often than not. But that is the price of not being slaves. And it is an exceptionally good deal.

Oh my god you want me to find "evidence" before putting someone in jail? Every time?? Do you have any idea how long that would take

One of the oldest arguments against giving any rights or process to the people we accuse is — one constantly “rediscovered” by the shallow and the dim — is “well they didn’t give their victims any rights or process.” That’s fatuous. /1

It’s almost like the people building and hyping LLMs to spare us the trouble of thinking have only scant experience with thinking themselves.

Walter Olson has a sober and informative post explaining what that “I AM THE LAW” executive order actually means and how it’s troublesome.

Elon says 90% of US aid never reaches communities. He confuses USAID's 90% reliance on intermediaries -- US companies delivering HIV drugs, WFP delivering food aid -- with waste. Comical if not so dangerous. @rachelbonnifield.bsky.social & I break down where aid goes: www.cgdev.org/blog/no-90-p...

The takeover of Twitter was a preview of what we're all living with now and a stark example of why you can't let any one person have too much money: they go insane and make themselves everybody's problem

We worked for months with USAID to build an $85,000,000 project to end TB in two regions of the Philippines. The project is funded by private money, the Philippine government, and matching USAID funds. It could provide a blueprint for eliminating TB worldwide--except it's...not happening.

The labor movement and antitrust movements were both fundamentally correct: the size and amoral character of modern corporations make them a threat to democracy.

i keep saying these people hate the american system of government because it is true. “sovereign over the executive branch?” get the fuck outta here. he is a servant of the constitution and those “rogue judges” are doing their jobs!

The remote work debate was funny because it forced the question "Is a job something valuable you do or is it a place you go to be watched like daycare" and the answer for a lot of them was yeah it's the daycare thing now come on inside recess is over