Mike Green is writing some amazing stuff at the moment. It's not in the delta, it's in the level and the cost structure. Read this and you will understand Angrynomics on a new level: www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-...

Interesting thread on how YIMBY can build "back doors" to eventually build a structure for public/social housing, even as it initially relies on private developers to provide housing supply.

Here's my theory on MTG's heel turn: she was a MAGA True Believer and never got rewarded with a cabinet position, committee chair, or Senate seat, crypto grift, or similar. She sees people much less loyal to MAGA (like JD Vance) getting those rewards, and Trump himself selling out MAGA.

On the whole this hasn't been a great year but imo that's all the more reason to recognize when we have wins that show we are not powerless. Right now, the Trump Administration is basically getting routed and/or in retreat on several key fronts. We are not powerless! We can do things! Consider-

Evergreen: www.bldgblog.com/2007/10/grea...

I know it's not the most important thing but it can't believe how sub-literate Epstein is in these emails. At best he's writing like an old Boomer typing an email to his grandson from his @aol email account, at worst it's like the beginning and ending chapters of "Flowers for Algernon."

Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer. He is a computer safety researcher. And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine. In under 1600 words. aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...

The RIFs language is actually great. Not only does it rehire the people RIFed during the shutdown, it makes it an unequivocal Antideficiency Act violation to do ANY MORE RIFs through the duration of the CR (Jan 30) Completely stops Trump/Vought Phase 2 for now Would love to see this standardized

two contradictory ideas that i hold in my head at the same time: 1) i think the threat to both SNAP recipients and federal workers is significant enough now that even bad deals are worth making to prevent further harm, and, 2) everyone who caves now should retire in shame

I do not think the era of Islamophobia or anti Arab racism is over but I do think this book ends a particular era of a particular kind of Democratic politics and opens up a new one

It's not in this article but the government asserts that the sandwich was thrown at "point blank range", which implies subway sandwiches have defined effective weapon ranges of varying lethality, and I would like to see the government's chart of these ranges.

I don’t know if I agree with this but what I would agree with is that you can’t maximin vote share if the electorate thinks you’re doing it with polls and spreadsheets

i don’t think you can maximin vote share with polls and spreadsheets, and i think it is a problem that the most prominent and influential political commentators right now are more devotees of data than experts in narrative

trump's invulnerability primarily functions through the consensus that he is invulnerable

I like this framing, as long as you define "anti-facism" as "opposing Trump with discrete political actions, and/or winning elections." "This Dem says we need to fight fascism, but wants to give more money to fasict cops" - well, yeah. Otherwise the actual fascists will win the election?

When daily life no longer fostered physical fitness as much as in the agricultural/factory era we created gym memberships, this is like a social analog for the digital age.

I've written an essay reflecting on how I use the word slop and some theory of what distinguishes slop from spam and kitsch. minihf.com/posts/2025-1...

Rooted cosmopolitanism vs rootless nationalism.

Recurring gripe of mine but it is incredible how National Conservatism is supposedly built around decrying lack of community, common project etc, while turning every “hate your neighbors” dial they can access up to 11. Make your professor terrified to say anything, don’t trust your doctor, etc

So to me the Tylenol/autism thing seemed to come out of left field. It felt like RFK Jr was gearing up to blame the MMR vaccine on autism to justify banning it, so where did this Tylenol theory even come from? Here's a good thread on X by Rachael Bedard that connected the dots IMO:

doomers: there’s not going to be elections in America ever again me: if they can’t even cancel an entertainer due to popular pushback what the fuck makes you think they can cancel elections

"Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that." Looking forward to seeing Jimmy back on the air.

generally speaking, and with the glaring exception of november 2024, the more directly democratic an institution has been, the better it has checked Trump (eg grand and petit juries); the more elite and insular, the less effective (the Senate, the Supreme Court, big business)

it's a pathetic liberal emotion, but the strongest thing i'm feeling right now is total indignity at how much they hate us despite us not doing fucking _anything_ to them

How I'm thinking about the possible budget battle in Congress:

I really need people who want Dems to filibuster the budget no matter what it contains to game out what happens, because I don’t think you’ll like either of the ways that ends: 1) enough Dems defect to break the filibuster, Dems look terrible, Rs look unified, circular firing squad continues

Alright, so I've been afraid to say this out loud, but I think after today, I can say it: In the first Battle of Los Angeles, the good people of LA County have prevailed. We beat ICE back. 1/

I disagree with the good doctor’s dx here: I think this is perfectly consistent with a proto-authoritarian state that has very limited but nonzero capacity to punish dissidents.

What if they not letting Trump speak because he had a Reverse Fetterman Stroke and hes woke now

like, when we are talking about Hungary, i can name like fifteen advantages orban has over trump off the top of my head

This sucks so bad. My daughter and I have been working on our amusement park all summer. Most of the rides are full sets, but everything in between (baseplates, pathways, walls, trees, some minifigures, parking lot) were all from pieces purchased from Pick and Brick.

one thing to remember about "ICE is going to occupy Democrat strongholds" is that ICE, if it hires to capacity, will employ about 26k people by the end of 2026, which is 1/3 smaller than the NYPD, which is not a large enough police force to occupy New York City itself.

1/ Man, we need a media ecosystem and political leadership that can propagate this kind of thing. This is the whole ballgame, it's why Dems get tagged with even the most fringe behavior (likely by someone who hates Dems!), while the GOP gets to just say unhinged shit and pay no penalty.

i find wailing about the irrecoverability of anything resembling a society just absolutely contemptible. this all came from nothing and can be returned from it.

All I read in Trump's post is that he's a lame duck. Tax bill is done, tariffs are done (subject to daily revisions), deportations underway — what else is there to his agenda? Time to measure the drapes on federal buildings and shuffle homeless camps from place to place

the reason it was extraordinarily important to persecute Trump and his sycophants under the Biden Administration is that it would have reduced Trump's support among Trump supporters. it is precisely his impunity which makes him popular among authoritarian submissives.

There are two significant components here: i) the media infrastructure that selectively highlights/amplifies right-wing extremism, and ii) the ease with which these specific views can be presented as autochthonous, authentic, or spontaneous. We obviously lack infrastructure...

There's a strategy for moving the Overton window wherein you say extreme stuff so even if you don't persuade centrists you recalibrate their sense of where the reasonable compromises lie and thus get things a bit closer to your preferred point of view. My sense is the Right can do this and we can't.

i really do love this stuff, man, and because a bunch of MBAs decided to do what they did, i'm going to spend the rest of my career fixing what they broke, breaking what i built, or apologizing for what i did

the dominant ideology of Silicon Valley right now is "god does not exist, but He soon will, and He will be our slave"

It's so funny how these guys say "import the third world, become the third world" and then their own policy preferences end up converging with the taliban

Amazing to be a billionaire, where "I should consider the consequences of imposing my entire worldview on society that's actively resistant because it's harmed by it" is only considered in *retrospect.*"

I'm adding a 2nd part to my account of why I refuse to assimilate to Celsius. (Part 1, of course, is Fahrenheit's superiority for weather; 0 to 100 expresses a large fraction of the actual weather instead of wasting more than half its scale on the march up to the boiling point of water.) 1/

People on bsky will really be like "you believe in setting the narrative by being bold and charismatic? that pales in effectiveness to my strategy, triangulating to win low info voters" and then not win low info voters

These two unstated beliefs that govern modern punditry have completely ruined for the Democratic strategic response: 1. Trump is immune to traditional political gravity 2. Public opinion is the cause, not the effect, of public action, and we must obey it at all costs

Yesterday, @robbwiller.bsky.social and I published an opinion essay making the case for the power of nonviolent protest. I’m proud of our work but also think we could have done more to “steel man” case *against* nonviolence. Here’s essay. Some counterarguments in 🧵 www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/o...

Good thread on the state of labor with undocumented workers.

It is 100% carrying water for the opposition to participate in this collective delusion that Dems for some reason need to answer for every teen who throws a rock rather than hold the Trump admin accountable for intentionally creating chaos and breaking the law to stoke violence. They are in charge.

Lol when you hit all the disaster options at once in SimCity