getting the feeling we made a mistake installing a philosopher-king. he locks himself in his tower and only comes out to say shit like, “I cannot disprove the idea that I am but a brain in a jar?” wow holy shit man, that’s crazy. did you have any ideas about the fucking grain shortage

This sure seems more like the tyranny the Constitution is supposed to protect against than forgiving student loans.

This is part of a bigger trend of the political valence of oil disconnecting from the actual economics of O and G. I keep telling people to do a little humorous anthropology and read the industry sub Reddit. Half the posts are joking that the industry boosters are morons or old and out of touch.

BREAKING: A federal judge ordered the government to restore Rümeysa Öztürk's SEVIS student record after it was wrongfully terminated in retaliation for exercising her freedom of speech. This allows her to fully engage with the opportunities of her PhD program.

the idea that a handful of conservative legal scholars have an understanding that should supersede a settlement affirmed my generations of american is astoundingly arrogant, and the idea that trump — or any president — can unilaterally overturn that settlement is just despotism

Herbert Simon on the internet and attention, 1996

WEB DuBois wrote this inscription, posted at Harper‘s Ferry

wishing that activists hadn't fought on Skrmetti is either wrong on the facts - Tennessee pushed the case up the chain - or wrong on the premise: the law was challenged by someone in Tennessee who needed to win or flee the state. if activists are your punching bag, you wanted the kid to lose.

People need to read Fritz Bartel, the Triumph of Broken Promises!

W.E.B. Du Bois on Robert E. Lee: “Either he knew what slavery meant when he helped maim and murder thousands in its defense, or he did not. If he did not he was a fool. If he did, Robert Lee was a traitor and a rebel–not indeed to his country, but to humanity and humanity’s God.”

IMO a lot of this factional infighting arises from the grievances of elite neoclassical economists having so squandered their influence such that no one listens to them anymore post-08

LLMs are a great tool for letting you kind of do something you don't know how to do. the problem is that knowledge of whether it is a good idea to half-ass something is highly correlated with knowledge of how to do the thing correctly.

We're throwing away that which cannot be regained for the ephemeral preferences of an illiterate madman.

Unitary executive theory means that the President can dictate the terms of individual prosecutions subject to his political whims

another american catholic arguing with the pope about scripture and defending national interests ... if protesting the pope on issues of spiritual corruption and temporal authority is what you're into i have a 500-year tradition you should check out

If Trump is going all in on impoundment why does he care about the outcome of budget talks?

the ethos of JD Vance is the nationalism of cucks. sacrificing every advantage this country had, every actual concrete thing we lead the world in, because it owns the people who make you feel insecure. an ideology of small men.

The way an executive branch that respects the rule of law objects to a district court ruling it doesn’t like is to *appeal* it, not to imply that the ruling just shouldn’t be followed.

demanding uninterrupted executive authority to do whatever you want when you also control both chambers of the legislature and the supreme court is weak, lazy politics

The member of Elon's incel clown posse in charge of the US Treasury's galaxy brain idea: "Let's take data formatted specifically for computers to read, filter it through an English language model that will completely ignore the structure of the data, and convert it to a different file format."

Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer probably. Need some admin law experts

trump and musk's attempt to destroy USAID is much more significant than the violation of the tenure of office act AND ALSO it is a harbinger of an anti-constitutional seizure of power. *that's* why it matters.

Self-described Roman Catholic thinks killing children is good

The destruction of the American Republic is unfolding in such an annoyingly stupid way. A ketamine fiend radicalized by right-wing memes and his crew of high school-educated groypers just setting fire to the administrative state without a care

Harder to build a 737 than crash it into a building

I was reading NFIB v. Sebelius for conlaw yesterday and the conservative dissenters hyperbolic example for abuse of the spending power was using federal funds to control school curricula. Like that was the Scalia fever dream of federal overreach

Deepseek is hilarious because the entire story of AI research since the 50s has been "I need a bigger mainframe to invert this huge matrix which is mostly zeros" versus "hahaha git good at math"

One of the thing the left is good at is deconstructing hero myths, but one of the things the left is terrible at is understanding why hero myths are created in the first place.

On the topic of American leftists abrogating their own history, they could really talk more about Benjamin Wade, the radical Republican senator from Ohio who advocated for land expropriation for the freedmen and was cited approvingly by Marx. He was a single Senate vote away from being President!

I’m amused by the theory that Republicans got tech on their side by being nice to them and not threatening them with state force for years

The boomer retirees who are currently hoarding land in Seattle are doing more to harm the environment than any other group of Seattle residents. More housing in Seattle means less sprawl and pollution. Anti-housing policies just push people to suburbs; they don't stop people from moving here.

it is so important to remember that IN THE MOMENT there was no one who thought jan. 6 was some innocent protest gone awry. everyone recognized it for what it was.

Pedestrian Observations: Public Transportation and Crime are not About Each Other pedestrianobservations.com/2024/12/24/p...

Fuck, he’s gonna mint the Coin isn’t he

Fundamentally, I continue to think that the problem is that both Liberalism and Leftism have become essentially conservative ideologies too, defending the gains of a past generation. We need to find a new to construct an imagined future too. Hell if I know how to do that though.

The problem with framing it this way is that the US medical system's failure trajectory is non-linear. People like their insurance until they don't

One specific issue that may matter is that the tendency of the $ to strengthen in US recessions (LHS of smile) means that not only does the $ hurt US exports in itself, it likely (and to even greater degree) tightens global financial conditions in aggregate, reducing RoW growth/imports in toto.

Driving is unambiguously the absolute worst way to travel, especially with little children, and I hate the boomers and silent generation for making our lives like this

Using the army to toss American citizens in camps is going a little far, says this libertarian

Wrote some stuff about Bessent's Economist op-ed: timshel.substack.com/p/does-trump...

This is literally (part of, etc) why we got Trump. Become Eunji Kim-pilled, realize that ‘apoliticial’ slop entertainment media is politically powerful. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

John Yoo was one of the legal experts Mike Pence solicited to argue that he had to certify the 2020 election, even he is too lawful for these guys

the media won't cover it like this, because they like Trump, but anti-vax shit is like seriously, seriously unpopular, in every poll. Deeply toxic opinion. Vaccine requirements for school kids are 70% for vs 28% against incl. majority of GOP voters www.pewresearch.org/science/2023...

But I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks--no form of government can render us secure.

hey dude, I noticed you attempting to carve a small space for joy in the face of overwhelming sadness. kind of problematic considering all the horrors

We should reassign all private and public USD denominated debt to mr beast and then hunt him for sport, his death representing a societal potlatch, a social jubilee, that resets the social collective and begins the economic order anew. This is what I believe, btw.