RFK believes pandemic lockdowns were more restrictive and oppressive than the Holocaust, that vaccines cause autism, and that tap water may be turning kids gay. But, sure, let’s question whether the “conspiracist” label applies because some countries in Europe don’t fluoridate their water.

In our - very limited - historical experience of democracy, (i) states rot from the centre-right (ii) and it's contagious (via geography/powerful exemplar states)

and scene

There is also ample survey data that people of any age identify the time period when things were best, e.g. the Good Ol Days, as whenever they were 10-15 years old. They weren't the Good Ol Days, they're whenever you were a kid. That's what you miss: being a kid.

I’m angry and tired of this idea that just because someone puts on the decorations of a faith that they are taken as pious and devout representatives of that faith. I think it’s insulting to believers who actually try and follow the precepts of generosity, kindness, meekness, and mercy laid out.

Biden delivered the material goods but didn't benefit a bit from it. You could argue this was because Biden couldn't capitalize on these policies due to his age or incapacitation, but i think the problem runs deeper--the political system doesn't operate in the way it did when Biden came of age. 3/x

centrist and Republican pundits addressing a mainstream audience always retreat from the particular to the abstract. never specific policies, always generalized concerns

When you think about the courage, determination, and blood shed by the people who brought us the progress we have lived with our whole lives, I really do believe it’s self evident we don’t have the moral right to give up.

I guess the rule is, you can call Kirk a nazi, but only if you mean it as a compliment.

Putting away all the "CIVIL WAR NOW" banners at the news station and bringing out the "Mental Health Crisis in America" banners with a heavy sigh

Divide between people who think politics is an exercise in increasing status and career opportunities within a static system and those who think it's about creating the circumstances within which people can live well

The Trumpists believe they may have found their Reichstag fire moment. And if it is not this one, then how long until something else happens that might serve as pretext? When those who are controlling the levers of state power are itching for violence, how long until mass violence follows?

This is what anti-anti-ism finally collapses into. Truth is unknowable, numbers are biased, counter-argument always has to muddle the water. It’s not that the leftists are more violent. It’s that not-right wingers are. It’s completely nonsensical.

They care more about this than any of the recent massacres of children because they see dead pundits as people and dead kids as content.

Look, we need to welcome all perspectives in good-faith debate. I personally happen to be opposed to political murders. But I recognize that not everybody shares that view.

again: it’s a regime, and the regime’s composition includes various private citizens, propagandists, and soon, likely, paramilitaries. it doesn’t include career civil servants. opposition party is not a governance partner, it’s an enemy to be crushed. bsky.app/profile/rvbd...

The Democrats with the skill at doing this, like Mamdani and AOC, are rendered anathema by the gerontocrats running the party.

Our politics seems to be entering a phase of "right supremacy" where only the lives of right-wingers have value. Assassinating the leader of a state legislative body in her own damn home was business as usual, but all of America has to have a reckoning if it's a far-right online influencer.

i haven't seen anyone explicitly celebrating kirk's killing but i have seen people complaining that other people's analysis of it isn't sophisticated, which is the blueskyism i am more familiar with

When a right-wing man murdered Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota, progressives asked MAGA to tone down the rhetoric to prevent more violence. Within hours of Kirk’s murder, motive still unknown, the right is demanding that the government wage a campaign of violence against their enemies.

When they say "It's too soon to politicize this" after a shooting, they mean it's too soon for you, not for them.

I'll merely note that today, like all days, is a great day to stop posting on Twitter, a platform whose owner force feeds this slop into people's brains with an algorithm designed to boost his views and trample yours.

I got stuck TA'ing a class on East Asian Business History one semester in grad school, and it turned out to be a great experience because the professor - a former banker and historian - never stopped emphasizing that functioning economies and successful businesspeople have opposed incentives.

Look, at some level you cannot have a functioning democracy where both parties presuppose an electorate of selfish, ignorant louts and compete to offer them the best array of goodies, which is more or less what “focus on kitchen table issues” means. You have to activate some kind of civic impulse.

This is literally what scholars mean when they speak of the fascist ethos of “blood and soil.” It’s adapted from a European context, but it’s the real deal. We’re in it.

Arguably the single biggest obstacle to the American herrenvolkists is the fact that every single American read the Gettysburg Address and Declaration of Independence when they were in school

Fully agree with sentiment, but - and this is just my humble and uninformed opinion - missing the mark: the goals here are to (1) create outrage in libs (check) and create confusion to deconsolidate formal & informal rules (check). What each EO textually says per se is irrelevant to them

And we already did a trial run of this in Los Angeles and not a single GOFO or officer/ from the marine corps resigned so you tell me when they’ll randomly start disobeying orders?

I guess since you struggled with that condition prior to this scenario, it's pre-existing and nothing to feel sympathy about.

The only poll anyone will ever need. Swing states voters were +11 on the economy they experienced locally and minus 27 (!!) on the national economy they only heard about.

Trump has shown particular leniency to criminals he identifies with — people who are white or wealthy, or who he believes were unfairly persecuted, or who rioted in his name on Jan. 6. But he sees people accused of crimes in Washington as irredeemable, Erica Green writes in a @nytimes.com analysis.

If Poland, Finland and the Baltic nations aren't developing nuclear weapons already, they should be.

some crimes do have an underreporting problem, but those are typically rapes and domestic assaults, crimes which this administration objectively support, and minor larcenies, which aren't the subject of this hysteria

the other thing is that they were very invested in the idea that a "canceled" person like Cuomo could come back.

There is no theory that can cut through these facts at this point. Fundamentally unfit for office not only because they cannot meet the moment but also because they clearly do not believe in actual democracy. They believe only in what they want. bsky.app/profile/utop...

The negative effects of the declining number of journalists has been pretty well studied, but there's also a noticeable decline in the average quality of each journalist now that the only way to break into the field is be born a top 10%er and accumulate many expensive signalling credentials.

It's a bitter irony that this note comes from Clifford Ando, a classics scholar whose brilliant "Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire" demonstrates how a key to an empire's survival is shared rituals and a common sense of legitimacy between the center and the provinces.

It’s kind of reaching the point where I’d be less embarrassed to walk in on someone watching porn than them having CNN on. Like whatever your proclivities are CNN is far more perverse.

I keep coming back to the conclusion that there probably are valuable use-cases for these LLMs, but they're not revolutionary, but rather mostly productivity and recreational software, which is fine, but nowhere near enough to justify the AI boom, which is why no one focuses on them.

It's fucking August. How many of them were a thousand miles away on family vacation while the kids were out of school?

You have more money than God. But you want incentives to do good, moral things?

NEW: A biotech company donated $5M to attend a March 1 dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. The company's co-owner brought a flier opposing a pending change limiting Medicare $ for his products. The next day, Trump posted the flier on Truth Social. The next month, the Medicare change was tabled.

This entire thread is hilarious

7 years ago I wrote that, "the most lasting long-term consequence of the Trump Administration," could be "the disruption of the belief in neutral gov't statistics that form the epistemological foundation of shared social, economic & political reality." www.the-american-interest.com/2018/04/17/d...

I spoke with 40+ sources for a look inside the Anti-Defamation League. Here’s some of what I found. ADL’s gentle response to Elon Musk’s infamous salute was partially driven by his support of Israel. To ADL, that indicated he didn’t have “antisemitic tendencies.” (1/x) nymag.com/intelligence...