The effects of this bullshit on education and public knowledge, on civic life, and on the workings of our political system could be disastrous. You would think *someone* at Google and Meta et al. understands the risks, but their actions show no evidence of it. They're in a race to hell.

The foundations of our leadership are a skilled workforce and enormous intellectual wherewithal, alongside an openness to ideas and immigration and stable institutions What if we dynamited those

If you think this looks like a threat to free speech you're wrong. Threats to free speech are when sex pests lose their jobs as magazine editors.

This is obvious but the massive expansion of private equity into vast areas of the basic fee for service economy (veterinarians e.g.) is so that they can take the vig while passing flows through to entities that really need to clip coupons steadily for a long time -- defined benefit pensions.

holy shit nobody has ever answered a question worse

Liberal voters whose consumer sentiment suddenly shifted negative after the 2024 election were indeed answering rationally

I am begging these guys—this Princeton prof in particular, but also a lot of other guys in positions of influence—to stop making their midlife crises everybody else’s problem

FFS.....we are a cancer in the world

I can't reproduce that. It gives a much different fuck up for me!

🧵 Public science in the US has taken some heavy hits over the last year, but the White House OMB is proposing a series of changes that will result in a TKO for science as we know it unless we fight back. Here's what's happening, and why it matters. 1/n

So, this new thing where political appointees will review scientific grants to decide whether or not to fund them? It is so dangerous that I keep thinking of new, terrible things hourly. The most obvious one is that RFK Jr.’s evidence-free, vibes-based agenda will be the priority.

UW - Madison has over 500K living alumni. Our alums are fanatical about Madison & the university. I have seen exactly zero attempts to publicly mobilize this network in opposition to the federal budget cuts, foreign student restrictions, or any of the other existential threats. Again, mind-boggling.

@joshchafetz.bsky.social nails it. The way to understand the Trump admin’s new science regulation is the institutional right has long wished to consolidate power over the govt in the office of the president, and now this unitary executive logic has moved to science agencies. To our detriment.

one fascinating thing is that this is not a major blow to the Trump Administration; it is a major blow to the thing which Trump personally believes the Trump Administration is for, which is his personal aggrandizement.

What's really astonishing is not the far right authoritarian party doing this, but the near-total lack of <loud public collective action> by university chancellors & presidents to oppose this existential crisis. Almost impossible to overstate how total a failure of leadership this is.

Israel has killed or injured 11 children in Lebanon every day, as it expanded strikes across the country despite a ceasefire.

The Dems really fucked up by not nominating "Big" Throb Hardman instead. Opened themselves up to all kinds of attacks.

@liberalcurrents.com Is on it with The Reconstruction Papers.

no shade intended to anyone’s taste in these matters but it would be cool if everyone worked their stuff out in slightly less destructive ways

FFS

ITS NOT HARD JUST DO THE RIGHT THING FUCK FUCKITY FUCK FUCK JUST DO THE RIGHT THING AND DEFEND KIDS

“Project for a New Republic” “Project for Constitutional Democracy” “Project for a Third Reconstruction” But FFS not “Project 2029” composed of policy proposals selected for their hypothetical appeal to the 2028 electorate.

That's right internationalpolicy.org/publications...

The grift here is simple: the conspiracy theorist can “lose” 95% of viewers and still increase overall support for the theory, and hence expand the number of nodes that spread it.

This and an overly compliant scotus explain 90% of the “why can Trump do whatever but democrats can’t” question

This is maybe a hot take, but there is no meaningful way there can be a project 2029 for democrats at this stage because we have no idea who will be the nominee and the candidates, to the extent there are any yet, all have different details they are running on

I rarely block, but I promise you. if you see me warning about use of an antisemitic trope (Jews as vampires, for example) and you respond with shit about Israel? I will block you with such swiftness, trust and believe

“What would illiberal hegemony look like?” Well

i think this is correct on the merits of the race but to the extent that we can nationalize Paxton v Talarico and thereby tar other Republicans we want to do it because Paxton really is that bad.

Wrote a bit about the data center backlash, and why it is Good, Actually. The Data Center Bankshot davekarpf.beehiiv.com/p/the-data-c...

SCOOP: The Trump administration is paying millions to quickly cover four enormous bronze horses with extra-thick 23.75 karat gold leaf. The money for the rush job is coming from National Park Service funds. In total, I found ~$100 mil spent on new DC beautification projects.

I cannot see the case as realistic. I cannot help but see Rivian/VW’s anti-android auto anti-apple carplay software walled-garden dreams as likely hallucinations. The absence of buttons, trying to charge through the nose for software walled gardens, and the $1500 or more of dark silicon... 1/

It's good that universities are making six-figure payouts to people who got fired for their comments about Charlie Kirk, but now the universities need to do some new firing, of administrators who carried out those illegal actions. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/u...

The National Science Foundation is terminating and suspending grants again, and at Grant Witness we need you to help to track them! 🧪 We can only identify research being suppressed by under-the-radar suspensions directly from researchers. Please report! grant-witness.us/posts/2026-0... #NSF

Trump Throws Temper Tantrum Over NATO Response to Iran War (This pompous buffoon has never had any idea what NATO is for. This war is HIS mess.)

yeah you gotta willie horton ken paxton. have the party committees and super pacs run ads explicitly accusing paxton of covering up for a child abuser. “you love your children and would do anything to protect them. so why would you vote for a man who lets child abusers run free”

yeah this is just lying like, this isn’t fudging, “we’ve only used this projection that’s favorable to us” type statistics manipulation like we’re used to, this is just flat out up is down black is white lying in the service of pushing nazi policy and it should be treated as such

Project 2025 was a far-right wishlist for radically restructuring the executive branch into an authoritarian, reactionary force. It was deliberately crafted to give plausible deniability to the Republican POTUS candidate, precisely because it wasn’t designed to appeal to voters. These are… not that.

Important to document this; as I've said many times, Trump has set up his entire second presidency to allow him to never be confronted with information that might contradict his impulses and prejudices.

The fact that Team Trump is cooking its own Iran war intel and data to make it seem nicer for President Trump before it gets briefed to him — and the fact that they’re doing so primarily b/c that’s basically what Trump *wants* them to do — is a massive scandal that…. In this era of corruption and…

idk sounds like a good way to encourage people to hide symptoms

Again, for all the focus right now on sentiment & how it's all vibecession all the time, it's important to note that, under Biden, the economy was objectively getting better but majorities thought it was getting worse, whereas under Trump it's objectively getting worse & everyone thinks that, too.

This is awful. Libraries are at the very heart of what universities do; we can’t fulfill our mission without them.

We often talk about Twitter as being fascist. We don't talk about it being fraudulent.

"We did nothing wrong by firing chemical irritants at a duly-elected senator" says a lot about where we are at as a country And none of what it says is good

Demented thug trash threatening an ally like it’s nothing.

“The Pentagon has spent months positioning the troops and weapons needed for the U.S. to launch a military attack on Cuba — all it needs is a final go-ahead from Donald Trump.” www.politico.com/news/2026/05...