“.. Tropical storm poised to hit basically every major US LNG export plant this week.” @bloomberg.com #TropicalDepression2

The ferocity and persistence of the debate On Here this comic alludes to is a pretty solid rebuttal of Rawls' exclusion of envy (and failure to explore less pejoratively-named values) as a component of the veil of ignorance. In this essay, I will...

This is really good and captured why I feel so bereft about the US Jewish commitment to Zionism, which is that European Jewry was, for so long, *the* problem for European ethnonationalism, and rather than build a case for pluralism from that historical condition, has joined the enemy.

So what I'm taking from this game is that Argentina treats the time until the other team scores as a warm-up.

This weekend the US military bombed civilian energy infrastructure leaving thousands in southern Iran w/o power in 100-degree heat. I've previously written about my sense of helplessness at these atrocities & keep asking, earnestly, how can I help stop it? www.liberalcurrents.com/we-are-the-b...

On a completely different topic I had one of my all-time trivia personal triumphs tonight when I was the only member of our team to know who invented the trolley problem, proving I had not forgotten *literally* everything from my PhD quals.

I am biring my tongue on today's parenting (but let's be real, *mothering*) discourse but I think it's worth those outraged at outsourcing childcare asking themselves if they feel similarly about the decision to place aging parents who use diapers and cannot feed themselves in full time care.

Because we're doing public transit versus car discourse today here on bsky.com and because I've dinged Ezra Klein for not reading Isaiah Berlin on Liberty I think I have to share this pre-2024 election take on public transit as metaphor for freedom open.substack.com/pub/cooperat...

I'm sorry this is just republicanism (small-r, early modern tradition exemplified by Machiavelli) and it's what historical liberals rejected for a modus vivendi. Valid debate but the benefit of the latter is a move away from property-based belonging and toward the potential for true pluralism

I tried to make a joke about this but couldn't land it so I'll just say it: this is annoying as hell because the same dude will get cold feet as soon as Dems to the left of him actually *do* push a vision, at which point he'll invoke all sorts of args about electability against it

Hi folks! I'm running for El Cerrito City Council. I decided to run because I want to help El Cerritans rebuild trust in their government and reconnect with their neighbors: www.meganasteffen.com/ec-city-coun... You can follow me on Instagram for more hot takes! www.instagram.com/elcerritogad...

I know folks are shitting (pun intended) on RFK and DOGE for this outbreak, and that's fair, but I also want to give credit to the nameless bureaucrats who are hanging in there and solved the kind of complex public health puzzle that would have been unsolvable for much of human history. Thank you

What does "very flirtatious" mean in this context? A drunk sitting member of Congress leaning over a 25-yo staffer who makes $60K a year and would like a career in DC? Putting his hand on her knee? Asking for her number? Responding to substantive questions with comments about her body?

I hope the college students who protested the US-funded massacre of Palestinian civilians, while being vilified by their universities and politicians and even the president, understand that they are actually having an impact, just much slower than they hoped

I know it hasn't hit peak season here yet but feels like A Sign of the Dystopia We're Already Halfway In to ask my parents in Chicago about wildfire smoke while under blue skies in California. One of those "something has gone very wrong" moments at the start of the movie.

This essay prompted the realization that my semi-ironic "baby activist starter pack" (the set of picture books I gifr to my new parent friends is as succinct and complete an articulation of my core political principles as any book list. So I will share the titles!

Now VERY curious whether anyone has written on this. SCOTUS: "It is urged that the statute...violates the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States [b/c it] is the liberty of the telegraph company to make contracts It is rather late in the day to make that contention..." In 1912!

ELIZABETH: Should we… expose Wickham? JANE: I don’t know about it. What do you think? ELIZABETH: Well, I guess we shouldn’t be the ones to do it since it’s Darcy’s account and not our story to tell. AND we have this precise discussion about abusers to this very day!!!! JANE!!! AUSTEN!!!!

We are here in part because otherwise good men in roles of public trust chose their personal relationship with other men over the safety and well-being of women they do not know. Genuinely interested if anyone wants to argue why this isn't Mamdani doing the same.

Evil is done by people. Fascism is done by people. And sometimes the price you pay for power is to be remembered in relation to your use of it and not the fullness of your humanity, particularly when that power was deployed to deny others' theirs.

Finally saw I Love Boosters and I'm not entirely sure *why* studios keep giving Boots Riley money to make hyper-surrealistic opposite-of-subtle anti-capitalist propaganda films and TV shows starring Oakland, but I really hope they keep doing so.

Turns out if you have complete and total disregard for human creative effort you eventually steal it from someone with the resources to hit back.

This is literally a plot point in The Great, an anachronistic retelling of Catherine's coup in tsarist Russia (and a really fun show!).

I would go even further than Alan does in the summary (he goes harder in the post itself) and say that outright hostility to children's personhood is an animating principle that explains a significant portion of MAGA obsessions/politics. (Also shout-out to @swordsjew.bsky.social on this!)

My extremely hot take is that saying this should be criticized as a betrayal of one's Jewish identity in the way calling Israel an apartheid state was (and in some places still is) treated. Not coincidental it's about masculinity too - a NYC-specific history: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Oh, a personalist campaign conceived by self-aggrandizing men in express opposition to an AOC candidacy imploded under the weight of its own misogyny? I wonder if there's an affirmative case for an alternative vision of electoral politics out there... www.liberalcurrents.com/aoc-for-pres...

Since March we've had a sitting US Congressman/near-presumptive CA governor, a swing state senator candidate, and Cesar Chavez all revealed to be serial rapists whose lesser sexual misconduct was widely known for months or years and men on here treat this as a way to relitigate the 2016 primary

When DHS shot Marimar Martinez in Chicago last October, they also claimed she tried to ram agents with her car. She survived, so they even charged her criminally. They lied. She had done no such thing, and the goon who shot her bragged about it in texts. They dropped the charges against her.

The “worst of the worst” framework is a key reason why America’s penal state remains exceptionally large, punitive, and injurious. Continuing to frame immigration policy in these terms will only fuel further criminalization and militarization.

Going to repeat myself and say that as glad as I am to see Dems recognize their mistake in valorizing a particular form of gender performance over actual qualifications for office, any "reckoning" that doesn't grapple with Swalwell will fail to address the real problem with sexism in the party.

Kids are in bed, I'm burnt out on political discourse so back to a fictional dystopia. On to the final two Andor episodes! I could live without the snarky droid sidekick - definitely feels like the show is shading into the lighter tone of Rogue One which is jarring given plot developments

I would really like to see Mamdani publicly and vocally distance himself from Morris Katz and prove there is a part of the Democratic Party that doesn't think women are disposable despite the fact we comprise well over half of their voters.

Wrote about why, despite my hostility to LLMs and anger/fear about their epistemic effects and the climate impacts of the current runaway hype, I am skeptical that the anti-datacenter movement has much to offer environmentalists or anti-fascists. open.substack.com/pub/cooperat...

I get that all politicians use their kids (or if nothing else, their existence) to a certain degree, but Vance really consistently deploys them in a dehumanizing way that I think provides yet more evidence of his toxic relationship to power and the permeability of the public & private.

Earlier this year I disclosed professional misconduct involving a young woman by a now-future-Congressman and a lot of people asked, "why now?" One of the reasons is that I wanted to warn future staffers. thehill.com/homenews/hou...

this coming out the same day a bunch of men are bellyaching about how everyone needs a pristine dating history to be in congress now should tell you something thehill.com/homenews/hou...

It's been a rough day for ~reasons~ so I'm going to indulge in some Andor posting and I have to respect the narrative confidence to just make the big plot moves in the first fifteen minutes that you *think* will be the climactic beats (I'm on S2e10).

I'll say a little more. Platner was transparently the product of gendered insecurities amongst a group of Dems spanning multiple intra-party factions and had a bunch of red flags (Nazi tattoo, imperial wars) that were gendered but not about his treatment of women. One lesson is Dems should reject...

As a Yale Law alum who is, uh, ambivalent about that distinction (gotta acknowledge the privilege, would prefer not to reproduce it), I Have to Hand It To Them this time. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/07/u...

Folks, no one has a RIGHT to higher office. OK? You aren't "canceling" anyone when you decide NOT TO SUPPORT THEIR QUEST FOR MORE POWER. Please let's be SERIOUS. This is not what is meant by "no one is disposable." I'm begging people to focus and use your brains. That man can still make a LIVING.

Having previously advanced precisely this thesis as a "hot take" I will also accept an smaller vindication ribbon, tyvm. bsky.app/profile/mega...

The whisper network got a lot of shit circa 2017-18 but you know what would prevent catastrophes like this? Listening to the goddamn whisper network. Women having epistemic authority with respect to sexual misconduct, imagine that.

A masculine personality politics is incompatible with genuine leftist commitments. www.liberalcurrents.com/aoc-for-pres...

Really feel for Balogun, who didn't ask for any of this, and now must navigate the fallout of our racist, immigrant-hating mob boss of a president intervening on his behalf.

OK I stopped this but have made it to S2E9 and I find Bix's choice unconvincing. It really feels like the writers didn't just want to make her a damsel in distress but couldn't figure out anything else to do with her and then needed to clear the field for Rogue One so, bam. Other ideas?

And Trump, by openly violating norms, is both discarding the fig leaf of self-restraint to reveal the system's basic rot *and* qualitatively accelerating that rot, ruining the World Cup for everybody. I take it back, the writers aren't half bad.

The discourse around the Supreme Court term would be much improved, I think, if people focused on the center of the Court as being very much part of the GOP coalition, rather than focusing entirely on whether it is or is not doing Trump’s bidding specifically.

FIFA is a corrupt, oligarchic organization yet despite its evil overlords the World Cup creates conditions thru which we can all enjoy acts of extraordinary skill & teamwork, cross-cultural exchange, and spontaneous communal goodwill. Surely not a metaphor for other holidays this weekend