“the Constitution is not a (career) suicide pact”, they console themselves.

this cartoon sums it up. This next decade is about China's solar hockey stick of hope against the petrostates led by the US. China's bet made Solar+batteries+EVs turn into business models of Coke cans-everywhere, cheap, accessible, satisfy the thirst for freedom. bsky.app/profile/mark...

if Tehran really runs out of water, would we help?

it’s not just Trump. it’s a key dynamic of the contemporary right. parody sites make up bullshit, are explicit and overt that it is bullshit, but influencers forward it in less plainly attributed way until it’s a thing everybody knows in MAGA-land. 1/

you can see why the Thiel / Andreeson /Musk types would have complicated theories about what would constitute an antichrist and in what sheep’s clothes it would appear, given the conclusions simpler stories might bring. xcancel.com/paul_heron_/...

Wrote a short bit on how thankful I am for the good parts of the internet, and some questions I have about how to amplify it and ensure it carries on https://notes.billmill.org/link_blog/2025/11/Essentially_Contested_Concepts.html

if you’ve already eaten, i’m afraid you’ll have to vomit.

BREAKING: Mark Wolf, appointed to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan, writes that he is resigning as a judge to have the freedom to speak out against the president's assault on the rule of law. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

Btw a review article in the FT contains this gem on.ft.com/3XjEzNn What we still get wrong about women’s role in global economics

“and if you were raised in the house, enjoyed its shelter as a child, it’s only fair you should inherit the debt.”

Even people begging on the street have to have smartphones

My old pal Pete Coviello — one of the best writers and thinkers I've ever known — wrote the piece of the moment lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...

The more we learn about Zohran Mamdani's upbringing, the clearer it becomes that he owes everything to his connected, well-to-do parents. by A.G. Sulzberger, Andrew Cuomo, Bill Ackman, and Donald Trump, Jr.

Funny, the Right wants to force kids to pray in schools but prevent adults from praying in public for prisoners

TIL about the “phonaestheme” concept, which identifies a pattern of sounds systematically paired with a certain meaning in a language. For example, in English, “gl-" occurs in words relating to light or vision, like "glitter", "glisten", "glow", "gleam", "glare", "glint", "glimmer", "gloss", etc.

i too am tempted into factional infighting, but i think for now elections are decided by whether the broad public is Republican curious or experiencing a bout Republican revulsion and our not-Republican factionalizing is mostly epiphenomenal. not a permanent state of affairs i suspect, but for now.

the relationship between how many units of CPI a person can buy — as reckoned (inevitably differently) by any of various statistical agencies which are doing the best they can — and economic welfare is extremely weak except over very short periods of time.

[tech notebook] Sysadminning in Scala, documenting in Claude https://tech.interfluidity.com/2025/11/08/sysadminning-in-scala-documenting-in-claude/index.html

how do you evacuate a city of 10 million people? and to where, where else is the water and resources now lacking in Tehran?

"You don’t have to be a wild-eyed leftist to think all of this has a pre-French Revolution vibe." @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social www.thebulwark.com/p/let-them-e... // liberals mugged by reality now clubbed by inequality. the world beats the shit out of you and there's no direction that's safe.

The LLM is so positive, but that's why it's not predictive. Just because it seems to really like what you are doing (and offers such apparently perceptive compliments!) doesn't mean that anyone else will.

the richest people in the world want to make the rest of us feel so poor.

"I wondered if Bari Weiss was burning Family Ties reels on the Paramount lot." sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/when-i-lov...

how can Bovino be a real name in this story? isn’t that a bit heavy-handed of the author?

It was on the 10Q yesterday. Dept of commerce holds 275M shares that were funded by CHIPS, there are 159M shares in escrow, presumably to wait for clarity on funding, and warrants for 241M shares at $20, presumably held by Commerce. And yeah, common shares.

God i hate that we live in an age of kremlinology but for DC/SV groupchats

“It’s really concentrating the power very directly into the person of Donald J. Trump, as opposed to the president more broadly, or to the parts of the executive branch that would have the delegated authority to do this”

Um, I think we can set that limit a lot lower. $100,000,000 is more money than anyone ever needs.

what is the legal form of the “stakes” he takes in companies? does the US Treasury become a regular shareholder or what?

It’s truly a loss today. First time since 1948, the government didn’t collect information on unemployment. www.youtube.com/watch?v=6isk...

Enshittification as a macro phenomenon, Cory Doctorow riffing on Pavlina Tcherneva.

DHS confirmed it has stopped automatically storing officials' text messages. Instead, officials are supposed to take a screenshot, send that to their work email, download it onto their work computer and run a text-recognition program on it. Every time. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/u...

hate the post, not the poster.

state legislators should be paid more. otherwise the legislatures are full of dilettantes, cranks, and nepobabies. this is why you keep hearing about the craziest fucking state laws

The Mayor of New York only makes $260k. I bet there are police that make more than that in NY with overtime. We need to pay elected leaders more money and stop pretending it's some sort of calling. They're managing hundreds of billions of dollars in investments and millions of people's lives.

people hate hearing this but it's 100% true, creating a huge pay gap between political leaders, their staffs, and other elites is a recipe for corruption. of course the flip side of that is taxes on the rich should be jacked way the hell up

ryan is right. people HATE hearing this. but it is just a matter of simple incentives. if you want a more representative legislature — and if you want a legislature more resistant to corruption — then you need to jack up the salaries. serving as mayor of NYC should net you a cool 500K *at least*

“Per capita wealth…should be limited to a maximum of $10 million.” // modern states are both extractive machines for war and domination and the enablers of social coordination at scale that make modernity possible. retaining coordination while restraining the assholes is an existential challenge.

Proportional representation is popular!

[tech notebook] Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah https://tech.interfluidity.com/2025/11/06/zip-a-dee-doo-dah/index.html

one of the difficulties mercies of existence is that no matter how profoundly you fail, not only are you permitted another chance, it is obligatory that you take it, the alternative is justly forbidden.

a lot of people should go to prison. but Bannon’s just a pundit. he didn’t break any laws. (at least that i know of!) the Doge kids, Musk, Noem and various ICE functionaries, have legit reason to fear return of the rule of law. Bannon just likes to make himself the hero by making himself the victim.

😢

I hate that I can read

the most interesting and important part of AI is generating the training data. we should just be better paid for it.

tasty AND aerodynamic!

🚨🚨🚨 The jury has reached a verdict. Sean Dunn, aka the DC Sandwich Guy, has been found NOT GUILTY of assault.

i think part of the worldview of the moderate Republican is it’ll be okay because the Democrats will clean up after our guys’ excesses. i’m not sure they’ve cottoned to just what a degree of catastrophic success they’re now, um, enjoying.

am i wrong that the path he laid is the one Marjorie Taylor Greene is now dallying upon?

We finally found him: the exact median voter.