I don't care whether he has a (very obvious) political motive. He's a liar and a fraud regardless. The alternative to having a political motive for that would be that he has some purely personal motive, which is not a better excuse. There's no such thing as a scholarly, intellectual motive for it.

This is a great way to put it, with the exception that in this case the Discovery Institute isn’t outside the academy but housed directly inside it, at some prestigious places, often with tenure and, I just realized, in at least one case with a named professorship (!!).

The hacks working furiously to rationalize Trump’s desire to end birthright citizenship serve very much the same function in law that the Discovery Institute does in biology: To create the illusion of a scholarly debate that in fact does not exist.

The thing about Platner is that while you can learn a lot of skills later in life, I genuinely don’t believe “empathy” is one of them. If you can’t look at another human and feel their feelings a little bit at 35, you never will. And his obvious zeal for killing indicates he never felt that

Graham Platner worked for Blackwater in 2018. 2018! That’s less than 10 years ago! That was after their contractors had been convicted of war crimes and just before Trump pardoned them. It’s not like this is digging into someone’s long-ago regrettable past. It’s 2018!

The anti-birthright pseudo-scholarship has been rife with dishonesty. Not error, not mistakes. Bad-faith dishonesty. They are lying and know they're lying. They're lying because it suits their political goals. Denouncing them in those terms is not incidental, it is the essential heart of the matter.

Not just electing - someone like Mamdani has to be in practice strong evidence that the Left can get people elected and that there's a POINT to getting them elected, that they can accomplish things and be part of broader processes of social and political change.

One reason why lib/left spaces need veteran members. So you can get the “no, he’s just a dipshit” reality check.

a few fun quotes from this March 27 2008 articles

This is quite something from Singapore's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vivian Balakrishnan, in an interview with Reuters. The end of the post-war order, diagnosed in technocratic language. www.mfa.gov.sg/newsroom/pre...

Might be the greatest opening paragraph of anything ever.

I agree 100% with Steven Vickers that authors will be falsely accused of using AI in the coming years. In particular, authors like myself whose works were stolen to train AI systems are at risk. When we write in our own unique styles, AI trained on us will quite likely flag us as using AI.

tfw you have to remind yourself that, however busy you are, you really need to find 2 hours on a Saturday to fight for your country

I know some people on here are intensely anti-'AI', and that is legit, and some people are, if not "pro-AI", then either fascinated by the technology (me too in many ways) or find it useful in ways hard to ignore but EVERY person on here thinks Sam Altman is a turd, and that is so beautiful to me

I recognize that this will not be a popular opinion, but I think it's true. And I hope people will read the whole thing before they start yelling at me based on the headline.

AWFUL. This upholds the crazy argument that for the last 30 years, no one noticed that Congress mandated detention of anyone who ever entered unlawfully. This will effectively gut most habeas lawsuits coming out of Minnesota. FWIW, the 8th Circuit is as conversative/more conservative than the 5th.

one of many reasons to distrust platner is that rural healthcare is in significant trouble as a direct result of actions the republicans have taken. republicans closed rural hospitals, not big pharma, and if you’re running as a dem, it’s your job to say that

They will have the troops wear slippers before the admit there are boots on the ground

BBC Newsnight has two special episodes on the Epstein files this week, apparently! Last night they spoke to Massie; today they’re speaking to the survivors. “I’m not satisfied until the survivors are satisfied. That’s my benchmark…”

Predicting we're about to learn something heinous about how this app is being used and you can probably guess what it is. Kind of sudden action you take when you're trying to get ahead of a pending PR crisis

moderate Dems descend into slopulism while the left of the party talks to voters like adults, incredible

Our council district organized an ICE-watch. We have block captains & potluck organizers where we sit in folding chairs in someone's living room while 2 very sweet guys train us w/handouts in neatly made blue folders. We all eat homemade cookies. We're all dumpy and middle-aged. This is politics.

Karp, remember, was the first of the lawfirm chairmen to bend the knee to the Trump DOJ

DHS shutdown causing travel delays? Worry not: Some of America's least-trainable gym felons are stationed over by the Gordon Biersch looking at Kalshi on their phones

if you called these people stupid over the last 10 years you would get lectured about how they’re little babies with zero agency that we need to bow down to to win over because wokeness hurt their feelings

look at this baby beaver and feel better briefly (@ wildheartrescue on TT)

“The wealthy cultural elite who run the media really, really wanted Trump to win” was a much better way to explain what happened in 2024. And the things we’re learning from the Epstein Files give some pretty solid evidence as to both how and why. The anti MeToo backlash was EXTREMELY important.

Remembering how yesterday he said he was going to wind it down. See, there is no string connecting anything. It’s all flailing now.

A central feature of modern life is that causes and effects are separated by such complex intermediate steps that many people will never accurately connect them, especially when certain factions want the connections to be obscured.

Giving away the game here that ICE is his own mob he will deploy if his demands aren't met.

if there's one conclusion that the study of both labor history and imperialism converge on, it is that the richest people in the world are happy to burn money on control, power, impunity. and the "everything is about profit" version of anti-capitalism does not survive serious contact with either

If I am understanding correctly these are cases that were cited by the trial court in an order denying a defendant's motion for a new trial in a criminal case and were cited to the trial court by the state in its briefing In other words, a criminal defendant had a conviction sustained on this shit

Modesto improperly shared automated license plate reader data with federal agencies in violation of state law. “When the data gets loose from California, other agencies don't have to play by our safeguards," EFF’s Adam Schwartz told CBS Sacramento. www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/...

I think I come down to the "you put your name on it, you vouch for it unconditionally, every word, regardless of LLM use" side of the debate rather than the "you should explicitly say if you used an LLM always" side. Too much potential to use the machine to dodge accountability

You could say that Rock n Roll was born 111 years ago today in Arkansas, but probably not where you'd think. Before there was a Chuck Berry or Little Richard, there was those who wanted to be like her. Rosetta Nubin better known as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the godmother of Rock was born on this day

incredible www.ft.com/content/f6eb...

I think this is a crucial point. It turns out there are in fact things that are *much* worse than hypocrisy.

*and signed up for Blackwater in 2018* like sure fine permanently inking a Nazi insignia onto your body while drunk can be a mistake but going to work for Erik Prince is a choice

Thinking about this again, how the wise, sage, cold eyed analysts at Goldman determined we should be back to about 50% of normal oil exports by now

Democrats are a heterogeneous coalition and I believe in second chances and and and, but goddamn, I think it’s a really bad sign that leading voices in the party don’t see the stuff in Platner’s past (some not very far in his past!) as a red line.

Utterly loathsome and morally bankrupt.

jfc. what evidence is there that platner will fight for anyone? he has no record except a list of vile statements and a nazi tattoo.

A number of Jewish organizations are shrilly insisting that any criticism of Israeli genocide and warmongering is an illegitimate attack on Jews. At the same time, an increasing number of non-Jewish people are insisting that any attack on Jews is a legitimate attack on Israel. This sucks, man

The purpose of a system is what it does.

has someone explained catholic confession to marc andreessen

People shouldn't feel bad about previously admiring someone when they didn't know about the terrible harms that person committed, but we should challenge ourselves to consider how pedestalizing and prioritizing the legacies of charismatic leaders can create harmful dynamics. That can be addressed.

This makes me feel ill. Dolores Huerta’s story especially, to keep such a secret for such a long time. She’s almost 100 years old and she’s still politically active. Me Too never went far enough.

Update: Dolores Huerta has released a statement. In it, she confirms the Times's reporting, and supports the other women who have come forward. "I have kept this secret long enough. My silence ends here."