i graduated from high school in 2002. 2002 was fucking awful. the music sucked, the games sucked, the fashion sucked, we were going to war everywhere, george w bus had a 90% approval rating, and it was largely all the fault of people who earnestly liked walmart

Fascism is easiest when people fit neatly in social boxes. Because that way, it's easier to compel people to stay in their boxes and to enforce hierarchical systems that give some boxes more power than others. Trans people and people with ASD often challenge the whole premise of the social box.

Children are in fact people & as such do deserve basic human rights just the same as every other person, and that includes the right to the freedom of information & the freedom of association and that 75% of parents worldwide disagree does not make me wrong in saying our youth deserve liberation

"Debate-me-bro culture, that's not real persuasion. Folks who are interested in this kind of debate-me-bro culture are not interested in persuasion at all. They're interested in the performance of their own intelligence," says @devawo.bsky.social. newrepublic.substack.com/p/is-america...

I just called Disney+ to cancel my account and had the most joyful interaction with an operator who was laughing the entire time about how many people had canceled today. I can only imagine how it feels to spend an entire day witnessing how many people want to stop fascism.

cancelling Disney+ and Hulu is well and good but it’s not a huge hit on an individual level but Disney adults? people who spend real money at the parks? you guys can make a dent, call ‘em up and tell them your vacation is postponed until they pull their heads out of their asses

Becoming increasingly clear we’re gonna have to build a parallel infrastructure for all the media we really love. The reason all of this is happening under the color of law is hyperconsolidation, dissent being traded straight up for merger approval, or fear of harassment.

Even if all the lies were true, none of the things they want to do in response would be legitimate.

So about that “transgender ideology” WSJ report

One policy solution to Young Men we should be considering is Universal Basic Electric Guitar (UBEG). I'm not joking, by the way. Kids of any gender should get a low-cost starter kit for some hobby of their choosing once they turn 13. A camera, paints, a cheap sampler, etc.

The people who cover politics cover the sport of politics as distinct from government. To them a very successful political influencer *is* more important than a state legislator. They’ve heard of him before. (Because this is bluesky so it helps to be explicit — this is bad)

On fascism and racism, Langston Hughes said, "Fascism preaches the creed of Nordic supremacy." He also noted, "Fascism is a new name for that kind of terror the Negro has always faced in America... This kind of terrorism is extending more and more to groups of peoples whose skins are not black."

My take: Lex Luthor MUST always be involved in a Superman story even if there are other villains because Luthor is that vital to Superman. He’s his antithesis. He’s his ultimate foil. Also Hoult is a killer LL. Just so weaselly. I need more of him

case study of how a non-meaningful tweak to a prompt can result in dangerously wrong output. Search A: prompt has typos in “association” & “blood clots.” AI output has medical misinfo (Yaz&Yasmin ARE NOT drospirenone-only). Search B: same words, same order, correct spelling. Output factually correct

I don't get how people don't realize that a technology that replaces junior and entry level positions in a field destroys that field. There's no skipping steps. You have to be a junior before you can be a senior, and if you don't have senior people, you don't have a field.

She didn't even mean to tell the future ... she was just calculating the most plausible outcomes of racism in America

Dear journalists: The President has not fired Lisa Cook. The President is *trying* to illegally fire her. Your words shape people’s reality. Please be accurate in your reporting.

if you need some good news, make it. go do something nice for someone else. book a trip. take a chance on something. you cannot spend all day waiting for the new york times to report it.

i think one issue is that this approach has proven to be a total failure. a partisan who sees the right as morally deficient will have had a better track record at predicting the events of the last few years than someone who is endlessly trying to demonstrate their nuance.

You can’t stand in an open field during a rainstorm and not get wet. You can have ways of dealing with being wet, but you get wet.

fundamentally the problem is that if you think "hotels are where I stay on holiday and I like being on holiday so living in a hotel must be fun and it's not fair others get to do it and not me" then you have the intellectual reasoning of a little child and it's going to be hard to engage with you

they cannot win the way they thought they could and some of the smarter ones are finally starting to realize it. and it terrifies them.

observations: 1. the gavin newsom fans on here follow a certain script 2. they are presenting newsoms candidacy as a done deal 3. they specifically bring up trans issues as irrelevant conclusion: this is a bot network astroTERFing support for newsom/transphobia

And resistance is going to be more than just screaming online about how Trump is an idiot or a wannabe dictator, etc. etc. Catharsis is not enough. Save your energy for action. First step: It's time to get in touch with your local community groups and have a plan. NOW.

Yeah, I hope the far-leftists understand that when we criticize their purity tests, we're NOT saying "Don't have any standards." We're saying, "Maybe don't hold those standards too high for literally any politician to reach them."

I’m not an audiobook person at all, I read so fast that I have a hard time with the much slower pacing, but audiobooks are great whatever book format works for you is good - the important thing is you get to experience the book

Carbon Monoxide doesn't poison with toxins, but by replacing the oxygen our brain needs to live. It's like starving because you keep eating packing peanuts instead of food. That's A.I. Inert crap taking the place of nutrition.

Chicago does not have a crime problem. Chicago has never had a crime problem. Chicago has a racist distribution of resources problem. Chicago has a food deserts problem. Chicago has a racist allocation of revenues problem. Chicago has an overcriminalization problem.

I think a lot of these “perfect is the enemy of good so we’re ok with anti-trans candidates” are just privileged white people facing adversity for the first time in their entire lives and are so fucking fragile and terrified they’re willing to do anything and kill anyone to protect themselves.

I find these labels, especially in the U.S. —- really silly. At heart, I’m an internationalist / humanist.

FRAMING MATTERS FRAMING MATTERS FRAMING MATTERS FRAMING MATTERS Know your values, frame the debate:

That liberal parties across the West think they can credibly combat rising far-right nativist currents within their own borders while abetting the perpetration of an anti-Muslim ethno-nationalist genocide overseas encapsulates the moral and intellectual cul-de-sac liberalism has led itself down.

DC police are using excessive force against Black people

Maybe if we give the far-right more facts and context, they’ll receive them in good faith and see the errors in their analysis

Unsolicited writing advice, no. 6336675: You have to actually WANT to write. The world is filled with would-be writers fantasising about lunch with agents, foreign tours, prizes, six-figure book deals, meeting movie stars. But that’s all mostly fiction. None of it makes you a writer.

I cannot emphasize enough that the playbook being used against mRNA vaccines (and vaccines in general) is IDENTICAL to the playbook used to restrict voting rights after the 2020 election: actively sow public distrust, then cite the distrust you sowed as an independent reason for your desired policy

The Years of Two Dumb Bitches Telling Each Other Exactly

When Hasan Piker bought a $2.7 million house in LA for him and his family to live in, critics said he wasn’t a real socialist because it’s too expensive. When Zohran Mamdani rents a $2,300 a month apartment in NYC, critics say it’s too cheap for him and he’s not a real socialist. It’s all bad faith

when the right say 'crime' they mean 'the presence of groups of people we're bigoted against,' they don't care about the actual stats

"PhD-level experts in your back pocket" is a completely nonsensical description of AI but a pretty good description of social media if you follow the right people

everything you as a democrat hate about what trump is doing has been means tested on trans people. everything. the democracy you want to save, we were the test case for ending it. and it started with making you angry about trans people in sports.

I wish folks would just accept a nomadic digital life. The party is not the place; the party is the people. When the fascists show up? Take the party somewhere else.

american voters develop object permanence challenge: impossible

Be the micro newsroom you wish to see in the world

I think it’s worth noting this piece generated the most unsubscribes I’ve seen in a while, and the newsletter version had the lowest open rate in many months. These horrors persist in part because too many people go to great pains to avoid them.

hey if a country sells a person to another country for imprisonment and slave labor I don’t think we should call it deportation