Elon Musk is now retweeting Nick Land (who is still doing the "I'm shocked SHOCKED that Nazis are anti-semitic" routine).

If you are far away from the leavers of power there’s no practical reason for you to compromise your ideals. The people who run things aren’t going to listen to you any more if you reconcile yourself to the way of the world.

I’m reading an 18th century novel and all the characters keep engaging each other in “intercourse.” Wild stuff.

the viability of many right-wing intellectuals and intellectual spaces is enormously dependent on the largesse of reactionary billionaires and foreign governments, who help them circumvent a marketplace of ideas where they would otherwise post extraordinarily poor sales

I made an offhand post about European electoral politics and now a lot of random people who don't follow me or my followers are jumping into the replies in a way that seems very organic and normal.

If Orban loses, curious how much the Hungarian gravy train for right-wing academics and think-tankers will dry up. This was the means by which Orban helped to build his stature in the West. He tried to insulate these institutions from election losses. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/make-ameri...

There’s a lot of wishful thinking regarding Hungary. The ‘opposition’ party split off from the current far right govt party [there’s also another fascist party too]. Experts believe they’ll make better mood music & less difficulty with the EU, but is it ‘out of the frying pan, into the Magyar?’

Obviously Orbán’s defeat should be welcomed but I think people are going to regret cheering for Magyar, an anti-immigration conservative who has been cagey about many of his policy positions.

It’s weird that people think of the 90s as techno-optimist good vibes when it was also the era of Columbine, Prozac, doomsday predictions, fundamentalist backlash, Jerry Springer, movies about being trapped in the Matrix forever, MTV music videos about being angry and depressed.

remember when Master Blaster embargoed all the power in Barter Town and Tina Turner responded by blockading all the power from Master Blaster's power supply?

fiddling while Rome burns

Robin Hood as homo sacer

the Trump administration lives in the Baudrillard world of media optics and finance speculation. the Iran regime lives in the physical world of production, extraction, and logistics. eventually the physical is going to win.

absurd as it may be, the blockade reveals that the Trump administration has always been more worried about the risk of public humiliation than the actual economic costs of the Strait being shut. it's an irrational point of honor.

Marco Rubio looks like he has a case of the alcohol sweats. what is going on?

I would not recommend pneumonia. You can skip it.

computer, enhance!

April continues to be the cruelest month.

seriously, what is happening here Microsoft Word?

A lot of the time when I think back to a really good video game, what I'm actually thinking about is the music.

Every CEO and pundit: Look, we have to face facts. AI is going to be devastating for my enemies and good for all the people I like. That’s just sober economic analysis.

Games Workshop's Dark Future presents an improbable world in which an unchecked Republican party has led America to the brink of apocalypse and the most powerful voice speaking out against it is the Catholic church

seems legit

there’s a whole genre of post that implies you think academia is hot shit but get ready to have your mind blown, and I have to say there are few people for whom this premise is true.

I hope whoever came up with this subtitle was really excited when they did.

people often point out that Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man is not actually about the literal end of history, but do you think the book really would've caught on if he'd called it Contemporary Political Applications of Kojève? the misunderstanding is integral to its success.

Maybe so, but I'm not sure that the essay achieves this goal either.

this is barely satire

boosting my salary by googling warhammer models. "he won't accept anything lower — he's got a habit to feed!"

I haven't written in like a week because I'm coughing so hard it hurts my back. I just take meds and watch Seinfeld when I get home. Good times.

the world is on fire, but then there's this

This looks excellent! The use of critical design/speculative fiction (the grandiose 'worldbuilding') to create counter-positions to dominant structures & cultures is almost always presented as progressive & positive. As a tool it can, of course, be used in darker ways which are rarely critiqued.

Come out to hear Su J Sokol and I discuss the role of art — and speculative fiction in particular — as a tool of community organizing and social justice imagining, and fighting fascism.

"magnum chaos"

BREAKING: Following the American threat of an “Avignon Papacy,” Robert Kennedy has begun a Diet of Worms

"I'm nostalgic for how SFF used to be" Oh, yeah, lean vibrant prose telling high-concept stories dashed off with urgency by authors as familiar with Shakespeare and Homer as the latest scientific reports “no, it’s the sexism I like”

ok, is this mantasy?

jumping online to mock General Jack D. Ripper for chickening out

this looks like a really durable peace

Trump as Hari Seldon, Trump as Paul Muad'dib. While we're on this idea of "low time preference" and speculative visions of the future, folks might want to read @jordanscarroll.bsky.social's SPECULATIVE WHITENESS:

I've only heard professional reviewers ever call a novel "taut."

it’s always disappointing to walk into a gaming store and realize that this is a place for people to run games not to buy games

Have you read the new Kaleidotrope?

A nation and an economy where everyone‘s life and livelihood depend on the whims of the elite creates a population of courtiers and babies.

if you are upset Trump “gave” Iran control over the Strait of Hormuz, it behooves you to explain how he can change that going forward without initiating WWIII.

the first article in the Rosicrucian Code of Life leads me to imagine a religion ritually devoted to adequate hydration.

BTW the people who spent the last few years advocating for Palestine were clearly 100% right that normalizing war crimes and genocide there would just increase the likelihood of inhumane actions elsewhere. Just saying.

we've reached the stage of hypernormalisation where it feels like a mug's game to interpret foreign policy now. any definitive statement about what's happening in Iran may turn out to be based entirely on lies in the next 12 hours.