In the back of every American’s brain is the understanding that success is determined largely by social station and it troubles our ideological investment meritocracy, so high profile and obvious examples of nepotism lead us to scapegoat them in order to maintain ideological coherence. It’s dumb

A lot of people are gleefully pointing out various data elements this gets wrong, but the thing is, that doesn’t matter; this all gets lumped into a sellable product anyway. They’re not trying to individually identify you because they care about *you*; it’s just a way to add value to a data product.

I understand the sentiment but even if I had Obama’s charisma and speaking skills, which I don’t, I still wouldn’t have every major media outlet on speed dial.

“I Am Not Sidney Poitier” by Percival Everett is the only Ted Turner biography that matters

Biden explicitly ran on restoring order and democracy. Post Jan 6 this meant holding Trump legally accountable (i.e. “getting Trump)

Will college make A.I. obsolete?

“Proud to co-author a bipartisan bill that will provide all Romans with fiddles, so that they will have the musical resources they’ll need to continue advancing the Empire…”

you know how apes will pick a bug out of their friend's fur and eat it

Is there a correlation between lead poisoning and use of the R-slur? Asking for a friend (my generation)

Finite Jest

Not sure what universities are supposed to do to win the respect of the right when we’re 3 years into the SCOTUS ban on affirmative action in college admissions and there are still all these viral stories of “this kid with a 1560 SAT score was forced to go to Duke instead of Harvard because of woke”

Is it just me or does this latest SCOTUS voting rights decision put us just a bit closer to a proper civil war?

Not sure everyone is prepared for just how much Platner's Nazi tattoo is gonna give the right ammo for the 6 years he's in office. Don't say you weren't warned when your favorite big papers (in addition to every elected R) spend every day telling Dems to shut up about Nazis because of it.

What we need is as many people as possible *not* to be directed down a specific career path, but to have the ability to adapt, to think, to be creative and to see through the illusions. That’s what a good university education should provide.

“damn that’s crazy” shall be the whole of the Law

Conspiracy thinking will make you stupid. Even, or maybe especially, if there is a conspiracy. Stacking hypotheticals and putting question marks at the end of every sentence distracts you from what you actually know. I get it. It’s fun. But so is huffing glue.

this is america. you could find yourself within 100yds of a shooting at any time, in any place. school, the grocery store, a movie theater, a block party, a public park… it happens to regular people every day. but this week we’ll get 50+ weepy op-eds because it happened to the guys who write op-eds

Taylor Lorenz on the grassy knoll

But if you actually have the flu you should go and share virus and canapés with the fascists and their enablers

it’s so funny that i really genuinely believed writing would get easier over time. that’s hilarious. it’s not even a mean lie somebody told me, it’s just a fake thing i came up with.

The first step to recovery from a black eye is to admit that you were being a wise ass and that you should’ve shared your lunch money with the bully

What we actually call inmates are “temporarily embarrassed kings.” Every advocate for criminal justice reform knows this

endowed chair for mama's very special boy the atlantic senior professor of phrenology fellowship for dogwhistles in the arts and sciences

for sale: data center, never used

New argument for utilitarianism just dropped!

"It's unlikely that he would've been able to, given Waffle House's sealing jutsu," said Hiruzen Sarutobi, who holds the Sandaime Chair of Ninjutsu Studies at Leaf University. "But some Sharingan users have been able to use unconventional space-time techniques, so we can't rule it out."

Marc Andreessen’s “great men of history don’t think they act” shit would be a lot more compelling if his legacy was anything more than having co-authered a primitive web browser 33 years ago that quickly became obsolete

I hypothesize that the unironic use of the word “gallantry” is itself a strong predictor of hostility towards women

Someone sent me this.

I worry that people can’t help but to overestimate the intellectual and emotional maturity of the average Trump voter. It’s quite likely that they’re just blaming an imaginary student or their mom for all this

Timing and tone matter, even when the goal is description. This is particularly the case for topics that have immediate and disproportionately felt consequences. That doesn’t excuse bad faith readings or harassment, but it does explain why people who can read are reacting badly to

A) people are shooting the messenger here B) his phrasing makes misinterpretation possible C) people describing this as a unique Bluesky experience or "Twitter is better" are delusional

For what it’s worth, I didn’t pile on because I was confused about the descriptive character of MJS’s posts, but because the timing and tone struck me as inappropriate to the moment.

Is there any profession less inclined to read the room than Supreme Court reporters?

Things can only be as they are, and they can always be different

1488 Jump Street

Going to be great when the most violent and stupid people in America search your bags and monitor checkpoints.

If you have a really good pair of binoculars you can see the pilot of the invisible jet and aim accordingly This is a big problem with our stealth technology

Finally, marketing without those annoying filters

The car lobby is why they kept adding more lanes to freeways in California instead of investing in public trans. California got labeled environmentally conscious somehow by adding electric cars and hybrids to the mix. Still more cars. Losses touted as wins. Waymo is the next verse in the same song

Mamdani angers certain journalists and their bosses because he's a well-educated child of privilege like they are, but he's the way he is and they're the way they are and it shames them and they can't deal with it. It's not hard to figure out

Paging Dr. Butler

'Hilarious' that our national repetition compulsion can't get us away from "the 1970s found us humiliated by Arab agency"

The push for AI reminds me of that time when the streets were littered with AOL CDs, except now those CDs are glued to things I actually need

I propose that in october we permanently shift all clocks back by only 30 minutes & then fucking leave them there forever after. And if you think that's somehow more absurd than the DST/SDT dance, please take a deep breath and remember that clock time is fake & was invented for trains. It'll be fine

Fascism is not the product of life being too easy. People do not become fairer or more just in their politics because their lives are hard, or because they live in a state of precarity. Come tf on.

“What if he’s not a Fetterman, but instead just a moral idiot with some leftish tendencies” is some pretty thin gruel