Bluesky might have people I don't know lecturing me about leftist issues i am already fully aware of, but at least they are not asking an evil AI chatbot to photoshop pictures of me crying in a bikini, so I think I made the right choice to leave X tbh

WSJ editorial board hits Trump: “Mr. Trump had imposed the higher tariff in the name of national security, but apparently the killer love seats aren’t as dangerous as advertised. Maybe you can now buy one without fear of assault from a foreign spy.” www.wsj.com/opinion/dona...

"India has ordered Elon Musk’s X to make immediate technical and procedural changes to its AI chatbot Grok after users and lawmakers flagged the generation of “obscene” content, including AI-altered images of women created using the tool."

an annoying thing about realists insisting they're the no-nonsense reality-based group is that few of their predictions have been based in reality

This is like if they did the Colbert Report but unironically.

Bari Weiss’ rebrand of CBS News as “Fox News but way less successful!” is coming along apace.

Other AI companies are hardly paragons of social responsibility but they can and do block what grok is doing, or at least try. It's not some "oh the tech can't stop it" thing. It's a 100% willful choice to enable and participate in people doing crimes with it. No plausible denial of culpability.

Mamdani: Where else can you hear the sound of the steel pan, savor the smell of sancocho, and pay $9 for coffee on the same block? Where else could a Muslim kid like me grow up eating bagels and lox every Sunday?

There should be more swearing at swearing in ceremonies. Just let loose with a string of obscenities and afterwards say you misunderstood the concept.

Some absurdly high anti-dumping tariffs (92%!) on pasta are being scaled back to just normal high levels (2 - 14%). Food price reality wins out (mostly) over protectionist instincts this time.

Incel Shogun, a miniseries airing on Daily Wire+ starring Kevin Sorbo as Budd MacGuyver, an American patriot who travels to Japan and convinces them to refer to the body of water on Florida's west coast as "Gulf of America"

A List of Predictions Made in 1926 About 2026 🧵

cant you though www.wsj.com/us-news/as-s...

Oh my goodness, this Wall Street Journal piece about Trump's ailing health that includes an interview with him (gift link). There are a number of ridiculous details in it and I'll put a few of them in this thread. (1/6)

"according to Gruters, Trump consumed french fries, a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburger, a Big Mac and a Filet-O-Fish." It appears that Dr. Oz's calls for patriotic healthy eating are going unheeded.

“[Trump’s] family’s crypto empire is now its most lucrative venture.” www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

President Donald Trump has delayed new tariff increases on upholstered furniture, kitchen cabinets, and vanities for a year, pushing their implementation to 2027. He signed a proclamation hours before the end of 2025. www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/...

Everyone post your worst takes right now while Sharon is drunk

Tired: We need to fortify schools by locking the doors so no one can get in or out! Wired: WHY ARE THE DAYCARES LOCKED AND WHY CAN’T WE WALK IN?!

Timezones are so weird. Australia is in 2026, Canada is in 2025, and the United States is in 1939.

Retaking the Senate "requires Dems holding every seat they currently have, flipping ones in North Carolina and Maine, and also flipping two out of Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, Texas, Florida, and Nebraska." The background noise of how the economy is doing is likely to be important here.

Most of the videos that come to mind are obvious ones, but this one is a little quirkier. I always wonder how exhausted he was doing all that jumping! youtu.be/HwOzeaL08Gg?...

My wish for 2026 is that Europeans will be as critical and vigilant about authoritarianism and racism in their own country as they are about them in the U.S. and that Americans will be as critical and vigilant about authoritarianism and racism in the U.S. as Europeans are.

this is objectively not happening, Fox

DEMS WIN BIG IN IOWA: Democrat Renee Hardman wins IA State Senate SD-16 with 71.5%, a 27-point Dem overperformance from 2024. Harris won the district by 16. Hardman's victory blocks a GOP supermajority and makes history as the first Black woman elected to the Iowa Senate.

yeah the Clinton turn towards neoliberal welfare reform basically happened after he got shellacked by Gingrich's Contract with America there was a moment under Clinton where he wanted to adopt industrial policy

Gander on BNN Bloomberg

Happening tonight: the final election of 2025! Details here:

American behaviorist friends: I took a weak first swing at this, but I reckon you know a lot better. I called the act of "try to vote for the winner" as "bandwagoning", which I vaguely recall as a term of art, but maybe you know better.

I don't know if there is a fancy political science explanation of this phenomenon, but there should be.

I think this is an underrated aspect of american politics: there is a not insignificant portion of the population who doesn’t vote based on policy positions but instead just tries to pick the winner

the US dollar will be magic right up until the moment it is no longer magic and I’d much rather prefer we take a few simple steps to avoid testing where the line between magic and reality is bsky.app/profile/sky....

and 3. the administration being hell bent on testing the currency's status as the global reserve

Just to build on this, I don’t think we are hurdling towards a crisis in the near term, the US has a decade (if not *much* more) fiscal space available to it, but I also don’t think that $77/2wks is a particularly high price for people to pay to future-proof the USD’s exorbitant privilege

Some people are responding to this with "actually we can keep borrowing at high levels with no adverse consequences because we've been doing so forever," but I think they are missing 1. how high the levels have gotten & 2. how difficult that makes it to deal with a real economic emergency these days

Yeah, that’s basically my view; the US is going to have the exorbitant privilege right up until the moment it doesn’t and we’re not going to know where the tipping point is (although prolly not for a few decades); market capacity to absorb treasuries is extremely high, but not infinite

"... have given me a unique vantage point to trace the replacement of Western history by global history." I don't think you need to "replace" the teaching of Western history, but we could definitely use some more global history teaching in the US. Could benefit US foreign policy in particular.

can confirm ✅

If you were thinking of pre-ordering our book How To Win A Trade War, then today is a VERY good day to do it (in the US), because Barnes & Noble Premium & Rewards Members get 25% off pre-orders Dec 30-Jan 1 only www.barnesandnoble.com/w/how-to-win...

It's fine to be happy that MTG is pushing back against Trump in some ways, but this statement about her is quite a stretch: "She is the best hope for liberalism in America."

The contemporary Very Online far-right seems to be operating under a kind of inverse hauntology: rather than being paralyzed by the inability to imagine a future, they are mobilized by the hyper-real simulation of a past that never occurred.

Dunk them in a milkshake.

Sarah Cooper is back. 👏

This is a hell of a sentence.

The MAGAfication of Norman Rockwell: A look at how Trump has hijacked the famous artist's work to promote nativism and Gestapo tactics. The artist's real legacy is one that promoted compassion, kindness, and dignity for people of all backgrounds. www.thebulwark.com/p/norman-roc...

Today in “isolationism” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/u...

every couple of months he circles back to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine

EV transition + direct to sales, basically

We need more rec sports for kids, less travel sports.