The biggest problem with “elitist Dems condescend to voters by talking funny” conventional wisdom is not that it’s true or even that voters believe it, but that self-loathing Dem pundits do

It’d absurd that a court case in which the architects of the Constitution (Madison) and the Declaration of independence (Jefferson) were on the losing side has somehow become the definitive record of “what the Founders™️ wanted.” The Democrats have to put it onto the ash heap ASAP

Good advice. Also, if you feel lonely you need to spend less time online. The LGBT online spaces (loneliness-inducing cycle) vs the in-person ones (not that) prove this. Yes I know I’m posting this online, I’m participating in society and simultaneously saying it should also be improved somewhat

Exactly right. You have to learn how to write “right” (bad) before you can write “wrong” (good)

It’s telling when people reach for the tariffs as the signal example of Trump II malfeasance. This site has Maia Mindel/Sky Marchini Thought, where the annoyances of annoying econ substackers are subbed in as the main grievances of the US public…even sillier here, with a Canadian decreeing this

Eh, it’s a Hayekian dream come true that’s full of incorrect information. It only seems good because the book encyclopedia ecosystem got demolished and almost every other website is full of slop.

Voice is a bad interface. I’m no fan of ChatGPT but its text-centricity is what’s made it much more successful than voice assistants. Plus, the need to be reading and entering text in it only reinforces the strength of the PC and phone forms over anything you need to talk to or put on your face

The anti-Yglesias/Silver/Shor/Jain. Stancil won me over when he refused to back down to that Kirby-avatar tankie account who was needling him with stuff like “actually China has more freedom than the US”

I think occasionally about how Klein was the son of a famous mathematics professor and yet was a lousy student who couldn’t get along with anyone. We only know who he is because any guy who could write “Lunch blog: Discuss” in 2006 immediately became a fixture of the US liberal establishment.

All I’ll say is that the amount of sex in _The Bear and Dragon_ was truly stunning to me, who somehow read it as my first Clancy novel 😵‍💫

This is true. Plus if the USA ever figures out how to _actually_ lower its trade deficit (e.g. by taxing foreign capital inflows), then the idea that it’s “eating itself” will be revealed as a mirage, since that’ll be chaos for Germany and China, among others

Another exhibit in how the internet is inferior to many of the things it supposedly replaced: * less permanent * more addictive * more antisocial * less democratic

To the degree that the USA has a small-c conservative party, it’s the Democrats—the party that thinks that (mostly) staying the course is OK. But the D tent is too big to reliably win conservatives, in part b/c the GOP is so radical that it pushes many reactionaries to become Dems. Vicious cycle

Average Bluesky poster is someone who never shuts up about how warmongering the USA is but thinks nothing of China threatening the highest-casualty event since WW2—and hey why even stop them, you’d only be impeding the “energy transition“

Has one of the better Rollong Stones covers on it (“Live with Me”)

calling a political ideology organized around a grab-bag of widely hated, unpopular ideas "popularism" has proven nowhere near as successful than calling your minority party "the bolsheviks"

The degree to which YIMBYism is just Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna in a trench coat is really understated