In other news I think a lot of smaller countries could cheaply replace the US branch of their military intelligence agency with one guy hitting refresh on any relevant Polymarket contracts

Brazenly kidnapping another country's head of state and doing literally nothing else seems like a great way to induce a "rally around the flag" effect in its domestic politics and achieve nothing else

The same editorial board described Seattle’s mayor raising taxes to pay for childcare as a totalitarian power grab

He's mad she won the Nobel Peace Prize and he didn't. That's it. That's what it's all about. Best part is she idiotically and sycophantically dedicated her prize to him and he still won't back her and prefers to publicly denigrate on a day like today.

I‘m discontinuing my social media use for the foreseeable future and I want to explain why. I woke up in the new year to discover that some guy on here had saved photos I took on New Year’s Eve and used Grok to remove my clothes. I know this because he showed me.

The likelihood you've been right about the course of American politics over the last decade rises in direct proportion to how often you listen to Rage Against the Machine. Having studied political science hurts you a bit. Having worked as a political journalist hurts a lot.

The thing that made "blood for oil" a dumb explanation of US wars was that people framed it as about securing oil supplies for US consumers, which is obviously false What these oil wars were ACTUALLY about was securing control of global oil supplies for geostrategic reasons

It’s darkly humorous he can’t even muster the ability to give some lip service to democracy or allowing the Venezuelan people to choose their leader.

I'm sorry, but what the hell is the US's plan here? Do they think they're playing Crusader Kings and now that they've captured the enemy leader, they've got 100% warscore and can now click the "Press Demands" button?

You know, I'm surprised no sci-fi author came up with the idea "Robots are given the right to vote despite clearly NOT being people with wills of their own, allowing them to vote for their masters' whims." Because that sure seems to be what a lot of techbros are advocating for

BBC News non-stop reporting on the fire at the Swiss nightclub like “nobody knows what started the fire” while also showing footage of the inside of the club where robots are carrying around bottles of champagne shooting fireworks out of the top. I’m not a forensic investigator but I have a theory

Capitalists used to at least pretend the things they were doing were working towards some social good (even if that was "spreading Western values" or whatever), but nowadays they're so high on their own supply they really just treat capital accumulation as the highest good in and of itself

One funny thing Elon Musk figured out about the media is if, instead of providing comment to reporters, you email back an automated reply saying "go fuck yourself," the reporters will just invent their own plausible-sounding defense of your conduct to balance their stories instead of punishing you

Certain reactionary centrist pundits like to chastise leftists for being "too online", but I genuinely can't think of something more symptomatic of Online Brain than praising MTG for getting into a social media spat with Trump, lol

we are going to live in a world without billionaires

People 300 years ago thought we'd never live in a world without kings.

liberals tell on themselves when they refer to the human rights, lives, and body autonomy of others as mere "policy preferences." i guarantee if it were jonathan's fundamental personhood on the chopping block je wpuldnt be so fucking glib about it

This dude is really out here saying "It's fine to exterminate minorities as long as you do it through the Democratic process" and expecting the vulnerable minority in question to agree

Ugly-laughed at this one

Consider: the purpose of confiscating billionaires' wealth isn't using it to pay for things. The purpose is to reduce the amount of money billionaires have.

I simply cannot take popularism remotely seriously when nobody involved even tries to answer the question "what happened to keir starmer" at best they point to a few policies they don't like, but "move right on social issues and immigration" is his main platform and look what fucking happened!

This Nazi passed a bill to imprison trans kids' parents two weeks ago.

I work in the tech industry and I think there should be a complete ban on all forms of generative AI, and would be willing to give substantial donations to any politician promising such.

something very important for Dems to realize is that the tech overlords are not people you can win back by promising a lighter touch and saying a few nice things they’ve gotten a taste of mask-off fascism and they are not going back, they don’t want to play nice with the peons anymore

Jon Stewart and the pod saves guys mocking people who wear masks while talking about What Is To Be Done is exactly what Jon Stewart and the pod saves guys are, it's the most Jon Stewart and pod saves guys thing possible.

Whole lot of liberals on this site really love telling minorities it's vitally important they materially suffer for the sake of abstract principles, and it's wrong to call them bigoted for it, huh?

That the popehat guy is whining about being misquoted in this and then posted a bunch of emails that make him look like an pedantic asshole who wasn't actually misquoted really opened my eyes to how many lawyers consider morality an annoyance that you shouldn't bother them with.

I will drop this. But before I do, I have to note that it is excruciatingly clear that Ken is really mad that my reporting highlighted FIRE’s ties to big right-wing money. He’s comparing the revelations of publicly available tax filings as something akin to a “Pharma-Rothschild conspiracy.”

remember when ken "popehat" white made a whole thread about how he isn't transphobic and cis people said "yes sir yes you aren't transphobic sir we love you sir"

oh did everyone remember that popehat is a disingenuous transphobic freak again?

Ken White, notoriously definitely-not-a-bigot-and-just-friends-with-bigots, has thoughts on whether institutionalized social exclusion and legalized bullying of trans kids is "productive conversation".

Full disclosure: Ken White, a lawyer I quote in this story, is claiming I took him out of context. The assertion is without merit. You can see the exact email here.

“it is illegal for you not to like me”

There are a lot of things people get wrong about trans women but "making this space welcoming to cis men will make it more welcoming to trans women!" is I think the most wrong and also most common thing that a lot of folks are maddeningly attached to.

Okay I think this guy basically just hates women who're smarter than him 🤷 utterly rank vibes

I wish the right-wing going from talking about "sex-based rights" to "sex-based education" was surprising, but it is very much not.

How generous of Elon to add a "generate nonconsensual nude image of this woman" button to every image of a woman ever uploaded to Twitter. Like, you know that's how it's going to be used. Every single image of a female celebrity or politician on there is going to be made nude.

Personally, I'd re-examine the biases that led me to conclude Bari Weiss couldn't possibly be those things simply because she is a scion of the upper class.

Perhaps the most exhausting part of being trans in 2025 is how harshly you will be sanctioned if you express even, like, 10% of the rage it is entirely normal to feel at the attempt to erase us from public life

look at how little effort it takes for someone on the conservative grievance circuit to destroy a life millions of college kids have half assed an assignment at the last minute, you eat the F and move on but the effort to push trans people out of public life will use whatever it can get

WHAT THE FUCK AM I LOOKING AT

Let this be a lesson: Business is only progressive and humanist when it doesn't cost them money or cause shrill shrieking. Not that this is remotely surprising, sadly.

I think the thing re: "vibecession" discourse that both sides are missing is "people were mad that the economy in 2024 was worse than in 2019, regardless of whether the economy in 2024 was on a good track"

Do you think "trans people" and "workers" are non-overlapping categories I honestly thought online liberals like this were extinct now that the entire bourgeoisie is unanimously arrayed behind Trump and union workers were one of the only groups to shift TOWARDS Dems in 2024

Anyway, curious what possible rationale the DOJ could have for redacting those sections saying that Epstein paid off witnesses to their "criminal sex trafficking and abuse conduct," threatened harm, to "release damaging stories about them," and telling them to "destroy evidence."

Interesting how it's framed as a simple given that the party will "have to" interfere in primaries in support of the incumbent, huh?

"Matt Yglesias thinks power plants make electrons and the electrons are used up by power-consuming devices" is really funny and says a lot about the kind of guy he is: The kind who confidently opines about subjects he knows less about than the average elementary schooler.

The extent to which the punditry has become disconnected from reality is very obvious on the topic of trans healthcare, but it's also very obvious on the topic of climate - they all seem to have convinced themselves "yeah, climate change is real, but who cares if some random species go extinct"