Anyway, evergreen

The mad scramble to reassemble shooters' politics as coherent is just a means of reconstituting legibility in the era of semiotic breakdown. There's political advantage to it, sure, but it's more that nothing makes sense and people want to unfracture meaning.

Last word about the massacre to American Horse (Lakota): "The women as they were fleeing with their babes were killed together, shot right through, and the women who were heavy with child were also killed." /fin

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Dozens of delegates from multiple nations walk out of UN hall as Israeli prime minister prepares to speak.

The wounded knee thing is really Trumpism distilled to its essence. It’s not enough to be able crush people who can’t fully defend themselves, it’s not enough to actually crush them, you also have to love and admire those who do the crushing otherwise the Trumpists’ delicate feelings are injured

There was a time when this would have been the premise of a big budget comedy, but everything is shit now...

*goes back in time to warn everyone that in 2025 we ask each other things like, “are you depressed because of the world or just regular depressed?”*

AI has real risks & we should have smart & evolving policy to manage them. By focusing the public's mind on very low probability/"high" consequence extinction events from super-intelligent AI, it slides acceptable windows of what bad things humans can do with AI right now (eg discrimination/disinfo)

This is the key point here. Folks so eager to dunk on Biden not only throw away a powerful narrative about policy, they make it clear that there's no political upside for fighting like hell to expand the social safety net because the desire to dunk on Dems is stronger than any policy preference.

At some point people need to learn that the poverty rate is mostly about the safety net or lack thereof and not the economy. The economy was doing historically well, real wages rising for the first time in decades, etc. And poverty rose because pandemic safety policies expired.

Can't think of a more segregationist policy than this...

My take on Vance is that he is an amoral, vindictive piece of shit who will do anything for perceived power, but I've never doubted his intelligence until learning he follows this guy.

"As many political schools of thought do, these technolibertarians make a philosophy out of a personality defect" This lady had bars...

Framing this and hanging it next to my "This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time" plaque

Honestly, he got it. This is an impossibly hard thing to get right. I can quibble about some parts, and it’s impossible to do normie content that’s also sufficient for the moment, but he did as good a job as is possible. Especially glad he rightfully called out the threat to journalists.

A LOT of these guys joined ICE, etc., specifically to beat the shit out of immigrants and protesters. And statistics tell us anyone willing to behave this way in front of witnesses and news cameras has probably beaten domestic partners too.

I'll continue to be "I do not regret to inform you that we are going to win"-posting, so figure I should address this point that seems to come up every so often Q: "is it still 'winning' if only *some* good things happen in the near term instead of total planetary eco socialist revolution?" A: yes

I know this could not be more beside the point but isn't this the sort of thing that a study looking for links between autism and Tylenol would look into?

im sorry but I'd rather live in a country where everyone is inordinately obsessed with model trains and ornithology than whatever the hell is going on right now

Something I couldn't quite articulate in discussions about political violence lately was nagging at me--today I finally figured out what it was. medium.com/kilpatrick-s...

"You couldn't make The Birth of a Nation nowadays," laments D. W. Griffith, "because it's three hours long, very racist, and I am dead."

I'm finding myself muting or skipping over a lot more political coverage than usual at the moment. Unlike the baddies, I can't exist in a permanent state of rage and disgust. I must focus my energy on creating things, instead of being driven to apoplexy by venal, squawking gobshites.

There's no more fitting tribute to Charlie Kirk than the one they're giving him right now: nominally Christian survivors on the same grift clambering over one another for more publicity, capped by the shambling, lurching embodiment of everything they long to be. You couldn't write anything meaner

think that realistically I would have always been deeply, deeply worried about the rise of far-right ideas in public discourse but I truly never expected this level of blithe elite complacency, turns out I do feel worried but mostly I feel like I'm going insane, watching them do.......nothing at all

i will concede that if you want to influence other people addicted to X, X is worth using. but if you want to influence the actual public, text-based social media is a fool's errand.

there is a point here i want to amplify. the free speech defenders of the mainstream seem to have no awareness that actual free speech is often more fractious and destabilizing than civil and respectful. a society where speech is genuinely free isn’t the deferential space they want it to be.

These posts from @auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social are always so powerful to me, but they have taken on new resonance in a country that seems to have all but abandoned "never again" as even an aspiration.

Fully agree they are deeply out of touch and also, any time you see a politician taking a position that is wrong both on the merits and as a matter of strategy there are 2 possibilities: 1) some personal connection to the issue they are willing to lose over or (more likely) 2) donors are insistent

Understanding policy is different from understanding polls and messaging; both are different from being an effective political strategist. Ezra has always been piss poor at 2 and 3, so his writing in those areas paired with whatever existential crisis he's going thru has made him un-fucking-readable

Even in a world where Woody Allen was not a predator, the idea of a bitter, obnoxious old man writing a Mary Sue novel about society's failure to recognize his wisdom would get a big fucking no thank you from me.

AND THEN THEY LOST. THEY ALL FUCKING LOST TO REPUBLICANS. IT WAS FIFTEEN YEARS AGO AND THEY NEVER GOT ELECTED AGAIN BECAUSE PEOPLE JUST VOTED FOR THE REPUBLICAN. DO ACTUALLY NOT FUCKING COMPREHEND WHY THAT HAPPENED

There's no normal to be had now, we haven't had a normal in the past decade, there's no normal to be had in the future. I don't know what "normal" is even supposed to be any more. All we have is fascism and the possibility of countering it aggressively.

Almost inevitably, a white liberal pundit who finds a way to “hear out” or “find commonalities” with white supremacists eventually starts saying depraved shit. I need to understand why that’s not the last strike for white people that it is for Black political observers.

I’m in Vienna right now. A city which went from being the intellectual and cultural capital of the world to a “provincial backwater” (to quote Brian Barry) in a couple of decades due to nationalism, anti-semitism and fascism which drove away the leading scholars and artists it didn’t murder.

I promise you that E. Klein doesn't have a clue as to how to get anyone out of this current fascist predicament. He really doesn't and he is demonstrating it in public for any sentient being being to see. You follow his lead at your peril and everyone else's. Don't be misled.

it is absolutely fair to say that hakeem jeffries has, in the last year, shown more support for charlie kirk's life work than he has for the democratic nominee for mayor in his city, the largest city in the country

Local sports radio that I enjoyed in spite of not following or caring about sports because gossip is gossip

Sharing this really moving, beautifully written piece by Annie Lowery about her very difficult pregnancies and why no woman should be forced to endure what she has gone through. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

It really is the worst!

I really need Ezra to take a fucking break...

A lot of respect for Kristof for not letting this go. It will be easy to forget the USAID cuts in the years to come. It's good to have people around making us remember.

I am proud to be born a Muslim. I am proud to be born in Somalia. I am proud to have become an American. None of you can change that no matter how much you rage tweet. Drink some water and touch grass.

Any journalist who takes this deal is not worth reading

The Economist asking us to believe 2 impossible things before breakfast: that Trump made millions "negotiating business deals" and that Witkoff learned something...

This is one of the stupidest charts I’ve ever seen. Allow me to explain why! www.pbump.net/o/elon-musk-...

Show me a picture in your phone that has your energy. Not a selfie.

I'm probably less informed now than I've been at any time in my adult life. Just can't bear this level of stupidity from every cabinet secretary, every spokesperson all day, while being scolded by people not directly threatened by this admin for having principles, common sense and a fucking backbone

I genuinely don't believe Vance finds anything funny. He just laughs whenever the people he is trying to fit in with laugh.

There is something about the training you get as a data analyst (or something about ppl who choose to become analysts, probably a bit of both) that encourages a belief that numbers can tell a complete story, over and above common sense and while that can be true it almost never is

I do wish someone had followed up with, Are you saying you support bringing back the Fairness Doctrine?