The rumors about daycare centers are extremely "fit" for virality: having both novelty & familiarity (drawing on anti-immigrant tropes of criminality & exploitation); making emotional/identity appeals; are *participatory* in that ppl can create their own “evidence” by investigating local centers.

Schrödinger's democrat (or should that be Trump’s democrat?) who is simultaneously weak stupid and incompetant but also sneaky devious and diobolitical.

Seems like the answer is the same as “why do people who are objectively not being oppressed (white men, Christians in the US, etc.) keep insisting they are?” Anything less than 100% success rate / complete deference from perceived opposition is viewed as subjugation.

You know what actually makes women happy? Bank accounts. Voting rights. The ability to leave a bad marriage, and not have a miscarriage kill us. Participating in these "debates" is agreeing that our rights are not important.

I can think of so many moments in my life that were greater, better, more meaningful. Having my family watch me walk the stage at my PhD hooding. Watching glaciers calve in Alaska with my wife. Building a rocket ship out of magna-tiles with my toddler. There is *so* much more to life.

It's a transactional relationship. Legal correspondents like Jan Crawford give the justices favorable coverage; they reward her with access and selected behind-the-scenes anecdotes so she can sell her next book. If she presented them honestly, they'd give the access to someone else.

This is one of several reasons I don't believe in meritocracy as popularly understood. You cannot use a test to evaluate someone's values, and fascists are perfectly capable of passing exams and checking boxes

Religion is like going to school or using training wheels. You're supposed to eventually find your own spiritual path and leave that scaffolding behind. To continue following a religion is intellectually lazy and will eventually result in the religion doing all of your thinking for you.

I think the ideal is to be known as smart but not brilliant and to be a little smarter than you are expected to be.

I think the term "Heritage-American" demonstrates an inability to assimilate. Why do these people insist on hyphenating themselves!

We can live without billionaires but billionaires cannot live without us, in the same way that a body can live without cancer, but cancer cannot live without a body.

More generally, the right favors competition, but only if (a) the pool of competitors is restricted to the favored group; and (b) the favored group gets to define the criteria for "merit."

But anti-catholicism tends to get overshadowed in education and completely ignored in discourse (except when democrats interrogate a conservative SCOTUS nominee, but those discussions are skin deep at best). You could get through your education with an impression that anti-catholicism was

That strategy was very effective. Unconstrained by any commitment to truth, the folks employing it gained followers and eventually developed into a new class of “news influencers”, displacing traditional gatekeepers and (with an assist from platforms) helping to rewire our information ecosystems.

Probably the same way we put men on the moon with 1960s technology. Or how we built the most dominating military in world history. Or how we created a postal system that can deliver a package to any address, anywhere in the country, no matter how remote, for just a few bucks.

There's the old saw about how Musk is an idiot's idea of a genius and Trump is a poor man's idea of a billionaire.

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

One reason it’s hard to get equal representation from conservatives in research and education and culture is that there’s no intellectual underpinning to conservatism. Any analysis is backfilled to justify activity and policy motivated entirely by animus. If it’s ever correct, that’s coincidence.

So much grievance can be sourced to realizing that various marketplaces don't want their ideas, ideals, ideology, etc. And THEN, they want big government to fix it for them. The power of self-delusion is unmatched. Always be asking: "Conserve what, exactly?"

My Birth certificate does not record the origin of my Parents or their citizenship there is no way to prove my parents were citizens without finding their birth certificates

Ending DEI practices in college admissions will expose an uncomfortable truth. Women now outperform men academically. If universities stop trying to gender balance incoming classes but instead admit based on merit, they’ll reject men at higher rates than they do today.

Italy will donate large number of power generators to Ukraine to help the country manage power outages. The generators, manufactured by Italian companies, are expected to arrive in the coming weeks. In a phone call with Zelenskyy Meloni reaffirmed Italy's unwavering support.

There was 0 data about the pediatric vaccine at the time. Journalists, please remind your readers that Prasad was always against the covid vaccine for kids. Always.

I genuinely think they don't know the difference! Governance is: you say things in order to get the people on the screens to say nice things about you. If they aren't saying nice things about you, you need to say different things. There's nothing beyond/outside that.

this time around, he leaned on the classic model employed by authoritarians of hiring people who owe their position only to you, and have no independent allies. that way they won’t worry about their future careers, or violating the law on your behalf (b/c they have no other ways of holding power).

There's been 2 attempts to remove him from office by the power of Congress, through impeachment, and he was impeached, he just wasn't convicted, because the GOP refused to do it - McConnell laid everything in the lap of DoJ, and through dithering around, allowed trump to run out the clock.

Elon's "Rosebud" is posting. His deepest desire is for everyone to tell him what a hilarious and clever poster he is. The problem is that he isn't funny. And it kills him. It explains why he bought Twitter. It's why Grok is the way it is. And it explains . . . whatever the holy hell this is.

Elon Musk donated $277 million to Trump so he could steal the federal government’s data, dismantle the nation’s infrastructure, and stop foreign aid from going to nonwhite people. It’s a quid pro quo breathtaking in scope, corruption, and damage, & completely unprecedented in American history.

For the first time in my career, I can’t tell people to trust what the CDC website says. And that is an incredibly sad and devastating place for this country to be.

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power" FDR

There is absolutely nothing old or consolidated about *multiracial, pluralistic democracy* in America. It only started 60 years ago. And the conflict over whether or not it should be allowed to endure and prosper has been the central fault line in U.S. politics ever since.

... I am entirely sure this is a bad thing. It makes me a less effective political agent, but much more importantly it makes me a worse person. I suspect I'm not alone in this.

Public health depends on citizens accepting scientifically-grounded guidance. When official institutions produce politically-determined science and independent verification infrastructure is eliminated, the capacity for evidence-based health policy collapses, writes Renée DiResta.

A jury's power to acquit (not necessarily to convict) is the most unchecked power that exists in our whole system of government. No judge can overturn it. No prosecutor or president can challenge it. Nobody can punish them for it. They don't have to explain why. End of story, case over.

These seem to be the three legs to the Trump regime's political stool, if you consider Trump, Vought, and Miller as the three centers of power: Corruption (Trump) Extreme conservative ideology (Vought) Fascism (Miller)

Tuesday will be 50 days since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Republican appointees issued an order allowing the Trump administration, essentially, to target working-class Latinos in its massive immigration raids. What has happened since has been as bad, if not worse, than experts warned on Sept. 8.

Your regular reminder that we desperately need to overturn Citizens United and get big money out of politics. It is among the worst Supreme Court decisions in history. It corrupts our political system every day.

100%. Tear down the ballroom, dig up his patio & replant the area with rosebushes similar to those he destroyed. If he builds that ridiculous arch, take a wrecking ball to it. Additionally, pull down that hideous gold stuff he's plastered all over the oval office!! The WH is NOT a monument to trump😡

We’re not dealing with brilliant strategists cleverly laying traps, we’re dealing with impulsive whiners whose advantage is contempt for laws, norms, and morality. They’re not pulling some elaborate trick, they’re just willing—even eager—to do things regular, principled people consider off limits.

Your periodic reminder that you have the right to find out why your health insurer denied your claim. We built a tool to help you do it: projects.propublica.org/claimfile/

I have been debating conservatives for 4 decades and the only thing consistent about them is that they think it’s unfair, evil even, to remember what they previously said and repeat their words.

*global hegemon destroys its entire network of post war diplomacy and trade that gave it control of the world economy for the last 80 years while liquidating its own bureaucracy, world renowned education system, and engineering a collapse of its public health system* yeah 50bps should do it

The single most important thing to understand about digital futurism is this: When the digital future that Sam Altman ( or Elon, or Andreessen, etc) predicts fails to materialize, he doesn’t have to give the money back.

listen as somebody who has a lot of really good ideas ideas are fundamentally worthless. sorry. we give WAY too much credence to people who have them. yeah, even good ones, dude. the only thing I respect is execution. whether it's in myself or somebody else. an idea executed is worth something

There was no concept of “illegal immigration” when the constitution was written. If you were here you were allowed to be here.