• User experience designer • Healthcare philosopher • Essayist 📍Mojave Desert https://jenka.substack.com
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praise for Kirk from liberal pundits is one of the clearest distillations of how ill-equipped they are for this fascist moment, & how devoted they are to a West Wing fantasy of a respectable right/conservative movement that does not exist, and which - like Kirk - almost never operates in good faith
I do think the means are important, e.g. to argue with civility against empathy, so that you can determine if the ends turn out as civilized.
The Hellmouth is WIDE open.
It's a great time to be China.
But this one in particular, of a man who spewed hate, and had that hate boomerang back at him, so different in some way? bsky.app/profile/jenk...
What is it, you think? What is it that could have made 26 years of senseless deaths of children totally acceptable bsky.app/profile/jenk...
We have abided with school shootings for 2+ decades. Yet something about this particular murder has elicited the bewilderingly stunned realization that:
From within you, it devours. www.npr.org/2025/09/13/n...
"This is not who I wanted it to be" is a literal quote in this article. No kidding.
bsky.app/profile/eric...
I just don't think you can really be good at hating other people without hating yourself first. The hate is aimed in multiple directions at once. It has to go somewhere.
Feel like I’m going insane with the revisionist history that Charlie Kirk fostered open debate. He chilled speech and his targeting of professors for wrongthink led to threats, harassment, and being forced out of their jobs. His legacy is chilling speech right now, about him
From within you, it devours.
Therefore, talking about how Republicans incite violence is abhorrent to them, because it creates a greater risk of backlash against them - thus they'll respond by inciting violence against *you*, all while claiming to be the peaceful ones and claiming *you're* endangering *them*
The Republicans assumed it was an outsider since they're expecting their continous abuse against others will eventually lead to repercussions. Their incitement against others both hurt others AND drive internal fear against future reactions from outsiders.
The core logic they use here is "how horrible and bad something is depends on who did it" They believe would have justified anger and a reason to lash out if a lefty type did it Now that it was infighting causing it, there's nobody they're *willing* to blame available, nobody to target
This is what a culture centered around hate gives you
The Republican position is that telling the truth about them is a personal attack
Bingo
I think you reduce nihilism by looking at the future, and if at the past then at examples of progress from the past that led to a better future. Narratives of the past that lead to a worse future underscore futility and nihilism.
audible guffaw
aeon.co/essays/the-m...
“.. The day after Hortman’s killing, when Trump was asked if he had called Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, he said, ‘I could be nice and call, but why waste time?’” @msnbc.com www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...
I wrote a thing. As someone who survived the 1970s and kept the receipts.
“Our employers told us it was ok… I will never visit 🇺🇸 again. It feels good to be free.” Hundreds of South Korean workers detained in shackles landed home, met by family who tearfully hugged them. Arrested building a factory to employ thousands. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/w...
But…. “…as for stops of those individuals who are legally in the country, the questioning in those circumstances is typically brief, and those individuals may promptly go free..” -Justice Kavanaugh
all hope is subjective
The nihilism will continue until emissions improve www.canarymedia.com/articles/emi...
1962: "It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice." - Deng Xiaoping 2025: "It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white or green, so long as it catches mice."
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Who hasnt bsky.app/profile/math...
But mainly a greed response to an existential threat bsky.app/profile/jenk...
And also some other ideological stuff about masculinity and whatnot thrown in bsky.app/profile/jenk...
The mentality behind why we are losing the tech race to China on clean energy is mainly greed...
yup bsky.app/profile/kevi...
The Left doesn't understand. To the Right, nothing even matter that much anymore.
Kirk didn't serve in the military or hold office. The war hero treatment -- half-mast flags, military guard, Air Force Two escort, calls for a statue at the Capitol or to lie in the Rotunda -- shows that for MAGA, service to Trump has become the highest, most honorable form of service.
Another one from earlier this year. This one was very close to home (where usually nothing ever happens) www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
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A gateway to a futureless abyss.
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They don't even care.
But even just in general, the squirrels in the park and daffodils didnt know it was bad.
Extremist murders by ideology, 2013 to 2022. www.pbump.net/o/reassessin...
Felt this in Spring 2020
Really just throwing years of spaceflight, rocketry, and a deeper understanding of the universe in the trash here.
“.. I can’t remember anyone ever telling me we can’t say anything critical about a civilian like this. He was not in our chain of command or anything,” the officer said. @nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...
And the Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes that now live in Southern California
It is useful to that movement -- and an inevitable outcome of its political psychology -- to deny any responsibility for its own actions, to frame its opponents as the cause of its degeneracy, but its opponents are under no obligation to accept that absurd premise.
What centrist libs can't seem to internalize is that the US contains a large, longstanding, well-funded political movement that *wants political violence and authoritarianism*. It does not need to be provoked in any way in order to pursue those goals.
Another thing: the people lining up to say “but he was nice to *me*” are to a person white guys in powerful positions. I got news for you: he did not respect your ideas, he respected your power and enjoyed proximity to it. Of course he was nice to you.
Anything except the future. bsky.app/profile/leca...
A world where we are allowed to want white supremacy, but not allowed to want to end white supremacy is a very specific type of world.
How it started. How it’s going
My So-Called Life
You know who else committed the sin of empathy?
As i said.
If only there was some kind of pattern here. bsky.app/profile/kevi...
If you haven't seen it yet: this administration is cutting off funding to any higher-ed institution that predominantly served a minoritized group. That includes HBCUs, Hispanic-serving institutions, etc. Historically, this has always been funded by Congress... www.ed.gov/about/news/p...
still can't wrap my head around this. like I can conceptualize that this is happening, but I cannot fathom the depth of what this will cause.
I am referring to the context u responded to.
Hardly qualifiers for “normie”
Ezra Klein and @theargumentmag.bsky.social people are in the same very lucrative business that Charlie Kirk was in: serving increasingly elaborate comforting narratives to people and groups in power. Status threat shapes everything in our political culture.
How many offline normie parents are there to go around? If you have a 2 year old u have a screen-based babysitter. Being offline finna be incredibly un-norm.
It's going to be a huge cultural divide that I expect will heavily track edpol.
"We need focused, intensive studies that pair antivirals with monoclonal antibodies and immune modulators, add gut-targeted therapies, and track every measurable biomarker." thesicktimes.org/2025/09/12/s...
💊➕: Combination therapies effectively treat a variety of disease & conditions. @atranscendedman.bsky.social writes that a cocktail of drugs is necessary for Long COVID. "Single-drug approaches feel almost quaint in the face of such biological complexity." thesicktimes.org/2025/09/12/s...
Nancy Mace acting on disinformation that the shooter was trans: goes off on tirade against "trannies" Nancy Mace when the actual shooter is a Christian white man: "he's just a poor lost boy, let us pray for him."
I don't own a TV at home. This morning at the hotel, reminded of so many other instances of being in a hotel and walking past talking heads discussing some act of gun violence terrorism.
Trump turns a manhunt for a murder suspect into a ratings win for Fox and a way to score points over the presenter’s boyfriend.
We have front-row seats to the greatest voluntary liquidation of a great power’s status and geopolitical influence in modern history, writes columnist @stephenwalt.bsky.social.
Would be interesting to understand implications for hypnosis
They have no incentive whatsoever to solve this thing. They've got everyone assuming the shooter was a leftie. All the hounds are already baying for leftie blood. Politically, they've got the effect they wanted. Why muck things up with actual facts?
I can’t think of a worse way of spending my 20’s: www.wsj.com/business/ent...
Charlie Kirk was a 2020 election denier and conspiracy spreader. But he was a 2020 election denier and conspiracy spreader in the right way. by Ezra Klein
I feel like the last 48 hours have just been the entire world going full NYT Pitchbot. "Whether it's the people on the right saying we should shoot everyone on the left as terrorists, or the people on the left saying we should give everyone on the right health care, both sides are---"
A useful reframe is that solar isn't "alternative." Carbon is just "legacy."
Anyway. bsky.app/profile/wear...
Nuclear energy is the dream of people who don't necessarily object to an energy transition so long as the power structure doesn't.
Like the answer is RIGHT there, in front of their face, but they simply refuse to make eye contact with it. bsky.app/profile/jenk...
You can tell what someone's politics are immediately by how they talk about nuclear energy because authoritarianism never met a centralized power it didn't like.
Biology Department xkcd.com/3140/
![Comic. [Building with large sign in front of it[ SIGN: Welcome to the *Biology Department* It has been [changeable sign: 3] days since we discovered something existentially horrifying about bugs that makes you question your whole reality](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreigvmzverlrjgqp4mazbkhm43fpvv2hdbkd2t2646dhihozrwdcy24@jpeg "Click to view full size")
this shit is so fucking evil
This is such a funny element to the Kirk eulogizing: they can’t describe him the way they’re describing him *and* show clips of anything he actually said or did
pretty wild that it so quickly became normalized that immigrants don’t have even basic free speech rights www.axios.com/2025/09/11/c...
If there's one thing I wish I could get every earnest liberal to understand, it's that, from the point of view of an authoritarian psychology, efforts to persuade, to "reach out" & "find common ground," are *viewed as evidence of weakness*.
Finally, some good news (though we're still playing defense). Thank you, my wonderful home state. Cali passed a bill to allow "Medication labels and paperwork in the packages" of abortion pills sent via mail to "omit the name of the patient, prescriber and... 1/2 www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/h...
Do people go from anti- to pro-vaccine? Absolutely. Destiny is one such person.
The "top stories" about Kash Patel actually combine to tell one very compelling story.
Not at all a fully formed thought: Charlie Kirk’s assassination had way more salience than (eg) the Minnesota lawmakers’ because so many people, particularly media elites, were in a parasocial relationship with him via the podcast/etc
A perfect encapsulation of American politics.
I guess enough people fell by the wayside finally.
On the one hand, no one is capable of remembering anything for too long anymore.
Most unsurprising effect of surrender of university administrations on DEI - Black students flock to HBCUs. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
I'm saying these people think that Kirk is a leader, even an international one - he seduces young people to the cause, he rallies the troops - and do not see legislators as leaders. Hell, most of them probably didn't even know their names, but they knew Kirk. He was their guy.
It's only weird if you don't see Kirk as basically an unelected but profoundly influential leader of the international right wing alliance. From their point of view he's significantly more important than two largely inconsequential local legislators (legislators are replaceable), let alone Dem ones.
