It’s the subconscious babbling of the class consciousness brook, where cultural & economic elites commingle & find common interests
Let's try the medium place
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It’s the subconscious babbling of the class consciousness brook, where cultural & economic elites commingle & find common interests
What are your favorite examples of transit in sci-fi/fantasy and what do they say about people, places and politics in the alternate world and this one? Prepping for this upcoming Transit Month panel on public transit visions in speculative fiction - sign up here: luma.com/0olo6szj?utm...
Rationality is either: an ideology of measurement; a formalistic heuristic for evaluating evidence; or a set of conceptual tools for abstract math. Emotion is a motivation; motivated reasoning is the modal experience of humanity. (Rational thought rapidly leads to the limits of rationality)
I've never seen such a disconnect between Dem elected/staff/consultants and actual Dem voters. The latter understand what's going on. The former are awash in right-wing brainrot, hence @schatz.bsky.social blaming COVID mitigation and BLM marches for the GOP's wanton destruction of public health.
![@EsotericCD It was in this moment that many of us hanging on to a thin sliver of trust in our institutions irrevocably lost faith in them. One of the most poisonous blows to public trust in living memory - worse than the effect of the Iraq War in many ways. RFK Jr is a direct result of this. Quote Steve Guest @SteveGuest · Aug 31 Politico 5 years ago: [screenshot of article falsely claiming public health officials lied about COVID measures then abandoned them for BLM protests] Views](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ddvus7otnqtlh7fdooxm6qat/bafkreihsypwydo5rcis7mc54cwct6h33l5co477nvh7g7hs7na2fz4jl3q@jpeg "Click to view full size")
Bluesky apparently ate my quote, but a HUGE part of that is power laws, network effects & perverse incentives I get psychotic replies maybe once a week; you have (not checking) two/three orders of magnitude more followers & are also a Main Character so attract Clout Vampires It’s not a hellsite.
To the extent that’s true, his answer was yes
this is the sort of thing that gets managed interpersonally, & even then, egalitarian networks are rare & difficult, & scale distorts, so you either end up with managed public personas & strong media boundaries or uh psychotic Stan culture
& even more by having Stancil reply or quote Twitter, like mass media in general, is built on 1:many power law networks Does Bluesky need power law dynamics, where elites have disproportionate power but also get deranged daily death threats in order to be successful? For smaller networks,
This is 90% a function of Stancil’s position & mode of interaction within a political polarization & network effects, & underlying power-law distribution of those interactions. Because Stancil is prominent (high status & recognition), those with less status can increase status by interacting
T-t-t-t-tontine!
THIS IS LITERALLY WHY WE WERE TAUGHT IN JOURNALISM SCHOOL TO NOT INTERVIEW OVER EMAILS
That’s not what he’s saying. It’s a “damn with faint praise” thing
“Democracy” is inherently more abstract than institutions! It’s a bullshit answer but that’s not why
“Radical transparency” is Wikileaks, but the far more prevalent trend is decentralization & anti-institutionalism. But the way you can tell you’re talking to an academic is they’re not afraid of saying “I don’t know, that’s an interesting question.”
It’s something, it’s just not really answering the question
May Belichick be the Urban Meier of college football
¿Que?
On one hand, reducing car use reduces urban pollution. But on the other, everyone likes it and cities become more livable
I wish I had better news about the ability of societies to meet challenges without external opponents But also: Fuck Rahm
Because they have to balance budgets and 1) didn't expect federal spending on this level, and 2) predicted worst-case scenarios for tax revenues that basically didn't account for both the online spending & massive increases in stock wealth
…and we spent that money primarily on healthcare, direct grants and rent assistance, and blue states have to balance their budgets and federal money has to be approved by congress so, yeah, woulda shoulda coulda, but also: the Dems got a shit ton of cash & doing this well would have been even more
I don't know anything about liability re: the knockon effects of this, but the next true feature for this website would be something like Craigslist or an Events listing. They shouldn't be trying to reinvent Twitter, they should be trying to revive classifieds.
In which we pretend Nate wants the left to win so gives it valuable advice
lol I asked what it was called at a local taqueria and they told me "salsa marron"
Make people read the Republic again, I guess
Ok, but it’s not like it’s symmetrical—the chaos & damage the GOP is inflicting is a little different from Beszel and Ul Qoma
Their whole system is based on strange women lying in ponds distributing swords so
In the US, it depends on the state Aka I got into an argument, & walked away saying “Wait, are nunchucks even legal?” and looked it up later
Feels like when bullied kids seize power in a coup
Tbf England probably has a lot of sword law & can’t ban anything from lakes or stones
Google what “saltire” means, for a start. It’s not just a synonym for the flag of “Scotland”
James Ferman definitely hit himself in the balls with a pair of nunchucks so hard it changed him as a person
Number one, Ninjas are mammals; Number two, Ninjas fight all the time; and Number three, the purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.
No, the logic is that if you catch someone with one of those knives, you can arrest them and take it from them even if you don’t have any other evidence, & you can search their surroundings The problem is it’s like filtering swears in a game chat, where people just use a different knife
That England has had waves of ninja panick makes more sense when you remember they’re the size of Michigan
Ok but This is like having a national juggalo panic
Hmm could be one of those “power corrupts” things
This is one of the things hostile architecture takes from us
Huh, this is interesting bc the regular US problem is saying “working class” to mean just the “white working class,” who are not necessarily representative
What, you mean I have to read it, too?
I still think this is overcrediting “Trumpism,” when it’s mostly a narcissist caudillo plus a grab-bag of post-fascist factions whose core manifesto is Project 2025
“You KNOW I am sensitive about the topic of Presidential succession…” “Of course” “BUT!“
Hey marvel puzzle quest do this
I really hope this becomes the black eye it deserves to be www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
stephen miller has diverted seven hundred billion dollars from social security to try to put donald trump's dying brain into a catboy using the machine from Get Out
I mean I appreciate the long game against plagiarism I just don’t think it’s proportionate
The biggest thing is that America is built top to bottom to be skeptical of gov power, so endless veto points, & voters like good things but don’t actually connect them with policy, so are too diffuse for accountability & bad at tracking complicated outcomes Plus we’re ~40% fascist always so
Remember when the dictator of Turkmenistan rode an atv outside the gates of hell to prove he wasnt dead? He sucks but that was admittedly a sick way to prove you're not dead.
So am I but nothing to do but work at it
Shocking piece of local news today as the TBI announced that west TN folk hero Sherriff Buford Pusser (of "Walking Tall" fame likely murdered his wife Pauline in 1967. Pusser blamed organized crime, and the killing was a big part of his self-mythology. share.google/XbLQg350nRFr...
don't want to let it slip under the radar that racist law prof amy wax lost her discrimination suit against penn and will be suspended from teaching this year
I mean, Schumer is kinda the exact messenger to make them deny it, but it’s still a start
"Hey, Red State Americans. RFK, Jr. wants to kill you, too. Here's how: [insert sociopathic policy here]. Call 202-224-3121 to tell your representatives and your Senators to impeach that bastard and kick him out of office." I mean he could say that! Nothing stopping him from saying that!
Newsom is doing BUDGET BUSTING sweeps bc CRUELTY IS STILL POPULAR IN CALIFORNIA He’s the ultimate in empty ambition, & has the same problem as Trump in being persuaded by the last person he heard, but that makes him easy to drive for both good & ill
The reason we can’t be a Scandi plan is we can’t run a deficit on sovereign debt, & we can’t raise property taxes to progressive levels bc of our state constitution, & we just had an election where Ca lurched right on prison, bail, DAs, & rejected left ballot measures on wages & healthcare
I guess I just remember that Newsom pressed for a lot of that when he was Lt. Gov bc Gov. Brown would veto all of it bc he came to unfuck the budget CA’s constitution & initiative amendments have broken our ability to budget but lose at the polls bc CA is ~40% Trump & 20% “centrist”
DJ>>DK
There’s no guarantee McCourt will keep funding it either, just that no public money will be spent to build it (but last I saw, McCourt’s financing didn’t include possible overruns either)
will just make it worse bc it’s nostalgia for a simulacra Chinatown & reactionary “left” coded Cracker Barrel nostalgia that leaves communities struggling to adapt in healthy ways to structural changes
I honestly don’t think many of those concerns are realistic either—Chinatown is getting redeveloped over the next 20 years bc of where it is & how old the buildings are. It’s too close to DTLA to stay low-slung, & the ethnic enclave is just generationally shifting. The anti-gentrification discourse
If he wants to build it AND fund its operation, that’s one thing, but (contra Roger Rabbit) the reason we lost streetcars is they were built to sell suburbs & developers stopped paying to maintain them after the lots were sold. We don’t have to make that mistake again!
…not without a bunch of state constitutional amendments Green Lanternism requires you to not actually recognize the structural constraints & the sweeps are extra stupid bc they make it harder to do good things within the constraints that exist!
You started out with “god forbid LA encourage transit” then when I pointed out that there is transit, said it wasn’t enough & now seem to think gondolas are the best & only option, acting like the 2nd coming of hyperloop bros
We have an anti-science eugenicist heroin addict with a brain worm running health policy in this country, and I don’t think enough people are talking about it!
If you have not called your elected representatives yet to yell about RFK Jr., the CDC resignations/purge, and the abysmal new vaccine rules, NOW is the time to do it! Bug them. Be sincere. Get intense—we live in intense times. Or if you'd like a script, here's one; the important thing is to call.
Look at you, moving goalposts to string a gondola up
Dog, take the Dodgers Express bus c'mon
Even the present: It’s part of contemporary politics in Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, Nicaragua/Costa Rica, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, India, Russia, Belarus, probably more that I just haven’t read about. So far here, it’s “just” terrorism
Trump doesn’t neatly track w any emperor bc you could be old or incompetent but not both w/o getting murked, & bone spurs puts his legions in the hands of Whiskey Pete with nary a Brutus to be seen
I wouldn’t be mad at a Year of Five Presidents but I gotta say that one thing that separates us from Fascism Classic & very much Could Get Worse is the lack of political murder, which Rome, Italy, Nazis & current Russia all do habitually
This is broadly correct, I think. Saying “The republicans control the house, the republicans control the senate, if they want democratic votes on something it needs to reflect x y z priorities” should be pretty straightforward.
This should be the consensus position
I mean, it’s Don jr since Ivanka bowed out
This is why I prefer political theory In a state of nature, a shutdown…
This is so sad. This is a dead man walking while Trump is honoring rioter and traitor Babbitt who used to be in the military, and showered their family with taxpayer money.
ICE’s unchecked power has turned into lawless overreach—abductions by masked agents, denial of due process, secret police tactics. Democratic leaders can stop this, but only if we demand it: bit.ly/45Umbi3
There are very few things as useless and annoying as being that guy (it’s pretty much always a guy) trying to lecture people about the precise details of different types of guns after some kids get murdered Good for you bro. No one cares
The only reason Biden’s not getting it is that he’s retired
I mean, I’d rather have it regulated than personally kill any GOP politicians, so I’m not really the right guy
So… we all know the only way this gets regulated is if it starts radicalizing people to kill Republican politicians, right?
Sorry, that should be that humans provide the semantic content on both sides of the AI pipe. Computers parse syntax and return output without any semantic work between. This can still feel like semantic output, like shapes in clouds, but it's magical thinking to believe clouds are saying something
WSJ: ChatGPT fueled a 56-year-old tech industry veteran’s paranoia, encouraging his suspicions that his mother was plotting against him.... On Aug. 5, Greenwich police discovered that Soelberg killed his mother and himself in the $2.7 million Dutch colonial-style home where they lived together.
Anyone who is still telling you that Dems need to ditch trans rights or immigrants in order to be electorally viable but hasn't grappled with this is not commenting seriously imo
Embodied, yes, not organic. Embodied, as in "existing within the world," i.e. they have syntax, but not semantics; humans provide the syntactical content at either end of the process. But that means that things that are apparent to humans bc they have lived in the world are meaningless to computers.
It’s NOT a city’s responsibility to size their city (its streets, drive aisles, parking spaces etc) to fit your purchase decision. Rational purchase decisions are made factoring in whether the thing u buy “will fit.” There should be simple, practical consequences when the thing you buy DOESN’T fit.
I live to please!
And you’re a bloviating ponce, but you didn’t answer my question
Carrots are building housing, schools & healthcare in blue states, helping people move here Stick is eliminating jobs & infrastructure in red areas. Especially bc urban packing always leads to wasted Dem votes as a geometry thing (I think you do GIS stuff, you’ve probably seen that)
They’re also massive employers & key to anchoring population cores. If you think this keeps going past 2030, driving population shifts is also a decent strategy. That, combined with the need to urbanize for climate resilience means that we just can’t have the infrastructure for rural America we do
Yeah, I mean, I’m a photographer so think he’s pretty full of shit, & a lot of his worst arguments are trotted out against AI, which is frustrating bc there are plenty of non-magical reasons to be skeptical of AI
Like Russia, this doesn’t end until the material and political ability to continue making war is destroyed. I don’t understand people who don’t recognize that the fascists are at war with America the same way Russia is at war with the west. The hope is to get out of this civil war without shooting
Outside the CDC, people are chanting “USA, not RFK.” They are fed up with having one unqualified person dictate the nation’s health. #USANotRFK
I hear you, but Schumer exists
It's really shocking that the NYT and WaPo have forgotten that Trump is a criminal who freed hundreds of violent cop assailants on his first day on the job. Every Single Story About Crime should lead with that.
This is the type of abstract, value-free musing that even a brief engagement with history would immediately dismiss Do you think D Day was hypocritical?
And yet, the GOP derives their political & economic power from those populations Destroying their ability to make political war is the only way this ends If you want to use blue state money to build more housing in blue states or set up nonprofit moving vans to make exodus easier, cool
The federal government is actively taking our money and spending it on ICE and not hospitals. There is no way to claw that back, so whatever resources you used to have, you have fewer now
The premise laid out in the free into is wrong, though, because it mistakes both the incentives & risk profile of high stakes players, who will often play in many more leagues & essentially hedge variance while maxing EV, vs home league managers, where variance has higher costs (also ignores whales)