Yes, where "root out bias" = "root out facts and opinions 'Robby Starbuck' doesn't agree with". Great job Zuck. 🤦🏼♂️
Musician, lover of dogs & soccer, proponent of democracy & bold action on climate change. Don’t blame me, I voted for the laughing lady.
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Yes, where "root out bias" = "root out facts and opinions 'Robby Starbuck' doesn't agree with". Great job Zuck. 🤦🏼♂️
That'll be a battle too 'cause the RW propgandists, with assist from Russian troll farms, etc. are gonna flood the zone, & some social media platforms are rigged against the left (especially Twitter, but facebook is on its way). & it's probably just a matter of time before a RW oligarch buys Tik Tok
Just be thankful it was that close.
I live in CA. I got mailers on day one. & I'm already seeing youtube ads, etc. They're gonna try to confuse voters 'cause people are generally against gerrymandering, but this is all about context. RW oligarchs could spend billions on this. A billion is couch cushion change for Elon. Work to do...
I'm pretty sure it's true because they used center alignment. That's how you something is true - straight down the middle, baby! Just the truth! Let me translate though: Rudy tied one on, crashed his car badly, and messed himself up.
Yeah, he's lying. Lying to give himself permission to back a mass murderer.
Really? They found it necessary to put Miller's bald head in the foreground over the lettering? 🤦🏼♂️
We get "strength and camera time" by protesting at the local level. The national news is hijacked by the RW propaganda machinery. Local / grassroots is the way. Power to the people. Nice chatting, I gotta step out now.
The "red state people" are especially not gonna hear anything "Jeffries and Schumer" say. The protest has to be local and grassroots, that's the only way they see it. And there *are* many people in red areas who are not OK with what's happening.
No one’s gonna come and save us. The only way to fix it is a grassroots movement by the people. That’s where the real power is. There’s nothing stopping any of us from getting out there and protesting.
I agree, we should all be doing that, not just posting about it. But it's always a challenge to cut thru the RW propaganda machinery, and if the left doesn't start making inroads against the propaganda machinery, we're toast. This means building the *infrastructure* to compete.
There are plenty of D's "shouting" about the occupations. That's not the problem. The problem is that the RW propaganda machinery dominates the information environment, and those shouts are drowned out by the RW propaganda machinery. That's the problem to be addressed.
W/ OUR Change.org PETITION 👇, PROTESTS, & CALLS, we demand that #Congress impeach & convict #Trump for abetting his #J6ers, incl "Kill em" Jared Wise, & prosecute his cohorts If #GOP do nothing, let's VOTE THEM OUT in 11/2026 www.change.org/p/with-this-... TYVM @liz.sheshed.rocks" #BlueCrew
I have to marvel at RFKj’s ability to get everything so completely backwards. That’s some pretty ornate pretzel logic.
So Loomer’s point is basically that Trump’s insane DOJ appointments aren’t insane enough. 🤦♂️
It’s the hideously out of touch techno-fascist solution for Gaza. Maybe these people should try touching a little grass? Or better yet send them to Gaza to get acquainted with a little reality.
Gaslighting 24/7.
52 of 53 Republican senators voted to confirm him.
Lankford has blood on his hands. RFKj is highly restricting access to the COVID vaccine. Many people will die as a result.
@tyedyedterrapin.bsky.social Nowadays, due to social media, lies go around the world 10X while truth is putting its shoes on. But it doesn't have to be that way. Is it finally upine.medium.com/time-to-solv...
Why? Because they are *inviting* foreign malign influence, especially from Russia. These people are traitors, straight up.
Are you sure that wasn’t a *Meidas* shop? But seriously making the COVID vaccine unavailable to a majority of the country is a big deal. It’s going to cause lots and lots of unnecessary deaths, especially if we have another wave this fall / winter. People should be up in arms.
Doesn't matter what Murkowski says now. She has blood on her hands. She knew RFKj was a quack. The D's provided evidence after evidence of his quackery and she chose to look the other way to save her own hide. Shame. Blood on her hands, forever.
That Trump and Trumpism are fascist doesn’t explain the sheer vandalism of unleashing mass murdering mayhem via RFK to replace medical/scientific institutions of immense value and prestige with medieval peasant superstitions. That is a criminal madness facilitated by but above and beyond fascism.
Stephen Miller wouldn't know the "scientific method" if it hit him in the head, and same goes for RFKj.
And besides, there's always....."scoreboard". It's not a hard question.
Mine is: Dogs Music Soccer Dogs and Dogs
💯 It's actually decently constructed sentence structure and flow. Not a chance in hell Trump wrote this. And Trump does not write or say "lo and behold"! It's an insult to the intelligence of Americans for them to think that they can get us to believe that Trump wrote that. But sadly, many will. 🤦🏼♂️
Regardless of what one thinks of the pope or of Christianity in general, Pope Francis, who was also of course all about prayer, said that we need better gun control & to address our obession with weapons of destruction. And I'm sure Pope Leo would concur. Prayer is not an excuse for inaction.
*all* the evidence to the contrary. Watch what they have said and done in the past, not what they say during confirmation hearing in order to get confirmed. But they probably know that - they are just looking for excuses to save their own butts. They need to be held accountable. /2
I think these spineless R's are looking for any reason not to buck Trump because they're worried about their own butts. So the nominee gives evasive, vague answers to the pointed questions and it's just enough to give the spineless R's enough reason to think "maybe he's not so bad" while ignoring /1
And of course the same is happening here, except that we are so destabilized that Russia has more or less wrested control of our government.
True, but I think people like Gates, as they see democracies and real problem solving crumble around them at the hands of RW propaganda, should think about getting into *that* fight, because, sadly, at this point it might turn out to be more cost effective than going straight to problem solving.
Well this relates to another of my "3 challenges" for truth-based counter-propaganda. Grievance, conspiracy, and racism sells, truth does not. Sure there are better ways to frame the truth, but it's an uphill battle and the rigging of the game against the left makes it even much harder.
CNN was started by oligarch Ted Turner & at least initially it was left-leaning. I don't hear anything about him anymore, & in fact I was suprised that he's still alive 😞 Apparently he lost much of his fortune now though & he is, at this point, a "minor oligarch" and getting rather up there in age.
wings of RW propaganda & evil RW oligarch Elon arrives & destroys USAID programs that were trying to address a lot the same problems Gates has been working on. So how would his $ best be used? Same with climate change, another Gates target. We can't fix it unless people believe it's real. /2
You would think that someone like Bill Gates would want to get involved in counter-propaganda, i.e. truth based information infrastructure, at some level. He's spent a lot of his money and time trying to address fatal disease and child mortality in impoverished countries. Trump got elected on the /1
donuts that Tik Tok will be bought by RW oligarchs. /3
voices are amplified, left voices are suppressed. Facebook just hired this "Robbie Starbuck" guy to "ensure that Meta's algorithms / AI is not "biased". Robbie Starbuck is an anti-DEI zealot so you know where this is going. And then we have Tik Tok, which is still ostensibly for sale, and dollars /2
Yes, good point, the point being (if I may generalize it), that content can drive bandwidth. That's what virality is all about. But at the same time the game is being further and further rigged against left-leaning or truth based virality. Look at what Twitter was before Elon and now. Extreme RW /1
Oh, and I forgot the 3rd challenge. Foreign influence campaigns work against the left / democracy. I don't believe there are pro-democracy foreign influence campaigns of any significance inside the US information infrastructure. Maybe there should be. France, Germany, can you help us out here?
I don't, know, saving democracy, saving our country? And 2) grievance, conspiracy, and racism sell. Truth does not. /2
Well these are the challenges that make a truth-based information infrastructure such a challenge (which is why I call it a moonshot). 1) The RW oligarchy is funding the RW propaganda machinery. They are protecting their power. Someone on the left would have to seek more selfless goals, like, /1
Yes, it should have, but we need to start building it now, or we're toast. What I see mostly is endless debate about what "the message" should be & little to no focus on the infrastructure. The problem can't be solved if people don't see it. It needs to be seen as *the* moonshot to save democracy.
The D's could nail the "mimetics" / framing in their message *today* but it wouldn't make a difference because that message would be drowned out by the RW propaganda machinery. We will keep failing if we keep trying to solve the wrong problem. It's not content, it's bandwidth. /2
It's true that D's need to get way better at fighting the info wars. But it's much less about *content* than it is about *bandwidth*. The RW propaganda machine wins because it is so massive & pervasive & getting more so every day, & it also drags along MSM. *That's* the problem to be solved. /1
Yeah, RFK jr has managed to twist it up so that it's exactly backwards. *Not* trusting the experts is a feature of religion or totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is usually either based on fanatical religion or a suppression of education.
🙏
Yeah, we’d better post about COVID vaccines because they save lives. Isn’t that reason enough? We may be in for a rough ride this fall / winter.
Maybe they just need to give him something gold, like a gold elephant or something. It doesn’t even have to be real gold, just painted gold. 🤦♂️
Yes, a quid pro quo that Trump got impeached for. How quaint. Trump does a quid pro quo like that every day now and it’s “fine” because Congress is full of spineless R’s and because the MAGA Supreme Court decided that Trump is allowed to crime away with impunity.
🤦♂️ Yes it really is that ridiculous.
His brain switches on?
True. We are officially in our Dumb Shit period.
I think it just died with that headline.
FFS - That's like an order of magnitude more ridiculous than the farthest-fetched @nytpitchbot.bsky.social headline.
If say 40% of the country was not pro-fascist that percentage for Harris voters would be much lower. Moral of the story: Don't be a fascist and you won't be in any danger of getting cut off. 🤷♂️
I can't get over "Kash Patel's girlfriend". He has a girlfriend???
And extremely pompous and condescending amidst his serial lying.
is the root problem. There is just endless hand-wringing about TheMessage™. Whatever TheMessage™ is, no one's gonna hear it unless we start to find ways to blunt the RW propaganda machinery. /2
Gotta try though or we're toast - i.e. it's all over. That's why I call it a "moonshot" - it's a massive undertaking and it would take nearly a miracle to succeed. But the only other choice is that our country, our democracy, fails for good. Problem is we can't even get people to agree that this /1
Yep. If the Trump administration isn't going to govern or is to "anti-govern" how much can states work together to fill in gaps.
This is good: With Trump/RFK destroying CDC, JB Pritzker's officials are exploring the possibility of buying Covid vaccines from manufacturers and distributing them in-state themselves, source tells me. Dem govs must step up and fill the void. New piece from me: newrepublic.com/article/1998...
Yes!!! Do it!
Don't tell *anybody* to don't tell things to people who are telling people to "don't do" things!
Yes. I think Ted Cruz's entire senate campaign was predicated around opposition to the 3 trans people in the US playing women's sports. 🤦🏼♂️ And he easily beat a good candidate - former NFL player Colin Allred. Fearmongering, othering - sadly it works. As a country, we need to do so much better :-(.
I agree, but what I'm saying is that the Dems / left do not have the bandwidth or infrastructure to get their messages out to people such that they are heard above the RW propaganda machinery. The RW propaganda machine dominates the info wars. That's the root problem that has to be solved...somehow.
RFK Jr. is going to get thousands of Americans killed. This is ludicrous and disqualifying.
Joni Ernst's political career dying an early death? Well, everything's gonna die, so I don't care.
Gary Hart and “Monkey Business”…oh, the way we were…
💯 See Haberman, Maggie.
RFK Jr. is going to get lots and lots of people killed by restricting vaccines. /2
Yes all the COVID revisionist history propaganda has made it seem like the lockdowns, the masks, etc. were all for naught. We had refrigerator trucks lined with bodies, and overflowing hospitals. We needed to do something to slow down the spread of the virus. I worry about this fall / winter. /1
💯 Exactly, yes, enough of this shit.
Father Michael Louis Pfleger a priest at the Sabina Catholic Church, a Black parish in Chicago's Auburn Gresham neighborhood has a message for Trump! Before you dare speak about any violence in Chicago, look into your mirror, and address the violence coming from the White House! 🔥
Well, that's what the trolls want us to do - to give up on BlueSky. The RW, including of course the foreign trolls, play dirty, and look to stifle any momentum on the left. If I suspect a troll, I'll either block or mute.
I'm pretty sure it's pretty active on BlueSky. There are legitimate gripes about the D party - it's far from perfect, but it's gotten really vicious. If you post one positive thing about D leadership you're liable to get an avalance of negative and oftentimes personally insulting comments.
the RW has so many advantages - RW oligarchs, the natural popularity of grievance, racism, and conspiracy, foreign actors, etc. It's a helluva uphill battle but we either fight it or we're toast. /2
This is another challenge. The RW propaganda machinery is fed not just from domestic sources / RW oligarchy, grifters, etc. *but also* foreign actors, *especially* Russia. This is why I say we need a *moonshot* counterpropaganda offensive. It's a moonshot because it's *hard*, we're way behind, & /1
The things is, the RW propaganda machinery operates not just on the right but also on the left, *from* the left. They're always trying to find wedges to split the left. That's what the '16 DNC hack was about. They're at it again. This is about impersonating left voices to amplify anti-Dem sentiment.
Yeah, that's part of the "fear" I'm talking about and also a by-product of the RW propaganda machinery dominating the info environment.
💯 I think it's 1) a consequence of habit formed when neither side was completely batshit crazy / fascist. They can't adapt to the new reality. 2) Fear of retribution, & 3) takeover by RW oligarchs or oligarchs who have decided to trade principle for "safety" - being on the good side of the fascists.
💯 Kamala's / Tim's message was fine and there were lots of concrete proposals to address real problems - healthcare, cost of living, climate change, murderous dictators invading sovereign lands, etc. Trump had tariffs and "mass deportation". No one can tell me it was a message problem for the D's.
moonshot kind of counterpropaganda offensive. /2
Voters believe what they believe because of what they read and hear. That's the problem. The RW propaganda machinery is dominating the info wars. Besides, we can't *fix* voters. I can't think of a way to do that other than to get them the right information to inform their vote. This will take a /1
Not just the D party, but we need folks like $$$$ who care about democracy to step up, and we need grassroots involvement. All of those things. /3
about "the Message™". As I keep saying, we're trying to solve the wrong problem. Sure do the best with message content, but that's not the problem. No one's getting *any* message because there isn't nearly the bandwidth to compete with the RW propaganda machinery. It's gonna take a moonshot /2
The RW propaganda machinery was driven mostly by RW oligarchs, not the R party. Plus, it's the sad truth that fearmongering, racism, and conspiracy sells. Truth does not. It's an uphill battle but it has to be fought or we're toast. There's no other way out. And yet we *still* have endless /1
No, the main problem with not getting more stuff passed is that we didn't vote enough real D's into office. Manchin and Sinema proved to not be real D's, and they torpedoed lots of legislation that the Biden administration had proposed.
No they're trustworthy. It's that the RW propaganda machinery has convinced people that Trump is something else. The Dems are telling the truth. The RW propaganda machinery lies.
doesn't get. And also, it's always the Dems fault, as if the R's have no agency in the matter of their own behavior. 🤦🏼♂️ /2
@ezraklein.bsky.social's whole thing, which drives me nuts, is to blame Dems for the rise of Trump because of some "messaging" thing. The perfect Message™ is not gonna fix it. It's a bandwidth problem to fight back against the RW propaganda machinery, not a message content problem. That's what he /1
I’ll await your follow-on pieces but isn’t it the same old playbook of “demonizing your enemies” (here actually literally!) to get people to believe that we *must* adopt your extreme measures to defeat said demonic enemies. It’s Nazi propagandist methods all over again.
Walz: "It boggles my damn mind that in the midst of a military takeover of our cities, the flaunting of the rule of law, that the press finds the need to talk about, 'Oh, there's a division in the Dem Party.' There's a division in my damn house & we're still married and things are good. That's life"
Why do we still allow people with serious mental illness to buy guns? Because the first law Republicans passed under Trump in 2017, made it easier. There were over 4,000 mass shootings between 2017-2024, and this country elected him again. If that’s not proof America is sick, I don’t know what is.
No, they're not "spending more time and effort to defeat left-wing candidates than to defeat fascists like Trump and Miller". They're opposing Trump and MAGA every day in Congress. Nice chatting. I gotta step out now.
