He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. juliansanchez.com
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Getting a lot of “every month someone says Bluesky is dying lol” responses. Here’s the number of accounts that posted to Bluesky on the last day of every month this year: Jan: 1,060,541 Feb: 1,032,002 March: 861,309 April: 813,441 May: 674,088 June: 695,699 July: 686,058 Aug: 604,333 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The moral panic about “kids online safety” is leading to a slew of bad laws (which many on the left moronically support) while both parties unite to censor speech so that there can be no criticism of power, US foreign policy, etc. We are seeing the effects of these laws in real time in the UK
This discussion isn't just an excellent introduction to the major thinkers of the contemporary far right, it also features a dive into why so many right-leaning self-described libertarians fell—and continue to fall for—their reactionary schtick.
deeply infuriating to see the extent to which they are doing the opposite of the successful authoritarian consolidation playbook and having remarkable success anyway
Washington's speculation about Trump's health is at a fever pitch. We've seen multiple reasons this summer to ask questions — and the media doesn't seem to care. What's really going on? www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/it-s-time-...
If you want to understand the far-right ideologies exercising power over us, and the thinkers behind this fascist movement, today's ReImagining Liberty episode, with @mattpolprof.bsky.social, is the perfect introduction. We dig into the MAGA's primarily intellectual influences. It's grim stuff.
President Trump’s most recent attack on mail voting is part of a concerted effort to undermine our elections. The administration has provided us with clues about what comes next. The good news: key actors can be ready to respond. bit.ly/4fRIqtA
People really just need to laugh in their faces when they say nonsense like this.
I hate that the most obviously phony, lying clowns get taken seriously by ANYONE in this country.
Some important “What to expect when we’re electing” messaging from the Brennan Center. Election fraud lies are integrated into the administration’s strategies of election interference going into 2026. What we need to be aware of… and what we can do:
Just because you feel like your day to day life may have not changed that much much doesn't mean that America hasn't changed dramatically under Trump. Authoritarianism is here, right now. We all need to be as clear eyed about it as @vermontgmg.bsky.social: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
This “explicit” is a weird editorial choice. The constitution gives the president no power over this at all. It’s not ambiguous.
New: I looked at 90 porn sites to test the new age-verification law rewriting the web. The ones following the rules, and scanning visitors' faces, are crumbling, while the lawbreakers are doubling or tripling their traffic. One of many unintended consequences for an experimental tech wapo.st/47QuttW
Bouie ends the “real or a show?” debate by explaining that it’s both at once. It’s real, a show, and their vision for the future, one that isn’t in place though possibly could be if it keeps going. Don’t fall for the show and take the reality seriously, resisting the vision. All simultaneously.
D’oh. Reposting!
I have finally finished An Instance of the Fingerpost, and am sort of sad there’s no more even though I have an interminable stack of other great books in my queue.
She is utterlty comitted to sigh-ents, presumably so named because it was discovered by depressed tree-people, and has devoted her life to the sigh-ent-terrific methhead. She may have some slightly misguided notions about the chemical supplements required for said pursuit.
New characters for a little D&D campaign interlude. Meet fairy artificer Wilhemina Popcog & her sidekick Mr. Clanky.
If you’ve done a systematic survey of living legal scholars that permits you to render a judgment without qualification, I’ll happily defer to your findings. I have not, so I’m working on vibes.
Americans are begging for Democratic leadership to get off the mat and back into the fight. If you’re a political leader in this country and are not prepared to fight with both hands, not prepared to make “good trouble”, then perhaps you should step aside and make space for those who will. #Velshi.
Jimmy Carter and the tennis courts but for the mad king
(Removing the caveat, it’s surely Vermeule, but then there’s a whole bunch of competition.)
Amar may be the most overrated living legal scholar who is not actively insane.
Pretty much the opposite of everything JD Vance says about immigrants is true.
As Carl Schmitt explained in his fascist handbook, a crisis must be created where none exists in order to collapse democratic institutions and hasten the transition towards totalitarian dictatorship
These are public employees who decided to leave rather than accept jobs where they actually did nothing. Remember that the next time they tell you that government employees are lazy and inefficient.
Only someone on the spectrum could nail this as well and clearly as @nathantankus.bsky.social (who is on the spectrum) does here: www.crisesnotes.com/powell-will-...
"The Trump administration has provided no evidence for its allegations of “mortgage fraud” against Lisa Cook and an individual can have multiple 'principal residences', as President Trump himself has."
2025 Democratic politics is that scene in every 70s movie where somebody gets their car stolen and runs down the street shaking their fist in the air yelling, "Hey, that's my car!!!"
Stuart Stevens, currently to the left of most democratic leaders on the Hill
Dem AGs getting it DONE y'all
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s assault may have dealt lasting damage to the CDC, experts fear, with harsh consequences for public health. (Gift article) www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/h...
Putin was feted by Trump, fooled Trump into thinking he was making concessions, and caused Trump to humiliate himself by loudly announcing these fake concessions to the world. EU diplomats are having trouble believing Trump is really that stupid. (Give them time, they're new at this.)
there is no question in my mind that rfk jr is the most dangerous person in this administration and that his eugenicist ideology threatens the lives of millions of people www.advocate.com/politics/dem...
"The defendant has been found guilty of beating his wife, but we're going to let him continue to beat his wife just in case he wants to appeal to a higher court to allow him to beat his wife."
And I was planning a quiet evening ... paulkrugman.substack.com/p/an-emergen...
I’m really sick of the courts finding this administration broke the law in some unprecedented way, but they get to keep doing illegal things for a few months as a little treat. They’re defaulting to rewarding lawbreaking.
BREAKING: Appeals court rejects Trump’s authority to impose sweeping tariffs under IEEPA. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
This is the classic parricide pleading for clemency as an orphan, and the Trump administration does it constantly. Knowing courts are slow, they charge ahead with illegal conduct, then whine about how disruptrive it will be if, months later, courts finally tell them to stop breaking the law.
One function of that lie, though, was to desensitize his followers to the idea of presidents having that sort of hands-on involvement. So they see a headline like this and are completely oblivious to how outrageous and abnormal it is.
It’s not just that every accusation is a confession; every accusation is also a rationalization. Trump constantly pretended Biden was personally directing prosecutions of Trump & allies, when of course DOJ norms would have made it unthinkable for the White House to have any direct contact.
Tariffs are a tax... on American manufacturing: "Caterpillar Says Higher Tariff Costs May Reach $1.8 Billion" www.wsj.com/business/cat...
Chantilly is a main processing facility for those arrested by ICE during Trump's DC crackdown. ACLU attorney Sophia Gregg told @msnbc.com: Conditions are "rapidly degenerating" & "ICE is holding up to 80 people in a single room for more than a week at a time" w/no access to lawyers
"The move forces members of Congress to confront a question that has lingered over the legislative branch all year: What is the point of the two parties negotiating a federal budget if the executive branch insists it has the power to unilaterally determine what funds get spent?"
1/DC occupation/Trump policies causing a sudden stop to regional economy. These policies are not creating a sense of safety but far reaching harm to families, workers, and the nation. www.dcnewsnow.com/news/local-n...
Seeking more power, Trump uses firings to test presidential limits reut.rs/45IoRR2
This is THE question for a lot of lower court judges evaluating the administration’s power grabs, and it truly sucks
Robert E. Lee killed more U.S. troops in battle than Adolph Hitler and Osama bin Laden combined
“Provincial” indeed.
Martin O’Malley, former Social Security Administrator, says the DOGE bro upload of SSA to cloud is the biggest data theft in history and could maybe lead to need to mass issue new SSA#s. 🤯 www.msnbc.com/the-last-wor...
i find this image so fascinating. it is both a literal example of authoritarianism but also a second-hand reproduction of the aesthetics of other authoritarian states. it's like a simulacra of authoritarianism whose purpose is to attempt to make the simulacra real.
In case you’re wondering how RFK is diagnosing mitochondrial malfunction in the kids he sees, I wrote about where he probably got misinformed 👇🏻
Wait till someone tells em about The Anarchist Cookbook
Translation: “The Pope was just practice.”
I miss the old brand #CDC
An important intellectual vacuum right now: we need to think through an agenda to weaken executive power, if one exists or is feasible. But the last people to do that, the Watergate Babies, are hated by every flank of the intellectual left and center, so recent materials paint them negatively. 🤷🤷
Federal Reserve independence reflects at least the minimal common sense to put the marshmallows in another room. The kind of choice it was possible to make in an era before indoor plumbing and reading without moving your lips became “elitist.”
This is generally desirable because the electorate, and by extension their representatives, are toddlers incapable of passing the Marshmallow Test even when the president is not a senile, emotionally incontinent moron.
Literally the reason the Federal Reserve exists is to make monetary policy decisions without “input” from elected officials. That’s why it’s there.
That… is the entire point of the Federal Reserve.
Nobody’s saying they should follow orders. Stay, be insubordinate, and force them to drag you out the door.
I do not understand why government officials resign when asked to do something bad. The resignations will no longer be treated by the public like a scandal. It’ll be out of the news within 24 hours. People should stay and force the White House to fire them. Do not make it easy.
I think the absence of DIRECT pushback against a shamelessly vindictive admin that happily delivers corrupt benefits to allies is easy enough to explain; I was more puzzled why we weren’t seeing greater skittishness qua investors.
Another similarly depressing option is that Trump’s ineptitude won’t just cause an American crash, but a global one, which means it’s not clear where you’d want to move your money as a hedge, and investors are sitting pat out of paralysis. bsky.app/profile/nwei...
Bunch of folks pointed to Paul Krugman’s depressingly plausible answer, which is that in the case of extraordinary disruptions, markets are biased toward pretending things are normal until it’s undeniable, then tanking. paulkrugman.substack.com/p/why-arent-...
It's hard to keep straight exactly what the worst thing going on, but the US health system being led by an idiot conspiracy theorist really is high up there.
One of the strangest things about the past six months to me is the bizarre equanimity (after that initial plunge) with which the markets have greeted a series of terrifyingly erratic and destabilizing policy moves. Is it just that TACO has settled in as conventional wisdom or what?
I am proud to join multiple Nobel laureates and hundreds of colleagues in signing this letter to protest the US Administration's illegal seizure of control at our central bank.
President Trump’s most recent attack on mail voting is part of a concerted effort to undermine our elections. The administration has provided us with clues about what comes next. The good news: key actors can be ready to respond. bit.ly/4fRIqtA
This is a real photograph of Washington, DC this week, where the United States president has ordered military occupation in peacetime, and ordered the display of colossal portraits of himself. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
This is good, very, very good.
Not a physician. Not a scientist. Not any kind of medical professional. But he’s in charge of public health and running his mouth about being able to eyeball “mitochondrial challenges.” We’re led solely by the cruel, the grifters, and the lowest common denominators.
My new @thehill.com article makes case for abolishing ICE and givingmoney to state/local cops. This will simultaneously end horrible ICE abuses, reduce crime, and help restore original meaning of Constitution on immigration power (which left most authority to states): thehill.com/opinion/immi...
“Soldiers wear camouflage to conceal themselves from the enemy they want to kill. Safety vests are what municipal workers put on so you can see them at work,” @chrislhayes.bsky.social on the “comically absurd” spectacle of Trump’s army of garbage collectors in DC.
This imagery is the kind of thing you see in video games to let you know you’re in a totalitarian city or country.
I’m trying hard not to doom and I remain long term optimistic about the politics and about our ability to rebuild. but it is hard not to notice that every function of the federal government intended to prevent death is currently on fire, except for the ones that are ashes already.
Ed “Big Balls” Coristine—who worked tech ops for Elon Musk’s DOGE project—is under FBI investigation for data theft. This is the same 19-year-old who was linked to a cybercrime ring earlier this year.
Are we to assume that the members of the press that are apparently in these rooms when Trump makes these nonsense assertions have zero agency to do actual journalism?
“Trump’s pretense to ownership of public goods and public spaces isn’t some quirk to be ignored or waited out — “there goes our Donald!” — but a direct expression of his autocratic ambitions and despotic cast of mind.”
They don't feel shame, but they care deeply about status. Wanting to be liked--or at least envied--is their Achilles heel. We can use that against them:it's cheap, non-violent & effective. Social shunning of elites supporting Pinochet helped bring down the Chilean dictator: it can work here too.
In a functional government, this would be a five alarm fire where Congress calls in Kennedy and asks him what the fuck is going on
Today's episode is a bit of a soft reboot, and a good entry point for new listeners. Joined by @corymassimino.bsky.social—my guest on the inaugural episode—we talk about what ReImagining Liberty is all about, radical liberalism's values, and how they're different from right-wing libertarianism.
Yarvin in particular is just a gibbering idiot, but they're all incoherent about this "common good" bit, bandying the words about as a talisman that justifies whatever they happen to want, with no real attempt to give it a coherent definition or defend that definition.
Dearest Martha, The National Guard stand solemn watch at the Krispy Kreme tonight. I cannot tell if they defend the people from the donuts, or the donuts from the people. Powdered sugar hangs in the air like cannon smoke. Jensen took a hot coffee to the face, he may never recover. Yours in glaze,
🚨 The CDC as we know it is being severely altered tonight. In addition to the CDC director being ousted, the Post is reporting that several senior leaders are leaving as well. Here are from two of the resignations:
I will say, the question is framed as generously as possible. It omits a bunch of relevant information (like the fact that the district doesn’t want this) and essentially accepts at face value the ludicrous falsehood that the purpose of the deployment is to fight crime.
Glad it’s net unpopular, but pretty depressing that the number supporting military occupation of an American city against the wishes of the residents and local government is as high as 40%.
If something happened to be daughter and in response I was told that she is now "with the person who loved her the most," you could not hold me legally liable for what I would do next.
The Trump administration is using the full force of the executive branch to undermine free and fair elections.
I'm not sure I have the space to enumerate everything wrong and stupid about this sentence, but let's start with a sort of easy one: Exactly what legitimate problem is being corrected or addressed by "issuing statistics on the blockchain"?
Update: it got funny again
This is wild. Grand juries will famously indict just about anyone. And one refused to indict the DC sandwich thrower. The law should not be used for political theater. Incredibly embarrassing for the government. reason.com/2025/08/27/l...
i like when these guys just say things like "union station has fallen into disrepair" which is plainly false to anyone with eyes apnews.com/article/trum...
Every lawyer should get the day off in observance of the fact that they actually failed to indict a ham sandwich
Brennan Center experts @seanmorales-doyle.bsky.social and @larrynorden.bsky.social forecast how the Trump administration will undermine confidence in our elections in the months leading up to the 2026 midterms:
Wow. On NPR, @gbrumfiel.bsky.social reports a Social Security official “copied the Social Security numbers, names and birthdays of over 300 million Americans to a private section of the agency's cloud.” The source is a whistleblower, who is named: Charles Borges, SSN chief data officer.
A “tariff rebate check” is like setting your kitchen on fire and then mailing yourself a bucket of water. There's an easier way to avoid the burn.
A federal magistrate judge said an arrest in Northeast Washington was preceded by the “most illegal search I’ve seen in my life” and described another arrest as lacking “basic human dignity.” wapo.st/3Jyc2QI
caramida (he/they) 