There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...
That Bannon says that about Newsom should be the kiss of death for his nomination prospects. Definition of an acceptable nominee is someone who is Steve Bannon's worst nightmare.
Vanity Fair@vanityfair.com · yesterday“Having Gavin Newsom as president wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world,” says MAGA philosopher Steve Bannon
Anyone who, in 2026, is already saying “I don’t want to vote for Newsom but I will” is part of the problem. This man is a fucking monster and has betrayed everyone imaginable. He is unacceptable in every possible way. There is no world in which this piece of shit should be trusted with power.
San Francisco Chronicle@sfchronicle.com · 23h agoGov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday sought to rein in a wave of legal claims that have pushed some local governments and school districts in California to the brink of bankruptcy, after earlier laws made it much easier to sue over child sexual abuse.
“What became obvious during WWI, which lesson was reinforced again in WWII, is that mass mobilization is also a form of national suicide, even absent nuclear weapons. Even for the victors, the resulting casualties have traditionally been catastrophic” www.liberalcurrents.com/the-return-o...
The Return of the Cutting-Off Way
Structural changes are driving us towards a more chaotic world, defined by "neither peace nor war, but conflict."
liberalcurrents.com
if you think about it, winning via a direct connection to the divine father of all creation through His appointed emissary on Earth is a much more egregious cheating scandal than banging on trash cans
Sarah Langs@slangsonsports.bsky.social · 24h agoThe first team in MLB history to make the postseason after even two consecutive 100-loss seasons (they had 3) just won a postseason series These White Sox, what a story!
I think we underrate that JCO came up in 20th century New York literary circles where everyone said five most devastating insults before breakfast and as one of the last one standing, her competition is guys who get sad if their chatbot isn't sufficiently nice to them.
Scare Smith 💀@evilgalprods.bsky.social · 2d agoFATALITY
A field can be socially indispensable and poorly remunerated because of existing institutional arrangements—social work and education are obvious examples of this. Then, circularly, that low remuneration is cited as evidence that educating people to perform the work is a bad financial investment.
The whole speech is good, but this part in particular is particularly relevant now. www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/publ...
Whitney Trettien@whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 3d agoIn the 1860s, chess player Howard Staunton produced a photo-facsimile of Shakespeare's First Folio. It was one of the earliest attempts to use new technology to reproduce an old book. @folger.edu has Staunton’s proof sheets. I looked at them last week. If you like media/books/history, they're fun.
people don't want to hear this, but it's why elite persuasion matters the uk becoming the most trans-exclusionary developed democracy in the world under a labour gov was not a bottom up thing—it was the other side reaching the people who matter www.liberalcurrents.com/the-end-of-t...
The End of Trans Rights in the UK Is the Start of Democratic Collapse
It's never just one minority.
liberalcurrents.com
"You must make your choice. Either this itinerant banjo playing frog was—as he claimed—the roving TV news correspondent for Sesame Street News Flash, or else he was a madman, or else a liar. Kermit leaves you no 4th option: you must accept him as The Frog or reject him as a fiend." -CS Lew Zealand
When they get back in power, Democrats need to go all-in on higher education. We need a campaign of reinvestment in public universities across the country that makes the Morrill Land-Grant Act look like nothing by comparison *and* a GI Bill of Rights-style program of tuition grants.
The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 4d agoTrump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/kQdKbY1
I do! We won the Cold War, right? ISTR that we won that one.
Kevin Gannon (now a Moo Deng fan account)@thetattooedprof.bsky.social · 3d agoFellow GenXers: remember how often we were bombarded with images of late-period USSR? Old, decrepit men in charge, clinging to an ossified ideology. Political repression, nakedly false propaganda, empty shelves, food shortages, inadequate health care, deep-seated cynicism, crumbling infrastructure
The worst thing about education is the idea that (at the university level, or even the post-graduate level) there is a period at which it is reasonable for students to stop engaging with things outside of the narrow vocational silo. It's not. Broadening is as important as deepening. Period.
At least they ended up with fewer than 90 losses... #Mets
the tech titan backlash to “woke dei hr ladies” makes a lot more sense now huh
Faine Greenwood@faineg.com · 4d agoWomen trying to succeed in Silicon Valley AI and effective altruist spaces are reporting feeling serious social pressure to attend sex parties - where people have reported being sexually assaulted, like below. Events like Aella’s “Slutcon,” which is happening again this weekend.
<chris rock> That Republican didn’t go rogue. That Republican went *Republican.*
tomwellborn3rd@wellborn.net · last mo.Congress funded the CDC's Alzheimer's work, the sickle cell and epilepsy data programs and a rape prevention unit, and Vought simply will not release the money. Grassley told him to his face he lacks the authority. The pocket rescission alone took 4.9 billion.
An 87-year-old woman lived in the same Madrid apartment for 70 years. Then a real estate firm bought it and forced her out. The housing crisis is global because the underlying logic is the same: your home is someone else's investment vehicle.
87-Year-Old Evicted From Her Home Tells Spaniards to ‘Fight’ to Avoid Same Fate
María del Carmen Abascal, whose case has become a symbol of Spain’s housing crisis, appeared in a video from her hospital bed after police officers removed her from her apartment.
nytimes.com
There are lots of ways to answer this and one of them is that studying history makes you a better citizen and our public universities have an obligation to produce good citizens. History education is essential to a republican model of government. Engineering is not.
Mike Ross@eruptionchaser.bsky.social · 5d agoAm I missing something here? In what universe would an engineering student ever study history?! Do many history students study engineering?! I *enjoyed* history at school, and I was *good* at it. But no way would I ever have studied it at university.
The law has always been slower than bad actors, and relied on deterrence instead. Deterrence is the product of A) probability of punishment, and B) degree of punishment. In American justice, both factors have broken down for rich white men. That must be fixed.
The single greatest improvement to quality of life in NYC in my lifetime, and it's not even close. My father's go-to example that anything was possible: "If they can get the dogsh!t off the streets of NY, there's nothing humanity can't accomplish!" An immortal, may he rest with the gods.
Edward Lehner, Who Made Dog Owners Pick ‘It’ Up, Dies at 93
Before the law passed, navigating New York was a harrowing exercise in dog-feces avoidance. As he put it, sometimes “you would come home and have it all over you.”
nytimes.com
1976's "Network" turns 50 this year. The pitch black satire of television always felt a little over the top, despite its star-studded cast's performances. But then social media came along and validated everything this movie warned us about--and more. We're all mad as hell now.
“Network” at 50: Now We’re All Mad as Hell
Paddy Chayefsky’s take on television captured the Long 1970s—and anticipated the rise of social media.
liberalcurrents.com
Ten years of relentlessly hateful, comically elitist anti-democratic politics across the white people world, helpfully summarised. The wrong people are talking, the wrong people are deciding and it’s harming the careers of important people who actually matter. Smithers! Release the hounds
En Buen Ora@enbuenora.bsky.social · last wk.This is a fantastic brief essay in how news media & pundits turn upside down who is who is being punished for speaking freely--in the case of Kraft, Macklemore, & Sheeran--when rich elites want things to go one way, but unruly peasant masses refuse to go along. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/se...
Age verification is an egregious privacy violation, an inexcusable form of surveillance, and… it’s also voodoo bullshit that doesn’t work. It’s one of the reasons I’m proudest to support @eff.org, who have been leading the fight against the horrible practice for years: www.eff.org/issues/age-v...
Age Verification and Age Gating: Resource Hub
Age verification (or age-gating) laws generally require online services to check, estimate, or verify all users’ ages—often through invasive tools like ID checks, biometric scans, or other dubious “ag...
eff.org
Erin Reed@erininthemorning.com · last wk.I'm a passenger in a trip across Ohio right now and what the fuck is this shit. Age verification literally stops me from being able to read my Bluesky messages!?
I read CYBERSELFISH back in the day and enjoyed it. This is a great profile.
Kate Knibbs@knibbs.bsky.social · 6d ago🚨 TOMMY CRAGGS ON PAULINA BORSOOK 🚨https://www.wired.com/story/paulina-borsook-profile/
Horror movie idea: An endless line of Trump sources calling and screaming at you "MARK HALPERIN"
Aha, so there's more than a Trump ego trip in play? Though I imagine none of this happens without the ego trip, either.
RaySCline@lastmandarin.bsky.social · 9mo agoMUX Grandfather was a pro-Nazi Germany leader in a Fascist Canadian party pushing for the U.S. to take over Canada & Greenland in the mid-late 1930s. Sound Familiar? (Now you know where the idea REALLY came from) CLICK BELOW to expand.
The thing about this "AI is gonna go rogue" bullshit is that we've established that this technology requires extremely expensive unpopular infrastructure to run. Like oh god the super intelligence is gonna kill us all please keep letting us build the streaming diesel fume factories
