the reason i keep arguing against “the vibe shift” being a real thing is that quite a few commentators believe otherwise and it has left them completely unable to analyze, understand and respond to the current political moment

Quinta Jurecic@qjurecic.bsky.social · 1h ago

this take was understandable in 2024 but is absolutely bananas to publish in Sept 2026. the South Lawn MMA fight polled at 16%. Trump's approval numbers on immigration and handling of the economy are not good and have steadily gotten worse since his inauguration www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Being a Barça fan is as close to understanding college football as I get, since you always have your blood pressure in the hands of 19 year olds

I have spent the day watching the Antoine Doinel films (a big blind spot). Delightful. I think I’ve done a total 180 on Truffaut the last couple years

Ridley Scott has made 20 movies in the 21st century and like five of them were successful and maybe two are actually good

If journalists and major publications didn't want elected Democrats to perceive them as being hostile and contemptuous of them and their voters, then they shouldn't have spent the last decade being hostile and contemptuous of them and their voters

every time i think i have a handle on how much of the elite backlash to wokeness was actually about male academics wanting to fuck their students i read something from an actual academic that makes me revise my assessment upwards yet again

Joe Lombardo and Aaron Ford are running almost identical ads, that look AI generated, accusing the other of being responsible for data center growth

the point here is not rendering justice, it is setting future expectations. we can't control thermostatic electoral behavior. we can teach a very painful lesson that Democrats will punish corruption when they take power

NCAA football is such a cooked sport. We should shut it down and make middle aged men pay attention to their kids for once

Convincing young people that America is poor & no one can afford anything & everyone is living paycheck to paycheck & their economic future is doomed ... IS NOT GOING TO LEAD TO MORE PROGRESSIVE POLICY. People who feel anxious & under threat do not respond with openness & generosity! Look it up!

The country is not in an economic disaster, and is not likely to be when he leaves unlike W. (the govt’s fiscal situation is a different story), but most of the public is convinced it is. The delta between those two things is something we’re going to argue about even after we’re dead

George Pearkes@peark.es · 3d ago

People really want Trump to be an economic disaster and sorry, it's just not playing out that way. There's no doubt his policies have reduced growth relative to an alternative baseline, but the US economy is in great shape for the near to medium term, even more so given everything he's thrown at it.

Francis Fukuyama keeps the winning streak alive.

I don't know where this idea that politics exists outside of social relations came from, but virtually every single white guy above a certain age seems to believe it

andy™@andylevy.net · 4d ago

ah yes once again the racists are the real victims

Doing low grade corruption so you can pay more money to a chronically injured 35 year old and come in 9th in the West is the kind of operational excellence I’d expect from the Los Angeles Clippers

It is remarkable how one of our few remaining bi-partisan points of agreement is on being conspiratorial about gender and women’s healthcare

Andi Zeisler@andizeisler.bsky.social · 4d ago

What in the condescending misogyny is this, @wired.com? “Perimenopause” isn’t a “buzzword” invented by pharma startups — if you haven’t heard it much until recently, maybe that’s because women’s health in midlife was almost completely disregarded www.wired.com/story/inside...

Its a shame that Gavin Newsom was turned into a culture war villain by conservatives (and he gleefully leaned into it) because he really has been a dogshit governor of the largest state in the union and that deserves more scrutiny

Leah Stokes@leahstokes.bsky.social · 4d ago

Newsom withheld *legislatively appropriated* school AC funds for 2 years. Now he's handing them to a fossil fuel company, the week after half a million kids had their school day changed by extreme heat. If that's not Trumpian, I don't know what is. Shameful. calmatters.org/environment/...

The dialectic of the Trump II WH since day one has been the simultaneous feeling of an authoritarian regime on the rise, and the sweaty final days of impending collapse when everyone is about to flee with gold bars and crying in front of a tribunal

rev. howard arson@theophite.bsky.social · 4d ago

the Trump administration is obsessed with doing the kind of thing which actual authoritarian states only do in a panic when on the brink of collapse, because they think that they are done out of strength rather than weakness

Once again, our media coverage is not actually reflective in tone or content of the governing party entering a prolonged political crisis and potential collapse

Djinn & Tonic 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇲🇽 🇬🇱@djinnandtonic.bsky.social · 4d ago

The steady erosion of Republican partisans + leaners feels like it's a big, unreported story. It's not an impression you would have, based on the way CBS and the NYT have been conducting their reporting

Bernie Sanders will ultimately be the Barry Goldwater of what the Democrats are turning/will turn into in a decade. YMMV on whether this is a good thing or not, but I think it’d be best if they’d don’t hold onto his immigration views

William B. Fuckley@opinionhaver.bsky.social · last wk.

Man we’re really gonna lose something when Bernie Sanders is all the way out of the game. May not be perfect but better than most most of the time.

It is sort of fascinating how despite all the “analysis” and upheaval and discourse in the last decade, this President and his staff routinely offer rhetoric that, while perhaps less polished, would’ve not been out of character for Romney ‘12

Sahil Kapur@sahilkapur.bsky.social · 6d ago

Trump defends data centers: “The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor. If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”

Mother speaks

Look, if you’re non-white, educated, and perceptive of the world, you’re familiar with the idea that you may work with people who find you simultaneously threatening and worth treating dismissively

Cleg@clegggg.bsky.social · last wk.

this is a pretty wild exchange with someone seemingly in a moderator position

Joe Lombardo is going to win reelection by a comfortable enough margin, despite a blue tsunami, and when the 2032 speculation begins it will be because the universe has decided to spite me personally

There is a real blind spot in a lot of corners of the industry where they don’t understand how or why large swathes of the populace would view them as not only antagonistic, but worse: useless

QuoProQuid@quoproquid.bsky.social · last wk.

techno-optimists befuddled by declining popular support for “the robot that tells you to kill yourself”, “the pervert glasses“, and “the camera network that stalks you”

Going back into the wilderness, I think

in the 21st century, solidarity with the working class means prioritising migrant manicurists over nativists, renters over established homeowners, bartenders & barristers over difficult customers, & those bounced around by bigotry or bad luck over those handed comfort & stability

This story drives me crazy. Everyone knows the rust belt version but Southern textile decline barely registers. The role manufacturers played in botching that transition is wild, they really did crash-land the Southern economy trying to bail themselves out. Hoping to have a paper on this out soon.

maria_from_ga@mariafromga.bsky.social · 2w ago

Also NAFTA didn’t hurt Midwestern manufacturing- that was dying since Reagan. It harmed Southern textile industries and the fact no one brings that up bc the South shifted to more productive industries in the knowledge economy gives away the game

People are simultaneously cynical about federal govt’s ability to regulate AI, and also uncomfortable acknowledging the real existing demand for what the AI does

rev. howard arson@theophite.bsky.social · 2w ago

the frustrating thing is that datacenters have essentially zero impact economically except for the building trades, transiently, and have relatively small downsides other than their electricity consumption. i do not know why no one wants to talk about what is runnign in them, which is the problem.

Latin American caudillismo is much closer to the mark for describing MAGA than interwar continental Europe, but even that doens't *quite* fit.

The thing about Kirk's death being very much Not a Reichstag Fire is one reason I think that while MAGA has a great many fash characteristics, it's fundamentally a dysfunction of America's constitutionalism and looking for interwar central European models ends up going wrong.

BeijingPalmer@beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 2w ago

A very positive sign that, nearly a year after Kirk's death, many if not most of the people punished for speaking truthfully about him have won legal cases against their former employees and compensation. Again, panicked compliance with Trumpism has only *cost* institutions.