Tomorrow (August 6) is the end of the first IPO lockout period for SpaceX, meaning that at market open over 900 million insider shares that could not legally be sold until now are free flood the market. 

Or someone who used to ride 25 to 40 miles every single day, 100°F or 30°F or pouring rain, I cannot tell you what a humbling experience it is to get back on my bike and ride up and down my own street for 10 minutes and have it feel difficult.

This narrative about "Black voters" is becoming the new version of "Democrats are out of touch with the white working class." Based on partial truths, it has rapidly turned into a ready-made story that is pasted onto situations where it barely captures what is actually taking place.

As I was saying

Ed Burmila@edburmila.bsky.social · 4w ago

At some point we are going to have to reckon with what percentage of the Thought Leadership we get from this class of people is just drug addiction. Either a lot of credulous reporters have never listened to someone tooted out of their mind go on a monologue or they're afraid to call it out.

Politics is fun because it's like THE FORCES OF SOCIETY and TEST OF THE ZEITGEIST and then it's a one percent margin that could have broken differently if the role of Haley Stevens was played by someone not cast for "weird and off-putting intensity" who raves about Israel coming to her in her dreams

"Diminishing returns" doesn't even begin to describe dollars 10,000,001 to 70,000,000 in a primary.

Ed Burmila@edburmila.bsky.social · 2y ago

I really wish people would get it through their heads that beyond a certain threshold, raising enormous amounts of money in a campaign offers, almost no marginal benefit per dollar. It just buys more ads, usually targeted at voters already saturated with ads.

In 1962 the military brought in TV and sci-fi writers to make up scenarios it could prepare for because it prepared for everything it could think of but still had more budget to burn. Thomas Allen's "Twilight Zone in the Pentagon" covers this in Cowley's "Cold War: A Military History" (2005)

Shipwreck@shipwreck75.bsky.social · 2d ago

A senior officer in US Central Command’s (CENTCOM) intelligence branch emailed a broad group of military analysts seeking “new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran.” A second source indicated a similar request went out the prior week.

Looks like a 10-15 point polling miss in Michigan regardless of who wins. And people have been writing a lot of electability takes using this data. It’s dangerous out there folks be safe

When I started my political science grad program in 2003 people were freaking out because survey response rates had fallen below 30% and now they’re well below 1%. It might be as accurate (and more intellectually honest) to just conduct simulations with high/low/average turnout scenarios.

Adam Serwer@adamserwer.bsky.social · 10h ago

There’s no actual alternative to polling but I just don’t believe they capture public sentiment in any reliable way anymore

It's "Electability" season once again so let me just remind everybody possessing this incredible power of foresight to tell us something useful like November stock prices.

I’m telling you this as a political scientist. The person who is electable is the one who is elected. This can and does change over time. Any and all speculation about “electability” is either puffery or anxiety and is often both.

Julia Azari@juliaazari.bsky.social · 18h ago

One way to be safe is to never write an electability take

You actually don't have to do the "well, you know, I disagree with MAHA but they're right that there are real problems with The System" thing. That's a concession you absolutely do not have to make.

Do you know what's really funny? Mamdani's subsidized grocery stores are basically relying on location and reputation to have needy people self-select into them. This was EXACTLY the reform to universal subsidies the World Bank and IMF told Middle East countries to do all through the 2000s.

WaPo has run exactly one story on Trump trying to buy off suburbanites with subsidized "Freedom Fuel" stations and has run 2 news items and 4 opinion columns and this video on Mamdani and subsidized NYC grocery stores. So that's 7 to 1, so far. 8 if this crap counts.

Make It Make Sense@themimsshow.bsky.social · yesterday

Mamdani’s grocery delusion

Oh my god I think I found the video.

CSketch@csketch.bsky.social · yesterday

Republicans love pushing vocational-only education instead of comprehensive-education because they want a healthy supply of low-cost servants and less competition for the professional and boss jobs they want their own kids to have.

Seth Cotlar@sethcotlar.bsky.social · yesterday

In a college sociology class in the late 1980s I was assigned a Marxist analysis of education that argued that the US education system is designed primarily to produce efficient workers for the labor market. And now Trump’s Department of Education is just tweeting it out.

The history of the cruise missile is the history of how American presidents have approached warfare in the past half-century. Trump is the apotheosis but he's not doing anything brand new.

PUSH-BUTTON CHAOS | Gin and Tacos

If you're looking for a single metaphor that comes closest to capturing what foreign policy has been to the last fifty years of American pre

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Reuters@reuters.com · yesterday

🔊 The US has used most of its precision missiles in Iran. 'The US might have to turn to methods of fighting the war ... which could bring American lives closer to the front line. Listen now on the Reuters World News podcast reut.rs/4fN6IW2

Youth sports were doomed when they got sucked into the hypercompetitive college admissions game. Soccer practice used to be a way to kill time after school until you could leave work to pick your kid up; now it's another thing your kid must excel at or they aren't getting into Yale.

Marisa Kabas@marisakabas.bsky.social · 2d ago

the obsession with trans women in sports is, apart from the abject bigotry, a symptom of how we take amateur sports participation way too seriously in this country.

"The politically-engaged citizen is encouraged to pour over poll numbers to determine their own preferences. Earnest liberals have been convinced that the only mature way of doing politics is to disregard everything you believe." www.lukewsavage.com/p/the-electa...

The Electability Hustle

Centrist arguments about who is or isn't "electable" have always been about disciplining the Democratic base rather than actually winning elections

lukewsavage.com

The people who demand gross, obtrusive genital monitoring of children in the name of protecting girls sports will immediately pivot to using the gross, obtrusive genital monitoring as an argument against letting girls play sports at all.

I think this is fundamentally wrong but in an interesting way I will need to write about sometime. The key is a) consumers do not choose what is produced, or how, they choose between what is produced. This is a crucial difference

Max Dubler 🏳️‍🌈@maxdubler.com · 3d ago

I think my most genuinely unpopular take is that a widely held and genuine consumer preference for cheaper, lower-quality goods, not private equity, is driving the decline in quality of consumer goods like clothing and housewares.

It's "Electability" season once again so let me just remind everybody possessing this incredible power of foresight to tell us something useful like November stock prices.

Here's what I remember about the early pandemic (spoiler: I remember what actually happened)

LOCKED IN | Gin and Tacos

RFK Jr. is attempting to relitigate COVID, a thing we all need to resign ourselves to doing for the rest of our natural lives. Revisionist a

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Ed Burmila@edburmila.bsky.social · 3d ago

Appropriate air quotes because the most infuriating part about Americans debating "lockdown" is that it simply never happened. Having to pick up your Applebees and eat it on the sectional does not count. There wasn't even a brief moment where "everything" was closed. That's not real.

Updated our 'Do Moderates Do Better?' paper When you analyze the question rigorously (and don't assume correlation is causation), you find that moderates & non-moderates perform ~equally well in the Trump era Love working with @adambonica.bsky.social

1986 Suzuki Jimothy

Appropriate air quotes because the most infuriating part about Americans debating "lockdown" is that it simply never happened. Having to pick up your Applebees and eat it on the sectional does not count. There wasn't even a brief moment where "everything" was closed. That's not real.

Melissa Gira Grant@melissagiragrant.com · 3d ago

if you hated covid "lockdowns" try long covid

The way we're supposed to listen to this guy 35 years after his one achievement is incredible. Pat Caddell (Carter's Carville) was by 1992 a pariah in the Democratic Party, and he ended up on Brietbart, Fox News, and the Trump campaign. They all do this. You can just stop listening to them.

Widow's Bay DSA@gonebabygone.bsky.social · 3d ago

James Carville isn’t even good at what he got famous for anymore (folksy bullshit that appeals to consultants who think southern people are some kind of pixie), now he just goes on TV to go “you’d probably be happy if I killed myself”

I don't actually know how to make a gif but I've long felt that the Gurdjieff movements have a lot of potential

Gurdjieff Movements, Sofia 2025

YouTube video by Jivan Sunder

youtu.be

Matt Leys@mattleys.bsky.social · 3d ago

Strong reaction gif potential with the Circassian folk dance

The Case of the Headless Beagle (1907)

Did you hear about the old timey gold prospector who was nonbinary? Found a fortune up in them/their hills.