this is legitimately a huge problem that i don’t know how they will resolve, either from an executive or legislative standpoint, and it’s going to be the case across a lot more than just defense

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux@bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 4h ago

I fundamentally do not know how to square the politics whereby Democrats will essentially have to tell the American people that because they (the voters) made an extremely stupid decision, they need to lower their expectations substantially for the foreseeable future, but here we are.

I must have cooked more than a thousand risottos, yet every time the emergence of something that looks edible from what had previously resembled a pond is a blessed relief.

can imagine the personal relationship between Senators Slotkin and El-Sayed going anywhere from “buddy cop movie” to “literal homicide”

Eric Michael Garcia@ericmgarcia.bsky.social · yesterday

Slotkin tells me on Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens, “the most important thing is putting a check and balance on Donald Trump, so I will support whoever wins.”

Call me skeptical about the self-image of “highly educated experts who are superior to normies create a beautiful & seamlessly functioning gay social democracy” when folks seem to periodically do a “with this specific grip & particular set of gloves we can safely grasp the tiger by the tail” mania

It’s important to understand that when 1.2 million Americans are dying from a disease, any government action is excessive and tyrannical, but if a dozen trans women want to play soccer no government action can go far enough

This is also a good line: “Having a PhD in classics means I agree with them that Corinthian helmets aren’t historically accurate to the film’s bronze age setting; having a sense of proportion and an understanding of artistic licence means I don’t really care.”

If youre inclined to give any credence to Annie Jacobsen's Nuclear War or Biological War books, be aware "Roswell 1947 was Stalin sending Mengele-mutants to scare America" is literally something she claims in her earlier Area 51 book

Mike Black@mikeblack114.bsky.social · 3d ago

anyway the """fact based""" argument in this piece of shit is a ~bioengineered~ whatever that somehow kills literally everyone in the US in a week lmfao not sure if this better or worse than genetically modified mengele kids doing Roswell for stalin

americans were not meant to live in the desert. it fucks with our cursed bog-german brains. you stare at a joshua tree for 5 minutes and become a serial killer or start believing vaccines cause autism or thinking players eating poké bowls are gonna win the cfb playoff

And look, I'm just going to say it: antisemitism is doing to the US political left (not just leftists/DSA) right now, before our very eyes, what transphobia did to the British political left, and anyone who doesn't see it is choosing not to.

The 50s and 60s must have been an insane time to work in government. "Mr. President, meet the head of NASA's rocket chimp division, Dr. Nazimensch." "Guten Tag, my fur- sorry, Mr. President." "Weren't we at war with them?" "It's important we send the monkey to space or the communists will win."

it’s never a great sign for your society when all the competent people who believe in doing a good job for the sake of it conclude that they’re actively being punished for these qualities, while malignantly stupid criminals are making bank

A very serious Rural Politico once told me "Dems have to go to farmer meetings! We gotta be where the people are!" I was in fact in a farmer meeting at that very moment! So I live-texted him the meeting. They were complaining that they want indentured workers that they don't have to pay or feed.

Lucas Tieman@lucastieman.bsky.social · 6d ago

There would be more pushback if folks left of center were more serious about outreach. But folks aren't despite the fact that our system does give disproportionate power to rural areas. But instead of taking that as the rules of the game as it exists, and actually organizing, we complain about it.

project 2025 was ultimately a vision of authoritarian consolidation, and while musk, vought, and milller (amongst others) have caused untold destruction and misery, they have not accomplished that and have made it significantly less likely through their own incompetence

Renaming undergrads as C peoples

this sounds elitist but our recovery from the present moment will depend in part on being able to once again effectively malign, ostracize, and refuse a platform to cranks

[Christopher M. Federico]@chrispps.bsky.social · last wk.

I don't stan Fauci in any mawkish resistlib way but I do not blame him for not wanting to play along on television with a gaggle of conspiracy-addled degenerates who are objectively beneath him in terms of intellect, culture, and values

Honestly, a real problem with a lot of 'collapse' revisionism for both LBAC and the later Roman Empire. You get a lot of fancy academic rhetorical footwork and sure, there are things of value in the periods that followed, but, like, aggregate population declines are generally not fun.

Nathan Goldwag @goldwagnathan.bsky.social · last wk.

*Trojan historian watching as the Achaeans break down the gates* Wow, my civilization is undergoing a complex transformation from a heavily centralized and stratified administrative society to a more socially-fragmented modality of living in which material culture is dispersed amidst smaller sites.

drunk girl trying to tell her friends that she thinks they are “weekend at Bernie’s” with McConnell, but she has got completely the wrong movie and keeps calling it “doing a Fish Called Wanda” with him and I’m dying

i also think being low trust paradoxically makes you more likely to fall for scams bc you don’t have a standard of truth or reality against which to measure claims

far and away I think the single most consequential failures of the 20th/21st century environmental movement was going anti-nuclear. to a great extent we literally chose climate change.

Sam@samd.bsky.social · last wk.

sometimes I think about how Germany could have one of the cleanest electricity mixes in the world if they simply didn’t shut down all their nuclear plants

I continue to be flabbergasted at the amount of ostensible liberal/left ppl on this site that think that a deep red senate seat staying vacant for the foreseeable future—& depriving Rs of a much needed vote before midterms—is a failure on Dems part.

ArgellaStone@argellastone.bsky.social · last wk.

Mitch McConnell isn't dead, but he is dying, and the best possible situation for Democrats is the one we have now, where he's too sick to leave the hospital but too stubborn to resign, and you should be extremely suspicious of people demanding Democrats rescue the GOP from this situation.

There’s a kind of guy on social media who acts like you’re a moron for believing in gradations. You say we’re teetering on fascism, they go “umm we were founded on genocide” You say Musk is having a racist breakdown they go “umm he was always racist” Truthers for the concept of things getting worse.

theres a joke that alot of FP talk online is cold war brained, i think it can get worse when alot of people wiash it was perpetual 1901

it's crazy how many people think the PRC is friendly to LGBTQ people my experience is the average person in china doesn't give a shit, but the government has totally reversed on the "just be quiet and you can do whatever" policy. you can read about it, it's not secret. please learn anything

an immediate reaction i always have as someone who has lived in a communitarian setting is: who’s going to clean all this?

there are a lot of people on this website whose only real experience with anarchists is the hyper-literate online types, and, let me tell you, some versions of the very offline ones can be *so* much worse

this is actually the exact kind of white collar crime we should be going after harshly stuff like “I am one of the elite so I can commit endless tax fraud to support a gambling habit without consequences” is extremely corrosive to the entire structure of civil society

Bloomberg Law@bloomberglaw.com · 2w ago

BREAKING: Prodigious US Supreme Court lawyer and SCOTUSblog co-founder Tom Goldstein was sentenced to six years in prison on Friday following his convictions on federal tax and mortgage fraud charges early this year.

BLUESKY: These posters at least have a THEORY OF POWER rather than just some empty bucket of ideology or hopium ME: is it theory of power or Vibes You Like because you feel small and impotent? BLUESKY: haha, it’s a good theory sir THEORY: *is all Vibes*

No, No, no. Look, are there lessons to learn from this debacle? Sure. Drone warfare, mag depth, etc. But the solution here is not 'yet more tactical excellence or tech.' It is 'the president asked the impossible of the military and they should have said so.' www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

The War Is Lost. Now Fix What It Broke.

America has to rethink how it moves resources, fights wars, and deters adversaries.

theatlantic.com

Karl May's long tail

Lizard@lizardky.bsky.social · 2w ago

Maybe it's an accident of simply what gets reported, but it seems "German tourists die in Death Valley" seems more common than, say, Swedish or French tourists, and there's about as many places like Death Valley in those parts of Europe, too.