Somehow things that would have been a background gag in a Verhoeven movie are now just real
Gady Epstein
@gadyepstein.bsky.social
A longform editor at The Economist. Views expressed may be the opposite of my employer’s
Also it was a very fun bonus episode, catnip for hate-readers
Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 5h ago"Hate to tell you" OK so don't tell us
I don't think people are ready for this kind of joke yet.
I saw someone say they should have cut off the interview but this rant with the chyron below is brutal for him
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3d agoRFK Jr yelling at Dana Bash sounds like a rabid dog barking
Some people ask why lab leak theory even matters and here’s one reason why, it’s a conspiratorial project meant to undermine trust in science
Bill Grueskin@bgrueskin.bsky.social · 3d agoRFK told Dana Bash that Lyme disease “almost certainly” came from gain of function research. Which is utterly false. www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdi...
This is an incredible story, a grimly compelling document of how elite capture works
How a Top Law Firm Went From Standing Up to Trump to Bending the Knee
Paul Weiss was a progressive stalwart for decades and led the legal resistance against President Trump in his first term. Then it surrendered without a fight. This is the inside story of its transform...
nytimes.com
AIPAC can't spend $60M on a race then say you can't criticize them. That's a guy putting on glasses and saying "you wouldn't hit a man wearing glasses."
Great reporting from @emilybregel.bsky.social about a gay man who’s been in the US since he was four, imprisoned in a “hotel” in Equatorial Guinea since April. He says he’s being denied soap and toilet paper in retaliation for filing a complaint w African Commission. 1/ tucson.com/news/local/b...
Arizona man languishes in African hotel after third-country deportation
A 30-year-old man, Ahmed Soliman, is confined in a decommissioned hotel in Equatorial Guinea after being deported there by ICE without warning. He faces the threat of return to Egypt, where he may fac...
tucson.com
The furin cleavage site at first seemed to be a unique feature of COVID but has since been discovered in numerous naturally occurring coronaviruses. The reports don't "raise questions," these questions have been answered.
just a devastating dispatch from @nysfocus.com about the acceleration of kids having to argue for asylum alone, without an attorney, and then most of them getting deported nysfocus.com/2026/07/31/t...
NY Lawyers Fear Trump Blitz Will Speed Up Child Deportations
The Trump administration is accelerating asylum proceedings as legal aid funding expires, leaving immigrant children less time to prepare.
nysfocus.com
The media and political establishment howling that Mamdani violated sacred norms of moderation, fairness, sensitivity to all New Yorkers, and keeping a narrow municipal focus when he talked about war crimes was awfully quiet while all this other stuff was going on: hellgatenyc.com/how-mamdani-...
Haley Stevens accuses Abdul El Sayed of wanting to "blame all of his problems on Jewish Americans".
@thejrocktv.bsky.social · 6d agoShe knows she’s losing so she said let’s just go mask off.
Now being canceled apparently means no one pays attention to your crackpot opinions? (This guy is on a high-profile Apple TV show in its third season!)
Ben Collins@bencollins.bsky.social · 6d agolol
This is a far bigger threat to the Jewish people in the long run than anything Zohran Mamdani could ever say or do. www.972mag.com/israeli-sett...
What an Israeli settler pogrom feels like
For the first time in my life, I found myself completely helpless. My car was engulfed in flames, but all that mattered to me was my family's survival.
972mag.com
God this is awful
Olivia Messer@oliviamesser.bsky.social · last wk.I’m going to be sick. Even the photo they chose — I painted in that exact spot during a concert one of my summers. From the 1970s to the 2010s, which includes the three years I attended. When my friends were there. Back to when some of their *parents* were campers. www.mlive.com/news/2026/07...
So will the history book about business and media titans aligning with Trump, which is where this case study is a perfect fit
Bill Grueskin@bgrueskin.bsky.social · 7d agoThe Harvard Business School case study on the demise of CBS News will be a banger.
over a fifth. probably a bigger warning sign than the approval numbers
Polling USA@usapolling.bsky.social · last wk.2024 Trump Voters - "Do you regret voting for Trump in 2024?" No: 77% Yes: 22% GSG / July 27, 2026
one tendency that comes out about period films is the insistence that XYZ moral thought would not have occurred to anyone in the ancient world. to be sure there are moral innovations and changes but the existence of thorough dissatisfaction with the present moral order is not a modern phenomenon
Text messages and videos obtained by the ACLU show that federal immigration agents who carried out last year’s raids in L.A. referred to Latinos with slurs such as “wet” (wetback) and “tonks,” reportedly derived from the sound a flashlight makes when hitting a migrant’s head.
Immigration agents used racial slurs referring to Latinos in text messages, video obtained by ACLU
Body camera footage and forensically recovered texts, which provide a window into the mindset of agents who conducted raids throughout the L.A. area, were detailed in a 37-page motion for a preliminar...
latimes.com
At the risk of repeating myself: What will the popularists say?
Prem Thakker ツ@premthakker.bsky.social · last wk.New poll: Americans believe the U.S. should arrest Benjamin Netanyahu by a +22 margin Total: 49-27 Black: 53-13 Hispanic: 52-15 Ages 18-29: 58-17 Harris voters: 74-10 Independents: 55-20 23% of Trump voters agree as well Economist/YouGov:
People who are suddenly deported to countries they haven’t been to for years — or, in some cases, have NEVER been to — are incredibly vulnerable. We are going to be reading stories like this for years. God have mercy on their three little girls.
Adam Sawyer@adamjst.bsky.social · last wk.“If immigration hadn't picked up my brother, my sister-in-law would still be alive, and the children wouldn't be going through this sorrow,” he said. “Unfortunately, immigration — the [U.S.] government — doesn't see that. It makes no difference to them.” www.stlpr.org/law-order/20...
That’s right. If as a journalist you’re still pushing lab leak theory even now then you’re just not interested in the science
Andrew Tan@andrewtanyongyi.bsky.social · last wk.Even a year later, it was not known if Huanan was the origin. The Feb 2021 WHO report correctly wrote "No firm conclusion therefore about the role of the Huanan market in the origin of the outbreak ... can currently be drawn." It only became much clearer with Worobey and colleagues' 2022 preprint.
COVID was a moment where the liberal consensus about both expert institutions and shared personal responsibility were proven to be incredibly important and it has driven both conservatives and a certain kind of leftist completely insane because it invalidated their worldview
Post-Left Watch@postleftwatch.bsky.social · 2w agoRyan Grim wants Dr. Fauci prosecuted because we didn't know everything about COVID-19 a month after it was discovered.
This makes for very disturbing viewing. 1.4 million followers on that other website btw
Seth Cotlar@sethcotlar.bsky.social · 2w agoIt’s not great how many media figures on the right are now voicing only slightly veiled neo-Nazi talking points about Communism being a Jewish conspiracy. youtube.com/shorts/rZttP...
Lemme tell you about the angel of history being blown backwards into the future: The shackles these people have been put in are Hiatt brand, same company founded in 1780 to mass produce shackles for slaver ships.
Joel S.@joelhs.bsky.social · 2w agoThe use of extremely online memetic aesthetics to support far-right political goals is like something out of Walter Benjamin’s nightmares.
"i'm not ideological just pragmatic" is one of those genuinely bizarre claims people make. it explains nothing. like. do you have ideas about how the world works? congratulations, you have an ideology. see e.g.
Opinion | Iran, China, Canada? A Defense of Trump’s Grand Strategy
A Pentagon official argues that “people can no longer take the United States for granted.”
nytimes.com
#StupidSuez@diplomatofnight.com · 2w agoPeople just like to tell themselves that actually they're not ideological, just pragmatic, but insisting on a false post ideological era is usually just naked reaction dressed up in Metternichian realism, which is uh, plain old conservatism.
This is magnificent and deranged in its specificity. I am speechless lol
Flaming Hydra@flaminghydra.com · 2w agoTODAY: @jdconnor.bsky.social on the history, science, and technology of waiting in line. “Queuing theory is a real thing, with real math and real consequences for our lives. There are mathematical models for lines, and there are agent-based simulations.” flaminghydra.com/retractatus/
Get in, there’s a new secret political influence campaign paying people to post. This time, a network targeting people in Michigan. First paid to post about how hard it is to afford groceries and gas, the accounts have gone hard in recent days, supporting Haley Stevens. www.ms.now/news/haley-s...
Secret paid influencer campaign backing Stevens floods Michigan Senate race
Rep. Haley Stevens and the Senate Democratic PAC said they were not involved in the effort to pay for user-generated content endorsing her.
ms.now