It's OK for criminal ex-neo Nazis to run your bins is a hell of a line.

I don't get why this piece starts and ends with digs at Machiavelli

open all borders. stop having them be closed 🇺🇦🇱🇹🇵🇸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿@dov.bsky.social · yesterday

if there's one thing i'm absolutely certain of is that socialism and whatever she is talking about here are totally morally and existentially antithetical

a fun thing to explain to non-philosophers are the Three Great Secret Identities of academic philosophy: -the person who makes surrealist youtube edits of philosophy talks -the person who blogs about fucking people at conferences -the person who sent philosophy professors poop in the mail

Pitch idea: “How to do Cocaine at a Conference” by Alex Rails

The thing is, she already does chase Restore's vote, she likes Rupert Lowe, she gave him a seat on a select committee! She just doesn't seem to grasp the threat.

Roland Smith@rolandmcs.bsky.social · 4d ago

You have to wonder if the Tories will now chase after Restore's support, 'because we need those votes'.

Amnesty's capitulation is unacceptable, because a human rights NGO is not simply a discount think tank (viz. a double discounted research university). It's part of its job description to specifically leverage its resources to stand its ground against actual and threatened SLAPPs from bad actors!

A nice line for anti-oligarchic politicians might be to promise one or five or ten dollars of new taxes on the super-rich for every one the oligarchs spend trying to buy elections.

David Roberts@volts.wtf · 5d ago

America's highest profile gutter racist to spend $100 million supporting the party of racism.

I think we should combine philosophy BlueSky's position that "flirting can be unintentional" with the emerging Gen Z norm that "flirting outside of dating apps is immoral" to create the most neurotic generation ever before seen.

Exactly this - Fascists have always been fascinated by human possibility even as they destroy it, and by (what we might euphemistically call) exploration of new territories in both spatial and technological senses.

Joel S.@joelhs.bsky.social · 5d ago

This is from the editor of the "Economist," and with all due respect, I do not think this is a surprising conflict at all. It's just typical fascist reactionary modernism, going back to Marinetti and the Italian Futurists.

I’m not a Burnhamite and the honeymoon won’t last - but I do think how much more competent he is has made hardcore Starmerites look pretty silly. Like holding on to a chef who keeps setting the kitchen on fire and blaming others, after getting in a competent person those who opposed look even worse.

So Concacaf sides with Uefa. FIFA's financial power grab is done. What's funny is Infantino would probably have just about got away with this if it wasn't for the Balogun thing. As i said at the time, that scared the absolute shit out of the European FAs. So they instantly closed ranks on this.

Roguelike Deckbuilder

But without AI slop what's left of LinkedIn?

Tits McGee@scientits.bsky.social · 6d ago

Oh my God, this is not a drill - LinkedIn has added 'seems like AI slop' as an option on posts Genuinely thought it was a joke until I clicked on a few posts

Is Farage a hypocrite & supporter of violent authoritarianism, cynically using & boosting the guillotine t-shirt post for personal political gain? Yes. Was Polanski an idiot and should he apologise wholeheartedly nevertheless? Also yes. I really don't understand why this is hard.

I felt some of the earlier Corbyn/Polanski comparisons were a bit lazy and superficial, but Polanski's handling of the Farage case is really reminding me of one of Corbyn's central political flaws.

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

“Zero died because of DOGE," Elon Musk said in his interview with the Economist. This claim is utter nonsense and has been widely debunked. But Musk tried to back this up with additional dissembling that's just as bad. We took it on here: newrepublic.com/article/2135...

Agree with this - the decline in vocal, material support for civil liberties by people and institutions with influence is one of the most disturbing developments of the 2020s UK.

flyingrodent@flyingrodent.bsky.social · last wk.

It’s astonishing how liberalism in Britain just laid down and died, probably around the time the spooks went to the Guardian office and smashed those hard drives. If this had happened in the 2000s, half of the press and parliament would’ve been up in arms. Now, hoping it all just goes away, at best

Indeed, Musk pretty consistently polls as virtually the most unanimously despised figures among UK voters. He makes Starmer and Trump, as well as other American tech oligarchs like Bezos and Zuckerberg, look popular by comparison. But no-one in British politics wants to act on that.

Toby Buckle@polphilpod.bsky.social · last wk.

it's not that they're unbeatable, what we're facing in the uk is in many ways a lot weaker than the fascist presence in america but no one's taking it seriously. our centre-left leadership is in full appeasement mode, the right, shabby collaborators

The whole point of the original policy (which was and is terrible) was to target exactly this group. And now they’re going to introduce the policy and exempt them? Just abandon the policy! The whole thing is just a terrible idea.

Immigration Bot@immigrationbot.bsky.social · 2w ago

"Exclusive: Andy Burnham thought to be considering waiving stricter right to remain rules for people already working in the sectorHundreds of thousands of care workers could be exempted from the home secretary’s plans to toughen up the immigration system under proposals being…" — The Guardian

CCP talks about how the solution to its economic problems is not rebalancing the economy towards consumers, but "new productive forces," aka automation and ai MAGA and sv like ai for the same reason: the promise of growth without the difficulties of relinquishing control to unruly people

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2w ago

1. The new Trump / Kratsios plan for US science appears explicitly designed to destroy US universities. Diverting money to tech donors is probably just a bonus. Gift link.

I know domestically this isn't going to play badly at all, but it's exactly the sort of unnecessary regressive policy action that soured me the most on Starmer. Burnham as "Starmer but more politically competent" confirmed at this point.

Bloomberg News@bloomberg.com · 2w ago

New UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham will use money allocated to helping poor countries deal with the worst impacts of climate change to fund a new cap on bus fares across England.

Christ almighty. The British obsession with itemized “pay fors” for everything is insane. This is just really not how fiscal policy or government works anywhere functional.

Bloomberg News@bloomberg.com · 2w ago

New UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham will use money allocated to helping poor countries deal with the worst impacts of climate change to fund a new cap on bus fares across England.

One of the greatest threats to European Security is anti-migration politics. It means we have less workers, less scientists, less doctors, less engineers, less soldiers, less of everything in a time of war. It is an active measure to convince Europeans that to be great we must be smaller.

The Ukrainian Review@theukrainianreview.bsky.social · 2w ago

🇵🇱Poland and 🇭🇺Hungary are tightening restrictions on non-🇪🇺EU workers to respond to public concerns about immigration, despite warnings from businesses and economists that both countries face serious labor shortages due to aging populations, - Reuters

For some reason, a great many who consider them shrewd, intellectually-minded strategies have wholly invested themselves in the idea that the true heart of pragmatic realism is an ironclad terror in the unknown even while the known lies dead at their feet.

this is all from the people who think we need to bring back "true and false!!" and "right and wrong!!" to defeat the relativist academy, and then in practice their entire plan boils down to "we should ignore truth in favor of DEI for a reactionary guy i just made up"

Peacetime politics involves less physical danger than war, but it has some dangers in common: both require what Clausewitz calls “moral courage” by which he means the willingness to accept risks and moral responsibility. This is what I saw lacking on that panel. 1/🧵

Liberal Currents@liberalcurrents.com · 2w ago

"I had only one reaction to the panelists and their cheerleaders: these gutless losers will never win. If they have their way, we will, at best, remain in this crisis for a generation longer, and at worst we will simply lose the war." www.liberalcurrents.com/tit-for-tat-...

“Never bathe a baby lest they defeat you in some future battle.” – Sun Tzu

I wrote a column about this in 2023 and still feel so strongly about it!!! in my opinion a truly civilised and successful society is one in which even slackers get to enjoy a decent enough life www.newstatesman.com/comment/2023...

Henry Mance@henrymance.ft.com · 3w ago

Really enjoyed this article in defence of meritocracy as.ft.com/r/5afd25c1-e...

If Burnham actually has arrived in London and decided that where Labour have been going wrong is that they were insufficiently willing to crack down on foreigners and undesirables so once we signal that we're doing that extra hard we'll be grand (too early to tell but signs are not good)... yeesh.