I'm so sorry.

this fall, consider dressing like the man in gary bunt's paintings

Yeah, this is insightful. There are a lot of people who identify as progressive who do not actually believe in basic liberal principles, and this shows up clearly when their suggested solutions to authoritarian conservatism amount to "authoritarian progressivism".

The Mall Krampus@themallkrampus.bsky.social · 11h ago

There’s a lot of discourse today around the appeal of radicalism in phases where liberal democracy is having to muddle through and simultaneously a set of discourse answers which are just “we need to make liberalism one of those radicalisms so that it can compete in that space“ which… hoooo boy

IMHO democracy worked just fine in Brazil. The guy who attempted the coup was jailed and is still in jail. The lesson of Brazil is "don't run a corrupt octogenarian with five decades of political baggage against conservatives and then pikachu face when the conservatives win".

Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · 7d ago

The lesson of Brazil is you have to make sure none of them can ever come back

This is very much true and incredibly important (the one thing Sulla couldn't abolish was his own example). I do think that without a judiciary Romans could trust, things were headed for autocracy anyway. I genuinely don't know if a more virtuous Sulla could have fixed that.

Nute@nutedawn.bsky.social · 13h ago

1. RM is of course entirely right. Sulla wiped out his enemies and totally remade all of Rome’s institutions, and it *didn’t work* 2. I think it’s also extremely important to understand *why* it didn’t work, as Ronald Syme memorably put it…

A related observation is that the rise of atheism has revealed that many people who understandably don't believe in God nonetheless yearn for spirituality in their life, and we don't currently have a good answer for where they should find it.

Aaron Blackshear@aaronblackshear.bsky.social · 12h ago

A lot of people really want to believe they don’t have any faith, that they only believe in science, that faith is for the dummies, but they absolutely do. It’s fine, there’s no shame in that, we all believe in things we can’t prove or know for sure. Stop pretending you’re above it

Yeah, exactly. I understand why some people on here want to insulate themselves from the risk of heartbreak, but nobody including themselves should be mistaking it for serious political commentary, which is currently "we're gonna lay a biblical whuppin on em".

𝔻𝕒𝕟 🏈🍻💀@danmynrd.bsky.social · yesterday

Multiple State championship winning coach from Trump +10000000 seat: I think a Democrat should be governor of Texas Dumbfuck political commentators: this year feels like a GE R+1 environment methinks

Peter Molyneux press conferences vaccinated me against this kind of crap.

Bugs, Yaoist@bugsmaytrix.bsky.social · 3d ago

maybe i'm old fashion but the coolest thing about video games is being taken to new worlds that i hadn't thought up and experiencing something exciting that the artists behind the game want to show me

Definitely downstream of this all being one big R&D lab leak and so all the marketing and product design accidentally ended up in the hands of people who just kinda assume everyone knows a couple feldspars.

Productivity as an adult is just an endless process of applying new psychological tricks and operant conditioning to yourself until an acceptable number of tasks are completed.

Most AI consciousness people do not believe current models are conscious but believe that it will be hard to tell when the transition happens and so it is worth putting in place appropriate mitigations in advance

My hot take is I don't think the revisionism of HP helps anyone. Will is correct here. The fact is, the politics of the books are simply completely different from how she participates in politics now. She was radicalized and changed by social media. It happened to her, and it can happen to you too.

Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · 3d ago

to be fair it’s actually the opposite - Rowling was right about this precise dynamic

I feel like this is a different issue than nativism in a rich Western country. South Africa has like a 38% poverty rate. Obviously rioting is bad, but I don't find it surprising that several million desperately poor people are outraged that the government is increasing the competition they face.

Matthew Downhour @matthewdownhour.bsky.social · 3d ago

We’re not even close to peak nativism, globally

I'm not trying to be a contrarian when I say that this is not obviously a bad thing, to me. A lot of people who support capital punishment in theory get incredibly squeamish about the reality of it, and while confronting that is not the purpose of this move, it may be the effect.

Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 3d ago

The Pentagon says it will livestream the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan

Ossoff's superpower is that he correctly thinks his opponent is a contemptible piece of shit and he is willing to explain why in clear and direct language. bsky.app/profile/atru...

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3d ago

Ossoff: "If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club"

This reminds me of the comment on a clip of a wild animal approaching a human to help with a problem that the animal kingdom appears to operate a shared playbook of "if all else fails, seek out the elves and pray their fickle nature is kindly that day".

Standplaats Kraków could really use some cash!@standplaatskrk.pl · 3w ago

Take it from an autistic guy who got stoned once and had this revelation: the primary purpose of social interaction is generally not the exchange of goods, services, or information. Once you figure that out a lot of the economy and society make a lot more sense.

It's remarkable that OP thinks this guy has been "dissuaded" from reading a book to his child, rather than the obvious truth that he doesn't give a solitary fuck. There's a bell curve of male interest in engaging in infant childcare, but the peak is way, way to the left of the female bell curve.

Jess Calarco@jessicacalarco.com · 4d ago

It's telling that men would rather try to invent tech to replace humans' role in caregiving than step up as equal partners in parenting. Telling, that is, in that it shows how financial capitalism and patriarchy work together to dissuade men from doing "unprofitable" labor, like the work of care.

There are more than a few people on here who would do well to recognize that precisely because sexual assault is so serious, stating unproven allegations about it as fact on Bluesky can end up with their full legal name under a groveling apology on the internet.

i'm afraid i must diagnose this as queen shit

Solomon@solomonrmissouri.com · 4d ago

OMG metro.co.uk/2026/10/07/w...

I think it's probably really hard for even thoughtful, well-meaning parents to grasp that all their sacrifices raising their child does not entitle them to a place in their adult children's lives... ...but that knowledge is so critical to doing what's required to ensure that you do have that place.

BeijingPalmer@beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 5d ago

*hotdog guy*

Try our new service, Shamm-AI. The only LLM that generates two answers per prompt and asks you to say which one is more helpful, but then vehemently disagrees with your choice and starts arguing with you about it

Third-eye Thoughts@thirdthoughts.bsky.social · 5d ago

New LLM where every prompt is answered with a Talmudic debate.

IMHO if we're talking about the Millennium Prize proof, it may not be plagiarized in the normal sense of the word, but there's nothing normal about AI, and the invention of a new type of cognition requires re-evaluation of how we reasonably define plagiarism.

Colin@colin-fraser.net · 5d ago

Setting aside any irony in case there is anyone out there who takes my posts seriously, these OpenAI proofs are probably correct and not plagiarized in any normal sense of the word and highly consequential

"I went to heaven for 18 days and I just followed Jesus around the gym saying, 'Wow, Lord, you're keepin' it really tight. Lookin' good! Can I spot you?' and then he kicked me out of heaven"

"I want a big tent, in the sense that I want more people to become the exact same kind of leftist I am. It's the only way we can win."

I'll be upfront that I don't follow Brazilian politics, but if I had to guess it's the age-old story that if the good guys don't fix the things the electorate considers broken, they'll give the bad guys a shot at it. There is a moral duty on the left to solve the electorate's problems.

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

I think it's pretty clear by now that there is nowhere near a majority of voters, anywhere, who inherently see far-right authoritarianism as extrinsic to the success or survival of democratic systems.

Oh, *Flavio* Bolsonaro. I thought for about 90 seconds that I was having a psychotic break.

Tyron@tyron.bsky.social · last wk.

Brazil looks over and like Bolsonaro's definitely winning the runoff. Some crazy flips too.

IMHO this nearly happened with the Black Death in the 15th century, which likely travelled via China > steppe nomad conquistadores > Italy's merchant republics. 60% of the European population dead in 8 years. Europe was arguably only saved by its irrelevance and overland distance from Asia.

Chrononaut@chrononaut.bsky.social · last wk.

Alternative history timeline where the diseases Columbus brings back from the New World are much deadlier so Europe gets ravaged by the biggest plague is has ever experienced, and then gets conquered and colonized by African and Asian empires.