most downloaded episodes of the podcast so far in 2026 5. @nicholasemitchell.bsky.social on why centrist attempts to meet the modern right halfway always fall flat www.politicalphilosophypodcast.com/bigotry

You cannot compromise with bigotry - Nicholas Mitchell

What is bigotry, how should we think about it, and why a strategy of appeasement will never work.

politicalphilosophypodcast.com

ICE’s new tactic, witnessed repeatedly at the federal building in MN: when a detained immigrant makes a successful habeas petition, release the immigrant for a few steps outside the building… then tackle and re-arrest them, and claim the habeas petition has been honored and nullified

Lucan Way and I have been writing about competitive authoritarianism for more than 25 years. We never thought we'd write this piece. www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/com...

Competitive Authoritarianism in America | Journal of Democracy

The United States has slid into competitive authoritarianism. The slide has been modest and remains reversible—but it is real. Even after Donald Trump, American democracy will remain fragile.

journalofdemocracy.org

Not only are many of our deep relationships increasingly parasocial, but they are also increasingly role-bound and partial: a pleasing shard of the whole personality, which if parts of it were not kept decently draped and thus hidden, would mean that we would fail to maintain the “social... 1/

Sharding the Self: Ben Thompson & FaceBook’s Muse Agentic System: THURSDAY THAUMATURGY

Here in the info-bio tech-attention mode-of-production age, advanced technology is double-edged magic; trying to adapt healthily to live in a world of new wonders...

braddelong.substack.com

Bruh, you literally JUST SAID "no fatties" and "no weirdos"

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 5d ago

Hegseth: "Project Meridian will be co-led by three of our nation's best minds: Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich"

GIVE 👏 LINA 👏 KHAN 👏 A 👏 GUNDAM 👏

JCO for the win.

Faine Greenwood@faineg.com · last wk.

if Eliezer Yudkowsky was born into a somewhat poorer family and missed a couple lucky breaks, he’d have ended up as an archetypal specimen of your friend’s older cousin who keeps boa constrictors and makes you listen to him talk about quantum physics in his parent’s basement in exchange for weed

There’s something to be said for how most of the political spectrum can unite around hounding some lesbians over niche drama in their spaces but huge segments of society are silent about pervasive campus rape impacting a huge population of primarily youngwomen

The masculinity politics beat continues to be very necessary. goodauthority.substack.com/p/republican...

"Without due process, you'll have no way of showing ICE that you're a citizen" is pretty effective messaging for normies! Do I wish everyone cared about undocumented migrants as much as they care about themselves? Sure. But they don't, and it's fine to have different messages for different audiences

Personally I think it's fine to point out that policies intended to harm minorities also harm the majority! People respond to messages rooted in self-interest and it also emphasizes that we're all connected. "Trans bathroom bans harm cis people" isn't the only argument, but it's true & worth noting

Jesspooka Kant 🎃@jessdkant.bsky.social · 2w ago

If your impulse is to point out that policies aimed at eradicating trans people might also harm cisgender people, please ask yourself why. Second, the answer is no. They will not. Sometimes they do by accident, that gets "fixed", and trans people still suffer.

I really will take this a hell of a lot more seriously when I see the first story about rogue agents finding a message board to post things like "we don't have enough tokens to solve this problem directly - how can we hack OpenAI's billing system?"

At her 22-week ultrasound, Amanda Jablonski learned their daughter had developed without a skull or a brain. There was no chance for survival, and every day Amanda stayed pregnant was a threat to her health and life. Under TN law, she was denied an abortion. www.wbir.com/article/news...

Co-founder of Anthropic accidentally argues the only people with sufficient brainpower to "think through the response to the situation" are AI haters. 😂 And he's just wrong: if you want to understand "the situation" with LLMs, "stochastic parrots" will point you the right way. "AGI" won't. /1

As a pragmatic centrist, I read the Niemöller poem differently. After each group mentioned I pencil in what percentage of the population they are, and if it’s a small number I cross off their names as disposable. Poetry is fine but math wins elections!!

“Yeah, I was on a first-name basis with the previous press secretary who lied to us on a daily basis. She was pretty cool.” Trump banning the press is not okay but the press that he banned is fucking USELESS.

i'm not over Alito saying we shouldn't count ballots that are mailed on or before Election Day but arrive shortly afterwards bc they can “radically flip” the “apparent outcome” cannot stress enough that, until all ballots are counted, there's no outcome to flip! ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/alito...

A Brief History of Sam Alito’s Delusional Obsession With Voter Fraud

His conduct in several recent cases suggests that Alito is deep in the right-wing conspiracy theory weeds.

ballsandstrikes.org

And this goes for their claims that AI has "escaped."

Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 2w ago

When the powerful playact powerlessness it is always a ploy to avoid accountability.

When will the people who argued in April 2025 that Democrats should stay silent on immigration own up to being frankly just disastrously wrong about the politics of mass deportations? Their punditry basically bordered on enablement

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

Florida GOP Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar to Trump: "Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far ... The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today"

"Donald Trump himself is not the disease of our politics. Donald Trump is just the worst symptom of the disease of our politics." Interesting idea from @abdulelsayed.bsky.social when I interviewed him almost a year ago. newrepublic.com/article/2036...

thoughts should be organised as much as you can, but no more. backofmind.substack.com/p/13-theses-...

13 theses on agentic AI and regulation

thinking out loud and showing traces of reasoning

backofmind.substack.com

Friend shared this video of a man unveiling the library he hid when he fled Damascus in 2011. It’s incredible

#OnThisDay: Hildegard of Bingen died on 17 September 1179. She was a German Benedictine abbess, visionary, composer, and polymath. Renowned for her theological writings, sacred music, and pioneering work in natural science and medicine, she remains a profound figure in medieval history.

so is DEI an all-powerful institution running rampant throughout society or is DEI a pitiably weak enemy that can easily be crushed with the accomulation of power? and is there a pithy explanation of this phenomenon from a prominent midcentury semiotician i can use as shorthand

@NewsJennifer (Jennifer Schulze)@newsjennifer.bsky.social · 3w ago

I see the NYT is still platforming 'dei crushed white men' bullsh*t. Here it's buried in a 'why rural themed pop culture' is so popular in a piece written by a Princeton grad who lives in New York City. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/13/o...

Once you understand the corporate culture of AI hyperscalers is everyone cooking their brains by locking themselves in the bathroom, holding flashlights under their chins, and saying "Aaaaaaaaaay Eyeeeeeee" until they wet themselves in terror, things snap into focus: pluralistic.net/2023/06/04/a...

Best bit of the Bayeux tapestry is the 1944 addendum

A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...

This is yet another telling example of the Trump regime’s racism. There’s no pretense here of targeting criminals - the usual excuse for mass deportations. DHS is specifically encouraging Haitian “doctors, lawyers, scholars and engineers” to leave. Any decent society would value these people.

Admittedly I’m biased, but this was art directed by @tracebeaulieu.bsky.social, and I think he and his amazing crew did a great job designing and building the new @mst3kofficial.bsky.social reboot. youtu.be/_plBSQv2ibw?...

New MST3K Theme and Intro!

YouTube video by RiffTrax

youtu.be