Rose and I were talking at lunch, and we observed the way corporate heads have this irresistible attraction to every new biz trend that comes down the road. "Squirrel!" said Rose. And thus, the concept of Corporate Squirreling was born.

The Anchovy Problem: Six people go out for pizza. Each of them, trying to determine what should go on the pizza, tries to imagine what everyone else would like. They get a pizza, which everyone is only okay with. Then...

Why do political organizations think these tactics work? 1. The doom-and-gloom newsletter: "We're gonna die in flames unless you donate $$$!" They think we'll be afraid of a disastrous loss and therefore willing to donate...but more people are likely to say, why throw away good money?

Completely agree. The "scandal" amounts to one story about Barnes and an adult woman consensually having sex. Big whoop. The JS obviously wanted to claim status for ending Barnes's campaign...even though clearly Barnes ended the campaign because it's become clear he just doesn't have the numbers.

Murphy’s Law: Journal Sentinel Story on Mandela Barnes Is Irresponsible

No proof of 'inappropriate behavior.' Editor Greg Borowski owes readers an explanation.

urbanmilwaukee.com

Indeed. Even if a girl loses to a trans athlete: well so fucking what. Athletes lose all the time - it's part of being an athlete. (Also: AMAB is one type of biological fact. So is the genetics that make a kid bulky enough to be a standout linebacker, or tall enough to be a basketball center.)

e.w. niedermeyer@niedermeyer.online · 3d ago

how many real people have experienced actual, documented harm at the hands of Trans people playing sports? ok, how many children will be victimized by mandatory genital inspections, because you know the number isn't zero? tell me again, who are you trying to protect here??

Valuing physical strength & achievements over brains, obsessed with regulations & appearances, fearful of “effeminacy” & actual women (both as soldiers & in real life), authoritarian overconfidence, thin-skinned re criticism, fear or ignorance of innovation… Mid-70s, this book had Hegseth pegged!

Foreign Policy@foreignpolicy.com · 3d ago

A 50-year old book reveals the tendencies that undermine military competence—a century ago and today. Read our analysis for free:

Capsule of our decline: alcohol no, guns yes.

slate@pleasebegneiss.bsky.social · 3d ago

my neighborhood 7-11 closed a couple years ago and tried to reopen but couldn’t get the permit approved because there’s a preschool next door and 7-11s sell alcohol (the previous permit was grandfathered in). i saw a fence going up around the lot recently and looked up what was moving in: a gun shop

Instagram served me an ad of some 80-year-old guy in glasses surfing along behind a speedboat...and my first reaction was, "This is the best Fake Mitch McConnell proof-of-life yet!" Alas.

Rabbithole Time: I ran into a reference to Marabi, an early form of South African jazz. Its Wikipedia entry contains a quote from the Garland Encyclopedia of Music expressing blatant favoritism towards score-reading musicians 1/

AI is a corporate cult.

I'm always amused...whenever anyone says "defund the police!" or "abolish the police!" or even the much-less-catchy "reconceptualize the role of police and stop having people with guns handle things they're not trained for," the inevitable response is "what are you gonna do when someone mugs you?" /

Ships that have sailed, sadly: A "clone" of a 40-year-old woman is not another 40-year-old woman who looks exactly the same etc. Clones grow from birth just like everyone else. But everyone thinks "identical copy" as if cloning's a photocopier. 1/3

THEY'RE MONSTERS, THOSE SOCIALISTS! Let them take charge, and they'll be installing PINK BUS BENCHES IN YOUR CITY!

wishda@wishda.bsky.social · 5d ago

The DSA in Wilmingotn, N.C. has created a "crisis" by putting benches at city bus stops, after literal decades of the city promising and failing to do so.

Perfectly normal post from perfectly normal tech CEO.

Chris Taylor@christaylornyc.bsky.social · 5d ago

Bryan Johnson: Maybe I’ve gone too far with this longevity thing Also Bryan Johnson:

"Schadenfriday" (per Jay Kuo): for a guy holding a federal law-enforcement position, Kash Patel has a conspicuous lack of legal savvy in his lawsuit-filing skills...

Kash Patel Keeps Losing in Court

This week, his $10 million defamation lawsuit against a blogger went up in smoke, just like his other lawsuits that seek to intimidate and silence his critics.

open.substack.com

Fundamentally, right-wingers do not understand, and fear, the idea of interdependence. They also fundamentally do not understand, and fear, the fact that the world is often ambiguous and does not admit of single, simple answers.

Anyone wondering about the progress of the fascist takeover of the US might take a look at the conjunction of the three articles I will link in comments.

Makes perfect sense.

Mike Rothschild@rothschildmd.bsky.social · 7d ago

The overwhelming right wing sentiment is that COVID was an engineered bioweapon that was also harmless. Trump overreacted to it by shutting down the country, then engineered a drive to create a vaccine that was the real bioweapon that killed millions, and it's Joe Biden's fault.

Damned right

Kristy Greenberg@kristygreenberg.bsky.social · last wk.

Hurling F-bombs at an 85-year-old scientist who won’t fight back doesn’t make you tough. Staying silent after your own daughter accused Rep. Max Miller of holding a gun to her head, pushing her against a wall, and fracturing your granddaughter’s collarbone makes you a coward.

Free advice for Francesca Hong (whom I'm voting for in the primary): Asked to defend "execution"? "Multiple shots directly to the head is excessive if the goal is only to disarm and contain a suspect." 1/2

Chilling on the Hill 7/28

Uh, yes, it is. By definition, a preference for a single race, culture, ethnicity is "bigotry." Get a better dictionary. And a better brain and a better heart.

Talking about more "training" for cops is stupid: not emptying your gun three or four times directly into the skull of someone you've already got flat on the ground is common sense for anyone not already inclined to do so.

This fall [gigantic movie-trailer drum hit], based on the blockbuster poem [GMTDH], so much depends upon... [low-angle shot of massive, rain-soaked red wheelbarrow]...so much depends upon [shot of lowering stormclouds, thunder cracks, lightning flashes, pouring rain]...so much...depends upon...

The problem with corporate AI usage and practices is that it violates LABOR RIGHTS. Not "copyright." Scraping data does not violate copyright law, and thinking in those terms is destructive. (This is a long, detailed essay. Hot takes by people who haven't read the article are unwelcome.)

I am very unlikely ever to afford to buy a Mercedes-Benz...but the AI thing with this car is a Very Bad Idea. As the writer notes (search in the article for "Mountain Goats"), a person truly in distress would be very unlikely to respond positively to a fucking AI's bogus "empathy."

Erin Marquis@emarquis.bsky.social · last wk.

Wrote a thing about Mercedes-Benz Purple Tesla eater.

The most troubling thing about this is the police claim that a US citizen, returning to the US, is not "in" the US because the cops suspect him of a crime. So much for presumed innocence.

Maybell Romero@maybell.bsky.social · last wk.

What an interesting crim pro hypo! I had no idea duress passwords exist and it kind of makes me want to put one on my phone. techcrunch.com/2026/07/24/u...

Yep. Humans need to excrete waste. Fail to provide sanitary facilities for this purpose...and you end up with unsanitary practices.

madeline odent@oldenoughtosay.com · last wk.

Really hate this “nobody has ever figured out how human feces is getting into the food processing” framing it’s incredibly simple if you pay a single molecule of attention to the working conditions of the majority of agricultural workers in the USA

From Jay Kuo's newsletter on the DOJ's harassment of NYT reporters...an astonishing paragraph in which DOJ lawyers revealed they hadn't mastered the most elementary first-year law-student standards of case history ...

Just in case you thought "Morrissey being a dick" was a recent thing. No, he just had the rest of the Smiths making brilliant noise so we could ignore his garbage more readily.

Marcus 🏳️‍🌈🇧🇧@marcusjdl.bsky.social · 2w ago

My beef with Morrissey runs all the way back to 1986 when he said this about Black artists. Nineteen Eighty Six, while the Smiths were still active. It’s not a “later phenomenon” don’t try and lie to me www.standard.co.uk/culture/musi...