regardless of which candidate you support I really hate this bit where pundits pretend being electable in a primary makes you electable in the general election just ask senators Hershel Walker, Blake Masters, Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, and Sharron Angle how that worked out for them

Just finished The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes -- maybe the best Weird City fantasy novel since Perdido Street Station? (The Saint of Bright Doors is another contender but I don't see it primarily as a weird city book, as much as I enjoyed it.)

also, cheap stuff has actually gotten way better quality now. this is a 1985 chevy cavalier. 88hp engine (although it was fuel injected!), and basically no creature comforts [a/c was an option, same with an FM radio]. it would last you maybe 100k miles. It cost the equivalent of $27,000 today.

Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · yesterday

I guess my question is, when was the time that consumer goods were mostly high-quality, durable, and a good value for the price? What decade was the ideal time to be a consumer in America? Not saying you’re wrong but I’m inherently suspicious about any kind of declinist narrative like this

Folks I won’t tell you not to feel your feelings, but this is rage bait. He’s talking about expanding beyond politics into things like live sports.

The Verge@theverge.com · 2d ago

Bluesky's new CEO Toni Schneider on the platform's reputation for being a liberal bubble: "Yes, we definitely want that to change. It is already changing. It certainly wasn’t designed to attract one specific group of people."

stripping OMB of the ability to dole out grants is an enormous win, this nukes the SAVE act, it prohibits further ICE bailouts, adding a "no, really, trump can't break already on-the-books laws regarding elections the federal government doesn't run" clause would be both unnecessary and unproductive

Murshed Zaheed@murshedz.bsky.social · 3d ago

Patty Murray and Chuck Schumer decide to strike a “bipartisan” deal with … checks notes … Susan Collins to fund the Trump regime through December which appears to not to any include any safeguards against Trump’s meddling with midterm elections.

Chiron was known to be well-versed in medicine (having learned it from Apollo) making him the original Centaur for Disease Control

A big ol' hard to swallow pill for a lot of folks on here:

Max Dubler 🏳️‍🌈@maxdubler.com · 3d ago

Online shopping eliminated these gatekeepers and disintermediated the market, allowing consumers to express their desires more directly. And it turns out that what people really want is cheap disposable goods, not more expensive but higher quality stuff that lasts a long time.

After the first wishes though, all bets are off.

Dare Obasanjo@carnage4life.bsky.social · last wk.

“What we need to explain to the world: Number one, we are close to creating a genie that can grant any wish. Number two, we are going to make sure that our first wishes broadly benefit humanity” - Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI — This is definitely the opposite of Anthropic’s AI kills all jobs pitch.

Spider-Mans is surely correct here because there are both distinct Spider-Men (Miles Morales, Ben Reilly, Miguel O’Hara) and also a super weird alternate reality character called Spiders Man, which is thousands of spiders imprinted with Peter Parker’s consciousnes squeezed into a spandex suit.

Molly White@molly.wiki · last wk.

enjoying imagining the discussion among editors in which they determined if this ought to be pluralized as Spider-Mans, Spider-Men, or Spiders-Man

enjoying imagining the discussion among editors in which they determined if this ought to be pluralized as Spider-Mans, Spider-Men, or Spiders-Man

Omg it just occurred to me that this means AI can now pass the Kobayashi Maru test

Athul K. Acharya@athul.acharya.cc · last wk.

Okay the funniest part of this, to me, is that the OpenAI bot was right! Hugging Face had the solutions it was looking for!

“Is Werner Herzog neurodivergent” is a question that feels fundamentally inadequate to its ontological task

Vituperative Erb@vituperativeerb.bsky.social · last wk.

I cannot recommend strongly enough the audiobook of Werner Herzog’s memoir EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF AND GOD AGAINST ALL as read by Werner Herzog

the 'C' in "USB-C" stands for "cloaca" because it's one hole that does just about everything

This is it. The perfect BlueSky post.

Obadiah Starmer@youngmarxist.bsky.social · 2w ago

saying this in the middle of the ai speculative bubble while normal people are starving because of billionaire greed is really out of touch

I don’t know how to convince anyone of this, but the hundreds or thousands of words many publications run below the headline aren’t decorative. Often they contain nuance that doesn’t fit into ten words.

Folks. As much as I agree Netanyahu should face justice, arresting him when he arrives for UNGA would be patently illegal, and would end international norms that have facilitated diplomacy for hundreds of years. Also, we don’t recognize the ICC and couldn’t turn him over if we did arrest him.

The New York Times@nytimes.com · 3w ago

Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in an interview with The New York Times that his administration was still discussing whether to arrest the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, if he comes to New York City as expected for the U.N. General Assembly in September.

Visualized.

Denali@denali.bsky.social · 3w ago

Husband just came in to tell me that since the assassination of Abraham Lincoln every American president has been alive at the same time as Herbert Hoover.

Messi goes super saiyan in the last 20 of every match and every opposing coach is like, what if he didn’t and we could just defend a narrow lead until the whistle

There really is a perverse sort of humor in watching ppl whose main activities are working an email job, getting things delivered to them, & looking at their phones too much bc like "god, people during X Time Period probably had it way easier than we do rn"

One of the things that has me legitimately baffled about the current primary climate (including what will likely be the 2028 race) is that even fairly engaged people don't seem to be pricing in at all that there's not going to be any money in 2029.

i’m sorry but ‘literally died of hard heartedness’ is the most hack writing yet in an already weak season

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

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lindsey Graham died from aorta rupture stemming from hardening of arteries: preliminary finding from medical examiner.

Support fell from 52% to 40% when eliminating private insurance and increased taxes were invoked. Offered a hypothetical federal plan or their current insurance, 70% say they'd rather keep with their current coverage. (This is not actually terribly surprising if you follow polling in this space.)

Zeteo@zeteo.com · 4w ago

‘A First-of-Its-Kind’ Poll About Medicare for All A centrist think tank offered to conduct an exclusive poll for Zeteo to gauge Americans’ attitudes about Medicare for All. Here’s what we found: zeteo.com/p/medicare-f...

Too bad we made booking travel a criminal offense and abolished the profession of travel agent. The fact few people are willing to pay agents anymore, even though they still exist, shows that they weren't actually that incredible! This kind of incredibly lazy nostalgia is so tiresome.

Rob Sheridan@rob-sheridan.com · 4w ago

Saw a meme of GenZ baffled by how pre-internet travel worked, and realized we’ve crossed an enshittification threshold where IRL services that once seemed outdated, like travel agents, now seem luxurious: “You meet with a human expert who plans out your whole trip with you” sounds incredible now tbh

I wrote a short post on how I think most of my commentary on AI and the environment is actually a normative rather than factual disagreement with the mainstream, and how that's ultimately rooted in the ethical philosophy of political liberalism. blog.andymasley.com/p/toward-env...

Toward environmental liberalism

The underlying normative claim of my environmental writing

blog.andymasley.com

I do think it's ironic that the wing of the Democratic Party that loves to holler about "the consultant class" threw themselves behind a guy who... listened to different consultants and ran a terrible campaign because of it

TIL

Quantian@quantian.bsky.social · 4w ago

Reminder that Napoleon Bonaparte owed his career to the fact that he wrote some fanfic and Robespierre’s brother liked his AO3 account so much he got given a command position. The rest is history, including his attempts to cover it up later out of embarrassment en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_soup...

The weirdness and endemic dishonesty of this saga led me to break with a large chunk of the post-Snowden left that I used to be friendly with. crookedtimber.org/2023/06/08/d...

Mike Masnick@masnick.com · 4w ago

Since folks are bringing up their "Klip is an asshole" story, here's mine. Four years ago he co-authored an Intercept story that was just... wrong. On almost every level. And helped kick off the MAGA obsession that the Biden admin colluded with social media to "censor conservatives." I called it out

Since folks are bringing up their "Klip is an asshole" story, here's mine. Four years ago he co-authored an Intercept story that was just... wrong. On almost every level. And helped kick off the MAGA obsession that the Biden admin colluded with social media to "censor conservatives." I called it out

Julia Azari@juliaazari.bsky.social · 4w ago

breaking my attempt at concentration to share a tidbit about Klippenstein, which is that he was a key vector of harassment 6 years ago when the internet decided to come after me for a bad Washington Post article. I haven't forgotten, or forgiven anyone

There's a certain category of commentator that is both stupid AND bad faith, so when you read their stuff, you have to judge on a case-by-case basis whether they are being obtuse or evil.

Who would have known Argentina would have so much trouble battling a remote Atlantic archipelago?