The single fact that smoking went from omnipresent to effectively BANISHED from public life is a marvel
IDtheMIKE is probably running@idthemike.xyz · 22h agoIf you can't instantly recognize 20 consequential things that are better today than 40 years ago you are a fucking child.
Mamdani is caught between two long term trends He's clearly a young generational talent with a lot of road ahead in a moment that favors him BUT ALSO ... The New York City mayoralty is famously and historically the most high profile dead end in American politics
FinTwitter@fintwitter.bsky.social · 13h agoTED CRUZ PREDICTS ZOHRAN MAMDANI WILL BE NEW YORK'S NEXT U.S. SENATOR
Didn't we just hear that NYC added more jobs than expected and crime is at its lowest ever? Clearly this policy doesn't seem to causing any problems
The Wall Street Journal@wsj.com · yesterdayNew York City’s business elites are long accustomed to direct access to City Hall, where even Democratic mayors felt the need to court the city’s wealthiest and most influential corporate leaders. That access is getting shredded by Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
There are certain categories of product for which it IS true that more expensive versions tend to be reflective of better workmanship, but it's not universal I would suggest that there is some kind of pareto-maximum combination of price and durability, but it's more often found in commercial grade
Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · 13h agoI think if we apply a little basic consumer intuition to the situation we can see that it’s exceptionally rare for something that costs five times more to be more than five times as good and last more five times as long. That’s just not how prices work in the real world.
Heaven forefend that I might subsidize [checks notes] ... MAKING FOOD CHEAPER FOR PEOPLE
USA TODAY Opinion@usatodayopinion.usatoday.com · 3d agoOpinion: Mamdani's idea may sound appealing, but it's NYC taxpayers who will take the hit, subsidizing discounts they may never even use.
At just under 0.5% of the US population and 8% of all newspaper journalists, Manhattan is SIXTEEN TIMES overrepresented as a location And ... speaking as a Manhattanite, I do feel that it would sometimes be nice if we weren't the focus of everything all the time
ryan cooper@ryanlcooper.com · 2d agomore than 8 percent of all American newspaper journalists work in Manhattan, up from 2 percent in 2005 www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
The kind of joke that really needs a long setup
Steffen Rayburn-Maarup@rayburnmaarup.bsky.social · 3d agoI don't think people are ready for this kind of joke yet.
Also worth pointing out that knowing the way a story is going to proceed and end does not diminish the enjoyment of the story Romeo and Juliet begins with a guy walking out on stage and *telling you what will happen and why,* and it's still excellent
David Sims@davidlsims.bsky.social · 4d agoif I ever taught film criticism lesson one would be “you being smarter than the movie is not interesting to anyone”
Also, given how quickly this version of the country and society burst up through the ground, it's kind of disturbing to realize that it must have been always latent, simply waiting for permission and its moment
Faine Greenwood@faineg.bsky.social · 6d agoit’s never a great sign for your society when all the competent people who believe in doing a good job for the sake of it conclude that they’re actively being punished for these qualities, while malignantly stupid criminals are making bank
YouTube pushed this lady at me over the last year, and because I live in New York State (where she is), I simply thought she was a nuisance complainer and ignored her. Embarrassed to say it never occurred to me that she was complaining for institutional rather than personal reasons
David Roberts@volts.wtf · 6d agoI genuinely don't know what to do about this. In our diseased information environment, one MAGA-adjacent "influencer" can do more to shape public opinion than mountains of studies or facts. Where are the pro-clean-energy influencers to counter this shit?
Look, I'm very much sympathetic to the Ukrainians in this conflict, but this is deeply ahistorical framing and reeks of "We have always been at war with Eastasia" stuff There are plenty of good justifications for continuing the conflict outside of misrepresentative mythmaking!
The Kyiv Independent@kyivindependent.com · last wk.“The war with Russia has been going on for hundreds of years. And it will never end,” says Vadym “Khmuryi,” a drone pilot with the 15th Brigade of Ukraine’s National Guard.
Swap out the writer-directors for some tech bros, and it seems to be the same these days. "It's 'Galadriel'... The market will love it." "A movie or an app?" "Does it matter?"
BeijingPalmer@beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 2w ago'so we're going to give these untested writer-directors a billion dollars to do a huge Tolkien show' 'wow! So do they have a really strong grasp of the spirit of Tolkien's work?' 'Absolutely not.' 'do they have a clear and compelling vision of their own?' 'Not at all!'
"Will be steep and difficult," yes ... but also importantly, the country we will become at the far side of that path back will not be the country we were before it. At least the leadership class, and ideally the public, must understand and accept this in order for us to succeed
Bill Kristol@billkristolbulwark.bsky.social · 2w agoRichard Nixon worried the United States would act like “a pitiful, helpless giant.” Under Donald Trump that is, sadly, what we have become. The path back will be steep and difficult. For now we have to minimize the damage. The first step is to end Trump’s disastrous Iran war now.
Just absolutely BEGGING people to stop naming startups after sci-fi and fantasy things....
It is both intriguing and important to remember that when modern Nationalism first arose in the 17th century, it was seen as an aspirational, liberatory ideology - freeing the brotherhood of man from the arbitrariness of dynastic rule, allowing the great swaths of humanity to see each other as equal
TJ resists! Bluestormcoming!@tjjohnson.bsky.social · 3w ago"Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind." -Albert Einstein
I have said for over a year now that we know they *want* to fix the elections, but we wouldn't know how likely they were to succeed until closer to it Now we know
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3w agoMy takeaway from that speech is that we are headed down the road of Trump trying to outright rig elections. It probably won't work, but he's going for it.
Overheard from a group of four guys on the subway: “Yo, why are you doomscrolling? You’re with the bros”
Boy kids these days are going to have no appreciation for the discipline it took to call up the pizza place in person and not hear the laughter of your friends in the background as you placed a joke order for 100 pizzas
Eris@isolyth.dev · 3w agoThat's it. Wrap it up. Bubble pops 9:30 am EST TOMORROW. It's done.
I mean, didn't Paul Ehrlich fight nuclear fifty years ago precisely because he thought it would be a bad idea for human civilization to have good, cheap, reliable non-harmful energy? Like he was so committed to the overpopulation hypothesis that the idea of more flourishing was dangerous
mtsw@mtsw.bsky.social · 3w agoMost depressingly you even see degrowth doomers *fighting solar* because of basically imaginary negative environmental impacts of utility scale solar but also because these projects challenge their worldview bsky.app/profile/jkfe...
Broke: New York Gentrification Woke: Inclusive neighborhoods Bespoke: East Village Hutongs
Brendan O’Kane@bokane.org · 3w agoIf we’re going to have Beijing air then we should at least get Beijing restaurants/bookstores/bike lanes too
Extremely grateful I was not invited to what sounds like the most intolerable experience in the world
Henry Farrell@himself.bsky.social · 3w ago"Two months later, the couple and their loved ones went around the world to Bali. Guests, including “five shamans from across the world” and the Yale Whiffenpoofs acapella group, all joined in. The five day mini-festival began with a party with the dress code: “Welcome to the Jungle.”"
New Suzerain experiences? Sounds great ... but wouldn't I need someone's permission to experience them first?
Torpor Games@torporgames.com · 3w ago🚨 Big news for the Suzerain Universe! Announcing the next chapter with 3 major additions: 2 brand-new DLCs & 1 standalone game. Suzerain Stories: The Neutral Lens, Suzerain: Socialist Republic of Galmland, & Wars of Suzerain. Read more: store.steampowered.com/news/app/120...
It is an absolute bafflement to me that it should cost a hundred or two hundred dollars to purchase something out of which you get literal hundreds of hours of use is somehow an offense
Aaron van Dorn@aaronvandorn.bsky.social · 3w agoBoy people really dislike the idea that videogames are underpriced.
My mother used to say that Republicans were constantly suffering from "Testosterone Poisoning" just a shorthand Never expected she'd be quite so precisely on the nose
Max Berger@maxberger.bsky.social · 3w agoEverything is penis
We tried this in the 70s and people HATED it. Just at the latitude of New York City, the sun wouldn't come up until nearly 830 in the winter mornings The problems of the time shift are essentially a one hour jet lag situation twice a year. How is this such a problem?
Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 3w agoThe House overwhelmingly voted to pass a bill to make daylight saving time permanent
