The platonic ideal form of the Trumpist state is that of an incompetent executioner, blessed by the court to be horrific and violent to no successful end.
Nils Gilman
@nilsgilman.bsky.social
Historian of the intelligentsia. Odi profanum vulgus et arceo. Deputy Editor @NoemaMag.com. Check out "Children of a Modest Star": https://www.sup.org/books/politics/children-modest-star. Posts my own
But anyone who objects to having some citizen-voters have more representation than others is presumably also vociferously opposed to the existence of the Senate. Unless they’re just a special-pleading partisan hack, that is.
Nils Gilman@nilsgilman.bsky.social · 10h agoApportioning Congress based on a census count that includes non-citizen residents does give more influence to citizen-voters in immigrant-rich locations, but it in no way “dilutes the voting power of Americans.” This latter point is either stupid or a lie. thefederalist.com/2026/09/30/e...
Apportioning Congress based on a census count that includes non-citizen residents does give more influence to citizen-voters in immigrant-rich locations, but it in no way “dilutes the voting power of Americans.” This latter point is either stupid or a lie. thefederalist.com/2026/09/30/e...
Even Democrats Oppose Letting Foreign Citizens Tilt The House
Americans overwhelmingly believe congressional seats should be distributed solely based on the number of U.S. citizens in each state.
thefederalist.com
"The heirs of dependency theory historicized modernization theory, arguing that it had been the ideology of a period of capitalist expansion, when the horizon of expectations was permanent growth." Now that consensus about "the horizon of future" has been deranged.... www.equator.org/articles/bra...
Brazil: The Future of the Far Right • EQUATOR
The limits of Lulismo, the sons of Bolsonaro and the new politics of disintegration
equator.org
I sharply disagree with this. Several reasons. “Engaging students through messages, searching conversation” can certainly generate ideas and reveal what parts of an argument need elaboration, but only writing forces you to be precise. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/o...
Opinion | I’m a College Professor. Writing Isn’t as Important as We Think.
If I do not treat writing as essential for achieving thought, it is not clear why I should force my students to.
nytimes.com
In completely unrelated news, Luckey’s Anduril signed a contract with U.S. Army in March 2026 worth up to $20 billion and Musk’s Starlink & SpaceX signed in May 2026 signed $6.45B in Pentagon contracts to build satellites & a satellite communications network. www.cnbc.com/2026/09/30/m...
Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich to help Pentagon with warfare initiative, Hegseth says
Pete Hegseth, in remarks about the state of the military, announced a project led by two GOP-supporting tech executives to examine military capabilities.
cnbc.com
Nils Gilman@nilsgilman.bsky.social · 2d ago50% more budget for the Pentagon, but with 20% fewer generals. Draw your own conclusions about what this boy math adds up to. www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth...
“A mother described to me that she had prepared her child’s snack and placed it in her backpack, kissed her face, and sent her to school. What was returned to her was her child’s backpack with an uneaten sandwich.”
Albert Pinto@70sbachchan.bsky.social · yesterday492/ "For more than two months, I have been working on a truly horrific story about one of the gravest war crimes committed by the US since Vietnam: The bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, Iran" "120 of them were children & 26 were teachers" www.dropsitenews.com/p/minab-scho...
Hard to imagine how a short-fingered vulgarian who once managed to bankrupt an Atlantic City Casino might have trouble with the finances of a snooty high culture institution defined by its Establishmentarian self-regard. www.washingtonpost.com/style/2026/0...
The Kennedy Center was solvent when Trump took over. Then its finances collapsed.
The Post examined 15 years of the institution’s financial records to see why it went south after the president took over.
washingtonpost.com
Given how obsessed MAGA is with depicting Joe Biden as Jimmy Carter redux, it’s darkly hilarious and deeply poetic that Trump’s presidency is foundering on (a) his impotence in the face of Iran & (b) his inability to do anything about stagflation.
Top tier trolling here
Albert Pinto@70sbachchan.bsky.social · 2d ago“People all around the world are looking to Americans to stop their government. Now is the time," the IRGC said. "Americans need to rise up and put an end to this miserable situation that their country, and the world at large, is facing." www.newsweek.com/5-takeaways-...
Most historians today argue that the key policies that made possible the US’s economic resurgence under Reagan were mostly initiated by Carter: military buildup, deregulation, taming of inflation, support for the strong $, etc. Reagan’s main policy innovation—tax cuts for the rich—was a net negative
A feature of post-war German democracy has been that the left has traditionally had far more of a firewall to the far left than the center right has had with the far right. The central role of anti-communism in Cold War West Germany created a structural asymmetry that has not been reckoned with.
“Under NY State law, voluntary intoxication does not preclude consent unless it is completely immobilizing.” The DA “described the students’ behavior as morally reprehensible but not necessarily illegal on the basis of the info they had about the case at the time.” www.thecut.com/article/what...
What It Feels Like at Cornell Right Now
As a professor at the Ivy League school, Kate Manne has known many, many victims. There’s a palpable feeling on campus, she writes, that this is big.
thecut.com
And guess what nationality his wife and son are? Always the grifting angle….
Rok Stergar@stergarr.bsky.social · 5d agoA fun fact: ever since His Dementedness started talking about super intelligence (SI), registration of Slovene domain names (.si) has exploded.
50% more budget for the Pentagon, but with 20% fewer generals. Draw your own conclusions about what this boy math adds up to. www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth...
Hegseth to announce a 20% cut to generals and admirals
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is expected to call for a 20% cut in the number of generals and admirals across the U.S. military on Wednesday, a Pentagon official told CBS News.
cbsnews.com
Implementation & diffusion of general purpose technologies always takes longer than boosters expect because taking full advantage of the new affordances requires transforming institutions, skillsets & protocols—& those things are hard/slow to change. Consider electricity: www.bbc.com/news/busines...
Why didn't electricity immediately change manufacturing?
The internet shows, as with electricity, that real technological change takes time and imagination.
bbc.com
Bummer for Jack Smith that he missed that game in Atlanta, because Steph Curry dropped a 60 piece in that one. www.espn.com/nba/boxscore...
Hawks 141-134 Warriors (Feb 3, 2024) Box Score - ESPN
Box score for the Atlanta Hawks vs. Golden State Warriors NBA game from February 3, 2024 on ESPN. Includes all points, rebounds and steals stats.
espn.com
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2d ago🤡 Schmitt beclowns himself 🤡 Schmitt concocted an elaborate conspiracy theory that Smith traveled to Atl for a Hawks game and to collude with Fani Willis, & flashed his "evidence" before accusing Smith of perjury. There's just one problem -- his facts were totally wrong. Here's the whole sequence:
Ten years ago I briefly oversaw Berkeley’s Title IX office, which investigates sexual misconduct cases. One misconception is that the evidence in such cases is always (only) “he said/she said”; in fact, as at Cornell, there is often quite a lot of other evidence. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Texts about alleged Cornell gang-rape released after investigation reopened
Texts, including unnamed male defendant appearing to apologize, reportedly sent days after alleged 2024 assault
theguardian.com
“AI not as a monolith, but as a dynamic field of possibility and tension between creativity & computation, where longstanding human questions about intention, desire, authorship, labor & value gain new urgency” — and making the liberating arts more important than ever press.umich.edu/Books/F/Firs...
First Encounters with AI | Nina Beguš
First Encounters with AI gathers some of today’s most original literary minds to explore one of the central artistic and cultural questions of our era: What happens to writing when language is no long...
press.umich.edu
Four ways to subvert an election: 1. Disqualify citizens before they vote 2. Stop qualified voters from casting the ballot 3. Stop cast votes from being counted 4. Overturn the results after you’ve lost, 4ex by refusing to seat winners (Expect them to try all) www.liberalcurrents.com/editors-note...
Editor's Notes: Gaming Out Antidemocratic Tactics
How worried should we be about election interference in 2026, exactly?
liberalcurrents.com
A Broligarchy of Neoreaction Figures, seeking to build a Nerd Reich inspired by the Pseudointellectual DARC Web to complete the Dork Enlightenment project
Every problem we face was once upon a time the solution to something else.
The vibes are really bad. That observation is not just itself based on vibes, but on evidence: www.gallup.com/analytics/34...
State of the World's Emotional Health Report
Explore the connection between global peace, wellbeing and health in this report based on 145,000+ interviews across 144 countries and areas.
gallup.com
This year’s El Niño is likely to be the largest in at least 1,000 years #NothingToSeeHere #MoveRightAlong www.theguardian.com/environment/...
‘Jaw-dropping’ El Niño bursts through temperature record months before peak
‘Godzilla-level’ phenomenon is supercharging the climate crisis and will have a huge impact on communities across the world
theguardian.com
In 1927, Siegfried Kracauer wrote of photography, “For the first time, the inert world presents itself in independence from human beings,” and in 1931, Walter Benjamin spoke of photography’s “optical unconscious.” AI is doing the same thing for lexicality & agency, as someone has surely observed.
Calling what humans are doing to the Earth "terraforming" is sort of like calling what an arsonist does "urban renewal."
I’ve been saying this for years: the difference between (western) billionaires and (eastern) oligarchs is that the billionaires enjoy complete impunity, whereas the oligarchs do not. This is the financial dimension of that.
Bloomberg News@bloomberg.com · 4d agoAcross China, tax officials have gone into overdrive to boost receipts from the country’s richest people and biggest companies: bloom.bg/4ylDpSH
