Interesting question: when was the last time there was a group of over performing GOP congress candidates? I think there were some in 06 but I’m blanking. Anyone remember?
Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias.bsky.social · 9h agoBlue Dogs do substantially better than baseline Democrats but there’s no equivalent group of GOP overperformers who can win tough races in the face of Trump’s unpopularity. www.slowboring.com/p/republican...
MGP likely to advance... it's so over for those sea lions
Interesting comment from Stross on why changes in AI in the last few years haven’t made it into print SF I think his point that SF/F is now 75%-80% Fantasy and the remainder is mostly space battle series is big. There’s just not much market for hard future sf now old.reddit.com/r/printSF/co...
Has the 2020s AI boom already shaped sci-fi in some manner?
If you're asking about trad publishing at book length, the answer is "not really (yet)". The day a book is released by a Big Five publishing...
old.reddit.com
Lem is so good that in 1974 PKD wrote a letter to the FBI insisting that Lem was actually a committee of East Block SF writers created to demoralize western SF writers by being *too* good. LeGuin wrote letters against this culture.pl/en/article/p...
Philip K. Dick: Stanisław Lem is a Communist Committee
In September 1974, the FBI received a letter. The accusations in the letter were shocking – a communist conspiracy aimed at the hearts and minds of America through propaganda in the subtle guise of sc...
culture.pl
Diego@ryukyu-hsr.bsky.social · yesterdayStanislaw Lem is so good. I was reading an antology of some of his robotic short stories, ending in "The Mask" ("Maska"), described as a most disturbing love story. No wonder, the plot is that a robot assassin disguised as a woman is sent to a royal ball to kill one of the courtiers.
The worst bit is that it’s not even clear it’s winning them many votes from the right! Like I believe voters have real preferences; these are often bad. Yet there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that anti immigration bloggers are interested in left wing parties that go that way. bad imo
open all borders. stop having them be closed 🇺🇦🇱🇹🇵🇸🏴@dov.bsky.social · yesterdayModern Denmark's particularly reactionary approach to migration is especially grating when one considers that its economy is one of the healthiest in Europe. You can absolutely afford to crack the door open, you're just too racist for it.
Today, August 4, 2026, is the setting of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” about a fully automated house continuing on after the family who lived there and the world around it died in a nuclear blast.
I think there is something poetic in the last Anatolian speakers the Isaurians (Emperor Zeno etc) saving Eastern Roman Empire from Gothic takeover in the 5th century. (Alas Leo III is probably not Isaurian...).
#1 Shoup Fan@oneshoup.bsky.social · 2d agoCrazy to think that we have evidence of some Anatolian languages as late as the 6th century. Presumably that means that it survived later. I wonder if any village made it past 1000? Kurdish was probably around by the 9th, I wonder if they ever met? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli...
Crazy to think that we have evidence of some Anatolian languages as late as the 6th century. Presumably that means that it survived later. I wonder if any village made it past 1000? Kurdish was probably around by the 9th, I wonder if they ever met? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli...
Many languages don’t make a hand/arm or leg/foot distinction. E.g. Malayalam “Kāl” leg/foot or “Kai” arm/hand. I think other Dravidian langs are the same? (Obviously there is a way to refer to hand or foot but its not the top level distinction)
post malone ergo propter malone@proptermalone.bsky.social · 2d agoa question that is bitterly dividing my household: are feet part of the leg?
I really believe Ivanhoe is the most "19th century" English author. The number of streets and towns named after his books alone shows his influence, and yet very few people read him today (for just the US Longefellow's HIAWATHA is kind of similar)
Ted Underwood@tedunderwood.com · 2d agoMany have tried to stop her. Many have failed.
When you look globally, there are many more countries that consistently abandoned street-running railways in the postwar years than ones that retained them. The simpler answer is that technology, decaying infras and the zeitgeist killed streetcars everywhere but in a bunch of countries.
Christof Spieler@christofspieler.bsky.social · 2d agoI think the conspiracy is comforting to people -- "a few bad guys did this." The reality -- "electeds, planners, and most of the public believed that the car was the future and rail transit was outdated" is actually more unsettling since it raises the question of what we're getting wrong now.
You will enjoy your 2H commute from the Oklahoma border to an anonymous industrial park in the greater DFW area. You will love living in a flat plain. You will love how big your self driving truck is. This is the future.
Regime Accountant, CPA ☠️🎢@regimecpa.bsky.social · 2d agoLove drone footage of new builds in exurban Texas, gives me a very particular kind of dread to look at that is hard to replicate with other photos.
Really hard to overstate how hated the streetcar companies were. Han got elected as a lefty mayor in NYC in 1918 with one stump speech: a call to limit the fare on the private metros to 5¢. This eventually bankrupted all of them. This was repeated across the country!
Jake Berman@lostsubways.com · 3d agoin general, public transport before world war II was generally privately owned. it was a business, like railroads had been since the start of the industrial age. nobody liked the privately owned monopolies that owned public transit. 2/
A lot of people want to be LeGuin, very few people want to read 10,000 pages of mid 20th century anthropology
Hugo Novelettes 2026: THE GIRL MY MOTHER IS LEAVING ME FOR by Reed Good! It’s called “TRANShumanism” because there are TRANSgender people in it. Seriously, the trans experience is a really interesting lens to look at common transhumanist tropes torpublishinggroup.com/the-girl-tha...
The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For
torpublishinggroup.com
#1 Shoup Fan@oneshoup.bsky.social · 2w agoMore Hugo Novellas: MURDER BY MEMORY by Waite: chamber murder mystery on a ship of mostly immortal human colonists who for some reason all want to cosplay as 1920s British elites. A bit dull. It is a bit bleak IMO to imagine a human being living for 300 years and basically acting the same
Good article. Sorry to hear of Moravec’s health problems. As always with articles on him I wish the interviewer asked his wife or kids about his predictions that soon they will be killed by robots and *hopefully* resurrected.
New York Magazine@nymag.com · last wk.In 1988, the roboticist Hans Moravec predicted that human-level AI would arrive in 40 years. His vision set the mold for a mind-set that now holds up the world economy: as intelligence has appeared in the universe at least once, it is inevitably going to happen again.
Alexander immediately rode up to say “Actually I also keep order on earth as commanded by Ahura Mazda. Now marry a Persian” to his Macedonian troops [200 years of idiotic Hellenist warfare]
Volt Beleriand@yungdreyfusard.bsky.social · 6d ago
This power already exists in the mythical land of Vancouver, Canada for those brave enough to seek it maps.app.goo.gl/Cxqgw6bGPdPU...
maps.app.goo.gl
Leon English@leonenglish.bsky.social · last wk.We should solve food deserts by putting Costcos on the first floor of mega towers.
There’s a wonderful book on the history of American cities realizing you can contract out services like sewage, light, policing etc. to other governments. I can’t remember what it is. Search is not helpful. Can anyone help me?
#1 Shoup Fan@oneshoup.bsky.social · last wk.It’s a bit accidental as I put in the next post. SF consolidation with East Bay was defeated by voters for parochial reasons. Chicago was in a huge county already. Baltimore and St. Louis were purposefully split. Then the invention of contracted out services made consolidation less appealing
Always feels a bit ridiculous when a modern show has a vast US government conspiracy. Dog Trump would be posting that stuff at 2am every day. The post-war conspiracy thriller only really works if the gov elite exists and thinks it has shared interests and not just party interests
People say that BOOK OF THE NEW SUN is a timeless book that withstands the ages, and then Severian does the most 80s thing imaginable: a kung fu move that kills you by hitting the point behind the nose that causes a head to explode with a single strike
Nathan Anderson@nathanandersonart.bsky.social · last wk.Double-Header
I’m going to be saying this about my own city in a few years. I’m staying positive.
Nathan Goldwag @goldwagnathan.bsky.social · last wk.*Trojan historian watching as the Achaeans break down the gates* Wow, my civilization is undergoing a complex transformation from a heavily centralized and stratified administrative society to a more socially-fragmented modality of living in which material culture is dispersed amidst smaller sites.
It’s fine dog. I’ve reduced the problem to finding the meaning of life, the correct moral course of action in all situations, and how to get everyone to act righteously and harmoniously. We’ve got this
We are ready for the big screen adaptation of THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH. Keep the bisexual stuff. Keep the lacuna around why they fight Humbaba. Don’t be afraid
I haven’t read Jünger’s HYPERPOLITICS and should. But Q, if he thinks that the best period of mass politics was the inter war years and he wants to go back to that: did people in the 1920s write about their longing to get back to proper politics of the 1820s? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Meet the man whose groundbreaking book is being devoured by the left
Anton Jäger has been lauded for his exceptional ability to make sense of these strange political times – and he’s only 32. The writer and academic explains why we’re living in an age of hyperpolitics
theguardian.com
Insane right winger made president, obsessed with purity, wants to contain pollution in Canada? What did David Foster Wallace know? 👁️
Mark Chadbourn@chadbourn.bsky.social · 2w agoCan’t win in Iran so he’s going back to bullying Canada. Can’t win there either. TBH, I think a lot of Canadians would probably go for this in a big way.
More Hugo Novellas: MURDER BY MEMORY by Waite: chamber murder mystery on a ship of mostly immortal human colonists who for some reason all want to cosplay as 1920s British elites. A bit dull. It is a bit bleak IMO to imagine a human being living for 300 years and basically acting the same
#1 Shoup Fan@oneshoup.bsky.social · 4w agoCinder House by Marske Enjoyable retelling of a classic fairy tale. It took me embarrassingly long to figure out which one. Manages tone better than some of the other fantasy in the Hugo’s this year. Also juggles tying up loose ends and leaving some things mysterious. A lot of faeries this year?
Incredible you can see in green the “small states where Dems can maybe win with some compromises in cultural issues”
skáld@danglinghemmie.bsky.social · 2w agonew political axis just dropped
