There’s a process called lustration that has been used as a part of transitional justice after the fall of dictators in other nations. Ive had a few conversations with international scholars who study it. We’re going to need it here.
Topher Brennan (he/they)
@topherbrennan.bsky.social
The richest man in the world is a Nazi.
This isn't a case of abusing some loophole or misusing discretionary authority. The law is unambiguous and he's breaking it, simple as that. If Congress isn't going to do anything about breaking the law that already exists, passing another law to make it double-illegal accomplishes nothing.
He recently defended his vote on the Lanken Riley Act! Senate brain!
Having a hard time getting excited about Ossoff for POTUS just because he's in the Senate and being in the Senate seems to rot people's brains. If he'd been talking about Republicans in February '25 the way he talks about Mike Collins now I might feel differently but feels a bit late now.
The Senate functions as a political "subsidy" for the conservative extremism of the Republican Party. It enables the production of more conservative extremism than a properly functioning political marketplace would otherwise produce.
Eliminating the filibuster is necessary for correcting this dynamic, but likely not sufficient. Nothing short of abolition of the Senate can fix the problem. What a pisser.
Quick story. My op-ed on how corporations that kept their DEI programs performed just as well financially was accepted & factchecked at TIME Magazine. Just needed "pro forma review by the legal department." Suddenly the piece is spiked Why? Benioff owns TIME and wants to ingratiate himself to Trump
sincerity is important here - when I see Gavin Newsom talk about how much Republicans suck, I don't think he actually believes it, I think he's playing a game will Ossoff do everything that needs to be done to impose consequences on these people? I don't know but I do believe he hates them
God I swear some people on this site would hear a negative comment about pulling wings off flies and go "oh so you care about flies more than humans?"
This is a ‘good strategy’ in game theory terms if you assume Trump will punish you for not rolling over and showing deference and democrats won’t. Democrats should think about altering those incentives.
Conor Sen@conorsen.bsky.social · 2d ago25 days until the midterms:
You NEED to understand that this is happening in America. It’s the intentional plan of a vile white supremacist in the White House, who sees this as an opportunity to finally torture and expel all the nonwhite people he hates.
When they do get seized, there’s frequently no help coming, no matter how worthy their claim. People are released here in Minnesota after being illegally detained five, six, seven months. They walk out in a daze, with nothing. They’re the innocent victims of a racial terror campaign.
ya i mean i do genuinely think that one of hegseth's goals is to drive people appalled by barbarity out of the military, because the long term plan is to make the military shoot at us, and the same guys who object to this won't do that either.
Risa Brooks@risabrooks12.bsky.social · 3d agoIf you were looking for a way to polarize Americans' views abt the military, undermine its influence internationally & drive out service members appalled by its civilian leadership's barbarity, this is certainly a good way to do that. www.defensenews.com/video/2026/1...
If people think that they are naive as hell. This isn't like health care where there is some grand bargain to get the ACA. It is a bazillion local and state bigots pecking away and still butthurt because they think they "lost" gay marriage. But sports is by far the weakest arena for trans rights.
“The United States” is not its officers. The United States is its *laws*. A republic is “an empire of laws, not men” (John Adams); “in America, the law is king” (Thomas Paine). ICE is an assemblage at war with our fundamental laws; they are at war with the United States. bsky.app/profile/samh...
Sam Halpert@samhalpert.bsky.social · 3mo ago🧵 Why we should talk about ICE as a "treasonous assemblage", levying war on the United States. 1/
Maybe hegseth watched ICE agents carry out public executions all year and thought people have become numb to it.
all knowledge is like this and if you do not feel this way about it you have not gone deep enough
norvid_studies@norvid-studies.bsky.social · 3d agowhat else is
okay I am ten minutes in to episode one and this is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen in my LIFE “We have doors slamming, taps turning on, a fishbowl in the kitchen spontaneously smashed,” home inspector walks in: “okay so first off, I see they have a cat”
👻madeline bOoOoOoOodent👻@oldenoughtosay.com · 7d agooh my god, Jay just told me about a paranormal show where in addition to the mediums and stuff they also get a home inspector in and I cannot WAIT I am preemptively dying laughing this will be glorious
this is good and everyone should stop being weird about it
The Verge@theverge.com · 3d agoAnthropic wrote that the new policy update “is meant to apply only in extreme cases, where users repeatedly act cruelly toward our models, with no discernible purpose. It does not apply to common versions of user frustration, pushback, dark creative themes, or model testing and research.”
Calling someone a self-hating <member of oppressed group> is always fraught but seems pretty hard to avoid the conclusion Yarvin does in fact hate himself for being Jewish. bsky.app/profile/came...
Cameron 🇺🇸🗽🦅@cameroncorduroy.bsky.social · 4d agothe Vice President of the United States has gone on record citing this man as one of his biggest intellectual influences if you didn't know this, it's probably because for some reason literally no mainstream political media outlets think it's worth mentioning
According to MIT News, Margaret Hamilton died at the age of 90. "A profoundly influential computer scientist best known for leading the software engineering team at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab during NASA’s Apollo program". This famous photo 🔽 inspired the For All Mankind character Margo Madison.
bryan newbold@bnewbold.net · 4d agoah damn, RIP Margaret Hamilton. she took safety-critical software engineering seriously, and got people to the moon and back. news.mit.edu/2026/margare...
If care about free markets, you not only get more from center-left Dems than the party of Trump, you get more *from professed democratic socialists* like Mamdani than you do from the party of Trump. Those who deny this only think of it as an anti-left cultural totem and not a real policy agenda.
Wanna see someone put forward the hot take that silicon can't be conscious but clearly water can be conscious because human brains are mostly slightly salty water. bsky.app/profile/soft...
softmacs@softmacs.bsky.social · 5d agoGuess someone’s looking preeetty stupid right about now
reading this, recalling how quickly the killing of Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman slipped out of the news
Congressional candidate is raped while repairing her campaign signs
Embarrassed, she initially didn’t want to report attack. Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office's investigation is ongoing.
phoenixnewtimes.com
I cannot stress enough that ICE is acting the way cops have acted for years. These are just "starlight tours" for Indigenous teens applied to the rest of the population.
ProPublica@propublica.org · 6d ago4/ Fernando Vasquez, an 18-year-old citizen, was on break from work when agents chased and handcuffed him, then put him in their truck. After realizing their mistake, the agents left the teen alone in the woods, with no way to get home. Then they threw his ID out of the truck.
okay i've taken this too seriously on its own terms. when a billionaire says "dictatorship is efficient" what he means is that it's easy to bribe.
Gil Durán@gilduran.com · 7d ago“Democracy has been hailed as, like, the holy grail for the last couple hundred years, but democracies are inefficient,” said the crypto billionaire. “If you get a benevolent dictator, it’s actually extremely efficient." Hmm, where have I heard this before? www.nytimes.com/2026/10/01/b...
interesting that conservatives were militantly “we must reward hustle” when the target was affirmative action at elite universities and now, when faced with the success of south asians and other groups, it is “i think we are too meritocratic”
Schrödinger's Sneetch Belly@rtodkelly.bsky.social · 6d agoIt's absolutely bonkers to me that this image led directly to this tweet.
Right now society at large is paying most of the bill for people who drive giant pick-up trucks and SUVs, my humble proposal is that we should stop doing that and ask them to pay it themselves.