bastillesam.bsky.social

In about 24 hours, poles will open here in Israel. In what is a strong contender for Israel’s most critical elections. The election pits Netanyahu’s extremely unpopular coalition against a non-coherent, but moderately more liberal, opposition. Here are some thoughts as we head into it.

A thing I need more people to internalize is that if you are not someone who has spent a lot of time working on/around federal criminal prosecutions in some manner, your “belief” about how long that should take is worthless to everyone, including you!

this is borderline self-parody www.latimes.com/california/s...

I genuinely believe this era of the Democratic Party is on its way out, though - that we may soon enter the Ossoffian Era of Consequences.

Anthropic cumulative operating loss since inception is only $12 billion and at their current run rate operating margin they will completely recoup that loss by Q1 27 even if revenue is flat. So much for “these companies will never make money” lmao

Just to try and pre-emptively stem the tide, a lot of people here are going to be posting the $66bn "loss" which is almost entirely about convertible notes and not the $1bn operating income which is the first cashflow positive quarter ever

This is just an objectively true thing. Whether it's good or not is up to interpretation, but the proof of capability is staggering. And anyone who wants to build other organizational structures needs to meditate on how you're going to compete with this kind of (and scale of) capability.

This is a good primer on Israel's political situation going into tomorrow's election. But I'd like to go deeper on something he only touches on, which is that part of the reason for Israel's electoral doldrums (and resulting geopolitical chaos) is its broken political system bsky.app/profile/avis...

They’ve always hit Obama for being too elitist because they can’t hate him for being black, and elitism is a good on ramp to “uppity”

The New York City Housing Authority has a seventy eight billion dollar maintenance backlog. Nobody quoted in opposition to the redevelopment plan has a credible plan to finance those repairs while keeping the existing buildings in place.

American conservatives are constantly bemoaning the decline of aesthetic standards and calling for a return to tailored suits and classical Roman architecture, but are now forced to defend the Cheesecake Factory. A constant tension between the Brooks Brothers patrician and the Kid Rock populist.

I am, as you know, generally quite patriotic about the United States, but our general behavior towards Central and South America is, frankly, not a record to be proud of and we both can and ought to be better neighbors. Not likely under this administration, obviously.

It's really important to pay attention to the fact that Lula beat the fascist candidate not by compromising and trying to meet fascist voters in the middle, but by sticking to his guns, promising prosecutions for election interference, and mobilising his own voters to turn out in greater numbers.

a key point here, but Obama wasn't putting down Cheesecake Factory, unless the particular Cheesecake Factory you go to is in fact run by Zombie Saddam Hussein

are we still doing this and by "this" I mean taking a deliberately vaguely weasel worded statement from a dem pol with a shot at winning in a red state facing a bajillion dollars of "he wants to trans your kids" ads and deliberately twisting it into the most unfavorable interpretation possible

Absolutely maddening to see the corruption in real time and then also see BlueAnon losers in the replies trivialize it by pretending the same thing is going to happen here "but worse"

Well this is a helluva way to prove my point for me given that the reorganization was an affirmative action scheme for the women’s lib and civil rights movements demanding to be brought into the party while white labor had just given the Rs a landslide victory in the ‘66 midterms *over civil rights*

I definitely combed the "liked" section and made sure I didn't follow anyone that phucking ignorant.

Ethics aside, this take could use some contact with reality. Biden's expanded CTC didn't motivate recipients to vote to maintain it. Trump offered $5000 checks and it hurt him in the polls. The empirical claim that welfare creates single issue voters just doesn't hold up.

Because there are 10s of thousands of Democratic electeds in the United States, and you have positioned yourself directly into a media environment that is designed to find every statement a Democrat makes that is even vaguely transphobic as soon as it happens.

A would-be governor cannot run a state while picking which political donors to sue. Rick Jackson’s GloriFi mess is an extreme conflict. As former ethics czar, I told @nytimes.com: not in a million years would I allow this arrangement in government. -TN

Republicans really firing on all cylinders in this campaign www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

JUST POSTED: Today at The NYT we are publishing a major investigation into how President Trump used his executive powers to expose millions of Americans to greater cancer risks. A six month-long investigation built on more than 10,000 pages of FOIA records. Read it www.nytimes.com/2026/10/24/c...

The 5-year cancer survival rate is up to 70% SIDS deaths have decreased by over 50% 89% decline in tornado deaths All thanks to federal investment in science and OUR tax dollars at work!

Yes and also this sort of 'uniparty' nonsense feels so hollow deployed in the midst of a national stove-touching. It turns out the difference between a 'milquetoast corporate Democrat' and Trump was really big! President Harris would not be driving trans soldiers out of the military!

You know what DOES have a demonstrated causal relationship with increasing the unemployment rates for men? Experience rating in unemployment insurance: aibm.org/policy/fix-u...

It is a longtime criticism of venture-backed tech that allows people to pretend that demand for a product they don’t like isn’t real, at least at a price that would actually cover the marginal cost to serve the products. It was true during the dotcom boom and bust. Not right now.

🇺🇦🇺🇸 Serhiy "Flash": It is very strange that Elon Musk does not know about the restrictions on Starlink operation in Ukraine. 1. Starting from the winter of 2026, all StarLink terminals over the territory of Ukraine (including occupied territories) have a speed limit of 70-90 km/h.

i'm trying to bootstrap this stuff in middle age because i didn't actually get them very well in college and then i transitioned anyway and then lost career time to health issues and i am seriously considering going back to school for a masters just for the environment.

The other option is packing the Court with Justices committed to declaring Presidential pardon does not extend to crimes committed on his behalf. This principle should be so obvious that the Founders probably didn't think it needed to be spelled out- but a new Court majority should do so.

It cannot be stressed enough that the admin created this process in a *deeply* authoritarian project to bind in ordinary soldiers by forcing them to vote to discharge their peers and every rejection or even protest undermines that a little bit more

In 1977, when I was four, an older-than-me girl, Marlene, lived next door. She was the youngest in her family and would regularly indulge my "come over and play?" requests. The year after we moved, Marlene died of leukemia. Childhood leukemia is now 85%+ curable.

Hawaii is converting 364 units of dilapidated public housing into 2,400 brand new mixed income homes, with current public housing residents guaranteed a subsidized spot in the new buildings this is what the future of public housing looks like: more homes for everyone, right near transit

The internet has become extraordinarily good at distributing moral indignation. It remains remarkably bad at distributing moral responsibility.

I know I've been on this bullshit before and I know this is an audience that largely agrees but I just have to yell at this particular cloud today: it is an absolute failure on the part of major news organizations that we have so little reporting on the president's physical and cognitive health.

Fundamentally, Liberalism is the only political philosophy where bodily autonomy is both a core tenet and actually defended; Anarchism/Libertarianism falls down completely on the second point, and the collectivist philosophies (Left and Right) fail on the first.

JUST POSTED: A Russian energy giant has secretly moved to acquire a position in a massive Alaska gas project. Its part of talks between Witkoff/Kushner & Putin. But CEO of US company resigns after learning of Russian money in the project. A wowzer of a story. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/23/u...

Overall, we are seeing some very odd deal talks that are supposedly a part of ending the war in Ukraine. But in fact evidence shows these deals are structured (in the most recent case secretly until now) to financially benefit Russia or business partners of the Trump and Witkoff families.

That empowers ICE agents to jail you for, in reality, any reason, and you have no access to an ADMINISTRATIVE remedy until DOJ decides to give you a hearing. That is chilling!

Btw becoming professional-managerial class is not in fact something you’re inherently born into You can do it. You just have to go to college. That’s how you do it, your parents’ background can make that easier but if you’re a US citizen without a specific kind of conviction you can get loans

The politics of possible always constitutes 'the ability to influence behavioral and ideological change in the electorate' as the definition of 'possible'. It isn't always about meeting voters where they are. It's also about moving them to where you want them to be, or moving alongside them.

he almost entirely rejects the premise of politics: that through communication and rhetoric we can move publics to act collectively in particular ways.

Yglesias admitted getting perks of the powerful while pretending to be "heterodox" bsky.app/profile/mich... bsky.app/profile/jaim... Iraq: "Being for the war was a way to simultaneously be on the side of the country’s power elite and also be a free-thinking dissident in context of a college campus"

A whole generation of smart people have grown up with the idea that people are something to be managed rather than individuals that must be led

We proved that we can reduce teen pregnancy. We proved that we can increase fertility for older women. This means fewer children having their lives ruined by abuse. This means more adult women starting families because they affirmatively choose to.