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@curiousjohn.bsky.social
outlier, not always in the direction I want superforecaster, techie, expat @john_henry elsewhere generally delighted to receive correspondence at curiousjohn@letterboxes.org
236 followers225 following291 posts
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we have had extensive ratfucking campaigns run by foreign countries in support of the republican party and it is high time the world's liberal democracies got in on the ratfucking in the other direction it's an existential issue for them
jesus fucking christ Trump is using our taxpayer dollars to create a global fascist movement
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this, more than anything, is why the elite have continued to back him even as he plunges into historical levels of unpopularity “we can be complete assholes without consequence” is the best thing that ever happened to them and they will fight to the death to protect that right
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“woke 1 was worse than our nation being run by fascist white nationalists” is a horrible thing to say out loud but it is the actual position most of these people hold so they disguise it by Just Asking Questions but you can tell by which subjects they cover
It’s mind-blowing that we have literal white nationalists in the White House carrying out unfathomably cruel, abusive, white nationalist policies, and the punditariat has spent the last two weeks debating if some people were too intemperate after a Black man was murdered by cops six years ago.
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The thing about Kirk's death being very much Not a Reichstag Fire is one reason I think that while MAGA has a great many fash characteristics, it's fundamentally a dysfunction of America's constitutionalism and looking for interwar central European models ends up going wrong.
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It’s René Goscinny’s 100th birthday, so here’s me and @jayforeman.bsky.social talking about the indomitable Asterix. pod.link/1614879928/e...
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"woke 2" "woke 3" can we settle for "nuremberg done right"
if woke 3.0 or whatever sweeps in one advantage it would have over the reactionaries is, the list of people needing to be hauled out of their homes and put on trial is like, comparatively tiny. few billionaires, trumps family and cabinet, etc. -- dont have to declare war on whole states like they do
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@pookleblinky.bsky.social you probably saw this already but if not: The BLIT Is Real
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THE US HAVING A WHITES-ONLY REFUGEE POLICY SHOULD BE A MUCH BIGGER STORY
BREAKING: in June 2026, *every single one* of the 1,062 refugees admitted in the U.S. were white South Africans. In FY 2026, the U.S. has admitted a total of 7,727 white South Africans, three Afghans (back in November), and nobody else. For reference, the U.S. admitted 100,060 refugees in 2024.
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I’ve taken to telling people that if the Supreme Court can just arbitrarily decide precedents (eg humphreys executor) that have stood for longer than I’ve been alive now need to go because they got in the way of mister Trump, we don’t have rule of law
No one is emphasizing to nonlawyers enough that the pace ay which this Supreme Court is changing the law has never been seen before in US history, and all of the history of common law for that matter
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Okay, I think I figured out the dynamic this morning on my run— the funny thing that happens on Bluesky is well-meaning folks spend weeks predicting something terrible will happen, it doesn’t come to pass, but enough people on here feel “right enough” to keep persevering in their ways.
earnest question: do you think you’d be more accurate betting on Bluesky consensus, or fading Bluesky consensus?
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"How does a bizarre and scary anomaly like a vast 'Killer Drone Gray Zone' even happen?" *Well, it built up quite slowly. I've got a meme-library here that dates back to 2014 www.flickr.com/photos/bruce...
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I actually think this bears repeating: Our Director of National Intelligence was just shown to *literally be taking secretive orders about what precisely to do and say in politics* from a scary cult leader in Hawaii And it wasn’t even front-page news How am I supposed to react to this?
This is one of the most strange, fascinating, and unsettling stories — and one of the best pieces of reporting — I’ve read about American politics in my life. Tulsi Gabbard took orders for her stances and bills in Congress (+ since?) from a secretive Hawaiian cult leader who wants to rule the world
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Replying to @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com
I think it's @beijingpalmer.bsky.social who's observed that many/most elites live in what is basically a post-literate oral culture and it all makes a lot more sense in this context
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Replying to @whstancil.bsky.social
These are people who would read newspapers or real journalism in the past. I'm sure they think they're still keeping informed; the short-form video mimics real news too closely. It's like carbon monoxide, poisoning someone by binding to cell receptors that think they're getting oxygen instead
my locally owned fast food place here in Amsterdam just put up a TV, and the last time I went there had CNN playing with Elon Musk as the world’s first trillionaire. Big simulation hypothesis moment.
The Trump era still doesn't feel real to me sometimes I expect I'll blink and it'll be like 2014 and I've just been having the worst fever dream of all time
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