florian23.bsky.social

I really think that a lot of the people eager to hand it to Trump over immigration as an issue misunderstand how deeply "you come to America from elsewhere and work and that's good" is rooted in the national mythos. Anti-immigrant sentiment relies on framing them as anything but that for a reason

Boring Third Way types: "We need the McCain-Romney Republicans!" The McCain-Romney Republicans:

“President Business From TV will make me rich just like him” voters are the skeleton key to all of this shit, and they are now realizing that, in fact, No He Won’t.

lots and lots of people making the imo bad assumption that if a D candidate in a red state says something publicly that isn't maximally pro-trans, the group they're deceiving about their future intentions is trans people rather than moderate voters

Well you see obviously the economy is a morality play and so you have to pay extra for the non-evil stuff

this is the really maddening part because like, somehow everyone has decided to pretend that publicly traded companies are the personal property of the CEO, american capitalism has just voluntarily surrendered itself to feudalism, it’s just insane

I love the diversity of answers to this. Some people are naming movies that were awful with some good ideas and others movies that were pretty good with mediocre sections.

One thing I realized is that ALL strategies are Underpants Gnomes strategies. Human endeavors are always so complex as to demand a "collect underpants, ?, profit" leap of logic. I guess the trick is to make that "?" as small as possible. Just an observation.

Clear inability to consider second order consequences. They figured it would make a good ad in a vacuum, and forgot to think about what a response would look like and how it would play.

If these midterm predictions bear out, that we can be confident of a few facts based on the last 10 years. 1. People are unhappy generally and willing to throw a wrench in the gears for fun 2. The Republican brand is broadly toxic. 3. Trump personally has a unique draw to low info voters.

I wish Biden had been a war hawk who shipped thousands of Bradleys to Ukraine. I wish our entire stockpile of 155mm rounds were used on Russian soldiers. There isn’t a single escalatory act NATO members could commit against Russia that I wouldn’t support.

I usually deflect it with a combination of humor and cynicism but it is so relentlessly exhausting (and probably bad for mind and spirit) to exist in an era where half the political spectrum is operating *entirely* in nihilistic bad faith on all levels. I'm so tired.

this is something I do worry about, not because I think the GOP are even doing this necessarily--but because I think that on the left we are uniquely vulnerable to giving up in disillusionment if our wildest dreams don't come 100% true.

take the under?

Guy who's mad at AI not because of job loss worries or environmental impacts but because it makes everyone who comes into contact with it a dorm room philosopher

idk why we would want to deport Elon when America is clearly the nation most well equipped to put him in a miserable prison cell for the rest of his life we're right in that sweet spot of rich enough that our prison guards won't take bribes but not nice enough to give a shit about comfort

Literary every attempt to “understand” the behavior of modern Russia can be answered by this meme

Also, let's imagine that the kid was in fact not supposed to be out at night. 2 year olds can be real houdinis and the penalty for a toddler escaping the house should not be death by car.

I think most of them were more likely to be annoyed by a lefty than harmed by the government and don't have the theory of mind to look beyond their own experience.

borders are a scam invented by governments to charge you customs taxes

this tequila is an extension of my sovereign person, you fascists

This is a bonkers question in so many directions, just remarkably revealing in the amounts of racism involved. Even before you raise the technology issue, this is, "Can ~500m people with PPP adjusted gdp of ~$2tn beat ~1.6bn people with PPP adjusted gdp of ~$16tn." Like, LOL, no, obviously.

i refuse to be bound solely by what I can defend as a "good idea". no one else in politics functions under these constraints.

"is the ship of Theseus covered by its warranty and if not when did it stop being"

Elite impunity is perhaps the single greatest problem in American politics going back to Gerald Ford’s Watergate pardons. These people keep getting away with it. This needs to stop.

back of the envelope math: a ship of the line was 100 times* more expensive than a trireme leading to the obvious question, could 100 triremes take a ship of the line?

I think there are worse ways describe our immigration system than “in the 60s we managed to overcome the white supremacist goals of the old system, and the compromise we struck was ‘only let in ‘the deserving’ ones’, and this too has been under relentless attack from reactionaries since we did it”.

problematic human Gritty

Trump’s superpower has always been that he radiates an anti-gravitas field, such that anything he touches becomes seen as fundamentally unserious. This has allowed Trump to pursue wars, tyranny, and corruption of immense gravity, while everyone tries to avoid looking like they care too much.

"I know 90 pound female drone operators in Ukraine with more confirmed kills than smallpox. Your post goes hard if you don't know jack shit about modern warfare."

'once-favored concubine dismissed from service with head attached and a big payout' was a pretty good life outcome historically

Oh yeah, that's my point, I will be fucking thrilled as long as we're not setting new records for GOP margins in Miami-Dade for the tenth time in a row.

"The evidence continues to grow. Social media, as it is currently constructed, redounds to the net benefit of illiberal regimes and their allies in democracies. The question is what to do about it." www.liberalcurrents.com/social-media...

there is no opinion so strange, absurd, or nonsensical that someone, somewhere, doesn’t hold it with 100% dead seriousness

I talked to a coworker yesterday and discovered that they have only ever played one video game, and that was overwatch, and they did so quite intensely but never played anything else. Thats such a funny game to have as your only video game.

So we've now discovered the magic new technology of ::checks notes:: patriarchy...in allowing wealthy male elites to seem super-productive by also appropriating the cognitive labor of women who remain mostly uncredited. 🎉 Everything is Gender, Exhibit Eleventeen Billion.

basic summary of the essay:

A lot of people on here also struggle with the inverse, if your political orbit is suddenly filled with people with dogged intensity and clarity of purpose and all of the losers and posers who used to make it harder to do things have showed their true colors, you are losing very badly.

I hope no one minds if I steal the "text elemental" framing.

Sometimes I think its not great that we've all cognitively offloaded say, navigation, but it sure is much quicker and easier to get around unfamiliar places now. It's that phenomenon on steroids and the impacts are hard to predict.

Clearly "deliverism" had flaws as a political strategy, but it beats the hell out of doing the opposite and claiming you delivered.

and now these trumpheads are crying crocodile tears about the terror they've unleashed on the american body politic. the coup party "party of coups" is having a big sad that their opponents are also now coup-curious. sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. you stupid fucking children.