Carly Rae Jeppson’s Malört

I don’t know how to explain to people anymore that services cost money

a weird set of people who only exist online are people who celebrate the defeat of global fascism in every other country and are then horrified and appalled at the idea that they should also be expected to vote for their domestic opponent of global fascism if some of their stances are Problematic

Bluesky has four kinds of users

sure, Brazilian folks recommend not engaging or screencapping bad-faith right wing actor on social media, and to ignore them. But for hundreds of liberal and left posters, Media Matters, and discourse sickos, that’s unfair to ask of them, they need those screencaps to build their outraged followers.

it really is amazing how accurate the “do you support both Palestine and Ukraine” litmus test has proven to be

It is Good, Actually when the people and institutions issued guns by the state feel compelled to signal their allegiance to cosmopolitan cultural values. It is a thing that you want.

"This is performative" okay well the fascists are performing bigotry so let's have everybody use the time that has been given to them.

"they really believe it"/"they will try to do it"/"the promises are real" are things that most americans refuse to believe about politicians but if you take them seriously will help you predict political behavior more often than not

Trumpism is a heresy against the American civil religion.

Large portions of the data center backlash are based on moral panic, but the the tech right VC types upset by it are very funny considering how gleeful they were about the demise of ‘legacy’ media. What’s that? You’re missing epistemic gatekeepers who would place complex facts in context? Tough shit

“It seems like politics worldwide started shifting in a populist and authoritarian direction beginning in around 2010 or so. This happened across most countries and independently of local economic conditions.” There is one trend that seems to track this political shift quite well: the phones

that cities should be safer for bicycles does not in any way mean that you should not have to wear a helmet, unless bike lanes magically stop people from crashing in non car-related ways

This man responding to city residents asking him to wear a helmet, making an announcement about it, does not shift the responsibility from drivers cars and urban design, and this kind of argumentation is rookie shit. C’mon.

not sure how to express this without sounding like a chair-turned-around youth pastor, but there's something so radical about having your most well-known lyric be "i will always love you" and then sincerely embodying it whenever possible

This is the letter kids got at the end of Dolly’s Imagination Library. I defy you to read this and not cry.

Dolly Parton, among a thousand other amazing things she did in her life, gifted over 330 million books to kids through her Imagination Library program. Her passing is a tremendous loss to the world, but you can support the program today to keep it going imaginationlibrary.com

a lot (not all, there are externalities, they're just normal ones) of the data center stuff does have witch hunt vibes in that that it's based moral panic pseudoscience, but considering how the AI industry has acted it's sorta like the accused witch *had* been going around bragging about her powers

Like a type of music that has deep roots in American folk music and harkens back to classic country music exists and the audience for it is educated urban hipsters. The volk hate that shit and instead like mainstream country music, a hideous behind-the-times pastiche of other top 40 pop genres

Indeed this is succinctly captured in a lot of the prices-and-affordability rhetoric we see. Most people are middle class, and getting by. Getting them angry about prices, and telling you’ll help them pay less, is a promise that can mostly be satisfied by crushing workers’ wages.

grouchy "we live in a society" old man type take: people care way too much about 'nepo babies' in entertainment, as though the 'be hot on camera' industry was ever going to be a representative cross-section of society, and not nearly enough about them in things like journalism

The dialogue around LLMs is kind of broken both in terms of critique and advocacy. For critique, we need to focus on how we attack fascist tech power consistently — LLMs are only one part of that; merely saying "AI bad" has simply ended up with a lot of people using AI quietly while feeling shame...

And amongst AI advocates, there's too often the same tedious fallback to arguments of inevitability and "progress", which excuse the enabling of the bad actors in tech, and advance their authoritarian project. It's a failure of imagination, in addition to being complicit in their political goals...

Type of guy who wants a completely planned economy but also constantly disparages spreadsheet people is an amazingly common type of guy on the Internet. Who exactly do you think is going to be planning your socialist economy.

spreadsheet people gave your trans employees the civil rights they are pissing away sabotaging the Democratic Party, Ben

Republicans do this thing with unions where they rhetorically assert that the rank-and-file membership are mostly conservatives and only the sicko leaders, who have ascended to their position by corruption, are actually opposed to them, and the Democrats should steal that but for cops.

the actual order of events from 2020-2024 gets strategically jumbled by reactionary centrists all the time. They love to blame 2024 on wokeness while skipping over the fact that Dems won in 2020. They talk about early COVID Iike it was a failure of Dem policy when Trump was in office.

At some point, I argued that I think this will debut huge, slowly erode across S1, then the bottom will drop out in S2, a pattern that fits a lot of heavily hyped modern streaming shows. The ones that buck that pattern are ones the audience feels like it's DISCOVERING, and this can never be that.

you think trans women should play in the WNBA? well how about this: I'm a cis man, who is decidedly not a trans woman, and I'd like to play in the WNBA. really makes you think doesn't it?

The thing about strategically leaning into populism is that some of those people will go from “affordability and data centers” to “(((affordability and data centers)))” without even blinking - if it’s just discontent you cant ride it forever because it’ll turn on you

I Work As A Jungle Cruise Tour Guide At The Magic Kingdom. Here's What The Odyssey Gets Wrong About Boats

Working on ironing out my ongoing political theory called “everyone is wrong and nobody understands anything.”

I think my most genuinely unpopular take is that a widely held and genuine consumer preference for cheaper, lower-quality goods, not private equity, is driving the decline in quality of consumer goods like clothing and housewares.

Right, exactly. If your end goal is taxing our affluent middle-class to help the needy, you WANT TO HIGHLIGHT HOW PROSPEROUS THE POPULATION IS. Talking about how the median American is broke and miserable and can't afford anything is a great way to make the necessary transfers seem painful.

"You realise you're an adult, right?" is kind of the ideal rejoinder to 90% of the therapy-speak discourse that plagues so much social media.

WGN posted a meme of Kyle Shanahan as Mitch McConnell when reporting on his car accident.