jben1990.bsky.social

If Lombardo goes down hard that will go a long way to discourage Republicans from sticking their necks out for Trump over the next two years. It's not enough to beat the hardcore Trumpers, we have to make the likable "moderates" pay too

it's such delusion of grandeur to demand that a serious mayoral candidate in the second-largest city in the country spend a few hours three days before the election getting yelled at by Marxist-Leninist Karen (Megan Romer)

This is actually a pretty minor lapse by @nytimes.com standards; usually when they do one of these undecided voter stories it turns out to be a literal card-carrying local Republican Party official.

I think Nate Silver is basically correct that Marist (and some other pollsters) are using their LV screens to hedge because they don't believe their own results. Which, to be fair, I don't really believe them either, but that's not what you're supposed to use an LV screen for. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@enzoreds.bsky.social and I wrote about this for @journalspectre.bsky.social a while back. But if you don't have the patience for long reads you can just remember that before cynical corporate appropriations of "wokeness"/DEI there was open support for apartheid spectrejournal.com/whats-new-ab...

I am old enough to remember when politicians felt the need to hide behind euphemism and obfuscation. As frustrating as these obfuscations were I hope it is becoming clear to all that they were an advance, historically speaking

Did not expect it would ever feel world-historically important to share this pic of the newly-reelected mayor of Toronto, Olivia Chow, but these days it is. 🥹

The cokehead objectivists, woke monarchists, misogynist marxists with fascist tendencies and White Islamist trad cons were too busy about the ghosts that plague thier minds and ketamine to be bothered to be something as drill as being a party hack

I realized in my own post the distinction happening here. The Problematic Old Heads that wrote the great fantasy/sci fi that were either conservative or has a contradictory batshit world view would never describe themselves as a "republican author" how no great mind was like "ah yes the estate tax"

Kind of ironic they also invented the concept of zero, seeing how it's one of the words most often used to describe RFK Jr.

Someone want to tell Bobby where algebra comes from?

The thing about RFK Jr is that he’s not just a eugenicist who peddles extreme and dangerous anti-science, anti-vaccine conspiracy theories that cause suffering, pain, and death, but he’s also a vile racist piece of s**t

you write 500,000,000 in ARABIC NUMERALS you slack-jawed brain-dead carbon sink of an undead racist, go try and prove germ theory wrong firsthand by huffing e. coli cultures

it's really, really fucking infuriating to be ruled by public officials so unbelievably, unfathomably, stupidly fucking racist such that you can't really finish your thoughts on the matter out loud because they are in fact public officials

Holy majoly

Most people view racism as first and foremost a *personal* sin, and if they think that institutional racism is real, it's because it's interpersonal racism that has trickled up.

Tbh it’s this but also I do think that most voters find broad judgements of white people as objectionable as racist criticisms of minorities, as much as they find the latter objectionable.

This ad is bizarre and laughable to run when Americans have real concerns before an election, but I think that’s exactly why they’re running it. They’re terrified that the base is going to stay home and they’re panicking and trying to mash the old buttons to prevent that.

You have to really, really, really fucking suck for your 8th grade teacher to come out and shame you like this. Damn.

One thing I have suspected for a while is that an AOC presidential campaign probably does not make it to November without being disavowed by DSA NPC.

Eh I think there’s a large group of people on here that just want their personal beliefs validated by politicians and don’t actually care about outcomes beyond that

People not understanding nuance and tact is a problem.

I think this could be grouped under a broader policy of banning scams and price gouging. Go after spammers, put real money laundering controls on crypto, and aggressively cap online gambling losses. Many would vote for the whole package.

Been saying that’s gotta be the way. Having to actually go there gives you at least some time to think, “hey maybe I can’t afford this shit.” As opposed to an app being like “here’s a free one, piggy, we know you never win but you spend!”

I'll split the difference with the online scolds on this and say "a sportsbook on ever corner but you got to physically be there"

There's going to be heavy overlap with the same constellation of actors who wailed and gnashed teeth when Biden did some tepid crypto regulation and did not embrace the industry in a bear hug. This is fine, but the fight against Kalshi and the like is going to be a real scrap.

tbh I think a good place to start is telling the prediction markets of which 99% of their trading volume is sports betting that actually they are casinos and not financial organizations selling contracts

This rather anodyne post somehow is a tremendous honeypot for people that I am glad to send to the Phantom Zone

one could imagine a different set of jurisprudential norms where the court would have the power to simply convert the unconstitutional statute into its constitutional version

Yep. Internet gambling in particular, which kind of necessarily partakes of interstate commerce! (I assume the reason why that law was so oddly written was to grandfather in Vegas and Atlantic City)

the story of how sports betting became legal is odd. instead of directly banning sports betting, Congress passed a law requiring states to ban sports betting, which the Supreme Court held (doctrinally correctly) is unconstitutional. but Congress clearly had the power to directly ban sports betting

i like that the big divide on this post is whether people read it, correctly, as "*run explicitly* on banning online gambling" or whether they ignored the modifying verb and adverb and read it as "i don't think anyone should ban online gambling"

Can we at least agree to ban the phrase "prediction market?" Can we at least do that please? We have a bunch of gambling addicts pretending they're day traders.

at a bare minimum, prediction markets seem laser targeted to avoid current laws and regulations around gambling so that needs some urgent attention

yes! and then go after online marketing of unregulated supplements / the whole “alternative health” scam ecosystem.

Should be treated like tobacco in the late 90s. Zero advertisements and sports leagues would have to fully divest.