manisnotabird.bsky.social

it is fascinating how the entire political media covers military support for Israel the exact opposite way that polling shows it plays, as if candidates who oppose it are the ideologues taking a risky stand and the Israel supporters are the commonsense moderates

if your agents are going to commit crimes, you are legally responsible if you cannot figure out how to prevent your agents from doing crimes, you’re going to have to choose between releasing them and protecting yourself from criminal liability imo this would do more for “ai safety” than a sex cult

look we're all making a big bet on AI! and if it pays off as big as we hope, well, it's going to make a handful of people super rich and you're going to lose your job but get to watch mickey mouse fuck geralt from the witcher. if it doesn't pay off well then you get to pay for the bailouts

This is the master key to deciphering contemporary debates about free speech. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/se...

Matthew Petti on military A.I.: "Artificial intelligence is a tool that makes its users more powerful—for better or for worse—and it's up to other people to rein them in."

I really do think that Democrats would be doing much, much better electorally if the democratic establishment hadn’t spent every single election cycle since Reagan dismissing and outright opposing every issue young people at the time have cared about. This is the main cause of voter apathy IMO.

It's interesting to see a former top Biden aide explain "No amount of public support in polling or public protest will influence how or when those in power drastically change Israel policy" — ie, he's just straight up saying the US is not a democracy. x.com/MichaelLaRos...

New York City officials are making public more than 170,000 pages of documents related to the air quality around the World Trade Center site in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks. The records suggest that New Yorkers were told to return to the ground zero area before it was safe. nyti.ms/3UDZehm

[“Guards, seize him” voice] Grok, do a vulgar roast

You can tell that progressive ideas are popular because corporate Democrats always pretend to be progressive come election season! www.levernews.com/the-corporat...

when people said we needed a "joe rogan of the left" i said anyone who approaches that has been and will continue to be condemned by the very people searching for that. they want a joe rogan of the center left and that is a contradiction in terms

Centrists' fake moral panic about Hasan Piker is really about one thing: cementing corporate donors' control over the Democratic Party. prospect.org/2026/05/12/t...

“From the beginning, Russiagate was used by a shellshocked liberal establishment to explain away Trump’s victory in a way that didn’t implicate the Democrats.”

Oh no! Well, I’m sure everyone tried their best, and that’s what counts

After Ben-Gvir called to kill 40 Palestinians daily, pro-Israel groups & officials insist he doesn’t represent Israel. But he’s the head of Israeli national security. And he’s had the job since 2022 (minus two months). And, in fact, between October 2023 - 2025, Israel killed 92 Palestinians daily.

Two cops in SF types the wrong license plate number into their patrol car's computer, arrested the wrong person for car theft. Then the SF DA's office spent a year prosecuting him before he ultimately killed himself.

so the israelis tricked him into stuffing himself into a box?

The "centrist" think tank Third Way is looking to pay someone between $140,000 and $150,000 to spend their days trying to dig up dirt on DSA members. They're trying to sell this gig as "anti-extremism" work, which I find completely disgusting.

If you don’t believe that Donetsk belongs to Russia, you are unlawfully discriminating against Russian-American students

There are 7 PR people for every journalist in the US. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

New: We found 50 cops who misused Flock cameras and other license-plate readers for personal purposes, often to spy on their girlfriends or ex-wives. He "watched every single move I made. ... Who do you turn the chief of police in to?" wapo.st/3S6rTuo

“The FBI has signaled that its new effort to brand political opponents of the president as terrorists has only just begun, and that soon the power of large language models will be brought to bear on the effort to flag and tag political dissidents en masse.”

There is simply no ambiguity in what Elon Musk is arguing and endorsing here.

Get in, there’s a new secret political influence campaign paying people to post. This time, a network targeting people in Michigan. First paid to post about how hard it is to afford groceries and gas, the accounts have gone hard in recent days, supporting Haley Stevens. www.ms.now/news/haley-s...

Just 10 billionaires have already poured over $600 MILLION into this year's midterms. In the entire 2008 presidential cycle, the last election before Citizens United, total billionaire spending was $16 million. If you're wondering what the real threat to "election integrity" is, it's Big Money.

I think instead of fantasizing about punishing people in red states, many of whom are just as marginalized as anyone else except without state-level protections you take for granted, we should fantasize about punishing politicians and oligarchs with actual power. Just an idea.

Unacceptable authoritarianism: being too nice about China in a twitter post or on a podcast Acceptable liberalism: UAE as major non-NATO ally, $30 billion to Israel for weapons in Gaza, helping Pakistani military coup PM, etc.

A 22-year-old just got a $30 million investment valuing his new futures exchange at $300 million. He graduated Stanford, wrote for Thiel's Stanford Review, interned at Andreessen Horowitz. His mom? Pro-crypto Sen. Gillibrand, D-NY. Bipartisan capture in full bloom. fortune.com/2026/06/18/t...

Bill Gates says Epstein sought to blackmail him over extramarital affairs

Representatives Goldman and Espaillat really should have moderated their extreme views on Israel-Palestine policy, views which are increasingly out of step with their constituents and American voters in general. The price of not getting out of your “ideological bubble”

Like many people who have worked in politics for decades, I am baffled and upset to see candidates who say they are going to try to make things better defeating candidates who say they are trying to make it more or less like it was in the years before things tipped over into Oaf-Style Fascism.

NEW: Palantir has gone on a Democratic lobbyist hiring spree, picking up Hakeem Jeffries' former chief of staff, a top DCCC fundraiser, and a former Democratic senator to push its interests in Washington DC. readsludge.com/2026/06/22/p...

New disclosures reveal how the groups are also transferring money to longtime PACs with historic ties to the Democratic establishment and center-left coalitions in Congress. buff.ly/XW0XPDX

Starmer was successful in the only way people who wanted him most care about: shanking Corbyn and purging the left.

His administration is actively deporting or jailing people who have said less

oh no a Jewish Democrat is going to lose his house seat to a *checks notes* Jewish Democrat

People operationalize democracy as “X institution does/does not perform Y function,“ but democracy is ultimately about whether the demos has their preferences reflected in governance. The tie between public preferences and policy was severed well before Trump.

The defining principle of our society is that people who were lucky during the dot com boom or Web 2.0 should have vast and ever-growing individual power over the entire world. The only acceptable check on their power is their squabbles with each other.

This story doesn’t have a happy ending

Oh my God