Hugh Mann

"Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes.... Families are torn apart... Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared... Everyone is scared." Anne Franke, 1943

BURGUM: When the sun goes down, solar produces zero electricity HUFFMAN: I want to enter into the record this amazing new technology that apparently the secretary is unaware of -- it's a battery

I think the disconnect between Atlantic elites is that Americans think Donald Trump is a kid getting to drive a monster truck for Make A Wish and Europeans and Canadians think Donald Trump is the president of the United States.

kinda amazing in hindsight that this dude was significantly cooler than any of the actual supervillain billionaires we wound up getting

it is incredible to see folks complain that good people don't run for office, that lawmaking is a hobby for the rich, that our state legislators are run by car dealership freaks, and then insist that we shouldn't pay lawmakers any more than we do.

“Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window” – Steve Wozniak

this is also one of my hobbyhorses. you want a better caliber of lawmaker? you want to reduce the odds of corruption? pay them more. a lot more.

Excellent piece. I'll admit I'll basically vote for any congressperson with a D next to their name due to their policy bundle and the limited damage they can do with their office. For executive positions if the Dem was monsterous I'd vote GOP or if very terrible then 3rd party.

Yes, I think the enormity of Elon Musk racking up Pol-Pot levels of mass killing is so hideous to contemplate that many people just….aren’t.

"To ensure that the person who earns investment gains pays the tax bill, taxes should be paid on gains whenever property is transferred—not just by sale, but by gift or at death as well. A rule like this has worked in Canada for decades. It will work here too." theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

This is a prime example of the very worst kind of symbiotic "insider account" journalism -- in which you can tell who the "sources" are, because they make themselves look good. It is therefore of extremely suspect accuracy. But.... 1/

The Onion is still undefeated 🧅

Old: Freedom of Navigation New: Joint Trump-Ayatollbooth

Millions of American voters wanted to be villains. They came to believe it’s the key to success, while goodness is weak, woke, loser stuff, done only to signal. Offered the option of unvarnished villainy, they enthusiastically took it. Seeing others suffer more made them feel big. And here we are.

I love these people.

reminder that the number one issue that the press covered in 2016, the one they told voters was THE MOST IMPORTANT thing in the election, was Hillary Clinton's compliance with Presidential Records Act record-keeping

Just so you understand, this is as if you prepared for argument in front of a panel that included Cookie Monster, and Cookie Monster asked you a question about cookies, and you had not thought about cookies in advance.

Amazingly the Hegseth-picked press isn’t asking him tough questions in an attempt to hold his feet to the fire, hold power accountable, and inform the public. They’re asking these basic questions because they assume Hegseth knows what he’s doing, is succeeding, and will therefore have good answers.

Big fan of David Roberts @volts.wtf and @pkrugman.bsky.social but their conversation on clean energy, environmentalism, EVs and so much more is next-level. open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

Heather Cox Richardson has a larger audience than almost any dudefluencer. More informed. Better values & policy preferences. And yet there are no profiles, no elevation or lionization, because there's *nothing* US media is less interested in than middle-aged lib women. No diner interviews for them.

Gotta love the Canadians... Right now there is a big push for them to forego buying the US-Made F-35 fighter jets in favor of buying Swedish-built jets instead. The proposed designation for this new jet would be the FU-47.

Maybe Baker should have spent less time complaining about black people winning journalism awards and spent more time accurately describing the man running the most powerful country in the world bsky.app/profile/carl...

💀

> @scottlincicome.bsky.social

"A team of British military planners has gone to the United States to help draw up plans to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, according to a British official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly." Good someone who hopefully knows what they're doing. www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03...

Ryan Clark has a more serious discussion and understanding about the morality of war than nearly everyone in DC www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-9i...

Oh how I wish this wasn’t satire. 💙

Trump can't declare bankruptcy on the Iran war. He can't get his dad to bail him out. There's no one to sue. His usual lies and bluster aren't working. Iran isn't Venezuela. The global energy market isn't something he can bully. This has already spun out of control. I wrote about the war in @ms.now.

"Brian Stelter posted a December 9, 2017, quote from the New York Times: "Before taking office, Mr. Trump told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals." Stelter wrote: “I think about this quote a lot.” "

Okay: Hear me out. How about hydrogen filled airships to avoid the strait?

“We have bombed the shit out of places and napalmed the jungles but the Viet Cong keep shooting at us from the bushes, we don’t get it, that’s not fair.”

“This is the greatest tragedy this state has ever felt" (said by venture capitalist Ron Conway) is such an unhinged statement for someone to make about the prospect of a wealth tax. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/14/b...

All of this incredibly obvious and infuriating welfare fraud happened under the first Trump administration and I don't recall them ever threatening to block funding to the state of Mississippi as a result.

Playing around with OpenDataPhilly's building footprints. Here's Philly, by population density, in 3D. sstirling.github.io/philly-3d/do...

@msoto.bsky.social sorry I didn't get back to you the other day. This is an example of an article i think was written in bad faith with a terrible headline. The Atlantic has been better lately just because their foreign policy is solid and that's what I've mostly been reading.

The is the federal government telling news stations to provide favorable coverage of the war or their licenses will be pulled. A truly extraordinary moment. We aren't on the verge of a totalitarian takeover. WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF IT. Act like it.

This is a good lesson for journalists: Use plain language to state true things clearly.

Man, @donmoyn.bsky.social's substack remains one of the best places to get concrete political science insights into our authoritarian consolidation. His guest authors today talk about secret police. I will definitely be getting their book open.substack.com/pub/donmoyni...

The Iran war is showing that renewable energy is a national security imperative, and that fighting renewables tooth and nail as the White House has been doing since day one deeply undermines national security, as @ryanlcooper.com writes. prospect.org/2026/03/13/i...

Excellent article. Government agency budgets are f***ed up and bullshit because Congress won't pass timely budgets. And we have to feed all those people in the military, y'know?

I think people who say things like this, especially prominent people with power, should be shamed and shunned and reviled — cancelled, if you will. “Free speech culture” disapproves of that sentiment — says that it’s worse than what Ogles said. Judge it thus.

We should be thinking about how to forgive the politically ignorant Trump voters in our lives as I suspect they'll come to realize they've been conned. Give them some room to come around, no they won't admit they've been conned. But I ain't Jesus, I can't forgive the true MAGA believers.

tapping the "people underestimate how many of our society's elites are motivated not by self-interest, but by sadism" sign

Renewable Energy and National Security The wind and the sun don’t need to transit the Strait of Hormuz open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

Wondering if they’re trying to cure leprosy.

MAGA Stole Obama’s Playbook How the right learned Obama’s game. And what Mamdani and Indivisible show about taking it back from the mucky mucks LIKE RAHM EMMANUEL who tossed it aside.

It's dumb politics that the Left/center left rarely make the national security arguments for renewable energy. Yes I fully understand climate change is much more important! Walk and chew gum!