NYTimes: affirmative action for mediocre editors angry at MeToo

NYT editors (and nepo baby owner) put "Claudine Gay" in "top 5 featured on the New York Times homepage Dec 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 22, 25" While they put Trump calling for Constitution's "termination" on page 15 and chief of staff "tyrant" warning on 12 Chris Rufo openly bragged about it:

I'm going to try to do this cleanly. Today's right wing governments are networked to each other. Those networks are well-documented. You can read about them in books. Following the elections in one node of that network is good practice for understanding the U.S. node.

Just here to agree the way Orban’s Hungary was funding a lot of right wing media efforts over here… There is no coincidence that Carlson and all the major right wing players spent time over there

In case facts still matter

NEW: The group behind Cornel West's 2024 ballot push was wholly funded through Elon Musk's dark money network, according to Sludge's review of tax documents. readsludge.com/2026/10/26/m...

the social media platforms are natural monopolies built on network effects. easily duplicatable if you can force the collective action to get people from one to another

one handy thing the CCP and Putin have demonstrated is you can just ban these companies from operating in your country. replacements will sprout up extremely fast

if I were president of any country, I would be searching for any pretext, however thin, to do this to Meta and Vichy Twitter at least

The powerful executives who cozied up to Trump didn't oops accidentally forget about pendulum swings. They either: 1) Like the fascism 2) Calculated it was here to stay, so going along was savvy 3) Saw no real downside, no consequences when the pendulum swung Crucial to show them 3 was a mistake

it is my deepest and most fervent wish that the tech oligarchs suffer consequences for openly allying with fascism the world over maybe we can extradite zuck in 2029

The fact that we've agreed to call these gambling sites "prediction markets" furthers their bullshit. They predict nothing and it's a disgrace that news orgs have partnered with them and pretend they have news value. THEY'RE JUST A BUNCHA LOSERS GAMBLING.

My immediate concern here is that the Trump administration will back this likely effort to attempt a coup, rhetorically if not materially. It would hardly be the first shameful thing the United States has down to our neighbors to the south, but it would be a very shameful thing indeed.

None of us should forget this. Meta should be subjected to corporate death penalty and permanently broken up into small pieces.

In his acceptance speech, Lula says he will work to regulate digital platforms in Brazil. “Digital crimes must be dealt with like real-life crimes.” This comes after Meta directly interfered with the Brazilian elections, favouring Flávio Bolsonaro.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who spared a thought for my country today, who amplified information about the coup d’état attempt, and worried about Brazil’s democratic future—the world’s democratic future. We won! Women won! The Amazon won! Young people won! Democracy won! Hope won!

Congrats to Lula on overcoming Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump to defeat Hospital Pervert Jr., even as his opposition literally blocked off roads and turned off bus service during election day. Fascists are scary but they are always, 100% of the time, ultimately gigantic fucking losers.

Dragging this into the light...in light of Brazil.

Lula won against Meta, TikTok, Rubio, and all the money poured in here by the US

As we head into the final weeks of the election cycle, this must be taken as a serious threat.

I LIED TO MYSELF, I WAS EMOTIONALLY INVESTED AND TRIED TO CONVINCE MYSELF I WASNT, BECAUSE I WAS EXPECTING LULA TO LOSE BUT LOLLLLLLLL

It is so funny that dad Bolsonaro stays in jail now LOL.

🧵 Matt Yglesias is one of the biggest reasons the Democratic Party leadership is so feckless, cowardly, and lazy. I'm not exaggerating. Yglesias is often a featured speaker at private Democratic Party events, despite almost always being wrong. Let's discuss...

Firstly, let's establish that Yglesias has this kind of access. There are dozens of webpages like this one showing Yglesias speaking at private or public events sponsored by Democrats :

This viewpoint, often called popularism, which Yglesias does not seem to have originally had when he was younger, has been absorbed like lead paint fumes by almost every person with access to Democratic power ever since Bill Clinton rose to power.

Simple pragmatism should have dictated the abandonment of this theory of change since it never led Clinton to a majority of his own, and it was not the method that Barack Obama used in the 2008 race which he won overwhelmingly. Popularism has been a total failure during the Trump era as well.

Popularism has been a total failure. It does not work. Since it became the unquestioned gospel creed of Democratic elites in the latter half of Obama II, they have only had victories after titanic Republican screwups. They were not earned by Democrats. They were cries for help from the public.

This also explains why it is that the people you keep seeing shoved in your face as "liberal thought leaders" are always pushing moderate conservatism and placating reactionaries: -Steven Pinker -Matt Yglesias -Noah Smith -Malcolm Gladwell -Jonathan Haidt -Ezra Klein ...

This is the neoliberal blob and it has been totally ineffectual at stopping Trump fascism because it thinks the world before Trump was great. Meanwhile, most Americans have thought the country was headed in the wrong direction since 2009.

Just for the sake of argument, let's assume that instead of being moderate conservatives, these people (Schumer, Yglesias, Klein, etc) actually do have some left-wing views that they really do want to implement. Popularism never gets you there, because you have to tell the public what you want.

Democrats don't want to have these public debates though because they hate their base and don't want to hear from you. This is why they don't post much on Bluesky. This is also why Klein, Yglesias, Smith, etc. are too afraid to post here also. They know that they would lose.

has mmfa or someone like that compiled a comparison of airtime and front page headlines given to hunter biden vs jared kushner, given that kushner's alleged corruption is about 1000x larger, you would expect it to receive more coverage than Hunter's, right?

one conclusion you could draw was that Joe Biden ethically adhering to DOJ protocol and appointing a Republican to prosecute his own son is seen as more scandalous and worthy of disapproving coverage than Trump's decision to appoint cronies who would not initiate investigations into his family

There's a different conclusion you could draw if you wanted to be less charitable of course!

Huh it makes you think if there is a consistent standard being applied here and, if there isn't, why that is the case. bsky.app/profile/redo...

Dems don’t have a network of billionaire-funded propaganda outlets 🤷

At some point after the election there'll be a lot of pieces puzzling out how the Republicans got away with being so generously funded by a notorious white nationalist and it wasn't treated as a big, problematic issue. From the same reporters currently not treating it as a big, problematic issue.

This vindictive targeting of career civil servants by Trump fascists precisely because they had served honorably was one of the things clearly at stake in 2024 - Trump promised it - but the media instead gave more coverage to the imaginary idea that Trump had a plan to lower prices to 2019 levels

They repeatedly covered Trump's appealing promises that he had no way to enact as if they were real and Trump's unappealing promises that he would have the direct authority over as if they were fake - even writing stories farcically confirming Trump's attempts to distance himself from Project2025

New @centeronbudget.bsky.social fiscal policy paper. The U.S. has 2 deficits: 1. A fiscal deficit 2. An investment deficit—our failure to adopt policies making folks better off. Fiscal policy should reduce both—not reduce one deficit by growing other. More revenue can do just that.