Peter Kurze

19 June

Note to CEOs everywhere: Work less stupidly, not pushier.

The White House budget for blowing sunshine up the boss’s ass needs to be drastically reduced.

Just sayin’

Schooley@schooley.bsky.social

The thing with insult comedians is they don't start dumb wars.

This cartoon has been living in my head for at least fifty years. A few years back I found a copy of it in some cartoon museum. That link seems to be gone now, but today seemed like a good time to repost it.

Peter Kurze reposted

billkittle.bsky.social

@billkittle.bsky.social

If this is a life threatening medical emergency, please hang up and dial 911. If you are seeking routine care from a competent medical professional, please stay on the line, although, tbh, you’re in for a long frustrating day.

So are the requirements for being an NBC baseball announcer having no interest in the actual game right in front of you and a generalized diarrhea of the mouth?

Attempting to repost here to see if this seems at all reasonable to you: bsky.app/profile/pete...

Josh Marshall@joshtpm.bsky.social

It sounds similar to micropayments. Ten or fiften cents an article. Or maybe a dollar an article. Some a la carte payment. The reasons are complicated. But basically it does not work. All the incentives are against it.

Agree absolutely. I don’t know what Josh’s analysis of micropayments was, but I’m damn sure the proliferation of paywalls leads inevitably to balkanization of the information commons and ultimately serves no one especially smaller publishers.

aed-cle.bsky.social@aed-cle.bsky.social

100%. I'd be willing to make micro payments for access to an article. But I'm not subscribing to publications that I don't have a good feel for because I can't read their content or that I don't get everyday value from.

At the end of the month, the clearing house divides up my $100 among all of the publishers whose work I’ve signaled my approval of. If there is only one, they get the whole $100. If there are 100, they all get $1. There are other features that could be added to such a system to improve market

signaling, but that’s the basic idea. Users could set their own funding level and publishers could decide on a per piece basis at what level of funding they would grant access.

aed-cle.bsky.social@aed-cle.bsky.social

I have no evidence, but believe strongly that the industry as a whole is leaving money on the table by not solving this problem. I believe micro payments could be effectively implemented by processing them through a clearing house in the same way Visa works for an infinite number of vendors.

Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie

As a news consumer i could subscribe to the ‘news’ at some set rate, say $100, and would then be free to read anything published by anyone that sets their ‘commitment threshold’ at or above the $100 level. Then when I choose, as a consumer, hit the ‘purchase button’ for content I find valuable.

Peter Kurze reposted

Hoodlum 🇺🇸

@nothoodlum.bsky.social

Denmark is trolling Trump.

Peter Kurze reposted

@audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app

the Court “cannot expect the public to have faith in our judicial system if, without clear explanation, we are consistently greenlighting harmful acts” i continue to think putting KBJ on the Court may be Biden's best decision, no other justice is doin it like her www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/u...

nytimes.comJustice Jackson Calls Emergency Docket ‘Potentially Corrosive’Hours after fielding the Trump administration’s latest emergency application, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson gave a speech urging the Supreme Court to rethink such requests.

In terms of my personal politics I agree with most of this, but there is a greater malaise in Dem politics that is not getting enough attention. The question isn’t how do we manage to line up 51% of the electorate to eke out a win in the next election, it’s more a matter of who are we and what 1/

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patches to this broken system. It’s good and important work but it’s not enough. It is time for a new vision. Courage and boldness are the order of the day. Institutional arrangements must be changed. Money, banking, trade, our sense of what represents our national security all have to change. 4/

We are the sovereigns here. We need to act like it. 5/5

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do we stand for? Reagan sold the country a bill of goods 50 years ago and the Dems have yet to work out a response. What does a Republican stand for? Small govt, low taxes, ‘free’ markets, individual responsibility, deregulation. Once Reagan did the heavy lifting, an idiot could get 2/

elected on that platform and lots of idiots did. The dysfunction we’re experiencing is not despite that platform, but because of it. Those are bad ideas for reasons that are discernible and can be articulated. Most of progressive politics, which I totally support, is about applying 3/

I am not reflexively tech phobic (well, perhaps a little. Forty years in the business will do that to a fella), but there are a couple of things about ai that bother me immensely. The size of the bets being placed are extraordinary given that no one has any real grasp on how this will 1/

Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social

They can't quite say they'd rather hear soothing lies, but it's evident many would. And then there's a larger group of people who are being very severely misled, on a topic of rapidly growing importance.

constitutes value. It’s easy to imagine all of these agents churning out activity and documents that could legitimately add to GDP as we understand it, but we are already running blind assuming that GDP is a reliable measure of worth. I don’t believe we are adequately prepared for a process 4/

that massively accelerates our current ability to generate chaos confusion and conflict. 5/5

Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social

play out socially. Yet at the back of it, a tiny cadre of ridiculously wealthy men are driving it forward in the belief that it will somehow work out well. Some of these folks are clearly mentally unstable, some are in thrall to the notion of infinite growth or just to the excitement of the hunt, 2/

but whatever their motivations are, we clearly do not, as a society, have the tools to ensure that it is integrated with any degree of common human purpose. That is certainly a red flag for me. Another one is that we seem to imagine that collectively we have a handle on what it is that 3/

14 Sept

I saw odds the next batter would reach base during the broadcast of a game. Also, the post urged haste getting your ‘trade’ down before the AB started. I don’t think this is what Adam Smith had in mind when he described the beneficial influence of the invisible hand. Free market my ass.

Let’s Be Frank@frankedson24.bsky.social

Seriously, get gambling, legal or otherwise, the phuck out of sports. Now, before it’s too late. It’s entirely possible gambling could be the undoing of sports as we know them. There are too many bad actors, including people and athletes involved in and around sports, who could ruin it for everyone.

10 Sept

TIL That Ayn Rand accused Milton Friedman of being a “red” economist and thought of Hayek as a socialist. lol.

30 Aug

The constitution makes it clear that Congress is the superior power wrt to SCOTUS. SCOTUS is not necessarily the last word. The judicial power may be vested “in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time establish” and the appellate jurisdiction of SCOTUS is subject to …

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30 Aug

“such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.” IOW Congress already has the power to set up a tribunal beyond the reach of the corrupt SCOTUS.

29 Aug

It seems like the Fed is making noises again about using interest rates to counteract the effect of Trump’s tariffs and insane foreign policy. Could somebody please do some root cause analysis on this situation and see if we could come up with a better solution? Try looking around 1600 Penn Ave.

28 Aug

Not a legal opinion here, but I think they got it slightly wrong. It’s not that prediction markets shouldn’t be subject to gambling regs because they’re pretending to be financial instruments, but that there’s a whole lot of what passes for financial markets that should be regulated as gambling.

Matt Ford@mford.bsky.social

Ninth Circuit panel says 3-0 that Kalshi’s “sports events contracts” are not swaps under the CEA and Nevada gambling laws aren’t pre-empted by CFTC rules for prediction markets. A massive blow to the industry: cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/op...

@samulmschneider.bsky.social

24 Aug

Make a band name bigger Brontosaurus Springfield

Ruth Ben-Ghiat@ruthbenghiat.bsky.social

Make a band bigger Truly Massive Attack

Peter Kurze reposted

Sam Ulmschneider

13 Aug

Normally I just appreciatively read @jamellebouie.net 's columns-sharable video content just isn't my bag. But this is a very, very, very trenchant piece of commentary that captures a lot of how I increasingly understand the disjunction between the commentary environment and on-the-ground politics.

youtube.comThe pundits have completely lost the plotYouTube video by Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie

13 Aug

To be fair to the folks out on the point of attack, it’s also language problem. Our public dialogue takes place through semaphores. The percentage of the population engaged in long-form debate is minuscule.

Perry Bacon@perrybaconjr.bsky.social

I agree with what Mark says here. But this is not just a media problem. Even the insurgent/progressive/young /supposedly different politicians invoke right-wing language at a moment's notice! The anchor on Sunday didn't ask, "What do you think about Woke 1.0?" The politician volunteered it.

about.fb.comThe Future is for EveryoneA letter from Mark Zuckerberg on the path to a positive AI future.

10 Aug

@hilzoy.bsky.social While reading Zuckerberg’s essay (about.fb.com/news/2026/08... )and wincing along with every wrong assumption on which he premised his argument, I couldn’t stop thinking about you and the idea that he might have been, but unfortunately was not, one of your students.

10 Aug

Not that I would have actually wished that experience for you.

10 Aug

I just read this to my wife and her response sums it up pretty well: “Just shoot me now!”

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Peter Kurze reposted

David Rothkopf

@djrothkopf.bsky.social

8 Aug

Last night, the GOP members of the Senate approved Trump’s effort to destroy the rule of law in the US, wreck the Justice Dept., enable rampant corruption, defend pedophiles, and attack the president’s enemies. And they know they did those things. An egregious violation of their oaths of office.

7 Aug

If you think of it not so much as a validation of Todd Blanche’s corruption and low character, but rather as a defensive move to keep Laura Loomer out of the AG’s office, it makes more sense, but just barely.

Kevin M. Kruse@kevinmkruse.bsky.social

"I've sold out my purported principles one again and I guess people will notice -- what's new?"

notus.orgMitch McConnell Is Voting, But He’s Still on Medical LeaveThe Kentucky Republican broke ties on amendment votes “by proxy” on the farm bill Thursday.

7 Aug

So this is how this works. Mitch, when I stick this pin in your leg, flinch once for yes, twice for no. Here we go. I think that was one twitch. You all saw that right?

capitolhunters@capitolhunters.bsky.social

Seems bad? Sen. Boozman of Arkansas is now voting for Mitch McConnell, claiming that McConnell talked to him and gave him permission to cast his vote. The photo on the article here is old, from before McConnell's crisis. No one's seen him. No reporters talked to him. But people are using his vote.

3 Aug

Hello, my name is Donald Trump, and I’m here to make the case for a new Constitution.

contrariannews.orgTrump & Cronies’ Top 10 Corruption Scandals (Round 4)Publisher's Roundup 78

2 Aug

I’d be very interested in hearing from someone with expertise in this matter, but as I understand it, none of the Nuremberg defendants were prosecuted based on German law. Given the scale, shamelessness and comprehensiveness of Trump admin criming seems we might need to redefine due process.

Norm Eisen@normeisen.bsky.social

JD Vance says Watergate wouldn't matter today I disagree Trump's self-dealing has reached levels that would have been unimaginable in past presidencies In my latest publisher's note, I break down the 10 biggest Trump grifts we're fighting back against 👇 - TN

youtu.beThe Death of Political ImaginationYouTube video by Michael Burns

I agree with you about the lack of political imagination, but not the messianic vision part. Messianic vision seems better suited to authoritarian projects than to democratic liberation. The latter requires more thoughtful reflection so anything that advances that gets my vote. 1/

Michael Burns@michaelburns.bsky.social

new video out now on the importance of reclaiming the power of political imagination. and why the left needs to dream big. youtu.be/RT1Q4qnHfTU

the only institution in which the people have a voice? Why are the preponderance of institutions that shape our lives operated and propagated through authoritarian principles? Seriously , why are our governmental institutions so unresponsive to the opinions of regular folk? 4/

Why is mystic wisdom attributed to markets and elevated above opinions of real people? Regular folks can understand this stuff and if we make it part of our everyday politics, we’ve got a shot at a more democratic future. Or, alternatively, I’m a hopelessly naive dope who will never learn. 5/5

youtu.beThe Death of Political ImaginationYouTube video by Michael Burns

Michael Burns@michaelburns.bsky.social

new video out now on the importance of reclaiming the power of political imagination. and why the left needs to dream big. youtu.be/RT1Q4qnHfTU

There’s a ton of very obviously wrong and broken stuff on which both the status quo and the RWNJ vision depend that escape unacknowledged in our political discourse. Exposing some of that could shift the current stasis of the political debate. 2/