Rich Beck

Convening a focus group of 30 people who have no idea what's going on and no expertise on basically any topic and just turning them loose. "Fuck me up," I tell them. "Just give me all the dumbest stuff you've got."

I took action with No Kings. Will you join me? Use this link to sign up: www.mobilize.us/nokings/even...

This is Tommy. Tommy had a question about my allegiances. Listen to the end to hear about his.

Do you remember the time when they made all the characters in mob movies have names like Alan Jones? And no one liked it because they wanted those beautiful Italian-style names? President Donald Trump does! defector.com/what-is-the-...

Trump: "I didn't go to Congress. Remember Sleepy Joe? 'Oh, if they would give me approval in Congress!' You're not gonna get approval. You just do it. You're the president."

New from me: Michael Lewis provides a timely reminder that even the heroic federal employees who tried to block DOGE grifters could only do so much. If DOGE could not be stopped at the time, accountability must be on the agenda for the future. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/blockers-a...

Grocery store chain Kroger said it will lay off 3,000 corporate employees over the next three years as it ramps up its use of artificial intelligence to streamline operations.

This will not end well. And I'm one of the people around here who is bullish on AI as an empowering tool. But this is not how to use it.

The Kennedy Center is on the verge of destruction; the members of its board, filled with foreign policy grifters and billionaire wives, serve as a kind of cheat code for understanding the crimes of Trump 2.0. A great taxonomy to the staging behind the scenes: prospect.org/2026/10/13/k...

There is absolutely no viable path forward for this country that doesn’t hinge on extreme accountability for everyone involved in this administration. They’re going to whine about politicization and credulous media types will echo them, but the thing is, they’ve committed tons of obvious crimes!

Sam Altman said people are just gonna have to die in order to implement AI. In the very same week, Anthropic claimed it’s a human rights violation to be mean to the computer. These people need to be held accountable. They think lines of code are a person with rights but living people are debris.

Second, the whole point of the lynching spectacle was to indict and implicate the white community involved the lynching. It tied them together; it implicated them; it bound them to each other in guilt and shame.

@beaubaumann.bsky.social is right: everyday, until the supposed day of public execution, is a struggle over the message. I would add two things: First, when I say that the Civil War taught us No Kings, No Masters, this is what I mean. The master had sovereign authority over the plantation.

I think people should listen to what the administration trying to bring back spectacle lynchings, race riots, and middle passage-esque deportation voyages are trying to tell you about themselves. bsky.app/profile/bren...

this is not a problem you can fix with calm, reasoned debate. you can't even fix it by improving people's lives with policy. there is no clear, proven, non-violent solution to this issue. finding one is the most significant problem of our age.

The biggest democratic/liberal mistake of the last 50+ years has been operating like the right has anything to offer America. It was the fundamental problem with Bill Clinton to Obama and everyone in between

The way to deal with the right is simple: out vote them. deprive them of power and influence. do not operate like they have anything to contribute and constantly ridicule their stupidity

Americans have never been angrier with one another. But polarization is not the disease—it is the response to a revanchist movement seeking to roll back sixty years of social progress. 🆕 by @lilymasonphd.bsky.social muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/a...

My new JOD piece arguing against the “cure polarization” approach to saving democracy.

“The current level of political animosity is exactly what one would expect to see if an extremist faction attempted to rescind the hard-earned rights of the vast majority of the country’s citizens… and its pathology is not anger—it is the movement to undermine a generation of rights.”

I recommend people read this to get a sense of the president's grave cognitive impairment. Trump is either unwilling or unable (or maybe both) to answer the questions he's actually asked, so he just rants and raves while the interviewers do their best to provide structure to his random brain firings

What's on your bookshelf that the Internet Archive doesn't have? There's an app for that. Scan a book's barcode or ISBN to see whether the Internet Archive needs it for preservation and digitization. Scan your shelves. Save a book. help.archive.org/help/donate-... 🧵

Your old books could have another life—not just on your shelf, but in the library. #ToolsYouCanUse

like I suspect many of you on This Website, I think a core reason why I find Eliezer Yudkowsky and his rationalist and effective altruist satellites so intensely annoying is because I had a VERY similar “being a super weird, pretentious, hyper-literate kid” experience - I just, you know, grew up.

"Today we are surrounded by a million 'mad prophet' Howard Beales now served up customized and personalized to your exact demographic ideological aesthetic micropreference telling us that they don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street."

It’s fun to watch Republicans realize Trump is poison but they still have to drink from the cup.

When historians look back on Trump's foreign policy in a century, I bet these are their verdict on his most famous policies: The support of Russia--the most evil. The pillaging of Venezuela--the most corrupt. The decision to go to war with Iran--the most incompetent.

The abandonment of Taiwan--the most geopolitically catastrophic. The China policy--the most craven. The destruction of US relations with its allies--the most stupid.

There's plenty of corruption, crimes against humanity, and downright evil shit to focus on, but every so often it strikes me how thoroughly we USians have been exposed and disgraced on the world stage. A country who can elect such a man—twice!—is not a worthy country. We need radical reformation.

“If you are staring at an example of social disorder or social inefficiency, and the left refuses to explain either why it has happened or how they will fix it, then the right gets to point at someone in the immediate area and say, ‘That’s who did it.’” crazy how much Mamdani speaks my language

Things Fall Apart (in the Middle East): The Donald Trump Story talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/thing...

Q: China is one of the most repressive countries for journalists in the world-- TRUMP: Well, I don't know about that. I think we're repressive also

i think the biggest ideological divide in america is between people who think everybody deserves dignity, and people who think dignity is a zero-sum game

The baseline level of Dumb Guy Pretending To Be Even Dumber in our culture is incredibly high at the moment, but this is an all-time performance in that category. Hall of Fame work in any era.

I just took action with @theactionnetwork.bsky.social: Join us to Defend Washington!. Take action here: actionnetwork.org/forms/join-u...