Ryan Shaffer

Democrats need to state that if this is done, they will have no choice but to turn Trump and his subordinates over to international tribunals for war crimes prosecutions, if Trump makes it impossible to prosecute them domestically. Make subordinates accepting pardons understand the consequences.

FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — Trump says he ordered the Justice Department lawsuit over Alaska's US Senate race: 'I'm the one that said do it.'

The Executive Branch has no authority to regulate states’ election decisions as to candidate qualifications, and the choice to file a lawsuit like this just days before an election speaks volumes about the political corruption festering at the top levels of the DOJ.

Grim sign for the long-term viability of the country: when the machinery of its one nominally pro-democracy party operates more in the manner of a Ponzi scheme, existing more to siphon off the wealth of vulnerable elderly individuals than actually sell the party.

Turns out the friction of having to learn photoshop was a crucial firewall protecting society from the terrible taste of small business owners

The lesson I've learned from designing a board game about lawfare in the last two years is that if the Trump administration was led by someone with his ruthlessness but even 20% more political talent, democracy would have been totaled. Not a good look that we've been only saved by his incompetence.

People like to claim that Dems are too internet-focused, but this is clear evidence that wide swaths of GOP Congressional staffers are irreparably brain-damaged from reading too much far-right conspiracy theory content on Twitter. A poor sign for the longevity of the party (and the country).

LIFE!! LIFE, DO YOU HEAR ME?! GIVE MY CREATION... LIFE!!!

What a day to be reading a bunch of #DeltaGreen scenarios and seeing the world through paranoia beer-goggles.

Lot of issues here but one part that sticks out in light of the almost-attacked-a-Chinese-ship story today: people with very important jobs where lives are at stake have bought the hype and outsourced their whole brains to AI. We're going to see more and more of this. www.cnn.com/2026/09/18/p...

???????

Money that comes into the United States government is government revenue. It is part of the public fisc. There's not "taxpayer money" and then "extra bonus money outside the rules." It's all taxpayer money. And spending *any* of it requires Congressional authorization. 2/

Man attempts to rob a bank by taking himself hostage

My parents met working for Reagan's DOJ on civil rights cases. Seeing the institution gutted in this way is, well, gutting. Needless to say, if I review a resume from someone looking for a job someday and see they were at DOJ 2025-2028, my presumption is going to be to huck that resume in the bin.

This, and also with a news media that credulously accepted most claims about AI through at least Q2 2026, including in particular SpaceX's attempt to mark-to-market a business model of "every human being will buy our product every minute of their lives forever."

Woah.

On the plus side, when these deals collapse and we’re left with all these useless data centers, computational power will be cheaper than ever. Sorry, I meant to say “establishing a fortress from which to rule over the wasteland will be cheaper than ever.”

This article neatly sums up why AI regulation is necessary; the notion that frontier agents should be developed to then sell the agents as protection against themselves (with the unsubtle goal of creating a new protection monopoly, however brief it may be) is real "good guy with a gun"-ass logic.

My takeaway from that speech is that we are headed down the road of Trump trying to outright rig elections. It probably won't work, but he's going for it.

And so we return to the status quo from three months ago, where both sides blockade Hormuz. After all, international trade is a two-way strait.

Saw a meme of GenZ baffled by how pre-internet travel worked, and realized we’ve crossed an enshittification threshold where IRL services that once seemed outdated, like travel agents, now seem luxurious: “You meet with a human expert who plans out your whole trip with you” sounds incredible now tbh

Heartbreaking hearing that the woman who Platner raped was hesitant to come forward because she agreed with his politics and didn’t want to damage the movement. If you didn’t already realize, this sort of thing happens a lot you just don’t usually hear about it

As ever, the real threat of AI isn’t that it will be spectacular, but rather that it will be as good as us and reveal we’ve been mediocre the whole time

In other words: the U.S. gives Iran everything it wants immediately, including billions in cash, for a pinky promise to negotiate a future deal on the things the U.S. wants

We are still a long way from a second civil war or breakup of our country. But, if it did happen, I think a breakdown in Full Faith and Credit and fights over long-arm statutes could be triggers. A nation of many sovereigns can't survive if they don't respect the laws of the others.