Ben Novack

Something benefiting you personally is not necessarily a good thing. Something that inconveniences you personally is not necessarily a bad thing.

"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country." ~Fmr. President Theodore Roosevelt, 1918. Roosevelt was born OTD in 1858. Image: NPS/Sagamore Hill collection.

I think a 2028 Democrat would go a long way with a crusade to “regulate Elon.”

I have literally never felt more disconnected from American society. What the hell.

It's really important to pay attention to the fact that Lula beat the fascist candidate not by compromising and trying to meet fascist voters in the middle, but by sticking to his guns, promising prosecutions for election interference, and mobilising his own voters to turn out in greater numbers.

House Judiciary Democrats have just released a 50-page report that pulls together years of assault allegations against Trump and his reported connections to Jeffrey Epstein. The report calls for a special counsel to investigate Trump's ties to Epstein.

I’m not a political journalist, so was gladly surprised at the community I found here last night. To Americans anxious about the upcoming elections, a key thing we learned in Brazil that might help you: DO NOT engage with the far-right online. Don’t share rage bait. Amplify your people. Ignore them.

what is the earliest console game that lets you pick non-binary and please tell me it's not fucking austin powers for game boy color of all things

Brazil’s results tonight are a big endorsement for the idea that every country should have a second “are you you sure about that” election a couple weeks after the first one for the important stuff

Lula winning is great for the planet, great for Brazil, and great for people who aren't revanchist assholes everywhere in the world, but let's not forget that it's also going to make some of the worst people on Earth extremely sad and mad. We should enjoy that, as a little treat.

We’ve been through this before but prediction markets are vibes machines until votes are actually being counted and then they become ruthlessly efficient high value information aggregators. “I don’t trust Kalshi” with 60% of the vote in is just silly. bsky.app/profile/love...

Another win for the prediction markets

I don’t know, man, I’m kind of sick of treating Trump and his cronies like they’re just absurd and laughable and not really spending any time talking about the murders, the concentration camps, the millions starved around the world, people living lives beset with threats of violence and erasure.

Dolly Parton seems to have been one of the very few people of our modern age to figure out that giving money away is 1) a lot of fun and 2) makes people like you.

look it's time that we face facts: being president makes you gay. the only way to survive the enormous pressures of running the free world is homosexuality.

The Tiny Computers app lets you play with old computers on the iPhone Duo. Ten machines included: “Macintosh, Commodore 64, IBM PC, Amiga 500, Windows 95, ThinkPad, iMac G3, iBook G3, PowerBook G4 and Windows XP.” XP even crashes sometimes. Love this. [youtube.com]

I forget who said this in a post the other day, but while it's a catastrophe that Elon has the net worth of the Phillippines, you don't want to be going up against the US if you're the Philippines

The articles about people who voted for Trump two times now turning on him actually feels like a validation of the criticism of Democrats for pursuing these voters constantly since 2016. All of that time setting up a “permission structure” to break up MAGA was a fucking waste.

To: All - Intercompany From: Maintenance Subject: Metamorphosis Body: To whom it may concern, The entire maintenance department is rockabilly now. Please adjust your files as needed Sincerely, Thick Dick Rick and the Husky Boys

Getting around to the mandalorian and grogu. It’s… just a two part episode. I mean it’s fine. But it even has a compete story told in almost exactly one hour. And then it does organically continue but it’s like suspiciously exactly two one-hour stories back to back! This is just the Season 4 opener!

His increasing dementia makes it even easier to tell that he truly has never understood the difference between aesthetics and reality.

We should incessantly remind people of our own revolutionary history, that when soldiers shot people during the Boston Massacre, they were prosecuted locally with no sovereign immunity invoked to protect them from homicide charges. bsky.app/profile/nath...

This is a neat trick from Ossoff. Note that times are unprecedentedly grim while remaining positive and aspirational. I think it’s going to work for him.

The idea that, after everything that's happened, a future Dem administration/DOJ would just be forced to respect blanket, preemptive pardons issued by Trump to cover up crimes, is absurd. The pardon power is not a magic spell that we are helpless to overcome.

There was a fucking hole in our planet’s *atmosphere* Like a legit, no joke, “this will unravel our entire ecosystem” hole in the world, and then we fixed it by working together across national and political lines As a species we decided, “we will survive” Let’s do that some more

Actually launching an impeachment against the sitting SecDef of your own party is a big step. But I think a *lot* of Republicans are going to be delighted to have Somebody To Blame For Iran who isn't named Trump, and that includes Trump. I don't think it'll be a party-line vote in the end.

voters say shit they hear on tv or read in the ether and they have no idea what it really means. "im fiscally conservative and socially moderate" = i want a big government financed social safety net and im perfectly fine with my gay neighbors ppl dont know how to articulate what they really want

They're throwing spaghetti at the wall. It doesn't mean it's not really dangerous - and whatever they try, we'll be prepared to counter - but folks should be clear that this is not some well-orchestrated highly competent plan unfurling.

Three years ago, my dad said that all fish are the same shape. Out of spite, I decided to draw all 478 families of bony fish listed in Nelson 2016. There's still some stuff I need to edit and some fish I want to redraw but, after 985 days, I finished my big dumb fish project last night.

The fact that the president's doctors are giving him the dementia test over and over again -- tracking his decline, most likely -- and that the president keeps bragging about having to take that test should be a five-alarm fire.

Once mass spam texts were made legal, younger donors vanished, leaving a grassroots fundraising machine that subsists on squeezing vulnerable seniors, some of whom give hundreds of times a day. It’s a horrific model. Consultants get generationally wealthy, and the party hollows out its future.

The lights were coming …from behind the screen.

i'll take this as confirmation of my argument that had Epstein lived he'd now be a major MAGA influencer

I sincerely think it would be for the best in the long run to have Trump attempt to rename as many things as possible as often as possible. New Mexico was great. The Atlantic Ocean would be wonderful. Renaming Venezuela or Greenland would be ideal.

@sarahmackattack.bsky.social “we’re gonna make an example outta you” No not like that like the good kind

All History Is The History Of Share Class Struggle.

It’s tragic that there’s so much car traffic in my neighborhood between 8-9am. I live just 1 mile from the heart of Center City so many of these drivers are probably commuting to jobs in the suburbs. It doesn’t have to be this way. BIRT is largely to blame. Bring jobs back to the city.

US garment workers helped pioneer multi-ethnic labor unions, which united people across racial, religious, gender, linguistic, and cultural divides. Also native-born citizens and immigrants. I think about that sometimes when I see people suggest such divides are unbridgeable.

The “once great” state of Minnesota is now full of Somali immigrants… like this one. www.goodmorningamerica.com/news/story/2...

macromedia shockwave, print ad (1999) archive.org/details/eu_W...

I’m telling you that the extreme exposure to scams is a big part of the reason so many people are negative about our economic future.

I’m not like hell yeah HRC but her saying this gives 1) is praiseworthy and 2) gives a staggering amount of cover for basically anybody in the Democratic Party to talk about major reforms and expansion to the Court. Hard to call it a crazy DSA Lefty Fantasy when Hillary f*cking Clinton is on board.

Video games has decided to discontinue its once leading product, the video game