turnerator.bsky.social

the context all y'all are missing on this piece is that this *is who marissa has always been.* 20 years ago she was demanding product managers test 200 different shades of blue for the google UI! outsourcing even trivial human decisions to machines is her entire schtick, and always has been!

David Gura@davidgura.bsky.social

cool, cool

it's interesting to see the bifurcation: direct democracy in blue states is a corrupted mess - by the 21st century monied interests have figured out all the tricks for gaming it. red states are in the 19th century - living under the corrupted legislatures that made it necessary in the first place

David Roberts@volts.wtf

Governing via ballot initiative, where any motivated billionaire can buy enough signatures to get something on the ballot that reverses democratically passed legislation ... is not great.

i know a few anti-netanyahu israelis well and unfortunately i find raice's account totally plausible, as biased as it may be. the way i would put it is that even most anti-netanyahu israelis are so in thrall to jingoistic zionism that *this specific scandal* might not be a factor

Weedle@weedle.bsky.social

The unspoken belief here is that any Israeli who doesn't show blind loyalty to Netanyahu is not a Real Israeli and therefore their opinion doesn't count like how the only Real Americans own thousands of dollars in MAGA merchandise and the rest of us are just out of touch elites

(none of which is to say that raice's assertion is at all a valid reason to distort the network's journalistic output, only that the assertion may well largely be factually accurate as far as israel's election discourse goes)

one of the many depressing things about israeli politics is that as far as I can tell the rump left-wing parties' voters are kinda the equivalent of, like, bay area loony left-NIMBY antivaxers, and the "centrist" parties' voters are akin to never-trump republicans who just hate bibi bc he's corrupt

Weedle@weedle.bsky.social

best analogy i can come up with is to the "bin laden determined to strike in US" memo. plenty of democrats hated george w bush but *ignoring that memo* was nonetheless immaterial to most popular discourse in the 2004 election, with the exception of a minority of hardcore partisans and dirty hippies

thank god someone else is saying this, i thought i was taking crazy pills

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you love to see it bsky.app/profile/turn...

Kevin M. Kruse@kevinmkruse.bsky.social

It's funny that all the famous marketing professors on the internet are so completely clueless about how they themselves look. The only thing I know about this person is that he routinely exposes himself as a dim-witted asshole. If that's his chosen brand, well, good luck with that.

what a fucking dumbshit john mcwhorter is

are mcwhorter and his editors going to come back with an apology in late 2027 when trump's brain has gone from pudding to jello and he's finally dropping racial slurs every week?

pointing out that "regular" fund investing is not gambling is largely the right way to look at it but apart from the day trading aspect of it, high-beta ETFs and especially leveraged ETFs have blurred the lines between "regular" investing and gambling

ellie lockhart (she/they)@eleanor.lockhart.contact

I’m sorry but if you’re comparing sports betting and investing in the stock market, you are doing a massive disservice to financial literacy

in the meme-stock world we live in now, there are plenty of chuds who are like "it's not trading - i'm investing long-term!" and then they shove all their money in some garbage ETF like $DRAM without any idea of the risks of going all-in on a portfolio of three companies that make datacenter RAM

i do think we shouldn't totally ignore the specifics of stories like this insofar as they are excellent illustrations of how many major journalistic orgs are obsessed with litigating ever-more-pointless questions around specifically social class and manners just like larry david, except unfunny!

rax ‘levon honkers’ king@raxkingisdead.bsky.social

you guys broke watergate

there's always that one unctuous scumbag at the office who "inexplicably" keeps advancing even though his peers all hate him. he knows how to kiss the boss's ass and look like he's working hard! this isn't really much of an enigma

Ned Resnikoff@resnikoff.bsky.social

There's this really odd pattern with Bari Weiss, JD Vance, Richard Hanania etc, where they rise to prominence because their main skill is cultivating the friendship of wealthy patrons, but it's impossible to figure out how they do it because they constantly exude a pungent strain of anti-charisma.

yes, and i also don't think it's a coincidence that everyone i've known who had this incurious, purely instrumental kind of mindset also approached their own jobs in a maximally slapdick, barely-competent way, doing the absolute minimum that was necessary for the client or boss to not pitch a fit

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux@bretdevereaux.bsky.social

As an aside, I think one of the essential skills being trained in college that the 'college is for training workers' paradigm devalues to its peril is the ability and willingness to treat dry, academic matters as serious and worth getting right, rather than dismissing them.

i have also noticed that for at least the wealthier cohort of gen x parents, they seem to see their children as living trophies; if princeton waitlists little Conor, that's princeton's way of telling them that *they*, and their *own* achievements in life, are unworthy

(this is also why some of them are such maniacs about "merit" in admissions - it's not just about harming the kid's prospects in life; they feel *personally* insulted that their own greatness hasn't been rewarded in the way they see fit)

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux@bretdevereaux.bsky.social

this too, though i wonder if the cause is less something endogenous to gen x and more a reflection of wildly increasing college costs; the higher that even lower-tier public schools jack up the price, the more parents will view that relationship as purely transactional bsky.app/profile/bubb...

Timothy Burke@bubbaprog.xyz

this is related to something I was talking with my parents about earlier today, how the shift from boomers to gen x parents saw kids being seen as less than individual people but more the property of the parent, & college as an "investment" in that property that must show early returns

besides everything else, this is a perfect example of how cops act based on vibes, not the law. listen to the cop go "[the flock guy] doesn't know if he'll be in the news, if he's going to be targeted" there is no law that immunizes you from showing up in the news for what you do in public!!!

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15 Sept

both the cops and local TV news itself see being subjected to public scrutiny as a *punishment* (fitting, since they both largely have total impunity from it). they have both arrogated to themselves the right to determine who is a "bad guy" who should be punished...

15 Sept

...and they get pretty upset if your definition doesn't agree with theirs. i think that is some of what's behind this cop's reaction - she thinks the flock guy is being singled out for wrongful punishment; by virtue of his job he can't possibly be in the class of "bad guys"

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with a very big asterisk: they won't police weirdness at all if it is even a little bit of a pain in the ass. can you imagine how the average cop would respond if you called 911 and said "my name is showing up on such-and-such website, i'm afraid people on the dark web are going to target me"???

15 Sept

the other bit of this that I couldn't quite put my finger on before is that it seems like the cop might be trotting out the "he doesn't know if he's gonna be on the news" bit to mean "this guy is just a smol bean, it's *unfair* that you would *punish* him by airing what he does to the public"

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i mean i guess i can see this being a very cursory step that cops take to try to deescalate disputes - "this guy has this concern about you regardless of what the law says" - but it feels scummy. a cop saying it carries the implicit threat that this "concern" might be ameliorated by the use of force

we have turned into a society of useless busybody hall monitors. both cops and local TV news now largely see their jobs as policing "weirdness" - their first instinct is to attack people not for noncompliance with the law, but for not *conforming* to how they think a "normal" way to behave is

13 Sept

in jentleson's telling, a major triggering event for fetterman becoming gung-ho for the gaza genocide was the tree of life synagogue mass shooting. american jews did not ask for john fetterman to cheer on the killing of arabs for "our" safety (???), but he decided to be our white knight anyway

Charlie Sykes@sykescharlie.bsky.social

WTF is wrong with John Fetterman? On today’s “To the Contrary” podcast, I ask his former COS, Adam Jentleson.

13 Sept

really not good that there are any D politicians who have internalized the idea that israel is the defender of world jewry (not to mention its absurd corollary, that attacks on jews anywhere mean that israel is justified in committing genocide against palestinian Arabs)

10 Sept

imagine how high the percentage be if they used the straightforward word "punish" instead of the bland, corporate "hold accountable"

Ezra Levin ❌👑@ezralevin.bsky.social

Fun fact: in our polling of battleground states, about 60% of voters said it is a “top” or “high” priority for Congress to investigate and hold Musk accountable. Lean into it Dems. He’s a cartoon villain - treat him like one.

argentina, israel, and saudi arabia do not get an instant of us government attention (let alone money) until their leaders personally prostrate themselves in front of me all ICE detention facilities and car dealerships will become units of the national park service

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the entire US-mexico border also becomes a national park. every panel of the border fence is pulverized and mixed with any recoverable stone from the also-demolished trump tower; after safety testing these are used as substrate for public gardens that subsidize growing ukrainian sunflowers

this is also why a key component of the early maga project was to try to gaslight people into thinking that this wasn't so - that screaming 'shut the fuck up' at people only made their opinions worse

Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social

Also, social shame is an important motivator! There is a real contingent of men who think age of consent laws should be repealed. The reason that 'movement' has never caught on is that they are immediately labeled freaks and perverts if they ever bring it up in public.

"am i so out of touch?" (for not using my considerable power to fight racism that i missed right under my nose) "no, it's the children who are wrong" (you should have 'debated' racists to convince them you were right, by stigmatizing them you just made them so much worse"

(yes, i'm glossing over the degree to which this also is a self-serving rationalization - that plenty of the tech elite were realizing they sympathized with many of the racist beliefs of trump's base, but were trying to find a way to get comfortable with those beliefs by making it others' fault)

this is also why a key component of the early maga project was to try to gaslight people into thinking that this wasn't so - that screaming 'shut the fuck up' at people only made their opinions worse

Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social

this was the kind of idiocy that very rich people in the VC world were stewing in in the immediate aftermath of trump's first election in 2016. they were trying to convince themselves that the rise of trump was all the fault of sanctimonious liberal harpies

ACC's decision to declare the mountain lion having "left on its own" and stop looking for it seems particularly bonkers. it's a peninsula whose only egress to the north and east is by bridges! if you don't specifically see a big wild animal going south, why would you ever assume it's left safely?

NBC Bay Area@nbcbayarea.com

A mountain lion sighting near Fell and Baker Saturday night prompted a big response. On Sunday, Animal Care and Control said the threat appears to be over, but authorities later said another possible mountain lion sighting was reported. nbcbay.com/T7Thuhn

nothing about ACC's behavior here makes any sense unless their strong bias is to do a minimum of work over a 3-day weekend, instead of relentlessly tracking down a shy but potentially dangerous animal that accidentally ended up in a city of 800,000 people.

badfaithtimes.comHolding Elon Musk Accountable Is A Matter Of National SurvivalElected Democrats can't move on this time.

it's small in the grand scheme of things, but the mainstream left needs to stop demanding that its enemies "be held accountable" for their crimes start using the goddamn word "punished"! "held accountable" makes it sound like punishment must be dependent on some future determination of the facts

Denny Carter@dennycarter.bsky.social

I don’t think there’s any moving forward for the United States without addressing the Musk problem. badfaithtimes.com/holding-elon...

political scientists have known for *six decades* that it generally makes no sense to treat elections as referenda on specific policies, but for some reason that doesn't stop immerwahr from going "well the people wanted X policy in 2024"

Quinta Jurecic@qjurecic.bsky.social

I think the more compelling critique here is less "sometimes The People want bad things, what does that mean if we have a less empowered judiciary" and more "sometimes what The People want is unclear, erratic, and disconnected from reality"

6 Sept

as a general point (that being nicer to these prime will not convert them) i think this is mostly right, but i do wonder a bit if these women were turned by the *combination* of mean doctors and their own sense of status i.e. "how dare you dismiss ME, a wealthy white woman, like this"

Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social

I know this is a common belief, but it’s not true. If people went anti-vaxx/MAHA because they were excluded from the medical establishment, we would see sky-high rates among poor people, minorities and the uninsured. We don’t.

this is what cities on the west coast have done for like the last three decades, though. look at the insane design of the VTA light rail in silicon valley. huge chunks of the stops are in SFH-heavy, non-commercial suburban sprawl. it takes an hour to make a trip that cars handle in 15 minutes.

David Roberts@volts.wtf

I know I keep yelling about this, but fuck, look at it. That's potentially some of the most valuable land in the country, located directly between two light-rail stations in a growing, prosperous city, and we're just going to leave a FUCKING GOLF COURSE there. It's such a travesty.

this very dumb fascist is so solipsistic and conspiracy-brained that he cannot fathom how someone could possibly have blunt force head trauma as a result of a fall, or that someone might take money off a defenseless person who had just injured themselves

one of the unironically best things about bluesky is that i never have to see stanley roberts's wingnut welfare-funded idiocy, because nobody here liked him enough to give him any engagement and he pretty quickly just gave up posting here