maybe the LA Times and the Washington Post are part of a conspiracy to make The New York Times look good.
“yes,” said the boy who cried wolf. “but there were guard rails — i mean fences — around the village those times.”
“I’ve noticed a little linguistic tic in some recent public statements – the use of the word ‘ruthless’ as if it was a synonym for ‘diligent’ or ‘competent’.” @dsquareddigest https://backofmind.substack.com/p/ruthless-pragmatism
// kind of dark. reminds me of Kamala Harris’ choice to emphasize the word “lethal” when discussing the armed forces.
you’ve become a casualty of the war — in a sense, just a bit — if you find your initial reaction to news of soldiers’ deaths on the side that you dislike is unleavened by sadness or grief.
i love this guy.
of course he was crushed.
from #BenRyderHowe https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/yellowstone-club-real-estate-public-land-montana-crazy-mountains.html
Text: The ranger, Alex Sienkiewicz, had infuriated the ranchers by tearing down their “No Trespassing” signs. In the summer of 2016, he sent a staffwide email that read, “This is my regular reminder: NEVER ask permission to access the National Forest Service through a traditional route shown on our maps EVEN if that route crosses private land. NEVER ASK PERMISSION; NEVER SIGN IN.”
as billionaires buy media, bribe voters with “petitions”, finance dark money influence groups in order to buy a Supreme Court and now an election for a fascist, will center-left liberals finally concede that top inequality is a problem, that it’s not sufficient to just try to “raise the bottom”?
@artcollisions i think that’s right. there are economic efficiencies to scale, but political and social institutions really need a foundation at human scale. i think the unworldliness of this election has to do with the reduction of an activity with incredibly profound consequences to media spectacle that terminates with filling out a bureaucratic form. we’d be and act more sane if we actually got together to form and express our views.
[new draft post] Midsize is the right size https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/10/24/midsize-is-the-right-size/index.html
@_dm gonna die with my keyboard in my hand *lawd lawd*
gonna die with my keyboard in my hand.
the korean war reanimates as proxy war in ukraine. https://koreapro.org/2024/10/south-korea-announces-potential-weapons-provision-for-ukraine/
when throwing one scapegoat off the cliff doesn’t resolve the problem, well you need to find another scapegoat to throw off the cliff for that!
A very good interview by #LexFridman of #BernieSanders, a guy who through all the twists and turns has retained my admiration.
It's also quite remarkable how quick and on-point he remains, compared to his contemporaries, Joe Biden, Donald Trump.
Culturally, we’ve grown accustomed to rooting for anti-heroes. I wonder if that hasn’t primed us to be able to vote for someone like Donald Trump, in full(ish) knowledge of who he is.
Are we just collectively Breaking Bad?
from #HamiltonNolan https://inthesetimes.com/article/union-election-trump-harris-2024-labor-pro-act-election ht #ErikLoomis
Text: Here is one thing we can say for sure about union members who vote for Trump: The fact that they are union members is not the most important part of their own identity. If it were, they could be easily persuaded not to vote for Trump, a literal billionaire scab who we have already seen act like a typical anti-labor Republican during his term in the White House. Hell, J.D. Vance gave a speech opposing the PRO Act just a few days ago! The interesting question here is not whether these guys are full of shit when they ask union members for support; the interesting question is why many union members care so little about being union members that they allow themselves to be tempted into the Republican camp. Their competing identities — as macho guys, or as racists, or as anti-elites, or as Christians, or whatever — have overtaken any hold that their identity as a union member may have had on their hearts and minds. That is a problem that cannot be solved by any politicians. It can only be solved by the labor movement itself.
Ads for candidates I support don’t motivate me. I resent the manipulation. I feel like they cheapen causes that matter to me, and turn them into grifts.
But ads by their opponents—the shamelessness and dissembling—infuriate me. The other guy going negative is, for me, the most effective positive.
it’s weird that in development and geopolitics there’s a sense in which the opposite of West is South.
speaking personally, i think it’s perfectly acceptable to jump around and skip like a dipshit. i encourage it even.
what is not acceptable is buying an election for a fascist.
Science famously progresses “one funeral at a time” (Max Planck). And so it was with moving past the NAIRU paradigm at the Fed, only a bit less morbidly.
See this excellent column by @jwmason https://jwmason.org/slackwire/does-the-fed-still-believe-in-the-nairu/
Tax cuts “are the political equivalent of someone chopping your house to pieces with an axe and then offering the remains back to you under a sign that says, ‘Free Firewood!’” #HamiltonNolan https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/why-republicans-love-to-offer-you