Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
in 2016, i was a class reductionist, a Bernie bro, sensible moderate centrist Democrats kept telling me. "If we broke up the banks tomorrow, would that end racism? Would that end sexism?" 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
now those same pundits disdain me as a progressive, a "leftist", whose failure to disavow with sufficient energy the identity politics of which i was skeptical back then now has lost the election to the fascists (who they won't call that, to whom they are now building sensible moderate bridges). 2/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i don't think it is my position that has changed. /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
what if we just planted an American flag on the glacier next to an ice cold keg of Bud and see how the Danes respond to that.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
it must really suck if your house got burned down and you didn’t even make the cut for the “celebrity-owned homes” list.
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
just because you’ve put it in a graph doesn’t mean that it’s a fact.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Screenshot of tweet by Basel Musharbash “The poor have been rebels, but they have never become anarchists: they have got more interest than anyone in there being some decent government. The poor man has a stake in the country, the rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.” –– G. K. Chesterton
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
cc @basel.bsky.social post here rather than there! or at least in addition to! we miss you!
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Elon Musk is epistemological poison in a way Donald Trump never was. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Donald Trump bullshits transparently. He lies constantly, changes his story with his interest, (almost) everybody understands that and looks through it into the values that are motivating the schtick (love them or hate them). 2/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Musk, on the other hand, affects himself a supergenius, a knower of truths. He attaches superficially plausible logics to his lies, concocts stories and “evidence” to support them is relentless support of persuading people to believe what he wants them to believe. 3/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
In Trumpworld, there have been the Qs, frightening, but discernibly fringe, weird. 4/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Musk, with his determined activity, with the reach and the epistemological deference his money can buy, is intent on reshaping the mainstream with his tendentiously concocted stories. 5/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
It’s working. Centrist institutions “triangulate” towards him. He increasingly defines one side a set of conventions that presume “both sides” equally worthy, equally suspect. Trump couldn’t really do that, because he couldn’t put together a platform, hold a consistent line. 6/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Trump was bad enough. But Musk and his crew are much worse. Under Trump, nothing was true, there were always alternative facts. Musk is molding lies of his choosing into a version of truth towards which much of our lucre-tropic society may quietly bend. /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
would you work in coalition with Steve Bannon to vanquish Elon Musk?
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Prop 13 is rent control for homeowners. And it's supply effect occurs where constraints actually bind, at the decision-making of local government, where in supply-constrained CA jurisdictions rents have usually been more than high enough for new construction to pencil absent non-price constraints.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
So dumb. "The suspensions apply only to properties and facilities in 'substantially the same location' as before the fires, and whose height and footprint do not exceed 110% of their original size, the order says."
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
some punters cheer, some moan, over where the ball has rolled just now. but the wheel very much is still in spin.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats, up there. for the love of apple pie we have to do something. has anyone even checked whether one of those icy little rocks isn’t a sex island? what if Jeffrey Epstein didn’t die at all + he’s there with JFK jr now? Peter Thiel will tell us the truth!
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
tech took a tongue lashing in the tech lash so they bought all the tongues.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
people think philosophy is obscure and all, but the most urgent crises we face now are basically problems of epistemology.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
what you want is people who lie a lot are amplified less. what you have is people who lie a lot are amplified more.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
You are receiving this e-mail because you have been cursed.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
the best way to recover from the *blah* that comes from eating something much too heavy is to immediately go and eat something light.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
people who speak ostentatiously about their ambitions to serve humanity often act with brazen unconcern about what their projects might do to actual humans.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
the Biden Administration was just too mean to billionaires and their surveillance monopolies. the poor dears. they are very manly.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
When you’re the President, they let you do it. You can do anything.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
you can burn down the court because you think it’s biased. okay. it may very well have been. but if you then mistake reversion to the justice of the lynch mob as corrective reform, well, then you are kind of an idiot. 1/
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
absent institutions to adjudicate it, there is no authoritative truth, just competing contradictory claims. and that is quite the opposite of a recipe for reconciliation. /fin