Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
why is “leftist” used as a term of derision more than “rightist”?
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
on twitter the main character was someone who outraged you. on bluesky the main character is someone who annoyed you.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
there must be a fairy tale about a person cursed never to do anything right or well but blessed that for everything he does wrong or poorly he will be generously, extravagantly rewarded.
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
they are heightening the contradictions.
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i think Putin persuaded himself that territorial expansion is what marks a leader as durably "great", then persuaded his admirers and imitators of this. Trump doesn't actually want to invade anybody, to his credit he's squeamish abt that kind of thing, but he figures he might work some kind of deal.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Why did Lina Khan succeed so much more than Gary Gensler?
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
burrito taxis are exempt, right?
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
he's resigned to resigning.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
regulation has it costs, but journalism, which disproportionately presents extreme cases, overstates them. regulation has profound benefits too. that there's lots of room for improvement doesn't render the regulatory state a catastrophe. see @kdrum.bsky.social jabberwocking.com/yeah-america...
Yeah, America can still build stuff - Kevin Drum
Link Preview: Yeah, America can still build stuff - Kevin Drum: Marc Dunkelman has a new book coming out next month called Why Nothing Works. His thesis is that America once did big things but now seems stuck—and much of it is the fault of progressives: America is...
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
perhaps i'm mistaken, but i don't think the outpouring of support for luigi reflects affluenza or post-materialist politics. although, yes, even people with awful health insurance do have a wide variety of sushi options these days.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
this by @mattyglesias.bsky.social is very good. www.slowboring.com/p/four-years...
Text: If I were to say, “It’s irresponsible to back Trump regardless of your views on taxes and energy because he’s an authoritarian menace,” these people would say I’m being a hysterical lib. But if I were to say, “It’s fine to vote for Trump while still strongly disagreeing with what he did around 1/6, I’d just like to hear you say that in public,” the response would be that everyone knows it’s best to avoid Trump’s bad side. If you’re not willing to voice criticism of the president, even while generally supporting him, because you’re afraid of retaliation, that seems at least a little bit like Trump is an authoritarian menace. I have concerns! And what I would love more than anything is for Trump supporters in the business world or at conservative nonprofits to set my mind at ease, not by arguing with me about whether Trump is an authoritarian menace, but by showing me that they don’t fear him and can offer pointed, vocal criticism of his conduct and strong condemnation of these potential pardons.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
baby's first bsky script github.com/swaldman/sca...
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Test post.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
small frivolous expenses—i don’t wanna touch burritos let’s go back to avocado toast—don’t indicate the purchaser is either wealthy or foolish. they can be chosen bc, despite their frivolity, they are immaterial relative to big sources of financial stress + deliver pleasure worth the small cost. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
humans don’t reveal lexical preferences for what finger-waggers deem essential first to frivolities only if income remains. this includes the preferences of the finger waggers whose excess income only lets them pretend their preferences are unhumanly hierarchical. /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
if, during a war, you are going to decide which side is a villain by which side’s spokespeople speak tendentiously and in bad faith, you will find nearly always that all sides are the villain.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
try not to slide into defending other people's caricatures of your views.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
how long before OnlyFans and similar are overtaken by AI fake characters run by twenty-something mostly male hustlers and we have a strange analogue of the “cultural appropriation” debate of the 2010s?
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
correlation is not causation, necessarily. but sometimes it is. but the arrow of causality may go in the direction opposite what you presume. so often what people think are means are ends, and vice versa.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
one thing i can say for mastodon is it didn’t have a meltdown over burritos.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
This is excellent. But what is to be done?
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