maybe the LA Times and the Washington Post are part of a conspiracy to make The New York Times look good.

can we admit that billionaires are a policy failure that must be remedied now?

“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.bsky.social backofmind.substack.com/p/ruthless-p... // kind of dark. reminds me of Kamala Harris’ choice of “lethal”.

without comment www.wsj.com/world/russia...

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 Ben Ryder Howe nymag.com/intelligence... ht @lollardfish.bsky.social @maeamian.bsky.social

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”?

[new draft post] Midsize is the right size drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/10/24/m...

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.bsky.social 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. lexfridman.com/bernie-sande...

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.bsky.social inthesetimes.com/article/unio... ht @erikloomis.bsky.social

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.

2016’s “Fight for $15” needs to be inflation adjusted to like $20. But it’s a start.

great new vocabulary word in this one by @rickperlstein.bsky.social. “eisegesis” — pronounced “ice-a-Jesus” and what it means is just bad hermeneutics, man. (with apologies to @poetryforsupper.bsky.social)

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.bsky.social. jwmason.org/slackwire/do...

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.bsky.social www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/why-republ...