violence perpetrated by the state is not “political violence” bc the state has a monopoly on legitimate violence, violence of the state is presumptively legitimate. when it no longer is presumptively legitimate, one no longer has a state, just multiple deployers of violence contending for legitimacy

kind of the flip side of “every accusation is a confession”, often virtues they attribute to themselves are unpersuasive appropriations of the work of others.

“Both the attention theory and moderation theory share the same fundamental flaw: they accept the existing conflict terrain as given and static. The moderation data nerds and shutdown commentators are bringing the same one-dimensional view.” @leedrutman.bsky.social

“The vision of politics—technocratic experts pulling just the right levers to secure just enough votes—is not just sterile + unappealing. It…has…consequences…contributing to the…sense…strategists + politicians don’t really care abt what they are saying… The poll-tested candidate looks like a phony…”

radical centrists are utopian in the sense that they’re always nowhere at all.

a minimal prerequisite of sovereignty. it’s shocking how many states just bleed data and fees to US companies.

kind of wanna get my account suspended now.

does inventory cause price or does price cause inventory? (usually causal arrows go both ways, but is the inventory-causes-price story true enough it can reliably guide policy?)

"Being an Apple customer is like being in a 24/7 BDSM relationship…without a safe-word. Maybe you like the control Apple exerts over your life most of the time, but if they ever start to hurt you, there's no way to make them stop" ~Cory Doctorow pluralistic.net/2025/09/28/w...

maybe we as a society decide we don’t want increased orality. maybe we put our thumb on the scale in a variety of ways for an internet of text.

the ethnonational reaction to liberalism, a backlash to the sense that important, protective, culturally important identities are dissolved under atomistic liberalism, will eventually occasion recourse to a more aggressively identity-undermining liberalism as the only way out of cycles of vengeance.

i’m imposing a 100% tariffs on your posts.

the miracle i want from a medbed is just a good night’s sleep.

would you really prefer an immoral panic?

am i the only one who worried for a moment that ICE was coming for this guy? youtu.be/ZcJjMnHoIBI

i feel like we are all, on every side, living through our villain origin stories.

sometimes people say “citizens” when what they mean is “subjects”.

people who style themselves political realists have such unrealistic views about how swing voters behave. it's not the issues, or at least not the issues our two parties elevate as objects of political contestation. it's a sense of affiliation, or of shared resentments, or just personal respect.