does the “competitive” in “competitive authoritarianism” need scare quotes?

“Boasting about incompetence is signaling that you can be trusted to be corrupt.” @himself.bsky.social

ADP infamously doesn't much predict the subsequent BLS report. But does it correlate more strongly with BLS numbers after revisions?

to bribes and gratuities, our growing menagerie of parsings of corrupt practices, we have to add supplications. of course the Supreme Court would see no problems with such a practice. our ball and strike callers. our Moseses who bear upon their weighty tablets the precious rule of law.

the whole “alligator alcatraz” thing is unfair to the alligators.

if i built a vanity LLM, i'd name it @delphi.

“unless the abrupt funding cuts announced and implemented in the first half of 2025 are reversed, a staggering number of avoidable deaths could occur by 2030.” // can’t the administration show the same “flexibility” it showed with tariffs on USAID?

those little countries they made quickly license Starlink as a condition of tariff relief, will they now make ban Starlink?

i’m beginning to think President Miller might be even worse than President Musk.

a lot more faith in continued alteration of power here than republicans seem to be expressing in the power they’re arrogating, the personal risks they’d be subject to following such an alteration. obviously we must act, not doom. but we can’t presume anymore that turntaking is a matter of course.

too much algorithmic social media consumption is like receiving one of those serial killer notes written in clipped-out magazine letters and being like “hey, this ‘Q’ is from The NewYorker so what the note says must be true!” a collage of a lie is not redeemed by the quality of elements collaged.

“what if we just gave the worst people in the world unchecked power for a while? that would shake things up.”

it’s weird that we pass when our body fails.

i just think the writers missed an opportunity by not combining her role with Jeffrey Epstein’s then we could all be talking about Gillibrand’s Island.

Thread by @heidilifeldman.bsky.social mastodon.social/@heidilifeld...

conjecture: the quality of life in its prisons is a pretty good measure of the success and level of civilization of a society. (note “measure”, which does not make a claim of “cause”. there are Goodhart’s Law risks.)

hello.

i guess the other place you might see this is a voting booth.