Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
the knife twists.
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
god i hope not.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
they said it was an inappropriate appropriation and that kind of blew my mind.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
scary as shit.
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
no one says stuff like “priced for perfection” any more.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
they say they’re afraid of his base (well, some of them), but i wonder if the populist schtick isn’t more cover, if a more accurate characterization would be he’s the Schelling point upon which plutocrats have coordinated to defend themselves from egalitarian demands, to ensure continued dominance.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
latest photo is fetching.
Image of the Grim Reader, via https://encyclopedia-of-monsters.fandom.com/wiki/Grim_Reaper
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
no, not if it was up to me. it’d be one person, one shot, with maybe a restriction on winning twice in a short time. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
remember 90% of people are in the bottom 90%. universal, flat transfers bring us toward equality, and avoid the need and time tax and gaming and stigmatization and accusations of corruption any kind of means testing regime provokes. 2/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
if you are concerned about the top having too much and getting more (you should be!) raising high-income tax rates is an elegant way to do that without micromanaging and delegitimating universal programs. 3/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
( for where i wrote up the random transfers idea www.interfluidity.com/v2/918.html ) /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
indeed. (oh no can’t help myself.) drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/08/20/t...
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
there's no position on "the issues" that could win my support for Donald Trump or JD Vance. their flaws, in my mind, go beyond what "issues" can remedy. i think most of the electorate behaves this way, although a substantial faction has diametric views about *who* is beyond support. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
yet so much electoral analysis insists on explaining results by issue positions. if only we'd moderated on this, doubled down on that, the polls say they'd like that! 2/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
it has come to seem a bit bizarre to me. /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
(i still like my crazy "what if we did transfers by lottery when demand is deficient" kind of ideas. but Bruenig has me pretty much convinced that tried and true social democracy might be enough, if we could get ourselves to try it.)
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
at least the self-styled smarter progressives have "what if we deregulate?"
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
to people who know anything about Argentinian politics (not me!), how much do you think Trump’s suggestion that American support was dependent upon Milei’s electoral success affected the results?
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i didn’t get interested in software to build shopping carts. i get so turned off when that’s the example.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i just watched “a house of dynamite” and it’s the latest in a string of defense, intelligence, and military themed thrillers where my overwhelming reaction is sadness for a lost world, a sense the film is suspended in an alt-timeline. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
this film depicts the worst possible events, but its protagonists are basically sane and decent. all the iconography of patriotism, for me often an effective filmic device, i’ve sometimes been quite the nationalist, hits different. like grief. /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
eg fossil fuel corps, tech surveillance and control monopolists, many others
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
so it's not Massachusetts or California he thinks is well governed. it's Florida. (where i live, but not for very much longer. its climate and physical geography are wonderful, but it is careening towards social catastrophe, and its misgovernment has destroyed the human thing i most loved here.)
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Chesterton's bedroom. ht @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
It's like everyday is Halloween at an old-school showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show!
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i love this. we did a "lunch and a movie" party for my kid's birthday. (training his cohort for a future, i hope, with lots of brunches!) but the kids did have to behave in the theater. alas.