contemptuous. contemptible.

"Standing alone, Trump’s executive orders represent a serious threat to the First Amendment. But the orders are backed by agency enforcement powers that drastically expand the danger." www.thefire.org/news/blogs/r... ht @light@noc.social

There are good reasons to consider industrial policy that some might deride as “protectionist”. There are no good reasons for Trump’s combination of chaotic tariffs and smothering government, which can’t possibly deliver good industrial policy. cf @jwmason.bsky.social jwmason.org/slackwire/at...

🧵

“Donald Trump could not care less about ‘promoting freedom and combatting tyranny.’ In fact, he’s more interested in the opposite: promoting tyranny and combatting freedom.” @digby56.bsky.social digbysblog.net/2025/04/23/s... // from a depressing piece on the state of the state department

and told just him i guess.

i suspect you won’t love this. but i enjoy your work (even your cantankerousness), and since you brought it up… drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/03/09/v...

i still don’t get what compelled him to take the visit after first demurring.

i guess we don’t know.

it was. and there are some eager to see it be again. recently, however, it’s been something quite different. so now it finds itself at a fork in the road.

it's weird how the catholic church now has a moment when it has to decide whether it wants to accommodate or pointedly resist a global trend toward authoritarianism.

“Beneath his facade of talking about healthy living and wellness, Kennedy is actually a eugenicist. He insists that viruses and bacteria only kill people who don’t eat healthy and exercise by his lights—essentially rejecting the germ theory of disease.”

depends on your measure. mostly not meaningfully.

remember when we were a confident, generous, hopeful country?

under bukele it is starting to seem like "el salvador" was ironically named.

Florida, near Tampa.

so, we are living under a fascist administration, but at least this is legal.

i take this as a great time to reform our prisons to Norwegian standards, so that life imprisonment without parole becomes practical even or especially of elite offenders who, "naturally" or paradoxically, always command outsize empathy.

"since JFK and especially since Carter/Reagan…US has been losing its ability to tax the rich. It has increasingly chosen to tax the rest of the world, moving industry…to other countries [who] made what the US needed, and sold it to them in USD" @ianwelsh.bsky.social www.ianwelsh.net/the-proximat...

“People are, in my opinion, usually sincere. That doesn’t mean right. It doesn’t mean praiseworthy, or good, or admirable. But people–even politicians–are not usually pursuing some deep, complex cynical scheme. When it seems like they are, it might just mean that they disagree with you.”