“(You may notice that straightforward ideas like ‘fire everyone in Democratic Party leadership positions automatically after a national election loss’ do not appear to be on the table.)” #HamiltonNolan https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/so-what-does-that-mean-in-practice ht @costrike

the only qualification is the favor of the king.

as long as there still is a Department of Education, shouldn't it be a creationist?

plutocrats are only wealthy because we collectively enforce the existence of their wealth. they should think about that more. so should we.

@light there may have been a hint of sarcasm in that remark.

“Il Douche” is kind of an amazing nickname, from @charvaka

second time as farce, but it isn’t funny. https://hivemind.plus/@charvaka/113482843333712282

a talent of the worst people is to shitpost until even angels look like the worst people.

Eastern European income-tax rates tend to be "flat", but layered onto high, capped, payroll taxes that render them very regressive. Kind of an artifact of governments set up at the peak of neoliberalism / post-Cold-War triumphalism.

@chrisp offers a deep dive, comparing Ukraine's to US Federal taxes. https://chrispeel.net/2024/11/10/ukrainian-income-taxes/

Very useful, concise tips on working with #postgres #postgresql, by @hibachrach ht @gvwilson @mhoye https://challahscript.com/what_i_wish_someone_told_me_about_postgres

Democrats mocked how at the Republican Convention, past President George W Bush didn't show. But maybe Presidents Clinton and Obama and even Biden ought not to have been invited to the Democratic convention.

Change means change, man. (It sure doesn't mean giving Rahm Emmanuel a new role.)

Institutional continuity is no virtue when it's institutions you feel have screwed you.

This post is for subscribers only.

“And just like family members, our brands regard one another with mutual suspicion and malice.” https://theonion.com/heres-why-i-decided-to-buy-infowars/ ht @andrewducker

my gee-i’m-clever word coinage of the day: “sclerocracy”.

pretty self-explanatory i think. in conversation with / inspired by @kentwillard and @phillmv

@kentwillard @phillmv (it’s worth pointing out that other rivals — notably plutocrat pissing match Blue Origin — haven’t had the same success, despite not being part of the ossified sclerocracy.)

@admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org ha!

@ntnsndr @Hyolobrika on face, that seems like a reasonable hypothesis! maybe in the open source world, we grew too comfortable with “benevolent dictator for life”. and obviously, surveillant commercial platforms.

@phillmv and yet. serious, thoughtful, smart, competent, educated, virtuous. all of these attributes have taken a bit of a beating when people who seem like the very worst, not just ethically, but in terms of basic competence, beat the people we judge as capable.

it’s like elon is an idiot, obviously, and yet spacex has made progress on space travel at a pace unseen for decades. i have my cope stories (he was lucky with good hires), but at a fundamental level, i’m missing something

@phillmv i think even a bit less than that, latest projection i saw 49.9%, with third parties putting dems a percentage point or two less.

but, you know, if a tiny sliver was enough to justify UK Brexit, why not US autocracy too?

when politics is good television, it’s bad real life.

@Hyolobrika it's not a matter of mere necessity. the ability to do things collectively at scale is the greatest technological achievement of humankind. a capable, legitimate, ethical state is the key to human flourishing, but it's pretty hard to get and keep all three of those characteristics!

a capable state always relies on individual enterprise, shapes and is shaped by it. freedom and collective capability coexist thanks to the magic of the central limit theorem.