@BenRossTransit “Left but not woke” was Ross Douthat’s characterization of Sanders 2016, and I think it captures a great deal of why he was so attractive.

Perhaps the “Great Awokening” is ending after all, just not in the way anti-woke reactionaries like #RonDeSantis and #ChrisRufo had hoped.

It has not, historically, been right-wing traditionalists who have owned a “mind your own damned business” ethos. Au contraire. It looks like the not-right-wing-traditionalists are taking it back now.

Maybe we're also taking back incautious expression, telling it like we see it, chips fall where they may.

See e.g. #AdamKotso https://itself.blog/2024/08/12/weird-conservatives-and-the-end-of-whiny-self-righteousness/

@jgordon @wood5y maybe while you’d feel like you are drowning, at least the water would be cool.

cc @ryanlcooper ht @ChrisMayLA6 @KimSJ https://theconversation.com/no-government-in-half-a-century-has-built-300-000-homes-every-year-but-thats-what-labour-wants-to-do-now-236442

[new draft post] China as a model https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/08/13/china-as-a-model/index.html

@phillmv a lottery whose winners bleat “merit”, and presume themselves superior to rather than luckier than everyone else…

There’s a genre of public affairs writing I call “Taking out the trash.” It becomes necessary when prominent, respected people say, as they very often do, tendentious and ill-considered stuff. Suddenly there’s garbage that might rot in the ears of people in power. A taking-out-the-trash piece debunks it.

It’s thankless work. Countering bullshit-in-a-fancy-suit is no one's idea of a good time. But it’s God’s work.

#MaxMoran and #HenryBurke respond to #MattYglesias https://prospect.org/power/2024-08-13-what-we-talk-about-revolving-door/

“Late cycle financial innovation: Are private credit funds the new MBS CDOs?” by @csissoko https://syntheticassets.wordpress.com/2024/08/13/late-cycle-financial-innovation-are-private-credit-funds-the-new-mbs-cdos/

// This is a challenging piece, but the basic idea is that private equity funds are foreseeably at risk, like housing was in the mid aughts. That inspired “innovations” to sell off future losses to less sophisticated bagholders. @csissoko considers techniques PE fund managers might use to pass off or share future losses with other parties.

#GreatMomentsInThePrivateSector https://www.thedailybeast.com/elons-trump-spaces-chat-is-a-total-disaster

Great UAW ad. via @Green_Footballs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ubJFPJgL3Y&t=114s

dickishness is contagious, so it’s hard not to be a dick.

“When Boeing and McDonnell Douglas sought to merge in 1996, the Clinton White House pushed for the approval of what was a clearly anti-competitive merger apparently based on the belief that the United States needed a company large enough to compete effectively with Europe’s Airbus. At the risk of stating the obvious, Boeing has not benefited from those indulgences.” #TimWu https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/13/opinion/google-antitrust-remedy.html

feels like The New York Times is dog-whistling to replacement theorists with this subhead.

@otfrom @davidho @Brad_Rosenheim
@Netux in this case yes, hypothetically, but it doesn’t scale for the President to adjudicate even intragovernmental disputes. and most disputes won’t be intragovernmental.

@admitsWrongIfProven there is for some! but they get very self-righteous when the prospect is raised they might not get what they want.

@talexb @davidho @Brad_Rosenheim just wait ’til John Roberts swears in one President while Sonia Sotomayor swears in another.

i mean, i pray not.

Solicitations of political cash by e-mail and text are a pox. What I wouldn’t give for a campaign that got in touch to meaningfully communicate with me rather than to milk me.

It begins.

(The Supreme Court’s sabotage of the regulatory state begins to take effect.)

ht @davidho @Brad_Rosenheim

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/12/air-force-epa-water-pfas-tucson

@jumbanho @ddayen he’s been at it a long while, paid to do it, for whatever that is or isn’t evidence of. i wish him well, but have mostly not found his contributions constructive.