@quixote i think it really was a weak spot. Presidents need to be talking to the public about what they are doing all the time. Biden's appearances were rationed and scripted. It's not he didn't generate outrage. He didn't tell a story of his own presidency, often and in real time. that is part of the job.

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@louis 🙁

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do the never-Trump former neocons now agree that every billionaire is a policy failure?

“voters are pleased to have a president who's taking some kind of decisive action and making sure we know he's taking decisive action.”

// that last part was Biden’s weak spot mstdn.social/@nomoremister/113

if the founders wanted a unitary executive, why did they assign to Congress the task of structuring the executive branch?

“all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law”

instead of risking that bright, hardworking Chinese grad students might be CCP spies here to steal our science, what if we just didn’t have any science?

that’ll show ‘em.

here in the US, among my lib/leftie crowd, we spend a fair amount of time dwelling on the US’ hypocrisies, its sins against the liberal values it ostensibly promotes. 1/

yet when an illiberal movement assumes power in the US, it does not merely seek to turn American power to illiberal ends. it seeks to sabotage the roots of American power, to render the country impotent. 2/

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that suggests to me, for all the United States’ sometimes miserable flaws, the enemies of liberal values, even when they dominate the apparatus of state, still perceive in the US an implacable threat. 3/

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i take some hope in that. /fin

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elon musk as jodie foster in elysium.

[new draft post] Might Elon Musk be personally liable? drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/

“If we don’t resign, remote workers have been told they need to move to work in one of nine cities by March 3, and we haven’t been told if we get to pick from among the nine or if we will randomly be assigned to a city in which we don’t live or have any connections.” slate.com/news-and-politics/20

“Big, credible news media outlets are mostly unable to imbue their reporting…with the seriousness that is warranted: whether due to their proprietors, their finances, or other sources of obeisance towards Trump/Musk.” buttondown.com/polycrisisdispa

maybe we can have the AIs fight out the civil war for us, claude vs grok or something. automate the unpleasant work.

@admitsWrongIfProven he is! i'm sorry things went down that way today.

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@admitsWrongIfProven if everybody else gets dumber they won't feel quite as dumb? i dunno.

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@admitsWrongIfProven the former would be the intelligence that would qualify as AGI, and the latter would be human intelligence.

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if AGI is intelligence superior to human intelligence, we're testing the proposition you can achieve it by reducing the latter rather than raising the former.

elon musk is a one man swarm of locusts.

Orban just had to kick Central European University out. Trump has so many!

@Phil @dcc @p the cheapest part of the innovation, which even every pharma person will concede is essential, is grant funded basic research. the government buys at least half of the innovation. the commercializers get rich reducing that state-financed research to practice.

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@Phil @dcc @p as i've said before, i think you wouldn't like what you think you're asking for. you're investments might flee as fast as a memecoin dump without an SEC, or you'd have to guard your gold at home. and you'd have no social security to fall back on. if you think you are too clever for this, what about the millions of others also trying to save for retirement who might not be.

in reply to @Phil