With rare and specific exceptions, it is not actually a problem that any individual politician is Old, it is a general problem for a society that so many politicians are Old, the fact that the problematic nature is mostly an emergent property at scale makes it very hard to address.
This made me think of @goldwagnathan.bsky.social's beautiful piece on Thaddeus Stevens' legacy.
In spite of it all.
In spite of it all.
nathangoldwag.wordpress.com/2025/09/19/e...
It is really impossible to overstate how monumentally stupid the average conservative intellectual is.
Tansy walks through the history of the all the drafts and rewrites in a way that is really fascinating and revealing, and argues I think that a lot of the earlier drafts were a lot more interesting if not, y'know, good exactly.
Listened to @tansyg.bsky.social's podcast about MEGALOPOLIS and I am still baffled by the decision to (a) become a revisionist about the Cataline Conspiracy, the most boringly self-interested coup attempt in the Republic, and (b) make it about architecture somehow, the one thing I'm sure it wasn't.
let a thousand Sharons bloom
There were actually plans to keep it updated and use it as an urban planning tool, though they eventually fell by the wayside.
America must arm and equip moderate Sharons in order to prevent radical factions from gaining an advantage.
If you like this btw you should make the trip out to the Queens Museum where they have a giant scale panorama of New York City built by Robert Moses for the 1964 Worlds Fair.
If you want me to remember something from your story make a little scale model key to it.
Step #01: Closer ties between Austria, Hungary, and other Central European powers to wield greater power in Brussels.
Step #02: ???????
Step #03:
I hate to be the one to tell you this but your roommate is Harry Dresden.
This is a good book btw that goes into the 'celebrity criminal' culture of the Great Depression, and how pointless and stupid and fickle most of it was; most notably the public finally turning against Bonnie and Clyde because the dozenth random person they murdered had a sympathetic wife.
Oh wait, this is just the secular version of the Sufi and Jewish mystics who would shave their beards and eat pork to show that they were so holy that they weren't bound by God's commandments, huh. Nothing ever changes I guess.
This stuff is too stupid to even get mad about, but I do think if you're going to reject the constraints of bourgeois morality and demonstrate new modalities of liberation through your lived experience you should go live in an abandoned building and stop podcasting and writing for the NYT, y'know?
Seem to have gotten a lot of new followers yesterday for some reason so: Hey! I write things! You should read them and like, comment, subscribe, donate, and/or hire me! 🥰
You can have any ideology you want in America as long as it's misogyny.
Everyone points out that none of this happens if they don't try and cheat Nedry, but even after that they take back control---it only falls apart again because they have a single, overworked scientist trying to run the entire system and he literally just forgets to switch from backup to main power.
Nope! I told you, I don't hold with the moving pictures.
hell yeah
As with most prequel exegesis, it's really interesting but relies on a lot of interpretation not in the actual text.
Listening to this now as someone who has never seen any of the films but has a lot of fondness for the original book and for the *concept* of the dinosaur park, WHICH I AM PRETTY SURE WOULD WORK FINE, BY THE WAY.
Anyways, gonna be interesting!
One of my #HotTakes re the Prequels is that the Jedi Council should be obsessed with secrecy regarding the Sith, it should be something you're forbidden to even talk about, so when Palpatine reveals himself to Anakin it's not "hey I'm evil" it's "here's the truth they've been hiding from you".
He accepted an offer from a rival firm that offered a better benefits plan.
This would require Anakin to have had an ideology or motivations or beliefs.
This stuff is coded as oppositional to Third Way-style bipartisan consensus but it's virtually identical in practice.
They're both credited to the Editorial Board at large.
@airshipchronos.bsky.social, I believe this is your portfolio.
They think you're stupid.
