Pisses me off that we’re stardust with the gift of conscious existence and having to spend our time on all this bullshit.

I can do and even enjoy small talk. I can endure loud, crowded environments. However, if I have to make small talk in a loud space,where we’re shouting to be heard and repeating questions & answers multiple times? I will shrivel like an earthworm trapped on dry pavement in full sunlight.

Hello, I understand you are an expert in the torment nexus and I would like to invite you to talk my organization about how we can be more torment-aligned

In that, there needs to be a recognition that illiberal ideologies see democracy and debate as tools to destroy democracy and debate. Erdogan's "Democracy is like a tram, you ride until you arrive, then you step off."

They will use your forum to try to destroy your forum.

It’s just Content all the way down. We live in Baudrillard’s vision of hell

Our politics seems to be entering a phase of "right supremacy" where only the lives of right-wingers have value. Assassinating the leader of a state legislative body in her own damn home was business as usual, but all of America has to have a reckoning if it's a far-right online influencer.

McCarthyism was rate limited by the number of people engaged, the amount of money available, the legal frameworks in place, and the media environment, in a way that is very different from what universities will face not just in the next three years but until we find a way to contain these people

The clear goal of the GOP is govern the entire United States the way it governs Texas (derogatory), but I know many Americans will respond just like Houstonians are doing right this minute (complimentary).

bsky.app/profile/jenr...

my new ai device will sit in a beer garden that backs onto a small river and drink three to five pints on a sunny late summer afternoon for you, leaving you free for more meetings and business calls

Politicians love talking about the pressure that trans people are under like it's a weather system and not something that their friends created because going on X the Everything App made them insane.

Under Siege From Trump and Musk, a Top Liberal Group Falls Into Crisis

Between Musk & the Trump administration, Media Matters has been squeezed to the brink. In settlement discussions, lawyers for X demanded the organization hand over all its cash and shut down — all because MM reported ads appeared on X next to antisemitic content. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/25/u...

when RFK says he wants to “end chronic disease,” what people hear is “he wants to cure us” but what he means is “i want to cull the weak”

there's this bedrock assumption among a lot of people that everyone believes in the same ideals (such as free speech), we just have different ideas of what they mean

this is manifestly untrue, these people believe they have the absolute right to control what everyone else says

This is what happens when neoliberal meritocratic technocracy hollows out democracy and leaves social media to fill the vacuum with outrage, distortion, and division.

Same. This is very much in the Torment Nexus zone. Once again. Because of course they did.

I think any analysis that doesn’t dig into the impact of algorithmically manipulated communication channels (X, YouTube, Facebook, etc.) will be missing some key perspective on what is different now as compared even to the 2012 election cycle. The damage done to consensus-based reality is profound.

Pardon me, sir, but that sugary diet is load-bearing

Can’t imagine anyone who might give say federal agencies open access to this for any reason. I also can’t think of any ways that might be horrifically misused in widespread abuses of power. Nobody ever wrote a dystopian novel about this kind of thing, nope. Totally fine, highly ethical. Yep. Ethics.

They also changed the definition of “day” to prevent Congress from applying the rule that a state of national emergency declared by the President cannot be indefinite. So…

really interesting that we don’t have a cultural panic about group think and intellectual homogeneity among the most powerful money men in the country. all the more interesting when a bunch of them have clearly lost their mind.

I know this isn't the point of the thread, but we really are in the era of "yeah they made environmental catastrophe Clippy and called it AI and now search engines don't work and objective truth has been sold for parts"

I am no parliamentarian but if you can just hold the vote open indefinitely after the votes are in until you get the outcome you want that feels uhhh
not democratic

There is a political satire premise in a puppet congress just holding a vote open forever because no one wants to tell the Fuhrer that they don't have the votes to pass it

Product managers and designers know exactly what they’re doing.

Goals & metrics drive corporate behaviors. If you don’t agree you make your way out of big tech.

Some might argue that it’s failure of leadership to define the right goals. Others might say it’s a failure of capitalism.

you can always tell when a product is a cool thing that everyone loves when they place access to it on places people will click by accident like its a scammy ad on a pirated sports stream

if this were fiction people would argue the references are too heavy handed

I don’t have any good words for this right now. Just. Good lord.

Banger thread dropped this morning

Like, what am I supposed to do for some mental quiet, sever all my worldly bonds and go live on a mountain like a monk? Come on, people, this suuuuuuucks.