I've built a socioeconomic system that depends on everyone to do useful work and act ethically except the people at the top, who get unimaginable rewards for being antisocial frauds and criminals. And I think it will stand the test of time
Trying to explain St Augustine to the pope, the former head of the Augustinian order, who wrote his doctoral thesis on Augustine, on his way back from celebrating mass at the Basilica of St Augustine in Annaba, Algeria, overlooking the site where Augustine lived is peak Adult Catholic Convert.
there really isn't much to the American ideology that refers to itself as "conservatism" beyond rejection of the New Deal reforms of the 1930s and the civil-rights reforms of the 1960s
The famous Andor line is that "tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle." Here is a perfect example of that through malicious compliance: Idaho forced the city of Boise to remove its Pride flags. So the city painted rainbows everywhere else.
There’s a reason people read the classics.
when we're all unable to connect to use the internet, send emails, pay our bills, use our toasters, and god knows what else if AWS goes down, i want you to know now that i blame our lack of antitrust laws far more than i'll blame a foreign missile
if you invented public libraries today, every opinion page in the country would be arguing for means tested subsidized Amazon Prime memberships
yes you fucking morons free preschool for everyone or it becomes just "free preschool for the poors" and then you call them leeches and ask for tax breaks when really we want free preschool for everyone because we want smart well adjusted kids why is this so hard?
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/n...
Sorry, but if you think that Ms. Rachel is bad in any way, shape, or form, no one on the planet should listen to your opinion on anything else.
The USPS IS NOT LOSING MONEY. THE USPS IS SPENDING TAX DOLLARS ALLOCATED TO IT BY THE BUDGET. THE USPS SHOULD NOT BE REQUIRED TO ZERO OUT ITS BALANCE SHEET IT IS NOT A BUSINESS IT DOES NOT HAVE SHAREHOLDERS. IF THE USPS IS OUTSPENDING ITS BUDGET IT SHOULD BE ALLOCATED MORE BUDGET.
“The fact that they didn’t take the cameras down shows that we are the product. They were never really selling to us in the first place. What they are doing is selling to much bigger agencies the ability to spy on a ton of people.”
This is a lie on a scale of Elon Musk saying he would cut the deficit to zero. Just insane. Not just untrue, but the opposite of the truth, which is that immigrants are lowering the deficit.
www.cato.org/white-paper/...
We've seen a lot of people say a lot of dystopian shit over the last couple decades, but this quote might take the cake.
AOC came out swinging against age verification legislation and somehow the entire tech press seems to not have noticed?
Now more than ever I’m convinced losing Anthony Bourdain meant we lost probably the biggest person on tv who advocated for the wonders of meeting new people and calling anyone online who hated learning new cultures the children they were, ruthlessly to the camera.
There's this idea in America that people always deserve a second chance. I have mixed feelings about that, but what I strongly believe is "Maybe your life shouldn't be ruined, but if you've fucked up severely you do not deserve to be in the highest halls of power".
If data centers want to build in Michigan, here are the terms:
All union jobs.
No rate hikes.
Improve our reliability.
Don’t touch our water.
Negotiate agreements in good faith.
I have never seen a politician more directly copy this speech in my life
When Trump came to power, he ripped up the peace deal that Obama had made, and used the uncertainty he created as an excuse to bomb Iran, insisting he had ended the problem he had created once and for all, except now he's bombing them again to solve the problem he created and previously solved?
I do appreciate that this administration is too incompetent to manufacture even the thinnest pretext for this, so we don't have to relive that 2002-2003 run when opposing an obviously idiotic war basically made you feel like the one sane person in a Twilight Zone episode.
at last, we have invented retrophenology from the classic Discworld text Don’t Invent Retrophenology
Kurt Vonnegut stop being so applicable to all time periods of American life, you can’t do that Kurt Vonnegut, your insights are too evergreen Kurt Vonnegut
I am a luddite and to me there is a lot of joy in technology. In technology that we deploy for all our wellbeing. Solar panels and vaccines, high-speed rail and wikipedia.
But they joy stems from the feeling of being able to be part of humanity in an embedded, meaningful way. Not from buying shit.
UK: Prince Andrew arrested.
South Korea: Former President Yoon sentenced for life.
Brazil: Former President Bolsonaro serving a 27-year sentence.
USA: President Trump demands $10 billion payout from taxpayers.
This is beyond appalling, and sadly emblematic of much of American politics. The desire stated is not to build a kinder world, but to enable and to quiet the increasing cruelty of this one. She should worried about having to explain her own disgusting worldview to her children.
If all the billionaires betting this country's economic future on AI weren't the guy from the "I don't wanna cure cancer, I wanna turn people into dinosaurs" meme, then yeah, it'd be a lot easier to be interested in what is, in the abstract, kind of a cool technology
once again pointing out that Trump vs. US is a treasonous decision--the Supreme Court equivalent of January 6--and the justices who voted for it have forfeited any claim to legitimacy (or indeed due process) whatsoever
I'll add that while ICE does not have the manpower to do this everywhere, they don't need to do this everywhere to have the intended effect
The AI bubble RAM crisis is caused for non-existent problems by non-existent money for a non-existent infrastructure to meet non-existent demand to make non-existent business and will utterly destroy real business based on real demand and real infrastructure built with real money for real problems.
