SETH

As with declining trust in universities, you cannot explain the timing or this trend, or fix it, without first acknowledging the reality that the the primary driver of these is the Republican Party’s near-total collapse into far right authoritarianism in the last decade:

bsky.app/profile/mcop...

McConnell: ‘Winners make policy, losers go home’ Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday pushed back on protesters at a speech in Kentucky, declaring that “winners make policy and losers go home.”Speaking in Lawrence…

“Winners make policy, losers go home.” is the Mitch McConnell attitude we need for 2026–2028 and beyond
thehill.com/homenews/sen...

Really wish the 2024 campaign autopsy report wasn’t nuked. Hopefully somebody leaks it soon so we can have some good discourse instead of this scolding stuff.

Good news happening behind all the bad news.

Reminder that most people who didn't vote in 2024 didn't do so out of a desire to "smash Democrats," so maybe it's really stupid to constantly attack people who didn't vote and constantly smear them. Just a thought! www.pewresearch.org/politics/202...

The Palentir statement on its desired “Technological Republic” is one of the scariest things I have seen in a while. It is a call for a world dominated by an authoritarian U.S., generated by AI (both the statement and the world), run by tech-surveillance companies. Technofascism pure!

I'll simply say again that for Shlaes to resurface in The Economist at this moment is an indicator of an ambient concern that Rooseveltian policies and politics are increasingly likely. The thing about the New Deal is, it was *immensely popular.* That's terrifying to certain people

Doing talks at universities designed to cause outrage has been part of the far-right playbook since the 1960s when American Nazi George Lincoln Rockwell did it. The point is to cause an outcry from progressive students and therefore get coverage and sympathy because the “evil students” were mean!

Eat shit you conservative hack

Why Yale’s term paper on what’s wrong with college gets a ‘D-’ | Will Bunch An Ivy League university's report on the loss of faith in higher ed ignores what really killed the American Dream of college.

That Yale report on what's wrong with U.S. college saw some trees (high cost, unfair admission, etc.) but missed the forest: the 60-year right-wing crusade to undermine higher ed, from slashing budgets to stifling speech

How to really fix college. My new column www.inquirer.com/opinion/yale...

These are going to come for the left too. They financially motivated — Macedonian teenager type stuff for the AI era. Scammers profiting off of easily enraged people. MAGA may be more susceptible to ragebait but worth understanding what’s going to happen in 2026 and 2028.

*points to sign*

The Supreme Court long relied on careful, time-tested procedures to issue decisions. But secret memos by the justices, obtained by The New York Times, show how the court decided to bypass those procedures and create its modern “shadow docket.” See key takeaways: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...

Ugh

Me: [idly looking up info on popes]

Wikipedia: This list is incomplete; you can help expand it.

Me: wut?

Wikipedia: [lifts eyebrows suggestively]

This was absolutely one of the most striking things about moving from suburban Atlanta to Manhattan when I was in my 20s. I remember being back home for a visit and, like, struggling to articulate to my parents just how different—and how much better and friendlier—the world felt on foot.

True. It’s also helpful for these types to keep talking and reveal their true values as the hacks they are.

The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they're the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive-because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about "Western civilization," while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.

Really powerful, hopeful paragraph from the latest article in the Atlantic by @adamserwer.bsky.social

“Blob error”: Matt Yglesias posts another centrist hot take

I like to imagine that Zohran Mamdani, Socialist African-born Muslim, was literally willed into existence by the collective psychosis of the Tea Party GOP over Obama, like the ectoplasm under NYC in Ghostbusters II

What specifically does “accountable” look like to you? Otherwise this is just social media noise.

Read that again. This Louisiana bill forces homeless people to choose between jail and "treatment"—and if they can't pay for the latter, they will be forced to perform unpaid labor.

The historical precedents are clear: convict leasing, Black Codes, debtor's prison.

BREAKING: The House just failed to pass a resolution to end Trump's war with Iran by one vote.

The count was 213-214.

Just one Democrat, Jared Golden, voted to let Trump keep waging the war.

Stop interviewing the decaying ham sandwich man

Fair. Thank you!

HELL YES! TAX THE MOTHERFUCKERS!

Bari Weiss not beating the "soft-MAGA, aspiring to be state TV" accusations

Obviously it’s very very problematic if you’re using this angle as a cudgel to abandon DEI for everyone, but isn’t the critique of “A narrow focus on DEI for only the elite is bad” a good one? Maybe that’s my layman understanding of it but that seems to be an argument this article is making.