world is static

Zionist is when someone doesn’t turn to the camera and say “I am exactly the same kind of anti-Israel as you.”

This list hasn’t changed since 2016, when Las Vegas got superseded in quick succession by a bunch of places in California.

Boston comes close to being further east than Santiago, but doesn’t quite make it.

Furthest I’ve been:

N: Minot
E: Santiago
S: Santiago
W: San Francisco

It’s been a decade-plus since I’ve engaged with this on an academic level, but my understanding is that street design is a more reliable indicator of traffic speed than speed limits.

Ironically, the best way to make traffic slower and safer, short of governors, is to make drivers *feel* less safe.

A lot of this comes from bad street design. Wide lanes, multiple lanes, straight streets, no curbside parking, etc. all make drivers *feel* safer driving at higher speeds, so they naturally drive faster in those environments, often without even realizing it.

This is the *exact* opposite of the way I would have expected a computer to make mistakes in the Before Times.

I'm going to say this again: the number of things that have to go right in order for something to go wrong like this is astounding, and I would have found it literally unbelievable a few years ago.

Democratic counter-gerrymanders would, of course, have to be cognizant of the same risk.

The harder you gerrymander, the more you risk if your assumptions are off. The proposed Texas gerrymander is a travesty in principle and should be opposed on those grounds, but it could easily benefit Democrats in practice.

Yeah - being raised Mormon is a big part of why I'm skeptical of giving communities primacy. I've seen how that community works. I know what would happen to people like me (queer, among other things) if they were the highest authority, even without the centralized Church.

@notquitehydepark.bsky.social I had no idea you were on here until just now. Prayer for Werewolves is one of my canonical trans texts. Thank you for bringing it into the world. <3

Don’t invent problems that don’t actually exist yet.

Also, no dollars, no votes, and no forgiveness for Newsom, Moulton, and the rest of the left-transphobe crew.

I’ll go a step further and say that acting like a Democratic betrayal is inevitable is actively harming a vulnerable community.

Threatening hellfire against anyone who even *hints* at a betrayal, on the other hand, is a vital act of self-defense.

put it back

“Do you have any idea how little money that is in the context of”

Don’t care. Two hundred million dollar Epstein Ballroom.

Politics is a minefield, but it’s a *really interesting* minefield. This can be somewhat of a problem.

Guy from The Mandalorian edited to say “I would like to see the Discord”.

After the incident, Salazar's life went on normally. Sixteen days later, Salazar admitted he felt sick and he was admitted to Hospital de São José two days later. On 16 September, he went into a coma. With Salazar incapacitated, President Tomás considered that the 79-year-old prime minister would die soon; on 25 September, he dismissed Salazar and replaced him with Caetano.

Salazar lived for a further 23 months. After he emerged from over one month of coma and unexpectedly recovered lucidity, his intimates did not tell him he had been removed from power, instead allowing him to "rule" in privacy until his death on 27 July 1970.

Portugal did the same thing with António de Oliveira Salazar when he made a surprise recovery from a stroke-induced coma.

Why are so many people in Peru named after (in)famous historical/political figures? I have no clue. I noticed it living in Chile in ~2010 and I've never seen an explanation, but it's absolutely a thing.

Ok yes that is an extremely Peruvian name.

(On the flip side, this is one reason it *is* important to be careful about being in coalition with truly odious people or groups, even if you have points of agreement or a potential common cause.)

Being in coalition with people who cared about that issue exposed me to the other things that they cared about. It's human nature to be sympathetic to the beliefs of people with whom you have something in common. In this case, human nature worked in my favor.

This is a big part of what worked on me! I cared passionately about extreme global poverty as an undergrad. I was also a true believer in a homophobic religion. But having that entry point planted a lot of the seeds of who I am today.

My point being: It's absolutely possible to get people to change their politics, but it happens through the *precise opposite* of One Weird Trick.

And there's almost never a decisive moment. I don't remember most of the conversations that nudged me leftwards. I don't remember the conversations I had that nudged others leftwards. The specific conversation barely matters. It's the enduring presence and reinforcement that makes it work.

I've been on both sides of that process now. It's thankless work. You can't know whether it's going to succeed until after the fact, until after you've invested years of your life. Even then, you might never know.

A political campaign can't replicate that. An online argument can't replicate that. It took years of personalized effort, combined with circumstances lining up just right and an underlying moral principle that was at odds with the politics I was raised in.

The things that changed me were (1) exposure to the world, (2) extremely patient friends, and (3) a fundamental desire for good things to happen to people.

I wish that aspect of Past Me didn't exist. But since it does, it at least inoculates me against the idea that everyone out there would agree with me if I could just say the right words.

Past Me believed a lot of shitty things, and believed them very sincerely and intensely. It took me years to change those beliefs, and there wasn't ever a single moment or a single argument that flipped a switch in my mind. There was no One Weird Trick to turn me progressive.