J

Idk I don’t feel strongly about this either way I’m just kind of skeptical

I don’t necessarily object but while I think civil judgments may work I’m skeptical that anyone who works at ICE is ever getting a criminal conviction, and a failed prosecution is potentially worse than none in terms of creating martyrs and inspiring vengeance

I do worry about having various cabinet secretaries, tech oligarchs, children and stepchildren around in public life for decades. They won’t go away. But there’s not a workable way around it, I don’t think

I think the impulse to want these people never to hold any kind of power again is right—“lock them up” is a shortcut, and automatic bar. But I don’t think it’ll work (not least because I’m sure they are immune)

In a world full of sorta conservative people with editorial roles in legacy media that far exceed their talents and on which they do not depend for income because they have (or have married into) dynastic wealth so the job is really more of a hobby, she’s a sorta conservative person with an editoria

I haven’t listened yet I’m just basing this take on a few screenshots like this and a 5-second clip I heard this morning on a podcast but I know I’m right

No longer experiencing any pressure to cryptically hint at having a politics, to cater to lonely nerds, or to underwrite her over-educated fanbase’s projections of intellectualism, her latest is a concept album where the concept is “Ke$ha but unironically (and less fun)”

The worst people you know feel emboldened by the Trump II cultural moment to use slurs with relish. Taylor Swift, on the other hand, feels emboldened to stop being a quirky cipher and lean into being aggressively basic

I’ve seen the charts of global infant mortality and stuff so I accept that this is not the worst time in human history, but I do think it is possibly the most embarrassing time in human history. Dignity and self-respect nearing all-time lows

Sometimes a fine is just a fee

CEO of gambling website is pro-gambling, believes in markets for everything, proposes that the social value of sports betting (notably not even pretending to be a market) is: people want to do it. Good stuff.

I want to believe that Davante Adams really does have his own personal Taco Bell

It’s wild to me how these discussions proceed as if it had turned out that Kirk’s killing was plotted by a local DSA chapter. “Political violence is violence against us all” ok well if you define it broadly enough to include this then… is it?

The parallels with Harris seem to me under appreciated. Fancy elite lawyers who leveraged identity-based self-narratives into political brands, total political chameleons with no charisma, selected for high office by popular party leaders who wanted to please an identifiable segment of their base…

For a while the consensus seemed to be that Vance had no juice, then there was this trend where the savvy thing was to say that the left dangerously underestimated his appeal, but the man simply has no charisma so that always seemed too contrarian to me. Anyway

🤮

I mean specifically the phrase “normative priors” is what I first heard from law people. Philosophers love to dress their hunches up in a coat and tie but have too much respect for the fact/value distinction to use it that way I think

It’s metastasized for sure but the jump from philosophy to law is when I suddenly started hearing it all the time (could be coincidence)

It used to drive me nuts when online rationalists used it as “beliefs” with a tophat but when law professors started talking about normative priors I achieved levels of irritation previously unimaginable

Gen Z men are NOT ok

I like this take, and not just because BttF is one of my other all-time favorites! Some of the outdoor shots of looming buildings at night also kind of remind me of the alt-1985 in part 2, with comic book perspective and gloom that borders on camp

This makes sense of The Matrix and offers some continuity with Office Space and Fight Club but I can’t see how Dark City is a movie about the doldrums of the end of history!

This makes sense of The Matrix and offers some continuity with Office Space and Fight Club but I can’t see how Dark City is a movie about the doldrums of the end of history!

I’m not sure “gothic” is the right epithet but there’s some aesthetic continuity in addition to thematic, right? Otherwise maybe you’d want to include The Truman Show. Some continuum of cyberpunk and neo-noir for the big four though, in addition to the reality-isn’t-real conceit

Wait am I confusing existenz with the thirteenth floor (which also came out in ‘99)? Or are there four in this subgenre

I was 13-14 so I vaguely remember the era (and saw at least the Matrix in the theater, maybe one of the others too), but I wasn’t quite culturally aware enough then to have any real insight in retrospect

The Matrix, Existenz, and Dark City came out within 14 months of each other. Incredible run for gothic allegory of the cave movies. What was in the zeitgeist in 1998 that made this happen?

Cyrina Fiallo as the alternatingly bemused and horrified bff of Brit Marling's straight girl who thinks Britta is a lesbian is some of the finest bit-part acting out there. She does so much with virtually no lines, it's amazing

Thank god wokeness is over and the D&D episode of Community is back on Hulu

Deliberate misunderstanding of Tim’s post, as “crush the cockroaches” is about as clearly not-an-argument as speech gets, short of “fire at will”