Matt Dragon

Hey Megyn Kelly,

14-year-old Eloise would like a word:

“If my voice makes you uncomfortable, good…
because the minute adults start defending predators by defending the age of a child, you’re not protecting the truth, you’re protecting the predator.”

Sound up! 🔥🔊

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Ta-Nehisi Coates on Bridging Gaps vs. Drawing Lines

Coates, kindly, exposes every flaw in @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social's arguments and he continues to double down with white dude, naivety to be kind, ignorance to maybe be more honest. @mikiesherrill.bsky.social's team could learn a lot from Coates here as her centrist push aligns with Klein.

What happens is Trump then wins, which is taken as truly shocking, and the Democratic Party begins to take on the opposite positions of Trump in many ways. Trump is the most anti-immigrant President of our lifetime— not just in his desire to build a wall but emotionally anti-immigrant. The Democratic Party becomes much more pro-immigrant. If you're going to build a wall, we're going to debate legalizing, decriminalizing, illegal border crossing.

Ezra Klein explains why he is against the “oppositional” approach of Dems. One example he gives is blatantly false: immigration.

But more important: Klein shows how folks like him almost always casually throw vulnerable people under the bus in the name of “practicality.”

Biden administration waives 26 federal laws to allow border wall construction in South Texas It marks the administration’s first use of a sweeping executive power employed often during the Trump presidency.

Klein is wrong: Biden waived 26 federal laws so he could build Trump's shitty wall. It was one of the many terrible Trump policies he continued and was followed shortly by funding and abetting genocide. www.politico.com/news/2023/10...

The mainstream / leadership Democratic position of today is to the right of George W. Bush on immigration.

One consistent thing this time of year is that there are crows everywhere. I spend a lot of time thinking about crows. They have the most obnoxious vocalizations of maybe any animal, they’re aesthetically unpleasant and feel like a harbinger of death, and they know when they’re bothering you and they enjoy doing it. Drives me crazy how well they’ve adapted to LA. I saw one just this week going through a garbage can, methodically picking items out of it one by one and tossing them on the ground, looking for foodstuffs. It was making a horrible mess, a mess you’d normally associate with humans. They’re such a pest, and the worst part is you have to respect it. They’re fat and happy and they thrive. They’re annoying in a way that suggests profound intelligence. If they could get around to inventing money, they should get tickets for littering. Treated like equals. I have met crows that should be in jail. There’s one in my neighborhood that seems to have a problem with me personally. They’re my favorite bird.

Revisited this spectacular Kaleb Horton paragraph about crows this morning. "I have met crows that should be in jail" is one of those sentences that's so good you're initially furious you didn't write it yourself before circling back around to just being glad you got to read it.

If/when Dems regain control of Congress, the path is clear. No clerks. No building. No shadow docket. Nothing, until the Wizards In Robes stop ignoring the law, data, history, precedent, & the plain meaning of words in the Constitution. And there will be 25, with 9 chosen by lottery for any case.

Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social • 2h It is really funny that Jimmy Kimmel Live showed more moral fortitude and adherence to a system of values than Columbia University DBerl0909 @dberl.bsky.social Why dont you tag them so they see what you post about them? Dont be a coward. Allow me: It is really funny that Jimmy Kimmel Live showed more moral fortitude and adherence to a system of values than @columbiauniversity.bsky.social

Just a reminder that these "pivotal votes" that the Democrats got in these recent special elections aren't pickups. They are pivotal seats that have been vacant for months because the Democrats who previously held them ran for office notwithstanding age and cancer diagnoses, then died in office.

I think it's also worth noting that Raul Grijalva was consistently ranked as one of the most progressive House members. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking of the gerontocracy problem as coming from the more centrist or moderate wing of the party, but it's really cross-ideological.

Elected office is not an entitlement and having members die of old age in office is failure of party discipline.

It is fully irresponsible to argue for an American return to global leadership. This country is deeply unwell and has no business leading anything until that's no longer the case. There's a whole world out there capable of tending to the world's problems. We must tend to ours.

French Minister Delegate for European Affairs Benjamin Haddad: "We cannot leave the security of Europe in the hands of voters in Wisconsin every 4 years" says France's Europe Minister "Let's get out of collective denial. Europeans must take their destiny into their own hands, regardless of who is elected US president"

All that needs to be said, really.

Compared to abetting the immolation of Palestinian children with bipartisan support, I think it measures up quite nicely, actually.

The Canadians know that they don't run the world and my understanding is that they don't want to. Would it be accurate to describe Canada's foreign policy as Canada First or cruelly isolationist?

My position is that America should adopt the foreign policy orientation of most countries in the world. There are things we can help with and contribute, but we've no right or reason to lord it over the Earth. And certainly not while the GOP is structurally favored to control Washington.

If the Chinese try for hegemony in our stead, it'll end as poorly for them as it has for every other civilization that's attempted it. I also do not presume, as is implied often, that the Global South is doomed to illiberalism, poverty, and impotence forever. The root of this presumption is racism.

I know antifa isn't a real organization because I don't get 40 texts a week from them asking for donations.

Quote from piece: "Action is happening up-and-down the LLM stack: Nvidia is making deals with Intel, OpenAI is making deals with Oracle, and Nvidia and OpenAI are making deals with each other. Nine years after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang hand-delivered the first Nvidia DGX-1 AI computer to OpenAI, the chip giant is investing up to $100 billion in the AI lab, which OpenAI will, of course, spend on Nvidia AI systems."

But this isn't toxic debt repackaging, this isn't a bubble, don't you worry your silly little brain about it.

Local police couldn't dream up a better rehabilitation campaign than, "We're not as bad as ICE, those guys are assholes."

For the record, the local police had to arrive to free the girl from … the federal police.

This is horrific. It’s undeniable that we will need trials for ICE officials and officers after all this.

“Leominster police arrived at the scene, recovered the child and returned her to the family.”

ICE arrested the man two days later at the same place (his house).

They knew where he was, they knew they could come back.

Taking a five yr girl on the autism spectrum hostage is appalling. Period.

That they knew it was totally unnecessary just highlights the gleeful cruelty.

It’s a new season. The air is lighter. Let’s find an hour a day to move our bodies. Even if it’s a 30 min walk.

Just start.

Poll 62/24 dems want their leadership replaced

Obviously they only polled Bluesky weirdos and not real american twitter democrats lile Nate Silver

Oh no, now Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are going to send a strongly worded letter to the Democratic base

chatgpt is much like an improv comedy group

1) you are the audience, giving it prompts
2) it produces things roughly shaped like your prompt
3) it is trained to respond with Yes, And
4) it has the factual accuracy of improv
5) it does not understand comedy

you say "i asked chatgpt"
i hear "i asked [an improv comedy group]"

an improv group wrote this report
instead of a therapist i use an improv comedy group