Swordfishtrombones (Taylor’s Version)

when the AI bubble pops it’s going to leave a mark

The concept of the deep state is great for building right-wing coalitions because everyone can populate it with their personal cast of enemies.

and created the Roberts court that went on to enable all the rights-taking and election-cheating!

“nothing has been added but sentences” is an instant-classic ALC insult

a parallel with the finance guys who took over Boeing and explained to the engineers that safety inspections are too expensive, except with a bigger potential body count

I really only became aware of it a few weeks ago when my gf’s sister started heckling their cousin over whether the Labubu the cousin ordered was genuine

There is, I think, a compelling case to be made that the American political tradition thinks of free speech not as the basis of a free press but as an instance of it. A newspaper is not a giant person; a person is more like a little newspaper. If this is so, then the vast majority of Americans have low budgets, limited circulation, and few dedicated readers, even in the age of social media. In other words, speech is a resource, not an inalienable property, and as such it is subject to the same regimes of theft, privatization, and accumulation that have swallowed up the labor of workers and the fruits of the earth. We have heard much lately about when free speech ends: the moment when protesting for Palestine becomes grounds for detention or deportation in the eyes of the police state, for instance. Less often asked, but equally important, is when speech begins. Did

instance. Less often asked, but equally important, is when speech begins. Did Cotton's speech begin the moment that the Times published his op-ed? During the editorial process? When Bennet's deputies pitched the idea? At what point, in other words, did the ordinary flow of money, labor, and influence through civil society stop? Well, never. To say that Cotton was too important not to publish is to say that he enjoyed a certain social position that deserved the paper's famously discriminating attention. From the start, Cotton had more than free speech: He had actual speech, the very thing that protesters were being denied all across the country.

One of the principal goals of the protests of 2020 was therefore to seize the means of expression: protesters were not exercising their right to speak freely so much as they were trying to amass a form of social influence that could meaningfully compete at a national level. In other words, they were starting a newspaper; what Williams hates is that people started reading it. The fact is that telling a voiceless person they have free speech is like telling a poor person they have freedom of money: Nice work if you can get it! Williams might respond that a person who finds their ability to speak curtailed does not thereby lose their capacity to think.

"Expression is the exterior form and, if I can express myself so, the body of thought, but it is not thought itself, writes Tocqueville. It is seductive, I know, and highly flattering to those of us who write for a living, to suppose that thought "makes sport of all tyrannies," as Tocqueville puts it. (At least the slave, Buckley had the gall to imply, had retained his freedom of thought under the whip.) But a thought without expression, like a soul without a body, is just as good as dead. Surely we cannot comfort ourselves with the idea that the brutal neck restraint that kept George Floyd from breathing nonetheless could not keep him from thinking. For in the end, we know it did.

Obviously yes you should read Andrea Long Chu’s latest for all the usual reasons (thrillingly blistering assessment of worthy target) — but these two somewhat standalone paragraphs exploring the true nature of American free speech left me absolutely gobsmacked www.vulture.com/article/post...

all respect to Joaquin Phoenix but he is in possession of the Oscar that Banderas should have for PAIN AND GLORY

Trump's a huge liar and gets zero credit for honesty, but, as a way of understanding his actions, this seems true. A lot of his decisions (e.g., gutting FEMA, turning off weather satellites, etc) are hard to understand unless Trump sees the whole federal gov't as his personal funds.

Christy, yes

“who is automation FOR” is a good question, answered by the fact that absolutely nobody is hyped to interact with a computer for a long time to try and answer a question a human could use their actual reasoning ability to listen to and answer helpfully

also note than in addition to the “automate interesting jobs people like” problem, the biggest category here is about 3 million jobs in customer service, and the quality of life harm not just to people losing those jobs but to the rest of us who will waste hours on janky automated menus and chatbots

Feudalism. the fascists want us all to be serfs

3/This is no longer the DOJ courts can rely on to act in good faith. The “presumption of regularity” courts have afforded the gov’t, an assumption of good motives & proper behavior that the gov’t regularly pleads in court when accused of wrongdoing without evidence, no longer exists.

I don't think there should be royalty but if I were a monarch you'd better believe I wouldn't dress like a fucking businessman. You're telling me it's socially acceptable for you to wear a cape and you've chosen not to?

post someone who looks good in a hat

i have been thinking a lot about how the entire concept of “the deal” is antithetical to transparency, fair play and rule of law, as larry notes. the deal is necessarily nonstandard, ad hoc and dependent on the whims of the dealmaker

My general rule of them is if you or anybody else finds yourself saying “why didn’t you just…” that’s a good indication that there is a deeper complexity at work that countless smart people have tried to fix

But Harvard has a more antagonistic relationship with the Trump admiinistration, as the university has sued the administration to stop its retribution campaign against the school That dynamic has fueled worries at Harvard that the White House is seeking a far higher financial penalty as punishment for fighting, not because the schools troubles alone warrant $500 million.

Trump is acting like a mob boss. The administration cannot legally treat Harvard more harshly “as punishment for fighting.” At no point in this article is a legal predicate for these extortionist schemes mentioned.

The confederates are so funny. The rest of us are out here being normal, and they’re like “remember that time we came in second place in a war?”

Trump take couch

the restaurant now serves styrofoam, and everybody whose interest and skill set is in making food has been asked to leave

i think it's underrated how much petroleum gets burned just by trucks that carry petroleum

what ferritor needed was moral education — and the limits and boundaries that come with it. he needed to learn that he had obligations beyond his own interests & personal advancement. he needed to learn that he had duties to other people. his parents fostered his brilliance at the expense of a soul.

"hmmm the people who i now hate are also hated by these folks over here, who will clap at things that get me booed over there"

Yet Another Trump Fiasco Firing the messenger. Plus the links.

On the BLS flap: How it's worse than Nixon; why it was sure to backfire; how the goal is probably not to keep information from the public, but to keep information from the president; speculation on what Trump actually believes; and more. goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/yet-anothe...

Same

it's very easy to get the answers you want when you ask questions and set up criteria to only produce that answer - like if, for instance, you want to strangle non-fossil energy development.

Summer Reruns Dep't. Indignity Vol. 5, No. 136

"There may be some relatively good people who are attached to a pile of money that stacks one billion dollars high, but the money does not improve them. It makes them worse. Their good points would be no less good if they held only, say, 500 million dollars." www.indignity.net/summer-rerun...