Seth D. Michaels 🍂🍁🍂🍁🍂

💯💯💯

I think an important thing to understand about brofluencer ideology is that they do not just deny that being toxic and shitty makes you a less appealing partner, they insist that women are only genuinely attracted to toxic and shitty men and being kind will instead make women lose respect for you.

This is the crux: "These bots are only as honest as the people programming them. And you may not find a more dishonest breed of businessmen right now than the AI evangelists of Silicon Valley."

Are some (cough, Elon) more blatantly rigging the output? Yes. Can any of them be trusted? Hell no.

it’s a Take, for sure, and whomst am I to argue

“the worst people in DC” and “the people who are meanest about DC” is a circular Venn diagram

yesssss, this looks so crispy

I'm not exaggerating when I say following @boltsmag.org rn will unlock money for our journalism.

A generous reader, @russ41.bsky.social, has offered to donate $1 for every 1-person increase to our follower count.

If you're not following @boltsmag.org yet, it'll directly help fund our reporting!

We need each other. It really is that simple.

Sabrina walking the dog

Sabrina Carpenter made the White House delete their fuck ass tweet.

Permitting Reform is Back. What Are We Even Talking About This Time? Get up to speed on the SPEED Act.

My colleague @emilypont.bsky.social wrote THE explainer on the big “permitting reform” bill Republicans are trying to pass this Congress

She really nails what the bill would do and why some cleantech people like it while many others really don’t

I highly encourage all wonks to read

USPS doesn't "lose money" it is a public service paid for by our tax dollars, it is not meant to make a profit. Also it is guaranteed by our constitution, so there's that.

ICE Arrest Data Shows Many Immigrants With No Criminal Record In high-profile operations, more than half of those arrested had no criminal record, an analysis shows.

This was never about targeting violent criminals. This was always a wind up to the full attack on Black, Brown and Muslim immigrants we’ve seen burst wide open this week. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

speaking of the current outbreak of genuine society-wide mass insanity

Federal Judge Has No Interest In Taking Brett Kavanaugh’s Racial Profiling Opinion Seriously The Trump administration cited Kavanaugh’s infamous concurrence to justify its immigration arrests. Judge Beryl Howell was having none of it.

Strong evidence here for my theory that lower court federal judges cannot *believe* that a guy as dumb as Brett Kavanaugh is on the honest-to-God Supreme Court ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/beryl...

it's definitely not supposed to but if i were an Oscar voter the range displayed across OBAA and TPS would absolutely affect my vote

Really overwhelming how often Black people of high rank have become the unwavering guardians of the values America has long espoused but now abandoned. And repeatedly found themselves eliminated now that the mask of propriety has been discarded by white nationalists. Makes me proud. And angry.

In addition, the whole reason why the ACA is set up as ADVANCE tax credits is because if you could afford to wait over a year to get the financial help you probably wouldn’t need the assistance in the first place.

the midpoint between Game of Thrones and Succession (complimentary)

We shouldn't have armed and masked men stalking the streets for victims to kidnap even if they did "do something wrong."

depressing but accurate: "most voters are partisans who will support their party no matter what. And those who aren’t are mostly the voters who pay the least attention to politics, and therefore won’t even notice the positions that candidates take."

Democracy and the Broken GOP It's not just Trump.

typically good @jonathanbernstein.bsky.social piece on the bind Republican politicians are in: goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/democracy-...

a cartoon character from the simpsons says i was saying boo turns Alt: Hans Moleman from "The Simpsons" says "i was saying boo-urns"

(raises hand meekly)

the ozone hole is closing, thanks to 90s-era internationally-negotiated rules that would get laughed out of a White House meeting today

It's a moral failure to reduce women to sex vending machines you put economic status, IQ and kindness coins into, but it's also just really bad mental health advice. It makes your status checks fully external, such that if you are not getting laid you must be mean, dumb, or a loser!

super cool draft! one of my discards here, recency bias and all, would be A DIFFERENT MAN (2024), which is about a lot of things but certainly very much about performers and performing

DRA 2020 A free app to create, analyze and share redistricting maps for any state.

California feels too big and too specific place-to-place for me to really dig into it well. i got to a 46-6 i like, though davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap...

yes, i'm a redistricting hobbyist, some people have fantasy football teams and i have this

screenshot of a map of the actual Tennessee congressional district lines, showing how what would be a reasonable Dem-leaning Nashville-centered 5th District is instead carved up by three surrounding Republican districts

the current map is a real rough gerrymander - 60% Dem-performing Davidson County (Nashville) is just under the perfect size for a congressional district, but instead cut into three parts davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap...

graphic from the NYT showing swings by county from 2024 in the TN7 special election, including a 20-point swing in Nashville’s Davidson County

2) the 7-point swing in the most Republican parts of the district would be plenty to build good midterm results on, but the real story is the huge swing in the Democratic portions www.nytimes.com/interactive/...