Alisha Kirby

In June, a Democratic state rep in Minnesota was murdered, and a state senator was shot.

And a couple of days later, Trump said he wouldn't phone Gov. Walz, calling him "whacked out" and "a mess"

no offends if this is you but if you're thinking "this is going to make the right do fascism" they're already there. they blew up a boat with 11 people on it for being immigrants. they're kidnapping US citizens and trying to rendition them to Uganda. do you think we're on a trajectory to peace

I think it’s cool that we made a machine that gives entire towns asthma so it can turn your uncle into the dad from Frailty

Trusting experts is not, in fact, a feature of religion or totalitarianism.

"we are human beings worthy of the same respect and dignity you'd extend to anyone else" vs "no you're not"

There can’t be any gun restrictions because we have to protect against federal government tyranny, and if kids get shot we just have to live with it. Also the President can send troops to cities because the federal government can do whatever it wants. These two ideas are consistent and reasonable.

I think this—the horror of mass shootings over the last 25 years and the response (the stiffening of opposition to any measures whatsoever to improve gun safety)—has broken us as a people in some fundamental way that is hard to quantify but plays a nontrivial role in where we are now.

I do wish people would treat transphobia as the serious red flag it is, because if someone is repeating bullshit pseudoscience talking points from right wing cranks, that's just as bad as conceding to anti-vax nonsense and undermining trust in science and medicine, alarm bells should be sounding!

if we made immigration work how people think it works that would be the biggest liberalization of immigration in American history

Another of my rules: accelerationism is bullshit. Bad place to hang your hopes. Build support, take gains where you can get them. Keep working to build support for more. Do the best you can to swat back backlash. But hoping for damage is a mistake.

this work saved millions of lives in 2021, won the Nobel Prize in 2023, and is cancelled in 2025

Most of the internet used to be like this. This is actually the default, it took companies enclosing the internet and adding weird, soul-killing incentives to make people behave the way they do now. In a way, there is truly nothing special about Wikipedia except that it survived longer.

I wholeheartedly agree.

cops did an uvalde again. they’re real brave when it’s unarmed protesters and workers and just the biggest pussies in the world the second there might be some actual danger.

why can’t he just pretend Mamdani is Trump and do nothing

A three panel meme from Spider-Man 2 depicting Peter parker and Harry Osborn talking to each other at a cafe. Panel 1: Zohran seems like a good mayoral candidate. Panel 2: But if he wins, Hakeem Jeffries will never become Speaker of the House. Panel 3: I already told you I was a fan You don't need to sell him to me.

Reality is now so internet poisoned you cannot say true things without appearing insane. “The New York Times ran a hit piece on Zohran purely so a minor race science blogger could place insider trades on Polymarket” sounds like you are a schizophrenic but it is straightforwardly factual!

at least he didn't do something truly reckless like try to forgive student loans

They have made the world living hell for no reason whatsoever. People will ask why this happened in a decade and there will be tremendous effort to make it more complicated than “they were evil, stupid, and bored”

I keep seeing people saying "everyone who voted for the Iraq war was disgraced" no they weren't! It worked out great for all of them! Bush got re-elected! The 2016 Democratic Presidential nominee voted for it!!!

being a conservative columnist at a major newspaper must rock so hard. an explicit mandate never to learn anything. approach every new day as though you just fired a roman candle directly up your own nose. that's the life

Dem senator: Please, protestors, there are better ways to oppose the president

Voters: Like not voting for his nominees?

Dem senator: haha no no no. No. What I mean is we are writing a rap

not the main issue here but i'd really appreciate it if democratic politicians spoke out in support of big-city life and culture with the same energy and reverence that all politicians have for small towns

los angeles is "real america" and so are all the other big cities the president hates

1 in 12 Americans live in California.

1 in 35 Americans live in LA County.

LA is America

Me after being added to the secret war planning group chat

The latest crazy just proves what we all know. They are discussing everything on Signal to avoid any discovery or FOIA or archival laws. So illegal but here we are.

I know people blame the professors for this, but the reality is that it’s one of the only time in people’s lives where they are more or less sorted pretty randomly. You meet people from all over and with lots of different interests and backgrounds.

One nice thing about the Trump era is that it’s revealed how much of the American political, media and economic elite believe in absolutely nothing.