SamUpstate

the only sentence I keep coming back to when thinking about the current state of the Democratic Party elite

"we will take the people who make your phone unusable by calling 12 times a day and hang them in the town square" would win 70% of the vote

I feel like every single day I need to post a reminder: if you ask an LLM about itself it DOES NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ITS INNER WORKINGS and WILL NOT TELL YOU ANYTHING ACTUALLY ABOUT ITSELF. It just (as it always does) will make up some plausible sounding answer.

Florida, unlike the federal government, can be sued for civil rights violations and punished with monetary damages.

Quick, hold an emergency community meeting on the dangers of ebikes in cities!

Congestion pricing is the perfect example here: it polls poorly before it is enacted because people do not believe the benefits

but once it is enacted it becomes popular because it works.

it’s the opposite of mass deportations which many people think sounds good but is a total shitshow to enact

I don’t understand why proposed use cases for AI are so simple and basic. Who can’t send a text that says, “I’m running late”? How is this something that need a quadrillion dollars and all the power from Hoover dam for one year?

Texting is THE killer app of phones. Anyone can do it.

it has been said over and over but it’s worth reiterating in the face of this horrifying decision: RFK is quite literally joining the war on cancer on the side of cancer

Jim Acosta Interviews AI Version of Teenager Killed in Parkland Shooting: ‘It’s Just a Beautiful Thing’ Journalist Jim Acosta conducted an interview with an AI version of Joaquin Oliver, a teenager killed in the Parkland school shooting in 2018.

I can't even fathom what the next few years are going to be like.

Fox News interviewing an AI American whose wife was killed by immigrants or an AI white person who lost his job due to woke.

Imagine a news person asking, "What do you think should be done, AI-merican?"

Screenshot of text from an article: As Bloch explains it, there are two big trends here that would come to define postwar America: a retreat from the commons, and an embrace of manufactured, resource-intensive comfort at any cost. America on AC is an America suspicious of strangers and the outdoors, intolerant of discomfort, addicted to the lonely monotony of suburbia, and willing to sacrifice a great deal to avoid addressing these pathologies-more nightmare than dream. And artificial cooling, of course, only addresses a symptom; in doing so, it worsens the disease. Today, Bloch notes, Americans expend more energy on climate control than the entire continent of Africa uses on anything: "It's not an overstatement to say the pollution we generate for cooling is burning the planet."

We see this even in our upstate NY suburb. Our neighborhood is far less shady than when we moved here a decade ago. It's particularly noticeable when walking the kids to and from school.

https://newrepublic.com/article/198364/america-shade-inequality-public-health-climate

How America Became Hostile to Shade A roving history makes the case for shade’s centrality to public health, climate adaptation, and even a more robust and inclusive public sphere.

How America Became Hostile to Shade. “A roving history makes the case for shade’s centrality to public health, climate adaptation, & a more robust and inclusive public sphere.” A big discussion in the age of urban heating. Via @newrepublic.com @samkbloch.bsky.social.
newrepublic.com/article/1983...

I'm sorry you feel this way. You should give this take a bit more thought when you have space from whatever event prompted the thread.

Some of my colleagues who are currently crying online about TX Democrats leaving the state are the same ones who left D.C. early so they wouldn’t have to vote on releasing the Epstein Files.

Kind of interesting how that works, huh?

One thing that annoys me about these stories and the common depictions of working from home is this image of someone relaxing on the couch/in bed.

I like to wfh because I have faster internet, a bigger desk, better monitors, and an office with a door that shuts. I’m not lounging in bed.

The Rise of Silicon Valley’s Techno-Religion

At last, we're starting to see coverage of much of AI culture as the heathen cult it is. I wish, though, they'd build on the fuller work of @xriskology.bsky.social & @timnitgebru.bsky.social re #TESCREAL.
Gift link:
The Rise of Silicon Valley’s Techno-Religion www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/t...

I get wanting the paper to be better but you need to accept it's not and turn to other sources.

When other people mention NYT reverentially, respond the way you would if they were citing Fox News uncritically.

If you share an NYT link hedge it the way you would if it were from the Daily Mail

Why is it so easy for many of us to see this extortion while the @nytimes.com treats this as The Art of the Deal? It is so repulsive and craven of these reporters and their editors.

A major failure of the last ten years was the belief that the utility of debates was to perform the ritual of truth seeking.

Instead what occurred was the weaponization of surface level fallacious reasoning to “win” “battles”

📌💡Great essay 👇

"Putting a lie in a headline without calling it a lie elevates the lie to the level of truth. It is proper and fitting to protest such elevation. It is completely improper for those of us who will not be harmed by the lie to entertain it in the name of open-mindedness."

The most polite quote I can pull tonight is from a young a doctor who simply said “I plead with any democrat to please stop this moderate nonsense”

The rich must be incentivised; the poor must be disciplined.

The political economy of the super-elite in one headline.

For all those rightwingers crying about how “DeMoCrAtS GerRyMaNdEr ToO,” just ask them if they support a nationwide ban on gerrymandering. We do. They don’t. They’re not mad at the concept of gerrymandering, they’re mad that they don’t get to be the only party wielding it anymore.

Wrote about Substack not just being the Nazi Bar, but promoting itself as such.

The central problem with the "this is really scary stuff" argument is federal elected Ds not acting like it

It's why the Democratic Party polls so poorly at the moment

The disconnect between Texas Democrats fleeing to Illinois and Senate Democrats continuing to vote for Republican nominees is stark.

Remember: Almost all of us are the descendants of immigrants who fled persecution, or were brought to America under duress, or sought better lives for themselves and their descendants.

Politicians who stoke fear and hatred over immigration want you to forget this.

Do not.

Btw, I call this the "I wish I could do art" syndrome. Every artist has inevitably heard this as someone examines their art. They are almost always unconsciously lying. They don't wish they could do art. They wish they could have the products of doing art, with none of the practice or investment.

“Inconvenience is the price of community”

Living together means compromise: waiting, yielding, helping. Motonormativity flips this, teaching us that speed and personal convenience outrank care for others.

The question is how often has these audiences been granted that he’s outraged by being denied here?