Michael Fletcher

(There seems to be no shortage of those.) This is something the Framers could not have fully anticipated. It's clear now that this was a failure of process design, much as the Electoral College was.
It's time to do away with districts and go to proportional representation. /3

Afterword: It's clear that the way we do redistricting is completely broken. Indeed, combining the need to redistrict due to population changes noted in the census creates an irresistible urge in unscrupulous politicians who love power more than democracy. /2

100% of seats with 58% of the vote. Impressive - in a democracy destroying way.

It's amazing what a political consultant can achieve with a modern laptop running a few thousand simulations through a clustering algorithm.

The creation of the competitive authoritarian State continues unabated.

Prof Hotez knows.

This is as predictable as gravity.

"The more you tighten your grip, [GOP], the more [States] will slip through your fingers." 😎

Seriously, they toy with risk in their drive to absolute control. I hate to break it to the GOP: total control of society is impossible. It's an unattainable illusion. It always breeds resistance.

Are the corporate and techbro elite so short-sighted that they fail to notice that eliminating workers almost completely to boost profits will fail horribly if taken to its logical endpoint? Even Henry Ford realized that paying workers a living wage meant many would be able to afford his products.

just get lost in the mountains of largely useless data. Also, we shouldn't pretend that their are not regressive anti-knowledge forces and communities working to deny or destroy that knowledge because it doesn't conform to their stunted worldview. /2

One reason for slow human progress was that knowledge passed by word of mouth could easily be lost or degraded within a generation.
We have the technology to retain key knowledge, but we neglect to pass it to the next generation. Also, key knowledge, perhaps even critical to human survival, /1

"It is the Doom of Men that they forget." - Merlin's warning to Arthur and his Knights.

We had vaccines for so long, we, as a people, forgot how horrible it was before. It's heartbreaking to think about how many times parents have had to bury their children.

As I said, SCOTUS requires a reset. Democracy won't be safe as long as six corrupt, unaccountable partisan hacks continue to rule from on high. /8

and no political party could game the court. Since no judge would be appointed directly, it would also relieve the nation of the partisan death-match spectacles that the confirmation process to SCOTUS has become.

/5

The simplest way to do this is to have SCOTUS serve as a temporary appointment. Randomly selected from the Appellate pool of almost 200 for a temporary posting of 5-7 years. This would solve a host of problems that afflict SCOTUS, the most important ones being that life tenure would be removed, /4

At this point, SCOTUS is hopelessly compromised. Its membership and goals must be reset. Congress does have the power to do this through legislation. Life appointments (implied in the Constitution) to the Federal Bench can continue. /3

They nakedly seek to promote a competitive authoritarian US, with them at the apex of power, with the power to, in essence, rewrite the Constitution. The post-Civil War Amendments disappear under a generous application of white-out. The Establishment Clause doesn't mean what it obviously means. /2

US supreme court approves redrawn Texas congressional maps Major win for Trump as majority rejects lower-court ruling that found maps had been racially gerrymandered

The GOP has finally achieved its dream. It stacked SCOTUS with a GOP Senate-protected, unaccountable, corrupt group of partisan hacks who serve for life.
Now the Roberts court is overseeing the dismantling of even the pretense of fair elections. /1
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

The fact that four hostile drones tried to hit Zelenskyy’s plane & it’s barely a blip in the news cycle should terrify everyone. We’ve been dragged so deep into the chaos era that an attempted strike on a world leader doesn’t even break through. When this becomes normal, the world is in real danger.

A few thoughts on the new US national security strategy that was released today.
🧵

www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...

Yes, many others, Newt, McConnell, DeLay, Atwater, etc. kept moving the chains forward, but it's not much of an exaggeration to say that Reagan set the table that Trump ended up sitting at. /2

The relentless positive slope started with Reagan. I've long held that the long road to where the GOP is today started with Reagan. He set so many things into motion (he greased the skids for Murdoch citizenship -Fox News was born soon after) that grew slowly into the abomination we have today. /1

Macron believes US may ‘betray Ukraine on territory’ says Der Spiegel Magazine says leaked note from call between European heads also contains similar concerns of other leaders

“They are playing games with both you and us,” Merz was reported as saying, which the magazine concluded was a reference to a diplomatic mission to Moscow this week by president Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

Even Captain Average Thinker, with little knowledge of these disciplines, can see that the system is now unstable.

Of course, those at the top of the pyramid have little desire for a flatter social and economic power structure.
So, we get instability, similar to what can happen in panarchy cycles

Unfortunately, our current state, especially in the USA, is a cautionary tale. We have opted for an ever-more top-heavy hierarchy defended by an ever-increasing desire for tighter and tighter control. /3

Human history tends to support the idea that societies and economies with a much flatter organization are more stable. Simply put, less social and economic disparity reduces the likelihood of resistance and rebellion. /2

Wonk Alert:
I have been interested in the systems effects of hierarchy for some time. I long held the hunch that social and hence economic hierarchies tend towards instability. Having read some more, allowed for some cross-disciplinary insights from archaeology and sociology as well. /1

I've located the mountainous pile of excuses being voiced by Trump officials and the military for committing murder on the high seas.

Horrible take by HRC. I hope her excuse is she has lost a step, because it's cringeworthy if this is the workings of a non-addled mind.

The idiotic zombie argument that opposition to genocide by the Israeli government is antisemitism in disguise keeps rising from the grave of refuted arguments.

The simplest reason, which I have spoken of before, is the Base Rate Problem. When looking for something rare in a large population (e.g. terrorists among the law-abiding) the likelihood of false positives is disturbingly high. /3

At no time can such a probability assessment reach one, at least in a field with very high inherent uncertainty, such as Intelligence work. /2

This is either trolling or some serious salesman snake oil bullshit. I worked on the problem of making (Intelligence) judgments under high uncertainty, both when done subjectively and mathematically. It ranged from Bayes to Fuzzy Math and even Baconian probability. /1

George Carlin was right about so much.

Trump, with the help of his friends on SCOTUS, has built a system of impunity within his big club. That impunity extends to his enforcers; his praetorian guard units such as ICE and FBI. The rule of law is functionally dead at the federal level.