Nick Davis

our institutional conditions are somewhat static post VRA, we've just swapped polite scoundrels for public-facing proudly wretched ones. if theres not a shared understanding of political virtues, then the distinctions between modes seemingly collapse? 2/2

non-negotiables have been so contaminated with entrepreneurial cynicism that it *feels* like corruption even when it is not. idk how you design around it either because it is not like we've regressed from an Ideal Politics to trash. put another way 1/2

many men, as 50 once said

yeah, the incentive structure produced by the institutional rules has permitted a self-selection of some of the worst impulses.

well it was nice while it lasted. what a total conflation of how context produces different forms of anger. terminal online brain has returned.

institutions are the start of our problems but some nontrivial share of where-were-at can be chalked up to the worst human impulses metastasizing into group incentives and norms. there are just some really, really shitty people participating in politics. it is as it ever was, i guess.

an uncomfortable reality: functional democracy needs shared social virtues. once scoundrels take the tiller and theres no enforceable punishment mechanisms, the entire institutional project tips over like a house of cards. you can redesign institutions, but purging depravity from public service? oof

be sure to take the online quiz associated with todays chapter that is totally divorced from reality!

feel free to take it from the table in the back on the way out next to the framed photos of ronald reagan

"there goes dr davis griding his anti-trump axe again"

some college republican mutters as i try and explain how the concerns discussed at the constitutional convention map neatly onto the premise that presidents cant do financial crimes

hello kids heres another story of how baldly fucked up this administration is violating the premises of what i am about to teach you.

there is not an introduction to american government textbook on planet earth suited to contextualize how fucked up your government is.

i cannot convey the difficulty of trying to teach this catastrophe to college freshmen, who are pretrained to believe that there are automatically "two sides" to every story. the depths of corruption on display are so profound that you sound like an insane person trying to communicate it.

few men have stewarded public regard for an institution into the ground as badly as john roberts. a real captain of the titanic. may history remember him as the architect of democratic backsliding.

the farm-league feeder system for young republicans is real world class shit

there is no better evidence of a practical speech asymmetry in american culture than the way punishment for violating propriety norms is meted out for left and right belonging persons

see, jonathan haidt, free speech is alive and well in college campuses

Ok doomer

It was all over Instagram and Reddit like two or three days ago 🤷‍♂️

This photo is a poignant visual illustration of what democratic backsliding looks like. It’s not just politicians breaking rules or robed wizards issuing cynical judicial edicts, its ordinary people getting chemically gassed for exercising their rights.

Tell Your Kids This Shit Is Racist American children deserve to know they're being raised under a white supremacist regime.

Denny Carter on talking to your children about the president's racism, which becomes more normalized all the time:

https://badfaithtimes.com/tell-your-kids-this-shit-is-racist/

So did Trump poop himself live on camera? I can’t tell what is real anymore.

“With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike, it is so ordered” is a thing you write when you know the Fifth Circuit will reverse you and can hope only that the court of history will affirm

Peter Attia in the Epstein files should shock no one — dude posted a crazy Kevin Spacey apologia on Instagram last year.

New sci-comm messaging campaign just dropped:

“One externality of robust government funding of public research is that it decreases engaging pedos”

Ed cHat later abt ur thots thx

wAT is SpELLinG aNd PuncTuATioN

given the VC tech bro pedos responsible for AI it’s low key funny that their robot assistant programs can spell good given that their emails read like a 2nd grade madlib.

Hell yeah

I am now at a sufficiently advanced age where the parents in cheaper by the dozen fill me with a mix od dread and empathy.

May it bring glad tidings of joy