Extraordinary Least Squares

Dali, Michael Jordan

lol did they let Gavin pick the photo himself?

Okay this is basically Marva’s speech from Andor S1 finale. We need to project this as a giant hologram post haste.

He’s always been a fascist but I don’t remember him being so manic in the first term. Not sure if it is getting cucked by Elon or a coke addiction or what.

this is wild: while Stephen Miller's guy was in Minnesota for his uncle's funeral, somebody was able to see his entire phone and take pictures of his Signal group chats talking about military deployments to Portland, and brought them to the Strib (gift link: www.startribune.com/trump-offici...)

Hanania has been racking up a lot of “heartbreaking: worst person you know…” posts lately but still

I buy store brand for tons of foodstuffs, but name brand cereal is usually well worth the splurge. Even Trader Joe’s struggles to make a good store brand cereal.

Nothing good can happen, only bad happen

Opinion | These 6 Charts Explain Why Democrats May Shut Down the Government

Great summary of what the Democrats are trying to fix with this shutdown. Many people are in line for truly massive premium increases next year.

(gift link)

I generally agree, but it is probably worth thinking about what mental models Trump and his advisors are working with. They have lots of ties to/affinity for Orban and Putin, but beyond that I suspect they’re much more knowledgeable about 20th c. totalitarianism than 21th c. hybridism.

Lately I've been thinking about the work of Stathis Kalyvas, who finds that many combatants don't really care about political causes, they actually use them as pretext for waging violence against their personal enemies. Ex: the Hatfields and McCoys fought on opposite sides of the Civil War.

Here is the ABC programming feedback form. If anyone has a better way of contacting them, let me know. #ABC #Kimmel

support.abc.com/hc/en-us/req...

Strongly agree. But it would be impossible to free ourselves of dependence on other infrastructure. We need to fight tooth and nail to preserve the neutrality of Apple, Google, ISPs, web hosting services.

They wanted a Sister Souljah moment with Harris forcefully and prominently disavowing woke stances on trans athletes.

Keir Starmer might be proof it doesn’t work. He did exactly what the anti woke crowd wanted and all he has to show for it is a historically precipitous decline in popularity.

tl;dr debating is terrible as a method of ascertaining the truth and no one changes their mind. Yet being seen as anti-debate isn’t a great look. It’s not like these guys are hard to beat, so maybe we should just do it. Meanwhile, convince the pundit class that it’s dumb.

Which is why I think there is some *political* value in debating. It’s dumb. But unfortunately there’s a sizable audience. And we have some very capable debaters on our side - @mehdirhasan.bsky.social, @petebuttigieg.bsky.social, Dean Withers…

Hammering the hypocrisy on this issue is a start. Kirk had a debate tent, but also a professor watchlist. Bari Weis calls herself a champion of free speech even as she tries to get Pro-Palestine professors fired. But it’s a tough messaging battle…

And yet I do think we’re losing politically on questions of which side is more supportive of free speech and debate. It’s not a massive gap, it’s narrowing by the day as Trump punishes dissent, and it probably wasn’t a decisive factor for many voters. But it’s still not an ideal reputation…

Many “great debates” are hollow. Hundreds of scholars published respectful, detailed critiques of The Bell Curve, debunking many claims and showing many more to be purely speculative. Yet Charles Murray and his allies continue to dismiss them as minor nitpicks, never changing their beliefs…

I agree on the merits. How often did Kirk admit that an opponent made a good point? How often did he change his mind on an issue? When someone bested him, did those moments end up on YouTube, or the cutting room floor?…

I really try to avoid playing armchair psychologist, but I do feel like she might have a severe personality disorder or something

A Tweet from @palmer1147: “I didn't care much for Charlie kirk. My name is Mike Shula and I am the offensive coordinator at the University of South Carolina.”

Lmao #cfb

Yo dawg, we heard you like hate

Agree, seems like this was inspired by the mid aughts blogosphere ethos

I have street parking and was struggling to replace mine the other day while a driver stared at me disdainfully during what seemed like the longest red light in history

I think there’s a case for Ezra going on Ben’s show. Make conservative audiences confront the fact that the big name liberals are not in fact bloodthirsty killers but rather boring ass policy nerds.

Not sure what is gained by having Ben on Ezra’s show.

I thought that photo surely must have manipulated. But no, it's real. What the fuck.

That was my first thought too lol

Erica Chenoweth finds that nonviolence is twice as likely to succeed as violence. And if anything that could be an underestimate, because many attempts at violent rebellion are crushed so easily that they don’t even make it into the data.

Wow Alan Dershowitz reads your work?