John Pettus

That shit is too simplistic, ignorant and dishonest to engage with.

You are not entitled to other people's agreement. It's fucking insane and repugnant to insult and command other people who do not accede to your *moronic* and illogical assertions.

Fuckin embarrassing.

Every technology problem is three social problems in a trench coat

Agree.

I had to stop myself from lazily writing "The far-left..." bc—as you said—it's not all or even (IDK) most. I try to discipline myself to be accurate and specific, esp if I'm criticizing.

If that's true (I haven't heard of it) it's not inherent in billionaires.

And billionaires benefiting from our fucked up tax system does not directly/specifically implicate traffic congestion.

This is what I'm talking about. This is not valid logical thinking. It's emotionalism and it's bad.

This thread perfectly illustrates why small governments (and, really, even individual national governments) should not be allowed to pretend they each get to write the rules for the internet—or even just <the internet when it comes into their physical jurisdiction>.

So stupid.

Meta to get rid of factcheckers and recommend more political content Mark Zuckerberg says company will ‘dramatically reduce censorship’ across Facebook, Instagram and Threads

Learning About Propaganda and Disinformation Is More Critical Than Ever... Did you know... On Facebook, Insta and Threads this year Meta removed fact-checkers, dramatically reducing content moderation, and promising to recommend more political content www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

America putting most of its eggs in the generative AI basket, China going hard into green tech. When history looks back on this period, someone is going to look awfully stupid.

It's more important than any single policy proposal, to me.

We need to fix our winner-take-all oligarchy, but I just can't stand stupidity.

What is even the theory that billionaires cause bad traffic?

DO NOT habituate yourself to dishonest thinking, or surround yourself with those who do.

So currencies. Much medium of exchange. Very store of value.

Excess mortality or excessive assumptions? How to make a popular metric tell any story you like

I am grateful for @adamjkucharski.bsky.social. He takes such care to deconstruct a claim made by the director of National Institutes of Health on excess mortality during the pandemic. We need sober analyses more than ever right now, even amidst the madness.

kucharski.substack.com/p/excess-mor...

Calling someone you disagree with "annoying" rather than articulating a substantive problem you have with their actions or ideas is so petulant and childish.

Thinking about this speech today.

Dude seeing this just makes me happy

I took arguing on the internet way too far.

Screenshot of a tweet from the account @graybee. The text says: Every lifelong Catholic I've ever met is like "I think we're supposed to give this food to poor people" and every adult convert is like "the Archon of Constantinople's epistle on the Pentacostine rites of the eucharist clearly states women shouldn't have driver's licenses."

I always come back to this, as someone raised in the Catholic Church.

It was received wisdom—a completely uncritically accepted fact—that Biden botched the Afghanistan withdrawal.

But it's not true and it never was. If there hadn't been a catastrophic IED, most people would have praised us getting out. But... the President doesn't plan or execute force protection.

I love this joke almost as much as I loved that book

When Davis learned that a breakaway faction was gathering on a Saturday afternoon at the offices of venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz to plot a strategy for DOGE’s future, he began calling likely attendees and told them not to attend what he called the “coup” meeting. (The firm did not respond to a request for comment on its role in DOGE’s work.) Those at the meeting who looked at their phones would have seen their fortunes change in real time, as they were removed from Signal group chats — DOGE’s primary status marker of who belonged.

Some incredible details in this piece
*one DOGE faction was planning the future of the US government at a venture capital firm
*illegally communicating on Signal to avoid transparency laws was deeply embedded into organizational culture to be taken for granted

MANY people on the illiberal left don't hate fascists as much as they hate Democrats. Narcissism of small differences and all that.

But they are a big source of Murc's Law—where people blame the Democrats for everything, no matter who is actually at fault.

My first ICE cartoon

This is what they should be doing. But, nah, it’s much easier to gang tackle cleaning women and nannies

Yeah, these MFers are RABID.

ICE video shows officers planned to ‘smash’ into Charlotte man filming Border Patrol Immigration agents had a 12-pack of Modelos in their car while making arrests, Miguel Angel Garcia Martinez told investigators.

They planned to force him to crash or shoot him for recording their crimes. They then accused him of assaulting them. www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/c...

A video from inside a Border Patrol vehicle shows agents chasing a US citizen for filming them. The citizen refused to get out when they illegally ordered him to stop. The agents say: "This is great." "This is fun." "He's going to get shot."

🎵 “Join Ice” - @wellesmusic on Colbert

Why do Irish dancers only move their legs?

Because their arms have been decommissioned pursuant to the Good Friday Agreement.

I love this idea so much

Help get LESSONS FROM CATS FOR SURVIVING FASCISM on to the New York Times Bestseller List

Journalist or not, photography isn’t a hate crime Gatekeeping over hate crime charges misses the forest for the trees

The hate crime charge against Alexa Wilkinson for photographing vandalism of the New York Times building is a dangerous precedent, no matter what you think of Wilkinson.

Q: How come to taking so long? I don't think you're doing anything. A: You're right - I apologize for pretending to work without actually making changes.

I am beginning to like this AI coding assistant. I can totally relate.