Ned Resnikoff

The Groups versus The Groups The interminable fight over who gets to rule the void

This is excellent analysis.

One thing I'd add... A good way to avoid the traps discussed is to simply support good policy

It's just way too easy to screw up if you logic backwards from what you think will be electorally successful.

publiccomment.blog/p/the-groups...

This is a very strange combination of performative moderation and flirting with secession

thinking Council should say no to these guys

Hell, if you buy Augustan era propaganda, Romans are descended from Turkish immigrants anyway

Let’s just set aside the fact that eg “I went to Rome and there were non-Italians all over the place” is something a visitor could have said at any point in the past 2500 years.

1. “Countries are no longer real” is the sort of claim that is only comprehensible to people who haven’t touched grass in so long that they have severe vitamin deficiencies.

2. The underlying complaint appears to be that other countries are not as ethnically homogeneous as their fantasy versions.

🫡🇺🇸

I disagree. The game’s mechanics have textual meaning in the game even if player decisions don’t affect outcomes. Also lots of great narrative art features protagonists who don’t meaningfully affect the outcome of the story.

200 hours (about five weeks full time or ten weeks at half time)

The Groups versus The Groups The interminable fight over who gets to rule the void

A reply to Matthew Yglesias regarding "Big Ass Truck Abundance" publiccomment.blog/p/the-groups...

Taking the Habermas pilled position that it's fine and good that there's groups of people advocating for various political ideas and freely giving their own opinions on the issues to persuade others. It's actually the responsibility of politicians to decide who to listen to

The Groups versus The Groups The interminable fight over who gets to rule the void

"A pol. movement can be oriented around a single issue or...a set of centrist cultural signifiers, but w/o civil society roots [it'll] end up hovering in the same airless vacum as every other well-intentioned but free-floating elite project." @resnikoff.bsky.social
publiccomment.blog/p/the-groups...

This is really fantastic - and if they're seeking centrist funding for a professional nonprofit, that explains at lot.

Anakin/Padmé meme. Anakin: CEQA isn't the obstacle to infill homebuilding, exclusionary zoning is. Padmé, smiling: So you want to upzone in infill areas? Anakin: [Blank stare] Padmé: So ... you want to upzone in infill areas?

California environmental groups

As someone with a bit of personal experience in what infertility does to couples, I always thought this was one of the more despicable empty promises of this campaign and that everyone who participated in this scam deserves to have very bad things happen to them.

White House has no plan to mandate IVF care, despite campaign pledge President Donald Trump has said he wants a “baby boom,” but critics say his administration has yet to make significant family policy changes — and that Medicaid cuts will hurt.

All those Trump surrogates who touted this, and news orgs that reported it credulously, owe Americans a big fat apology www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

This is a great essay! As one of those "non-professional" activists, I've found it frustrating that so much of our society's civic leadership is locked into organizations you can't join and meaningfully particupate. It pushed me to move involvement with smaller groups. Just paying an org sucks.

Going to run for the legislature on a proposal that multifamily developers get a 100% density bonus for every time local NIMBYs do something like this.

Still thinking about this. As images hit the American media of a literal genocide and intentional famine, there's something incredibly vile about appropriating the "genocide" label to describe someone building affordable apartments in your neighborhood.

They’re trying to speed run Orbanization because they realize how screwed they are if America ever has another relatively free and fair election. I’m not sure what options exist other than having blue states fight fire with fire.

Yeah to be clear I’m not defending groups like Sunrise or saying they’re better or worse — a lot of my work in California is dealing with the damage wrought by orgs that claim to be protecting the environment. My claim is that the problem of The Groups can’t simply be solved with different groups.

In the housing space The Groups are treated as a uniquely progressive rot, but centrists have their own Groups they reflexively defer to: realtors, large SFH builders, landlords, and utilities.

Many of these centrist Groups have positions that are odds with climate-friendly housing abundance.

The loudest “come the fuck on” ever heard just emerged from my body.

The Groups versus The Groups The interminable fight over who gets to rule the void

A reply to Matthew Yglesias regarding "Big Ass Truck Abundance" publiccomment.blog/p/the-groups...

The Groups versus The Groups The interminable fight over who gets to rule the void

Got impatient and published it early publiccomment.blog/p/the-groups...

"Hyper-gentrification is internationally recognized as an act of genocide" is one of those sentences that appears grammatically correct without having any sort of sense content.

Pieces like this are why I’m anti-anti-Richard Brody. (Also he was the only critic I read who was right about why WHIPLASH is an awful movie.)

Young men lack positive models of healthy masculinity because they haven't seen Alec Guiness's portrayal of George Smiley in the BBC adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy

The Osaka Museum of Housing and Living, which is located on the top floor of the Osaka Municipal Housing Information Center and includes a life-sized reproduction of an Edo-era Osaka neighborhood.

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