Michael Waddell

Trump's tariffs--ivermectin for the economy.

Everyone wants there to be a grand scheme behind all of this but the terrible truth is that extremely stupid people are in charge and they have a fanatical devotion to wrong, childlike concepts of society and economics cooked up by right wing radio hosts in order to sell tainted dietary supplements

A cat destroying a hand-knitted stocking

Someone's getting coal in their hand-knitted stocking...

“Don’t feed the trolls” also extends to bad opinion pieces in papers of record.

They run them bc people react to them the most.

If we stop linking to bad columns and instead post thinkers we find valuable (& generate convo around it), incentives change.

It’s not easy and takes constant practice!

stop using “norm busting” and “law breaking” interchangeably, there’s a reason it’s not called Norm Busting: SVU

YouTube video by vlogbrothers Populism, Media Revolutions, and Our Terrible Moment

This is one of those videos that you could work on forever, but suddenly it felt very important to make it, so I finally did: www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Pn...

The link between changing news use and trust: longitudinal analysis of 46 countries Abstract . Changing levels of public trust in the news are of deep concern to both researchers and practitioners. We use data from 2015 to 2023 in 46 count

New article in Journal of Communication looking at changes to trust in news across 46 countries in the last 10 years.

Trust in news declined in just over half of countries.

It decreased more in countries where TV news use has declined, and/or where social media news use has grown.

A thread:

Unfollowing hyperpartisan influencers can reduce partisan animosity by 24%.

It was a "structural intervention", changing people’s daily information diet for at least a year.

osf.io/acbwg

Authors: among else @steverathje.bsky.social @jayvanbavel.bsky.social

Gaetz withdrawal is encouraging, not just because we won't have AG Gaetz but because it's taken Trump about two weeks to squander his supposedly invincible mandate and remind everyone of his staggering incompetence and dysfunction—which, per last time, are the main checks on his power.

Pendantic. Because when people correct you, you don't even have to say anything, just smile.

bluesky request.

do not follow or reward quote-doomers. people who quote an article and only add something like "you have no idea how bad this is" or "it's over" or "say goodbye to everything you love".

they succeed from your stress. they're bringing you down with them. stay awake; not like this.

notgreatbob.gif

This summary entirely chimes with my experience reporting on media use in the UK general election. Lots of people weren’t consuming any news directly yet were still weirdly aware of a lot of the big scandals or allegations. They didn’t even know how the story had reached them, it just sort of… had.

What could be more human than working diligently to find any reason to believe what you already wanted to believe anyway?

THAT is what is new, and THAT is what is fixable. We, as a society, made it this way, and we can make it some other way. Whether Blue Sky will end up being part of the problem or the solution, only time will tell, but I'm hopeful. (5/5)

That's not an accident. These echo chambers are engineered to hold our attention in whatever way possible (for the benefit of advertisers), and outrage and herd-mentality are great ways to do that. The social costs and political health consequences are enormous, but predictable. (4/5)

Now we get our political gut-reactions from instant snippets, engineered to appeal to us emotionally, fired off in quick succession in echo chambers that people adhere to through feelings like "This group is who I want to think of myself as," and not "These statements survive scrutiny". (3/5)

Not so long ago, most folks got their political gut-reactions from parties, or trusted institutions, or consensus at diverse social encounters, or commentators trusted for their honesty across the political spectrum. You know, those gate-keepers we freed ourselves from. (2/5)

Most people don't think about it too hard; they just vote their gut. That's not anything new, and it's probably not fixable, so focusing on "ignorant voters" won't help. What _is_ new is where people get their political gut instinct from. (1/5)

NEED SOME GOOD NEWS?

The EU now generates more electricity from wind and solar than from fossil fuels.

Graph from @natbullard.bsky.social using @emberenergy.bsky.social data.

Assuming that there will be no rule of law, no checks or constraints of any kind, is a form of complying in advance.

Asserting that there _ought_ to be such things is a form of demanding them, and forcing their elimination to be seen as a rupture.

7 Reasons Democrats Should Be Optimistic About Their Chances in 2026 and 2028 A guest post by Wally Nowinski.

Full article: open.substack.com/pub/noahpini...

If we can make it through the next four horrible, stupid years, the future does look up. A thread.

The institutions are not self-enforcing, and if the Senate Republicans are already signaling that they don't intend to enforce them, Trump and his government will do more blatantly illegal and unconstitutional things.

Is he a good boy?

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is my youngest cat. His full name is "Mister Sir Fancis Drake, Vice-admiral of the Royal Navy and Terror of the Spanish", but we usually just call him Mister-Sir.

'This process includes the replacement of all first-rate talents, regardless of their political loyalties, with crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is the best guarantee of their loyalty.' (The Origins of Totalitarianism, renewed version, A Harvest Book New York, 1976, 339)

These are polarized times, but we can't cede the idea of "government efficiency" to the cynical right. What would efficiency that really helps people look like?

Public healthcare and college, no means testing. No humiliating red tape for SNAP, FEMA, debt relief. Websites for UI that actually work.