Paul Matzko

I can answer that, Ted. For the same ostensible reason you, a Christian, routinely wear a yarmulke: to show respect to people of a different faith when attending their religious observances.

Then again, I'm not sure using one as a campaign billboard shows all that much respect!

Excellent work!

Listening to @ezraklein.bsky.social’s interview of Yoram Hazony and struck by the fact that Hazony isn’t just bad at nationalism; he’s also bad at understanding his faith. His scriptures are filled with outsiders being grafted into tribes by acts of faith and creedal commitment (e.g., Ruth, Rahab).

It’s a golden age for Cassandras.

I hadn’t made that connection before, but you’re absolutely on to something with the comparison! Bari Weiss as the Carl McIntire of the 2020s. 🙃

The Radio Right by Paul Matzko Libro.fm

Current listening to The Radio Right by @paulmatzko.bsky.social, and his description of the key role conservative broadcasters played easing the transition of segregationist democrats to the GOP hauntingly mirrors how modern right-wing podcasters do the same thing today for transphobic liberals.

The “party of small government” has just created the largest militarized police force on Earth, and a top 15 military globally. What could possibly go wrong with a secret police force that rounds up undesirables without due process of law and locks them in concentration camps???

So many of the “campus free speech” crusaders of the past decade have turned out to be utter hypocrites.

Free speech was merely a convenient rhetorical device for their ultimate goal: imposing their own beliefs on universities by government fiat.

Indistinguishable from every gamergate troll complaining about “woke casting” in Disney movies.

“Abundance-lovers of the world unite!”

This is from a Ronald Reagan column in 1978, a reminder that we ought to think of what @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social & @dkthomp.bsky.social et al are part of as the Second Abundance moment.

DHS has arrested two medical personnel at a surgical center in California for demanding that the officers trespassing in their building identify themselves & provide a warrant, accusing them of another.... wait for it... ASSAULT. The case shows how DHS lies relentlessly to violate the Constitution

Call him Commissar Carr from now on.

Thanks! Love to hear your thoughts whenever you get around to it.

i don’t think he does this, but this is the “break glass, everyone in the streets until he is removed” line (i think even he knows that)

In a stunning moment of erotic fervour, calculator demands BOOBS.

www.reddit.com/r/AmericaBad...

I will never understand the European preference for dying in heat waves rather than installing air conditioning.

The police militarization debate is over Quaint disputes about the proper role of police and military have been superseded by a more urgent threat: Donald Trump is creating his own, personal paramilitary force

Radley Balko is always worth reading, but when he talks about police militarization, he’s speaking as one of the most qualified journalists we have. He’s rather apocalyptic about where we are with a huge ICE force. He’s right.

open.substack.com/pub/radleyba...

One fundamental, unresolvable problem with industrial policy is that it isolates a national economy from global competition and thus reduces long-run innovation, ultimately kneecapping the very industry it was meant to boost.

We're watching that stultifying process happen in real time with EVs.

The o.p. is simply wrong about the meaning of “balkanized,” which was coined to describe the splintered nature of the region, not as a critique of some kind of regional supra-nationalism.

Another ICE "assault" case unravels. Border Patrol and ICE are arresting US citizens and then after they find out that they are US citizens, they are charging them with "assault" to justify their actions. This is clearly DHS policy at this point. We've seen it repeatedly now.

just setting these next to each other

No, Grok, No It was the July 4 weekend.

Yes, Elon tinkered with Grok and turned it into MechaHitler, but the takeaway isn't merely that Musk's ideology collapses into fascism but that this is the natural ideological arc of Trumpist ethno-nationalism.

What's new in biology: summer 2025 The first gonorrhea vaccination program, contact lenses that see infrared light, the protein behind sweet tastes, a baby cured with gene therapy, and more

Another great roundup of biomedical innovation from @worksinprogress.bsky.social:

Whereas the right-wing populists -- including anti-vaxxers like RFK -- are actively dismantling the infrastructure that enables vaccine and biomedical trials, likely delaying such medical innovations by years and leading to thousands of preventable deaths and a lot of unnecessary suffering.

These miraculous innovations demonstrate the drastic shift from the New Right to the Paleo Right. The old style conservatives were small government deregulators, who pushed through FDA reforms that have made many of these experiments possible and promise to save thousands of lives.

New mRNA and CRISPR based therapies are experimenting with cures for Type 1 diabetes and rare genetic diseases in utero, reducing infant hospitalizations for common viruses by half, curing multiple forms of cancer, and so much more. Just amazing stuff happening in biomedical research right now.

To cow the civilian population.

A Fatal Tesla Crash Shows the Limits of Full Self-Driving As Elon Musk touts robotaxis in Austin, federal regulators are investigating whether Tesla’s system is dangerous even with a human behind the wheel.

Elon has made bad decision after bad decision as head of Tesla, including handicapping his automation product by betting against lidar. So now his "robotaxis" can't even handle sun glare without mowing people over every now and again.

The money just given to ICE could fund the NEH for 850 years