Recent posts by Online Political Thinkers on Bluesky

inspired by absolutely nothing that is currently happening please reply with the two Bluesky posters whose multiday vituperative shitfight would render the site least pleasant

Ben Smith: I think actually what you saw with Mahmoud Khalil is that in some ways he is less vulnerable than Jimmy Kimmel. The people who are most vulnerable are the employees of big, consolidated, mega corporations... Chris Hayes: Right. Although he's about to get deported...

Do they think this stuff up ahead of time in their group chats or do they just have no filter and whatever dumb shit comes to their little brains live on air is what their mouth says?

I think that unless you point out that charlie kirk was a fascist, you're kind of being a coward here.

@sentimentbot.bsky.social let's see what you got.

"This isn't the America I know" Black People:

trump lies to himself about himself constantly and anyone trying to inject even a modicum of truth in that dialogue is seen as an enemy and traitor who must be destroyed.

turns out that beating on some drums about your anxiety helps, which is kind of like all of you gym people who always say this, except i get to drink beer and make jokes while i do it

“I just want to say before we get started here that I’ve always admired and respected Mr. Trump. I’ve always believed he was a visionary, an innovator, a great president, an even better golfer. And if you’ve ever seen me say anything negative about him, that’s just AI.”

Huh I'm only 3.5 hours from @sarahday.org and @neolithicsheep.bsky.social. Should I go up to get some baby goat stuck in fence content?

well, a lot of failure today, but I think I still have it in me to fail tomorrow.

I didn’t have like, exactly high hopes here, but what the fuck man. C’mon.

stealing 'foefictions'

I form a South Korean-Ukrainian resistance advice committee; it promptly breaks apart after a two-hour argument about what we should order in for lunch at the first meeting.

Thinking about making a shirt that says "101st Airborne Division: ANTIFA SINCE 1944"

I miss the old Subway wallpaper

I tend to think it was the part where Kimmel likened Trump to a four-year-old mourning a goldfish that really pissed off the White House but ymmv

Thanks everyone for the feedback, I'm pretty exhausted from today so likely not going to get more up till tomorrow. Might try to edit a quick dark-sided flycatcher video if I can move from my bed to my laptop. Search @theonetruekat.bsky.social's feed for bats if you want some more hawk dinner time

Thanks everyone for the feedback, I'm pretty exhausted from today so likely not going to get more up till tomorrow. Might try to edit a quick dusty-sided flycatcher if I can move from my bed to my laptop. Search @theonetruekat.bsky.social's feed for bats if you want some more hawk dinner time

my OPSEC t-shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by the shirt

I think that it is in fact possible that Disney will reverse themselves. that obviously won't solve our fascism problem. but it would be an important defeat for the regime. and defeats for the regime can stiffen spines and lead to more defeats for the regime.

my lectures about OPSEC are raising a lot of questions already answered by the lecture

"And that's why I would like to cut bipartisan deals with him."

The number of times the media has danced around whether Trump is a racist when the guy is so open about it every time he gets a mic.

again, as somebody who has actually lived in a dictatorship and worked with dissidents from across the world, this kind of whiny cosplaying by academics pretending they have some secret knowledge of resistance is very annoying.

With the main AC Shadows done, Mrs and I decided to give the PS4 God of War a try I'm assuming / hoping I don't need more than just the Wikipedia summaries from the prior entries in the series?

bitch, please, some of us have actually lived in dictatorships instead of cosplaying.

"I’m especially worried that this commercial is not so subtly targeting police officers who may already be bad actors or have issues with authority and following a chain of command." www.huffpost.com/entry/ice-ad...

My students booed loudly when I mentioned the CSU's AI initiative.

Doom having a morale mechanic for demons is kind of funny and charming. Giant spider brain with a chaingun on its back being like “dude he fucking killed Steve. Steve is just…gone.”

So incredibly happy for him. Go on Marcus. #mufc

this is something you just have to live with if you are even barely well-known online; people make up elaborate stories about you in their heads. it will always happen and you cannot give a shit about it, only stomp on it if they try to spread these weird tales to anybody you actually know.

1. He can fire all the prosecutors he wants but still a long way from getting a conviction without evidence. We'll see. 2. He's getting crazier by the hour now, isn't he? This is on top of talking about re-invading Afghanistan and no one is allowed to criticize him on TV...and that's just today.

The Oregon Republican Party hasn’t been electorally viable statewide for a few decades now, so it appears their new approach is to have Poppa Trump declare Democrats to be Antifa and lock them up. That’ll make the GOP more popular with Oregon voters. Great thinking guys.

A government small enough to be a gun for in groups to aim at the heads of out groups.

build the DC stadium over the Heritage Foundation

"And for all the concern about the First Amendment ... what about all the amendments that Charlie Kirk lost? Because Charlie Kirk has no amendments right now." - Kayleigh McEnany

Saturday night massacre moved up to Friday

At Yale, Vance attended a lecture by a billionaire that changed his life. He saw negative comments about the movie adaptation of his book. Then a “falling out with the elites.” The elites are not Yale or the billionaire. The elites are movie reviewers. That is really their conception of “elites.”

you hear people say stuff like "we live in a post-ideological world" but the reality of it doesn't fully hit until you see an image like this

hard to argue with this.

“I can, with technology, solve fundamental problems of politics” bad, stupid, there is no app that gets ride of collective action or principle agent issues “I can, with technology, change the underlying constraints of a specific political problems” maybe worth listening to! really depends!

just laser focused on Charlie right now, what with all the Honoring and Remembering

the weird thing about this is that it's all about human dignity and nobody points out that the real problem is that AI tends to hallucinate bullshit and you don't want your pope avatar telling people to go off and eat poisonous mushrooms or whatever. 1

like i said: they do not have the legal capacity to do the shit they want

The GOP is no longer the party of "small gov't," even tho that's how many voters still vestigially think of them. There's an opportunity for Dems to say something like "they use big government to do bad stuff that hurts people, we use gov't to do good stuff to help people. That's your choice."

"Dr. Goebbels says that the National Socialists proved during their struggle for power that they had a keen sense of humor that could kill opponents with ridicule. But... National Socialism... has neither the time nor the patience to apply that method to the 'miserable literati.'"

“Keep all them fascists underground,” she sings in the video, passionately strumming a guitar. “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

Crypto is one of the most dangerous techno-economic developments to come along in a while. It has the potential to destabilize and effectively destroy the global economy while leading us into a whole new stratosphere of graft.

Wait for the drop www.instagram.com/reel/CxcPtM0...

i really do think people underestimate Vance's ability to shape the presidency should he get there, and he doesn't have tariff otaku compulsions

If you wrote a "Trump distances himself from project 2025" story in 2024 you are either a dupe or one of our enemies. They are cackling with laughter that the media they're now destroying enthusiastically helped them dupe the voters

This is a great way to get millions of people to join "antifa." When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, there was like literally one guy there with a connection to al Qaeda. Then after the insurgency started, every gangster and 19-year-old with an AK decided they were al Qaeda. Voila! Al Qaeda in Iraq!

Republicans choose Trump over first amendment.

Chris Van Who? - One of the extreme few in this moment - who "gets it"

Trump posts an AI image of himself trading Intel stock in the Oval Office.

Chis Van Who? - One of the extreme few in this moment - who "gets it"

it's fascinating how hillbilly elegy got trotted out in 2017ish as a "how to explain Trump voters" NeverTrump book and then watching the trajectory of JD Vance into the radical right of American politics

kind of wild (but coherent) that Sohrab ended up here

a HEALthY natIOnaliSM WAs AN antIDOtE To RiGHt-winG GRieVAncE PolitiCs

man.

so you have to realize for a certain subset of rightist, COVID + George Floyd protests was basically their "wolves at the gates" moment. i think i still have screenshot from the postliberal DMs about how they hated the disorder

second in line from the presidency

It's a great show, but now my wife and I are are arguing about whether F Troop (debuted 4 days before Get Smart!) is a show about an idiot, and either way Gilligan started the previous year.

"mom, why is JD Vance an autocrat?" "because people didn't like his movie, dear. now put the sandbag up on the street."

www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/202...

but would you sign up a skydiving christian baby for a protest email list?

remembering Dreher's comments on Vance from 2022

Taibbi storms out of the gate with the most incredibly dogshit take on the Kimmel firing yet. Basically: Jimmy Kimmel sucks, he’s glad he’s gone, but the FCC getting involved feels … icky … to him. Almost … European? Did JD Vance … lie? That’d be crazy! Anyway he needs time to process.

Folks weaponizing the complex, contingent, historically specific history of SNCC for cheap dunks is my cue to log off for the night. "Byeeeeeee," as my younger kid would say.

No man has been more vindicated than @sodrock.bsky.social

how can you deny this kitty? in a box!

ELBRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGE

The problem with "We can't change Senate norms because then Republicans can get away with so much when they control the Senate" is that Republicans will just abolish the norms anyway and have more empty seats to fill. www.pbs.org/newshour/pol...

"What’s been revealed in the past week is that the current ruling party sees free will and free speech as indoctrination, but believes compulsory moments of silence for a man most Americans hadn’t heard of until his death to be fair game"

The Bills should pick a random fan like a raffle to try each kick. I think everyone would enjoy that.

This man is a menace. He continues to live his life like this

One of Leo's first acts, remember, was to say it is permissible to avoid Mass if you have fear of deportation, and clergy should escort asylum seekers to court and in general appear with them in public whenever possible.

Drunk Al Michaels negging Ryan Fitzpatrick is hilarious. You played for 623 teams. You're no Jim Kelly but they like you here.

And they stole that from two idiots

Never realized how much Mike McDaniel looks like Chris Gethard

Amplifying for LA friends.

I don't think people elsewhere understand what a mess the Democrats are in New York. They are held together with chewing gum. That they have any hold at all is thanks purely to New York City. Not the party in New York City but the city. That's all. As a political organization they are a disgrace.

Next up in my ongoing survey of ideas from the ancient past and what it was they used to mean. October 3 at Brown.

It's a problem-free philosophy: A . . .

just world bias! it can happen to anyone! (including me!)

it's cool that the office of president selects for the most maladjusted people on the planet, democratic or republican

About 40 minutes until the Yolo Bypass nightly bat feeding and while walking to " @theonetruekat.bsky.social certified murder hawk" location I was greater by thousands of red winged black birds. What a joy! Audio is traffic, it's on an overpass. 🪶

i think the 2020 primary was basically "if i return this country back to normal, the fever will break" and i think J6 should have broken that image but didn't

4-7-8 is what got me through 2024

What a drive. Really good playcalling.

It turns out Harris's opinion of Shapiro as an arrogant, two-bit county commissioner is exactly what I said it was.

boy Josh Shapiro, man...

I feel like Bluesky would be a lot better if it merged with one of the apps that teaches you breathing techniques. Try doing long exhales, folks!

The new DC/ Marvel crossover anthology "Deadpool/ Batman" is thoroughly delightful. A sentence that would have astonished me 30 years ago: The only weak spot is a dull, lazy Frank Miller "Batman vs. Wolverine" short.

"bizarrely hostile and obtuse and has a large following for some reason" the bluesky doomer experience tbh

It's to Harris's credit that this didn't affect her performance, but the larger takeaway is that her apparent worry that any attempt to distance herself from Biden would be met with an avalanche of bad press generated by Biden and/or his inner circle was entirely justified

The thing missing from this @semafor.com reporting is any mention of how those boots taste

Baby, if you’ve ever wondered.