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Can we “match the level of in-the-streetsness”? Moonstruck Cher GIFfrom Moonstruck GIFs “I can’t seem to get out of my own way,” my best friend from college used to complain. By that he meant that all his smarts and cleverness were stumbling blocks to getting what he wanted out of life. Which was another way of saying he thought too much. Democrats and lefty allies have the same problem: stubbornly insisting this is a survival-of-the-smartest world when it isn’t. Anand Giridharadas the other night issued a warning about that. First he notes that while lefty anger is dialed up to 11, our actions do not reflect it. Are we serious about stopping fascism or what? Do our actions “really match the level of in-the-streetsness” we saw in the 1960s, Giridharadas asks. Just as I’ve argued before: Winning in your head is like bringing sports visualization training to the Olympics and thinking you’ll be competitive when you show up with no conditioning and no skills. At some point, you have to play the game for real. At some point, you have to run the election and count the votes.
Plus, Google suffers a big antitrust defeat, New York’s private colleges could lose wasteful tax breaks, and Massachusetts says goodbye to natural gas.
On Democrats fighting the last war Trying to teach Yellow Dogs new tricks sometimes seems pointless. With few exceptions, Democrats always seem to be fighting the last war because that’s the one they learned on. Brian Beutler sees it too. Beutler perceives that social media has fundamentally shifted our political ground: When Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016 on the strength of a media feeding frenzy over emails, it dawned on me that either my intuitions about partisan politics had been wrong, or something fundamental had changed. With the benefit of hindsight, I soon came to see the 2014 midterm campaign as a precursor. Republicans back then turned a closely fought election into a blowout in the final stretch by fanning a different media feeding frenzy—this one over a far-off outbreak of Ebola. […] All of this happened because Republicans situated themselves to win an information war in 2014, then situated themselves to win another information war in 2016. I had simply been underestimating the effectiveness of their antics.
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Doctor Who, Archer, Rick and Morty, What If...?, Pete Davidson/Netflix, Walker, Evil, Loki, and more!
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Hacked and leaked datasets are more common than ever. Here are some ways to verify they’re real.
The post How to Authenticate Large Datasets appeared first on The Intercept.
In this decade, left-wing publishing is awash with works on technology. With ease, you can find a wide array of discussions over technology, how socialists should approach the platforms which govern our digital lives, and the dizzying potential of tech workers to build utopias of the future and transform existence as we know it. Life […]
Animals opening their presents! Aaaaand kids opening their presents: Happy Hollandaise, folks. I know some of you like the Friday Night Soother more than anything else I do. If so … 🙂
Ruby meets the Doctor in a preview for BBC's Ncuti Gatwa & Millie Gibson- starring Doctor Who Christmas Special, "The Church on Ruby Road."
It’s not absurd to think the universe might endure forever.
The post Could the Universe Be Finite? appeared first on Nautilus.
Striking images of the planet, its volcanic moon Io and its trippy atmosphere.
The post Hello, Jupiter! appeared first on Nautilus.
What happened to all the missing secrets? You may remember Cassidy Hutchinson saying that Mark Meadows took a binder full of information about the Russia investigation home with him during her January 6 Committee testimony: According to transcripts released by the Jan. 6 committee last year, in closed-door testimony, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the committee she was “almost positive” the binder went home with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. “I don’t think that would have been something that he would have destroyed. It was not returned anywhere, and it never left our office to go internally anywhere. It stayed in our safe in the office safe most of the time,” Hutchinson said, adding that she realized the binder was no longer in the safe on her last day at the White House. CNN has new reporting on what went on and the enduring mystery of the missing binder continues.
And his cult will probably believe it. I don’t know how many of you are watching the Trump videos on his web site but almost all of them are terrifying. But among the atrocities are a few comic gems. This is one of them: Former President Donald Trump on Friday proposed building up to 10 futuristic “freedom cities” on federal land, part of a plan that the 2024 presidential contender said would “create a new American future” in a country that has “lost its boldness.” Commuters, meanwhile, could get around in flying cars, Trump said – an echo of “The Jetsons,” the classic cartoon about a family in a high-tech future society. Work to develop vertical takeoff and landing vehicles is already underway by major airlines, auto manufacturers and other companies, though widely seen as years away from reaching the market. “I want to ensure that America, not China, leads this revolution in air mobility,” Trump, who announced his third bid for the presidency in November, said in a four-minute video detailing his plan.
Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson met the Blue Peter fan art contest winner during a look behind the scenes of the new Doctor Who series.
He manipulated the court’s norms to overturn Roe. And he’ll do it again whenever he chooses. This piece in the NY Times about the deliberations in the Dobbs decision is a barn burner. I’ve included a gift link so that you can read the whole thing, but here is how it opens. Alito is a beast, as are those in his thuggish crew: On Feb. 10 last year, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. showed his eight colleagues how he intended to uproot the constitutional right to abortion. At 11:16 a.m., his clerk circulated a 98-page draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. After a justice shares an opinion inside the court, other members scrutinize it. Those in the majority can request revisions, sometimes as the price of their votes, sweating sentences or even words. But this time, despite the document’s length, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote back just 10 minutes later to say that he would sign on to the opinion and had no changes, according to two people who reviewed the messages. The next morning, Justice Clarence Thomas added his name, then Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and days later, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. None requested a single alteration.
Or is it just more hopium? I’m hoping to spread a little bit of hopium during this holiday season, not because I’m trying to blow smoke but because I’m honestly not as pessimistic about this coming election as a lot of people are. It’s not that I’m not extremely nervous. I know as well as you do that anything can happen and this political situation is extremely volatile. After all, just two years ago we had an attempted coup! But after having lived through some earlier panics that inform my feelings about this election, I’m just not ready to call for the hemlock. Yet. I know it will take hard work and close attention to what’s going on over the next year, but I do believe it’s possible. I’ll try to bring you analysis that I find as I scour the internet everyday that may at least give you some pause. JV Last of the Bulwark is a bit of a curmudgeon. Sometimes he is down right dark but I often find his analysis interesting. Today he discusses a conversation with economist Noah Smith about Biden’s chances in the election and why Smith believes he will win.