I am a proud-ass Minnesotan by the grace of God and Goldy, and I'm hitting the Fair tomorrow with my folks. We will walk ten miles and eat ten thousand calories, and it will be great.
I already read the Strib's 80 new foods article, and this year nothing super grabbed me as a must-do. If I *had* to guess, we'll do the Somali Street Fries and the Bison Meatball Sub as new arrivals.
Regular, every-year-must-do's are the giant egg roll on a stick at Que Viet (near Cooper and Dan Patch), chicken in a waffle cone at Blue Barn (Ligget and Dan Patch), a milkshake at the cattle barn, and a Pronto Pup (anywhere).
We will eat many other things, but these four are absofuckinglutely mandatory. Sorry, Sweet Martha's, those cookies are good but they're not special. The Pronto Pup is special.
I come from strong Minnesotan stock, and have braved the State Fair gladly a few times. The first and only place I ate a deep fried Oreo, and saw a calf be born in the same day. 10/10 experience.
Even effects the local accent. I happen to be posting the comment in Seattle, and if you listen carefully, you can hear just a faint touch of Minnesota in the speech of many locals.
Let me know how the Somali Street Fries are. Somalis have been catching hell online to the point where I've had the thought "damn, chill everybody, I'm sure they have some food that will endear them to us."
I've been to this fair, and it is special. At other fairs all you ever see are the same old generic carnival food vendors you see everywhere, but not here.
Amen. Such is the atmosphere, I think you could deep fry some taconite pellets and just having them at the state fair would taste wondrous. Shout out to my native Iron Range of course…
I went yesterday and saw both Walz and Tim Pawlenty (the latter in the ag building disguised as a regular guy wearing a Vikings polo). We usually don't try to spend too much time in line waiting for the more Reddit-tier food but the fawaffle was pretty good. I also had eight 20 ounce light beers. We biked!
I have a personal announcement! I'm pregnant and due to give birth on September 13. I am extraordinarily lucky to have a (so far; knock on wood) a healthy pregnancy at 43!
I also realized that I never organized that Slow Boring SoCal meetup I promised, and once I give birth, my brain will be utterly fried from sleep deprivation and I will be no good at intelligent conversation.
So:
I'm going to be at the University Town Center, 4100-4255 Campus Drive, Irvine, CA next Saturday (August 30) at noon. There's an outdoor seating area between the boba place, the ramen place, and Gogi Korean Grill. I'll be sitting at one of the tables. (For anyone familiar with UC Irvine, it's across the walk bridge from the UCI campus.)
I realize this is very short notice, and it's Labor Day weekend. But I'm down to 3 weeks, and the further back I push it, the higher the risk of "oops, baby made her appearance early, gotta scrap the meetup." And I do want to have a meetup, the last one in Long Beach was fun! This location is close to my home, so if nobody shows up, don't feel bad, I'll just sit there and read a book and then go home. But if you do want to come, please let me know!
If you haven't met me in person, I'm a tall, visibly pregnant woman with long brown hair, and I'll have my son's stuffed toy octopus with me.
Anyhow, it's been kind of surreal following all the "declining fertility rates" discourse on SB the past few months while I've been pregnant with my second all along, but I didn't want to reveal it prematurely, because I didn't want to jinx it. This is considered a geriatric and hence high-risk pregnancy. But now that I'm at 37 weeks, even if the baby were born tomorrow (please no) she would likely be okay.
Do check it out! Freddie lets go of his Grumpy Prick side and harnesses his considerable writing talent to express joy and gratitude, not to sneer at his ideological enemies and tell us how much they suck. The result is a wonder.
Your due date is three days before my closing date on the new home a block and a half down the hill from you!
Unfortunately I will be on a flight back from Tucson next Saturday (landing at 3:30 - if there’s a chance that it’ll last that long, we can exchange phone numbers over email so I can find out if people are still there) or else I would be able to help make the table more noticeable with my hair color.
In the interest of factual accuracy for which Slow Boring is rightly known, I must point out that a typical new home is in fact larger in both volume and mass than a new human baby.
... there is both no space and no permission for an ADU unfortunately...."
Do not submit to this unjustifiable restriction on your property rights -- build it anyhow! Perhaps something cantilevered? An extended balcony, with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen?
"Everybody talks about needing to be ready, these days - we want to have kids, but we’re not ready, we need to get ready. That’s not how it works. You get pregnant and it makes you ready. You make yourself ready. You feel yourself rise to the occasion. Ready comes later; the world of man was not built on ready."
I'm going to quote that passage quite often, I think.
Also: "And yet what a joy. What a joy. What a constant joy. I think people are afraid to be real about how fun this all is, afraid to sound like they’re bragging, afraid of perpetuating one stigma or another, afraid that people won’t appreciate just how hard it is. And, yes, it’s very very hard. I typically watch him from 9PM to 5AM; my circadian rhythm is a shambles. This is bad enough. Not being able to sleep next to my wife is worse. I am exhausted, obviously. We never do anything, obviously. We dream up plans that we know we will have no ability to execute for years, sometimes many years. Yes, it’s all very hard. But so what? So what. People shying away from having babies because they heard that it’s so hard are making one of those category errors that are inescapable in this rotten decade in this awful century: they think that hard is the opposite of good. Well, this is better than good. He is a joy to me."
I could quote the whole thing, but instead, just go read it. It captures the early days of fatherhood very well.
This really isn't about Bolton. You don't always see constructive discourse on Bluesky, and I recognize not everyone likes fascism analogies, but I thought these folks' general sentiments were basically right. https://bsky.app/profile/andrewbare.bsky.social/post/3lwywuiavuc2g
But it is kind of about Bolton, right? What's the psychology of these people who keep getting screwed over by the Republican Party but keep voting for it? It's a running joke at this point, all the people that have been personally victimized by the Republican Party's policies or Trump and plan to continue to vote for them. It's not -not- about Bolton, is what I'm saying.
No, it's not about Bolton. The story here is that power is being abused. It doesn't matter if Bolton deserved it on some level, because we should oppose abuses of power as a matter of principle regardless of how sympathetic or unsympathetic the victim is. Every second that's spent focusing on whether or not Bolton deserved it effectively minimizes the abuses of power and diverts attention away from them.
That's not my point at all. I'm not asking whether Bolton "deserves" to be victimized because he supported Trump, whatever that means. I'm asking why he supports Trump even though he is victimized, because an answer would be interesting to me.
Seems like these are both important stories, why is Trump so authoritarian and why are so many people who support him so dumb.
There’s some literature about how people with right wing authoritarian personality go along with and empower the people with social dominance orientation and we’re seeing this a lot.
If I was a religious person, I'd say that we're all sent to Earth to be tested, and these people are being given a series of increasingly simple tests that they continue to fail. It must be frustrating for whoever is doing the testing. I'd imagine it's like training a stupid dog not to eat one specific bowl of food, and then watching the dog fail over and over again -- even after you coat the food with motor oil.
BARI WEISS AND THE FAILING FREE PRESS ARE CROOKED CROOKED CROOKED TEY ARE LYING TO YOU ABOUT TRANS SPORTS MATTERING, AND IGNORING THE EVIL DONALD JOHN TRUMP WHO ATTEMPTED A COUP AND JUST SICCED THE FBI ON A GREAT AMERICAN PATRIOT JOHN BOLTON
The FP doesn't post breaking news stories (and hasn't posted anything since the Bolton thing happened) and Bari hasn't tweeted anything about anything since yesterday. I do not understand the compulsion to make the story about one minor centrist news outlet's editorial decisions.
(Feel free to insert whatever throat-clearing you need here about how I'm not an FP subscriber, Bari superfan, whatever)
Because they’re not credibly “centrist”. They mainly serve to launder right-wing propaganda through sophistry, and then backfill their “centrist” street cred by mouthing muddled paleoliberal rhetoric about spending on middle class benefits that they know they’ll never have to follow through on — because the ultimate purpose is sanewashing right wing culture war grievances, not economic liberalism.
It’s not centrism, it’s Hawleyism, and it’s a morally bankrupt and intellectually dishonest enterprise.
Ed: It has nothing to do with accusing you of being biased in their favor as a subscriber. I just think that FP is pretty obviously dishonest about its goals. You can tell what they care about by how much they talk about it — they talk about trans shit WAY more than, say, the John Bolton raid or dozens of other free-speech/civil-liberties violations.
She was a free speech advocate when it was about people getting canceled on Twitter. When it's about actual government action in the real world? What, Twitter isn't real life?
Surely, this attempt to establish a "progressive media ecosystem" will succeed where the other 837 or so failed.
Why spend $30 million to support dowballot candidates who can help flip state legislatures blue or win mayoral and sherriffs races in red counties when you can pay influencers $30 million to tell their anti-Trump listeners and readers that they think Trump is bad?
1) It pays to try a lot of different things with low probability of success but high potential upside. Eventually (hopefully) a couple of them will bear fruit and you can funnel further investment into those projects. That's the standard play for venture capitalists.
2) Social media has become the new media. Cable usage down, app usage is up. TikTok has 150 million users in the US. Trump and Elon executed a social media focused strategy in 2024. Mamdani used a social media strategy and won the NYC primary largely off the back of youth (like early 30s) turnout. Social media skeptics are starting to sound a lot like powered flight skeptics around the turn of the (previous) century.
What upside? There's already lots of progressive media organizations and influencers out there right now and journalists, academics, late-night talk show hosts, and celebrities are overwhelmingly liberal/progressive. If all that couldn't prevent 2 Trump terms, what is another MSNBC or Vox or Crooked Media going to accomplish?
2 of those 3 didn't even exist in 2010. Either way, these things not being very popular should be a clue.
Though I'm sure this venture supported by Steve Kerr, who's outspoken progressivism always seemed to stop short when to came to issues that affected his paycheck like democracy in China or Draymond Green assaulting players on the court, will surely be different.
I think you might be projecting. I'm just pointing out that it will obviously fail at its stated goal. It might successful in making its investors a decent chunk of money, though, so I guess that's something.
Progressive media is marginal compared to Fox News or social media. Spend some time on Twitter which is where most prominent politicians and journalists spend their time now and see for yourself.
There’s a lot of things “social media skeptics” might mean. The ones who say “social media will rot your brain” are right (the way the people in the 80s and 90s who said “TV will rot your brain” were - though it was actually the TV news and the advertisements more so than the fiction programming).
All depends on how it’s spent. If it ends up fueling more of the same old same old echo chamber, vetted and approved by cautious, donor-adjacent staff, then yes, you are right. If it’s seed money spread around broadly to encourage a variety of voices trying strange new things, I think that’s good and promising.
Any criticism is pointed at the people involved with the venture, not you for pointing bringing it up. If anything, I'm thankful that you did mention it so that more people will be aware it was tried when it inevitably fails to move the needle.
As an anecdotal example, my brother and some of his friends are young, non-college-educated non-voters and while I don't know what will exactly compel them to vote, I do know that thinly-veiled partisan political content (progressive or conservative) will not do the trick.
Yes, let's spend a lot of money on messaging instead of, you know, actually moderating on positions that most of the US agrees with, like trans sports, immigration, and crime. Dems need to take the L on those issues and reconsider their position. I'm pro-trans, pro-legal immigration, and anti-crime, but I want to win.
Say what you will about Trump's awfulness, but he does use executive orders to get what he wants, and that reads to the general public as getting shit done.
I don’t know if it will bear fruit but it sounds like a different approach:
“They’re recruiting online influencers and paying them for the anonymized data showing what their audiences are listening and responding to. Then they plan to synthesize that data and see how American Dream’s core messages can relate to what’s being discussed online by younger people. Then they will pitch those messages back to the influencers in the hope that they share it with their audiences.”
They’re not even at the stage of pitching political messages yet, it sounds like.
First of all, I agree with you that these words sound hella weird and off-putting. “Justice-involved”? SMH.
Second of all, thank you for example number eleventy of “normie Democrats are judged by what the fringiest woke activist posts on Bluesky.”
I read the list and, with few exceptions like “cisgender” and “patriarchy,” I can hardly see any of these “in the wild” nowadays. A lot of them were popular in the heyday of wokeness, like, 2020 or so, but have since mostly gone away; a few were never common; “person who immigrated” is one I’d never seen before.
Sincere answer: I haven’t heard BIPOC in a while, and the others I have heard, but much, much more rarely than during the 2020-ish woke discourse peak.
My problem with this list is that it combines some words that are genuinely annoying or jargony (“Latinx” “microaggression”) with others that convey important concepts that would otherwise be hard to convey (“privilege”, “violence”).
This comment section won't be happy until there is nobody popular on any social media anywhere saying anything 1% to the left of the median non-college educated swing voter in Wisconsin on cultural issues at a minimum, no Democrat anywhere should associate, stand next too, or say positive things about anybody 1% to the left of the median non-college educated swing voter.
And what is wrong with that? These people gave us Trump and they might continue to cause harm to the country by alienating normal people from the left and - by implication - the center-left.
We had a friend play a bunch of episodes of ‘Books that kill’ on a road trip. I thought they were funny until the got to Freakonomics. I’m not saying Freakonomics is some wonderful book that’s ideas have held up super well but to say it was bad faith puts it incredibly mildly.
Still, I like the memo, and it wouldn't be bad to publicly punch some people on Bluesky by saying "WE REJECT YOUR WORDS, WHICH ARE SILLY AND CONSTITUTE FOOLISHNESS AND NONSENSE!"
I know centrists are desperate for a Sister Souljahing and dream about it nightly but even if it did happen, the voters you think need to see it (outside of centrists who'd erupt in joyous celebration) would never see it because their algos would never show them it.
"Centrists" are desperate to win elections. Others seem perfectly content to let Trump and the GOP run the country as long as Democrats supply a steady stream of dopamine hits on social media for very-online progressives.
Giving people the social media dopamine is how you win elections today. That’s how Trump won and why Trump is illegally blocking the TikTok ban; he didn’t suddenly become a Sinophile. Liberals have been completely defeated on all the big social media platforms.
What if you get your precious Sister Souljahing and the actual Democratic primary voters decide to support the person being SIster Souljah'd, like we just saw w/ Mamadani and Israel?
Except this isn't just coming from crackpots on the internet. Everywhere that's governed by democrats has this kind of language written into actual laws and governance.
There are two configurations of complex life. One where is a long tube with an in hole and out hole, and then one where the in hole is also the out hole.
Who do they think is using this terminology? I can tell you that if you’re a gay man about to have sex with a trans man, this terminology is going to be important, and if you’re not going to have sex with a trans man, you probably shouldn’t be using it. Are they telling people to stop using this terminology while having sex or do they think that people are using it in other contexts?
Conservatives are sensitive to anything that sounds like they're being hassled by HR. That's why DEI became a slur. Heuristic might have become associated with diversity training seminars, e.g. "A good heuristic for avoiding microaggressions is to respect personal boundaries."
What is the politicized use of heuristic? I feel like I’ve only ever come into contact with this in earnest social science work and books about cognition.
They’re really lumping together a lot of very disparate things here.
Like for instance, “pregnant person” is a totally ordinary phrase that people don’t blink twice at when it’s used, like on a flight I was boarding when they said “pregnant people and people with disabilities can board at any time”.
“Birthing person” is a weird technical construct that’s only relevant when talking about large and anonymous groups, probably medically, and even there, I’m not sure how often people want to talk about people solely in their capacity of birthing. “Chest feeding” is a term that I can’t imagine hearing outside the context of a trans man who has recently given birth, and even then I don’t know how many would prefer it. Both of these phrases sound like they’re designed to strike a nerve rather than actually being phrases people use. Certainly if a politician is saying either phrase, something has gone wrong. But by including them on this list, they’re just perpetuating the dynamics these words were intended to create.
“Cisgender, deadnaming, heteronormative, patriarchy” are totally useful words for something that doesn’t have any other terminology. I can see that the use of these words to a general voter population suggests that you’re talking about a topic that isn’t productive to bring up with them, but it’s not the word that’s the issue - it’s the topic. (And “deadnaming” is a term that is unlikely to come up unless you’re commenting on someone who is already talking about a trans person.)
“LGBTQIA+” is one where I can’t tell what they’re saying - are they saying you should use “LGBTQ+” instead? I assume not. But what about “LGBT” or “gay”? Are these equally problematic? I can say that when I’ve asked ChatGPT and Claude about the history of how Palm Springs and Puerto Vallarta became gay destinations, it was very confusing when they used the phrase “LGBTQ+ travelers”, because I’m sure that these places have very different histories for lesbians and for gay men, and I don’t think that either are particularly popular trans or Q+ destinations. It felt like a discussion of the history of koreatown that called it a location for AAPI communities. If the robots are talking this way, then probably some humans are too, and that’s a problem. But when you’re talking about political issues, rather than the history of particular locations, I think the broader term may often be more useful, and it doesn’t feel off-putting in that same way.
My go to is LGBT+. I get why gender identity is lumped in with sexual orientation, but I could give a shit about Q (get over yourself) and don’t really see what I (a biological issue) and A (get over yourself, don’t fuck if you don’t want to, I promise no one gives a shit) have to do with it. But I’ll say + because what the hell
But I’m basically a bona fide curmudgeon these days
It’s annoying that words which are legitimately useful are made meaningless and cringe, so that it’s hard to use them even in valid situations. Some words not on the article’s list which I’ve come to hate, though they have valid usages:
“contextualize” - Used with other big words to make whatever point sound more intellectual
“structural” - Basically “you didn’t show this thing the way I wanted you to”, or an excuse to be reverse-racist/sexist/any-sort-of-“-ist”
“problematic” - before daisy-chaining together some loose associations to declare that thing racist
“grifter” - Ad-hominem against someone who disagrees with you. Sure YOU think they have gaps in their knowledge and understanding. That’s what disagreement is! It doesn’t mean they’re being dishonest
What I hate about the use of the word problematic is that people have used it to elide a very important distinction. It’s useful to be able to talk about how something is problematic without thereby meaning that the thing is bad! Unfortunately, too many people have accidentally made the shift of thinking that once you identify a problem, therefore the thing is bad and we should use the unconsidered alternative whose problems we haven’t thought about yet.
If we could just remember that everything is problematic, and some of them are better choices anyway, despite their problems, we’d be fine.
I agree that "problematic" sucks. I think saying, "I have a problem with that," is perfectly fine. I think my issue with problematic is how it shifts agency from someone having particular problem with something to an issue that adheres with the claim itself. It simply seems dishonest. But I also hate "proactive" because it just means active. I also hate "weaponized." It seems there is a general shift from active voice to passive voice, and I hate it. And don't get me started on "black bodies." It's insulting.
As I suspected, these aren't actually common phrases Democratic politicians use. It's just a right-wing smear people tend to believe because the lefty academics and activists who actually use them vote Democratic.
You can beg for a Sistah Souljah moment but that was pre-social media. What would happen nowadays is that Republicans/media would seek out the ravings of pissed off leftists, corner Democratic politicians for comment, and generally feed the controversy. Net result, Democrats are still associated with the woke left and now party factions are publicly hurling insults at each other.
A lot of kind-hearted Democrats aren't gonna like it, but fighting fire with fire really does seem to be the only viable play.
A generous welfare state and open borders cannot coexist for any meaningful period of time. A) There is not enough money and B) It will inevitably piss-off the people the welfare state was designed for.
The irony I always find with this statement with regard to the US is that high levels of immigration have been a cheat code to help fund the welfare state.
The rurals believe that immigrants get undeserved Social Security benefits... Though as Elon discovered those gainfully employed 115 year-olds seem to continue paying into SS.
We've never had anything remotely resembling "open borders" (ie, no barriers to immigration) in the United States, so, while it's true the two don't mix, it's only *trivially* true in the US.
And the closest thing the US has occasionally experienced wrt "open borders"—the episodic spikes in inflows of migrants (late 90s, early 20s, etc)—are actually *conducive* to the operation of a welfare state, because these pulses stimulate growth, hold down inflation, and fill our tax coffers—all the while placing minimal demands on the US safety net (illegal immigrants are not covered by Social Security, Medicare and sundry other programs).
Fair point. I was referring to the era since we've had a welfare state. Basically, barriers to immigration have been being implemented since the 1870s, with one era in particular (late 1920s to 1960s) characterized by draconian restrictions.
But in any event, nobody seems to be advocating a return to 19th century laissez-faire immigration norms, and it's plainly far outside the Overton window, so the talking point in question seems...curious.
We kind of had an open border with Mexico from roughly the mid-19th century until about the 1970's. People just looked the other way with regard to itinerant workers moving back-and-forth across the border seasonally. Once we created a hard border in the 1970's, people were more likely to remain on the American side illegally due to fear of not being able to return. Stricter enforcement basically creates the problem it seeks to solve.
Between legal and illegal immigrants, there is like, what, ~70 million non-Americans in the country? Increasing that number to ~90 million probably would not cause major fiscal problems, but it would probably cause more cultural backlash.
We’re at roughly the same peak of foreign-born as when MY people came here.
Do we need some consolidation? Sure!
But a significantly higher legal cap would have made ALL of this a LOT easier to manage.
Restrictionism is like being that fignorant fucking soccer mom or old lady who drives 40-50 on the highway for fear they’ll get in an accident, and all they’re accomplishing is DRAMATICALLY increasing the likelihood that they’ll CAUSE an accident.
I’m sorry, this is just not a serious approach to the problem of excess immigration.
Adding the 10-15 million illegal immigrants (the best estimates I know of) mean the total number of non-Americans in the country is close to 65-70 million.
Yes, more legal immigration, especially of high-skill and highly motivated immigrants, would be better for the country. But a lot (most?) of the country doesn't believe so. And they (including me) especially don't believe in open borders.
You’re misunderstanding that statistic around US visa holders. A visa just gives someone the right to enter the US, but it does not mean they are currently in the US or that they are allowed to stay in the US for an extended period of time. I currently have a 10-year multi entry Chinese tourist visa. I live in the US. It just means I can visit China for up to 60 days without having to reapply for anything.
About 12.8 million green card holders live in the United States, according to the latest estimates from the Office of Homeland Security Statistics.Mar 22, 2025
Oh, cultural backlash is a different issue, but no I don't think more immigrants would cause major fiscal issues at all in the way anti-immigration people claim.
On a side note, anybody who is living in America and wants to be here long-term is an American in my view. Some researcher from Estonia who nonetheless wants to make a life in America isn't non-American in my view just because they only have a green card at the moment.
A) Immigrants on average are net fiscal contributors and there also would be enough money if we were spreading our technology so that people in poorer parts of the world could be as productive as we are.
B) So what? The point of the welfare state is to meet people’s material needs, not their emotional ones. If people getting welfare are pissed off because other people are also getting welfare, that makes them look pretty unsympathetic. If people getting welfare want to vote to gut the welfare state out of emotional resentment, let them touch the stove.
Thoughts about the Bruenig-Piper debate in The Argument:
Overall, it strikes me that the biggest difference between the variety of contexts where we know that cash transfers are highly efficacious (GiveDirectly transfers in Kenya, Bolsa Familia in Brazil, the Nordic welfare state examples that Breunig cites, the effects of CTC expansion in 2021 in the US) and the UBI RCTs that Piper cites is scope.
In the efficacious interventions, the recipient *and most of the similarly situated people the recipient knew* got a transfer. Even GiveDirectly, which can’t scale to universal programs, generally gives money in village-level blocks (because they want to avoid accidentally creating social strife). The UBI RCTs, by contrast, mostly targeted individuals within communities which remained mostly unaffected by the program (often by design so that there was a more unambiguous control group.)
I have two hypotheses about why this distinction might matter:
1– Transfer leakage through social networks. If you receive a windfall and your family and friends, who are statistically likely to be mostly poor, don’t, they’re likely to hit you up for cash— creating a volatile and significant new expense stream. Ironically, the people who are conscientious and psychologically well-adjusted enough to make the best use of cash transfers are also probably among the most likely to both have dense social networks and comply with the social obligation to share. (This creates a counterintuitive case for in-kind transfers when you can’t distribute cash universally— they’re harder to appropriate)
2– Universal or community-level transfers create macro or meso-economic stimulus effects are more than the sum of their parts (basically, Keynesianism)
I think that Matt was closer to getting this, but his lack of real interest in the international development interventions prevented him from drawing the connection. Overall, I found the exchange stimulating even though Piper and Bruenig talked past each other sometimes; hope to see more of this kind of content from The Argument. (Good for Jerusalem Desmas.)
To be honest, the entire exchange felt kind of ginned up to me to stir up social engagement. Almost the first real article gets strongly disputed by the most famous leftist author, who write angry point counterpoints on the same article (so it can all be shared with a single link). Then Matt Y., also a part of the article and known for having a large following, makes some fairly inflammatory comments about Bruenig's piece, when usually he is fairly polite toward Bruenig online. I feel like this whole saga was staged to get a lot of early subscribers to The Argument.
I agree with this take. I haven't paid for a subscription yet, but a) this made me a bit more leery of doing so and b) I am feeling like a chump for paying for Derek Thompson right away, when everything seems to be free.
Tbh, it feels like if you follow the Yglesias Twitter Extended Cinematic Universe, most of these articles are going to have their key points screenshot and shared at you.
Of course it was staged in a sense, but isn't that the point of their enterprise? I see your point though if the disagreement is amplified for effect (I haven't read the follow-up yet). I subscribed anyway to give it a fighting chance.
Galen Druke just had a podcast debate between Lakshya Jain and Elliott Morris regarding their disagreement over the value of moderation to political candidates. Honestly, it was so boring I wished they would have amplified something!
Good piece laying out the ridiculousness of judicial review in the UK- where it technically shouldn't even exist, as they have parliamentary sovereignty. Somewhat incredibly their judiciary is continuing to push the bounds of their power, including arguing with the very concept that Parliament is sovereign- and hinting that they'll disregard future laws as they see fit. (While Britain does not have one constitutional document per se, it's a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, which their judges use to issue increasingly bizarre decisions). Anyways, a good read (archive.is link included), and another example of how judicial review is both fake and a power grab by unelected lawyers
The House of Lords doesn't even have judicial functions anymore! What use is the Lord Chancellor?! A travesty against justice, I say this is! A travesty!
In another crushing defeat for YIMBYs, NIMBYs successfully used environmental challenges to get a judge to stop things being built:
Florida must stop construction at an immigration detention center in the remote Everglades for 14 days, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, granting at least a temporary victory to environmentalists who say the facility has the potential to cause serious harm to sensitive wetlands and endangered species.
The order is temporary, giving the judge time to complete a hearing in the case, which was filed in June by several environmental groups. They argue that the project to build the facility, which is run by the state but houses federal immigration detainees, went ahead without first completing an environmental review required by federal law. The groups are seeking a preliminary injunction to stop operations and construction at the center.
Looks like it's a one-man effort? (In the first three pages of results I checked, all but one of the threads were started by the same user: "David-SB".)
I would really recommend watching the new South Park season, because even only three episodes in it's been outstanding in just slamming the world of shit that Trump voters have put us all in. They retain one of their extreme strengths in being able to create new episodes so quickly so they can keep so timely and topical with the latest news.
And on that note, I have an etiquette question to ask all Slow Borers: what should the rule on spoilers be on here? Unforunately there is no styling tags to hide spoilers. I'd love to discuss cool things in the episodes, but I also don't want to ruin it for people who haven't seen it yet but want to.
Just my $0.02, but if you write “SPOILERS” in all caps and then put a few blank lines before the actual spoiler, it will be all right. If anyone still reads the spoiler, that’s on them.
Of course, if you want to be extra scrupulous, you could always write the spoiler in rot13. The posters on Astral Codex Ten regularly do this.
Oh including a link to rot13.com in the comment is helpful! I’m always annoyed when I see rot13 comments and think I want to read but can’t be bothered to open a new window, google the site, open it, and then finally copy-paste. Skipping the first three steps makes me more likely to actually do it.
Maybe just my opinion, but South Park is not really a show you can spoil. Even if you know the punchlines, it doesn't diminish the experience of actually seeing it.
Words/phrases I would retain as useful, although not necessarily in the political sense: triggering, Overton window (does this even get used beyond political wonks?) stakeholders.
Words/phrases I would prioritize launching deep into escape velocity: existential threat, person who immigrated (and all this exhaustive "person first" bullshit", incarcerated people (heh, this is *not* person first, but still an unnecessary syllabic assault), and above all, birthing person and BIPOC (the latter of which I remember Matt getting raked over the coals by his Vox colleagues when he dared question the coining of the acronym on Twitter).
”Black bodies”, ”white bodies” etc is another example of really weird, off-putting academic left-speak. Straight from the lingo of the notorious pedophile and sadist Michel Foucault.
What I personally find really funny is that I was told recently that "stakeholder" is technically a bad word because it invokes the seizing of land from Native Americans or something. "Community Partner" is I guess the better phrase. I know that no real-life human being has been offended by the term because those who told me this still frequently trip up and use stakeholder because it's a fine word!
I totally agree that anyone who is in the job of being popular among median voters should avoid saying the excessively cringe phrases like "birthing person". But I fear that the problem isn't that Josh Shapiro is going to say those words, it's that some college student will in an esoteric poorly shot vertical video that will make its way to Fox News primetime at which point 'all Democrats = weirdo language police' gets communicated without the consent of liberals. It's a losing battle?
Honestly, a decent amount of heterodox center-left writers, Matt included, carry water for this and act like the verbal quirks of the most hyper-online left are Democratic party line - think of how the CSDM had a whole entry about abandoning word policing, using "unhoused" and "chest-feeding" as examples of neurotic Dem overreach. But even the far left isn't policing anyone into using those words; I work in homeless aid and no one's ever been disciplined or even corrected at my org for saying someone's homeless or an addict. It's microscopic skirmishes that the right wing is running with to show that Dems are humorless nitpicky scolds, and annoyed hippie-punchers are amplifying those small foibles and disputes and elevating them as representative of the whole left. The woke left doesn't need more help looking bad!
Maybe I'm the one billionth person to say it, but there is a lot of truth that when there are 30 people on the internet being really mean to you it feels like a lot and can be really hurtful.
A huge problem with centralized social media is that the world's 30 most always-online, miserable, neurotic, assholes will find you in a way that was impossible until very recently, and unlike in real life they work in shifts to be bullies 24/7.
30 years ago, the weirdos who's #1 issue was language policing "chest feeding" were just anti-social outcasts, 20 years ago they found each other and rambled on isolated forums, 10 years ago they now get to bully as a pack anyone who joined Twitter for their job.
Be that as it may, if you’re a political pundit who wants the Democrats to win, isn’t it more responsible to not present those 30 people (or some tiny non-profit’s website language, or some cringe college kid) as more prevalent and more prominent than they are on your side? And has there ever been a mob online going after Matt over “chest feeding” or “unhoused”, or is this all hypothetical bogeyman?
Honestly, I think this is something where did the centrists dislike the leftists want a reason to openly fight.
You can just not use those words and if asked, say you don't use the words and move on. Like, one reason it seems like the Democrat is involved in a civil war over wokeness or whatever is some centrists seemingly want the fight more than they want to fight Trump and its not helping them among normie Democratic voters.
I think moderates want to fight a faction war so they tell themself this works when collapsing Democratic favorability suggests faction warring is in fact bad for popularity.
Maybe it's too easy to forget this stuff happens when one has bigger priorities, but the phrases escape containment into mainstream politics all the time. For example, remember the minor shitstorm about Biden's 2024 state of the union? He ended up making a public apology: "I shouldn't have used illegal, it’s undocumented." (https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/09/biden-regrets-word-illegal-sotu-00146143)
Language policing is hardly the biggest problem in the world, but it's annoying and it hurts everyone left of Trump. Pushing back against it is low-hanging fruit for Democrats.
This shit happens with /pol/->mainstream conservatism all the time with Republicans paying virtually no penalty for it. Libs are too easily baited into attacking their own while conservatives understand public self-critique is brand-damaging.
This is another area where the US left could learn something from the Scandinavian left/center-left. We are not weird, not academic, but speak like regular people and have regular people fronting our parties. I realize there are historical particularities why the Northern European left is more folksy and populist than the US left but hopefully some change is possible. Although it seems more likely that the change is going the other direction as our politics becomes increasingly Americanized…
MattY has insisted for a while that Trump is popular because he's actually a moderate. I think it's pretty damn clear that if any Democrat proposed 10% public ownership of Intel, Matt would have claimed that's exactly the sort of far-left overreach Dems need to avoid. It's high time for Matt to admit Trump is not a moderate, we're just well beyond the bounds of the old-fashioned left/right politics he grew up with. Voters are expressing a preference for Peronism not moderation.
EDIT: Though Matt's characterization of Trump as a "moderate" still pisses me the fuck off. Ken has noted that Matt has specifically endorsed public ownership of companies in the past.
I missed where (1) Trump ran in 2024 on nationalizing US industries and/or (2) there is any polling showing this new Intel deal is popular with the general public?
I bet you a lots of Republican voters who'd be declaring the end of the republic if President AOC announced a 10% stake in Amazon will approve of this in polls.
"Trump's policies are popular with people pathologically addicted to sucking his ****" is not actual evidence that "Voters [writ large] are expressing a preference for" Trump's policies. Because, I'm pretty sure at this point "lots of Republican voters" would be fine with declaring Trump All-Powerful God-King for Life, but I really, l really f***ing doubt that you'd think that shows "Voters are expressing a preference for" that.
I bet you lots of Democrats who oppose Trump buying a 10% stake in Intel would fully support President AOC announcing a 10% stake in Amazon and lots of DSA types would criticize AOC only for not doing more than 10% and only doing it for Amazon.
No shit. Part of that is raw partisanship but the other half is I have way more confidence AOC has genuine intent even if her decisions can sometimes be naive. Trump, by contrast, is a corrupt sycophant. Are we so post-morality that whether or not a politician seems like a good person isn't relevant?
In the hypothetical universe you invented* where President AOC had just announced 10% public ownership of Amazon, she probably would be doing a lot of good for LGBT youth in Alabama and immigrants in Texas.
EDIT: *Sam did not invent this hypothetical but was continuing the hypothetical from the above comment. I stand by the rest of the claim.
I mean, we're all tribal - dems asking where the outrage is for behaviors they'd get dinged for are asking for an electorate that doesn't exist. If Biden had gone after Harvard's lush indirect cost reimbursement on research grants, can you honestly say the dem side wouldn't have been, those numbers have been inflated for years, go Joe!
Trump lies and is inconsistent is the most consistent thing there is about him, and there is certainly a Peronism for many of his supporters. But the moderation to squeeze out the win is real.
Matt's position as I understand it is that Trump ran as a moderate, ESPECIALLY in relation to the previous Republican brand. In 2016 after decades of other Republicans decrying SS and Medicare, Trump explicitly promised to make no changes. In 2024, again after decades of a Republican platform that wanted to end abortion, Trump tried mostly to dodge the issue, said it should be up to the states, and promised to make IVF free.
His advice to dems now is break with the democratic brand in some similar way, again to squeeze out the win. I'm less sure about it working on our side.
Trump also promised to raise tariffs to rates not seen since pre-Keynesian economics and he absolutely followed through with it. Calling him "moderate"--literally means "avoiding extremes"--when he's the most aggressively protectionist man in politics in my lifetime is patently absurd. It's also ridiculous to give him fucking credit for moderating on abortion when he's the guy most responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade. Trump isn't a fucking moderate, he's just unprincipled (except for tariffs apparently)
All it does is reveal that Matt can't play politics to save his life. Starting a faction fight with the left when your biggest contentions with them naturally started to fade over the past half-decade is stupid. Reinforcing Republican narratives that Trump is moderate and Democrats are too left is stupid. Letting Republicans define what left and right mean such that free trade is bizarrely coded as left now is stupid. Giving credence to conservatives' free speech concerns when it was obvious to anyone they were just whining about losing the culture war and would turn heel the second that changed is stupid. Matt's just very bad at playing the Secret Hitler game that's going on here.
He just has this slippery way of seeming like some sort of blank canvas that anyone possessed of motivated reasoning can project their own hopes and dreams onto without actually noticing anything he says/said.
The statist partial takeover of private companies in that fashion wasn't something he'd ever talked about as far as I know though. Any idea where he got that bit of communism from?
Insane, for every imaginable reason. Are wind turbines trans in some way? Because that's the only really good explanation for just halting them when they're not even government funded.
And to show just how dystopic and pure authoritarian we've become, this tidbit was in the same article: "The department has issued several orders to keep coal plants running past their planned closure dates, even in cases where the operators never sought an extension and ratepayers would shoulder the costs of complying."
He's just breaking shit everywhere, and they no longer bother even pretending there's a reason beyond his whim.
THIS IS THE MOMENT I WAS RAISED FOR
I am a proud-ass Minnesotan by the grace of God and Goldy, and I'm hitting the Fair tomorrow with my folks. We will walk ten miles and eat ten thousand calories, and it will be great.
I already read the Strib's 80 new foods article, and this year nothing super grabbed me as a must-do. If I *had* to guess, we'll do the Somali Street Fries and the Bison Meatball Sub as new arrivals.
Regular, every-year-must-do's are the giant egg roll on a stick at Que Viet (near Cooper and Dan Patch), chicken in a waffle cone at Blue Barn (Ligget and Dan Patch), a milkshake at the cattle barn, and a Pronto Pup (anywhere).
We will eat many other things, but these four are absofuckinglutely mandatory. Sorry, Sweet Martha's, those cookies are good but they're not special. The Pronto Pup is special.
I come from strong Minnesotan stock, and have braved the State Fair gladly a few times. The first and only place I ate a deep fried Oreo, and saw a calf be born in the same day. 10/10 experience.
The Spam curds are something special. You only want to get the personal-size order, and split it with three or four friends.
The Minnesota -> PNW pipeline is real
Even effects the local accent. I happen to be posting the comment in Seattle, and if you listen carefully, you can hear just a faint touch of Minnesota in the speech of many locals.
🇳🇴🇸🇪
How much of that is just the shared Scandinavian heritage?
I’m sure that’s mostly it. Lots of Norwegians settled in Western Washington.
I believe the correct term is “You betcha”.
Bless your heart.
That's southern shit. We say "That's different."
Especially your coronary arteries. They’ll need it.
Let me know how the Somali Street Fries are. Somalis have been catching hell online to the point where I've had the thought "damn, chill everybody, I'm sure they have some food that will endear them to us."
I've been to this fair, and it is special. At other fairs all you ever see are the same old generic carnival food vendors you see everywhere, but not here.
Seriously jealous. I may need to try to make my on fawaffle…
Hey, Marie! Good to see you.
Amen. Such is the atmosphere, I think you could deep fry some taconite pellets and just having them at the state fair would taste wondrous. Shout out to my native Iron Range of course…
"the giant egg roll on a stick"
Please explain.
nothin' more to say, sir
https://sahanjournal.com/arts-culture/minnesota-state-fair-queviet-concessions-vietnamese-food/
Oh yum
Those wontons sound good too
Oh, come on. That thing is large, not giant.
I went yesterday and saw both Walz and Tim Pawlenty (the latter in the ag building disguised as a regular guy wearing a Vikings polo). We usually don't try to spend too much time in line waiting for the more Reddit-tier food but the fawaffle was pretty good. I also had eight 20 ounce light beers. We biked!
The daughter of a friend of mine won the junior crop art competition. Look for the lovely picture of the ballerinas made of seeds!
Go with God my son (also by money the bathrooms at the Eco Experience are the best)
The Maple Bacon on a stick at the Texas State Fair was excellent. I would look for that if they have something like it.
Jeebus I hope you hibernate for six months after all that
Hi Matt Y and Halina and nice readers!
I have a personal announcement! I'm pregnant and due to give birth on September 13. I am extraordinarily lucky to have a (so far; knock on wood) a healthy pregnancy at 43!
I also realized that I never organized that Slow Boring SoCal meetup I promised, and once I give birth, my brain will be utterly fried from sleep deprivation and I will be no good at intelligent conversation.
So:
I'm going to be at the University Town Center, 4100-4255 Campus Drive, Irvine, CA next Saturday (August 30) at noon. There's an outdoor seating area between the boba place, the ramen place, and Gogi Korean Grill. I'll be sitting at one of the tables. (For anyone familiar with UC Irvine, it's across the walk bridge from the UCI campus.)
I realize this is very short notice, and it's Labor Day weekend. But I'm down to 3 weeks, and the further back I push it, the higher the risk of "oops, baby made her appearance early, gotta scrap the meetup." And I do want to have a meetup, the last one in Long Beach was fun! This location is close to my home, so if nobody shows up, don't feel bad, I'll just sit there and read a book and then go home. But if you do want to come, please let me know!
If you haven't met me in person, I'm a tall, visibly pregnant woman with long brown hair, and I'll have my son's stuffed toy octopus with me.
Anyhow, it's been kind of surreal following all the "declining fertility rates" discourse on SB the past few months while I've been pregnant with my second all along, but I didn't want to reveal it prematurely, because I didn't want to jinx it. This is considered a geriatric and hence high-risk pregnancy. But now that I'm at 37 weeks, even if the baby were born tomorrow (please no) she would likely be okay.
ETA: Freddie deBoer annoyed me one too many times to the point that I blocked him, but I popped over to his Substack recently and found this absolutely beautiful and poignant ode to Freddie's infant son: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/i-didnt-know-i-could-feel-this-way
Do check it out! Freddie lets go of his Grumpy Prick side and harnesses his considerable writing talent to express joy and gratitude, not to sneer at his ideological enemies and tell us how much they suck. The result is a wonder.
Congratulations!
Your due date is three days before my closing date on the new home a block and a half down the hill from you!
Unfortunately I will be on a flight back from Tucson next Saturday (landing at 3:30 - if there’s a chance that it’ll last that long, we can exchange phone numbers over email so I can find out if people are still there) or else I would be able to help make the table more noticeable with my hair color.
"...closing date on the new home...."
Okay, it's not as huge as a new baby. But since this is a YIMBY blog, we should certainly congratulate you on having a new Back Yard!
When is your first ADU due?
"it's not as huge as a new baby"
In the interest of factual accuracy for which Slow Boring is rightly known, I must point out that a typical new home is in fact larger in both volume and mass than a new human baby.
/puts on hat, leaves quietly
New babies are huge. It's not a matter of volume or mass. They're just huge.
Very true! 😊
It's faculty housing at UCI - and it's a townhome without a backyard, so there is both no space and no permission for an ADU unfortunately.
... there is both no space and no permission for an ADU unfortunately...."
Do not submit to this unjustifiable restriction on your property rights -- build it anyhow! Perhaps something cantilevered? An extended balcony, with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen?
Wow, sounds like an offer to babysit as needed on short notice! ;-)
Congrats to you as well!
That's wonderful news. I hope delivery is a cake walk, and her childhood is a joy.
Holy shit, congratulations! And hope the meetup goes well.
Congratulations on your growing family. Babies are awesome.
Freddie at his best.
"Everybody talks about needing to be ready, these days - we want to have kids, but we’re not ready, we need to get ready. That’s not how it works. You get pregnant and it makes you ready. You make yourself ready. You feel yourself rise to the occasion. Ready comes later; the world of man was not built on ready."
I'm going to quote that passage quite often, I think.
Also: "And yet what a joy. What a joy. What a constant joy. I think people are afraid to be real about how fun this all is, afraid to sound like they’re bragging, afraid of perpetuating one stigma or another, afraid that people won’t appreciate just how hard it is. And, yes, it’s very very hard. I typically watch him from 9PM to 5AM; my circadian rhythm is a shambles. This is bad enough. Not being able to sleep next to my wife is worse. I am exhausted, obviously. We never do anything, obviously. We dream up plans that we know we will have no ability to execute for years, sometimes many years. Yes, it’s all very hard. But so what? So what. People shying away from having babies because they heard that it’s so hard are making one of those category errors that are inescapable in this rotten decade in this awful century: they think that hard is the opposite of good. Well, this is better than good. He is a joy to me."
I could quote the whole thing, but instead, just go read it. It captures the early days of fatherhood very well.
Wow, congrats!
Congratulations! I don't live anywhere near SoCal, but hope the meet up goes well
That’s awesome, congratulations!
Wow, congrats!!
Congrats! My wife and I just had our second three weeks ago. Fun times ahead!
Congratulations drosophilist!
Congratulations!!!!
Congratulations!
A bit late but congratulations!!
Yeah, I thought Freddie’s piece was lovely, too
Congrats!
So...Bolton.
I assume Bari Weiss is frothing at the mouth that the president is raiding the homes of those who dare to criticism him? #freespeach
Bolton voted for him. After every derogatory word he said, he also said he'd vote for him over Harris. So good for you, Bolton! Suck it.
He said he was going to write in Dick Cheney, but then Cheney endorsed Harris and he said he was thinking of writing in Ronald Reagan. What a tool.
This really isn't about Bolton. You don't always see constructive discourse on Bluesky, and I recognize not everyone likes fascism analogies, but I thought these folks' general sentiments were basically right. https://bsky.app/profile/andrewbare.bsky.social/post/3lwywuiavuc2g
https://bsky.app/profile/amerthkj1.bsky.social/post/3lwyyoux6rs2e
But it is kind of about Bolton, right? What's the psychology of these people who keep getting screwed over by the Republican Party but keep voting for it? It's a running joke at this point, all the people that have been personally victimized by the Republican Party's policies or Trump and plan to continue to vote for them. It's not -not- about Bolton, is what I'm saying.
No, it's not about Bolton. The story here is that power is being abused. It doesn't matter if Bolton deserved it on some level, because we should oppose abuses of power as a matter of principle regardless of how sympathetic or unsympathetic the victim is. Every second that's spent focusing on whether or not Bolton deserved it effectively minimizes the abuses of power and diverts attention away from them.
That's not my point at all. I'm not asking whether Bolton "deserves" to be victimized because he supported Trump, whatever that means. I'm asking why he supports Trump even though he is victimized, because an answer would be interesting to me.
Yes, you're quite right. I'm succumbing to my baser instincts. It's been happening a lot over the past 10 years or so.
Seems like these are both important stories, why is Trump so authoritarian and why are so many people who support him so dumb.
There’s some literature about how people with right wing authoritarian personality go along with and empower the people with social dominance orientation and we’re seeing this a lot.
"important stories, why is Trump so authoritarian"
That's a nearly perfect question begging.
This is a little like the diehard communists who cry out for help from Stalin as they are sent to the camps. Bolton is a true believer.
If I was a religious person, I'd say that we're all sent to Earth to be tested, and these people are being given a series of increasingly simple tests that they continue to fail. It must be frustrating for whoever is doing the testing. I'd imagine it's like training a stupid dog not to eat one specific bowl of food, and then watching the dog fail over and over again -- even after you coat the food with motor oil.
Shows Trump is capable of being strategic, knowing how few would be inspired to stick up for *that* guy.
Amen.
I will not sit still for injustice against Ambassador John Bolton OR HIS MOUSTACHE!!
Forget what Matt says. If the Feds shave Bolton's moustache, I'm officially panicking.
When do amoral identitarian grifters froth at the mouth at anything that doesn't make them money?
BARI WEISS AND THE FAILING FREE PRESS ARE CROOKED CROOKED CROOKED TEY ARE LYING TO YOU ABOUT TRANS SPORTS MATTERING, AND IGNORING THE EVIL DONALD JOHN TRUMP WHO ATTEMPTED A COUP AND JUST SICCED THE FBI ON A GREAT AMERICAN PATRIOT JOHN BOLTON
David. Have you been into the cooking sherry?
SIR, I am a grown ass adult fully capable of buying my own box wine.
Somebody’s giving Governor Newsom a run for his money!
Okay last one.
C'mon, blood! You gotta put the punchline in the same comment or it isn't funny.
The FP doesn't post breaking news stories (and hasn't posted anything since the Bolton thing happened) and Bari hasn't tweeted anything about anything since yesterday. I do not understand the compulsion to make the story about one minor centrist news outlet's editorial decisions.
(Feel free to insert whatever throat-clearing you need here about how I'm not an FP subscriber, Bari superfan, whatever)
Because they’re not credibly “centrist”. They mainly serve to launder right-wing propaganda through sophistry, and then backfill their “centrist” street cred by mouthing muddled paleoliberal rhetoric about spending on middle class benefits that they know they’ll never have to follow through on — because the ultimate purpose is sanewashing right wing culture war grievances, not economic liberalism.
It’s not centrism, it’s Hawleyism, and it’s a morally bankrupt and intellectually dishonest enterprise.
Ed: It has nothing to do with accusing you of being biased in their favor as a subscriber. I just think that FP is pretty obviously dishonest about its goals. You can tell what they care about by how much they talk about it — they talk about trans shit WAY more than, say, the John Bolton raid or dozens of other free-speech/civil-liberties violations.
What’s the deal with Bari Weiss for those of us just joining?
She was a free speech advocate when it was about people getting canceled on Twitter. When it's about actual government action in the real world? What, Twitter isn't real life?
IOW she's a bog-standard right winger (as if that wasn't obvious from the getgo).
When you think social pressure is more dangerous than actual government action.
Audience capture. The readership of The Free Press is convinced the Democrats are minions of the Antichrist.
She's a partisan Republican who pretends to be motivated by things other than partisanship.
Bari is a man? My whole worldview is in danger here.
He's being specifically targeted because he publicly criticized dear leader. That is the only free speech issue there ever was or ever will be.
What do you consider a true "free speech" issue?
Attacks on journalists, writers based on their opinions and public writings not based on personal animus.
The precipitating motherfucking issue was that he wrote a motherfucking BOOK.
A book that, y’know, went to a PRESS.
Wut
Since when do only “journalists” have free speech rights? And BTW, what the heck qualifies someone as a “journalist” these days?
Commenting on substacks is the primary qualification
Surely, this attempt to establish a "progressive media ecosystem" will succeed where the other 837 or so failed.
Why spend $30 million to support dowballot candidates who can help flip state legislatures blue or win mayoral and sherriffs races in red counties when you can pay influencers $30 million to tell their anti-Trump listeners and readers that they think Trump is bad?
1) It pays to try a lot of different things with low probability of success but high potential upside. Eventually (hopefully) a couple of them will bear fruit and you can funnel further investment into those projects. That's the standard play for venture capitalists.
2) Social media has become the new media. Cable usage down, app usage is up. TikTok has 150 million users in the US. Trump and Elon executed a social media focused strategy in 2024. Mamdani used a social media strategy and won the NYC primary largely off the back of youth (like early 30s) turnout. Social media skeptics are starting to sound a lot like powered flight skeptics around the turn of the (previous) century.
What upside? There's already lots of progressive media organizations and influencers out there right now and journalists, academics, late-night talk show hosts, and celebrities are overwhelmingly liberal/progressive. If all that couldn't prevent 2 Trump terms, what is another MSNBC or Vox or Crooked Media going to accomplish?
It's not 2010 anymore and none of those things are as popular as you think they are.
2 of those 3 didn't even exist in 2010. Either way, these things not being very popular should be a clue.
Though I'm sure this venture supported by Steve Kerr, who's outspoken progressivism always seemed to stop short when to came to issues that affected his paycheck like democracy in China or Draymond Green assaulting players on the court, will surely be different.
You're very upset over not a lot of money.
I think you might be projecting. I'm just pointing out that it will obviously fail at its stated goal. It might successful in making its investors a decent chunk of money, though, so I guess that's something.
Elon Musk spent $44 BILLION on Twitter and it was extremely effective. Progressives have never had anything close to that level of resources.
Elon's preferred candidate was Ron DeSantis, who was crushed by Trump in the GOP primary.
Progressive media is marginal compared to Fox News or social media. Spend some time on Twitter which is where most prominent politicians and journalists spend their time now and see for yourself.
There’s a lot of things “social media skeptics” might mean. The ones who say “social media will rot your brain” are right (the way the people in the 80s and 90s who said “TV will rot your brain” were - though it was actually the TV news and the advertisements more so than the fiction programming).
Interestingly, TV is pretty good for your brain these days, so long as you’re sticking to ad-free consumption of all the wonderful series available
All depends on how it’s spent. If it ends up fueling more of the same old same old echo chamber, vetted and approved by cautious, donor-adjacent staff, then yes, you are right. If it’s seed money spread around broadly to encourage a variety of voices trying strange new things, I think that’s good and promising.
Any criticism is pointed at the people involved with the venture, not you for pointing bringing it up. If anything, I'm thankful that you did mention it so that more people will be aware it was tried when it inevitably fails to move the needle.
As an anecdotal example, my brother and some of his friends are young, non-college-educated non-voters and while I don't know what will exactly compel them to vote, I do know that thinly-veiled partisan political content (progressive or conservative) will not do the trick.
Yes, let's spend a lot of money on messaging instead of, you know, actually moderating on positions that most of the US agrees with, like trans sports, immigration, and crime. Dems need to take the L on those issues and reconsider their position. I'm pro-trans, pro-legal immigration, and anti-crime, but I want to win.
Say what you will about Trump's awfulness, but he does use executive orders to get what he wants, and that reads to the general public as getting shit done.
The next Dem president needs to be brave enough to send FBI swat teams to the homes of the conservative Supremes
I don’t know if it will bear fruit but it sounds like a different approach:
“They’re recruiting online influencers and paying them for the anonymized data showing what their audiences are listening and responding to. Then they plan to synthesize that data and see how American Dream’s core messages can relate to what’s being discussed online by younger people. Then they will pitch those messages back to the influencers in the hope that they share it with their audiences.”
They’re not even at the stage of pitching political messages yet, it sounds like.
Third Way gets it right in this memo outlining words and phrases normal people simply do not say: https://www.thirdway.org/memo/was-it-something-i-said
Every Democrat should be required to recite this memo line for line, FIFTY TIMES.
Sigh.
First of all, I agree with you that these words sound hella weird and off-putting. “Justice-involved”? SMH.
Second of all, thank you for example number eleventy of “normie Democrats are judged by what the fringiest woke activist posts on Bluesky.”
I read the list and, with few exceptions like “cisgender” and “patriarchy,” I can hardly see any of these “in the wild” nowadays. A lot of them were popular in the heyday of wokeness, like, 2020 or so, but have since mostly gone away; a few were never common; “person who immigrated” is one I’d never seen before.
You haven't heard these words recently: privileged, violence, othering, microagression, Latinx, BIPOC, or intersectionality?
Maybe because I teach college, but I hear and read these terms all the time, especially on Substack.
Sincere answer: I haven’t heard BIPOC in a while, and the others I have heard, but much, much more rarely than during the 2020-ish woke discourse peak.
Fair enough.
My problem with this list is that it combines some words that are genuinely annoying or jargony (“Latinx” “microaggression”) with others that convey important concepts that would otherwise be hard to convey (“privilege”, “violence”).
Only on episodes of Blocked and Reported... Haven't heard them IRL since 2020.
I didn't want to post this, but this is an example from July: https://open.substack.com/pub/lovettejallow/p/anti-racism-white-guilt-performance?r=4x77p&utm_medium=ios
Plenty of Biden appointees used words like these in congressional testimony and official communications.
This comment section won't be happy until there is nobody popular on any social media anywhere saying anything 1% to the left of the median non-college educated swing voter in Wisconsin on cultural issues at a minimum, no Democrat anywhere should associate, stand next too, or say positive things about anybody 1% to the left of the median non-college educated swing voter.
And what is wrong with that? These people gave us Trump and they might continue to cause harm to the country by alienating normal people from the left and - by implication - the center-left.
It just isn't feasible... There's always gonna be at least one Michael Hobbes.
We had a friend play a bunch of episodes of ‘Books that kill’ on a road trip. I thought they were funny until the got to Freakonomics. I’m not saying Freakonomics is some wonderful book that’s ideas have held up super well but to say it was bad faith puts it incredibly mildly.
But wait, may I associate, and say positive things about myself?
I can't start next to myself without some kind of out of body experience so that's fine.
When a racial group hates a demonym the way Latinos hate "Latinx", it's frankly rude to keep calling them that
Still, I like the memo, and it wouldn't be bad to publicly punch some people on Bluesky by saying "WE REJECT YOUR WORDS, WHICH ARE SILLY AND CONSTITUTE FOOLISHNESS AND NONSENSE!"
I know centrists are desperate for a Sister Souljahing and dream about it nightly but even if it did happen, the voters you think need to see it (outside of centrists who'd erupt in joyous celebration) would never see it because their algos would never show them it.
"Centrists" are desperate to win elections. Others seem perfectly content to let Trump and the GOP run the country as long as Democrats supply a steady stream of dopamine hits on social media for very-online progressives.
Giving people the social media dopamine is how you win elections today. That’s how Trump won and why Trump is illegally blocking the TikTok ban; he didn’t suddenly become a Sinophile. Liberals have been completely defeated on all the big social media platforms.
Then we will force them to see it. Everyone will be made to see.
What if you get your precious Sister Souljahing and the actual Democratic primary voters decide to support the person being SIster Souljah'd, like we just saw w/ Mamadani and Israel?
Then they would be wrong and in dire need of correction, as they often are.
Except this isn't just coming from crackpots on the internet. Everywhere that's governed by democrats has this kind of language written into actual laws and governance.
Chest Feeding? That sounds like how an alien race feeds its anthropoid spawn.
My absolutely favorite, and I don’t think it’s on the list, is “front hole” and “back hole.” Yes, they are what you think they are.
🤦
Sweet lord
There are two configurations of complex life. One where is a long tube with an in hole and out hole, and then one where the in hole is also the out hole.
Make Cloacas Great Again!!!
Who do they think is using this terminology? I can tell you that if you’re a gay man about to have sex with a trans man, this terminology is going to be important, and if you’re not going to have sex with a trans man, you probably shouldn’t be using it. Are they telling people to stop using this terminology while having sex or do they think that people are using it in other contexts?
“Chest feeding” makes me think of the chest bursting xenomorph from “Alien.” Not great in the context of lovingly nourishing one’s baby!
It's like when milk producers tried to force plant-based milks to call their product "nut juice". Literally negative advertising themselves.
Can we please stop the anti social nerds from taking over the party again? 😂
Heuristic and postmodern are perfectly fine.
Stakeholders is management-speak, and you may be surprised that it is also under attack from the other direction.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/05/07/should-we-stop-using-the-word-stakeholder-in-research/
Conservatives are sensitive to anything that sounds like they're being hassled by HR. That's why DEI became a slur. Heuristic might have become associated with diversity training seminars, e.g. "A good heuristic for avoiding microaggressions is to respect personal boundaries."
What is the politicized use of heuristic? I feel like I’ve only ever come into contact with this in earnest social science work and books about cognition.
I’ve seen it in applied math, too
I love this list.
Signed,
An inseminated person.
They’re really lumping together a lot of very disparate things here.
Like for instance, “pregnant person” is a totally ordinary phrase that people don’t blink twice at when it’s used, like on a flight I was boarding when they said “pregnant people and people with disabilities can board at any time”.
“Birthing person” is a weird technical construct that’s only relevant when talking about large and anonymous groups, probably medically, and even there, I’m not sure how often people want to talk about people solely in their capacity of birthing. “Chest feeding” is a term that I can’t imagine hearing outside the context of a trans man who has recently given birth, and even then I don’t know how many would prefer it. Both of these phrases sound like they’re designed to strike a nerve rather than actually being phrases people use. Certainly if a politician is saying either phrase, something has gone wrong. But by including them on this list, they’re just perpetuating the dynamics these words were intended to create.
“Cisgender, deadnaming, heteronormative, patriarchy” are totally useful words for something that doesn’t have any other terminology. I can see that the use of these words to a general voter population suggests that you’re talking about a topic that isn’t productive to bring up with them, but it’s not the word that’s the issue - it’s the topic. (And “deadnaming” is a term that is unlikely to come up unless you’re commenting on someone who is already talking about a trans person.)
“LGBTQIA+” is one where I can’t tell what they’re saying - are they saying you should use “LGBTQ+” instead? I assume not. But what about “LGBT” or “gay”? Are these equally problematic? I can say that when I’ve asked ChatGPT and Claude about the history of how Palm Springs and Puerto Vallarta became gay destinations, it was very confusing when they used the phrase “LGBTQ+ travelers”, because I’m sure that these places have very different histories for lesbians and for gay men, and I don’t think that either are particularly popular trans or Q+ destinations. It felt like a discussion of the history of koreatown that called it a location for AAPI communities. If the robots are talking this way, then probably some humans are too, and that’s a problem. But when you’re talking about political issues, rather than the history of particular locations, I think the broader term may often be more useful, and it doesn’t feel off-putting in that same way.
My go to is LGBT+. I get why gender identity is lumped in with sexual orientation, but I could give a shit about Q (get over yourself) and don’t really see what I (a biological issue) and A (get over yourself, don’t fuck if you don’t want to, I promise no one gives a shit) have to do with it. But I’ll say + because what the hell
But I’m basically a bona fide curmudgeon these days
It’s annoying that words which are legitimately useful are made meaningless and cringe, so that it’s hard to use them even in valid situations. Some words not on the article’s list which I’ve come to hate, though they have valid usages:
“contextualize” - Used with other big words to make whatever point sound more intellectual
“structural” - Basically “you didn’t show this thing the way I wanted you to”, or an excuse to be reverse-racist/sexist/any-sort-of-“-ist”
“problematic” - before daisy-chaining together some loose associations to declare that thing racist
“grifter” - Ad-hominem against someone who disagrees with you. Sure YOU think they have gaps in their knowledge and understanding. That’s what disagreement is! It doesn’t mean they’re being dishonest
What I hate about the use of the word problematic is that people have used it to elide a very important distinction. It’s useful to be able to talk about how something is problematic without thereby meaning that the thing is bad! Unfortunately, too many people have accidentally made the shift of thinking that once you identify a problem, therefore the thing is bad and we should use the unconsidered alternative whose problems we haven’t thought about yet.
If we could just remember that everything is problematic, and some of them are better choices anyway, despite their problems, we’d be fine.
I agree that "problematic" sucks. I think saying, "I have a problem with that," is perfectly fine. I think my issue with problematic is how it shifts agency from someone having particular problem with something to an issue that adheres with the claim itself. It simply seems dishonest. But I also hate "proactive" because it just means active. I also hate "weaponized." It seems there is a general shift from active voice to passive voice, and I hate it. And don't get me started on "black bodies." It's insulting.
https://open.substack.com/pub/dcinboxinsights/p/was-it-something-the-democrats-said
As I suspected, these aren't actually common phrases Democratic politicians use. It's just a right-wing smear people tend to believe because the lefty academics and activists who actually use them vote Democratic.
You can beg for a Sistah Souljah moment but that was pre-social media. What would happen nowadays is that Republicans/media would seek out the ravings of pissed off leftists, corner Democratic politicians for comment, and generally feed the controversy. Net result, Democrats are still associated with the woke left and now party factions are publicly hurling insults at each other.
A lot of kind-hearted Democrats aren't gonna like it, but fighting fire with fire really does seem to be the only viable play.
Love it
But sadly don't think it's gonna matter
It's pretty on brand for progressives to create an NGO to do focus groups to find out what kind of culture they should produce.
How much you want to bet They're still gonna get the wrong answer
https://x.com/asymmetricinfo/status/1958910219838530036
A generous welfare state and open borders cannot coexist for any meaningful period of time. A) There is not enough money and B) It will inevitably piss-off the people the welfare state was designed for.
The irony I always find with this statement with regard to the US is that high levels of immigration have been a cheat code to help fund the welfare state.
The rurals believe that immigrants get undeserved Social Security benefits... Though as Elon discovered those gainfully employed 115 year-olds seem to continue paying into SS.
This is because the US doesn’t have a ”generous welfare state” so the statement does not apply to the US.
What are the actual figures on the fiscal impact?
Agree, but high levels of immigration are not the same as open borders, or unfettered immigration.
True, but there is plenty of immigration happening under the table.
I don't think many people realize that. Hence, my point B).
We've never had anything remotely resembling "open borders" (ie, no barriers to immigration) in the United States, so, while it's true the two don't mix, it's only *trivially* true in the US.
And the closest thing the US has occasionally experienced wrt "open borders"—the episodic spikes in inflows of migrants (late 90s, early 20s, etc)—are actually *conducive* to the operation of a welfare state, because these pulses stimulate growth, hold down inflation, and fill our tax coffers—all the while placing minimal demands on the US safety net (illegal immigrants are not covered by Social Security, Medicare and sundry other programs).
The US basically had open borders for the first century of its existence.
Fair point. I was referring to the era since we've had a welfare state. Basically, barriers to immigration have been being implemented since the 1870s, with one era in particular (late 1920s to 1960s) characterized by draconian restrictions.
But in any event, nobody seems to be advocating a return to 19th century laissez-faire immigration norms, and it's plainly far outside the Overton window, so the talking point in question seems...curious.
I'd do it if they'd let me get away with it.
We kind of had an open border with Mexico from roughly the mid-19th century until about the 1970's. People just looked the other way with regard to itinerant workers moving back-and-forth across the border seasonally. Once we created a hard border in the 1970's, people were more likely to remain on the American side illegally due to fear of not being able to return. Stricter enforcement basically creates the problem it seeks to solve.
I mean, totally open borders, sure.
But, 25-35% more liberal than we have been for the past 40 years? Not really.
Between legal and illegal immigrants, there is like, what, ~70 million non-Americans in the country? Increasing that number to ~90 million probably would not cause major fiscal problems, but it would probably cause more cultural backlash.
Dude. AYFKM?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States?wprov=sfti1#Demography
We’re at roughly the same peak of foreign-born as when MY people came here.
Do we need some consolidation? Sure!
But a significantly higher legal cap would have made ALL of this a LOT easier to manage.
Restrictionism is like being that fignorant fucking soccer mom or old lady who drives 40-50 on the highway for fear they’ll get in an accident, and all they’re accomplishing is DRAMATICALLY increasing the likelihood that they’ll CAUSE an accident.
I’m sorry, this is just not a serious approach to the problem of excess immigration.
The State Department just reported there are ~55 million visa holders in America: https://www.axios.com/2025/08/22/trump-us-visas-immigration-vetting-deport
Adding the 10-15 million illegal immigrants (the best estimates I know of) mean the total number of non-Americans in the country is close to 65-70 million.
Yes, more legal immigration, especially of high-skill and highly motivated immigrants, would be better for the country. But a lot (most?) of the country doesn't believe so. And they (including me) especially don't believe in open borders.
You’re misunderstanding that statistic around US visa holders. A visa just gives someone the right to enter the US, but it does not mean they are currently in the US or that they are allowed to stay in the US for an extended period of time. I currently have a 10-year multi entry Chinese tourist visa. I live in the US. It just means I can visit China for up to 60 days without having to reapply for anything.
One of the saddest parts of renewing my passport is how many long-term visas I have that expire with the expiration of that passport.
I looked this up and that's not correct.
There are 55 million visa holders.
Most of them not in America right now, they just have visas.
Actual number seems to be about 16.4, or < 1/3 the claimed number.
And remember that includes green card holders, which is the majority of those in the US (though not the majority of all visa holders)
Are There 55 Million Visa Holders in the US? What to Know - Newsweek https://share.google/UGAxzmiki7fhF47TF
Or from CNN
About 12.8 million green card holders live in the United States, according to the latest estimates from the Office of Homeland Security Statistics.Mar 22, 2025
And maybe 3.6 on other visas, like tourists.
It's amazing how many people saw the number and didn't think to do even a basic sanity check. 'Is every 6th person in the U.S. on a visa'? Sigh...
I would assume most of them are people with tourist and business visitor visas, which most people in the world need to come to the US.
Open borders made this country great. Period.
The *Trump-Run* State Department.
Interesting how their numbers differ so much.
Are you counting naturalized US citizens like me in that non-American total?
Oh, cultural backlash is a different issue, but no I don't think more immigrants would cause major fiscal issues at all in the way anti-immigration people claim.
On a side note, anybody who is living in America and wants to be here long-term is an American in my view. Some researcher from Estonia who nonetheless wants to make a life in America isn't non-American in my view just because they only have a green card at the moment.
Yes, but how can he be an American if he doesn't spit on the Declaration and his ancestors didn't fight for the Confederacy?
A) Immigrants on average are net fiscal contributors and there also would be enough money if we were spreading our technology so that people in poorer parts of the world could be as productive as we are.
B) So what? The point of the welfare state is to meet people’s material needs, not their emotional ones. If people getting welfare are pissed off because other people are also getting welfare, that makes them look pretty unsympathetic. If people getting welfare want to vote to gut the welfare state out of emotional resentment, let them touch the stove.
Thoughts about the Bruenig-Piper debate in The Argument:
Overall, it strikes me that the biggest difference between the variety of contexts where we know that cash transfers are highly efficacious (GiveDirectly transfers in Kenya, Bolsa Familia in Brazil, the Nordic welfare state examples that Breunig cites, the effects of CTC expansion in 2021 in the US) and the UBI RCTs that Piper cites is scope.
In the efficacious interventions, the recipient *and most of the similarly situated people the recipient knew* got a transfer. Even GiveDirectly, which can’t scale to universal programs, generally gives money in village-level blocks (because they want to avoid accidentally creating social strife). The UBI RCTs, by contrast, mostly targeted individuals within communities which remained mostly unaffected by the program (often by design so that there was a more unambiguous control group.)
I have two hypotheses about why this distinction might matter:
1– Transfer leakage through social networks. If you receive a windfall and your family and friends, who are statistically likely to be mostly poor, don’t, they’re likely to hit you up for cash— creating a volatile and significant new expense stream. Ironically, the people who are conscientious and psychologically well-adjusted enough to make the best use of cash transfers are also probably among the most likely to both have dense social networks and comply with the social obligation to share. (This creates a counterintuitive case for in-kind transfers when you can’t distribute cash universally— they’re harder to appropriate)
2– Universal or community-level transfers create macro or meso-economic stimulus effects are more than the sum of their parts (basically, Keynesianism)
I think that Matt was closer to getting this, but his lack of real interest in the international development interventions prevented him from drawing the connection. Overall, I found the exchange stimulating even though Piper and Bruenig talked past each other sometimes; hope to see more of this kind of content from The Argument. (Good for Jerusalem Desmas.)
To be honest, the entire exchange felt kind of ginned up to me to stir up social engagement. Almost the first real article gets strongly disputed by the most famous leftist author, who write angry point counterpoints on the same article (so it can all be shared with a single link). Then Matt Y., also a part of the article and known for having a large following, makes some fairly inflammatory comments about Bruenig's piece, when usually he is fairly polite toward Bruenig online. I feel like this whole saga was staged to get a lot of early subscribers to The Argument.
I agree with this take. I haven't paid for a subscription yet, but a) this made me a bit more leery of doing so and b) I am feeling like a chump for paying for Derek Thompson right away, when everything seems to be free.
Tbh, it feels like if you follow the Yglesias Twitter Extended Cinematic Universe, most of these articles are going to have their key points screenshot and shared at you.
Of course it was staged in a sense, but isn't that the point of their enterprise? I see your point though if the disagreement is amplified for effect (I haven't read the follow-up yet). I subscribed anyway to give it a fighting chance.
Galen Druke just had a podcast debate between Lakshya Jain and Elliott Morris regarding their disagreement over the value of moderation to political candidates. Honestly, it was so boring I wished they would have amplified something!
Fair enough. And at least it means they will be fighting over substantial issues, which is a huge step forward.
Good piece laying out the ridiculousness of judicial review in the UK- where it technically shouldn't even exist, as they have parliamentary sovereignty. Somewhat incredibly their judiciary is continuing to push the bounds of their power, including arguing with the very concept that Parliament is sovereign- and hinting that they'll disregard future laws as they see fit. (While Britain does not have one constitutional document per se, it's a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, which their judges use to issue increasingly bizarre decisions). Anyways, a good read (archive.is link included), and another example of how judicial review is both fake and a power grab by unelected lawyers
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/16/how-judges-came-to-rule-britain/
https://archive.is/bCNZI
The House of Lords doesn't even have judicial functions anymore! What use is the Lord Chancellor?! A travesty against justice, I say this is! A travesty!
Everything I learn about Britain nowadays just makes me more confused. It's as if anybody with a plan has already fled the country.
In another crushing defeat for YIMBYs, NIMBYs successfully used environmental challenges to get a judge to stop things being built:
Florida must stop construction at an immigration detention center in the remote Everglades for 14 days, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, granting at least a temporary victory to environmentalists who say the facility has the potential to cause serious harm to sensitive wetlands and endangered species.
The order is temporary, giving the judge time to complete a hearing in the case, which was filed in June by several environmental groups. They argue that the project to build the facility, which is run by the state but houses federal immigration detainees, went ahead without first completing an environmental review required by federal law. The groups are seeking a preliminary injunction to stop operations and construction at the center.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/07/us/alligator-alcatraz-florida-construction.html?searchResultPosition=5
Now where are those people supposed to go? Back to their families and jobs?
Probably put them in tents
This really was amusing. (I actually don't mind environmental review if your project is close to a national park.)
Or if it’s for locking up people without due process?
We should have other laws to stop that, not overly expansive environmental laws that can be turned against anything that is bad for any other reason.
Sure, but given the system isn’t working, I’ll take this good result of a bad law
Damned alligator NIMBYs!!!
So I guess we're not getting the Saturday thread back...😕
Maybe we need a subreddit.
Oh wow. One exists? TIL. https://old.reddit.com/r/slowboring/
Looks like it's a one-man effort? (In the first three pages of results I checked, all but one of the threads were started by the same user: "David-SB".)
That's probably the least helpful handle possible in figuring out who here created it.
OMG!
Yep, was just coming to the comments to make the exact same observation! :-(
I would really recommend watching the new South Park season, because even only three episodes in it's been outstanding in just slamming the world of shit that Trump voters have put us all in. They retain one of their extreme strengths in being able to create new episodes so quickly so they can keep so timely and topical with the latest news.
And on that note, I have an etiquette question to ask all Slow Borers: what should the rule on spoilers be on here? Unforunately there is no styling tags to hide spoilers. I'd love to discuss cool things in the episodes, but I also don't want to ruin it for people who haven't seen it yet but want to.
Just my $0.02, but if you write “SPOILERS” in all caps and then put a few blank lines before the actual spoiler, it will be all right. If anyone still reads the spoiler, that’s on them.
Of course, if you want to be extra scrupulous, you could always write the spoiler in rot13. The posters on Astral Codex Ten regularly do this.
Never heard of ROT13, but that's clever in a simple way, thanks!
I always forget about rot13 until ACX points out that it exists.
Guvf frnfba bs Fbhgu Cnex unf orra rkpryyrag, V'z pheeragyl oruvaq (https://rot13.com/)
Oh including a link to rot13.com in the comment is helpful! I’m always annoyed when I see rot13 comments and think I want to read but can’t be bothered to open a new window, google the site, open it, and then finally copy-paste. Skipping the first three steps makes me more likely to actually do it.
Maybe just my opinion, but South Park is not really a show you can spoil. Even if you know the punchlines, it doesn't diminish the experience of actually seeing it.
https://x.com/adamwren/status/1958859560749277548
Words/phrases I would retain as useful, although not necessarily in the political sense: triggering, Overton window (does this even get used beyond political wonks?) stakeholders.
Words/phrases I would prioritize launching deep into escape velocity: existential threat, person who immigrated (and all this exhaustive "person first" bullshit", incarcerated people (heh, this is *not* person first, but still an unnecessary syllabic assault), and above all, birthing person and BIPOC (the latter of which I remember Matt getting raked over the coals by his Vox colleagues when he dared question the coining of the acronym on Twitter).
What say you, Slow Borers?
Retain as useful but not for politics: trauma, narcissist
Jettison entirely: hold space, dissociate, serious person, NPC, dark empath, high value/low value, luxury beliefs, greedflation, late-stage capitalism
Take away until people learn to behave: genocide
It seems like we've been in late-stage capitalism for a long time now.
Is this the kind of thing announced by the NBER, like the beginning and end of a recession?
According to my online circle, late-stage capitalism is Netflix charging for an ad-free experience.
Ah, yes. I had thought it was being put on hold for an hour and then having the call dropped.
Late-stage capitalism is that loathsome "whopper whopper whopper whopper" ad campaign from Burger King.
I thought they already crossed that line with their previous campaign with that king with the creepy smile.
https://www.enworld.org/media/burger-king-where-is-your-god-now-jpg.33579/full
Also, there is an opportunity for someone to make an irony fueled Cards Against Humanity: Wokepocalypse card game.
Black card: "I'm sorry professor, can I have an extension on my _____ homework because of _____"
My white cards: "holding spaces", "heteronormativity"
Yes, but do any of them beat "Dominoes Oreo Dessert Pizza for $3.99"?
Genius
”Black bodies”, ”white bodies” etc is another example of really weird, off-putting academic left-speak. Straight from the lingo of the notorious pedophile and sadist Michel Foucault.
You forgot equity, lived experience, and neurodivergence/neurodiversity.
Even worse: "neurospicy."
I hate it, kill it with fire
I didn't, the list did.
The title of this list should be "Words that alienate the voters necessary to win elections."
What I personally find really funny is that I was told recently that "stakeholder" is technically a bad word because it invokes the seizing of land from Native Americans or something. "Community Partner" is I guess the better phrase. I know that no real-life human being has been offended by the term because those who told me this still frequently trip up and use stakeholder because it's a fine word!
I totally agree that anyone who is in the job of being popular among median voters should avoid saying the excessively cringe phrases like "birthing person". But I fear that the problem isn't that Josh Shapiro is going to say those words, it's that some college student will in an esoteric poorly shot vertical video that will make its way to Fox News primetime at which point 'all Democrats = weirdo language police' gets communicated without the consent of liberals. It's a losing battle?
Honestly, a decent amount of heterodox center-left writers, Matt included, carry water for this and act like the verbal quirks of the most hyper-online left are Democratic party line - think of how the CSDM had a whole entry about abandoning word policing, using "unhoused" and "chest-feeding" as examples of neurotic Dem overreach. But even the far left isn't policing anyone into using those words; I work in homeless aid and no one's ever been disciplined or even corrected at my org for saying someone's homeless or an addict. It's microscopic skirmishes that the right wing is running with to show that Dems are humorless nitpicky scolds, and annoyed hippie-punchers are amplifying those small foibles and disputes and elevating them as representative of the whole left. The woke left doesn't need more help looking bad!
Maybe I'm the one billionth person to say it, but there is a lot of truth that when there are 30 people on the internet being really mean to you it feels like a lot and can be really hurtful.
A huge problem with centralized social media is that the world's 30 most always-online, miserable, neurotic, assholes will find you in a way that was impossible until very recently, and unlike in real life they work in shifts to be bullies 24/7.
30 years ago, the weirdos who's #1 issue was language policing "chest feeding" were just anti-social outcasts, 20 years ago they found each other and rambled on isolated forums, 10 years ago they now get to bully as a pack anyone who joined Twitter for their job.
Be that as it may, if you’re a political pundit who wants the Democrats to win, isn’t it more responsible to not present those 30 people (or some tiny non-profit’s website language, or some cringe college kid) as more prevalent and more prominent than they are on your side? And has there ever been a mob online going after Matt over “chest feeding” or “unhoused”, or is this all hypothetical bogeyman?
I suggest adopting the Chinese euphemism for homeless: “street friend”.
Honestly, I think this is something where did the centrists dislike the leftists want a reason to openly fight.
You can just not use those words and if asked, say you don't use the words and move on. Like, one reason it seems like the Democrat is involved in a civil war over wokeness or whatever is some centrists seemingly want the fight more than they want to fight Trump and its not helping them among normie Democratic voters.
You also fight Trump by fighting the people who (mostly unwittingly) help Trump win by alienating normal people and swing voters from Democrats.
I think moderates want to fight a faction war so they tell themself this works when collapsing Democratic favorability suggests faction warring is in fact bad for popularity.
Maybe it's too easy to forget this stuff happens when one has bigger priorities, but the phrases escape containment into mainstream politics all the time. For example, remember the minor shitstorm about Biden's 2024 state of the union? He ended up making a public apology: "I shouldn't have used illegal, it’s undocumented." (https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/09/biden-regrets-word-illegal-sotu-00146143)
Language policing is hardly the biggest problem in the world, but it's annoying and it hurts everyone left of Trump. Pushing back against it is low-hanging fruit for Democrats.
This shit happens with /pol/->mainstream conservatism all the time with Republicans paying virtually no penalty for it. Libs are too easily baited into attacking their own while conservatives understand public self-critique is brand-damaging.
This is another area where the US left could learn something from the Scandinavian left/center-left. We are not weird, not academic, but speak like regular people and have regular people fronting our parties. I realize there are historical particularities why the Northern European left is more folksy and populist than the US left but hopefully some change is possible. Although it seems more likely that the change is going the other direction as our politics becomes increasingly Americanized…
"Because God tells me" (ends argument/discussion).
MattY has insisted for a while that Trump is popular because he's actually a moderate. I think it's pretty damn clear that if any Democrat proposed 10% public ownership of Intel, Matt would have claimed that's exactly the sort of far-left overreach Dems need to avoid. It's high time for Matt to admit Trump is not a moderate, we're just well beyond the bounds of the old-fashioned left/right politics he grew up with. Voters are expressing a preference for Peronism not moderation.
EDIT: Though Matt's characterization of Trump as a "moderate" still pisses me the fuck off. Ken has noted that Matt has specifically endorsed public ownership of companies in the past.
I missed where (1) Trump ran in 2024 on nationalizing US industries and/or (2) there is any polling showing this new Intel deal is popular with the general public?
I bet you a lots of Republican voters who'd be declaring the end of the republic if President AOC announced a 10% stake in Amazon will approve of this in polls.
"Trump's policies are popular with people pathologically addicted to sucking his ****" is not actual evidence that "Voters [writ large] are expressing a preference for" Trump's policies. Because, I'm pretty sure at this point "lots of Republican voters" would be fine with declaring Trump All-Powerful God-King for Life, but I really, l really f***ing doubt that you'd think that shows "Voters are expressing a preference for" that.
I bet you lots of Democrats who oppose Trump buying a 10% stake in Intel would fully support President AOC announcing a 10% stake in Amazon and lots of DSA types would criticize AOC only for not doing more than 10% and only doing it for Amazon.
No shit. Part of that is raw partisanship but the other half is I have way more confidence AOC has genuine intent even if her decisions can sometimes be naive. Trump, by contrast, is a corrupt sycophant. Are we so post-morality that whether or not a politician seems like a good person isn't relevant?
What has AOC's "moral goodness" accomplished? How is it helping LGBT youth in Alabama or immigrants who are being harassed by ICE in Texas?
In the hypothetical universe you invented* where President AOC had just announced 10% public ownership of Amazon, she probably would be doing a lot of good for LGBT youth in Alabama and immigrants in Texas.
EDIT: *Sam did not invent this hypothetical but was continuing the hypothetical from the above comment. I stand by the rest of the claim.
I mean, we're all tribal - dems asking where the outrage is for behaviors they'd get dinged for are asking for an electorate that doesn't exist. If Biden had gone after Harvard's lush indirect cost reimbursement on research grants, can you honestly say the dem side wouldn't have been, those numbers have been inflated for years, go Joe!
Outside of Leslie Knope and Lucy on Tacoma FD no one worships Biden, so I doubt it.
Trump lies and is inconsistent is the most consistent thing there is about him, and there is certainly a Peronism for many of his supporters. But the moderation to squeeze out the win is real.
Matt's position as I understand it is that Trump ran as a moderate, ESPECIALLY in relation to the previous Republican brand. In 2016 after decades of other Republicans decrying SS and Medicare, Trump explicitly promised to make no changes. In 2024, again after decades of a Republican platform that wanted to end abortion, Trump tried mostly to dodge the issue, said it should be up to the states, and promised to make IVF free.
His advice to dems now is break with the democratic brand in some similar way, again to squeeze out the win. I'm less sure about it working on our side.
Trump also promised to raise tariffs to rates not seen since pre-Keynesian economics and he absolutely followed through with it. Calling him "moderate"--literally means "avoiding extremes"--when he's the most aggressively protectionist man in politics in my lifetime is patently absurd. It's also ridiculous to give him fucking credit for moderating on abortion when he's the guy most responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade. Trump isn't a fucking moderate, he's just unprincipled (except for tariffs apparently)
All it does is reveal that Matt can't play politics to save his life. Starting a faction fight with the left when your biggest contentions with them naturally started to fade over the past half-decade is stupid. Reinforcing Republican narratives that Trump is moderate and Democrats are too left is stupid. Letting Republicans define what left and right mean such that free trade is bizarrely coded as left now is stupid. Giving credence to conservatives' free speech concerns when it was obvious to anyone they were just whining about losing the culture war and would turn heel the second that changed is stupid. Matt's just very bad at playing the Secret Hitler game that's going on here.
He moderated on two big high profile issue for republicans, abortion, SS/Medicare cuts
Sort of, but they are cutting Medicare -- they're quietly rolling out pre-authorization in a few states.
Yes, but again, that's not what Trump ran on doing, which is the relevant issue.
Matt has written positively several times about the idea of the US government owning a stake in US companies. Why just make shit up Davy?
https://www.vox.com/2018/8/28/17774334/social-wealth-fund-bruenig-solidarity
Alright, fair enough.
He just has this slippery way of seeming like some sort of blank canvas that anyone possessed of motivated reasoning can project their own hopes and dreams onto without actually noticing anything he says/said.
The statist partial takeover of private companies in that fashion wasn't something he'd ever talked about as far as I know though. Any idea where he got that bit of communism from?
"...I am generally interested in unique efforts to solve problems...."
And I like unusual, mold-breaking SB PM's -- this was a good one!
I hope your relocation goes smoothly, and welcome to D.C.! You need to learn the City's anthem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYipMv5CgMo&list=RDlYipMv5CgMo&start_radio=1
Thank you!
This seems like a questionable policy decision. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/climate/trump-administration-halts-revolution-wind.html
Insane, for every imaginable reason. Are wind turbines trans in some way? Because that's the only really good explanation for just halting them when they're not even government funded.
And to show just how dystopic and pure authoritarian we've become, this tidbit was in the same article: "The department has issued several orders to keep coal plants running past their planned closure dates, even in cases where the operators never sought an extension and ratepayers would shoulder the costs of complying."
He's just breaking shit everywhere, and they no longer bother even pretending there's a reason beyond his whim.
I think the explanation is that they are on Team Coal, and they want to defeat their sworn enemies, Team Wind and Team Sun.