Ouch. The *language*.
American Economic Association bans Epstein correspondent Summers from involvement with group | Reuters
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Author Archives: John Lusk
The Conservative Grievance Business Is Always Hiring | Defector
https://defector.com/the-conservative-grievance-business-is-always-hiring
This was a fun article.
On reply guys (i.e.: me)
So. I tend to jump into replies. I try not to be a pill, generally, but I’m so full of myself I can’t always tell. (And, tbh, there is a certain amount of shitposting, because some of y’all… smh.)
Here’s the thing, though. I (currently) have ~350 followers on Mastodon, a good chunk of them bots and monitors and hucksters and dead accounts, I think.
Other folks have 2.8k, 13k, 85k (ok, I stopped sampling here) followers. I’m guessing follower count is an exponential distribution. If I want my toots heard (and I do, for most of them), I’m going to be in the reply wake along with the rest of the seagulls and fish.
Every post by a “personality” is its very own nanoscopic village green, automatically filtered (roughly) by folks who are actually interested.
I get you might not want random strangers jumping into your replies, but I think them’s the dynamics. I’m not necessarily replying to YOU, just the more general audience that are your followers and boosters. (Ok, well, sometimes you.)
You can already post to local or just your followers (and, for all I know, you already are), and I guess at some point, Mastodon will implement a limit on who can reply. There’s already a limit on who can quote-toot.
So, that’s all. Just a little post here. A thought I’ve been wanting to get out for a while.
The Germans Who Stood Up to Hitler – The Atlantic
Someone wrote a novel about my toots.
«No one who resists, as Wilkes notes in his afterword, leaves a lasting mark. A postal carrier who quits the Nazi Party escapes punishment—but her act of defiance makes no meaningful difference. A low-level con artist who is wrongly accused of distributing the postcards will not concede his guilt; he ends up dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after being given the choice between that and drowning. The members of a small, rebellious cell who begin the novel with grand plans to take down the government end up ineffective and disbanded. And like their real-life counterparts, Otto and Anna are caught, convicted in a sham trial, and sentenced to death by guillotine; their postcards also have none of their intended impact.»
I wonder if MTG will un-resign?
Ok, thowin my marker down here: I bet Marjorie Taylor Greene un-resigns before March 2026. Here are the dates to file to run in Georgia primaries, according to https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/2026-candidate-filing-deadlines:
Open: March 2, 2026, at 9 a.m.
Close: March 6, 2026, by 12:00 p.m.
Also this:
https://sos.ga.gov/sites/default/files/forms/2026%20Election%20Calendar%20Summary.pdf
Update: eh, never mind. I misunderstood which January she was resigning. I generally don’t trust the usual signals of “some thing will happen” these days (since the current crew just doesn’t follow convention), but I guess this is pretty solid by now.
Marisa Kabas is the alternative to wallowing in Olivia Nuzzi’s tale of dysfunction and deceit – Media Nation
«Marisa Kabas is a far better example and role model. But so is the young woman (or man) who’s covering town hall for your local nonprofit news site. Let’s keep the focus where it belongs.»
Tennessee House Race Rivets Democrats and Worries Republicans – The New York Times
«“As often happens, these special elections gain national focus,” said David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth, an anti-tax group that began airing ads attacking Ms. Behn on Tuesday. “Everybody wants to see if there are any trends happening nationally.”»
I gotta say… as a man of my age, I will ALWAYS get The Club for Growth mixed up with The Hair Club for Men.
Border Patrol monitors US drivers and detains Americans for ‘suspicious’ travel | AP News
«A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took. Federal agents in turn may then flag local law enforcement.
Suddenly, drivers find themselves pulled over — often for reasons cited such as speeding, failure to signal, the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view. They are then aggressively questioned and searched, with no inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement’s radar.»
We’re here! We’ve arrived at 1984! It’s been a long trip, but we finally got here.
Let’s go see what Big Brother’s got cooking. It sure smells delicious!
😀
Fuck your bio. Fuck your lyrics.
The New York Times: Tina Brown Thinks the Über-Rich Have It Coming
Two, count ’em, two separate thoughts in here. Maybe even three.
«There is brilliant writing out there. But finding it is like the needle in the haystack. I’m always feeling, What have I missed? Because somebody will say, Oh, did you read that great piece? It’s like, Where? I’ve got a thousand Substack things, I’m reading social media, I’m reading the old-guard stuff, but my head is exploding. And unfortunately what it’s leading to is a lot of people checking out. So it’s a very demoralizing time. I’m always being asked by young people, How do I get into journalism? Often I say you should go to India, because India, in fact, has a very vibrant literary culture.
I can’t believe your advice is go to India. [Laughs] Yeah, it’s not popular. When I say that, you do see the light fade from the eyes.…
I think we’re underestimating the power of humanity. That’s what Mamdani showed. We’ve tended to think this is the inevitable direction. A.I., the über-barons will dictate how we’re all going to live, and everybody else is a peasant. All of these things have become very depressing. But maybe humanity has a bit more juice in it than they anticipated. Things can change very, very quickly in America. It’s one of the reasons I love living in America. It’s an exciting place. The whole mood can change overnight. All of a sudden, people will just turn around and say, Look, I don’t want you deciding how my life is going to go. So I’m feeling quite optimistic at the moment.»
Here, Read This 