Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 10/10/2026I'll just say that "the babies on the other side are legitimate targets" is what you here from some far-left protester types, and also from some conservatives in Congress and the Knesset. 0101
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 09/10/2026Quite the devious plan from James Talarico, to ... wait until he's running for Senate to transition, but also to lie and say that he has the flu so hopefully nobody notices? 010
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 09/10/2026They still think that seeing things on screen influences you to like those things ... 000
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 09/10/2026That sort of polite language can be done for good effect like Churchill allegedly signing off on the declaration of war with Japan with "I have the honour to be, with high consideration, Sir, Your obedient servant" then explaining it with "when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite" 000
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 09/10/2026I always thought it was the CW in a multi-person primary where naming a specific opponent boosts their importance as one of the main contenders. In a 2 person race, it sounds like you're an ancient Egyptian peasant afraid to take the Pharaoh's name in vain 0890
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 08/10/2026Also has made multiple appearances at Bari Weiss's university (you know, the one that was founded because other colleges are anti-semitic) and is required reading for multiple classes 001
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 08/10/2026I don't agree with Mamdani's statement, though I'm hardly scandalized by it. But it would have been worse to do similar with 9/11, because Mamdani is the mayor of NYC and has a responsibility to commemorate 9/11, in a way he doesn't with Oct 7. 000
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 08/10/2026A nuke is gonna get porch pirated after the government mails it via UPS and the guy knocks once and then leaves it on the sidewalk with a post-it and drives off. 0110
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 08/10/2026I'm glad that national security depends on an unnamed midlevel UPS employee not missing any e... wait, UPS? I assumed it was some special government run shipping thing for important shit, or at least the post office. We're sending sensitive F-35 parts via UPS? 1100
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 07/10/2026Yes, this is the implicit reason behind Republicans being so willing to remove these limits on abuses of power. They know a Democratic president won't wantonly commit crimes, politicize the DOJ, purge the exec branch, or for that matter, gerrymander as aggressively. 091
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Wow, Democrats must be screwed if Trump is even trying to win Maryland now! I guess all those Senate seats are safe after all! 000
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Of course you can ensure it, just make me the dictator 030
Reposted by Art VandelayTyler @twoodard89.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Unironically think the strong men/weak man meme is true but it’s actually just about generations with living memory of fascism. 526114
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Side note, but SCOTUS nominees routinely decline to say whether they'd overturn old cases (including, in the past, Roe) because it would supposedly compromise their impartiality. Now he's coming out and saying this, because that was always BS. 000
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Also if your side has all the cannon factories, shipyards, and coal mines. 020
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 05/10/2026I worry that the far right stuff will continue until we get another catastrophic outcome, and then it'll be anathema again for 80 years until that catastrophe passes from living memory too. 000
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Optimistic take: realistically when things like MAGA fail and fade away, a lot of supporters will pretend they were against it, or at least ambivalent, the whole time. This guy minimizing his support for Trump is a harbinger for when a lot of people will claim they never supported him. 101949
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 05/10/2026I guess same world that Trump would reverse inflation? 020
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Corollary is that it's harder for people to abandon Trump than other presidents, because to do so at this stage is to admit you supported someone clearly unfit this whole time. 020
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Reminds me of the argument I heard, way back in like 2017, that if any other president acted like Trump did they'd be removed via 25th amendment. On a bipartisan basis, because it'd just be obvious to everyone they'd suffered some sort of mental illness. 101
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 02/10/2026To state the obvious ... if they do a lame duck nomination/confirmation then it will massively increase momentum for Dems to pack the courts. 1341
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Mass disbarment of lawyers involved in Trump's lawlessness checks a lot of boxes as a project for future Dems. The main impediment is Dems in power's feeling that it isn't the sort of thing you're supposed to do ... an impulse that will destroy the Republic if unchecked. 031
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 02/10/2026The real answer is constitutional amendment or court reform. But the constitution-hack way is to establish a new court, give them the power to appoint/oversee inspectors general, a clear mandate for how to choose who to appoint, and stack it with Dems. Article II explicitly allows this! 010
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Sliwa didn't exactly like Mamdani, but he really fucking hated Cuomo. It's easier to do this sort of fun joint-PSA with the guy you lost to, when you both hated the 3rd guy more. 130
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 02/10/2026As a consumer, I've never cared whether employees are sitting or standing. It always struck me as employers gratuitously making the lives of their employees worse, out of some vague sense that they aren't maximizing profits if the employees aren't miserable. 010
Reposted by Art VandelayStarfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social · 01/10/2026I don’t trust the mainstream media, but I feel like the primary alternate model, getting the news from the posts of a 14 year-old Romanian schizophrenic shitposter named “G00n3R the Swamp Pervert,” is not necessarily a superior alternative. 311534209
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026This gets into the "LLMs training on LLM-produced content" issue, which some people say will lead to recursive self-improvement but seems like it also might result in infinite mega-slop. 060
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026I'm not saying polling *isn't* cooked, but it's also possible that the shift is among more rural / red state / pre-Trump Dem voters. 040
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026Also the texts shown on that poster don't say anything about the Hawks specifically, it's about some unnamed event in an arena, and pasted over what's presumably a picture of the Hawks' arena. 081
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 01/10/2026Well the government will suffer irreparable harm if they are unable to execute Pike, so you have to let them do it. This isn't a decision on the merits, she could still win on the merits after her execution. 010
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Thing is the "embarrassing whoopsie" framing is one that will get normies paying attention who have long since tuned out all this DOJ stuff. Dems should lean into it, but then also connect it to "Republicans are so desperate to validate Trump's conspiracies and punish anyone who is anti-Jan 6" 000
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 30/09/2026We can do more than stop giving them military aid. 001
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 29/09/2026E.g. compare this scene from Boys in the Hood (at around 2:10), to this buzzfeed article about how terrible 2017 was www.buzzfeed.com/jasminnahar/... www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqm5...youtube.com"It's Called Gentrification" | Boyz ’N The HoodYouTube video by NOW PLAYING 000
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 29/09/2026You can watch old movies where they say "it's [insert year]" as a sign for how civilized they are/should be. But starting in 2015/6 it was a joke for how shitty things were. Each year the joke was that it was worse than the last, until 2020 killed it by obviously being the shittiest year ever. 140
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Also Rümeysa Öztürk. Not only was she arrested, but even for a lot of people disposed to dislike activists, she's clearly a "civilian" who never said anything radical. Plus there's video of her, as a woman, being cornered on the street by masked ICE thugs. 11257
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 28/09/2026Agree but one thing I'd add is, in those red states where the right-leaning independent is outpolling the Dem (or where there is no Dem), vote for the independent. 150
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 27/09/2026If AI is "thinking" or "conscious" or whatever, then the fact that they're *also* following their instructions exactly, just raises uncomfortable questions about what we humans are doing! 030
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 27/09/2026IMO there's a difference between being alarmed at what AI does, and the questions about whether it's "thinking" or "conscious" or whatever. IMO AI is still just following its instructions like any computer, it's just that its instructions are more complex than what any one person can understand. 140
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 27/09/2026I'd only heard of it until recently. But the line in here about "saying more about the listener than the song" - on one hand that's certainly true about me. On the other hand he wants to treat that as an insult, as if I have some moral obligation to have heard about popular songs. 010
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 27/09/2026I think it's hard to say yet how much the corruption of the Trump admin will be punished. I worry about it - not because of decentralization, I worry the Dems will be unwilling to pursue it. But the presidential pardon power IMO *is* a distinctive US impediment to fighting corruption. 100
Reposted by Art VandelayfranciscOOoOo👻 varela fan club @paleopragmatist.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Mambo No. ℵ₀ 1468
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Even in 2021, the idea that the VP could be someone who explicitly said that Mike Pence did the wrong thing and should have tried to overturn the election would have been insane to everyone, even most Republicans ... And yet JD Vance is that guy. The media treats him better than Pence! 030
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 26/09/2026I tend to agree but my pessimistic worry is that in 2018 there was a lot more discussion about Trump being incompetent/corrupt/authoritarian. Today that stuff has gotten much more normalized. Of course the flipside is that Trump has gotten *more* incompetent/corrupt/authoritarian to compensate... 140
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Democratic voters are not fine with it, but a lot of Dem electeds likely are (or at least not willing to personally do stuff to prevent it), so there's bound to be a conflict. 010
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 16/09/2026The idea that the US should take a strong stance against Canada and the EU having close economic relations is so self-evidently absurd and the fact that it's coming from Susan Collins shows this shit isn't just Trump, it's the entire GOP. 0100
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Seems like one of those billionaire moves arising from believing too much in your own BS that won't actually work out Like the whole CBS Bari Weiss thing Or the whole Trump thing 020
Reposted by Art VandelayNick (derogatory) 🎃 @slothropsmap.bsky.social · 28/08/2026I’m sure that the developer clamoring for access to Yosemite is promising Trump a kickback of some kind, but to me that’s incidental to the larger point that Trump loves to ruin good things. His orientation is anti-human and anti-civilization and he does whatever he can to hurt people. 724431
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 16/09/2026They didn't get to have the Purge against their hodgepodge of enemies, but it was in play there for awhile 090
Art Vandelay @artsvandelay.bsky.social · 16/09/2026One step past "anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism" - "Judaism is Zionism". And the moment the GOP becomes anti-Israel they'll turn this exact chain of reasoning against back against them: "you said it yourself, your 'religion' is just loyalty to another country". (to be clear this is false) 100
