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Crazy to say D's should stand for maybe-right-wing-theocracy-but-maybe-not-quite-so-radical for the sake of 'keeping the court non-political'. Sarah Isgur drives me nuts. She's got this chirpy affect. You can imagine her doing voice-over for "Fargo". 'I dunno, maybe you shouldn't buy a woodchipper.'

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Why would the seminar room possibility of being able to distinguish five-or-so flavors of originalism even be relevant to the question of whether you should expand the court, lest Alito-style activism wreck the liberal (and not in a partisan sense) social order?

Once we freely admit the obvious: that this conservative Supreme Court Justice is playing some knife's-edge political game with post-liberal theocrats - and reasonable observers might be in doubt which way the game is going - any argument against expanding the court goes 'poof!'

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They conclude: the latter. Better! In what world is that supposed to mollify critics of the conservative court? Two post-liberal legal minds fighting over HOW to smash liberalism to suit taste? If Alito thinks Vermeule might buy his stuff, what does that say about what Alito thinks he's selling?

But right at the start they are frank enough about Alito being not just conservative but partisan. He's obviously a very political animal. Specifically, they ponder whether, in his WSJ op-ed, he should be read as showing signs of co-option by Vermeule - or vice versa of seeking to co-opt him.

What Is Originalism? | Interview: Sherif Girgis

This Advisory Opinions interview with Sherif Girgis about Alito's alleged originalism is bizarro. I'll make one point. They try to make it an interesting, fine-slicing seminar room-style deep-dive. Let's count the flavors and varieties of originalism. Hmmm. Ideas! thedispatch.com/podcast/advi...

thedispatch.com

Discussing Justice Alito’s latest book.

John Holbo @jholbo.bsky.social · 5h

As with Zelelsnky, the accepted term for this sort of not helping R's in the upcoming election behaviour is 'ingrate'. He's an ingrate.

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John Holbo @jholbo.bsky.social · 6h

The theory that we need to immunise big AI companies from liability, or else China wins, is literally the national socialism of risk - the privatisation of profit. If your company poses existential risk, the company should - at the least - suffer existential liability. In case anyone survives.

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Reposted by John Holbo

Celeste Ng @pronounced-ing.bsky.social · 7h

As usual, he says it so clearly: "The Afrikaner policy... proves the catch-22 facing nonwhite immigrants: If you're poor, you're a moocher, and if you're gainfully employed, you're taking a job from a hardworking American. The only way to be a good immigrant is to be white and Christian."

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John Holbo @jholbo.bsky.social · 6h

The Fiddler on the Roof, but with Irish musical Vampires and the vampire, who has migrated to Russia, is attempting to break in through the roof.

Screencap from Sinners, the Irish vampire

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Grisly recording reveals bat catching, killing and eating robin mid-flight

Bat Eats Robin. But that just seems like something DC fans would call in to request, for 50 cents a minute. not an actual good idea. I', stumped.. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

theguardian.com

Before the Spanish study, some scientists had been sceptical about the mammals attacking migratory birds

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Wait, I got that backwards. We need Bat eats Squirrel not vice versa. My game has a flaw.

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Squirrel eats bat at S'pore Botanic Gardens

Owl Stomps Bat is good, especially in light of recent Squirrel Jumps Owl nature pic. Add this and we've got the fixins for a Rock-Paper-Scissors sequel. Just needs simple hand gestures. mothership.sg/2024/10/squi...

mothership.sg

Yes, squirrels are omnivorous.

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I think Bill Kristol both says - and believes - exactly what I said above. Which is pretty crazy.

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It is reasonable to suspect that - but I don’t think it’s true.

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I am actually on team Bill Kristol has changed. The Bulwark is genuinely not a Reaganite Trojan horse project.

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Actually it was all grey-on-grey. No clean air and water acts passed yet! That’s part of what makes the car chases cool. No Herbie the Lovebug, all French Connection atmosphere.

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I fear post-Trump we are in for more of the same. In 4 years there won’t be any R’s in politics who will admit they were for Trump because of his war/personal corruption. They were all always in favor of something more openly fascistic. That R party may lose badly, but they aren’t going to moderate.

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The remarkable feature of Trumpism was not that you could bum-rush the stage and seize the party. The remarkable feature was that, afterwards, there was not some former establishment remnant within the party that was anti-Trump. There wasn’t some stubborn Liz Cheney bloc. None. Nada.

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Why are they crazy? They aren’t willing to debate even people who are merely common sense conservatives - ergo center-right. The left calls any common sense conservatism ‘fascism’. And that’s why common sense conservatism must be fascism. It really is all that Matt Bors comic quasi-philosophized.

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It isn’t called ‘real Trumpism’ it’s ‘common sense’. It’s common sense that Trump wouldn’t pull it off, but also common sense that directionally Trump was right - necessary. So it’s common sense we need extreme authoritarianism, but don’t call it that, or the left will return and they are crazy.

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Trump’s failures have got conservatives forced to decide between A) ‘something wrong with this, because this was predictable’ and B) ‘real Trumpism - some more coherent, further out version of the same - has never been tried’. And, at least on X, the everything app, it’s ride-or-die B.

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That helps explain why cars do that so often in the cinema of the period. It was just what they did I guess.

I vaguely remembered the Corvair was the villain. My belated apologies to the Corvair! But I think the Corvair had problems too.

Ralph Nader attacked Detroit automakers for cars ‘unsafe at any speed’ & then trying to blame ‘the nut behind the wheel’. But at least Chevy didn’t literally design the Corvair to BE, itself, the nut behind the wheel of itself. Detroit didn’t make Stephen King’s Christine, then blame Christine.

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The Cabin in the Woods nearly predicted the future. But if it turned out to be AI. No plotspoilers.

John Holbo @jholbo.bsky.social · 9h

I had my first AI horror anxiety dream. Meh it was pretty much like the zombie ones I used to have since that was how the AI decided to get us.

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John Holbo @jholbo.bsky.social · 9h

Cool. I figured he was just some warlord. I stand corrected.

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I don’t know much about him or his works! I gather he was no Christian nor pious Jew.

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No one could mistake a Republican pol for a believing Christian but they might mistake a Democrat for one - all the love stuff - and thus be misled. They might fail to realize the essence of Christianity is right-wing grievance politics to get out the GOP vote. Trans panic, like Jesus preached.

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The Cyrus the Great-ification of the GOP. Christians excused Trump on the grounds that God sometimes makes us of bad pagans in mysterious ways. Now Dreher and Yang make that excuse for R's generally. GOP-style Christianity is so through-and-through unchristian that makes it less a threat to faith?

Dreher: "And THIS is why if I were in Texas, I would vote Paxton, despite it all."

Retweeting Wesley Yang: "Talarico is a politician, yes, but he is above all a preacher of a heretical creed that seeks to cannibalize Christianity from within and deploy divine authority on behalf of a successor catechism that seeks to equalize outcomes by race and brainwash confused children into being chemically castrated and dismembered as its chief sacrament. His politics are all in the service of this successor theology."

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Man that's some baby shoes never worn heaviness.

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Reposted by John Holbo

For men over the age of 40, Pelennor Attention Surplus Disorder can make ordinary life feel ... out of reach - but there is hope. Ask your doctor if Lesspelennor is for you. Life shouldn't feel like a siege in which your outer gate has been breeched. Side-effects include: corsairs.

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Pelennor Attention Surplus Disorder sufferers aren't all men. Try Eowynalone. Strong enough for a man - formulated for a woman dressed as a man.

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Discontinue treatment if you experience erections or free-flowing tears lasting over 6 hours.

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He's obviously joking-not joking. But he's also obviously not not-joking enough.

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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Robert Nozick: here are repugnant implications of my Experience Machine thought-experiment, to convince you hedonism can't be true. A genius: how many tokens per repugnant implication? I'll take the lot.

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Reposted by John Holbo

One thing that Ossoff does - thank god - is COMPLETELY abandon the weird liberal wisdom that you should never say your opponent’s name. He says “Mike Collins” about 30 times in this clip, not “my opponent” or some such, and the directness make his attacks exponentially more brutal.

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Time was you would say ‘we take corruption seriously, let the process play out, no rush to judgment.’ But that would send the wrong message today.

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This is one reason why he is so resentful. He thinks he’s the only one who is open about everything being a rip-off - & yet HE gets called corrupt! Normally we don’t think of mercantilism as paranoid-style politics but the ‘flouride is elites trying to poison you BUY GOLD’ impulse is longstanding.

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His use of ‘elite’ in this context is also telling. ‘Don’t buy stuff elites try to sell you’ is conservative epistemology. Trump is a mercantilist - but also a griftist about economics & epistemology. He thinks all ‘profitable’ communication and exchange is grifting. Elites grift by definition.