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manisnotabird.bsky.social

@manisnotabird.bsky.social
213 followers 484 following 589 posts
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Reposted by @manisnotabird.bsky.social
Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
I don't think the Republican Party can "go back to normal" but if it did, that just means being a vehicle for undermining government and concentrating wealth, enveloped in a bunch of dishonest obfuscatory slop. Why yearn for something to return to the exact thing that fostered it
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dr. rich traditions, JD @helldude.bsky.social · 29/12/2025
look we're all making a big bet on AI! and if it pays off as big as we hope, well, it's going to make a handful of people super rich and you're going to lose your job but get to watch mickey mouse fuck geralt from the witcher. if it doesn't pay off well then you get to pay for the bailouts
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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
This is the master key to deciphering contemporary debates about free speech. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/se...
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David Kaib @davidkaib.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
When people see a politician calibrating their position to what they think is most popular, it doesn’t win them over, it makes them think you’re a snake.
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Atrios @eschatonblog.com · 19/09/2026
Dems should run on 80-20 issues except the ones the rich people who pay me are on the 20 side
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Jesse Walker @notjessewalker.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Matthew Petti on military A.I.: "Artificial intelligence is a tool that makes its users more powerful—for better or for worse—and it's up to other people to rein them in."
reason.com
AI is already killing people—and governments are to blame
Military AI working as intended can also create a terrifying world, if its users are tasking AI to carry out malicious purposes.
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The Nerdskull @nerdskull.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I really do think that Democrats would be doing much, much better electorally if the democratic establishment hadn’t spent every single election cycle since Reagan dismissing and outright opposing every issue young people at the time have cared about. This is the main cause of voter apathy IMO.
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☀️ Jon Schwarz ☀️ @schwarz.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
It's interesting to see a former top Biden aide explain "No amount of public support in polling or public protest will influence how or when those in power drastically change Israel policy" — ie, he's just straight up saying the US is not a democracy. x.com/MichaelLaRos...
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Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Mamdani is a charismatic guy but I promise you anyone can replicate this. 1) Unapologetically use the government to help ordinary people; and 2) Tell them about it
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The New York Times @nytimes.com · 08/09/2026
New York City officials are making public more than 170,000 pages of documents related to the air quality around the World Trade Center site in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks. The records suggest that New Yorkers were told to return to the ground zero area before it was safe. nyti.ms/3UDZehm
Smoke rises from the ruins of the topped World Trade Center towers. A headline reads: "After 9/11, Documents Suggest New Yorkers Were Misled About Air Quality" Photo by Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
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Graham J. @grahamj.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
What are we even doing here man www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
Last September, Israel Ambassador Yechiel Leiter met with Fetterman in his office, and suggested an alternative: Fetterman could write an op-ed explaining why he continued to support Israel, according to people familiar with the matter. 

Fetterman agreed, and told Leiter he would write the submission based on any points the ambassador sent over, according to these people. A few days later, embassy staff sent over drafted points for Fetterman to consider. 

Fetterman staffers decided not to tell him about it, out of concern that drafting an op-ed based on suggestions from the Israeli embassy, under the senator’s name, risked violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. A spokeswoman for Israel’s embassy declined to comment.
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Patrick Monahan @pattymo.com · 05/09/2026
[“Guards, seize him” voice] Grok, do a vulgar roast
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Jonathan Cohn @jonathancohn.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
You can tell that progressive ideas are popular because corporate Democrats always pretend to be progressive come election season! www.levernews.com/the-corporat...
levernews.com
The Corporate Dem Asking Super PACs To Call Him A Progressive
Seth Moulton once called progressive populism a recipe for losing. Now he’s asking Wall Street financiers to help him claim the progressive mantle.
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Kath Barbadoro @kathbarbadoro.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
when people said we needed a "joe rogan of the left" i said anyone who approaches that has been and will continue to be condemned by the very people searching for that. they want a joe rogan of the center left and that is a contradiction in terms
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Atrios @eschatonblog.com · 27/08/2026
i do not think "populism" is a very useful word when people use it to mean both "right wing white nationalists" and "left wingers who want higher taxes on rich people and medicare for all"
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Revolving Door Project @revolvingdoordc.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Centrists' fake moral panic about Hasan Piker is really about one thing: cementing corporate donors' control over the Democratic Party. prospect.org/2026/05/12/t...
prospect.org
Third Way or the Highway - The American Prospect
The centrist outfit’s latest foray into the culture wars isn’t about a streamer—it’s about entrenching oligarch control of influence and electoral infrastructure.
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Eoin Higgins @eoinhiggins.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
“From the beginning, Russiagate was used by a shellshocked liberal establishment to explain away Trump’s victory in a way that didn’t implicate the Democrats.”
theintercept.com
RIP to the Russiagate Liberals
With Alex Vindman and George Conway’s losses, Democratic voters are forcefully rejecting the notion that Russia is to blame for America’s ills.
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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Oh no! Well, I’m sure everyone tried their best, and that’s what counts
The Telegraph Y @Telegraph
X.com
The criminal investigation into whether Lord Mandelson passed confidential government information to Jeffrey Epstein is at risk of collapse, The Telegraph can disclose.
Detectives at Scotland Yard believe it is increasingly unlikely that the US department of justice (Do) will hand over the unredacted Epstein files, which police believe may be needed to continue the investigation into the former Labour cabinet minister on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
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Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
After Ben-Gvir called to kill 40 Palestinians daily, pro-Israel groups & officials insist he doesn’t represent Israel. But he’s the head of Israeli national security. And he’s had the job since 2022 (minus two months). And, in fact, between October 2023 - 2025, Israel killed 92 Palestinians daily.
zeteo.com
Pro-Israel Groups Want You to Believe That Israel’s National Security Minister… Doesn’t Represent Israel
Parts of the pro-Israel lobby are calling for the far-right Itamar Ben-Gvir to be ousted from government, after he called for the mass murder of Palestinians. So what will they do when he isn’t?
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Taylor Lorenz @taylorlorenz.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Two cops in SF types the wrong license plate number into their patrol car's computer, arrested the wrong person for car theft. Then the SF DA's office spent a year prosecuting him before he ultimately killed himself.
nytimes.com
A Driver’s Fatal Spiral After a Police Officer’s Typo
Police thought they had caught a car thief in San Francisco. Instead, they had mistyped his license plate number, a watchdog agency said, then arrested him with excessive force.
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dr. rich traditions, JD @helldude.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
so the israelis tricked him into stuffing himself into a box?
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Jared Holt @jaredlholt.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
The "centrist" think tank Third Way is looking to pay someone between $140,000 and $150,000 to spend their days trying to dig up dirt on DSA members. They're trying to sell this gig as "anti-extremism" work, which I find completely disgusting.
from job listing:

As the Director of Anti-Extremism, a typical day might include…

Assembling and updating a database of the DSA’s most extreme ideas and statements and a repository of voting records, affiliations, and issue positions to make available to allies and partners;
Leading public opinion research to identify and test the contrasts that move base voters away from these extreme candidates;
Overseeing the development of memos, talking points, rapid response materials, and other products that make the case against these extreme forces in American politics;
Promoting and marketing our research and materials to ensure they reach decisionmakers quickly, repeatedly, and at scale through a coordinated distribution infrastructure;
Recruiting and arming a group of young, diverse spokespeople to fight the DSA from a center-left perspective and assembling a broad coalition of organizational partners to make the case against extremism;
Running an earned media program to create a drumbeat of our message in op-eds, television appearances, podcasts, and traditional and digital media engagement.
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Bill @bill-of-lefts.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
If you don’t believe that Donetsk belongs to Russia, you are unlawfully discriminating against Russian-American students
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Josh Sternberg @joshsternberg.com · 03/08/2026
There are 7 PR people for every journalist in the US. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
chart showing 280k pr specialists to 40k 'news analysts, reporters, and journalists'
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Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 02/08/2026
New: We found 50 cops who misused Flock cameras and other license-plate readers for personal purposes, often to spy on their girlfriends or ex-wives. He "watched every single move I made. ... Who do you turn the chief of police in to?" wapo.st/3S6rTuo
wapo.st
She left her ex. He secretly tracked her through a network of policing cameras.
Flock’s array of license-plate cameras was built to fight crime. But at least 50 law enforcement officers were charged with or accused of misusing it and other systems.
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Jesspooka Kant 🎃 @jessdkant.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
“The FBI has signaled that its new effort to brand political opponents of the president as terrorists has only just begun, and that soon the power of large language models will be brought to bear on the effort to flag and tag political dissidents en masse.”
reason.com
Minority report: FBI seeks AI for political watch list
Documents show the FBI seeking AI tools to flag Americans before they act, as the terror watchlist's focus moves toward domestic dissent.
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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
There is simply no ambiguity in what Elon Musk is arguing and endorsing here.
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Brandy Zadrozny @brandyzadrozny.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Get in, there’s a new secret political influence campaign paying people to post. This time, a network targeting people in Michigan. First paid to post about how hard it is to afford groceries and gas, the accounts have gone hard in recent days, supporting Haley Stevens. www.ms.now/news/haley-s...
ms.now
Secret paid influencer campaign backing Stevens floods Michigan Senate race
Rep. Haley Stevens and the Senate Democratic PAC said they were not involved in the effort to pay for user-generated content endorsing her.
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Just 10 billionaires have already poured over $600 MILLION into this year's midterms. In the entire 2008 presidential cycle, the last election before Citizens United, total billionaire spending was $16 million. If you're wondering what the real threat to "election integrity" is, it's Big Money.
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Gary Alexander @garyalexander.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
I think instead of fantasizing about punishing people in red states, many of whom are just as marginalized as anyone else except without state-level protections you take for granted, we should fantasize about punishing politicians and oligarchs with actual power. Just an idea.
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Travis @someforeignfield.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Unacceptable authoritarianism: being too nice about China in a twitter post or on a podcast Acceptable liberalism: UAE as major non-NATO ally, $30 billion to Israel for weapons in Gaza, helping Pakistani military coup PM, etc.
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Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 19/06/2026
A 22-year-old just got a $30 million investment valuing his new futures exchange at $300 million. He graduated Stanford, wrote for Thiel's Stanford Review, interned at Andreessen Horowitz. His mom? Pro-crypto Sen. Gillibrand, D-NY. Bipartisan capture in full bloom. fortune.com/2026/06/18/t...
fortune.com
Son of pro-crypto New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand raises $30 million to launch a derivatives exchange | Fortune
Lux Capital led the investment, which values the Stanford graduate’s exchange at $300 million.
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 24/06/2026
Bill Gates says Epstein sought to blackmail him over extramarital affairs
theguardian.com
Bill Gates says Epstein sought to blackmail him over extramarital affairs
Transcript of congressional testimony shows Microsoft founder spoke of ‘veiled’ threats made by late sex offender The Microsoft founder Bill Gates told US members of Congress that the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had sought to “blackmail” him over his extramarital affairs, according to a transcript of the testimony. The tech pioneer testified behind closed doors before the House oversight committee on 10 June regarding his friendship with Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 as he awaited trial for sex crimes. Continue reading...
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Chase Madar @madar.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Representatives Goldman and Espaillat really should have moderated their extreme views on Israel-Palestine policy, views which are increasingly out of step with their constituents and American voters in general. The price of not getting out of your “ideological bubble”
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David_j_roth @davidjroth.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Like many people who have worked in politics for decades, I am baffled and upset to see candidates who say they are going to try to make things better defeating candidates who say they are trying to make it more or less like it was in the years before things tipped over into Oaf-Style Fascism.
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Sludge @sludge.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
NEW: Palantir has gone on a Democratic lobbyist hiring spree, picking up Hakeem Jeffries' former chief of staff, a top DCCC fundraiser, and a former Democratic senator to push its interests in Washington DC. readsludge.com/2026/06/22/p...
readsludge.com
Palantir Goes on a Democratic Lobbyist Hiring Spree
The ICE contractor has hired Hakeem Jeffries' former chief of staff and a former Democratic senator as it builds out a Democratic lobbying operation on Capitol Hill.
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The American Prospect @prospect.org · 22/06/2026
New disclosures reveal how the groups are also transferring money to longtime PACs with historic ties to the Democratic establishment and center-left coalitions in Congress. buff.ly/XW0XPDX
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Gary Alexander @garyalexander.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Starmer was successful in the only way people who wanted him most care about: shanking Corbyn and purging the left.
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The Serfs (youtube.com/theserfstv) @theserfstv.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
His administration is actively deporting or jailing people who have said less
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Jesse @requiemarm.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
oh no a Jewish Democrat is going to lose his house seat to a *checks notes* Jewish Democrat
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W.E.D.em Boyz @leftistwonk.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
People operationalize democracy as “X institution does/does not perform Y function,“ but democracy is ultimately about whether the demos has their preferences reflected in governance. The tie between public preferences and policy was severed well before Trump.
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Sridhar Ramesh @radishharmers.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
The defining principle of our society is that people who were lucky during the dot com boom or Web 2.0 should have vast and ever-growing individual power over the entire world. The only acceptable check on their power is their squabbles with each other.
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Mark Follman @markfollman.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
This story doesn’t have a happy ending
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Will Bunch @willbunch.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Oh my God
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Eric Linus Kaplan @ericlinuskaplan.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
M: I made bilions selling software that lets people go on the internet. E: Great. Thanks. Good on you. M: Now I have some ideas to share about the future of civilization. E: Huh. Cool, I guess. Have you run them by anybody? M: You're not listening! I sold software so people can go on the internet!
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Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
White House rolls out an obvious distraction and here’s the most powerful Democrat in the country clapping like a seal
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