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r_ephemeral

@rephemeral.bsky.social
506 followers 311 following 1.2K posts

“Everyone knows that in modern communication, messages compete for attention and cancel each other out. And that they are picked out for reasons that need have nothing to do with their truth.” —Bernard Williams

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Meredith Rose @mrose.ink · 29/09/2026
...and, importantly, eliminating the Office of Technology Assessment, or OTA. What was the OTA? It was a small office, housed entirely within Congress, whose entire job was understanding complex technology issues and writing reports to explain them to legislators. 3/
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r_ephemeral @rephemeral.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
hard to find good help these days, in the world of GOP apparatchiks
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r_ephemeral @rephemeral.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
hmm, clearly a woke out-of-touch coastal elite who could never win except in the bluest areas
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Patrick Daugherty @rotopat.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Someone whose wealth is derived from a grandparent born in *1855* is no longer spending $200 million on politics this cycle because they're upset voter suppression isn't happening. Good system
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
As @noamlupu.bsky.social has documented, we consistently do not see working class representation in elections. So policymakers systematically lack first hand experience of the policies they impose on the poor. That gap in knowledge is often filled by stereotypes. bsky.app/profile/prin...
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r_ephemeral @rephemeral.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
just as—following the GOP’s previous period of cult of personality—with W. circa 2008 the Democrats must make the stench stick this time
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[Christopher M. Federico] @chrispps.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I'd go further: at this point, the NYT and other mainstream journalistic outlets -- given their business-related need to continuously ship both-sides polarization porn -- are doing way more than El-Sayed is to keep Piker relevant and make him a more influential figure than he otherwise might be
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hilzoy @hilzoy.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I’m thinking of the 1950s, when there were actual people who defended STALIN on the grounds that, hey, you were either on board with humanity’s glorious future or you were a reactionary.
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Urban Land Rent 🇸🇴🚰 @urbanlandrent.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Germany’s political leadership believed in esoteric theories around racial supremacy and ultimately believed good outcomes would naturally flow from Aryan’s natural superiority. This is the same vibe the GOP has in 2026.
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mathletic.bsky.social @mathletic.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
This should haunt Yggy for the rest of his career
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r_ephemeral @rephemeral.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
the human loss remains beyond our poor power to add or detract; in political terms, this from Paul Krugman on the 10th anniversary still rings true archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blog...
Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?

Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.
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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
"What are we, fucking Immanuel Kant??" the true universal maxim of philosophy
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Schooley @schooley.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Note on pieces like these, not only is there no suggestion that Republicans should distance themselves from him, there's no hint that there's a reason to. No recap of his CSAM machine. No inflammatory racist quotes. No mention of the DOGE death toll. No history of his fabulist quotes.
axios.com
Exclusive: Musk plans massive push for GOP in midterms
Musk is resuscitating his America PAC, which spent more than $260 million in 2024.
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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
The entire reactionary centrist case is that leftist politicians must distance themselves from Piker to neutralize him as a electoral issue. But when they *do* distance themselves, reactionary centrists still write articles making the link and criticizing their exact wording.
Several leading Democrats, including Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, issued statements denouncing Piker’s ugly warning to the Jews as a barely veiled anti-Semitic threat. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat running for Michigan’s other Senate seat, trod more carefully. He issued a statement “in response to Hasan Piker’s comments” affirming that “all Americans deserve the right to advocate for what they believe without fear of violence” and denouncing anti-Semitism, but the statement itself did not say whether Piker’s comment qualified as anti-Semitism. El-Sayed instead dismissed Piker as a distraction, saying at a recent rally, “The effort to make this race about a streamer in L.A. is actually kind of laughable.”
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Pardesi @pardesi2.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
This is it!
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John C @badsocialism.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
Cynicism has poisoned our souls so gravely that we cannot even speak out ambitions without qualification and contrition.
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r_ephemeral @rephemeral.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
just ran a news search for the past few weeks, found 557 hits for Hasan Piker and for Peter Oberacker—an actual officeholder!—a total of 11
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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
There is no plan. There is no funding model.
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Sam @samd.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
important reminder that donating to swing seat state legislature candidates is the best way to stop these fascist weirdos
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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
a favorite bit of writing on Dolly: David Cantwell on "Coat of Many Colors" "I am poor, but I will be more than that. I *am* more than that. Despite your contempt, the things I love are worth loving."
Coat of Many Colors is not a documentary or even a memory, but a story she's telling herself. The adult Parton presents this childhood story says a lot about the survival tactics of poor kids generally, and of Dolly Parton specifically. It might, for example, explain Parton's flamboyant stage dress through the years. More substantially, it tells how a poor kid from the Blue Ridge Mountains has to make sense of life if she has ambitions, as we know Dolly Parton most certainly did. ...I am poor, but I will be more than that. I am more than that. Despite your contempt, the things I love are worth loving. And since my mother slaved over this amazing coat for me, I must be worth loving, too."
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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
I'll go another step further: the research shows that BLM protests causally shifted Americans' racial attitudes leftward and helped Democrats in the 2020 election link.springer.com/article/10.1...
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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Congrats, again, everyone on our long National Conversation™️ about “polarization” & wHiCH pArTy hAs mOvEd fUrThEr FrOm tHe pOLitiCAl CeNtEr iN tHe 21st cEnTuRy
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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Structural things are structural, & it really may not matter who the nominees are if Democratic enthusiasm/anti-Trump-driven turnout is at these levels in November.
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Ian Jamison @ianjamison.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
I have yet to see a scoldy, “Wisconsin is purple so Ds MUST nominate ideological centrists” take that grapples with Ron Johnson’s existence or Tiffany’s nom. If it only applies one way, you’re either arguing that Wisconsin is a red state (nope) or there’s a hole in your argument (yup)
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Joe Flynn @chinajoeflynn.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Trump's entire cabinet - even Hegseth! - begging him not to play "Macho Man" during the press conference, and Trump ignoring them.
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Xander O’Connor @xanderoconnor.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
“I’m personally putting it in a news magazine that I’m mad” is the actual job of anti-woke and/or reactionary centrist opinion writers!
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r_ephemeral @rephemeral.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
popularism with real punch
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Bat-prillia @aprillia.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
End of an era.
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Paul Rosenberg @paulrosenberg.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
“My research with Adam Bonica shows that, all else equal, progressive and moderate candidates perform about equally well in general elections,” @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social told me. 5/10
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G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 06/08/2026
Twitter is a reality distortion field that stereotypes partisans as extremists and pushes the electorate right. All algorithms do this to an extent, but X is incredibly pernicious in that it's explicitly designed to do this. More on the algo here www.gelliottmorris.com/p/you-should...
gelliottmorris.com
You should quit social media for good
Platforms optimized for engagement warp our politics, erode attention, and harm our wellbeing. Here’s how I minimize time on the (anti‑)social web.
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Ed Burmila @edburmila.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Every time you see a meltdown remember that Chuck Schumer got over it in four hours
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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Right wing Twitter has basically become a form of soap opera fandom for fascists. Did you hear who had a nasty falling out? Did you hear who is secretly gay? Did you hear who threatened to kill who? Be sure to tune in tomorrow!
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Jessica Price @delafina777.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
I will reiterate: Christians in the West evangelize in public for the same reason men catcall. Neither is trying to persuade you; both are reminding you that the public sphere belongs to them and you exist in it at their sufferance.
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Gerry Doyle @mgerrydoyle.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
the problem here isn't military, it's the way the military was used. what was the desired outcome? could that be achieved by long-range strike alone? (answer to the first question is a series of question marks, answer to the second is "no")
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Patrick "Inverted Vibe Curve" Blanchfield @patblanchfield.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
you know its the atlantic when questions are (1) framed as entirely innocent philosophical hypotheticals but (2) also bravely iconoclastic truth-telling yet stand (3) entirely divorced from reality and (4) affirm the worst impulses while (5) coinciding with programs of true political evil
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Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
It's trivially easy to throw out the names of participants in these processes—social movements, civil society, interest groups, political parties, media. But there's no theory I'm aware of that orders their interactions, enumerates their motives, or traces issues' developmental stages.
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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
The only real reason to find it implausible he’d attempt this is “C’mon, this is America, we don’t do that here,” which has thus far been an absolutely worthless heuristic for predicting Trump’s actions.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 16/07/2026
“public conversation about children and technology focuses on regulating how long children themselves spend in front of screens. Our results show that this framing is incomplete… When adults engage more with the internet…quality and quantity of…interactions with young children is likely to decline”
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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
This keeps happening, the conflation of people disapproving of Dems being too weak and unprincipled with disapproving of Dems for being too leftwing. This is part of how a lot of Gen Z distrust for Dems gets recast into Gen Z being rightwing
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Maureen Johnson @maureenjohnsonbooks.com · 13/07/2026
JKR and her new org apparently helped get the new Amnesty International report on how TERF organizations destroy lives taken down from their site. Well, guess what? The Streisand Effect is real. Here's the entire report in a thread. Read it. Share it.
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r_ephemeral @rephemeral.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Bob Inglis saw what was animating GOP elites & voters over a decade and a half ago, as he lost his primary by over 30 points to Trey Gowdy www.motherjones.com/politics/201...
I sat down, and they said on the back of your Social Security card, there’s a number. That number indicates the bank that bought you when you were born based on a projection of your life’s earnings, and you are collateral. We are all collateral for the banks. I have this look like, “What the heck are you talking about?” I’m trying to hide that look and look clueless. I figured clueless was better than argumentative. So they said, “You don’t know this?! You are a member of Congress, and you don’t know this?!” And I said, “Please forgive me. I’m just ignorant of these things.” And then of course, it turned into something about the Federal Reserve and the Bilderbergers and all that stuff. And now you have the feeling of anti-Semitism here coming in, mixing in. Wow.
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Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
you may have seen this already, but...becoming an independent pundit in the substack space creates massive financial incentives to present yourself as a lone truth teller defying a benighted and biased establishment.
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 09/07/2026
It also has the side effect of punishing Democrats for having moral standards and giving a shit. In our current information and political environment, decency is an anchor.
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Petter Törnberg @pettertornberg.com · 07/07/2026
‘Polarization’ has become the master concept for diagnosing our current democratic crisis. But this is not polarization. It is the radicalization of the political right. By misdiagnosing it, we risk becoming complicit in the crisis. 🧵 Just out in Perspectives on Politics doi.org/10.1017/S153...
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r_ephemeral @rephemeral.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
“moi, j’ai les mains sales. jusqu’au coudes. je les ai plongées dans la merde et le sang” —Sartre
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Julia Blough @jcblough.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Considering there are 500,000 NCAA athletes and <10 of them are trans, and not all athletes are on scholarship, I'd say your daughter is more likely to be struck by a meteor than lose out to a trans girl on a scholarship.
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Joshua Foust 🪖🎮 @joshuafoust.com · 01/07/2026
You may not think it is persuasive, but it is driven by research showing that headline wording affects news perception. This actually does matter, even if you don’t want it to. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
doi.org
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
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Puppet @greenjoel.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Deterrence works by making the cost uncertainly high. Coercion teaches the adversary exactly what costs they face and allows them to take control of the transaction by choosing to pay the price when that price is suitable. Trump surrendered deterrence for bravado.
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
The main defense for the archipelago of US Gulf bases was deterrence. Iran (or whoever) won’t fire, except maybe small and symbolic, because if they do then the US will unleash massive strikes. Except Trump did that unprovoked, so Iran didn’t hold back. (Also, insufficient US air defense on land.)
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