Zoe

dysphemistic treadmill

1d

Edited

"... punching is a good strategy for centrist...."

I think one key tenet of Yglesias-thought could be summarized as:

the advantage to centrists of having a ready supply of hippies for punching does not outweigh the disadvantage to the national party of having punchable hippies as its most visible public face.

blorpington

7h

Just like anything else, heavy users of Catholicism sometimes need to up their dosage to stay level. And since Vatican 2, the amount of Catholicism in a single service is simply not enough to meet the needs of those who are most profoundly effected.

Just ask yourself, what makes it easier for people to get their big-ass trucks? Of course you don’t want relentless data center construction to drive up the cost of residential electricity — that makes it harder to get a big-ass truck. But the construction of data centers plus the construction of new energy facilities to power them equals more and ... See more

Tom H

7h

The democratic party apparatus is largely run by lawyers with JDs. The politicians, many of the staffers, most of the non profit executives, and many of the thinkiest think tankers have JDs. It is central to law education in the US that policy legitimacy is derived from the process that creates the policy, there is no focus on outcomes. Its ... See more

Jackson

Jackson

9h

Liked by Ben Krauss

Broadly speaking, theory of power thinking is appealing because it allows you to avoid thinking through theories of change. Designing better policies is both difficult and involves significant tradeoffs that pit the interests of various groups in your coalition against each other. Sloganeering around billionaires... See more

srynerson

14h

Edited

It probably contributed somewhat, but I suspect another significant factor is senior decisionmakers simply becoming more savvy about social media. A lot of the stuff that happened with corporate activity in the 2014-2020 timeframe seems to me to have been driven by executives believing that any noticeable degree of criticism on s... See more

In other words, if you look at a group of non-college white men, the average is going to be a pretty hardcore Republican. And if you look at a group of African-American women, the average is going to be a pretty hardcore Democrat. But there are non-college white male Democrats and (a smaller number of) Black female Republicans. And in both groups, ... See more

City Of Trees

City Of Trees

9h

Liked by Ben Krauss

I'm really surprised that Matt didn't mention what I now believe to be the most compelling reason to root for lab grown meat to be commercially viable, and that is pandemic mitigation. With over 8 billion people, and several times more farm mammals and birds, so too has risen the number of mutations t... See more

GuyInPlace

19h

I don't have issues with elected officials saying performative stuff to connect with their constituents. But the discourse on "elites" really has become it's own weird entity disconnected from reality. We're at the point that the characters on The Office would be considered elites because they work in an office, some have college degre... See more