Nate Bowling
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natebowling.com
Nate Bowling
@natebowling.com
Teaching Political Science and World History in Abu Dhabi — Skeets mainly about the Seattle Sounders, the state of the world, and my generalized grumpiness

https://buttondown.com/natebowling
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If you're new to Bluesky, I made Starter Pack with past guests on my podcast, Nerd Farmer, that are on here. There's a heap of authors, journalists, academics & educators, and folks from the civic scene in the PNW.

go.bsky.app/L57tdFK
Nerd Farmer Podcast Guests
Join the conversation
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Reposted by Nate Bowling
You can do a lot locally with a dedicated group of 15 to 40 people. Regular people should be thinking at that scale rather than at the scale of thousands.
December 27, 2025 at 5:04 AM
Shout-out to the crew at the Mildred Street Taco Bell in Tacoma. Y'all held it down with that ¢99 Nacho Supreme back in high school.
Just realized Taco Bell is offering a $5 / $7 / $9 menu

They used to offer a $.59 / $.79 / $.99 menu

America is a failed experiment
December 26, 2025 at 3:32 AM
I spent a chunk of Christmas Eve helping my niece set up her first Roth IRA.

VT & chill, start em young.
December 25, 2025 at 6:23 AM
Please explain to me how and why podcasts became a video medium?
December 25, 2025 at 4:03 AM
All the money for the programs we need: education, health care, transit, is sitting there in the hands of wealthy people and corporations thanks to tax cut, after tax cut, after tax cut since 1980
YIKES! Why are tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy few costing us BILLIONS in lost revenue that could’ve gone to our public schools, child care, food banks and farmers markets, and infrastructure?

It’s time for a change, North Carolina. #LoveNCFundNC
December 24, 2025 at 6:35 PM
Reposted by Nate Bowling
Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing a text, writing an email, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing since the dawn of time.
December 23, 2025 at 8:24 PM
There's a quiet crisis afoot in the philanthropic community.

Foundations and funders are pulling back drastically from programs and not-for-profits that may bring scorn and scrutiny from the President and his DOJ.
My biggest takeaway from this conversation is that the administration's current war on philanthropy and not-for-profits is ultimately a war on the communities they serve.

open.spotify.com/episode/38PC...
Attacks on Philanthropy and Not-for-Profits – Cole Leiter, Americans Against Government Censorship – #254
open.spotify.com
December 23, 2025 at 8:04 PM
I want to see Seattle return to an Oba-Duece two forward setup with Jordan playing the Dempsey role.
December 23, 2025 at 6:27 PM
Reposted by Nate Bowling
CBS paid the president of the United States millions in bribe money and now they censor news reports so it does not annoy him. I don’t know how much plainer we can put this.
December 22, 2025 at 12:14 PM
My biggest takeaway from this conversation is that the administration's current war on philanthropy and not-for-profits is ultimately a war on the communities they serve.

open.spotify.com/episode/38PC...
Attacks on Philanthropy and Not-for-Profits – Cole Leiter, Americans Against Government Censorship – #254
open.spotify.com
December 23, 2025 at 5:01 AM
Turning to the journalistically compromised Washington Post for coverage of the newly compromised CBS News is a choice.
Here’s a gift link to this stunner Washpost story, quoting the 60 Minutes correspondent on the CECOT story, who accuses Bari Weiss of spiking the piece all because the Trump Administration wouldn’t comment.

“Government silence is a statement, not a VETO.”

wapo.st/3YL4T3D
‘60 Minutes’ correspondent says CBS’s Bari Weiss abruptly pulled segment on Trump deportations
CBS News pulled a ‘60 Minutes’ segment about a prison in El Salvador one day before it was set to air because the Trump administration declined to participate.
wapo.st
December 22, 2025 at 5:53 PM
A random Redditer with the precise explanation of our historical moment
December 22, 2025 at 1:28 AM
I really love how European and Canadian universities are scooping up US-based scholars and experts.

Go be free, y'all!
Me and @runestahl.bsky.social are hiring a future PhD fellow to study climate and class

www.cbs.dk/om-cbs/job-o...
www.cbs.dk
December 20, 2025 at 11:51 PM
Alexander isak is going to be the end of me
December 20, 2025 at 7:01 PM
Having aging parents is really hard. No one tells you about it or how to navigate it but it's just really, really hard.
December 19, 2025 at 11:08 PM
Today is a good day to sit down with your older loved ones to explain the concept of malware.

It's an even better day to remove unwanted and harmful apps from their devices.
December 18, 2025 at 9:48 PM
Any users out there that wants to browse in peace, and actually find what they're looking for, and don't have to worry about some AI chatbot trying to pop up on every page, summarizing articles... come to Death Row.
December 17, 2025 at 2:49 AM
There's the veteran central mid.

If Dotson is healthy that's good depth next to CR7. Let's see what else CW has planned.

bsky.app/profile/soun...
They're going to have to sign a veteran CM. There's no way Snyder can fill all the JP, Leyva, and potentially Obed minutes.

I'm skeptical about Arriola and Georgi soaking up all Paul's minutes.

I'm also skeptical JM will be healthy all season. If you're gonna deal 🫎, you need depth at FWD.
December 17, 2025 at 12:02 AM
Reposted by Nate Bowling
The demand from people spending money needs to be there in the first place.

We’ve redistributed massive amounts of wealth upwards, and we’re all poorer for it.

@natebowling.com wrote about this the other day and you should all read it.

buttondown.com/natebowling/...
Where’d All the Money Go?
The $80 trillion wealth drain and where money for substantial public programs may be hiding.
buttondown.com
December 16, 2025 at 11:47 PM
Ladies & gents, for the next eleven days you're gonna get my rants in primetime.

International arrivals at SEA continues to be dog water.
December 16, 2025 at 9:24 PM
Reposted by Nate Bowling
Donald Trump has instructed the entire FBI to prioritize finding ways to bring charges against anti-fascists and other activists. Any FBI agent who wants to advance his career now has an incentive to set up naïve kids for an entrapment case.

Please read about entrapment and how to protect yourself.
December 15, 2025 at 6:59 PM
There's a woman in the airport lounge in her wedding dress and I'm kinda here for it. Got your full money's worth, sis.
December 16, 2025 at 4:09 AM
I'd argue digital piracy is a market response to "price" being higher than "value"

People largely stopped pirating music when affordable streaming came online

Film piracy plummeted when Netflix was introduced but began to rise again as streaming fragmented and then enshittified
Pirating media isn't cool. It's theft. If you want more of what you consume...pay for it. If you don't want to pay online providers, buy physical media or go to a library.
not to come off as all "i'm cool cuz i steal" but this is actually a good encapsulation of why i pirate so much media. do i want to pay for something and still get spam and ads? or do i want to connect my computer to some guy in brazil's computer so i can get the movie i want for free no catch
December 15, 2025 at 4:06 PM
Sounders off-season so far

Out (of consequence at least):
JP (478 minutes)
Kent (540)
Leyva (699)
Bell (1324)
Likely Rothrock (2174)

In:
🦗
(In case you can't tell, that's a cricket)
December 15, 2025 at 2:49 AM
Reposted by Nate Bowling
Read this to see numbers bigger than you can imagine.
There's a roughly $80 trillion hole in the US economy, that began growing in 1975, as a result of serial tax cuts for the wealthy and stagnated wages for workers.

It's possibly the greatest act of theft in human history.

buttondown.com/natebowling/...
Where’d All the Money Go?
The $80 trillion wealth drain and where money for substantial public programs may be hiding.
buttondown.com
December 14, 2025 at 4:36 PM