abyss watcher
@joemamaa24.bsky.social
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“Everyone needs mutual aid” - I should hope not because it’s usually not going to be there and its total capacity to support the needy is very low. Part of what makes us progressive is that we understand these kinds of charitable private systems of support are insufficient, and often actively bad.
December 27, 2025 at 12:49 PM
“Everyone needs mutual aid” - I should hope not because it’s usually not going to be there and its total capacity to support the needy is very low. Part of what makes us progressive is that we understand these kinds of charitable private systems of support are insufficient, and often actively bad.
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Literally did the meme lol
December 26, 2025 at 10:51 PM
Literally did the meme lol
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If you let corruption fester then it creates a very bad incentive structure in which anyone who isn't corrupt is a sucker and once everyone is corrupt, everyone is guilty, and enforcement of anti-corruption laws simply becomes a mechanism for punishing anyone who falls from favor
December 25, 2025 at 3:16 AM
If you let corruption fester then it creates a very bad incentive structure in which anyone who isn't corrupt is a sucker and once everyone is corrupt, everyone is guilty, and enforcement of anti-corruption laws simply becomes a mechanism for punishing anyone who falls from favor
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The people who showed up to vote for a write-in dem candidate in a Trump+50 special election 2 days before Christmas are democracy's strongest soldiers.
Polls closed in SC at 7 PM ET. Results here: www.enr-scvotes.org/SC/125770/we...
Still *super* early, but in the uncontested #SD21 (around Trump+50), write-ins are currently getting 42% of the vote against Republican Lee Bright.
Still *super* early, but in the uncontested #SD21 (around Trump+50), write-ins are currently getting 42% of the vote against Republican Lee Bright.
December 24, 2025 at 12:34 AM
The people who showed up to vote for a write-in dem candidate in a Trump+50 special election 2 days before Christmas are democracy's strongest soldiers.
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deliberately writing a paper where the only ethical move is to fail you so you can get a shortcut to the right-wing grievance circuit and victimize some random trans and trans-friendly academics on the way up
Worth noting that the student admits that she just threw the thing together in 30 minutes without reading the paper she was supposed to be responding to.
December 23, 2025 at 5:49 PM
deliberately writing a paper where the only ethical move is to fail you so you can get a shortcut to the right-wing grievance circuit and victimize some random trans and trans-friendly academics on the way up
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The GOP "healthcare plan," if they ever come out with one, is going to be "Peloton is 80% off and only the rich get chemo."
The point of RFKism is that healthcare is a consumer choice, and the right choice is Instagram woo. If you didn't go to the Equinox juice bar the ensuing cancer is your fault.
The point of RFKism is that healthcare is a consumer choice, and the right choice is Instagram woo. If you didn't go to the Equinox juice bar the ensuing cancer is your fault.
Another new a16z idea: giving letters of medical necessity to anybody so they can commit tax fraud
Between funding social media bot farms, crypto, and prediction markets, this company represents the new era where tech is mostly just for fraud
Between funding social media bot farms, crypto, and prediction markets, this company represents the new era where tech is mostly just for fraud
December 23, 2025 at 5:48 PM
The GOP "healthcare plan," if they ever come out with one, is going to be "Peloton is 80% off and only the rich get chemo."
The point of RFKism is that healthcare is a consumer choice, and the right choice is Instagram woo. If you didn't go to the Equinox juice bar the ensuing cancer is your fault.
The point of RFKism is that healthcare is a consumer choice, and the right choice is Instagram woo. If you didn't go to the Equinox juice bar the ensuing cancer is your fault.
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It's time to leave your lucrative office job and go work at a factory, where the robots have taken all of the jobs
Peter Navarro: "In an age of AI when all the white collar jobs are going away pretty damn quick, I think maybe it's a good time for people to think about having good blue collar jobs ... give tariffs a chance, because they're working"
December 23, 2025 at 3:54 PM
It's time to leave your lucrative office job and go work at a factory, where the robots have taken all of the jobs
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like, that doesn’t mean it’s legit, we don’t have enough information to know that, but nothing about the actual *content* of this letter seems out of character for epstein at all, this is what he did
December 23, 2025 at 7:45 AM
like, that doesn’t mean it’s legit, we don’t have enough information to know that, but nothing about the actual *content* of this letter seems out of character for epstein at all, this is what he did
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do i think epstein would have written an abuser out of the blue with whom he sympathized, bemoaning that trump was just as bad and lamenting how unfair it was? have you read any of his emails? of course i think that. guy was *constantly* writing to other notable people, and was *always* unsubtle.
one thing i will say is that i am no longer surprised by things that seem “too on the nose” when it comes to either trump or epstein. neither of these men have ever, in their entire lives, been subtle about anything.
December 23, 2025 at 7:34 AM
do i think epstein would have written an abuser out of the blue with whom he sympathized, bemoaning that trump was just as bad and lamenting how unfair it was? have you read any of his emails? of course i think that. guy was *constantly* writing to other notable people, and was *always* unsubtle.
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one thing i will say is that i am no longer surprised by things that seem “too on the nose” when it comes to either trump or epstein. neither of these men have ever, in their entire lives, been subtle about anything.
December 23, 2025 at 7:21 AM
one thing i will say is that i am no longer surprised by things that seem “too on the nose” when it comes to either trump or epstein. neither of these men have ever, in their entire lives, been subtle about anything.
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The Trump supporter who runs CBS news just killed a story about Trump’s favorite torture prison. Here’s why America has a liberal media bias problem.
December 22, 2025 at 3:03 AM
The Trump supporter who runs CBS news just killed a story about Trump’s favorite torture prison. Here’s why America has a liberal media bias problem.
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I'm 90% sure he pivoted to the right because they don't care about the sexual assault allegations
Exhibit #268 as to why you shouldn’t get too attached to “leftists” whose entire worldview is really just unfocused anti-establishment blathering
December 22, 2025 at 4:21 PM
I'm 90% sure he pivoted to the right because they don't care about the sexual assault allegations
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Given her background, I have no trouble at all believing that the issue is simply that she’s too green to understand how this sort of reporting actually works. “We must have comment” is actually the kind of kid playing dress up approach you’d expect from an amateur in this job.
One explanation for Bari killing the story is that she did so as a public act of fealty to the administration. But another is that, as an inexperienced journalist, she doesn’t understand that a refusal to go on the record is a kind of comment in and of itself
December 22, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Given her background, I have no trouble at all believing that the issue is simply that she’s too green to understand how this sort of reporting actually works. “We must have comment” is actually the kind of kid playing dress up approach you’d expect from an amateur in this job.
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not to excuse Weiss who owns this but I’ll be pretty surprised if there wasn’t a nasty call to an Ellison making clear that if this ran they could kiss WB goodbye
December 22, 2025 at 4:52 AM
not to excuse Weiss who owns this but I’ll be pretty surprised if there wasn’t a nasty call to an Ellison making clear that if this ran they could kiss WB goodbye
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These guys are not subtle about their political project so maybe it's time to take that seriously
JD Vance gets the biggest applause of his speech so far when he says "by the grace of God we always will be a Christian nation"
December 22, 2025 at 12:56 AM
These guys are not subtle about their political project so maybe it's time to take that seriously
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Can we just step back from a moment from the idea that poling and politics should tell us what ideal policy is? I feel like these people have surrendered the ability to have a non-polls-based opinion to the extent where they treat "being less than maximally popular" as the same as "being wrong."
when we said “defer electoral strategy to the actual politicians running for actual offices” we meant “after calculating wins above replacement somehow”
December 21, 2025 at 12:53 AM
Can we just step back from a moment from the idea that poling and politics should tell us what ideal policy is? I feel like these people have surrendered the ability to have a non-polls-based opinion to the extent where they treat "being less than maximally popular" as the same as "being wrong."
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I genuinely do not believe left vs. center is a useful heuristic and especially not right now because what matters is fight vs. don't fight and all of the substack guys who like to talk about WAR as a metric for evaluating politicians are on team "don't fight if our data says it's not 95/5"
On the other hand, WAR for a +13 Dem seat is supposed to be used to not run up the score but to shave the margin and elect someone more to the left, not the center!
But this just keeps going to show those guys don't understand what politics actually is and why it exists.
But this just keeps going to show those guys don't understand what politics actually is and why it exists.
December 21, 2025 at 3:12 AM
I genuinely do not believe left vs. center is a useful heuristic and especially not right now because what matters is fight vs. don't fight and all of the substack guys who like to talk about WAR as a metric for evaluating politicians are on team "don't fight if our data says it's not 95/5"
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I don’t like moderates but understand them to be a necessary evil.
I hate Vichy senators like Sinema and Fetterman more than republicans though.
I hate Vichy senators like Sinema and Fetterman more than republicans though.
honestly totally fine with ideological moderates, they just need to be good soldiers, like that is what i care about
December 20, 2025 at 10:52 PM
I don’t like moderates but understand them to be a necessary evil.
I hate Vichy senators like Sinema and Fetterman more than republicans though.
I hate Vichy senators like Sinema and Fetterman more than republicans though.
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Biden ran a point and a half ahead of House Dems generally. But more relevant: you know what winning a seat by 13 points instead of 8 points gets you? Absolutely nothing. Even if Casten traded away a few points he didn't need anyway in order to go further on whatever issue, that's rational behavior!
when we said “defer electoral strategy to the actual politicians running for actual offices” we meant “after calculating wins above replacement somehow”
December 20, 2025 at 10:30 PM
Biden ran a point and a half ahead of House Dems generally. But more relevant: you know what winning a seat by 13 points instead of 8 points gets you? Absolutely nothing. Even if Casten traded away a few points he didn't need anyway in order to go further on whatever issue, that's rational behavior!
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The Independent has identified Eric Lendrum as the DHS PR officer responsible for a relentless flood of social media posts on DHS pages using Nazis memes, slogans and images. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...
DHS speechwriter linked to hateful social accounts
‘They are not migrants. They are not ‘undocumented.’ They are an invading army. The largest invasion in American history,’ DHS speechwriter writes on X
www.independent.co.uk
August 18, 2025 at 9:45 PM
The Independent has identified Eric Lendrum as the DHS PR officer responsible for a relentless flood of social media posts on DHS pages using Nazis memes, slogans and images. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...
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2. What he says about climate is patently false (more on that later) but to the extent he's saying "politicians shouldn't do the right thing unless it's popular", I'd note only that that is a toddlers view of leadership. If the popular kids are mean, should you be mean?
December 20, 2025 at 3:03 PM
2. What he says about climate is patently false (more on that later) but to the extent he's saying "politicians shouldn't do the right thing unless it's popular", I'd note only that that is a toddlers view of leadership. If the popular kids are mean, should you be mean?
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I am pretty definitionally moderate: regulated capitalism, free (import/export) markets, robust welfare system (not fully sold on Medicare for all), plus gun owner, Catholic, LGBT. I could continue
It is also my only goal in life at this point to see the complete destruction of the Republican Party
It is also my only goal in life at this point to see the complete destruction of the Republican Party
honestly totally fine with ideological moderates, they just need to be good soldiers, like that is what i care about
December 20, 2025 at 11:43 PM
I am pretty definitionally moderate: regulated capitalism, free (import/export) markets, robust welfare system (not fully sold on Medicare for all), plus gun owner, Catholic, LGBT. I could continue
It is also my only goal in life at this point to see the complete destruction of the Republican Party
It is also my only goal in life at this point to see the complete destruction of the Republican Party
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I work with declassified CIA files constantly for my research and I can’t remember the last time I came across something this heavily redacted
December 20, 2025 at 1:59 AM
I work with declassified CIA files constantly for my research and I can’t remember the last time I came across something this heavily redacted