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@nihilscio.bsky.social

3.2K followers 1.6K following 9.1K posts

he/him 🏳️‍🌈 nerd about 🌍🗳️🗣️🎶
lib/left/socdem. pro democracy. pro 🇺🇦🇵🇸
from 🇺🇸 (MN->MI), speak fr🇫🇷 pt🇧🇷 es🇲🇽

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@nihilscio.bsky.social

Frey won in Minneapolis, which is a shame. I was hoping Fateh would pull it out.

Fateh did gain thanks to RCV. The margin between Fateh and Fry shrunk from first to final round. Reminds me of NYC 2021, where Adams lost ground in RCV final round but still eked it out

www.mprnews.org/story/2025/1...

mayor of minneapolis - round 2 results

jacob frey 73,723 votes, 50%
omar fateh 65,377 votes, 44.4%

source: mn sos & city of minneapolis

100% reporting

November 5, 2025 at 8:05 PM

@nihilscio.bsky.social

Look, I get it. It’s unsatisfying. For his critics as well as his fans.

All this.

All these people dead.

All this trust and goodwill destroyed.

All this trauma, this confusion, this waste.

And for what?

For nothing.

For vanity and ennui and resentment.

Well.

I just don’t understand it.

Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) at the end of Fargo (1996).

October 29, 2025 at 6:00 PM

@nihilscio.bsky.social

Will Graham Platner outlast this head of lettuce?

October 22, 2025 at 6:41 PM

@nihilscio.bsky.social

And in the afternoon, No Kings Detroit.

We are not afraid.

My sign with a progress pride flag in the background

Federal building in Detroit with No Kings protestors demonstrating in front of it.

October 18, 2025 at 9:44 PM

@nihilscio.bsky.social

Happy no Kings day from Ann Arbor, MI. :)

Me holding a sign that says “Tyrants are weak, the people are strong.” There is glitter on the sign and on my face. :)

October 18, 2025 at 3:18 PM

@nihilscio.bsky.social

(for reference, here is a screenshot of the graphic as it currently appears on the website)

screenshot of graphic from pew article with Philippines (incorrectly) coded as Muslim-majority instead of Christian-majority.

July 31, 2025 at 5:27 PM

@nihilscio.bsky.social

Yes, massive fuckup. Yes, temper slightly your takes from the original chart.

But only slightly. Do not overcorrect.

New chart still shows massively boosted turnout for younger voters

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/29/n...

Corrected chart from NYT. Younger voters broadly turned out much more in 2025 than in 2021. This includes a big increase and high turnout level for the 18-24 year old group. But the highest turnout, and the biggest spikes from 2021, both look to be the 25-29 and 30-34 year old groups. Older voters largely sim ilar.

June 30, 2025 at 10:00 PM

@nihilscio.bsky.social

Here’s how Klein puts it. The larger context here is Mamdani’s win, and Klein thinks Mamdani’s optimistic & humanistic vibes were a closer fit to the vibes of vertical-video-scroll media like TikTok than to “compressed text” (microblogging) platforms. Mamdani aside, I think I agree about vibes.

But with the rise of populist right, and to a lesser extent, populist left politics all across the world all at the same time in this punctuated period, starting in the late 2000s or early 2010s, I believe the single strongest force there was not just immigration, and it wasn't economics, as you can really see in the data. I think it was the rise of the central communication platforms of politics being high-conflict, high-engagement, compressed-text platforms.
I think, in a way that we do not have incredibly good language for, those platforms are somewhat illiberal in their design. And by that I mean that they are structured in a way that makes the fundamental temperament of liberalism hard to do.
They're not well suited for deliberation or tolerance. They're not well suited for on the one hand, on the other hand - the things that make deliberative liberal democracy function, those habits of mind.

Barack Obama is not good at Twitter. He's just not. His Twitter is bad. These platforms, they're about groups. They're about engagement within and then against other groups. They're about drawing these lines very, very carefully. They create, by nature, a more populist form of politics. Or at least they create a communicative structure of politics where it is easier for outsider populist politicians to thrive.
The thing coming after it — when you look at TikTok, when you look at Instagram reels: It's not that no content is high-conflict political content, but most of it much more day-in-the-life stuff. It's very highly visual.
And you just kind of saw that a little bit in this campaign. I think there was something in the grammar of Mamdani that was so inflected by that era. He's really like our first Vine politician. His grammar was not Twitter's grammar. His grammar was TikTok's grammar.

June 30, 2025 at 6:29 AM

@nihilscio.bsky.social

Yes. We have no choice but to fight for an even bigger miracle. Algerian model not an option, no France to return to. Edward Said:

“The Israeli Jew is there in the Middle East, and we cannot, I might even say that we must not, pretend that he will not be there tomorrow, after the struggle is over.”

Excerpt from “Arabs and Jews”, Edward Said, 1974, Journal of Palestine Studies. First half of paragraph:

But to be honest amongst ourselves as well, we must say what about this war has been a threat to us. Not that we might lose because we have learned how to deal with defeat. But that, in parallel with the Israelis, we will start to believe that our Middle East can be restored to us either by war or by negotiation as a pristine, unspotted land, free of its past enemies, ours for the taking. That is out of the question. There is no future that is entirely free of the past, and there is certainly no future without an adequate understanding of the present. For the Arab today there must be an understanding that years and years of war with the Israelis, possibly with the great powers as well, will not bring a utopia in the end. Certain processes, which inhere in the struggle, must be acknowledged. First of all, there can be no struggle on the popular…

Excerpt from “Arabs and Jews”, Edward Said, 1974, Journal of Palestine Studies. Second half of paragraph:

…or on the individual level without drastic changes. This is a truism. Among these changes the giving up of certain ideas, at very great cost, is one of the most difficult to endure. We must give up, once and for all, the idea that we shall have a Middle East that is as if Zionism had never happened. The Israeli Jew is there in the Middle East, and we cannot, I might even say that we must not, pretend that he will not be there tomorrow, after the struggle is over. This is something very obviously to be faced directly and immediately by the Palestinian who has always fought for his right to be there. It is not for me to say what the right of the Israeli Jew is or should be, but that he is, that he exists with an obviously special attachment to the land is something we must face. We must face it directly, and not through the distorting glasses of an imperialist project which, alas, is the only way we have had to face it; quite justly we have rejected it on the grounds that such a vision scants us completely.
But how then do we face it? We cannot avoid the continued presence between us and the Israelis of distrust, war, and even the deepest hate. Those cannot be wished away simply, but they can be isolated and seen as secondary attributes of the struggle, the result of circumstances in which Palestinian Arabs and diaspora Jews were victims of powers and historical circumstances that made either violence or the total absence of any sort of meaningful engagement the only two alternatives.

June 30, 2025 at 6:01 AM

@nihilscio.bsky.social

god emperor of dune

is this transhumanism

June 28, 2025 at 7:29 AM

@nihilscio.bsky.social

My favorite xkcd is also a good mantra for persuasion & coalition building in politics.

Saying “what kind of idiot wasn’t already on board with my political program” is so much more boring than speaking from the heart about what you believe in & welcoming new allies when you win them over.

Xkcd strip 1053, “ten thousand.” Text of strip:

I TRYNOT TO MAKE FUN OF PEOPLE FOR ADMITTING THEY DON'T KNOW THINGS.
BECAUSE FOR EACH THING "EVERYONE KNOWS" BY THE TIME THEY'RE ADULTS, EVERY DAY THERE ARE, ON AVERAGE, 10,000 PEOPLE IN THE US HEARING ABOUT IT FOR THE FIRST TIME.
RACTION WHO HAVE = 0°
EARD OF IT AT BIRTH
FRACTION WHO HAVE = 100%
HEARD OF IT BY 30
US BIRTH RATE = 4,000,000/year
NUMBER HEARING
ABOUT FOR THE = 10,000 day
FIRST TIME
IF I MAKE FUN OF PEOPLE, I TRAIN THEM NOT TO TELL ME WHEN THEY HAVE THOSE MOMENTS.
AND I MISS OUT ON THE FUN.
"DIET COKE AND MENTOS THING"? WHAT'S THAT?
OH MAN! COME ON, WERE GOING TO THE GROCERY STORE.
WHY?
YOURE ONE OF TODAY'S LUCKY
10,000.

Original alt text for xkcd 1053. Ten Thousand - Saying 'what kind of an idiot doesn't know about the Yellowstone supervolcano' is so much more boring than telling someone about the Yellowstone supervolcano for the first time.

June 25, 2025 at 10:50 PM

@nihilscio.bsky.social

Gallup polling on Israel-Palestine among democrats over the years. Dem sympathy for Palestinians has grown dramatically from 2017-2025. In 2017, 48% of Dems sympathized more with Israelis, while 30% sympathized more with Palestinians. As of 2025, 59% sympathize more with Palestinians, while 21% sympathize more with Israelis. Text on image pasted below:

Use the buttons to view each party group.
Democrat
Republican
Independent
— % Israelis — % Palestinians
100%
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
59
21
2001 2005 2009 2013 2017 2021 2025
Percentages who say both, say neither or do not have an opinion are not shown.
Get the data • Download image
GALLUP®

June 25, 2025 at 4:04 AM

@nihilscio.bsky.social

This was a HUGE MISS by the polls.

Not a single poll had Zohran getting higher than 35% in the first round.

My take: Zohran turned out voters the polls weren’t counting on showing up.

List of the latest NYC mayoral primary polls, from NYT. They almost all have Cuomo way ahead in the first round, and even the one with Mamdani ahead in the first round has him only up 35-30.

June 25, 2025 at 1:50 AM

@nihilscio.bsky.social

At 9:25pm, Zohran leads 43.5-35.4, with 54% of the vote in.

June 25, 2025 at 1:26 AM

@nihilscio.bsky.social

STOP THE COUNT

At 9:08pm, with 38% in, Zohran leads 43-34.

This is mostly early vote, so grain of salt.

June 25, 2025 at 1:08 AM

@nihilscio.bsky.social

A poll of Jewish Democrats in New York found Cuomo getting 31% of the Jewish vote in the first round, which is a few points lower than than most polls of all Dem primary voters (which typically put Cuomo at around 40% in the first round).

forward.com/fast-forward...

Support for NYC Mayoral Candidates by Jewish Democrats
Question: "If the Democratic Primary Election for Mayor of New York City were held today and the candidates were ... for whom would you vote?"
Andrew Cuomo
31%
Zohran Mamdani
20%
Brad Lander
18%
Don't Know
13%
Adrienne Adams
8%
Scott Stringer
5%
Zellnor Myrie
3%
Whitney Tilson
2%
Jessica Ramos 1%
Michael Blake 0%
31%
Honan Strategy Group survey of 412 likely Jewish voters in the June 24 Democratic primary, conducted May 15 through May 18.
The poll, conducted via text-to-web, has a reported margin of error of ‡ 2.9%
Chart: Jake Wasserman / The Forward • Source: Jewish Voters Action Network • Created with Datawrapper

June 22, 2025 at 8:30 PM

@nihilscio.bsky.social

I don’t think the leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate right now should be someone who fought against Obama in 2015 to try to stop the JCPOA.

Screenshot is from NYT, September 2015. I remember following this vote closely and feeling anger at Schumer.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Screenshot from NYT showing votes in the senate on a resolution of disapproval for Obama’s deal to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, the JCPOA. 42 democrats held together to filibuster this disapproval vote, meaning the deal survived (until Trump ripped it up in 2018). Chuck Schumer was one of 4 Democrats who voted with Republicans to try to stop the deal.

June 22, 2025 at 8:09 PM

@nihilscio.bsky.social

If you had shown this headline to a trump voter one year ago they would have been like “lies, dnc shill propaganda, trump is the peace candidate”

The New York Times
The Athletic
Today
Lifestyle
Great Read
U.S. Enters War
Against Iran
Fordo
President Trump said the U.S. dropped a "full payload" of bombs on Iran's most critical nuclear site.
Iran
Afghanista
Kuwait
- Natanz
Israeli attacks had already damaged the country's largest uranium enrichment center.
Isfahan
A repository of near bomb-grade nuclear fuel is thought to be stored here.
Pakist

June 22, 2025 at 1:30 AM

@nihilscio.bsky.social

And in case you needed a reminder, here’s how US public support for the Iraq war evolved over time. Whole article is maybe a good reminder of this recent history, grounded in evidence: www.pewresearch.org/politics/202...

Support for the Iraq war was initially high, quickly dropped, and stayed low, with GOP (89% in 2003, 61% in 2018) continuing to support it more than Dems (53% in 2003, 27% in 2018).

June 19, 2025 at 1:00 AM

@nihilscio.bsky.social

These are not the same.

Left: a month before Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, from Pew. GOP support +72, Dem support +12.

Right: current polling about Iran, from YouGov. GOP oppose +30, Dem oppose +50.