J. C. Cantwell 🌻
segfaultvicta.aludel.xyz
J. C. Cantwell 🌻
@segfaultvicta.aludel.xyz
Social Justice Bard. They/them. Gay; tired.

"Maybe when it happens, you'll sink deeply into your chair
and sigh loose a breath you didn't know you were holding.

It is a pronoun. It is an event. It is a place and a time and a
certainty."
Pinned
fuck it, reactivating to retweet this
Imagine if Dems in the Senate hadn't caved. The House wouldn't be in session rn, the discharge petition wouldn't be signed, people wouldn't have SNAP, govt workers would be RIF'd & the GOP would have some decent talking points. But also online rage addicts would be happier! YMMV!
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Damn, when you've got *Oliver Willis* in your mentions for *once* taking up the mantle of "the media actively tries to ratfuck Dems and refuses to take responsibility for it", you know you've stepped in something.
November 13, 2025 at 7:37 PM
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OHHHHHHHH *my immense bad*, the reason journalists run with right-wing bullshit is because Republicans *hand it to them*, unlike, for example, when Epstein sent a NYTimes writer an email saying "hey if you want to publish these, I've got pictures of Trump in my kitchen with young girls in bikinis".
Not excusing the NYT's political coverage, but this person makes an important point. The reason legacy media falls all over itself to cover BS like Benghazi, Hunter Biden's laptop, Hilary's server, etc. is because the entire GOP and their media apparatus takes official actions to make them a story.
The emails that you’re seeing now are news in themselves, but that’s because of how they’re coming out—a congressional committee released them—& the context in which they’re being viewed. A guy emailing a reporter talking about old girlfriends or saying someone is “dirty” is not a whole news story.
November 13, 2025 at 7:34 PM
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The reality, folks, is that journalists believe their readers are stupid and *they're* the real truth-tellers.

Us unwashed plebs just *don't know* what goes into *real* investigative journalism.

Like, ya know, the obviously bogus plagiarism claims by a far-right smear artist about Harris's book.
November 13, 2025 at 5:16 PM
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Right right right, but when it came to airing *Trump's* dirty laundry, that's when the investigative journalism pipeline suddenly ran dry.

Conveniently.

Inexplicably.

Right around the same time the NYT was publishing Clinton's emails.

Hmmmmmm....
I was at NYT for 7 years & one of a dozen reporters who investigated Epstein’s interactions w/the rich & powerful. I don’t know every conversation held at every level there, but I do know we dedicated ourselves to exposing those who supported Epstein & engaged in the abuse of girls he facilitated
November 13, 2025 at 5:13 PM
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NYT ran with "Mamdani falsified college application records" and CNN ran with "Biden maybe has Parkinsons??????" based on a far-right blog post.

Let's not pretend the level of "investigative journalism" required here is static.
I am not defending Landon’s relationship with Epstein. In fact, the NYT didn’t even try to defend it. He left the paper. What I’m saying is that a piece of investigative journalism that exposes a secret, criminal act such as statutory rape requires far more than what is in these emails.
November 13, 2025 at 5:12 PM
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Look if they'd just find the RIGHT rock...
November 13, 2025 at 8:13 PM
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A lot of folks have very suddenly switched from demanding Dems fight dirty to demanding they defend principle & it appears they haven't realized they've made that switch.
Tim Kaine will 1000% vote to kill the filibuster in 2029 if we have a D trifecta just fwiw. he wanted to kill it in 2021 for voting rights legislation.
November 13, 2025 at 8:10 PM
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Yeah, but the CEO of McDonalds didn't know if Kamala worked there 40yrs ago, so that's great investigative journalism time spent on that, really paid off. Our Special Boy Donnie pretended to work there like a Make a Wish kid, and that's nice, and proved she lied or something. I'm no journalist. 🤷‍♂️
November 13, 2025 at 8:25 PM
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Pizzagate and QAnon were DARVO all along.
November 13, 2025 at 8:31 PM
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The damage done by treating Trump's victory as some sweeping mandate in the first eight months of his term really was massive, but ending that collective delusion - i think with the help of last week's elections - really is having profound impacts.
👀 Trump lame duck watch
November 13, 2025 at 8:02 PM
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Wood chipper, feet first.
November 13, 2025 at 7:24 PM
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it’s about ethics in pedophile journalism, but like, actually
November 13, 2025 at 5:44 PM
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look as someone who can be incapacitated for weeks by the fear that I put the wrong number of exclamation points into an email this has been a fascinating glimpse into a some brains that work extremely! differently! from! mine!
November 13, 2025 at 5:28 PM
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And them specifically. They spent the bulk of last year declaring Joe Biden was "old" and thus more impared than the present dementia addled psychopath.
November 13, 2025 at 6:13 PM
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At the same time the NY Times was hyping Hillary Clinton's emails, it had a reporter with emails from Jeffrey Epstein that were highly damaging to Trump.

The more NYT apologists try to minimize this the clearer it becomes that they don't understand why much of the public doesn't trust legacy media.
November 13, 2025 at 5:44 PM
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Fucking Children: It’s Unpopular. But Just How Unpopular, And What Does That Mean For The Midterms? We Made An Ugly-Ass Infographic To Explain.

We’re CNN.
Harry Enten: "Nobody is buying what Trump is selling on Epstein. His net approval on it is an absolutely dreadful -39 pts... Far worse than any other major issue.

It isn't improving over time.

Even among the GOP, just 45% (!) approve of the job the Trump admin is doing on the Epstein case."
November 13, 2025 at 5:06 PM
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Eric Trump brags about sending $500 million while having a glass of wine with his wife.

Let them eat cake.

Donald Trump and his family are fixated on ostentatious ballrooms and billionaire issues, while Americans suffer from rising grocery prices and skyrocketing health care.
Eric Trump: "You can send $500 million worth of bitcoin on a Sunday night at 11pm while having a glass of wine with your wife for virtually zero fees."
November 13, 2025 at 6:07 PM
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What's frustrating (and @golikehellmachine.com has ranted about this to me before) is that Anthropic etc. seem largely uninterested in teaching their users this stuff. The theory seems to be "we'll just make it smarter so you don't have to know how to do that".

It's uh. Not working so well!
November 13, 2025 at 5:15 PM
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When I talk about meta-cognition, this is what I mean. You can't just tell it stuff. You have to understand how it works, then speak *its language* back to it. But doing so is easy...if you have a certain kind of "empathy" (no, it's not alive, etc.) that lets you understand what resonates with it.
November 13, 2025 at 5:11 PM
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Had a minute while eating lunch, and thinking about something -- I wonder how much of LLM-usage misfire comes from not understanding the tools you're using.

This has come to mind to me because of Claude Code, and how some people are able to use them effectively and some are Just Not.
November 13, 2025 at 5:11 PM
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it is deeply human and normal to feel urges for sexuality and aggression (imho) and mental health comes from managing and acknowledging those urges in social and balanced ways. i think we drive ourselves batty trying to treat them as private concerns or fields mostly talked about as DSM issues
November 13, 2025 at 5:47 PM
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I think this is right, or at least a fair question. I’d also extend it beyond sex to aggression/violence. Modern tech and media have (maybe for good reasons!) siloed sexuality and aggression to private tastes and expressions, and it might be that a “healthy” landscape attempts to acknowledge them.
Frictionless access to porn has, apart from desensitization (random movie boob used to be a big deal!) created a sort of separate conceptual space dedicated to "horny" for many, esp younger gens, who now feel its odd when it encroaches on other parts of life (ie. film/TV). Not sure this is healthy.
November 13, 2025 at 5:44 PM
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I mean, that's very much "bar set lower than hell" territory, but the thing that journalists and other kinds of truth tellers can do is *interrupt the narrative* that not just ogres but enablers weave about themselves. They are putting a non-complicity narrative out there & we don't have to buy it!
November 13, 2025 at 5:26 PM
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"But what can *I* do about it?" At the very least, you could be honest w yourself abt what you're doing if you see injustice or abuse & do nothing about it. At the very least, you can be honest w yourself--that you fail to act because you 1 believe in this gross system 2 want its spoils for yourself
November 13, 2025 at 5:25 PM
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There are a lot of people who keep toxic, abusive, predatory systems going who insist to themselves & others that they are one of the good ones, when if they & others with power tried to stop the most monstrous, they could have. People rewrite history & what's happening in front of them all the time
November 13, 2025 at 5:17 PM