cugel.bsky.social

@cugel.bsky.social

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Seattle-based software engineer with an interest in urbanism and global affairs.

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cugel.bsky.social

There are an awful lot of people who want to claim the political left as a way to engage in really stupid anti-social behavior, and it's your job as someone on the left to not take them seriously because doing so will harm your credibility

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cugel.bsky.social

Two months ago Greg Abbott pardoned a murderer who texted a friend "I might go to Dallas to shoot looters" then drove into a BLM protest in Austin and killed a protester. The universal response from conservatives to the pardon was "Yeah! Woo-hoo!" Now they say liberals should turn down the rhetoric

My problem with articles like this is that people seem to take away the message that all enforcement is inherently evil. In a society where getting behind the wheel of a car brings out the inner sociopath in many, some mechanism is necessary.

A police stop is enough to make someone less likely to vote, recent research found. "Voting is a reflection of our belief that we’re part of the system, that our voice matters." boltsmag.org/a-police-sto...

A Police Stop Is Enough to Make Someone Less Likely to Voteboltsmag.org New research shows how the communities that are most heavily policed are pushed away from politics and from having a say in changing policy.

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cugel.bsky.social

Reply to

Mike Masnick

October 2020: Trump defends plot to murder Gov. Whitmer January 2021: Trump sends mob to kill his own VP and members of Congress November 2023: Trump cheers attempted assassination of Nancy Pelosi March 2024: Trump posts video depicting abduction of Joe Biden

Earthquake! As a midwesterner who's had zero previous experience with quakes, it's been interesting to live in a high-rise where a quake will be felt even at a substantial distance. Only experienced light jolts and nearly imperceptible swaying thus far... earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/...

earthquake.usgs.gov The Earthquake Event Page application supports most recent browsers, view supported browsers. Or, try our Real-time Notifications, Feeds, and Web Services.

Living the cliché: Just as I'm dozing off, the smoke detector decided to start loudly chirping a low battery alarm... Broke out the earpro, 2x AAs, and the step ladder and groggily swapped things out 😮‍💨

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cugel.bsky.social

Reply to

Yonah Freemark

Paris's policy choices have major impacts: —Car ownership & car trips declining in city & near suburbs since 2000 —City traffic down 50%, 2002–22 —Transit ridership increased 35%, 2000–19 —Crashes involving hospitalization declined by half 2007–22 —Net reduction in air pollution

A wise tankie insisted to me that the failure of Russia's "3-day" invasion of Ukraine was due solely to it having "bought into the Western doctrine of over-reliance on special forces", not systemic corruption, poor accountability, and siloed information about intent destroying force readiness.

The cat woke me up at 3 AM by awkwardly falling off the bed. Upon gracelessly extracting herself from between the bed and the nightstand, she spent 30-some minutes gently thwacking my legs with her tail...

I lived a year in Auvergne and another in Franche-Comté. Not surprised to see the former beat the far-right by ⅔, while the latter succumbed by less than a percentage point. Hell, the first Confederate flag I saw in real life was in a rural village around Montbéliard.

A map of the French results — with a dot per district: lemonde.fr/politique/ar...

My only concern with this in the US is that there will be no "first round" to shock everyone out of their complacency, resulting in last-minute action to overcome the challenge of authoritarianism.

Do not let pundits and opinion-havers convince you that things are hopeless. They do not know: the left and the center can work together for the good of democracy and voters will reward them

I've always considered myself a fairly idiosyncratic American leftist and seeing the complete clowns who've made names for themselves as "leftist" figureheads only hammers that home.

Ken Klippenstein is streaming with George Galloway. The Young Turks are hosting RFK Jr. One ex bernie spokesperson is streaming with candace owens and another is defending Nick Fuentes. Brianna Wu is hanging with lauren southern. Maybe now is the time to re-evaluate how the left chooses celebrities.

I periodically review rental options outside the urban core I live in, only to be consistently surprised at how little price power square foot is improved, particularly relative to the drastically worse commute and walkability.

It is... disconcerting to switch from a fairly dull kitchen knife to one that is well and truly sharp. I purchased a sharpening stone, gave it its first use, and then tested the knife on some green onions to see how poor a job I did. Very quickly went from "It worked! 😄" to "It REALLY worked 😰"

There are strong arguments for keeping Biden as the candidate. Gaslighting ALL concerns about his debate performance as "hysteria" is not one of them.

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cugel.bsky.social

This is the editorial view of the guy who controls which posts get shown on Vichy Twitter and which get buried. Insane that journalists continue to use it as a source of information and contribute to its legitimacy

Can't vote until you're 18; can't be president til you're 35. Both come from an understanding that, below a certain age, a person may fundamentally lack the maturity and experience to do so responsibly. Neither is typically criticized as "ageist".

This is very much where I'm at. Many, but far from all, of those demanding Biden drop out or even resign clearly are not arguing in good faith. But the same goes for those completely excusing Biden's performance!

I think what makes this difficult to discuss with any kind of rigor is that Biden staying in is bad and Biden dropping out is also bad! There are no good options available so we’re all flailing to figure out which bad thing is gonna be like 15% better than the worse thing

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cugel.bsky.social

Yep. One of the biggest blind spots people have is assuming that underneath, others share the same basic values as them. They have trouble imagining an ideology that is completely misaligned with theirs.

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cugel.bsky.social

We really need to stop using the misnomer "conservative" to describe the rapidly advancing fascist movement. Nothing is being conserved except supremacism. Everything is being overturned. Cc: political scientists & journalists

The new expectation of immunity is only one way in which a second Trump presidency would operate outside of traditional limits and accountability. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Analysis | Trump would return to the White House unfettered and unassailablewww.washingtonpost.com A second Trump administration would not be bounded as the first one was.

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cugel.bsky.social

At this point, it is 100% undeniable that the Supreme Court majority is attempting to destroy democracy and seize total power over the US. They're not even trying to hide it. Since the media refuses to clearly convey this fact to the public, tell everyone you know.

Feels like we could sure use a Constitutional Crisis right about now

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cugel.bsky.social

This debate is a prime example of how profoundly we are ill equipped to deal w/the rise of authoritarianism. Letting blatant lies fly. Doing nothing to follow up on lies & ignoring questions. Normal rules don't apply. We need to think--CLEARLY--about the best ways to clear the air & support truth.

This debate is a disaster for Biden. I've been giving the campaign the benefit of the doubt about his ability to carry out the job for another four years, but... It looks like it's time to step aside.

Authoritarians are just so incredibly petty.

School children sang anthem too softly - Hong Kong

School children sang anthem too softly - Hong Kongwww.bbc.com Officials advise teachers to help students "cultivate habit and confidence" while singing anthem.

There's a frustrating subset of otherwise good urbanists who will turn around and vocally go to bat for the sociopathic excesses of car culture, just so long as the particular manifestation superficially comes from an otherwise marginalized population.

There's a narrative in nominally left spaces throughout the West that feckless centrists have driven dissatisfied voters to the far-right. But why, for instance, have France's left-wing parties so utterly failed to capitalize on that dissatisfaction themselves?

Second attempt at befriending the neighborhood crows was a qualified success

Flies eaten: 1 Dogs chased: 2 "Aww"s received: 8 Crowd befriended: 0

Weird how the "Are we the baddies?" moments keep coming.

Reuters confirms details of Israeli forces strapping wounded Palestinian to the hood of a jeep like a trophy deer: www.reuters.com/world/middle...

Israeli forces strap wounded Palestinian to jeep during raidwww.reuters.com Israeli army forces strapped a wounded Palestinian man to the hood of the military jeep during an arrest raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on Saturday.

I'll just never understand how tankies can make the leap from recognizing the various real failings of "Western medicine" writ large to stanning for LITERAL witchcraft like traditional Chinese medicine. But I guess the pattern of letting imperfections push one to rabid nonsense fits the character.