Duncan Watson

@duncanwatson.bsky.social

303

Posts

I left twitter long ago but stuck with more free alternatives until now.
I am a liberal (not neo) and post about bikes, magic, politics and urban policy.
Still exploring

Posts Replies Media

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Duncan Watson

For non-cycling fans, this is like Bonds breaking the HR record or Lebron breaking the NBA points record. Cavendish has now won 35 Tour de France stages, more than Eddy Merckx, one of the greatest cyclists of all time.

Goosebumps seeing seemingly every rider in the peloton stopping to congratulate Cavendish.

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Duncan Watson

Oh look a country where people strategically try to prevent the anti-democratic party from taking power

THE sentence of the day: A Macronist incumbent in the Marseille region came in 3rd in her seat. She just dropped out to support the left. She said, about why she's maneuvering to block the far-right: "Defeats happen, but you can never recover from dishonor."

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Duncan Watson

Easy to lose sight of the significance here, but the sitting president just gave a speech condemning the Supreme Court for a ruling that expands presidential power. It’s also a president who stands to benefit from this ruling, given that his opponent is vowing to imprison him and his family.

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Duncan Watson

It's important to note that Trump tried to order this at least twice we know of during his regime.

right. the president could order troops to suppress protesters using live fire and the supreme court would extend that absolute immunity

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Duncan Watson

very much reflective of the lack of any real survival instinct among journalists that they think the big story today is whether biden will step down

“What makes you so confident you should be president?” is an actual question a reporter shouted at the incumbent who just warned about a reckless court decision that imperils democracy

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Duncan Watson

pay teachers more

“ai” edtech company collapses after taking six million dollars from the Los Angeles school district to develop an “educational friend” platform.

A.I. ‘Friend’ for Public School Students Falls Flatwww.nytimes.com Los Angeles schools hired a start-up to build an A.I. chatbot for parents and students. A few months later, the company collapsed.

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Duncan Watson

“The Court’s conservative majority has revealed itself to be the most direct threat to American democracy, and any Democrat who is not ready to shelve old fears about ‘court packing’ and get serious about expanding and reforming the Court isn’t made for this moment.” Correct.

I've seen enough -- this is the most radical, dangerous, arrogant, out-of-control Supreme Court in American history, and it needs to be treated as such. open.substack.com/pub/kevinmkr...

The Radical Roberts Courtopen.substack.com The current Supreme Court of the United States has just cemented its place in history as the most radical Supreme Court ever. For a century and a half, that dishonor has gone to the antebellum court l...

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Duncan Watson

Someday a lot of people will claim not to have supported any of this and you need to survive to remember that they did

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Duncan Watson

As originalists, they should have no problem with this very American form of peaceful protest.

Me today: No kings no supreme court justices, we take their McMansions apart brick by brick.

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Duncan Watson

I really have lost my former tolerance for "we're doomed/fucked/it's all over/they've won" takes at this point, in that they're the most dangerous attitudes one could possibly have when confronted with a truly existential political threat (which we still DO have levers to address).

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Duncan Watson

Holy shit, the Supreme Court actually wrote that Trump telling Pence to claim the wildly unconstitutional power to single-handedly reject certified Electoral College votes, thereby overthrowing Constitutional democracy, can't be illegal because POTUS and VP talking about it makes it an official act.

i keep re-reading this to make sure i didn't hallucinate

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Duncan Watson

Reply to

Sean Skunk-Cabbage ⚓

I simply don't buy the very common argument of "none of the options available to me are extreme enough so I'm going to continue to do nothing" If you can't even hold your stomach and do some harm reduction how the fuck am I supposed to expect you'll be there when we need to march and strike?

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Duncan Watson

Don’t worry, Dick Durbin is considering the possibility of a letter that slightly disagrees with them. Mulling it over right now!

The president is himself forever immune from prosecution for crimes committed using his official power, and he can pardon anyone for helping him to commit federal crimes, explicitly including an actions in furtherance of a coup to illegally hold onto the office of the presidency. That’s the upshot.

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The words in the constitution don't give the president immunity, nor was that the intention of the authors. But you must understand that the meaning of the constitutional vibes have evolved over time in a way only I can detect. Now there are penubras and emanations that tell me he is in fact immune.

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Duncan Watson

Not surprising yet surreal to watch the traditional corporate media swarming over the Dem establishment pushing for its candidate to drop out after a debate while they did nothing to pressure the GOP to drop a rapist, fascist, felon off their ticket. Fascism enablers they are.

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Duncan Watson

Recently, I was peer reviewing a paper, and it cited one of my papers. Except... it wasn't anything I had written. The title sounds like something I'd write. It included coauthors I work with, and was in a journal I've published in. But it wasn't real. AI is not good for science.

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Duncan Watson

one of the problems with modern politics reporting is that it should not be on me, shitposter, to have to explain presidential campaign fundamentals to the general public, this is literally the job of politics reporters and they are virtually all failures at it

trump faces sentencing in less than two weeks, and while he may not get jail time, he might get home confinement — whatever it is, he's extremely unlikely to get *nothing* on more than three dozen felony counts, and every time "convicted felon" comes up, his support drops with independents

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Duncan Watson

to make the implicit explicit, i do not think it would be wise to tell black voters and women who are the party's base that both biden and harris need to get the fuck out of the way for, say, gavin newsom or pritzker or even whitmer, which is what this idiotic "biden must step down" plan requires

maybe bret stephens and michelle goldberg could check in with james clyburn and ask him what he would do with his influence if the party decided to throw both biden and kamala harris in the trash and replace them with gavin newsom

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Duncan Watson

at the core of conservative jurisprudence - and conservative thought more generally - is an empathy gap the further a person is from their own direct experience the less that person is, to them, a real human being with thoughts and feelings and their own lived existence

They don't have an inside to go to. This is "increase jail population and slave labor" ruling.

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Duncan Watson

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Duncan Watson

The editorial board that endorsed Elizabeth Warren _and_ Amy Klobuchar in the last Democratic primary, and which has yet to call on a convicted felon to drop out as the Republican nominee, says what?

"President Biden has repeatedly and rightfully described the stakes in this November’s presidential election as nothing less than the future of American democracy." you might read this opener and expect an article directed at Mr. Trump. you big dummy. you fool. you- www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/o...

Opinion | To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Racewww.nytimes.com The president’s inadequate performance in the debate made it clear he is not the man he was four years ago.

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Duncan Watson

Jailing people for being homeless is a classic American policy: stupid, brutal, and very expensive.

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Duncan Watson

*looks around* WELP. I better hurry up and finish this book while it’s still legal for black people in the US to read.

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Duncan Watson

The Democratic Party’s reaction to their candidate having a bad debate substantially outpaces the Republican Party’s reaction to their candidate being convicted of multiple felonies, held liable for rape, and owing judgments in the hundreds of millions for defamation and fraud.

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Duncan Watson

I don't want some egghead bureaucrat telling me whether there's poison in the water I drink. Ideally I'd want that decided by a 29yo judge who went to a "biblical law school" and does not believe dinosaurs existed, and then to have that decision reaffirmed six years later by the Supreme Court.

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Duncan Watson

Nominate six (or more!) new Justices right now and let a Dem Senate confirm them. Let them wait, stacked in queue, to fill the next six vacancies. If Republicans want to clear out the queue and be able to nominate and seat Justices again in the near future, they can create six new seats for them.

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Duncan Watson

if Biden wants to stay in the race he needs to do this. Just flood the zone with media appearences and get people used to stammering old guy Biden as something that's normal (or ideally a better version where he's not stammering old guy). Hiding out won't work.

I think the opposite. He should be going on TV a lot, ideally to announce big new policies

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Duncan Watson

Another very bad decision by the Supreme Court bluevirginia.us/2024/06/frid... h/t @mjs_DC

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Duncan Watson

I will absolutely be getting one, I have a book tour and international travel in the fall.

Breaking: All Americans ages 6 months and older should receive one of the new Covid-19 vaccines when they become available this fall, scientific advisers to the CDC said on Thursday. www.nytimes.com/2024/06/27/h...

New Covid Shots Recommended for Americans 6 Months and Older This Fallwww.nytimes.com As the virus continues to mutate, scientific advisers to the C.D.C. are urging Americans to roll up their sleeves again for annual vaccinations.