Steve Randy Waldman

Blog: https://www.interfluidity.com/
Github: https://github.com/swaldman

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Last Notes

2026-05-10 20:21:21 CEST

someday we’ll have a monument to the new solarpunk plenty and there will be a great gold statue of donald trump just like there is a giant visage of andrew jackson on the twenty dollar federal reserve note.

2026-05-04 02:08:19 CEST

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the places you’d cut are also the limbs.

2026-05-03 23:08:58 CEST

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at the moment things are bad. but things have been better, and many things remain better in other places. the point of productive pessimism is to figure out what to do rather than concede nothing can be done to forestall bad outcomes.

2026-05-03 22:17:02 CEST

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I agree that human nature is corruptible! And institutions are of course made of human actors. But I am more optimistic than you are that the susceptibility to corruption inherent in human nature is somewhat malleable to institutions and so culture, so I think a mix of institutions that encourage and reward virtue, along with checks and balances that impose accountability, can enable effective coordinated action at scale with tolerable losses to corruption and malfeasance.

2026-05-03 19:58:21 CEST

intelligence and rationality are much more social than they are individual characteristics.

2026-03-17 17:00:07 CET

huh. i missed the big anniversary like a couple of weeks ago, but https://interfluidity.com is twenty years old this month. i'm on a bit of a hiatus as my life is overwhelmed by other things, but i'm still blogging after all these years. https://drafts.interfluidity.com/archive.html

2026-03-15 18:24:03 CET

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For most people, especially for lower-effort potential voters, the passport will be to go-to proof-of-citizenship. People gain privileges beyond overcoming prerequisites of voting from a passport, so it's what not-super-motivated voters would choose, if they are going to deal with the bureaucracy of getting a new form of ID. 4/

2026-03-15 18:22:09 CET

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(Birth certificates also won't work for people — including many married women — who no longer retain their birth names.) 3/

2026-03-15 18:20:33 CET

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Of course, it's not watertight. Sufficiently resourced and motivated citizens will overcome the barrier. People can get birth certificates. (But incentives will emerge to shape who retrieves those how easily as well; a savig grace with birth certificates is that state and federal politician incentives may not be aligned.) 2/

2026-03-15 17:45:33 CET

i worry about whether the SAVE act would create incentives for politicians to make it more difficult for (some) people to get passports. international travel is good for people and for the polity.

2026-03-08 23:41:30 CET

i know someone said this better a few days ago and i think i even reposted it but my god i’ll never get over the US sabotaging its renewables industry and doubling down on fossil fuel dependency only to force fossil fuel prices sky high. it’s like thanatos, a national death wish.

2026-03-08 23:25:37 CET

putting storefronts in every phone was about as good an idea as a technology that makes sure there is always a fresh, open bag of cheetos at hand in every room.

2026-03-06 14:57:27 CET

Had US v. Trump not happened, would Trump have launched a full-scale war (arguably two) without some kind of Congressional fig leaf?

2026-02-27 20:50:40 CET

"They’ve genuinely identified the pattern I described in the Bonfire essay and then committed the most consequential intellectual error possible. They saw the fire and decided to pray to it." @npub19ud…ds65 https://syntropic.xyz/posts/2026-02-14-the-bonfire-in-the-cave/
// Josh pointe me to this essay but I flaked. ht @npub144u…adjw for pointing me again. It is excellent.

2026-02-19 15:59:19 CET

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it’s never “deregulation”. there was regulation before the reform. there will be regulation after. it’s the character, not the “quantity”, of regulation that determines its virtue or vice. 2/

2026-02-16 20:43:46 CET

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You can lose slack because your real purchasing power declines, or because your needs expand. “Needs” are largely a function of structural facts and social norms. 2/

2026-02-16 20:43:24 CET

The main good that determines whether you think the economy is good or bad is slack. How much headroom is there between what you are going to buy and what you can afford to spend? 1/

2026-02-16 13:14:15 CET

“If there is an inalienable right to life, it should follow that I have an obligation to take reasonable steps to minimize disease that could harm or kill my peers.” @npub1a5c…5g4q https://www.liberalcurrents.com/propaganda-rather-than-pandemic-policies-caused-the-war-on-public-health/
// this is general, a thing any serious liberalism must grapple with. the dual of any meaningful right is a burdensome obligation.

2026-02-15 15:58:07 CET

I just made some shit up. Its authenticity has been confirmed.

2026-02-15 15:51:28 CET

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( i've written a bit on this https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/08/13/china-as-a-model/index.html )

2026-02-09 13:14:01 CET

i woke up today and found i was unable to verify my identity.

2026-02-07 01:07:19 CET

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i mean they might not, but we do!

2026-02-02 22:47:26 CET

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That’s a very interesting wrinkle. Do you think societies with languages more distant from English will much less quickly reorganize work? (That might be a good thing or a bad thing for them!) Alternatively, despite the United States and broad Anglosphere’s flagging prestige, will the prospect of AI automation of white-collar work incentivize greater adoption of English in professional settings?

2026-02-02 22:21:37 CET

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good question! but if (a big if) AI reorganizes how humans engage in the kind of work that demands schooling, might we decide to do less of it, or else devote education to very different purposes, which might have implications (shorter or longer) for how “much” of it we do?

2026-02-02 15:09:38 CET

i now view nearly all digital ads and sponsored content as some mix of cheating and manipulation and treat it as an ethical gaffe to click or even offer my attention to them.

2026-02-02 13:30:23 CET

does AI mean young people should typically have more years or fewer years of education?

2025-12-29 23:04:32 CET

billionaires are the sad victims of an inadequate tax code, which has allowed them to become surrounded by an isolating bubble of sycophants, severed from participation in community and ordinary fellowship. we owe potential victims of this condition prevention, and those already suffering remedy.

2025-12-15 04:48:53 CET

if the world lifted all tariffs but deficit countries committed to filling any domestic demand gap created by trade imbalance with efficiently implemented military build-up, perhaps surplus countries would seek a more balanced path.
(not really recommending this. it’s a thought experiment.)

2025-12-15 02:54:27 CET

pricing power is the root of all evil, except of course when you’re the one doing the pricing.

2025-10-26 21:33:46 CET

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it’s a more minoritarian coalition than i’d imagined!

2025-10-26 21:21:40 CET

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not all second amendment people are you, my friend.

2025-10-26 20:43:16 CET

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our current leaders have imagined, perhaps quite mistakenly, that “second amendment people” will always be on their side.

2025-10-26 19:50:47 CET

building a giant golden ballroom while cutting SNAP has very Marie Antoinette vibes.

2025-10-23 23:21:20 CEST

Since China increasingly owns the global automobile industry, maybe we can revise our built environment so we are not isolated and helpless without constant access to that product.
I mean we should have anyway, but maybe declining domestic lobbying clout and geopolitical exigency will help.

2025-10-17 18:43:22 CEST

made a sign for tomorrow, but i worry i may be pushing at the bounds of free speech with this kind of radicalism.
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/115/390/506/662/407/563/original/d6f5b8fa1a2ef188.png

2025-10-17 02:05:36 CEST

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i do think it’s worth trying! every time this Court acts egregiously it’s another arrow in our quiver when we make the case to reform this Court out of existence in anything like its present form. and given the balance of merits, you never know, the Court may rule at a moment where it’s nervous about its position and feels like it has to pretend to play fair. 11/

2025-10-17 01:27:57 CEST

is anyone keeping a database of the black letter crimes that members of this administration seem to commit with some frequency, so that a next administration can finally take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed?

2025-09-28 19:09:19 CEST

people who style themselves political realists have such unrealistic views about how swing voters behave. it's not the issues, or at least not the issues our two parties elevate as objects of political contestation. it's a sense of affiliation, or of shared resentments, or just personal respect.

2025-07-31 01:12:29 CEST

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i think we need to develop realistic but anticynical media, informed by a kind of Pascal’s wager. (i admit in many of my posts i fail to live up to this suggestion.)

2025-07-18 17:52:59 CEST

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(i just don’t think US homeowners are a cartel that’s going to be broken sufficiently to enable new construction in already desirable places at nearly the scale that we require. when it’s the 1% you can fight. when it’s the 60%, you have to coopt or circumvent. i think anti-NIMBY politics has always been a foolish choice of means in pursuit of genuinely virtuous ends.)

2025-05-31 02:31:42 CEST

i unironically think the job of the future might be politician.
we'd have a better world if we had a lot more of them, if every thousand, rather than every almost 800,000 of us, had a paid professional representative enfranchised in our political system.
see e.g. https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/9069.html

2025-05-19 15:16:03 CEST

“The enduring strength of a state-dominated Chinese system that can pivot, change policy and redirect resources at will in service of long-term national strength is now undeniable, regardless of whether free-market advocates like it.” #KyleChan https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/opinion/china-us-trade-tariffs.html

2025-04-30 04:01:43 CEST

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not working extra hard because of hate. falling into line, obeying the leader unconditionally, because of love of ones community in the face of an insidious enemy that existentially threatens it.
see https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/03/05/what-is-fascism/index.html

2025-04-30 03:56:11 CEST

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i certainly agree, but the counterclaim would be that sufficiently demonizing a minority outgroup unlocks a kind and quality of coordination (i think a horrible, ugly kind and quality) worth the cost in conflict and the sacrifice of potential collaborators.

2025-04-30 03:38:46 CEST

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just an idea!

2025-04-30 03:36:06 CEST

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you just treat every press organ that is not absolutely fawning of you as different faces of the same enemy, one blob emitting “fake news” whenever it is news you find unhelpful.

2025-04-30 03:32:59 CEST

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as steve jobs would say, stay tuned.

2025-04-30 03:29:15 CEST

maybe the answer is your faction should always loudly accuse the press as being and enemy and out to get you. it seems to work. they go every extra mile to prove they are evenhanded and unfairly maligned.

2025-04-29 16:01:13 CEST

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you might consider replacing them with your phone!

2025-04-29 15:59:45 CEST

our phones are trying to make themselves our spouses, completing our sentences for us when we are half way through them.

2025-04-28 14:57:37 CEST

andreeson used to chat widely, than he blocked anyone who might say anything he might find uncomfortable to hear. in retrospect that has proven consequential.

2025-04-17 02:44:43 CEST

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https://mastodon.social/@MelancholicBear/114344656606383954

2025-04-17 02:43:17 CEST

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you live in a bubble of your own construction, and from that vantage instruct us all on the proper application of executive authority, in a democracy no less. but the people you support are actively dismantling democracy, incarcerating innocents and throwing away the key, hinting very strongly that any of us (“homegrowns”) could be next. this is tyranny that has even shed its fig leaves, but you sing songs to yourself and look away. https://www.newsweek.com/merwil-gutierrez-ice-wrong-teen-el-salvador-2059783

2025-04-16 22:47:31 CEST

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He is sending people into life imprisonment who have done nothing at all to merit that, with no meaningful process. he is a tyrant. his rank evil is leavened only by his idiocy, buffoonery, narcissism. Perhaps he’s incapable of understanding the horrors for which he is responsible. His supporters, however, have no such excuse.

2025-04-16 22:28:12 CEST

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I agree Congress has been dysfunctional the last few decades. But empowering a tyrant is no solution to that. Our system requires an assertive, functional Congress. Electoral reform and institutional changes can deliver that.

2025-04-16 22:26:31 CEST

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DOGE is incompetence and corruption incarnate.

2025-04-16 22:17:51 CEST

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independent agencies are entirely answerable to Congress. the one democratic branch of government.

2025-04-16 21:52:03 CEST

hawkish fed did nothing to gold though.
#finance

2025-04-16 20:33:53 CEST

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Drehen Sie die Unendlichkeit und sie wird Null.
(blame Google Translate if that makes no sense. or just blame me!)

2025-04-16 20:28:47 CEST

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are independent courts repugnant to democracy? can the people never choose a decision-making procedures other than the whim of the people as expressed through the whim a quasi elected quasi king?
under our constitution btw the electoral college is not elected. it’s weird quasi electedness is an ad hoc ex post state level innovation.
under our constitution democratically elected Congress is supreme. and it is, even with respect to independent agencies.

2025-04-16 19:29:32 CEST

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ha!
but then we’ll have to wait 91 years instead of just 11 for the next fun year!

2025-04-16 19:11:38 CEST

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ha!

2025-04-16 19:08:14 CEST

2-squared / 4-squared / 5-squared

2025-04-16 18:41:43 CEST

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democracy in our constitution is invested in Congress. the President is not elected by the public, and the notion of one man representing the fractious public is absurd. “independence” is conferred by Congress against the influence of that one man, democratically and often appropriately. that this Supreme Court might strip that basic institutional and democratic prerogative from our system is on them. no agency is ever independent of Congress, the heart of our democracy.

2025-04-16 17:20:07 CEST

Congress has created offices and agencies within the legislative branch, right? The Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, the erstwhile Office of Technology Assessment, etc
If the Supreme Court overturns Humphrey's Executor, cld independent agencies migrate to the legislative branch?

2025-04-16 16:27:08 CEST

“You cannot restrict unfreedom to a particular class of people. It will metastasize to consume the entire society.” [@jbouie](https://threads.net/@jbouie/ ) https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/opinion/trump-court-order-constitution.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare ht @npub1esh…ggsa

2025-04-16 16:16:58 CEST

just called my Florida Congressional delegation to express my CECOT outrage. one human picked up (on behalf of Rep Luna), two voicemails (Sens Scott and Moody).

2025-04-16 15:40:21 CEST

the right time to throw the ring of power into the volcano is when it is you who holds it.
we forgot that, tried to wield it, now look who we’ve become.

2025-04-16 01:25:46 CEST

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generally speaking the plan from this administration is unlikely to be the one you want.

2025-04-15 23:35:13 CEST

“nobody can be trusted with absolute power, least of all the demagogues who seek it. The one good thing Trump’s trade policies are achieving is to demonstrate this yet again. They are harbingers of chaos. The world’s challenge is to survive the folly. The US’s is to end it.” #MartinWolf https://www.ft.com/content/a3e6174c-25e9-4428-9109-16e37319e9e2

2025-04-15 15:20:59 CEST

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oops. /fin

2025-04-15 15:20:43 CEST

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i think it was not ennui but annoyance that left us vulnerable. people were just annoyed by pronouns and what one might call the microincriminations of “wokeness”. These seemed real, even pressing, while words like “fascism” or “tyranny” or “extermination camps” seemed hypothetical, overwrought. 2/

2025-04-15 15:20:26 CEST

some people think it was a kind of ennui that left us open to fascism, citing perhaps Fukyama’s “last man” and a predicted rebellion against that status by those with “megalothymia”. 1/

2025-04-15 15:18:33 CEST

“It’s a great idea, if…done right. Federal lands are a national resource, and the nation needs more housing… What cities like St. George need most—and what they mostly refuse to allow—are modest homes and apartments for…workers and families.” @npub1uv8…7twl https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/opinion/housing-crisis-federal-land.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
(may i suggest microcities? www.interfluidity.com/v2/8772.html or just the sort of districts #MikeEliason would design and propose?)

2025-04-14 07:58:55 CEST

if they had any sense they’d call the whole thing off and declare the weaker dollar a great victory.

2025-04-14 07:42:00 CEST

every time i swipe the credit card, whatever bullshit i am blowing the money on, i am increasing my capital account surplus.

2025-04-10 07:19:00 CEST

you can just do things. stupid things.

2025-04-08 01:29:56 CEST

i feel like Roberts + Barrett know the Court is violating core values they pretend to share, but don’t want to actually thwart the insurrection. so they take turns ineffectually joining dissents (while the other helps plunge the knife). they can present themselves as one of the good ones, i tried!

2025-04-06 03:10:19 CEST

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we’re mutuals! we’ve not chatted directly, but i love her posts.

2025-04-03 19:27:37 CEST

not only does it have the lowest tariff rates, but the penguins aren't unionized.

2025-04-03 00:29:09 CEST

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but are you her boyfriend?

2025-04-03 00:11:42 CEST

my son: “i feel like apostrophes can sometimes be really possessive.”

2025-04-02 15:57:06 CEST

i love the smell of liberation in the morning.

2025-03-30 01:32:53 CET

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USAID was much more than an ad campaign! it’d be kicking ass and saving lives in Myanmar and Thailand right now, saving lives as a matter of course throughout Africa. An ad campaign would be a weak tea kind of soft power move for a someday liberated America, and USAID was justified as a source of soft power, but USAID was so much more.

2025-03-30 00:56:42 CET

we should form a group called the “real americans” and raise huge sums for ad campaigns throughout the free world apologizing for our country’s behavior under possession, thanking them for staying sane and free, praying we will soon rejoin them after a difficult exorcism.
https://bsky.app/profile/thomashansen.bsky.social/post/3lljncadhqs2y
ht #WilliamCullerneBown

2025-03-29 19:13:05 CET

cc @npub144u…adjw https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/734089

2025-03-28 16:58:10 CET

from @npub1edf…tqa5 https://resnikoff.beehiiv.com/p/living-with-a-murderer
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/114/240/878/201/064/565/original/9d4f8b7d759d7e4b.png

2025-03-28 01:32:56 CET

i think much of the Republican coalition is tacitly sure they can do what they’ve persuaded themselves is called for, and the pointy-headed liberals who warn them of consequences will be wrong because God will reward and protect the USA they will have sanctified.

2025-03-26 23:47:56 CET

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You may condemn that too, or you may consider it a justified response to Israel’s actions in Gaza. But these aren’t killings coming from one side out of nowhere. Whichever of the many linked parties you consider more or less culpable, they are all — the US, Houthis, Israelis, Hamas, etc — prosecuting murderous military actions. /fin

2025-03-26 23:46:03 CET

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War is bad. But it is also not one-sided. I’m not inclined to give the current US administration, which I consider lawless and fascist, much benefit of the doubt. I think it likely this leadership are reckless with civilian life to the point of war crime. But these melees are in response to hostilities from the Houthis that have also resulted in deadly consequences. 1/

2025-03-26 23:26:53 CET

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I don’t revel in the deaths of Russian soldiers either, though of course it’s legitimate for the Ukrainians to kill them. It would have been legitimate for the Houthis to kill these servicemembers too—this is war—but I am very glad that did not happen, despite the severe intelligence breach. War is tragedy upon tragedy upon tragedy. Mass death may eventually help exhaust support for war, but that doesn’t make it virtuous or desirable. There are better ways to peace.

2025-03-26 17:50:08 CET

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( as more information comes out, the case that military planners were not in fact adhering to obligations to protect civilian life and proportionality grows stronger. after the fact, we may well conclude there were war crimes. but again, that's not something servicemembers executing these orders could have judged and refused. https://bsky.app/profile/eliothiggins.bsky.social/post/3llcabku2xk25 )

2025-03-26 14:10:45 CET

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Orders to bomb targets carefully selected for military importance are not *prima facie* a war crime such that a servicemember could or should refuse such orders. Questions of proportionality might lead to accusations *ex post* of war crime, that risks or harms to civilians were beyond proportionate to legitimate military objectives, but that is beyond the duty or capacity of servicemembers to judge in real time. They had no basis to refuse these orders.

2025-03-26 13:28:17 CET

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the servicemembers acting as ordered, on a mission that is not a war crime, are not the people responsible. their deaths are not to be sought or excused. in consequential terms, had incompetence led to their deaths, the probability of an escalation for all involved, leading to more civilian and noncivilian catastrophe, would be very high. it may already be high, but severe escalation (eg restarting full civil war) may also yet be avoided.

2025-03-26 04:34:21 CET

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It would have been, yes.

2025-03-26 02:52:10 CET

The war-plans thing is bad, but I think it's far less of a scandal than lawlessly decimating USAID, CFPB, NSF/NIH, etc.
It would have been a terrible tragedy if US servicemembers had been harmed due to their leaders' miserable opsec. But what those mfs have done to USAID alone will kill many more.

2025-03-25 15:36:45 CET

Donald Trump has no mandate at all. The majority of people who voted in the 2024 election voted against him.
He won a plurality of the popular vote. He achieved not even the barest majority, which itself would not constitute any kind of a mandate.

2025-03-24 15:39:43 CET

Excellent, from #MattBruenig, on “Abundance”. https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2025/03/24/the-abundance-agenda/ ht @npub1c2d…c2yj

2025-03-19 22:29:49 CET

the way you reduce Federal interest outlays is you retire debt with wealth taxes.

2025-03-19 16:03:21 CET

one thing i’d not have guessed is it’s the rich who’ve decided to burn it all down. recruiting the discontent and fanning the cynicism of the not so rich, sure. but the rich are in drivers’ seat of uprooting the foundations of their own extraordinary lives. great wealth turns people stupid.