Steve Randy Waldman

https://zirk.us/@interfluidity

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

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Last Notes

2025-06-19 13:13:23 UTC

suppose you cut medicaid, but create a “stabilization fund” to hold hospitals harmless, prevent rural hospitals from shuttering.
all you’ve done is created income for hospitals without requiring—or even allowing—them to actually do the work of helping those who would have been medicaid recipients.

2025-05-05 12:32:57 UTC

“french films” undermining our morals again.

2025-05-01 12:39:31 UTC

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yes! Ricardo’s comparative advantage presumes balanced trade, but not necessarily bilaterally balanced. ( i’m explicit about that in this one https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/04/27/how-can-taxing-foreign-investors-balance-trade/index.html )

2025-05-01 01:50:36 UTC

[new draft post] Overall but not bilateral balance https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/04/30/overall-but-not-bilateral-balance/index.html

2025-04-28 12:57:37 UTC

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.

2025-04-10 05:19:00 UTC

you can just do things. stupid things.

2025-03-30 15:49:10 UTC

a firm is a human organization to accomplish something. recruiting and appeasing all stakeholders, generating cash flow sufficient to pay the bills, these are *constraints* a firm faces, not the goal or function or purpose of the firm.

2025-03-30 00:32:53 UTC

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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.

2025-03-29 23:56:42 UTC

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 18:13:05 UTC

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

2025-03-28 15:58:10 UTC

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

2025-03-26 22:47:56 UTC

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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 22:46:03 UTC

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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 22:26:53 UTC

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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 16:50:08 UTC

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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 13:10:45 UTC

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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 12:28:17 UTC

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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 03:34:21 UTC

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It would have been, yes.

2025-03-26 01:52:10 UTC

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.

2025-03-19 15:03:21 UTC

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.

2025-03-12 03:11:58 UTC

ambitious sociopaths are drawn to MAGA. rule by unvarnished, unapologetic exercise of power is their highest ambition made real. there are plenty of ambitious sociopaths among democrats. you can see them. they feign disdain but they slip, pulled toward that bright light of ruthless control.

2025-03-06 15:32:37 UTC

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i still build my world around RSS! (you can subscribe by mail if you want.)

2025-03-06 14:59:33 UTC

i think all social media posts should begin with a land acknowledgment that blogs were here first and sincere expressions of contrition for colonizing the place and destroying the culture.

2025-03-05 13:57:30 UTC

“economists” falsely presume a quantitative resource constraint rather than undesirable patterns of deployment and remuneration. under poor deployment and inequitable remuneration, greater public share can be welfare increasing, even when much must be spent on unconsumable war preparedness.

2025-03-03 18:17:53 UTC

it's remarkable the term gaslighting was invented prior to this administration.
cf @npub178m…w32e on Schroedinger's CFPB. https://prospect.org/economy/2025-03-03-cfpb-we-didnt-mean-stop-work-russell-vought/

2025-02-26 02:00:11 UTC

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(thanks for looking!)

2025-02-26 00:47:50 UTC

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i would appreciate any help. to my knowledge my domain has never been used for anything nsfw or sketchy. i did recently have some kind of breach of my notes server, maybe there was something not-great placed there? in any case, i’d like to understand and remedy this.

2025-02-25 18:39:24 UTC

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that's very strange! thanks for letting me know. it's up for me. can i ask whether are you trying https://drafts.interfluidity.com/ or https://www.interfluidity.com/ or are both unavailable? (only) if you are comfortable saying so, where are you physically located?

2025-02-24 15:42:04 UTC

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i know you won’t.

2025-02-24 14:27:39 UTC

you can just do things. terrible things.

2025-02-20 17:16:19 UTC

microsoft always astonishes me. it's allegedly an IT company. i renewed my Excel subscription yesterday, after i let it expire. today they write me — twice, same e-mail — "Your Microsoft 365 subscription has expired" asking me to renew.
it was queued yesterday or whatever. information technology.

2025-02-20 00:55:15 UTC

i find it a bit weird how little we hear from Kamala Harris or Joe Biden. Biden is old, i guess. but Harris could be at the rhetorical ramparts.
i think it would help. the quiet of the people we supposed our leaders is devastating.
thank you aoc, pritzker, bernie. more, more, more.

2025-02-11 13:55:20 UTC

on the anti-US-imperialist left (“tankies”), i wonder if part of Trump’s appeal, perhaps only semiconsciously, is that he’d be openly as bad as they were always sure the United States always was. they’d be proven right, and no more of what they perceived as hypocritical sanctimony.

2025-02-10 15:13:48 UTC

This point is so obvious is should fit in one post.
Elon Musk’s role is plainly illegal. The “advice and consent” clause of the Constitution is obviously intended to prevent a President from such powerful delegations of authority without explicit Congressional consent.

2025-02-07 03:06:23 UTC

everyone should be in favor of a democratic people’s republic. seems obvious.
from https://xcancel.com/lexfridman/status/1887587308087427072
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/113/960/391/955/923/368/original/c7028fa268827ff7.jpeg

2025-02-03 21:42:05 UTC

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truly a pleasure! i think so well of you too, my dear interlocutor who is fine with people who worked with USAID in good faith getting tortured so Elon can play USAID files, thinks that would serve a larger, noble purpose.

2025-02-03 21:39:21 UTC

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if you say so. you are really a delightful person to share a discussion with.

2025-02-03 21:35:04 UTC

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i agree secrecy is overused and abused by the bureaucracy.
that doesn't mean secrecy never has a role, or that it's legit and not evil to undo it basically randomly.

2025-02-03 21:24:56 UTC

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not true in law. if a "rogue operator" is presented in such a way by an organization that a reasonable counterparty would consider them to be acting in the name of the organization, the organization often finds itself on the hook. as a matter of ethics, stipulating your interpretation of nonauthorization, if someone accepted support from a real USG agent on promise of discretion that shouldn't have been made, your ethical view is "oops! sucks for you!"?

2025-02-03 20:57:04 UTC

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the US owes all the people with whom we collaborated in Afghanistan refuge, and all of the politicians who deny or prevent that, who gum up the works, have their future blood on their hands and besmirch our nation's honor. you make too light, walk away too easily, from things that are not light, easy, or frankly yours to walk away from, whatever you personally agreed or disagreed with.

2025-02-03 20:49:32 UTC

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you can have plenty of accountability and oversight. we have a whole army of people with security clearances, and you can clear more if you don't like their politics. Congress can ban USAID from the practice of covert aid. i'd favor that. but you—yes, you too if you're an american—can't ethically welch on obligations with life and death stakes that predecessors took on, no matter how shitty you think the predecessors.

2025-02-03 20:42:50 UTC

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the issue is that, since (rightly or wrongly, it's actually not a practice i favor) the US sometimes does provide aid to people or organizations without their country's government's knowledge or approval, what we are talking about risking is, yes, murder, the murder of people USAID has covertly assisted, if that information is disclosed to the wrong people or made public.

2025-02-03 20:32:58 UTC

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i'd say the "we" in this case is the government of the United States, a formal institution that promised discretion under high stakes to some of the people it financed. that "we", and its obligations, survive changes of administration, just like Boeing survives (for now) its many CEO changes.

2025-02-03 19:25:10 UTC

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i'm saying confidential aid has been part of what USAID has done, and whether you think it's a good idea or not (i'm mostly on the not side), it's ethically and practically critical that we maintain the confidences we've promised, however we might decide to narrow the practice going forward.

2025-02-03 15:37:37 UTC

Suppose you think USAID is more about official cover for intelligence work than aid. I think that’s exaggerated, untrue, but OK.
Then it is *more* outrageous its classified docs shld be compromised. Agents in the field don’t determine US intelligence policy but it is they whom these leaks may kill.

2025-01-31 15:13:54 UTC

Should people who openly bribe the President, even if they are “respected” lawyers or CEOs or whatnot, doing it because “it’s in the best interest of shareholders” be welcome in polite society? Should you serve them in your restaurant? Speak politely with them at conferences?

2025-01-26 18:27:58 UTC

abundance is awesome and i support it, but presuming abundance will overwhelm distributional concerns is a bet we’ve already taken that works out poorly, both from an abundance and distributional perspective.
i am radically for the equitable abundance agenda!

2025-01-23 23:36:56 UTC

in business and in France, ROI is king.

2025-01-21 20:19:11 UTC

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what did Marc Andreeson say about Musk? https://x.com/pmarca/status/1870915523623670176
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/113/868/190/541/682/958/original/4844153631775671.png

2025-01-21 20:03:27 UTC

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But that's just a different interpretation of the basic claim, that jokingly or not Musk has some longstanding interest in communicating support of Nazi-ish things. (And the support of AfD doesn't seem too jokey?) /fin

2025-01-21 20:02:13 UTC

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Sure it could all be a gag! Trigger the libs! 5/

2025-01-21 20:01:56 UTC

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Circumstantial evidence could always be coincidental. But as circumstantial evidence piles up, the probability of coincidence declines. 4/

2025-01-21 20:01:40 UTC

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Support of AfD in Germany doesn't mean you are a Nazi sympathizer, even if that party has neonazi connections. 3/

2025-01-21 20:01:23 UTC

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A longstanding fascination with the number 420 is pretty weak tea as evidence, even if 4/20 is Hitler's birthday. 2/

2025-01-21 20:01:01 UTC

A hand gesture that culminates remarkably like a Nazi salute but begins with a hand on the heart might have been some novelty, something not intended as a Nazi salute. 1/

2025-01-21 19:05:06 UTC

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yes, it did a bit. he's called himself a socialist in the past, but only in his usual words-have-no-meaning ha-ha way.

2025-01-21 17:34:47 UTC

Are there any efforts in European countries / the EU to supplant US-based communications platforms?

2025-01-21 15:00:28 UTC

we can't see the future. our base case always has to be muddling thru — turbulence sure, but things mostly remaining as they mostly have been.
but if we crack, if we really do take a turn towards political violence, disappearings, camps, in retrospect it will seem we were astonishingly well warned.

2025-01-21 06:52:57 UTC

man, we’re going to have the mother of all tourism booms when people learn that those on temporary visas are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, so it’s like “The Purge” for them. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential... ht @npub1nkh…zm9f

2025-01-21 00:40:12 UTC

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they don't so much blame Bernie, though of course they say his ideas are far too "left" and helped damn the Democrats electorally. but Bernie is popular, even among the supporters of the people to whom they are ingratiating themselves. and he didn't feminize anything. so it's much quieter. /fin

2025-01-21 00:39:42 UTC

it's weird how bitterly some self-styled centrists have turned against Elizabeth Warren. they don't use the snake emoji, but there's this self-flagellation about having supported her, and so (allegedly) alienated the tech boyz to whom they are now cozying. i guess it's her fault too they went Nazi. 1/

2025-01-20 22:42:31 UTC

just deleted an instagram account i never really used. still, it felt good.

2025-01-20 20:09:51 UTC

an important precedent to set will be impeaching a Supreme Court justice for false and tendentious readings of the Constitution. it’s one of the few checks we have on them, since they arrogated the power of judicial review.

2025-01-20 20:04:21 UTC

vibes are confected and promoted by pundits. they only shift in right-wing directions. they serve to promote preference falsification. just don’t.
will it ever be a vibecession under Trump?
(no shade to @npub1l7p…0ns0 of whom i am very fond. it’s just how the vibes of vibes have shaken out.)

2025-01-20 19:14:45 UTC

i’d feel more secure about Amendment 14, Section 1 if they hadn’t substantially nullified Amendment 14, Section 3, with very little pushback or complaint because even though their decision defied the text’s clear intent (Congress is supposed to cure, not find), it seemed advisable politically.

2025-01-20 18:11:17 UTC

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🎵sometimes i feel like
AI is watching me! 🎶

2025-01-20 17:52:16 UTC

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https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/113/861/953/753/919/370/original/fdf0c48b70d9bc46.jpeg

2025-01-20 17:39:56 UTC

donut holes are all around us, all the time.
the making of a donut simply reveals one.

2025-01-20 17:28:09 UTC

melania is like david bowie incognito today.

2025-01-20 01:05:41 UTC

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i did cancel. they’re offering one month free. i’ll end up having to renew before the end of subscription — i actually do need Excel — but i wanted to send a signal.

2025-01-19 23:59:04 UTC

the price dynamics of $TRUMP / $MELANIA basically track Trump supporters' theory of gender dynamics.

2025-01-19 21:24:41 UTC

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(thanks! i've tried following these directions, and just searching for "Microsoft 365 Family Classic" but it seems not to exist at this point. i don't see any family plan for less that the new $129/year.)

2025-01-19 20:53:34 UTC

unironically this. https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/113856024485003178

2025-01-19 20:50:50 UTC

it would be funny if what happens is Trump baits firms like Oracle into violating the law and then fines them hundreds of billions and they're like we had assurances and the courts are like don't you have lawyers? the money would be enough to put a dent in a year's deficit!

2025-01-19 20:36:33 UTC

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they like having big net worth numbers attached to themselves, and Trump legit can make those smaller, or reduce their growth. say Trump, as he has threatened to, somehow exempted Meta from Sec 230 protection. it's not clear the business model can work without that. Zuck might be reduced to a mere single-digit billionaire!

2025-01-19 20:33:11 UTC

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i'm not wedded to the phrase. you do what you have to do. sometimes you shouldn't. but sometimes the cost of not doing legitimately outweighs any scruples. both Zuckerberg and Zelensky would face costs if they didn't. but i judge Zelensky's choice far more defensible than Zuckerberg's. the costs are of a different moral quality.

2025-01-19 20:22:24 UTC

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fair enough. but in addition to caution, diffidence, and courtesy, there was extreme praise. understandable, forgivable. but also factual.

2025-01-19 20:04:46 UTC

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i agree, as i suggested, the kissing up is more forgivable IMHO in his case. but he is kissing up.

2025-01-19 19:58:00 UTC

we didn't actually object to the oppression. we just objected to who got to be the oppressor.

2025-01-19 19:51:37 UTC

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pretty much.

2025-01-19 19:50:18 UTC

i spent a few years among idealistic cryptocurrency types. in drips and increments, the pull of payoffs drained the idealism, in my view. nevertheless, i hope to see some reflections by cryptocurrency thinkers on how $TRUMP relates to the early ideals of the community.

2025-01-19 19:42:34 UTC

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even if Americans haven't "gotten" social shopping yet, we still have a large share of currency-exchange-weighted global purchasing power, so the prospect of, um, educating us has git to be attractive.

2025-01-19 19:37:58 UTC

living in America when you consider it unethical to use products from X, Tesla, Meta, Alphabet, TikTok, Amazon, Starbucks.
one thing it does is sow marital discord.

2025-01-19 18:19:45 UTC

just for the cognitive dissonance, it’s worth noting it’s not just billionaires and greedy capitalist businesses. if you listened to his #LexFridman interview, Zelensky also was going out of his way to flatter Trump. understandable, but it always is. arguably more forgivable under the circumstances.

2025-01-19 18:10:58 UTC

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is there?

2025-01-19 18:08:40 UTC

not with a bang, nor a whimper, but with a TikTok.

2025-01-19 17:53:45 UTC

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executive orders cannot override acts of Congress. name a Biden executive order you think did that. there are, of course, gray areas. but this is not one. Congress passed a law explicitly to ban TikTok if ByteDance did not divest it. it did not grant the President the authority to waive or delay it.

2025-01-19 17:38:09 UTC

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Why would they?

2025-01-19 17:19:52 UTC

there is no such thing as the vibe so it cannot actually shift.

2025-01-19 16:11:05 UTC

Trump wants TikTok to become state-owned media! https://journa.host/@w7voa/113855771597485176

2025-01-19 06:15:20 UTC

This post is to notify you of some unusual activity in your account.

2025-01-19 04:45:14 UTC

unsurprisingly i guess, my sense is Redbook is shaping its algorithm to present China as great, Chinese people as welcoming, the US as a bit of a catastrophe morally + economically, but good Americans as welcome, especially those who express gratitude for hospitality, refugees from more than TikTok.

2025-01-18 22:40:02 UTC

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Partisans of all stripes edit Wikipedia tendentiously, but its reliability is sustained be editors removing poorly sourced information. Partisans of the fascist right may have new support from, say, the Washington Post or ABC or CBS as their practices bend to the new, um, business reality. /fin

2025-01-18 22:37:41 UTC

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Can outlets that openly placate Trump by e.g. forfeiting winnable lawsuits remain reliable sources to Wikipedia? How reliable will Wikipedia remain if the sources from which its articles are constructed bend to curry favor and escape threats of the new administration? 2/

2025-01-18 22:33:59 UTC

Wikipedia (which ironically, early on, was warned against in schools as an unreliable source) is one of the last bastions of high quality information. But that quality is based on requiring citations to reliable sources, traditionally including "well-established news outlets". 1/

2025-01-18 22:03:22 UTC

someone asked on redbook about Americans’ view of Elon Musk (and his mom), and it’s fun to see the infosphere clash, the Americans mostly dissing him while Chinese people note that he is widely admired there. http://xhslink.com/a/8xIo5fp1I343

2025-01-18 19:23:33 UTC

what if China does to the next American election what Elon Musk did to the last one?

2025-01-18 18:44:37 UTC

i love it when i click on a thing and get a message like the thing you clicked on does not exist. like what does existence even mean?
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/113/850/834/990/760/625/original/1fda3c48f17e8a47.jpeg

2025-01-18 14:22:25 UTC

it’s touching to see Donald Trump make such an effort to prove Gary Gensler right.

2025-01-18 02:10:37 UTC

so many people into eugenics wouldn't make their own cut.