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Free-quent Flyer

@freequentflyer.bsky.social

390 followers 230 following 5.1K posts

Travel hacker, theory and practice. Freequentflyerbook.com for travel hacking and platform work. The last honest man.

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Free-quent Flyer @freequentflyer.bsky.social · Aug 20

Every person who agreed and everyone who went along with the lie that "something had to be done" but that "something" was not "housing" is responsible in their part, however small. "Being lied to" is not an excuse for "believing lies." You cannot, famously, cheat an honest man.

Nicholas Slayton @nslayton.bsky.social · Aug 20

Trump repeatedly cited homelessness as an excuse for flooding DC with cops and troops, conflating being unhoused with being a criminal. He's building on a bipartisan policy consensus that's surged across blue and red states and cities. New from me @newrepublic.com newrepublic.com/article/1991...

The Bipartisan Roots of Trump’s Cruel Crackdown on the Homeless

The White House is ordering brutal clearings and displacement of the most economically vulnerable Americans. Democrats and Republicans have jointly helped pave the way for this.

newrepublic.com

Free-quent Flyer @freequentflyer.bsky.social · 12h

I had a real Dead Internet Theory time looking for the text since search doesn't work anymore, but it starts at page 380 here if you're curious for some reason archive.org/details/maca...

The History of England from the Accession of James the Second (Volume IV) : Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron, 1800-1859 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second (1st edition) (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1851; OCLC...

archive.org

Free-quent Flyer @freequentflyer.bsky.social · 12h

I believe he must be referring to chapter XX of Lord Thomas Babbington Macaulay's "History of England From the Accession of James II," Volume IV, which appears(?) to have been published in 1868, plenty of time for it to be in everyone's hands in time for "Lombard Street" in 1873

Free-quent Flyer @freequentflyer.bsky.social · 12h

Bagehot is a brilliant writer but because he was writing for his contemporaries many, many of his references are funny and inscrutable to a lay person

Free-quent Flyer @freequentflyer.bsky.social · 14h

Bagehot on faith in institutions

Reposted by Free-quent Flyer

Blue sky nice guy @rajandelman.bsky.social · 15h

Rooting for Humpy

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Free-quent Flyer @freequentflyer.bsky.social · 17h

I am explaining why I do not think what you described would be a "full victory" but rather a "temporary lull" because a full victory requires an engaged and vigilant population but you are describing a passive population that will be continually vulnerable to new authoritarian appeals.

Reposted by Free-quent Flyer

GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com · 20h

not one of the linux people in this thread is doing a single, solitary thing to refute the joke

GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com · 20h

every linux person i know: you should try linux, it’s great and easy!

also every linux person i know:

Ed @ed3d.net · 20h

ed: I want to just install a Linux desktop and I prefer KDE

also ed: fedora doesn't have even nouveau out of the box and says "mess with rpmfusion"

also ed: "'nobara linux'? that has one developer"

also ed: "kubuntu's installer crashes making encrypted partitions"

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Free-quent Flyer @freequentflyer.bsky.social · 19h

An early nexus of anti-welfare campaigns was when social workers started enrolling black families in the benefits they were entitled to. Whites were fine with it when they understood it to be for whites who "fell on hard times," but radicalized against it when it promised to lift up the underclass.

Free-quent Flyer @freequentflyer.bsky.social · 20h

But there has never been a capitalist class satisfied with modest wealth inequality, so far-right authoritarians will always have the resources they need to undermine that consensus by activating the racial anxieties of "disengaged center-right voters." So the left doesn't get to relax either!

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Free-quent Flyer @freequentflyer.bsky.social · 20h

I do not think this would work because this is what the New Deal and Great Society "consensus" looked like: broad prosperity for the middle classes, modest wealth inequality, and a system of violent racial repression for the underclasses that "disengaged center-right voters" got to politely ignore.

Damned Frightening Robot @supremerobo.bsky.social · 1d

A full victory over authoritarianism will be a kind of mass gaslighting campaign. Systematically isolating MAGA holdouts from their peers by changing politics so that the far-right lights their hair on fire while the large contingent of disengaged center-right voters checks out.

Dead Carl @deadcarl.bsky.social · 1d

I wrote something on this. Ruthlessness means being economical with power, and so formal justice and accountability will have to be secondary to doing what is necessary to prevent another Reactionary administration.

open.substack.com/pub/sincerec...

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Free-quent Flyer @freequentflyer.bsky.social · 20h

That's right

Reposted by Free-quent Flyer

David Zipper @davidzipper.bsky.social · 3d

"Though robotaxis have notched up impressive growth, they look ploddingly pedestrian compared with far zippier pedal-powered rivals. [Waymo] proudly proclaims that its cars do around 250k trips a week. Yet in NYC alone that number of trips is made every three days using the city’s bikeshare scheme."

Forget EVs. Cycling is revolutionising transport

Pedal power is booming, spinning up a new culture war

www.economist.com

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Free-quent Flyer @freequentflyer.bsky.social · 20h

No room for prominent leftists in Hollywood

Reposted by Free-quent Flyer

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

STEPHANOPOULOS: I didn't insinuate anything. I asked you whether Tom Homan accepted $50k as was heard on an audio tape recorded by the FBI in September 2024. You did not answer the question. Thank you for your time.

VANCE: No, George, I sai--

STEPHANOPOULOS: We'll be right back

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Reposted by Free-quent Flyer

Don Hughes @donaldhughes.ca · 1d

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate.

Pumpkins and fruit and such with the words Happy Canadian Thanksgiving.

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Reposted by Free-quent Flyer

Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · 1d

What you see here in the children’s father, Bandit, is the culmination of sin. A father whose very name evokes crime, the criminal of criminals. Bluey, the color of sorrow. Bingo, lust for games of chance. Mother Chilli, who works part time at an airport in which planes “soar into the heavens”, thi-

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 1d

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

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Stellaween? @antlervel.vet · 1d

MARLEY: I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link—
ME: Hell yeah dude you were a blacksmith?
MARLEY: What? No
ME: Oh you made a big chain for fun?
MARLEY: No
ME: Ok well it looks heavy man you can throw it on the chair if you want I’m just gaming
MARLEY: Is that the new Battlefield

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Reposted by Free-quent Flyer

Justin LaLiberty @jlalibs.com · 1d

What an absolute treasure Diane Keaton was. Her wit never tired, nor did her style.

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The New Republic @newrepublic.com · 1d

According to the victim's attorney, the body camera captured the officer saying, “Do something, bitch,” before leaping out of the car and shooting her multiple times. Another officer asked, “Hey, what happened?” The first pointed to his camera, “Hey, don’t speak. You’re good”
trib.al/KhKsfSb

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Reposted by Free-quent Flyer

Big Worker @bigworker.bsky.social · 1d

7th Circuit to National Guard: You don't have to go home but you can't stay here

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Reposted by Free-quent Flyer

Butt Praxis @buttpraxis.bsky.social · 1d

Do you think this is where he lives

Photograph at night of the fanciest fucking Burger King I’ve ever seen, three stories of Edwardian era construction, with the letters B U R G E R K I N G illuminated from below like an apparition

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Free-quent Flyer @freequentflyer.bsky.social · 2d

This guy cracks me up on a weekly basis. You're not "on strike" if you do not show up to a job you are not being paid to do. That's not how "jobs" work. Jobs are things you are paid to show up and do viewfromthewing.com/as-flights-b...

As Flights Back Up Nationwide — Duffy Threatens to Fire Air Traffic Controllers Who Stay Home During Shutdown - View from the Wing

Flight delays are spreading across the country as the government shutdown drags on — and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is issuing a warning that echoes 1981: air traffic controllers who don’t sh...

viewfromthewing.com

Free-quent Flyer @freequentflyer.bsky.social · 2d

Round 3 BABY!!!!

Martin Austermuhle @maustermuhle.bsky.social · 2d

Update: The push to hold a referendum on the changes the D.C. Council made to Initiative 82 this summer is official. A critical hearing before the D.C. Board of Elections is set for October 22; after that, proponents will have very little time to collect signatures from voters.

Free-quent Flyer @freequentflyer.bsky.social · 2d

Uber and DoorDash certainly haven't sent anything to workers in DC, presumably because they're still lobbying to make sure they're included in the untaxed-tip scam

Reposted by Free-quent Flyer

Chris Person @papapishu.bsky.social · 2d

It’s true: the cities are lawless and scary, if you live here sell your property as fast as possible, particularly if you have a 2 family row house from the 1920s with those nice bay windows.

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