Kyle Monson
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kmonson.bsky.social
Kyle Monson
@kmonson.bsky.social
640 followers 630 following 680 posts
Founding partner at Codeword, helping tech companies with their words. Former editor and journalist. NYC-based.
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I do love the idea that the Senate Dem leader likely voted for the same guy that Trump, Musk, and Stephen Miller endorsed.

Makes it very clear what the real sides are in this fight, and who's on which.
This is worse than the worst thing ever attributed to any “Bernie Bro”. The Democratic leader literally refusing to say WHETHER HE VOTED FOR THE DEMOCRAT.
this shit right here is wrecker shit, as much as wrecker shit as any online leftist has done, if not more so. no wonder so many people are repulsed by anyone (rightly) saying 'vote blue no matter who', the most powerful elected Dem in the nation won't do it! it undermines the whole coalition! jfc
the word we used to use for this attitude was "conservative"
On the other hand, freemium ad-supported bagels could be a billion-dollar idea
Reposted by Kyle Monson
I wonder if bakeries that advertise their wares online get people commenting "Paywall!" after they go into the bakery and see that the tasty croissant someone posted a photo of actually costs money.
I'm firmly in this camp too. Modern life is absurdly technical and complex, most people could really use an assistant to help navigate, but can't afford a human one.

"Help me make sense of this" is the killer use case.
we touched on this a little bit with @donmoyn.bsky.social last week but I think the bull case for LLMs-as-admin-burden-Sherpas is fascinating and maybe compelling
I got one after years of pining, and regretted waiting so long. Nothing else like it.
Imagine signing up to be an orc based on bad meme.

And not even an Uruk-hai, just the dumbest, ugliest, pulled-from-the-mud NPC that everyone hates and laughs at.
DHS just posted a Lord of the Rings meme as an appeal to join ICE
Freezing cold take but Waiting for a Star to Fall, She Drives Me Crazy, and Miss You Much are perfectly produced songs.

Those snare tones alone validate this entire year of music.

(And yeah REM and The Cure and Tom Petty and The Pixies and all the "cool" artists that aren't on this list)
People need to stop retconning literally the worst era in American popular music history into something it wasn't, just because there were also some amazing records that like 250 people happened to be hunting down and listening to
I was thinking about this over the weekend... clicking around on FindAGrave and realizing I know a handful of details about my grandparents, a story or two about my great grandparents, and everything before that is hazy lore and family mythology.
Reposted by Kyle Monson
ICE is abducting our residents. So Evanston will now send supervisors to every reported scene, demand IDs and document every abuse. For our community, basic justice, morality and safety is the floor — anything less is not optional.
City to respond to, document ICE sightings - Evanston Now
Police commander says city can't "force federal law enforcement agents to give us credentials," but will make "every attempt."
evanstonnow.com
Reposted by Kyle Monson
The "don't talk about social issues" strategy only works if you *admit that was your strategy after the fact*. We're in this doom loop where Democrats try something, gaslight themselves into believing they didn't try it, then decide to try it again.
"if we just don't talk about it, they can't hit us for talking about it" has been thoroughly discredited but we're going to keep trying it because the point was always that party elites/centrist Dems don't want to talk about those things, not whether it was good strategy/messaging to do so!
Reposted by Kyle Monson
Reposted by Kyle Monson
Changing my name to Isaac Chotiner so at least the interview transcript will be confusing.
I see more "dems talk about identity and climate too much!" than I do actual dems actually talking about identity and climate issues.

The GOP invented a party to run against, the media bought into it, and now the centrist consultants have too.
IANAPS (I Am Not A Political Strategist), but the appeal of AOC and Mamdani and Bernie isn't their message discipline. It's that they seem to actually believe what they're saying, and are willing to fight for it.

Jeffries or Schumer could have perfect message discipline and I'd still want them out.
Not surprising given the names in the acknowledgements, but the consulting class continues to treat "having sincere beliefs and running on them" as some weird trick that will never work.
Li'l scoop at Semafor: A new report endorsed by Biden's former campaign manager, former DCCC chair Cheri Bustos, and other centrist Dems blames the party's broken brand on post-2012 left-wing language and ideas - not just "the groups" but adopted by whole party www.semafor.com/article/10/2...
Left-wing ideas have wrecked Democrats’ brand, new report warns
The center-left group Welcome relied on polling of hundreds of thousands of voters over six months for its findings, shared first with Semafor.
www.semafor.com
Reposted by Kyle Monson
i should be able to click a button at the beginning of a sports season that says “i’m normal” and i don’t get served any ads for crypto or gambling
Reposted by Kyle Monson
A 14-word replacement for most op-eds, substacks, etc about this moment.

The GOP could stop ALL of this, right now—if a handful of Sens or Reps could step outside the cult.

It would take four in the Senate, four (maybe five) in the House, to change history.

Until then, they're all to blame.
Reposted by Kyle Monson
I am pretty tired of this talking point when we actually know what high deductible catastrophic health insurance plans produce: an across the board reduction in care including preventative/prophylactic care, a fuck ton of medical debt, and a hospital system brought to the brink.
DeSantis said “Most people, particularly under 50, what they really need is a catastrophic plan that’s affordable, where then they can pay whatever they’re doing out of a health savings account.”
floridapolitics.com/archives/761...
Ron DeSantis says people under 50 don’t have much use for comprehensive health insurance
'Catastrophic care' should be enough for them.
floridapolitics.com
33 points against the Giants in the 4th quarter. This guy's down bad tonight (and hopefully in concussion protocol).
MAGA man eats pavement after shouting slurs at No Kings protesters
Ex mormons really do make the best friends. One reason: leaving the church means you get back a ton of money and time to spend with friends and family.
I have two friends who are ex Mormons and they are the best of all of my friends at reaching out to hang out or do something together /and/ they almost never flake and I need this to be studied.
MetLife stadium is half full and that's way more of a crowd than this team deserves.