Stephen Judkins
stephenjudkins.bsky.social
Stephen Judkins
@stephenjudkins.bsky.social
Skull astronaut
Going to log off social media for the next week. I will log back on if and only if It Happens
November 24, 2025 at 7:15 AM
Ranked-choice voting didn't *mathematically* change much in Portland, mostly the same people won who would have with FTTP. But it sure did lower the level of rancor a bunch, letting voters have more "expressive power" without worrying about spoilers
i am...skeptical about implementation here state-by-state but it could absolutely strengthen coalition unity and decrease alienation of the primary electorate.
1) UHHHHHHHHH...... WHAT??????

2) TOTAL MAMDANI CULTURAL VICTORY
November 24, 2025 at 5:46 AM
A lot of WW2 counterfactuals are of the form "what if Hitler had only made incredibly risky high-stakes bets the times that ended up working and didn't the times they didn't work"
basically the only militarily impressive thing, singular, the Nazis ever did was the logistical feat in capturing paris the way they did and the correct takeaway is holy shit they got ungodly lucky with that one
November 24, 2025 at 4:00 AM
This would be appalling in any context and for any victim, but the fact that they're invading a commercial kitchen to drag someone off who came here to work their ass over a hot stove to make native-born restaurant-goers a little more comfortable and well off really shows how negative sum this is
November 23, 2025 at 11:23 PM
Reposted by Stephen Judkins
one response (true, funny) to the twitter location thing is "lol twitter/the gop/vc is cooked" and another response (true, less funny) is that a massive amount of the traffic on ALL public social media is money-making scams lying about national origin
November 23, 2025 at 5:26 PM
Traditional Chinese medicine isn't even coherently traditional. To a large extent it was fabricated or reinvented during the 1950s-60s by Mao and the PRC as an alternative to more expensive (but actually helpful) science-based medicine and spread through the Chinese diaspora after that.
This will be a battle because there’s a lot of well meaning anthropologist types who really do believe it‘s racist to say that eg: traditional chinese medicine is mostly bullshit, but it’s a fight well worth having.
I'm all for woke 2 as long as we agree woo-woo is out, I want aggressively pro-science and medicine thanks
November 23, 2025 at 7:16 PM
You can know a lot about a liberal, leftist, or centrist by whether they see Black voters as a burden or a boon
I just read a lament, re: the laborious, nettlesome burden of keeping Black voters motivated to turn out, that the Dem coalition relies “on placating a group that is 13% of the population.”

Just do the math, it went on — which makes one wonder: doesn’t “the math” involve counting to 50? Hello?
November 23, 2025 at 7:07 PM
Anti-solar NIMBYs aren't beating the accusations of being pretty dim bulbs. "Extracting from the sky" is a good one
November 23, 2025 at 6:20 PM
Reposted by Stephen Judkins
Literally the reason Twitter sucks now is all these foreigners logged on willing to do racism for pennies on the dollar and undercut our home-grown American racists. We need to erect serious trade barriers to protect the integrity of our domestic racism industry and preserve racist jobs.
November 23, 2025 at 3:58 PM
It's funny how all the businesses on 28th ave said installation of a bike lane would lead to a loss of parking that would be an existential threat to their businesses, and then COVID happened and they happily replaced all the parking with outside dining and they're doing fine
maps.app.goo.gl
November 23, 2025 at 5:43 PM
Reposted by Stephen Judkins
I realize there are only like 5 people who may do this but I would strongly suggest giving this a read.

Gift link

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/o...
Opinion | How the Elite Behave When No One Is Watching: Inside the Epstein Emails
www.nytimes.com
November 23, 2025 at 5:10 PM
Freeway maintenance, or even freeway expansion is normal and expected. Bike lanes are social engineering
As a general rule, most people decrying "government intervention" regard state activity they approve of as merely ensuring the default, correct state of affairs and state activity they disapprove of as an artificial and unnatural infringement on it.
in general the American individuality and distrust of government disappears once criminal justice enters the conversation

Americans hate the government meddling in their everyday affairs but "criminals" are a separate class of ontologically bad people that they could never ever be a part of
November 23, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Reposted by Stephen Judkins
Pfizer’s mRNA Flu Vaccine Works Great, but RFK Jr. Might Ruin It for Everyone gizmodo.com/pfizers-mrna...
Pfizer’s mRNA Flu Vaccine Works Great, but RFK Jr. Might Ruin It for Everyone
In a large-scale trial, modRNA was significantly better at preventing confirmed flu cases than a typical seasonal flu shot.
gizmodo.com
November 23, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Real happy we didn't have to deal with Bolsonaro holes up in the US Embassy, if that was the plan. What a fucking mess that would have been
November 23, 2025 at 4:54 AM
Reposted by Stephen Judkins
Court politics are inherently incoherent.
So, to recap, Ukraine and Europe understand that America has effectively endorsed a 28-point plan to force Kyiv to capitulate, set a Thursday deadline to accept it, and threatened to cut off all aid.

Now Marco Rubio says it's all wrong, that's not the plan, there's no deadline and no threat.
November 22, 2025 at 11:06 PM
Reposted by Stephen Judkins
no one has even bothered trying to convince us there’s a threat from Venezuela. no weapons of mass destruction. nothing. just a war of choice because why not.
US operations against Venezuela to begin within days.

Covert ops the first move.
www.reuters.com
November 22, 2025 at 9:48 PM
Another significant expansion of Waymo's service area. We will certainly see if the statistical evidence of their relative safety keeps mounting!
Waymo gets California DMV's approval to test robotaxis in more areas
The California DMV has approved Waymo’s request to conduct driverless testing and to deploy its robotaxis in more locations in the state.
www.engadget.com
November 22, 2025 at 9:26 PM
Reposted by Stephen Judkins
1) good, they should be prosecuted, they are responsible for countless deaths

2) always very funny when these people realize the extent to which their billionaire patrons could not possibly give less of a shit about them
November 22, 2025 at 7:41 PM
I hate this because bash is a terrible and primitive coding environment and LLMs aren't really capable of wielding it much less clumsily than humans are
Anthropic is giving away all their secrets
November 22, 2025 at 8:33 PM
Reposted by Stephen Judkins
Polycules? Is that some obscure hero from Greek mythology?
October 24, 2023 at 3:20 PM
Reposted by Stephen Judkins
Big Tech cos ranked by how much I personally trust their approaches to privacy:

1. Apple
2. Google

….I feel there's a bit of a gap here, frankly, but it's mostly vibes

3. Microsoft

another gap, less vibesy

4. Amazon

HUGE gap, and not really vibes-based at all

5. Facebook/Meta
November 22, 2025 at 7:45 PM
[yakety sax plays alongside the sounds of the horrors of war]
Russia flat out rejects Trump's 28-point peace plan: "Even in a reduced military and territorial form, Ukraine would remain a significant danger, requiring us to keep our forces on the western borders."
November 22, 2025 at 7:51 PM
Reposted by Stephen Judkins
not surprising that it's easy to give an LLM Twitter brain poisoning
November 19, 2025 at 4:09 PM
Reposted by Stephen Judkins
America putting most of its eggs in the generative AI basket, China going hard into green tech. When history looks back on this period, someone is going to look awfully stupid.
November 22, 2025 at 7:18 PM
This is real penny-ante stasi stuff here. They're cosplaying authoritarian consolidation: snitching on overheard conversations but—unless something really changes—without the compliant courts or propaganda outlets to make the bite worth the backlash
speaking as a virginia beach native if these kind of dudes are plotting against ICE then there is wide runway in public opinion for straight up abolishing the agency under a dem presidency
Kempsville High School assistant principal charged for threats against police, ICE
Virginia Beach assistant principal John Bennett and Mark Bennett charged for conspiring threats against police and ICE agents. Both are held without bond.
www.13newsnow.com
November 22, 2025 at 6:30 PM