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zenosAnalytic @zenosanalytic.bsky.social · 8h

... and then they get SUPER embarrassed, because they just made themselves a public laughing stock, and double down on the Stupid and Angry.

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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 17h

One of the real dangers of becoming super rich is that you'll write or say some of the dumbest shit imaginable and there's no one around who will tell you how stupid it is before you publish it

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 20h

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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Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 14h

"no no you don't understand. we deploy OUR shitposters against THEIR aura farmers. WE farm aura with normies. but secretly our aura farmers all have normie alter egos--yes, like batman--who can actually govern after we reconquer the cathedral. no, the other batman"

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Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 14h

The Frog is the best thing to happen to American politics all year, but the fact that politics has devolved into Posting is ultimately a bad thing.

www.theverge.com/policy/79849...

American politics has devolved into shitposting and aura farming

The Frog is owning the president.

www.theverge.com

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Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 2d

Just gonna note that this blog was published long before Elon Musk climbed the list

Joseph Morris @morris.cloud · 2d

My favorite formulation of this one remains @tomscocca.bsky.social 's: hmmdaily.com/2018/10/16/n... so short, yet convincing

No Billionaires

hmmdaily.com

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Momster for Gliberty 🧟 @fakegreekgrill.bsky.social · 2d

This has been one of the biggest things the Trump admin has changed my mind about. I used to be indifferent to billionaires, but I no longer find that an option.

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Hemry, Local Bartender @bartenderhemry.bsky.social · 2d

Tricia Mclaughlin again with these absurd little-kid lies!!! "The local news producer was throwing things at border patrol" how is it not a scandal that the mouthpiece of dhs is this much of a lunatic

CJ Ciaramella @cjciaramella.bsky.social · 2d

UPDATE: In emailed statement to me / @reason.com, DHS alleges that WGN-TV producer Debbie Brockman "threw objects at Border Patrol’s car and she was placed under arrest for assault on a federal law enforcement officer."

Screencap of email from DHS public affairs: Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin:

“U.S. Border Patrol was conducting immigration enforcement operations and when several violent agitators used their vehicles to block in agents in an effort to impede and assault federal officers. In fear of public safety and of law enforcement, officers used their service vehicle to strike a suspect’s vehicle and create an opening. As agents were driving, Deborah Brockman, a U.S. citizen, threw objects at Border Patrol’s car and she was placed under arrest for assault on a federal law enforcement officer.

“This incident is not isolated and reflects a growing and dangerous trend of illegal aliens violently resisting arrest and agitators and criminals ramming cars into our law enforcement officers. These attacks highlight the dangers our law enforcement officers face daily—all while receiving no pay thanks to the Democrats’ government shutdown.”

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Hemry, Local Bartender @bartenderhemry.bsky.social · 2d

Like how can we have endless pieces about fucking dissertation plagiarism and not one about "the spokesperson for DHS tells specific, easily-disproven lies constantly to provide cover for serious crimes against the public" how is that not a big deal? Do I have to write this shit myself?!?!?

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Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 1d

“The fact that figures like Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have seemingly done better — or at the very least no worse — than credentialed diplomatic professionals has striking implications for how we think about expertise in foreign policy” hmm also the fact that they take huge foreign bribes—?

Daniel Larison @daniellarison.bsky.social · 1d

In his foreign policy, Trump launches illegal attacks, murders people, and starts pointless and destructive trade wars. Is that what Douthat wants at home? Because he’s already getting it. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/o...

Opinion | Why Can’t Trump’s Domestic Policy Be More Like His Foreign Policy?

www.nytimes.com

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Tim Marchman @timmarchman.bsky.social · 1d

Diane Keaton was so cool she singlehandedly turned an otherwise unwatchable Woody Allen movie about Woody Allen having sex into one of the greatest movies of all time.

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Sexy CHOAM Nomsky costume @samthielman.com · 17h

“A shithead in rural Texas saw something he didn’t like on the Internet and lost his mind” isn’t really a story of disenfranchisement, is it

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Elizabeth Spiers @espiers.bsky.social · 17h

And she was just on the other side of the issue. But first of all, she expressed an opinion he didn’t like and he went out of his way to harass and put her in danger. At worst she said something rude about a public figure who had dehumanized people like her repeatedly.

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Elizabeth Spiers @espiers.bsky.social · 17h

I was trying to put my finger on what bothered me about this portrayal and I think it’s that it just takes the guy’s words at face value, like he was a nice guy and reaction to Charlie Kirk’s death just pushed him over the edge www.nytimes.com/2025/10/12/u...

She Despised Charlie Kirk. He Resolved to Make People Like Her Pay.

www.nytimes.com

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somelabels.bsky.social @somelabels.bsky.social · 15h

One of the key features of turn-of-the-millennium America was George W. Bush endlessly making inarticulate, nonsensical speeches and the press swearing that was "authenticity". The point is, however a prominent right-winger is talking will be described by professional journalists as "the right way".

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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 16h

A piece i think about a lot is "The President's Speech" where Oliver Sacks showed an address by Ronald Reagan - literally a trained Hollywood actor! - to patients suffering aphasia, who mostly found it inexplicably funny www.nybooks.com/articles/198...

The President's Speech | Oliver Sacks

What was going on? A roar of laughter from the aphasia ward, just as the President's speech was starting, and the patients had all been so eager to hear

www.nybooks.com

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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 16h

It's a sign of how many people (and journalists) live inside a media-created alternate reality that skill in the style of televised public performance associated with Hollywood actors is considered equivalent to 'authenticity'

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 17h

This is an obsession of mine - a huge pathology of the press is coverage suggesting that politicians who are less skilled performers are somehow less "authentic"

Me on Romney coverage in CJR: www.cjr.org/united_state...

Me on Hillary Clinton coverage in The Upshot:
www.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/u...

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Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 16h

The ability to "be natural" in front of, let alone toward, a camera lens is a freakish artificial skill and the demand for it almost certainly has left scammers and sociopaths overrepresented in political leadership; probably not great that we've now organized everyday society around it too

mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 16h

It's a sign of how many people (and journalists) live inside a media-created alternate reality that skill in the style of televised public performance associated with Hollywood actors is considered equivalent to 'authenticity'

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 17h

This is an obsession of mine - a huge pathology of the press is coverage suggesting that politicians who are less skilled performers are somehow less "authentic"

Me on Romney coverage in CJR: www.cjr.org/united_state...

Me on Hillary Clinton coverage in The Upshot:
www.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/u...

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Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 13h

Deep sourcing, fact-checking, publishing chain letters

Screenshot of text:

build a culture of ideas. This is exactly what she’s done at The Free Press, which covers a variety of stories, the most popular of which—[Highlighting begins] Uri Berliner’s explanation of NPR’s decline, for example [Highlighting ends]—are those that hold powerful institutions to account.

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Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 13h

Please nobody tell professional writer praising professional journalists Caitlin Flanagan what "out of whole cloth" means

Screenshot of text:

Not now but soon enough, there will be major stories about The Free Press being the creation of three female founders who constructed a hugely successful digital business out of whole cloth.

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Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 13h

Still dying at Flanagan accidentally writing one true sentence in her blog through her own illiteracy

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Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 11h

ICE kidnapped a 7th-grader with a pending asylum claim and spirited him out of state without notifying his parents, seemingly with the cooperation of the local police in Everett, MA.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...

Everett 13-year-old arrested by ICE and sent to Virginia detention facility
By Marcela Rodrigues Globe Staff,Updated October 12, 2025, 44 minutes ago

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A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Everett after an interaction with members of the Everett Police Department and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia, according to his mother and immigration lawyer Andrew Lattarulo.

The boy’s mother, Josiele Berto, was called to pick her son up from the Everett Police Department on Thursday, the day he was arrested. After waiting for about an hour and a half, she was told her son was taken by ICE, Berto told the Globe in a phone interview.

“My world collapsed,” Berto said in Portuguese.

From the police department, the boy was taken to ICE’s holding facility in Burlington on Thursday evening, where he spent a night before being transferred by car to the Northwestern Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Winchester, Va., on Friday morning, his mother said. The juvenile facility is more than 500 miles away from Everett.

The boy is a 7th-grader at Albert N. Parlin School in Everett, his mother said. The teen and his family, who are Brazilian nationals, have a pending asylum case and are authorized to work legally in the United States, Lattarulo said.

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 20h

“Who was president in 2020?” remains one of the most pertinent questions in American politics—absurd, yes, but here we are—and that extends to “who was president January 1 - 19, 2021?”

Joyce White Vance @joycewhitevance.bsky.social · 21h

That’s a nice trick, since Biden wasn’t the president on Jan 6.

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Brian Lyman @brianlyman.bsky.social · 18h

“One of them, Albert ‘Skip’ Caissie Jr., 78, said in a phone interview that he wasn’t aware that he was involved in a Supreme Court case.”

Who Are the Louisiana Voters Behind a Major Supreme Court Challenge?

www.nytimes.com

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Brian Lyman @brianlyman.bsky.social · 18h

The federal courts have degenerated into places for far-right charlatans to bypass democracy, and democratic reforms must start there.

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Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 18h

Democracy Americana is a publication solely funded by readers. If you find pieces like this one helpful, you can subscribe for free – or, better yet: If you can, consider becoming a paid member. As an independent writer, I fully rely on your help to make this work possible. Thank you!🙏

Democracy Americana

A newsletter on U.S. politics and history - and the ongoing struggle over how much democracy, and for whom, there should be in America

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