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Reposted by Zane Selvans

Matthewせいじ @matthewseiji.com · Aug 14

It’s 2050 and a teen girl is torrenting a .tar.gz file of all the consciousnesses of all the tech bros who uploaded themselves into the cloud in a bid for immortality and modding them into The Sims 4

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Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 10d

Or similarly, that what happened isn't a function of what you *did* as of the system that you're embedded within. The skewed media landscape. How the Senate is apportioned. The filibuster. Gerrymandering. Exogenous inflation. So trying to figure out what to do differently may be counterproductive.

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Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 10d

I feel like there's an analog to pareiodolia but for political sensemaking. Sometimes there's no real unifying narrative to learn from. Just a bunch of random shit that happened.

"Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why." -- Kurt Vonnegut

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareido...

Pareidolia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Reposted by Zane Selvans

Aaron Huertas @aaronhuertas.bsky.social · 10d

A very frustrating thing about Klein’s podcast is that is constantly discusses perceptions of the Democratic Party without addressing media ownership or attention. Mediation gets bare passing mentions, as it does at the end here when Coates recommends Chris Hayes’s book Siren’s Call.

Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 10d

This was revealing. Worth reading. The basic demand is that Coates spend less time thinking/writing his true feelings and more time playing political strategist. Klein asks him over and over him to do Dem strategy; he says no, over and over. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/o...

Opinion | Ta-Nehisi Coates on Bridging Gaps vs. Drawing Lines

www.nytimes.com

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Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 10d

bsky.app/profile/mtsw...

mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 10d

Klein, like many powerful pundits, is living inside an alternate reality that's been created through their phone and television screens. He's grown more powerful inside that alternate reality by working to uphold the pillars of the anti-reality like "hillary clinton lost because she insulted voters"

Paul Waldman @paulwaldman.bsky.social · 10d

This is a demonstration of how powerful the right wing misinformation machine is. They take a phrase or a word some Democrat said, attach the worst possible interpretation to it, and repeat their view of it THOUSANDS of times until even liberals remember it the way conservatives want them to.

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Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 10d

In some ways this problem is more basic than either policy choices or messaging. If the constituency you're trying to win over don't know what you did, don't hear what you say about what you did, and primarily perceive you through the lens of your opponents, does it matter what you do and say?

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Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 10d

I'm surprised that folks still assume there's a strong connection between what left/progressive political actors *do* and what they're perceived to have done by the public. How does the asymmetric narrative power of right-wing media not come up in this conversation?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uaeo...

Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein Hash Out Their Charlie Kirk Disagreement

YouTube video by The Ezra Klein Show

www.youtube.com

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Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 11d

Well I think you're a glorious constructive chaotic force in the world and your work just make me smile. You're a goddamned delight.

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Reposted by Zane Selvans

David Weiskopf believes in you @dave.bzky.team · 11d

It often gets lost in these conversations that there are major structural differences between funders of groups like TPUSA and, say, climate philanthropy.

Most notably, TPUSA funders have a profit motive, and see this as a source of long term revenue stability, like coca-cola's ad budget.

JLRay @jlray.bsky.social · 11d

The primary reason TPUSA succeeded, thrived, and delivered significant political power is because wealthy ideologues patiently invested a huge sum of money for many years to give it time to establish a market presence.

A smart and correct strategy with huge pay-off!

fortune.com/2025/09/20/c...

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Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 11d

Will it succeed? I don't know. But I bet they'll try. And if history is any guide, they'll be happy to lie, cheat, bribe, break the law, overthrow governments, and collaborate with other entities who share their interests no matter how nasty they are in order to win. It's an existential fight.

Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 11d

US oil & gas had net income of ~$100B in 2024, and spent ~$100M on lobbying. Just 0.1% of its net income. What if it spent 1% or 10%? If demand is declining, maybe that kind of investment makes more sense than developing new reserves or stock buybacks.

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Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 11d

Part of the optimistic story is that as demand for fossil fuels and the profitability of the industry declines, its political clout will also decline. But do we know how much political clout it's capable of wielding? Has it ever really flexed?

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Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 11d

And the result is a huge and unnecessary flow of wealth away from households and governments towards those private interests.

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Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 11d

The economics of land use & transportation systems built around requiring everyone to use a private car to do anything are insanely bad overall, but benefit a mutually supporting set of political and economic interests that have been able to run the system for like 80 years.

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Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 11d

Sprawl developers, car makers and the unions representing their workers, the contractors that build auto infrastructure, oil companies, and the banks that finance cars and homes all benefit, and maintain their position through regulatory capture and propaganda.

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Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 11d

The counterexample I can't avoid is how durable the complex of industries that benefit from car dependency in the US has been, despite the fact that car dependency is economically ruinous both for households and local governments.

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Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 11d

Another thing that makes me nervous is the narrative of economic inevitability -- that just because the new system is in some objective, global way more efficient, it will necessarily take over, even against incumbents locked in a fight to the death.

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Reposted by Zane Selvans

Kandist @kandistmallett.bsky.social · 11d

Hearing other Americans while traveling abroad:

Scene from the movie Civil War in which Jesse Plemons asks “what kind of Americans”

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Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 11d

When combined with greater price sensitivity, lower grid reliability, and frequent reliance on very expensive petroleum-based on-site backup generation, I think this means that the transition in poorer countries will be (much) more discontinuous & distributed than in rich countries.

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Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 11d

These places can't as effectively encourage early adoption, or shape how the deployment happens. But they're also less likely to be to slow it down with permitting and planning regulations.

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Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 11d

So the kinds of energy transition technologies that can be deployed quickly at scale will be the ones that don't need complex regulatory or technical systems to make sense. Like on-site PV + batteries. And EVs that are only ever charged at home.

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Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 11d

One is the disparity in the level of administrative capacity that exists in rich vs. poor countries. Many places may never be able to set up and enforce thoughtful rules and regulations like interconnection queues, feed-in tariffs, or net metering.

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Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 11d

Walking across town (in Chiapas, Mexico) while listening to this episode, I happened to pass by the local BYD dealership.

"Tired of spending your money on gasoline? Better test drive a BYD."

There are a couple of interesting dynamics I haven't heard come up in this conversation yet. #EnergySky 🧵

A picture of a billboard in Chiapas, Mexico depicting a small yellow car with a blue background. In Spanish it the ad says "¿Cansado de gastar EN GASOLINA? Mejor estrena un BYD." which translates as "Tired of spending your money on gasoline? Better test drive a BYD."

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Reposted by Zane Selvans

Ryan Schuchard @ryanwithboulder.bsky.social · 14d

City of #Boulder has concluded its mega #parking reform.

Parking minimums are now gone. So all those patches of 200 square feet that home-builders have been required to install at a cost of $30,000+ per space can now be used for other things like vegetable gardens, bike parking, and housing.

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Zane Selvans @zaneselvans.org · 12d

Expecting a boom in glass with a very low coefficient of thermal expansion?

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