Stay Spicy, kids ♾️

Maybe it's my autism talking, but I never really got why there was so much pressure to rent a silly outfit we would never wear again- and I quite resented that the people selling/renting sanctioned regalia seemed to have marked it up a lot

The venn diagram of police and right-wing extremist groups like the Proud Boys is a lot closer to being a circle than you'd like to expect

It's infuriating that we 'defund' that sort of bad behavior by giving it more money and not talking about it in the media

Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social

On the night of April 30, peaceful anti-genocide protesters at UCLA were subjected to a vicious assault by Zionists, Proud Boys and other white supremacists who chanted, “I’ll kill you,” “I’ll rape your sister,” and “What Israel does to Gaza, we’ll do to you,” as police looked on.

t.co/CT5DYza3Wg

17 hours ago

Disgusting that the narrative framing has been twisted to portray the protesting students as hateful and violent, the university admins as being the only party with rights that matter, and the police as anything but hate group protection

It probably shouldn't be surprising that the same people that brought you bangers like 'the nazis were left-wing, actually' are now telling everyone that it's antisemitism to call it genocide when Israel does it

The last time I looked at the history channel it was all aliens built the pyramids and credulous documentaries of people in dark houses saying they know there's a ghost and it just won't show up on camera

It's a good look!

If our leading expert on legal ethics is so willing to extend infinite benefit of the doubt despite the presence of a long trail of obvious ethical transgressions, we don't have any ethics champions at all, do we?

OMG I must have that shirt

Yeah voting to not have democracy and defending it like it's a valid exercise of democracy is your tell that they don't believe in things like democracy, they pay lip service to that stuff to get you to accept their efforts to rule you

When they tell you they get mad when the other team does democracy, it's a confession they realize their own political legitimacy is trash and they can't win in a fair democratic process

Because people are disposable and the solution to ignorance is hiring it to police the people that didn't get the education they deserved?

I'm guessing his source for the claim that student protesters are more likely than not to be ill-informed or wrong is... he made it up and thinks you won't question it

Stoller focuses mainly on antitrust and the tension between capital and democracy in that frame- and his takes on how not enforcing antitrust law hurts the left are generally salient.
I think he's wrong re: race and civil rights not being a factor here, but I think he's right to underscore antitrust

Stoller focuses mainly on antitrust policy and the tensions between capital and democracy in that frame- and his takes on how not enforcing antitrust law hurts the left are generally salient

Wild that the argument for in-office work is if workers are remote it "wastes" federal money having that building space

This is bullshit of course, think of the savings (money, time, fuel, energy/pollution) to realize from not commuting when it's not needed

I'm not but I will note that for the last 6 years they've been taking money from the Koch foundation and C3 AI- and in that time, their editorial direction has been to endlessly seek 'middle ground' between the reasonable and insane, no matter how insane

The only way those go together is if you've reconciled yourself to the reality that nobody has gun rights as such, they are only ever privileges granted by police that don't take the opportunity to murder you on the spot

Note that race seems to be a major factor in who gets those privileges

Sorry Tom, I'm gonna call it how I see it and I'm for sure not going to pretend I don't see it that way or wait for polite society to catch up

"We might have taught you a thing or two about how to think critically but if you say things we don't want to hear it's the police state for you"

That sounds a lot to me like a confession that he did the crime, and also that he is in no way apologetic and intends to do exactly the same in the future

...you know, a career criminal

It's wild to me that having the US acknowledge as possible what's been obvious for years is touted as 'narrative-changing progress'
www.bbc.com/news/world-u...

US says Israel may have breached international law with American weapons in Gaza

Report says it is "reasonable to assess" there have been breaches in Gaza, but admits it does not have "complete information".

www.bbc.com

...and just as it was with BLM protests, it was cops and counter-protesters that instigated the violence and media gamely blamed the peaceful protesters for having been the target of political violence over their exercise of their protected right to free speech.

Let this be your reminder that the only reason 90% of the bullshit-firehose media like Rudy ever got a platform was because of patronage like that.
Rudy losing his platform only reinforces that the people with real power are the ones writing checks

When Target caved to 'right-wing backlash' it basically told the right wing that terrorism works
amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/05/...

Target is dialing back on Pride merchandise after right-wing backlash | CNN Business

Target is limiting the number of stores that will sell LGBTQ-themed merchandise for Pride Month in June following a boycott from right-wing activists last year that took a toll on the brand’s bottom l...

amp.cnn.com

This from the party that warned you socialism means the government can take your stuff

...now the government can take your stuff

The whole X axis label kinda describes UCI bike racing

At some point it has to become journalistic malpractice to just keep reporting 'gop stokes fears of voting fraud' when the headline should be '...lies full-throatedly to convince people to resort to political violence'

When cops selectively enforce (or don't enforce) rules in ways that allow political violence against one side of a conflict but not the other... at some point we really ought to call it organized crime.

...except your employer.
Wage theft by far outweighs all other kinds of crime

let us out you monster

I'm all for journos being paid, but knowing that propaganda and disinformation are free but real news costs something kinda hurts my hope for the future

Now if only we could sort out a way to pay journalists to hold the powerful to account in some way that everyone would get the benefit of that

Guys, the whole reason for the freedom-of-the-press part of 1A is that the press needs freedom in order to hold the powerful to account

"Not taking sides" over democracy is the opposite of that

Jay Rosen @jayrosen.bsky.social

"To Kahn, democracy is a partisan issue and he’s not taking sides."

Think about that for a moment.

Dan Froomkin says the old guard at the New York Times has reasserted control "over the rabble," and Joe Kahn's interview with Ben Smith demonstrates it.

presswatchers.org/2024/05/new-...

New York Times editor Joe Kahn says defending democracy is a partisan act and he won’t do it | Press Watch

Joe Kahn, after two years in charge of the New York Times newsroom, has learned nothing.

presswatchers.org

08 May

Not taking sides to defend democracy is not a neutral stance

That this doesn't happen on the regular, honestly, should be more alarming than it apparently is

It's a sort of whiplash to have derived so much pleasure seeing this guy win over an awful alternative... to now watch him really be awful

If you "know intuitively" anything that you can't prove or measure, you don't actually know it.
But, when you keep repeating the thing to insist that it be taken seriously, it's called "not telling the truth"

Something tells me they do know, and if anything, are mad that more of it isn't happening 🙁

Yeah this looks like Joe wants young people and minorities to stay home in November really

It's as if he needs a hot war to keep going so he can stay in power and out of court or jail

If you're asking the question in good faith (which I somehow doubt) you have to consider there's a serious possibility that the genocide against Palestinians would continue, but without getting anyone's attention and with less accountability for the people doing it

Somebody alert the US congress- by their definition of antisemitism, lots of Israelis are antisemitic for protesting their leadership's conduct

The thing that jumps out to me is that the cops don't protect the lady, they join in the action of shouting her down.

Sort of how cops stood by and watched counter-protesters attack students protesting against genocide, then got in on the action themselves- not against their attackers

Or maybe his implication is that if he and his friends can be accused of antisemitism and it is scary and infuriating to be accused of that, why not accuse his enemies of it because he knows it's a hard accusation to defend against because real antisemites will deny it too

With an annual budget of $42B to work with, one wonders whether the government could deliver broadband itself without funding share buybacks in AT&T

It's probably worth noting that the Universities resisting calls for divestment the hardest are responding to donors they can't operate without
Now that they have so many administrators they're more like hedge funds with a side-hustle educating kids

Oh, I 100% agree- I just wanted to draw a distinction between today's militarized police and the kinds of professional police in other countries- (who kill far fewer citizens than ours do) so we're not lumping warrior cops in with all cops.

There's police... and then there are the unaccountable kind.
First, their training doctrine is straight out of IDF; it is explicitly that of an occupying force that thinks a reputation for unreasonable escalation to deadly force will impose the sort of reactionary order they want to see

Yes, the warnings are that white nationalist militia groups recruit heavily from police and military. Those groups get police protection when they rally - and they have been observed to instigate riots at BLM protests then walk away clean while police assault protesters for being 'violent'