The MAGA civil war that’s been happening since Kirk died largely boils down to whether or not American conservatives should support Israel or not. Kirk was something of a bridge there. The “cool” new far right, led by figures like Owens and Nick Fuentes are both anti-Israel and blatantly anti-Semitic, while Shapiro, of course, is not. The age old problem with working at the racism factory! They eventually make a new racism that includes you.
Stream
This is where your find short posts, like quick updates, interesting links or photos.
Robert P. George’s Dec. 7 op-ed, “There are valid debates among conservatives. This isn’t one.,” argued that conservatives should stop promoting “white supremacy, antisemitism, eugenics, the subjugation of women, and other forms of ideological extremism and bigotry.” You know what this means. It means it’s too late. Telling conservatives to stop being bigots is admitting they’re bigots.
The pattern is so consistent it’s almost funny if it weren’t so terrifying. Every single time it goes like this: Conservatives panic about socialism or progressives or whatever. They ally with fascists as the “lesser evil.” Fascists take power. Fascists immediately purge the conservatives who helped them. Then it’s 30-50 years of dictatorship. This happened in Germany, Italy, Spain, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Portugal, Croatia, Romania, and Hungary. […] Want to know how many times conservatives successfully “controlled” the fascists they allied with? Zero. Want to know how many times fascists purged the conservatives after taking power? All of them. Every single time.
Carlo Graziani argues that Russia’s escalating provocations are a sign of stress, rather than confidence:
It is certainly true that Russian incursions drive NATO state resource usage. But it is also true that after 3.5 years of full-out war, Russia is by far the more resource-constrained party in this exchange. So, if the Russians have decided to raise resource-commitment stakes now, they need a pretty strong reason, because ultimately it will cost European states less of their disposable resources to defend against incursions than it costs Russian disposable resources to commit them.
Broken record time: the reason is that the Ukrainian Oil Plan has the Kremlin scared shitless. Not only have the Ukrainian drone attacks against Russian refineries and pipelines reduced Russian refining capacity by 17% since August, and caused their pipeline authority to warn oil producers to expect lower acceptance capacity for the forseeable future: oil revenues constitute about 30% of the Russian state budget. And from the Russian perspective, the great and fearful unknown is how fast can Ukraine grow its domestic drone industry in range, payload, and output. They are almost certainly asking themselves, if Iran could gain such comparative advantage from investment in drone development over such a short time, what can they expect from the maturing Ukrainian drone industry over the next year?
Prior to the roll-out of a major air defense upgrade—which is probably in development now—the Russians are basically helpless in the face of an effort that now seems plausibly capable of choking off up to 30% of state revenue. That’s no joke, even without going into the domestic difficulties associated with gas and heating fuel shortages. Putin would be an idiot not to be panicking now, and while he is a monster, he is not an idiot. Any change in Russian war strategy now must necessarily be read in this context. If Russia suddenly wants to put new strain on NATO, it is because of the new strain that Russia is suddenly experiencing itself. Russia would like NATO powers to help end the war on terms they find acceptable. That, in my opinion, is the real reason for these new attacks, and the reason that they are happpening now. The Ukrainians have changed the strategic outlook of this war since August. The Russians are reacting.
Source: The Ballon Juice comments
The fundamental issue with “debate me bro” culture isn’t just that it’s obnoxious, it’s that it creates a false equivalence between good-faith expertise and bad-faith trolling. When you agree to debate someone pushing long-debunked conspiracy theories or openly hateful ideologies, you’re implicitly suggesting that their position deserves equal consideration alongside established facts and expert analysis.
This is exactly backwards from how the actual “marketplace of ideas” is supposed to work. Ideas don’t deserve platforms simply because someone is willing to argue for them loudly. They earn legitimacy through evidence, peer review, and sustained engagement with reality. Many of the ideas promoted in these viral “debates” have already been thoroughly debunked and rejected by that marketplace—but the “debate me bro” format resurrects them as if they’re still worth serious consideration.
A particularly idiotic liberal trope is that it’s OK to be a hyper-reactionary Christian nationalist as long as those are just your “private views,” and you don’t try to enforce them on everybody. That makes exactly as much sense as saying it’s OK to be a fascist, as long as you don’t try to enforce your fascism on everybody. The reason this response to poisonous ideologies is an oxymoron is because the WHOLE POINT of these ideologies is to enforce them on everyone.
In 2008, Ireland couldn't really afford to host the ESC yet again, so they sent the novelty act Dustin the Turkey to make sure they wouldn't have to. Irlande Douze Pointe was widely derided at the time as one of the worst entries in the history of the competition.
In 2025, however, it sounds like a decent club track, and the stage show comes over as tasteful and understated.
The new trailer for James Gunn's take on Superman is out, and looks pretty good. The Snyderbros are out in force to denounce it, but aren't managing to derail the conversation quite as much as they would in the past.
I'm a Superman fan, and am looking forward to this. While I think Cavill was a good choice, he was perhaps, too ripped to be Superman. David Corenswet has a similar "Aw schucks" energy as Christopher Reeve did, and Gunn seems to better understand stuff like, you know, heart.
I feel like I gave Zack Snyder's vision a chance, and while he has style to spare, he's a pretty lousy writer and worldbuilder. The fact that he's a self-professed libertarian as well makes him almost uniquely unsuited for writing a character like Superman, whose selflessness is part of his very fibre. I admit angsty Superman sound interesting on paper, but we ultimately got was quite dreary ... in my opinion.
Anyway, this looks fun.
Everything is terrible, but bands like Dropkick are still around, making music to soothe the soul. Their new long player, Primary Colours, will be released this week, but while you wait, you can listen to the lovely, new single Dreams Expire.
Here's a parable.
Imagine you're Coca-Cola. After a year with record-breaking sales, you decide on an unusual course of action: You intend to stop advertising your products entirely for four years. No TV ads. No billboards. No online ads. You even take down the Coca-Cola logos that are part of diner signs.
During these four years, Pepsi advertises relentlessly. Pepsi reaches out to new media and finds inventive ways of getting attention. And not only that: Pepsi also promotes every negative story and bad rumor about Coke through all its messaging routes. Did they really find rat poison in a batch of Coke? Are Coke cans radioactive?
Coca-Cola is aware of all these negative stories, but it doesn't respond to them. Its executives conclude that responding to the stories will just draw attention to them. Coke says nothing. It doesn't even find a way to say that Coke is working hard to maintain high standards of quality control. The rumors spread and spread.
At the end of these four years, Coke sales have declined approximately 8%. That's not a lot -- but as a result, Pepsi is now outselling Coke by a small margin.
What conclusion do Coke executives draw?
"People hate Coke."
And that's the wrong conclusion. People don't hate Coke. Coke was the #1 carbonated drink, and now it's slightly less popular, after four years when the public heard almost nothing positive about Coke and a great deal that was negative.
This is where Democrats are now.
Ryan Broderick seems to have the correct take on Facebook changing their approach to content moderation:
I floated a theory of mine to Atlantic writer Charlie Warzel [..] that content moderation, as we’ve understood, it effectively ended on January 6th, 2021. [T]he way I look at it is that the Insurrection was the first time Americans could truly see the radicalizing effects of algorithmic platforms like Facebook and YouTube that other parts of the world, particularly the Global South, had dealt with for years. A moment of political violence Silicon Valley could no longer ignore or obfuscate the way it had with similar incidents in countries like Myanmar, India, Ethiopia, or Brazil. And once faced with the cold, hard truth of what their platforms had been facilitating, companies like Google and Meta, at least internally, accepted that they would never be able to moderate them at scale. And so they just stopped.
I stayed on through the last round of changes, but I'm approaching the end, I think.
