mbdrapier.bsky.social
A jumped-up egg. I can neither confirm nor deny that I am the Queen of the May.
629 posts
245 followers
18 following
Active Commenter
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Presumably the Ukrainian forces will get that wind and temperature data from drones.
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They don’t like the bad poll numbers and the widespread dismay in the US.
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Yes, this isn’t Musk’s Twitter, there’s no excuse for not linking here.
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Woof.
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It’s certainly very norms-brained, for want of a better term.
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Trump please fix.
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The lack of an edit note is what people are complaining about—that, and the fact that the association was not disclosed in the first version of the article.
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My hunch is that that’s also why Bannon’s trying to make himself the voice of Trump 2028. bsky.app/profile/atru... The big players all have plans to take over when Trump steps back, & maybe even promises from him. That opens a gap for Bannon to be the super-loyalist who demands that he rule forever.
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bsky.app/profile/mbdr...
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It’s all pretty familiar, ironically enough:
orwell.ru/library/revi...
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Ironically, it’s precisely because Murdoch is a really old-fashioned right-wing press baron. He’s used to pushing his own agenda with little pretense of neutrality and to lashing out at anybody, left or right, who displeases him. (It probably also helps that he can easily live outside the US.)
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(Your profile picture is great.)
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The framers of the US constitution didn’t do a perfect job at all, but one thing they got right was that they at least tried to prevent the president from being chosen in a bloody plebiscite.
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They also simply need never to be allowed to directly elect the chief executive—and yes, the current bodgy system counts as direct election.
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Trump had long been a somewhat-live political prospect by then, so it wasn’t *completely* beyond belief that he could become president. www.nbcnews.com/think/amp/nc...
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Since then, just a few weeks ago in fact, he recast himself as another anti-woke, anti-antitrust tech-revolt guy. paulgraham.com/woke.html But you’re right in that he hasn’t been on that team nearly as long or as thoroughly as, say, Andreesen or Sacks, let alone Thiel.
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The latest Ukraine horror has got Paul Graham to voice some objections. I’m not sure who or what else there is, but I largely don’t follow those fellows anyway.
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See also the WSJ showing some fight. Ironically, precisely because Murdoch is a dyed-in-the-wool old-school right-wing-agitator media baron, he’s used to kicking back hard, against left or right, when he isn’t happy.
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There was a lot going on in Musk’s life in the later 2010s, including the slow and ugly failure of his “alien dreadnought” vision of a fully automated car factory. This underfamed 2018 profile is probably still one of the best things about him: www.wired.com/story/elon-m...
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100% Internet speculation here, no expertise or special knowledge.
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2) And this is actually an opportunity for Bannon to steal a march on the big players like the tech guys and P2025. The bigs quietly want Trump to hand over the reins so they can take over themselves: Trump may even have made them promises. That leaves space for Bannon to be the no. 1 loyalist.
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100%, but also: what’s going on here? My ignorant hunch: 1) Bannon’s been frozen out, and it’s hard for him to get back in when others like P2025 or Musk & the SV right can offer Trump more. So his new plan: win Trump’s favour by making himself the leading, most vociferous supporter of Trump 2028. 🧵
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In itself that’s not that strong a signal. I’m not American but I spend a lot of time on here posting about the US, especially in this weather, and so do lots of non-US English-speakers. It’s just a pretty easy misunderstanding which can arise, not anyone’s fault particularly.
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Why do you think I suggested otherwise?
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He’s been shaping Trump admin policy here since before election day. And that’s the most obvious swing against antidepressants that’s been taking place lately: if you’re thinking of things taking place elsewhere or much earlier then you may need to clarify.
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It’s not Big Pharma, it’s RFK Jr., a notorious hippie/crunchy who distrusts Big Pharma and much of the rest of modern medicine (and modern food production). Courting RFK Jr. helped to swing the crunchy vote to Trump at the election.
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It’s also not inconceivable that Putin will make some suggestions to Trump about extending the life of the ISS.
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It’s a “the enemy always has a vote” situation. No-one can stop Trump from choosing to try to defy the courts if his heart is set on it, but if his opponents first clearly win in court then both of his possible choices become a lot less favourable to him.
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It seems they’re already moving on to trying to reconcile themselves to it. Bloomberg TV just had Bessent on to blame Zelensky for it and the presenters were all nodding gravely at his weighty arguments.
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Also the obligatory en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%..., though comparing Salazar to the Trump gang is in some ways really unfair to Salazar.
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The US founders did a number of things badly or imperfectly but they were not nearly foolish enough to intend to make the president directly elected. That was a problem arising later, one which you need to fix now.
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The US president must not be directly elected—most certainly including the current system of direct election with extra steps. When the chief executive is directly elected this is the kind of plebiscitary legitimacy which people will appeal to. Do we all understand this now?
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Eh? Communism was notably very real and not “conjured” in inter-war continental Europe. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_... “A Soviet victory … would have put the Soviets directly on the German border, where they were expecting or were promised aligned forces, as well as other such areas.”
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The congressional Democrats need to keep banging the drum of impeachment. Not only does it prevent normalisation, at this rate it might actually happen before 2027.
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If only Congressional reporters had access to A3 colour printers! Alas.
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While that’s definitely widely true it isn’t universal. @wsj.com just interviewed three fired inspectors general youtu.be/JNqf2Q9tVtg
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Witness Trump from a few months up to a few weeks ago, when he seems to have been mostly disconnected from Putin World, vs. Trump now that he is plugged back in.
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I think there’s probably a number of people who might bite on a convenient way to have bodyguard with you to make a splash arriving at a prom and that kind of nonsense. Then God knows what happens when people start hiring bodyguards to help intimidate their exes or for security at street drug deals.
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Pretty unfair if so, as Venice, unlike the USA, actually seems to have had a good system for electing a chief executive rangevoting.org/HPL-2007-28R....
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You know what they say, no-one watches opera for the libretto. Now if Musk reveals an amazing singing voice, though …
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A big part of Trump's magic was that he cld keep the US right eating out of his hand even when he bucked its purity tests. But now he's partly ceded control to people who share the US right's (& to a lesser extent the anglophone Right's) distinctive, visceral, century-or-more-old anti-state streak.
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It's not even really a Trump thing: IMO one problem with the Wolf piece is that it elides this away a bit. AFAICT Trump hasn't ever been a "government is the problem" man, either in word or in deed: he likes tax cuts, but he's a Xi admirer who wants to rule the state uncontested, not to smash it.
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One strange thing: this anti-state mentality is not even shared with most of the Trump admin's foreign allies. Eg. Orban (AFAIK: not an expert) loves a bit of Gleichschaltung and is happy to attack hostile institutions but doesn't dream of scaling the Hungarian state back to a C19 size. (short 🧵)
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To be fair, places like PR do escape US federal income tax for that reason, IIUC. Its unrepresented status is still a scandal of course.
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I don’t think Zelensky should assume that he would even be able to fly back out of Saudi Arabia at will and unharmed, let alone anything else.
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But, naturally, it's not as simple as that. Notice for instance that this very popular dril tweet x.com/dril/status/... is ... let's just say that it can easily be read as a defence of simplism, and when people RT it enthusiastically that's usually what they're using it as.
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@rolandmcs.bsky.social's invented the term 'simplism'. bsky.app/profile/rola...
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Next is synthesis or, as we call it, layering.