paulisheehan.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Police departments have exponentially more control over how officers are recruited, trained, and overseen than a protest does over its participants, but are allowed by a sympathetic press to use the "bad apples" defense to separate deeds from goals and institutions in a way protestors often aren't.

submitted 5 days ago • 17 comments

🧵 My small country, Estonia, population 1.3 million sent 2003-2014 over 2500 soldiers. 9 were killed in the line of duty. 109 wounded, half of them so seriously they could no longer lead a normal life. In Iraq 2003-2009 we had more than 440 soldiers. 2 were killed. 18 seriously wounded. 1/n

submitted 8 days ago • 137 comments

🧵 Several people have raised questions about what I meant by "deservedly so" when referring to the decline of institutional trust. It's a fair question, so I want to explain that, because it sits at the heart of my work on how democracies collapse when their epistemic foundations rot.

submitted 10 days ago • 37 comments

Some thoughts about the US deportations court order case, where today saw (1) a judgment from the federal district court and (2) a hearing at the federal court of appeal. Judgment: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... Hearing (audio on YouTube): www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DoT... 1.

submitted 87 days ago • 1 comment

Anyone who somehow still believes Elon Musk is a genius should read this - it is a brutal indictment of his ignorance and ideology. defector.com/neither-elon...

submitted 103 days ago • 19 comments

What we’re witnessing in America is what happens when disordered discourse captures a political party, then the state itself. The Republican Party was the first to fall - abandoning truth for conspiracy, ideology for grievance, and policy for performative outrage.

submitted 111 days ago • 180 comments

Putin planned to take Kyiv in three days, but he couldn't take Kyiv in three years. The only way Putin wins now—the only way he finally succeeds in destroying Ukraine’s sovereignty—is by persuading Ukraine’s allies to abandon Ukraine. www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

submitted 116 days ago • 95 comments

Could we all, please, stop saying this is caused by social media? It isn’t. And suggesting it is dangerously distracts us from what matters most. Pol Pot didn’t have YouTube or Instagram. Hitler didn’t have Facebook or Twitter. Stalin didn’t have TikTok. A 🧵 /1.

submitted 118 days ago • 4 comments

DISEASES ERADICATED OR DECIMATED BY SCIENCE: 1. Chickenpox 2. Diphtheria 3. Measles 4. Pertussis 5. Pneumococcal Infection 6. Polio 7. Tetanus 8. Typhoid 9. Yellow Fever 10. Smallpox DISEASES ERADICATED OR DECIMATED BY RFK JR. OR PRAYER: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

submitted 126 days ago • 1218 comments

I appreciate all the people recommending the Shock Doctrine. I've been thinking about what makes Trump's use of these tactics a little different. In recent decades, shock tactics were used mainly to rapidly impose neoliberal economic policies. But what Trump is doing goes way beyond that. a 🧵

submitted 142 days ago • 47 comments

If you’re at all familiar with Peter Thiel’s youth in apartheid South Africa/Namibia — where his German dad helped run a concentration camp-like uranium mine under military control that violated international law — his name-checking the Truth and Reconciliation Commission here is especially gross.

submitted 160 days ago • 21 comments

Social media has done one unequivocal good thing and that is definitively refute the myth that wealth follows intelligence.

submitted 161 days ago • 7 comments

Whitewashing the uncomfortable parts of the past doesn't just affect Black stories. For example, you can't fully appreciate how a peanut farmer from Plains, GA became a beloved president unless you know TRUE Black History. The unwhitewashed history of Jimmy Carter: A thread.

submitted 161 days ago • 46 comments

Why will there not be a rival to Eurostar any time soon? It's NOT - Brexit - Schengen - Passports - Bag scans - Track access charges - Maintenance facilities It IS - no wannabe rival has any trains

submitted 165 days ago • 18 comments

Sobering discussion on Today of the tech billionaires jostling to buy influence with Trump, so they can gut the regulation of their industries. It's plutocratic feudalism, with tech-barons fighting to control the court. The long project to bring economic power under democratic control is in ruins.

submitted 167 days ago • 39 comments

What Smartphones are doing to kids' mental health is NOT terrifying (no matter what a child psychiatrist says) theneuroscienceofeve... My response to the Guardian's latest 'Phones are destroying the children!!' article. As ever, it's... problematic #Phones #screens #brains

submitted 167 days ago • 16 comments

submitted 182 days ago • 42 comments

whatever you feel about this you have to admit it's rare for a radicalized man who's frustrated or angry and ready to choose violence to actually correctly identify the source of their suffering, instead of just blaming and killing women and minorities.....

submitted 191 days ago • 2 comments

BREAKING Reuters is reporting that two senior Syrian officials have said that Bashar Al-Assad has fled Syria for an unknown destination.

submitted 194 days ago • 147 comments

Really, really bad day for Tulsi Gabbar and all other Assad apologists. Great day for Syrians.

submitted 194 days ago • 167 comments

It's Irony Saturday.

submitted 194 days ago • 56 comments

The 🇫🇷 National Assembly has voted down Barnier's government (331 MPs voted in favour of no-confidence vote). What happens next? Quick thread.

submitted 197 days ago • 3 comments

🚨I'm seeing some climate accounts posting overpopulation stuff, so I've removed the paywall from my article on the subject: Overpopulation Is A Racist Trope.

submitted 200 days ago • 135 comments

My take on the Hunter Biden news is that trump has proposed creating a network of concentration camps to deal with the undocumented millions in our country

submitted 200 days ago • 153 comments

#Tbilisi Now

submitted 201 days ago • 78 comments

Georgian parliament building now, nonstop watering of protesters from all sides with high intensity. A large puddle of water has formed in the vicinity of the parliament building from the water cannons. Protesters are stretched from the parliament building across all Rustaveli.

submitted 200 days ago • 12 comments

The courage of those Georgians and especially of this woman is just amazing.

submitted 200 days ago • 146 comments

this is one of the most bad ass things I have ever seen in my life

submitted 201 days ago • 1 comment

The big story today is about a Cabinet minister being dishonest. But there’s another member of the Cabinet whose cavalier approach to the facts may cost Britain an awful lot more - @edmiliband.bsky.social. (See what I did there?) 🧵

submitted 203 days ago • 3 comments

Here’s a short story about who wins and loses from the status quo of our inheritance tax rules - and about, what you might politely call ‘sub-optimal’ journalism🧵

submitted 206 days ago • 89 comments

A hypothesis on what was wrong with UK/EU relations: The shape & meaning of the EU/EEC and of UK-EU relations were and are in the eye of the beholder. While this is true to some extent for life in general, the EU and UK/EU relationship went further in this regard. Thread.... /1

submitted 208 days ago • 5 comments

Ian Hislop for PM.....

submitted 211 days ago • 38 comments