Category: Thoughts

My personal thoughts/opinions, or commentary.

  • Libertarians feed bears

    A New Hampshire town was taken over by bears because freedom means being able to feed bears so long as the bears aren’t “my problem.” It’s more complicated than that, because when you don’t believe government services have value, then problems that need government intervention don’t get addressed.

    What was the deal with Grafton’s bears? Hongoltz-Hetling investigates the question at length, probing numerous hypotheses for why the creatures have become so uncharacteristically aggressive, indifferent, intelligent, and unafraid. Is it the lack of zoning, the resulting incursion into bear habitats, and the reluctance of Graftonites to pay for, let alone mandate, bear-proof garbage bins? Might the bears be deranged somehow, perhaps even disinhibited and emboldened by toxoplasmosis infections, picked up from eating trash and pet waste from said unsecured bins? There can be no definitive answer to these questions, but one thing is clear: The libertarian social experiment underway in Grafton was uniquely incapable of dealing with the problem. “Free Towners were finding that the situations that had been so easy to problem-solve in the abstract medium of message boards were difficult to resolve in person.”

    More evidence that libertarianism is anarchy for rich people.

  • How Musk Took Over the Federal Government

    The New York Times goes in depth as to how Elon Musk took over the government.

    Mr. Musk made clear that he saw the gutting of that bureaucracy as primarily a technology challenge. He told the party of around 20 that when he overhauled Twitter, the social media company that he bought in 2022 and later renamed X, the key was gaining access to the company’s servers.

    Wouldn’t it be great, Mr. Musk offered, if he could have access to the computers of the federal government?

    Just give him the passwords, he said jocularly, and he would make the government fit and trim.

    And with a little education on a few bureaucratic agencies, that’s essentially what happened.

  • The Bull in the China Shop Doesn’t Care What it Breaks

    “Like a bull in a china shop.”

    We know the bull’s indiscriminately destructive, sometimes purposeful, but what’s often missing is that often the bull doesn’t care what it breaks. No matter how revered, inconsequential, reinforced with robust protections or an honor policy not to touch, it’s all the same to the bull. A thing.

    And when the minders of the shop allow the destruction to continue, while the customers watch in horror? They’re complicit in the shop’s destruction.

  • Destruction imminent

    Maria Kabas: The full force of this administration’s destruction is about to hit

    I recently told someone that being a journalist right now is like standing on the edge of a beach and watching a tsunami approaching. Other journalists, government workers and activists are on the shoreline with me, and we can all see it clear as day. And we agree we need to warn the others inland.

    So we start making calls and telling people this catastrophic wave is about to hit, but the people inland still can’t see it and don’t believe us. Everything looks fine where they are; it’s dry and comfortable. “Let us know when it gets closer,” they say. We try to communicate that every moment of preparation counts, but it’s no use. They’ll only believe it when it’s crashing on their heads.

    This week feels like the wave is about to crash.

    Social Security Administration is about to be gutted.

  • Beware of the SAVE Act

    The SAVE Act Would Disenfranchise Millions of Citizens

    The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act has been reintroduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. This legislation would require all Americans to prove their citizenship status by presenting documentation—in person—when registering to vote or updating their voter registration information. Specifically, the legislation would require the vast majority of Americans to rely on a passport or birth certificate to prove their citizenship. While this may sound easy for many Americans, the reality is that more than 140 million American citizens do not possess a passport and as many as 69 million women who have taken their spouse’s name do not have a birth certificate matching their legal name.

  • Venn diagram of Trump authoritarian actions

    Venn diagram of Trump authoritarian actions, by Christina Pagel.

    Categories overlapped and mapped:

    • Undermining Democratic Institutions & Rule of Law; Dismantling federal government
    • Dismantling Social Protections & Rights; Enrichment & Corruption
    • Suppressing Dissent & Controlling Information
    • Attacking Science, Environment, Health, Arts & Education
    • Aggressive Foreign Policy & Global Destabilization
  • Project 2025 Tracker

    Project 2025 progress dashboard

    Two Redditors collaborated and put together a Project 2025 Tracker dashboard. Objectives are link to sources, marked for status, subject, and affected agency. As of 2/12/2025, fascism in America is over a quarter of the way done.

  • My 2024 best of list

    Originally posted to Instagram

    Now that we are in the final days of the year, here are 🎵a few of my favorite things 🎶

    (TV, movies, music are all from this year. The book list are my favorites that I read this year, but may have come out earlier)

    TV

    • Shrinking
    • Penguin
    • Arcane
    • Shogun
    • Slow Horses
    • Abbott Elementary
    • Geek Girl
    • Las Azules
    • Interior Chinatown
    • Fallout

    Books

    • Adam Higginbotham – Midnight in Chernobyl
    • Kathryn Schultz – Lost & Found
    • Scott Carson – Lost Man’s Lane
    • Matt Dinniman – Dungeon Crawler Carl series
    • Tananarive Due – The Reformatory
    • Travis Baldtree – Legends & Lattes
    • Adrian Tchaikovsky – Children of Time
    • Rick Remender – The Sacrificers vol 1
    • Matthew Desmond – Evicted
    • Patrick Horvath – Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees

    Movies

    • Mads
    • The Last Stop in Yuma County
    • Wild Robot
    • My Old Ass
    • Caddo Lake
    • Rebel Ridge
    • Inside Out 2
    • Hundreds of Beavers
    • Late Night with the Devil
    • Self Reliance

    Music

    • Etran De L’Air – 100% Saharan Guitar
    • Haley Heynderickx – Seed of a Seed
    • Glass Animals – I Love You So F Much
    • Cassandra Jenkins, My Light, My Destroyer
    • Runnners – Starsdust
    • Rosali – Bite Down
    • Zach Bryan – The Great American Bar Scene
    • Kelly Lee Owens – Dreamstate
    • Ghost Funk Orchestra – A Trip to the Moon
    • Dehd – Poetry
    • Pearl Jam – Dark Matter
    • Phosphorescent – ‘Revelator’
    • Itasca – Imitation of War
  • Accessible seating should not be available to the general public

    A hill that I will die on: accessible seating tickets for events should not be available to the general public. These areas or sections are already scarce and by making them generally available increases the likelihood of scalpers buying them.

    Recently, I attempted to purchase Nine Inch Nails tickets for a show. And due to the hellish experience that is modern ticket purchasing made possible by Ticketmaster, the show sold out immediately, yet plenty of tickets showed up immediately on Stub Hub.

    I’ve been to concerts in the last couple years, mouse clicks lucking into tickets, where no accessible seating after the on sale. But when I got to the venue, these sections were nearly empty, with nobody sitting in them.

    I’m not entitled to tickets, but I should have the honest ability can purchase tickets intended for those with limited options.