The best way to follow American politics is to read coverage of the election while listening to the Mr. Robot soundtrack.
The Taylor Swift endorsement itself is likely to have a smaller electoral impact election than the enthusiastic coverage of it might indicate. But it does tie into a larger story about young people feeling jazzed about this election in a way many of them never have before, and that's a big deal.
We like what we view as good about our own cultural ways, and are inclined to ignore what's bad or harmful. This means not only that "the kids today are worse than when *I* was a kid" tends to mistake "different" for "worse," but it also fails to see all the ways the kids are *better* than we were.
My most radical political position is that homework is stupid, giving a lot of it as a learning tool is a crutch for ineffective teachers (and an ineffective tool), and making teens spend hours a night doing homework is disrespectful of their time and developmental needs.
An important aspect of last night's debate is how clearly it demonstrated that the sort of "strong masculinity" Trump embodies, and is so ideologically central to the far-right, isn't strength at all, but a blustery and belligerent cover for profound weakness.
Between the Aaron Rogers's performance on Monday, and Trump's performance yesterday, this has been a bad week for conspiracy-addled, brainwormed wealthy New Yorkers.
The biggest barrier to an actually just criminal justice system in America is cop unions. Reform is difficult, though, because the left doesn't want to pass legislation breaking the power of public employee unions, and the right likes bad and violent cops […]
Having played with it, with a number of different topics and styles of documents, the new "Audio Overview" tool in Google's NotebookLM, which generates a natural sounding, two "host" podcast conversation, might be the most impressive use of AI technology I've seen yet. It's mind blowing.
Trump really has only two policies: mass deportations and tariffs. The first, grounded in hatred of immigrants, is evil and would tank the economy. The second, grounded in hatred of other countries, is stupid and would tank the economy.
Just want to remind people that there are a *lot* of tabletop RPGs out there besides D&D, and if you haven't tried some, you should. In fact, you'll likely find many of them more fun than D&D, even in the same genre of heroic fantasy […]