Meme - Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion: "Even a site filled with bots and Nazis is apparently more appealing than the zombie husk of 2010s Cancel Culture"
Mike Bird @Birdyword: "It's been very nearly a year since the first big burst of Bluesky growth, driven by the brief Brazilian Twitter ban. As a result they're soon going to have negative year-on-year growth in posting, activity has been grinding lower since the inauguration."
Bluesky is backfiring. Mark Cuban says the 'lack of diversity of thought' is actually pushing users back to X | Fortune - "Between November 2024 and this May, Bluesky grew from about 10 million users to 30 million, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. Many news influencers—people who regularly post about current events on the platform—lean left politically, according to the analysis. One such figure was billionaire Mark Cuban, who supported former Vice President Kamala Harris during her presidential run in 2024, although he didn’t give her a penny for her campaign, he said in October. Cuban became a regular Bluesky user, having posted nearly 2,000 times since November 2024. When he first joined the platform, he famously posted: “Hello Less Hateful World.” But Cuban has changed his tune. In a series of posts this week, Cuban argued Bluesky has become too much of an echo chamber, and is sending more users back to X. “Engagement went from great convos on many topics, to agree with me or you are a nazi fascist,” Cuban wrote. “We are forcing posts to X.” The former Shark Tank star and Dallas Mavericks owner also said he thinks Bluesky users have “grown ruder and more hateful.” “Even if you agree with 95% of what a person is saying on a topic, if there is one point that you might call out as being more of a gray area, they will call you a fascist etc.,” said Cuban, whose current net worth is about $8.33 billion, according to Bloomberg... “The lack of diversity of thought here is really hurting usage,” Cuban wrote in a separate Bluesky update including the Washington Post article. “The moderation and block tools on here are so advanced, if you see someone you don’t want to see on here, just block them. Don’t attack them.” “There used to be great give and take discussions on politics and news. Not so much any more,” Cuban added. “Doesn’t have to be this way.”"
For once, he's not wrong
Meme - "Disgraceful Patton"
The Daily...: "Tom Homan says he has received so much hate for his positions on immigration that he is unable to live safely with his family."
Patton Oswalt @pattonoswalt.bsky.social: "good. i hope it gets so much worse for this rancid pile of polenta"
"So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, 'The good outnumber you, and we always will.'" - Patton Oswalt. LOL
Opinion | Bluesky’s decline stems from never hearing from other side - The Washington Post - "A recent Pew Research Center analysis found that many news influencers have Bluesky accounts (I’m one of them) but that, like me, two-thirds post irregularly. By contrast, more than 80 percent still post to X on most days. Engagement on Bluesky appears to have peaked in mid-November. It’s now down about 50 percent, and the decline shows no sign of leveling out... Nor is this process likely to be halted by organizing your pals and exhorting people to be better, or getting progressive writers to post to Bluesky before X. Yes, seeding platforms early with a small group of influential individuals can help it grow, as other users flock to be around them. But when that movement is organized by liberal groups, it’s most likely to appeal to folks who are very interested in progressive politics — which is to say, the other people who have already moved to Bluesky. You can’t blame them for trying, I suppose. But wait, actually, I can. Because even if this works, moving progressives off X into Bluesky’s beautiful blue bubble isn’t a great idea for the movement. This effort isn’t just a doomed attempt to re-create the old Twitter. It’s likely to sap already-waning progressive influence and make the movement itself less politically effective... For roughly a decade, Twitter hosted what is lightheartedly called the “national conversation” on issues of the day, particularly social justice and public health. Twitter never had that many users, compared with Instagram or Facebook. But it had a big group of influential users — politicians, policymakers, journalists and academics, all of whom were engaged in a 24/7 conversation about politics and current events. That was a boon to progressives, who wielded outsize influence on the platform because they were early adopters who outnumbered the conservatives. They were also better organized and better networked, and had the sympathy of Twitter’s professional-class employees, who proved increasingly susceptible to liberals’ demands for tighter moderation policies on things such as using male pronouns to refer to a transgender woman. Moderation suppressed conservative users and stories that hurt the left — most notoriously, the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which Twitter throttled as “disinformation” in the run-up to the 2020 election. Of course, progressive Twitter mobs also policed the discourse themselves, securing high-profile firings that made many people afraid to cross them. Thus, that national conversation ended up skewed toward liberal views, creating the illusion that their ideas were more popular than they actually were. That’s a major reason that institutions went all-in on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and why the 2020 Democratic primary field moved so far to the left that Kamala Harris was still struggling to backtrack four years later. All that changed when Musk bought Twitter. It’s not surprising that progressives want to return to the good old days. But it’s not working, and I’m skeptical it ever will. The people who have migrated to Bluesky tend to be those who feel the most visceral disgust for Musk and Trump, plus a smattering of those who are merely curious and another smattering who are tired of the AI slop and unregenerate racism that increasingly pollutes their X feeds. Because the Musk and Trump haters are the largest and most passionate group, the result is something of an echo chamber where it’s hard to get positive engagement unless you’re saying things progressives want to hear — and where the negative engagement on things they don’t want to hear can be intense. That’s true even for content that isn’t obviously political: Ethan Mollick, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School who studies AI, recently announced that he’ll be limiting his Bluesky posting because AI discussions on the platform are too “fraught.” All this is pretty off-putting for folks who aren’t already rather progressive, and that creates a threefold problem for the ones who dream of getting the old band back together. Most obviously, it makes it hard for the platform to build a large enough userbase for the company to become financially self-sustaining, or for liberals to amass the influence they wielded on old Twitter. There, they accumulated power by shaping the contours of a conversation that included a lot of non-progressives. On Bluesky, they’re mostly talking among themselves. One can say the same about Truth Social, of course, but that’s not an example the left should be eager to emulate. Segregating yourself in a political silo amplifies any political movement’s worst tendencies, giving free rein to your most toxic adherents and cutting you off from vital feedback about, say, your unpopular tariff policies. Something similar has happened on Bluesky. The nasty fringe has become even nastier: A Bluesky technical adviser recently felt the need to clarify that “The ‘let’s tell anyone we don’t like to kill themselves’ crowd are not welcome here” because left-wing trolls kept urging people who disagreed with them to commit suicide. And without the leavening influence of their opponents, Bluesky discourse appears even more censorious and doctrinaire than what progressives were saying on old Twitter. When you never hear from the other side, it’s pretty easy to talk yourself into a political dead end. That might be enough for the political dead-enders. But it’s a terrible mistake for any political movement that actually hopes to rack up some durable victories."
Meme - Bluesky Libs: "Mark Cuban's Bluesky honeymoon is drawing to a close. Wonder when he'll realize - it's the not the platform, but the people. This is who they are, and always will be."
Mark Cuban @mcuban.bsky.social: "The replies on here may not be as racist as Twitter, but they damn sure are hateful.
Talk Al: FU, Al sucks go away
Talk Business: Go away
Talk Healthcare: Crickets.
Engagement went from great convos on many topics, to agree with me or you are a nazi fascist. We are forcing posts to X"
Colin Wright on X - "I checked in on BlueSky to see how people there are reacting to the release of the Israeli hostages, and it’s the eeriest thing. It’s not trending. There’s no mention of it on the “Explore” tab. I started scrolling the feed and went through hundreds of posts without seeing a single one that mentioned it. Instead, it’s all posts about Mamdani, John Oliver’s new episode criticizing Bari Weiss and Jamie Reed, the “No Kings” protest apparently happening this weekend, Taylor Swift, the Epstein Files, complaints about anti-vaxxers, and snarky takes insisting that Antifa doesn’t exist. That's it. It’s honestly blowing my mind how ideologically airtight that bubble is. If someone primarily gets their news by scrolling BlueSky, there’s a good chance they don’t even know that Trump negotiated a deal for the hostages and that they were released today. And what’s even more mind blowing is that this echo chamber is entirely self-imposed. They weren’t banned from X. They left voluntarily, specifically to avoid encountering news or perspectives that might challenge their narrative."
Meme - "Just a brown girl in the U.K right now sat in the train station watching people walk by, wondering who's racist who isn't"
Eva Vlaardingerbroek @EvaVlaar: "Us white girls sit at train stations wondering if we're going to be pushed in front of a train or stabbed in the throat. But yeah, poor you."
Lukas (computer) 🔺 on X - "The entire left wing rhetorical strategy is just pretending they don't know things and praying people are too scared of being mean to explain them
"What do you mean he looks like a thug? He looks totally normal to me, there was no way to predict he would've stabbed her"
"What do you mean he's gay? He's dating a trans-woman. He's attracted to femininity. Is Trump gay for dating a woman too??"
It's just this one move, over and over and over The whole system breaks down as soon as people start responding honestly. These aren't difficult questions, literally everyone in the world knows the answers"
Meme - Mario: "Hey MAGA, define "leftist" for me. What exactly makes someone a leftist? Be specific. I'm listening."
Reddit Lies: "I fell for this trap a few years ago. Turns out literally every leftist has defined leftism differently and no matter how many you've talked to, they'll just claim "erm actually leftists believe Y, not just X" "
Millennial Woes @MillennialWoes: "It's amazing how much leftist discourse is just them pretending not to. understand things, thus making discourse impossible."
Dr Strangetweet or How I Learned to Love the RT on X - "Half of social media is Leftists not understanding things and the other half is Leftists not remembering history."
Joe M on X - "Don't forget the third half where they lie about everything and the fourth half where they are experts about literally everything. 🤣"
Left wingers go on about media literacy and dog whistles but are unable and/or unwilling to understand inconvenient truths
Meme - Ben Scallan 🇮🇪 @Ben_Scallan: "Note: there's not one prominent Leftist anywhere in the West doing what Charlie Kirk did, i.e. issuing an open debate challenge to all comers and saying "Here's my view, I invite you to try and prove me wrong". None of them are willing to subject their views to that scrutiny."
Melissa Chen @MsMelChen: "It’s because the left enjoyed cultural and institutional hegemony over the last decade. By refusing to debate, it helped to enthrone their ideological superiority. Remember they had full control of the institutional stack. We are talking an end-to-end self-credentialing and consensus manufacturing loop. It’s why Ibram X. Kendi refused to debate Coleman Hughes despite a significant sum of charity money on the table. Any liberal who engaged with the other side (such as Bill Maher) was constantly pilloried for not observing ideological purity. It was a way to gatekeep and ensure they could continue to masquerade completely mainstream views as “fringe.” It was successful. Until Elon bought X and Substack challenged the corporate media"
"There is more diversity of thought on the political Right than on the political Left. Although they pride themselves on open-mindedness: liberal thinking actually coalesces around a very narrow set of opinion, whereas the Right diverges widely."
"FIGURE 2. Extracted attitude network. (a) A visual representation of the extracted attitude network revealing distribution of forty attitudes into two clusters. Note: Dark Blue Strong Disagreement: Pale Blue Moderate Disagreement; Grey = Neutral; Orange = Moderate Agreement; Red = Strong Agreement. (b) Two attitude clusters depicting latent Democrat (blue) and Republican (red) belief-systems."
Thread by @phl43 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "My guess is that it's a result of 2 factors:
1) people on the left are more intolerant, they demand greater ideological uniformity and punish deviation more severely
2) people on the left are higher-information on average, hence more likely to detect ideological deviation
I don't think it's really new, but the difference has probably increased in recent years, because social media have made 1 worse and educational polarization has made 2 worse. When I claim that left-wing people are more intolerant on average, they often get mad, but even putting aside that we have a ton of data showing that, as a right-winger who spends a lot of time in left-wing circles I'd say that you have to live in a parallel universe to deny it."
Meme - StarmerOut @ForeverScept: "Sadiq Khan would have been run out of any other country for saying this about their native population as a foreigner. If I don't belong in my own capital city, then I should be under no obligation to pay taxation for it."
"White families just don't represent real Londoners say Khan's staff guidelines. Mayor forced to withdraw advice on which photos will best promote his brand after critics label it racist and divisive"
Man Utd warn fans they risk arrest over ‘Chelsea rent boys’ chant - "Fans have been told the word “rent boy” – a term for a male sex worker – has been considered a hate crime by the Football Association and the Crown Prosecution Service, and that those chanting it could be thrown out of the stadium, be subject of banning orders or face criminal charges... “Thus, the chant ‘Chelsea rent boy’ is effectively a homophobic insult that implies male Chelsea players and fans sell sex to other men.”"
Bob Vylan represent the worst of Britain - "There was much gnashing of teeth by the liberal establishment over the Tommy Robinson march. John Simpson, the BBC’s veteran reporter, spoke of his horror that “extremists and rich American ignoramuses” wanted to take “calm, peaceable, tolerant, rational, stable, essentially moderate” Britain away from him. But when extremism comes from the Left, there seems to be silence. And perhaps it is that silence that has led to some people marching. If we want to talk about extremists who represent the worst of Britain, yes, there is the convict Tommy Robinson, so beloved by the global far-Right, but there is also the punk rap duo Bob Vylan, whose violent chants from stages around the world shame our nation. The band’s frontman, Pascal Robinson-Foster, became famous overnight for his condemnation Zionists and cry of “Death, death to the IDF” from the Glastonbury stage, repeated by a rapturous crowd, which was aired on BBC iPlayer. By the time the BBC had taken it down and apologised, the chant “Death, death to the IDF” became a new global demand for the death of Israelis, echoing from Somerset in England to Melbourne in Australia, where it was subsequently repeated in anti-Israel demonstrations. Although UK police are still investigating him over the Glastonbury incident, Robinson-Foster went one step further at a gig in Amsterdam’s Paradiso venue on Saturday night. First, he gleefully rejoiced in the horrendous murder of American Right-wing activist Charlie Kirk at a university event in Utah, grinning: ‘I want to dedicate this next one to an absolute piece of s--- of a human being.’ Miming a gun being shot, he added: “The pronouns was/were. Because if you talk s--- you will get banged. Rest in peace Charlie Kirk, you piece of s---.” During the performance, he also allegedly urged attacks on Zionists. “F--- the Zionists,” he screamed. “Go find them in the streets.” And once again, he led the chant, “Death, death to the IDF.” Throughout it all, a rapturous crowd roared their approval of his screams of violence. That is the most chilling thing of all. His inflammatory comments came in a city which nearly a year ago some Dutch Muslims attacked Israeli football fans over two days of violence which they called going on a “Jew hunt.”... liberal leader Rob Jetten said that this was not freedom of speech which should mean people can “disagree with each other” without violence. The murder of Charlie Kirk and the joy some on the Left have taken in it is a sign that something is deeply wrong in our society"
Far-leftists' motte-and-bailey arguments : r/EnoughCommieSpam - "I've been thinking about this lately, as a recovering insufferable terminally online arguer. Leftists will say things like "my political views are literally that I don't want poor people to starve to death" or "just be a fucking decent human being" which sounds good. I'd go as far as to wager most people agree with those views. But then when they go further into it, it's some hyper-specific offshoot of Marxist theory and they think anybody who doesn't agree with that exact niche politic is human trash. It's really gotten on my nerves lately because it's so transparently disingenuous; I don't know if they know they're doing it and intentionally being manipulative or if they're so sucked into the cult that it doesn't feel like a fallacy to them."
"You need to bring up "Ends justify the means" vs "Means justify the end" with them. Most of them are the former, so you have to start asking them questions such as, "How many people are you, personally, willing to kill/enslave/imprison" to see *imput leftist goal here* happen?" and then do your best to explain to them that it will happen, and we know that because it's happened before."
"As New Left Notes (the SDS pamphlet) once said, "the issue is never the issue. The issue is the revolution." All of Marxist realpolitik is based on the idea that good faith and even objectivity are bourgeoise concepts; spooks based on the false premise that two sides are morally equivalent. Lenin introduced the concept of partiinost, whereby all ideas and even artwork should be evaluated partly in terms of who those concepts benefited. That is, a "fact" which seemed to benefit the cause of capitalism could not be a fact at all; and concepts or claims or even falsehoods that made communism look good were, in fact, a higher form of truth. This mindset led to Lysenkoism. These people don't seem to be good faith, because they are not good faith. They believe they have a moral obligation to say whatever will advance their cause."
The Web of Radical Groups Backing ICE Riots, Hamas, and Iran - "Promoting revolution never goes out of business, and lately, business is booming. Activists in the revolutionary ecosystem that organize street mayhem are veering sharply from anti-deportation actions to pro-Iran ones. They may have to swap in flags of the Islamic Republic for the Mexican ones they’ve been waving in Los Angeles, or the Hamas ones they waved earlier, but so be it. Unless, that is, the ceasefire that President Donald Trump announced late Monday sticks. In that case, the organizations in the ecosystem will move on to the next crisis, manufactured or not, that offers an opportunity to tear down society. Who are these organizations lining up behind Iran’s theocracy? Some are committed to the anti-Israel cause, sort of a raison d’être for the Tehran regime at this point. But many others are secular, Marxist organizations that just want the destruction of the West in general. The Party for Socialism and Liberation; the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism Coalition; Black Lives Matter groups, especially the LA and Grassroots branches, the most radical BLM groups now; Code Pink: Women for Peace; Students for Justice in Palestine, the most active of the activist organizations in last year’s campus encampments; the Palestinian Youth Movement; Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network; Al-Awda: The Palestinian Right to Return Coalition; etc., have all sharply swung to defend Iran. This is only rank opportunism. Last week, these same groups were protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in Los Angeles and other cities, where they brandished Mexican flags while carrying out violent attacks, to the point that Trump had to federalize the California National Guard and send in Marines. Prior to that, these same groups were busy organizing pro-Hamas riots on U.S. streets and campuses. And before that, they were part of the tightly knit network that supported the BLM riots that rocked our streets in 2020 after George Floyd’s death, and before that, Ferguson, Missouri, after Michael Brown’s death, and every year in between. And, of course, before that, they were involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, protests against former President George W. Bush’s Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the 1999 anti-globalization Seattle riots. In fact, some of these organizations are fiscally sponsored or funded by remnants of the Nicaragua Network, which opposed President Ronald Reagan’s efforts to keep Central America free of malign Cuban and Soviet influence. That’s close to half a century ago, folks... In the West, Samidoun’s “leadership has declared solidarity with a variety of far-left causes worldwide, including militant Black and Native American activism in the United States,” according to Influence Watch... Samidoun itself is fiscally sponsored by the Alliance for Global Justice, which Mary Mobley and I called “the very embodiment of the ecosystem” in a Heritage Foundation paper last year. AFGJ is the funnel through which funders such as the Tides Foundation, George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Arca Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, and the Brightwater Fund—all of which also fund BLM—send money to radical activists and fund BLM. Also a fiscal sponsor of BLM’s Movement for Black Lives, AFGJ “is so Marxist that it started out life in the 1980s in Managua under the rule of the Sandinistas, calling itself the Nicaragua Network back then,” we wrote. AFGJ’s leaders wrote, “The Sandinistas always told the Nicaragua Network, ‘What you can do to most help us is to change your own government.’ We took that instruction to heart.” This goes a long way to explain why groups hop from one cause to the next—this month Gaza, next ICE raids, next Iran. As the late David Horowitz used to say, in the 1960s, the slogan was, “The issue is never the issue; the issue is the revolution.”"
The left wing agenda is all connected
Bernie on X - "I see the humane slaughter of meat is being raised again. So to remind you. In 2014, the Tory government decided that compulsory labelling of halal and kosher meat “was not the best approach.” Because they didn’t want to start a massive cultural and animal welfare war. Much better just to allow it without you knowing. This means suppliers can legally hide how meat is slaughtered. So they do. Whilst calling it ‘higher welfare’"
The harms of halal slaughter - "Britain’s relationship with its animals is a peculiar one, forged over centuries of stubborn practicality and mutual understanding. We’re the nation that gave the world the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) in 1824, the first organisation of its kind, born from a mix of Enlightenment ideas and a very British feeling of having a soft spot for the underdog, or undercows and underhorses in this case. We’re a nation renowned for anthropomorphising animals, seeing our own folly and struggle reflected in them, in everything from Beatrix Potter’s rabbits in waistcoats to Orwell’s pigs plotting revolution. Our countryside is covered with farmers who name their lambs before sending them off to slaughter, as highlighted in the most recent season of Clarkson’s Farm. This is done not out of mere sentimentality but rather as a quiet pact, that although their slaughter is inevitable, by no means should their suffering be, too. In the UK, laws require that animals must be stunned before slaughter, a change which was legislated in the twentieth century amid animal welfare concerns, in an attempt to make such a death as painless and free from suffering as it could be. An exception is made, however, for religious slaughter, in the case of dhabihah and shechita, its Jewish equivalent, making an allowance for slaughter without stunning if it’s for a particular faith community. These kinds of religious slaughter are not carried out in small numbers, however. Awal Fuseini, a senior figure at the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, told Farmers Weekly in 2024 that 72 per cent of the sheep slaughtered in England and Wales are done according to halal standards, in addition to over 50 per cent of goats slaughtered and a growing number of cattle and poultry, despite Muslims representing a disproportionately low 6.5 per cent of the population. As a result, a significant proportion of the meat from these animals enters the hospitality supply chain, where there is no requirement to notify consumers in restaurants or takeaways if the meat is halal... 80 per cent of Indian restaurants are actually Bangladeshi-owned, a nation where Islam is the state religion, and as a result would only buy and cook halal meat anyway. Science doesn’t soothe the conscience, either. Studies have suggested that animals are conscious for a period of time after their throats are cut during halal slaughter, and it is very likely that they are suffering intensely during this time. A 2004 report by the Farm Animal Welfare Council, published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, highlights that sheep are conscious for between 5-7 seconds after the cut, 3-5 seconds for goats, 22-40 seconds for adult cattle, and anywhere between 10-120 seconds for calves, with this time variance being due to anatomical differences in the animals’ bodies. Comparatively, when cattle are stunned with captive-bolt pistols, studies have shown that there is zero brain response activity afterwards. The UK’s Halal Monitoring Committee, a regulatory body which certifies much of Britain’s halal meat, insists that such slaughter is “swift and humane” when done right, but even then it is a flimsy peg to hang one’s hat on. I have had friends who have worked in abattoirs. The reality of them — high-speed lines, human error, the sheer volume of animals — means precision is not and can not always be guaranteed. A nick instead of a clean slice, a dull blade, a lack of concentration and those 5-7 seconds can stretch into something grimmer. I paint a dark picture, but this is the reality of such meat production in the UK. Earlier this March, we saw the horrors of a halal abattoir unfold in the media as secret camera footage showed severe mistreatment of sheep by the workers there. The animals were tortured, being slammed onto the concrete floors while recordings of wolf howls were played, terrifying them. In several cases, the animals’ throats were inadequately cut, allowing them to run around for several minutes while they bled out. Some sheep were visibly still conscious as workers began to cut their legs off, while workers laughed and mocked the sheep who were struggling after the botched slaughters. There is nothing about this that is compatible with life in this country."
Weird. We're told that rights are not like cake - more for one does not mean less for another
