"This was the voice of moderation until 13 Sept, 2025"
I found this article quite interesting, it's about Vision Zero, an initiative which began in Sweden and is being taken up in other countries. What I find most interesting is that this is a great example of what happens if you change your perspective. I read that New York is trying to adopt it, but … Read more
by liberal japonicus Russell suggested a new thread around Macron's speech (here and here). The title is the old name for the French nuclear capability, it is now called Force de dissuasion. Whether it will live up to the new name and this pdf from 1965, which details Soviet reaction to this nuclear capability, is … Read more
by liberal japonicus
A thread about that dump Trump and Vance took on the Oval Office rug. To be honest, I've not looked at the video, I think it would make me physically ill. But below the break, I've put in the transcript, which I got from AP here. Probably like everyone else, I've seen tons of stuff on line, and I imagine folks have the same reaction that I had, but I didn't want to pretend that it didn't happen. Anyway, have at it.
by liberal japonicus Started out as a comment, but thought I might spin it out to a post. Russell, building on nous, suggested that communal care is self-care and I want to unpack a bit. Nous mentioned in an earlier thread about the difficulties he is having (difficulties that I share) of students who have … Read more
by liberal japonicus https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr72n1yyj30o Federal workers received an email on Saturday afternoon asking them to list their accomplishments from the past week or resign – the latest development in the Trump administration's efforts targeting the federal workforce. The emails came after billionaire and Trump confidante Elon Musk tweeted that workers would "shortly receive an email … Read more
by liberal japonicus Been watching Kara Swisher, who has spent time with Elon Musk and has a number of insights. So I caught this episode of her podcast with Scott Galloway (here, teed up to the quote) Don't I agree with every point they make, but this point by Galloway made me sit up. I … Read more
by liberal japonicus The other one has moved over to dot-matrix printing, so I thought I'd open up another one. Have at it.
by liberal japonicus
With apologies to Katy Perry and Zedd, it's been 3 days and it seems like a year. Maybe the superpower is to make things so bad that time slows down. It's like hitting the event horizon of a black hole. And, just like the event horzon, I'll put the rest of this after the break
by liberal japonicus I'm sure everyone is following the various clown cars the Orange the 1st is setting/has set in motion, and you are welcome to talk about them here. But, a bit of meta (surprise, surprise), I think it is illuminating to identify what is the 'superpower' that underlies all these things. While I'm … Read more
by liberal japonicus It seems like it's time to take a step back and see if we can come to some agreement about the use of AI here. This is primarily directed at Charles, which is highly unfortunate, because I don't want to make him an object lesson, but it seems unavoidable. A while back, … Read more