Open thread. I will publish the original post another time.
On The Road – Redshift – Hands Off! DCReader Interactions
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Professor Bigfoot
As I said downstairs, central.
Suzanne
My first thought is yes, give it a try. I think Dems take a lot for granted, specifically that (potential) voters make rational assessments of evidence. Unfortunately, that isn’t true. I think effective messaging includes a lot of emotional appeal and direct engagement.
Almost Retired
This is great. We’re not going to convert any old white guys by proselytizing at the Lion’s Club pancake breakfast, but young college men are probably our best bet for moving the needle on the $#@*-ing white male vote. And signing up young college women as well.
I will go to my grave not fully understanding the concept or appeal of “influencers,” but Gramps here isn’t the target audience. This seems like a brilliant strategy for reaching the yoots. Tik Tok motherfuckers, so to speak.
rikyrah
THEE ENTIRE PHUCK!!!!
Jon Cooper![]()
@joncoopertweets
OUTRAGEOUS: Trump’s Social Security Administration will be shifting its public communication exclusively to Twitter (gosh — I wonder whose idea that was?). This comes as the agency plans to cut its regional office workforce by roughly 90 percent.
https://x.com/joncoopertweets/status/1910758140905422940
Baud
Kirk is a good example of what we don’t have.
Hacks.
The hack deficit is real, and instead of promoting our own hacks, we impose on our politicians the duty to be hacks. But that’s really not something most politicians can do.
ETA: Kirk also has no illusion or uncertainty about which political party to support.
rikyrah
With many career lawyers gone, Justice Dept. hires Trump loyalists for court
The Justice Department is building a roster of lawyers willing to defend in court the most controversial parts of President Donald Trump’s agenda, firing career attorneys whom leaders view as standing in their way and hiring dozens of political appointees to carry out the president’s agenda.
The new hires are already appearing on behalf of the government to defend Trump’s efforts to remake immigration policy and the federal workforce and to expand the powers of the presidency. They sometimes sit in front of judges alone, without the cadre of veteran attorneys who typically show up for big cases.
more here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/04/10/justice-trump-political-hires-lawyers-court/
Suzanne
@Almost Retired:
I miss Yarrow.
rikyrah
Anders Åslund (@anders_aslund) posted at 10:07 PM on Thu, Apr 10, 2025:
What Trump is doing with his tariff war:
1. Alienating every nation in the world.
2. Destroying the US economy.
3. Driving the global economy into recession.
4. Killing the big US trading companies such as Apple, producing 90% of its iPhones in China.
(https://x.com/anders_aslund/status/1910530180092682707?t=WaD-4xIIzJAu4anGsZ2gaw&s=03)
rikyrah
Michelle_BYoung (@michelle_byoung) posted at 8:00 AM on Fri, Apr 11, 2025:
The almost exclusive focus on STEM has lead to tech bros who understand nothing of history, the humanities, or basic ethics running the world on their very limited terms & corrupt worldview 🤷🏾♀️
(https://x.com/michelle_byoung/status/1910679433628860618?t=y6vZHGKTgLLfNqE759NF9Q&s=03)
The United States versus Elon R. Musk (@Needle_of_Arya) posted at 10:24 AM on Fri, Apr 11, 2025:
I’ve talked about this.
the tech bro generation, 1946-89, has brought us here, with their sociopathy, their hatred of the humanities (at university), their desire to recreate the Middle Ages through technoserfdom
(https://x.com/Needle_of_Arya/status/1910715566337454315?s=03)
rikyrah
PatriotTakes![]()
(@patriottakes) posted at 6:05 PM on Wed, Apr 09, 2025:
White House “Coal Miner” Is Actually a Supervisor for a Company That Recently Laid Off 165
Zachary Erdeljac wore a red MAGA hard hat, safety gear and praised Trump’s tariffs
https://t.co/RoWnl1In0s
(https://x.com/patriottakes/status/1910106764210565164?s=03)
Melancholy Jaques
What was that approach? What did they say to these young white males to convince them to vote & to vote for Trump?
And, the more important question is, what should we say to get them to vote for Democrats
I recently re-read Milan Kundera’s essay, “The Tragedy of Central Europe.” In discussing the how people in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia reacted to Soviet/Russian domination, he noted that:
Our problem with white Americans generally and white males specifically is that they view the liberation of people other than themselves as a threat to their identity. They see non-whites in authority, women with their own money, having to push 1 for English, not being able to say N! or other slurs, and OMG! is that a boy or a girl?!?! All of this is received as an attack on an identity that is largely based on an imagined past, but is nonetheless emotionally embraced
Raising their wages, forgiving their student loans, making it easier for them to go to college are not going to overcome that.
rikyrah
Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) posted at 10:08 AM on Fri, Apr 11, 2025:
Yikes. “Consumers have spiraled from anxious to petrified,” says Pantheon Macroeconomics.
Consumer sentiment plunged again in April. The expectations index is the worst since May 1980 (the stagflation era), according to the University of Michigan Survey of Consumers.
Americans https://t.co/wQFy158x8V
(https://x.com/byHeatherLong/status/1910711595732181461?t=HQUNivEk_GNMD_NuMgcGlA&s=03)
rikyrah
Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) posted at 6:42 PM on Wed, Apr 09, 2025:
Remember the big presser where Pam Bondi, Kash Patel and others announced charges against a prominent MS-13 leader? They appear to be dropping the case and seeking a quick deportation instead.
In a bizarre twist, the defendant is asking the court NOT to dismiss the case because he’s worried it will lead to a summary deportation without due process.
Stranger still, the magistrate presiding over the case ordered the defendant, Henrry Villatoro Santos, detained pending trial because of the strength of the evidence and likelihood of a lengthy sentence.
Unclear why DOJ changed court so abruptly on a case of such significance.
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
https://t.co/zRwSWPqJEo
(https://x.com/kyledcheney/status/1910116068070510767?s=03)
rikyrah
ADAM (@AdameMedia) posted at 3:11 AM on Fri, Apr 11, 2025:
🇺🇸 🇨🇳 🇦🇺 China has just HALTED all liquified natural gas imports from the United States.
This leaves tankers in limbo with BILLIONS of dollars of contracts.
China will now go with Australia for their natural gas needs instead.
Australian is inking new deals throughout Asia and may soon turn to Europe and cut American gas out of the picture entirely.
Trump has turned Australia from an ally into a competitor.
https://t.co/l2eOvZiy4L
(https://x.com/AdameMedia/status/1910606663289106722?s=03)
rikyrah
Grrrrrrrr…..
CNN (@CNN) posted at 11:54 AM on Fri, Apr 11, 2025:
The Trump administration plans to eliminate the research arm of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, close all weather and climate labs and eviscerate its budget along with several other NOAA offices, according to internal documents obtained by CNN
(https://x.com/CNN/status/1910738242497900659?s=03)
rikyrah
Spencer Hakimian (@SpencerHakimian) posted at 11:11 AM on Fri, Apr 11, 2025:
Jamie Dimon now saying he expects the Fed to have to step in and rescue the bond market.
Unprecedented times.
We had +3% real GDP a quarter ago. https://t.co/KQosKC3UhY
(https://x.com/SpencerHakimian/status/1910727328923004997?s=03)
Suzanne
@Melancholy Jaques:
Chicks dig Democrats.
WaterGirl
@Melancholy Jaques:
We engage with the on their turf, tell them about what Democrats are for, and tell them what Republicans are against. I think this is a chance to reach these young people where they are.
*I think that FFOTUS is making it easier to see what Rs are for and against.
Baud
Readership capture
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: As a “STEM” guy, I think this is an incomplete picture.
First of all, this is the “TE” part of “STEM” overwhelmingly. Scientists and mathematicians are not on the train and their institutions are being decimated.
Second, it’s not even all of them, it’s really *tech entrepreneurs and CEOs*–the money guys. Yes, there’s been a right-libertarian streak in, particularly, software and California tech industry since forever. But there are a lot of liberals in the industry too, indeed Bay Area tech industry seemed majority liberal through the 2010s. A lot of this is billionaire Big Tech CEOs resenting the increasing power of their own employees and wanting to strike back.
Melancholy Jaques
@WaterGirl:
I edited my earlier comment to add what my thinking is. I do not think telling them what we are for and what Republicans are against is going to work. Because one huge thing we are emphatically for – inclusion – is anathema to them.
Jackie
@rikyrah: I love your updates, but I so wish you didn’t post Muskrat’s social media links. I, for one, refuse to give him clicks. Isn’t the same info available on Blue Sky?
WaterGirl
@Melancholy Jaques:
A whole ton of young people have grown up with people being gay, or non-binary, or black, etc, and they accept that.
I think you are drawing absolutely conclusions where there aren’t absolutes.
Do you suggest that we just give up then? Not try to reach potential voters?
rikyrah
@Baud:
Our best ‘ hacks’ happen to be a plethora is non-White/women social media influencers.
People who are full-throated in what Democrats represent, in plain English?
It’s certain not those dumb azz pod-bros.
rikyrah
@Jackie:
I will try to find info on Bluesky.
WaterGirl
Nearly every thread is filled with awfulness, which isn’t out of line because there’s so much of it!But I am hoping we can kind of stay on topic here, rather than only talking about all the awfulness?
Trying to look ahead at possibilities for action and get some feedback about what I presented.
I should have posted this as the first comment.
Never mind, I have officially given up on the original point of this post.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: Doesn’t work though. One of the recurring messages of the incel phenomenon was “I tried being a feminist and it didn’t get me laid at all!!”
Professor Bigfoot
@Matt McIrvin: I can only speak from a reasonably long career as an engineer and working with engineers, and my observation is that in general, we are extremely well trained, but poorly educated.
There’s no room in the curriculum for history, ethics, philosophy— the engineering curriculum is hard enough as ‘tis!
(once upon a time I could solve a fourth order differential equation- now ask me how often i got to do that when I got into the work world)
Steve in the ATL
@WaterGirl:
I was about to mention Omnes but I’ll respect your wishes and hold off
rikyrah
Mortgage rates surge over 7% as tariffs hit bond market
Published Fri, Apr 11 20251:55 PM EDTUpdated 12 Min Ago
The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage surged 13 basis points Friday to 7.1%, according to Mortgage News Daily. That’s the highest rate since mid-February.
Mortgage rates have been on a roller coaster ride all week, as bond yields spiked higher mid-week when President Donald Trump’s new tariffs on dozens of countries went into effect. Yields dropped when Trump lowered the tariff rate on most countries hours later. Tariffs on Chinese imports, however, currently stand at 145%.
But bonds began selling off again Friday, despite a cooler-than-expected inflation report. Mortgage rates loosely follow the yield on the 10-year Treasury.
“There have been some bad weeks for bonds here and there over the careers of most anyone who’s alive to read these words, but unless your career began before 1981, you just lived through the worst week you’ve ever seen in terms of the jump in 10-year yields,” said Matthew Graham, chief operating officer at Mortgage News Daily.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/11/mortgage-rates-surge-tariffs-bond-market.html
Jay
@Suzanne:
Seconded.
rikyrah
WHAT.THEE.ENTIRE.PHUCK.
Like there isn’t an entire population that has been living there for longer than America has been America.
Exclusive: Greenland ‘Freedom City’? Rich donors push Trump for a tech hub up north
By Rachael Levy and Alexandra Ulmer
April 10, 202512:45 PM CDTUpdated 17 hours ago
April 10 (Reuters) – As the Trump administration intensifies efforts to acquire Greenland from Denmark — or take it by force — some Silicon Valley tech investors are promoting the frozen island as a site for a so-called freedom city, a libertarian utopia with minimal corporate regulation, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The discussions are in early stages, but the idea has been taken seriously by Trump’s pick for Denmark ambassador, Ken Howery, who is expected to be confirmed by Congress in the coming months and lead Greenland-acquisition negotiations, the people said. Howery, whose involvement with the idea hasn’t been previously reported, once co-founded a venture-capital firm with tech billionaire Peter Thiel, a leading advocate for such low-regulation cities. Howery is also a longtime friend of Elon Musk, a top Trump advisor.
Howery declined to comment. The White House did not respond to requests for comment. Sources who spoke to Reuters requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.
The vision for Greenland, one of the people said, could include a hub for artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, space launches, micro nuclear reactors and high-speed rail.
The discussions reflect a longstanding Silicon Valley movement to establish low-regulation cities globally, including in the United States, which Trump himself promised to do in a 2023 campaign video. Proponents use different names for variations on the idea, including startup cities or charter cities, with the common goal of spurring innovation through sweeping regulatory exemptions.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/greenland-freedom-city-rich-donors-push-trump-tech-hub-up-north-2025-04-10/
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: Scientists seem much more likely to have some humanities training in their higher education than engineers, especially if they came out of engineering schools.
Professor Bigfoot
@Matt McIrvin: Also true in my experience.
Also true of PhD engineers, like my former boss who I loved and many others I worked with here and there; at least, they seemed to have their heads better attached.
ETA: you’ve got me thinking— maybe it has something to do with doing real research, where the Universe loves to tell you that you don’t know as much as you think you do…
Raoul Paste
@rikyrah: Talk about a Friday news dump!
Bupalos
@WaterGirl: I’ll continue to say, we can do all the outreach and postcards and whatnot we want, but until we have a simple story- one that practically tells itself and envisions a better and different future- we’re going to be fighting very much uphill. We need a coherent air war, and we need to be clear about our failures.
Biden’s great failure was communication and badly underestimating people’s sense of general anxiety about society falling apart. He truly was from a different time. And I think generally not understanding we’re at a point of breakdown where narrative is primary and policy secondary. The only story he seemed to me to tell was about the dignity of having a job in the 1960’s.
Professor Bigfoot
Back to the original post— if you can make it work, then by all means it’s obviously worthwhile.
Also, if we’re ever going to get any white men, the only ones even potentially available to us are the ones with college educations, so that’s a great place for a “proof of concept.”
Professor Bigfoot
I can only read this as “the American electorate is stupid AF.”
And I agree.
WhatsMyNym
@Professor Bigfoot:
What state(s) did you go to school in (high school and University)?
Illinois and California both required humanities back in the 80’s.
Bupalos
@Professor Bigfoot: I don’t know about “stupid.” More like “panicked.” But of course there’s a relationship there. It’s also global.
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: …Also, I am not sure but I have been getting inklings of geographic variation. Which is *not* the same as the general political lean of the area. The Beltway Bandits in the DC area often work for defense contractors, and there’s historically some conservative politics there. West Coast tech was aerospace-heavy before the rise of Silicon Valley, and a lot of early libertarian politics came out of Southern California. Boston/Rte 128 tech where I’ve made my bones has a lot of medical and bioscience and the influence of the universities, seems a bit more left-leaning.
PaulWartenberg
Keep asking this:
Where is Abrego Garcia.
His rights are our rights.
Where is Abrego Garcia.
Where is Abrego Garcia.
Jay
@Matt McIrvin:
In my late teens and through my 20’s, I had about 16 “friends with benefits”. I worked night shift, 3 or 4 would drop by my Mom’s house in the afternoon. They would engage my Mom in conversation, which she liked, as she was a very social person with a tiny social group. 1 would offer to “wake me up”, which usually took 45 minutes or so.
PaulWartenberg
@rikyrah: If I’m Meta, I’m suing.
Jay
@rikyrah:
Black bears ruined Libertarian Utopia in Grafton, NH.
Greenland has Polar Bears.
trollhattan
Why was I not informed?
Big van parked next to the house is labeled “Bee swarm rescue” and “Caution, Bee Hives.” Uhhh.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: I’m being (mostly) sarcastic.
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: Engineers have traditionally got that Promethean streak, the idea that everything is possible with enough effort and cleverness. Scientists can seem like the negative Nellies telling them, no, it isn’t, everything involves tradeoffs and reality gets a vote.
A crank tendency I’ve been observing for decades is Theory of Relativity denialism. This has been associated in some way with the political right ever since the Nazis were denouncing relativity as Jewish science. (But not always–one of the most notorious figures in the movement, the British astronomer Herbert Dingle, was a progressive.)
Part of this in modern decades has been connected to “creation science” and the need to reconcile vast distances with claims of a young universe (so something has to have happened to the speed of light–unless all astronomy is fake!)
But I think some of it is engineers who really hate the idea of the speed of light being a limit to interstellar travel, and would love that just to be wrong. “You think you can’t go faster than light? Have you tried? Just get up to 99.999% of the speed of light and then gun the engines, right??!! Bet you double-domes just never thought of that!”
Glidwrith
@Professor Bigfoot: Graduate school doesn’t really do much in terms of humanities, that’s undergrad BA/BS. But something like >90% of PhDs are Democrats and half are atheists. You don’t go hunting for truths and keep the delusions of bigotry.
Not to mention in the biotech field, the world is right there, in your lab. Multiple languages, cultures, ethnicities all just beavering away, looking for answers.
Martin
@rikyrah: Most techbros aren’t engineers. They hire engineers, but they are finance/marketing people at their core, despite what their degree is in.
Also: Chinese AI memes would make for pretty banger Democratic ads on Trump’s economy.
Peale
@Suzanne: We tried “Stay at home. Practice Social Distancing. Think of your grandparents and the needs of the brave “front liners” in the hospital.” And the response was “fuck you I want a race war and granny can die already.”
Our problem is that we’re unwilling to vilify anyone for any extended period of time until people believe it.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Suzanne: I think people do make rational assessments
but only after their fears are quelled and their anxieties dissipated.
The gop has been a false fear pusher and anxiety generator for nearly as long as I have drawn breath.
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: I’d say it for sure! Delivered as a funny throwaway line (but not really a throwaway line) I think it would be very effective.
Ohio Mom
@rikyrah: The scariest part from your link is not that Social security will be issue its press releases through Twitter, however dumb and unethical that idea is, it’s how much they are cutting the staff that interacts with the public.
From personal experience, it’s pretty simple to sign up for retirement benefits, but SSI and SSDI, for the disabled, those are complicated procedures with many pitfalls and it’s pretty typical to need SSA staff’s help to pull you out of the holes.
And yes, these cuts will allow fraud and abuse.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@rikyrah: their lack of quality shows
HopefullyNotcassandra
@rikyrah: think about the small businesses of this world
I don’t know how most of them will manage to survive this mess.
This regime is also killing farmers for no rational reason.
They Call Me Noni
@Melancholy Jaques: I do not think that there is any message that will reach them. They are who they were raised to be. They are selfish and think that if “others” have the same rights and opportunities (and actually take advantage of those opportunities) as they do it somehow takes away from them. It, of course, does not but they cannot grasp the concept that a rising tide lifts all boats. They see their small world getting smaller.
Jay
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy0ngd11yzo
Thought Crime is now illegal in the US. Free Speech is Dead.
Melancholy Jaques
@WaterGirl:
I thought I was on topic, but I can no longer read the original post to check.
No, I do not suggest that we just give up. While a very large portion of the electorate has grown up with all kinds of people and become comfortable with different people being involved in all aspects of their lives, another very large portion of people have not made that adjustment. That latter are the ones attracted to Trump. And it’s those that I thought we were talking about.
I am arguing that we cannot hope to reach those voters with policies and programs like the ones that made Democrats what they are today. That doesn’t penetrate through or overcome the defense of identity that causes white working class people to say “Trump cares more about people like me” when there is nothing in his entire life that would support the idea that he cares about anyone but himself.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: The terrific science vlogger Angela Collier made a video about tech billionaires’ odd tendency to go on about how they were always interested in physics, might have gone into physics, always wanted to study physics. Bill Gates says this all the time; Mark Zuckerberg goes on about it. Elon Musk likes to tout his undergrad physics degree, which there was some question as to whether he’d actually finished (though UPenn says he does have the degree, FWIW).
Collier, who is an astrophysicist, just asked: you guys are billionaires, you can do whatever you want, why don’t you study physics? Go ahead, do it! I’m sure any college would happily take your money!
It seems, though, like they’re not actually interested in physics, they’re interested in being seen as knowing physics because it has some kind of genius cachet.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@rikyrah:
if the tech bros want to return to the Middle Ages, do they comprehend that means half of the year is spent in hosting parties (festivals) for their serfs?
https://m.medieval-life-and-times.info/medieval-religion/medieval-religious-festivals.htm
somehow, I think the tech bros skip that part of history.
Peale
@rikyrah: Yep. Its an important measure, but it hasn’t shown up in actual changes of behavior yet. I think its because people can be put into five segments right now.
Trump diehards who are still running on dopamine and spending like the prosperity that was promised is coming around the bend.
YOLO types who are like “well, the recession is coming, but whatever. You can’t take it with you” who are spending like its the Gotterdammerung.
The perpetual nonplussed: They don’t follow the news. They haven’t read anything other than the funny pages since 1942. They haven’t met a cookie that they’ll keep in the jar. And so they just go about their normal spending.
Prudent Heroes – Class 1: Normally they would be saving and looking for thrifty discounts right now like they always do, but realize that prices are going to go up with tariffs so they might as well buy now and stop spending later.
Prudent Heroes – Class 2: For them, the recession already started when they looked at the price of eggs. They are pulling back spending even more than usual because who knows if they’ll be laid off in the next few months.
Not all these groups are the same size. But because the first 4 overwhelm 5, don’t be surprised if economic indicators look great for another month or so. When 4 and 5 have a thrifty reunion (no cash bar!), and either 2 or 3 run out of money to not give a shit about, we’ll have our recession.
Anyway
Puhleeese! Mathematicians are the true geniuses – everyone knows that.
Ohio Mom
@rikyrah: Yeah, because we have to rescue the
mindBOND market but not anyone else.Math Guy
#*!””@&’. }#%^ #& /@#$*!!!
(@%¥{[?”……%¥? #%{^*#!
Peke Daddy
@rikyrah:
Along with a technodystopian police state that would make Stalin envious.
Sister Golden Bear
@Matt McIrvin:
Programmers, at least the inexperienced ones, have an even stronger Promethean streak. Or why Silicon Valley techbro bosses — and DOGE — prefer to hire junior ones that don’t know better and shun experienced ones.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@WaterGirl: thank you for trying!
Matt McIrvin
@Math Guy: oh, look, it’s a fast Fourier transform in APL
Dorothy A. Winsor
@rikyrah: Holy cow. Because old people hang out on twitter.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Matt McIrvin: Russian bots perhaps?
Jackie
@WaterGirl:
Maybe not making it an Open Thread would have helped? Anyway, I understand your frustration :-(
Wapiti
@rikyrah: I’m trying to sell my Dad’s house and the buyers want to move the closing date up. I wonder if it’s about locking in an interest rate,
Martin
@Matt McIrvin: Angela’s stuff is fantastic. Watch every video.
Math Guy
@Math Guy: Nota Bene: Just venting. Sometimes I just have to vent.
Martin
@Jackie: Yeah, respite threads tend to be respected. Probably should be one every day, even if it doesn’t have a subject.
Matt McIrvin
@Sister Golden Bear: Elon Musk has always had this obsession with insane working hours giving you superpowers. Get some teenagers to put in 120 hours a week, sleep on that futon in the office, and anything is possible! He was recently gloating about how it was what made DOGE work.
In reality, working those hours for any length of time makes you insane and sloppy. But what it does do is allow you to outrun somebody who is working shorter hours, be it a competitor or, say, a judge or legislator who is trying to stop you.
Steve in the ATL
Thunderstorms and windy in Atlanta, but still beautiful weather in Augusta. Further bulletins as events warrant.
Surely I’m not the only here watching the Masters?
Peale
@Dorothy A. Winsor: They voted for harris 50/50 because they actually get their news from the NYT and ABC news, and not just Fox. What they’re hoping for is that they’ll be hit with the Free Speech Zone algorithm to remind them that they should be happy to have to move in with their children and they are much better off not being in their homes.
Melancholy Jaques
@Bupalos:
Pretty much agree. That was my reaction to mistermix’s and Kay’s posts on the need for Democrats to be more nuanced on tariffs. If Democrats say the word nuance they will lose voters for being snobby elitists. We need to paint in primary colors, write in bold comic sans font, and speak to them as we might to a young child or a golden retriever.
How do we address their anxieties? Republicans do it by naming and blaming enemies. What’s our angle? I admit I have no fucking clue.
Matt McIrvin
@HopefullyNotcassandra: I saw someone characterize Curtis Yarvin as a guy who wanted to turn society into a Barbadian sugar plantation and thought that was medieval feudalism.
Jay
@Wapiti:
Yes, mortgage interest rates are starting to skyrocket and are forecasted to continue upwards as long as the US Bond Market is weak.
Ohio Mom
@Professor Bigfoot: Ohio Dad spent his career as a computer engineer undercover as a Liberal/Democrat. I could not have put up with what he did, most of what the other fellows talked about were regurgitated Fox talking points. All.day.long.
WaterGirl
@Jackie: @Martin:
I changed it from an open thread (my oversight) 5 comments in, the thread said organizing and resistance, and it still didn’t help
I don’t usually get this cranky when this happens, but I am today. The thread took an hour to put together and i think 3 people max responded to the topic
edit: Not to mention the hour meeting with the group yesterday.
Matt McIrvin
@Melancholy Jaques: “Gee, has Trump brought the prices down yet? Economy going great guns? Strange how he promised all these things and now he’s pushing the price of everything up and telling you to prepare for pain.”
It doesn’t seem that hard.
Jay
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/11/mahmoud-khalil-deportation-ruling-immigration
They Call Me Noni
@Steve in the ATL: You are not.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Also trivia, but man, the Mean Girls have been out on Tiktok the last few days.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Professor Bigfoot: that is not true.
plenty of men exist of every color, even freckled and chalk white, who can be reached with a coherent message so long as they they actually hear it.
Some white men exist who do not have college educations who are better messengers against this regime than most elected democrats. I know this because I know them. They never stop. They are ceaseless in their disgust with this president’s words and behavior and they register that disgust in public in the reddest of red places regularly.
Our president is an amoral man. That bothers quite a few men of every color. I don’t know how we penetrate the protective bubble of lies rightwing media has built around this president to inform people that this president is an amoral man. I do know the more weeks he trashes our country like this last one, the easier our task becomes.
I do sincerely hope we can rid ourselves of this poison before our country craters. We can do that together. Separately, we are in for big trouble imho
Ohio Mom
@WhatsMyNym: Ohio Dad chose to go to college at Case Western in Cleveland for engineering in the mid 1970s exactly because they insisted their engineering students also acquire a liberal arts background.
Then the university got a new president who said, Liberal Arts, Shiberal Arts, the engineering school is going completely vocational. We are preparing our students for industry, not to be well-rounded citizens.
Steve in the ATL
@They Call Me Noni: that second shot by Scottie Scheffler reminded me of why I retired from golf after covid: 212 yards to the hole and he’s hitting a 4- or 5-iron. Absurd.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Matt McIrvin: wow. That is just wow
Ohio Mom
@trollhattan: Bee swarms are not dangerous. They are bees that split from a large, overcrowded established hive that are looking for new digs. They have no honey or larvae to protect so they aren’t apt to attack.
And if a beekeeper is working on rounding them up, you have nothing to fear, they will be captured and moved to a new location shortly.
Years ago I was visiting friends who kept a beehive when a swarm escaped. They were way up in a tree across the backyard, probably 50-60 feet away and twenty feet up and they were loud. You may not be able to hear one bee buzz but tens of thousands, buzzing all together, yes.
They Call Me Noni
@Steve in the ATL: Because I pretty much exclusively played golf with men, except on vacation when Mr. Noni and I might be paired up with another couple, their game used to intimidate me. In our regular Sunday game we played for money (with handicap). My mantra was drive for show, putt for dough as the saying goes. No way I could out drive them, but while they were at the range I was on the practice green. But I do enjoy watching the pros perform their magic and analyze a course the the nth degree. Fascinating.
Matt McIrvin
@Ohio Mom: I’ve heard many people describe software firms, even on the liberal coasts, as hellholes of reactionary politics like this… and it just hasn’t been my experience at all, over a long career. I think it might have been luck of the draw and maybe a difference between Boston-area and other places.
What I do think there are a lot of are these sort of comfortable centrists who have mostly liberal cultural sentiments but will relay the wisdom of NPR. But these people do not like Trump.
Ohio Mom
@Matt McIrvin: In the words of my late beekeeper friend, who was a PhD research biologist, who also taught at the local medical school, “Physics is very hard.”
That was his advice to his son who dropped physics and became a computer engineer.
Ohio Mom
@Ohio Mom: BOND market.
i hate spell check.
Matt McIrvin
@Ohio Mom: To me, subjects like organic chemistry or even some history classes where you have to do huge amounts of memorization are way, way harder. But it’s probably how my brain is wired.
Bupalos
@HopefullyNotcassandra: At this point the tariffs could still just be a head-fake, although Trump has pushed it to where it already has real primary economic effects not to mention secondary effects on perceptions of American reliability.
I don’t think they are, I think they essentially made a shocking kind of opening bid hoping that negotiating down to 0% on “friends” that also attack China, 10% on “neutrals” and maybe 40% on China is something that the existing system can digest as good news without a real meltdown. I think China will probably use various means to veto this potential end state.
WTFGhost
My wife and I started working on a strategy to handle the next time I’m traumatized by a doctor baselessly accusing me of aggression. I’ll stay, torturing myself with my PTSD symptoms, and risk arrest, so I don’t embarrass myself by leaving an intolerable situation in which I’ve already been emotionally abused and bullied.
Me, I think it needs some work, but my wife and the medical establishment are down with it, so that’s good.
Suzanne
@WaterGirl: I thought the post was good and thought-provoking. I appreciate the effort y’all put in here.
David Collier-Brown
@Almost Retired: Re getting supporters, from younger generations:
I was recently reading an article in the New Yorker that described to me something I had forgotten: how the Chinese “brainwashed” enemy soldiers during the Korean War.
The mechanism was called “reeducation”, first used by Mao on fellow Chinese: placing people in an environment where seemingly everyone else was a communist, and the reporter was corrected every time he said anything positive about his “old side”. Eventually he gave up verbally defending the US, then thinking about the US as good, and ever so slowly came to see that “the Chinese Communists have unlocked the secret to man’s happiness” . The process was never-ending, and effective: he stayed in China for 12 years.
This is exactly what I see in a small-town Facebook group in Canada. “Everyone” is a Conservative, and all postings on politics are either praise for Mr Polievre or accusations of criminality by Mr Carney.
I’m being “reeducated”, just like the soldiers I read about in the Korean War. The better the isolation, the better the effect. It isn’t so much as we’re brainwashed, it’s that we’re placed in a hermetic bubble, and we brainwash ourselves to fit in.
If you ever wondered why anyone growing up in that small town or that TokTok group will be honestly convinced that the Conservatives are sane, and the Liberals are brainwashed, well, that’s why.
–dave
The article was https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/07/its-always-the-other-side-thats-been-brainwashed
Sorry I don’t have a guest link: there is an audio file at the link above with the whole article.
WaterGirl
@WTFGhost: I wish you had better choices!
MisterForkbeard
@rikyrah: He’s “leading Greenland-acquisition negotiations” – but those aren’t happening! Greenland and Denmark telling us to go fuck ourselves after we threaten to annex Greenland isn’t a negotiation!
This is going to go well, for sure.
Bupalos
They are carrying a lot of honey, but the good news is most of the bees are so laden with honey they literally could not deploy their sting even if they got a “start stinging shit” signal.
Harrison Wesley
@rikyrah: Sounds a lot like the shit they pulled in Honduras.
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: You were one of the three, and I appreciated it.
I will try another time in the next few days, with the clear statement that it’s not an open thread, and hope to get more feedback then.
Jay
@Bupalos:
And swarms usually start when there is a second Queen in the hive. The usual solution is the beekeeper combs through the hive, finds the new Queen, and puts her in a small box, inside a larger box. The swarm, over time, (a couple of hours), then migrates to the new box with the Queen.
Voila, a new hive is born.
Peale
@Harrison Wesley: They do this shit every year. And they never move. Remember the Crypto Libertarian Vacations they were all going to take to the beaches of El Salvador? Or the boats they were going to sail out into the sea to live in harmony with libertarian nature? They ain’t moving to no Greenland when they wouldn’t even move to some tropical paradise.
Bupalos
@David Collier-Brown: Excellent. Thank you for this.
We all need to think a little more deeply about how all this comes about and maybe ease off on the essentialism and dehumanization. Falling for Trumpism or Hitler or what have you is a very human thing, a thing that comes by cause, and a thing that but-for-the-grace-of-god and whatever kind of advantage or privilege the world gave you could absolutely have happened to you.
Understanding this is the real first step to effective resistance to the democratic decline that is going to proceed for at least a couple decades. All of the polarized dehumanization – reinforced psychologically by online algorithmic feel-good payoffs and the temporary alleviation of loneliness – that whole spiral feeds democratic decline and feeds Trump. And will feed the worse and more competent versions of Trump to come.
Jay
@Peale:
Melancholy Jaques
@Matt McIrvin:
True, what you are saying is not hard. But will it work?
Bupalos
@Jay: That’s the right way to do it. But then you could do it the way I did, and just always be a little too nervous about going into the hive, not do needed maintenance, and just have the bees do what-the-fuck-ever. And get like 1 gallon of honey over the course of 3 years, while supplying swarms for better beekeepers to capture.
Maybe I can convince myself this was “effective altruism.
Anyway, maple syrup is better than honey.
Ohio Mom
@WTFGhost: Where do you live that the medical profession is so antediluvian?
Your plan will leave you in a mental, uh, I mean behavioral health ward, sequestered with nothing to do and no way to contact the outside world. After a week or so, after you are bored into quiet resignation, they will let you go, after filling you up with the wrong meds (I had a friend who went your planned route).
Look for others with issues/conditions similar to yours and ask who their doctors are. Are you near a university health system affiliated with a medical school? Those doctors are usually more sophisticated.
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: This idea of setting up your own private utopia in what you imagine to be terra nullius keeps coming up. I think it’s one of the drivers of space colonization fandom. And there’s seasteading, the idea Trump was touting a while back of “Freedom Cities,” etc.
There’s a long history of rich guys fantasizing about this. Of course often it’s just a gloss on the old idea of the company town where everyone gets paid in scrip and is in debt to the company store.
Ford’s Fordlandia in Brazil was one constructed as Henry Ford’s ideological utopia–didn’t work out so great. Walt Disney’s original vision of Florida’s Disney World, where the theme park was just a sidelight and the main show was his EPCOT city of the future inhabited by Disney employees, was another one. I think a bunch of the guys who went to Iraq after Bush’s invasion had these kinds of ideas on their minds.
Bupalos
@Jay: Maybe the US could have the Civil War it’s just dying to have on the empty territory of Greenland. Just all the volunteers for both sides just take themselves out of their hopelessly politically integrated communities, go there, and fight it out.
I’m pretty good on x-country ski’s.
Baud
Matt McIrvin
@Melancholy Jaques: The only way we ever seem to win is by coming in as Mr. Fixit after an obviously Republican-induced disaster. I don’t know of any way to break the cycle. But at this point, we’re asking ourselves if we even get another iteration of the cycle or if things are too broken for that to happen. It’s the only play I know of, though.
Anyway, as one of the people who contributed to derailing this thread, I’m sorry and I hope the above is at least a little bit on topic.
Jay
@Bupalos:
Well, Canadian 1812 Reenactors have noped out on going to the US.
Bupalos
@Ohio Mom: I don’t know how to break this to you, but I’m just going to go for it: there never was a big worldwide flood.
frosty
@WaterGirl: The awfulness overwhelmed me. A dozen comments in a row, each reporting worse news. I can’t take it.
I think from now on I’ll skip reading comments after I see the first one or two of these. I’ve already (tried to) abandon them when they get to 300 comments – means there’s a fight going on.
I’m sorry your post got stepped on; I’ll look for it later. In the meantime I think I’ll take a nap.
Bupalos
@Jay: JUST LIKE THEY DID AFTER PERRY HANDED THEM THEIR ASS AT PUDDING BAY!!!!
Sorry, my Western Reserve nationalism just got the better of me there for a minute.
Matt McIrvin
@Peale: Occasionally, they actually try and it’s a hilarious failure. Remember the time they tried to turn some town into a libertarian utopia in New Hampshire and it turned out it was hard to keep libertarians from feeding bears?
rikyrah
@PaulWartenberg:
No lie told.
THOSE PEOPLE WERE SOLD
SOLD
SOLD
SOLD
SOLD
TO EL SALVADOR
SOLD
rikyrah
@Jay: The only thing I know about Polar Bears is that…
if you encounter one..
hopefully, you have made your peace about the afterlife.
Cuddly, they are not.
Jay
@Bupalos:
when we lived at the place, we had one hive. We reflowered the meadows which were a monoculture of red fescue. Only had one hive because we did not want to starve the bumblebees, or make them compete. We had about 200 bumblebee pots set up for their hibernation, and I knew it was spring when I walked around the 40 acres with sports bottles full of sugar water and a tablespoon, picking up bumblebees off the ground and feeding them. We joined Bumblebee Watch, and learned we had several, though to be extinct.
Back to the Honey Bees. The hive was on a concrete pad, surrounded with chain link fencing and a chain link roof. (Bears). Stayed on top of the care, insulation blankets in winter, feeding in winter and spring, varroa mite treatments, etc. No bee suit, just a smoker. Every May, go through all the combs, pick out the new Queen, box her up, let her subjects come to her, seal them up, go to the Farmers Market and ask, “Who wants a box of free bees?”.
New Deal democrat
@Jay:
On the other hand, if British re-e actors were to land on the Chesapeake, cross Maryland, and cause the current government to flee Washington, they might just get a warm reception.
P.S. My Canadian flag is on proud display facing a main road in my neighborhood.
Barry
@Baud: “‘I never thought I was going to lose this much money’: Trump voter amid tariff”
Leopard just can’t eat anymore, asks if this is torture through force feeding.
Scout211
He said earlier that they have to leave and then apply to return if the employer vouches for them. You know, like a fake work visa.
Did he change that to “stay in the country” this afternoon?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@New Deal democrat:
I’m guessing they’d get lots and lots of help that goes beyond polite golf claps. ;)
CarolPW
@Suzanne: Me too, I hope they are OK.
Professor Bigfoot
@Matt McIrvin: Engineers who read lots of science fiction; amongst whom I count myself. ;)
But yeah, the scientists, egg-headed so-and-so’s, continue to be proven correct and so some of us are smart enough to understand there’s limits, yo!
(btw, “The Expanse” postulates a thoroughly spacefaring species within this solar system– the only handwave is the Epstein drive which honestly doesn’t seem too far from the realm of possibility. Save the protomolecule, that is. ;)
Melancholy Jaques
@Matt McIrvin:
I guess I derailed it too, but I thought it was about organizing the young white male. It’s a critical problem and I have no ideas right now, but I am hopeful that we can come up with something.
For some reason, saying that racism, misogyny, and religious bigotry are wrong has gone completely out of style.
Professor Bigfoot
This has been demonstrated repeatedly over the last ten years; including convictions of multiple felonies, but still the only demographic that gives him WELL over 50% of their votes are white men.
These are the facts and I will not hide from them.
Professor Bigfoot
@Ohio Mom: I went to an HBCU and they tried to inject some humanities into the engineering curriculum but it was difficult… nonetheless there was more a sense of turning out fully rounded people who could do the work.
Now, as I’ve said before, it seems much more like extensive training, not education.
Professor Bigfoot
@Matt McIrvin: The killer for me was the straight math. The work I had to put in to keep up… when, for example, my junior year Econ class was an absolute breeze which led to my contempt for “business majors.”
Oh, to be young, stupid and arrogant! XD
Professor Bigfoot
@Melancholy Jaques: I think I did, too– I did try to bring it back; and I think it’s an excellent idea if it can be pulled off.
Anyway, I’m sorry to have been a derailleur.
Steve in the ATL
@Professor Bigfoot: I had law school classmates who were doing the JD/MBA program. They reported that the MBA curriculum was a joke compared to law school.
WTFGhost
@Ohio Mom: Yeah, that’s kind of the plan B, is getting good doctors. In the meantime, well, I can lean on my social support, which say I’m embarrassing, which, hey, when you’re right, you’re right. It’s just, my embarrassing reaction was to trauma – even though it didn’t look traumatic to an outside observer.
Meh. It happens. Invisible disabilities.
Thanks you, and WaterGirl, and any others I’ve missed. I have more torture tests to determine if I’m eligible for disability at the moment, alas.
OldDave
@Matt McIrvin:
ROTFLMAO. Now if I could only find my APL Selectric ball.
me
@Matt McIrvin: This is the plot of Heinlein’s “The Moon is a harsh mistress”. It’s a good book but the political philosophy is trash.
Barry
@Bupalos:
“I’ll continue to say, we can do all the outreach and postcards and whatnot we want, but until we have a simple story- one that practically tells itself and envisions a better and different future- we’re going to be fighting very much uphill. We need a coherent air war, and we need to be clear about our failures.”
Somebody once said that there was only one message in a campaign ‘you waz robbed!’ and that whoever got control of this won.
Martin
@WaterGirl: I understand the crankiness. Mine turned up a few notches today. Many lines being crossed.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Same here organic chemistry and were always at cross purposes. Same with biology.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: I had a math minor. It just got too esoteric for me after Real Analysis and Complex Analysis.
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: I’m cool with physicists’ math. Though I finally realized I was never going to finish my thesis unless I dropped my Luddite tendencies and embraced computer algebra, because I couldn’t do algebraic derivations by hand without making a mistake when the equations got to be a page long.
Mathematicians’ math, though, that’s rough going. When the version all the physicists are interested in is just a trivial degenerate case of what they’re really studying, and furthermore, you have to prove everything with a level of axiomatic rigor that will make the physics cavemen’s heads spin…
The trouble is, the physicists usually end up needing some piece of it 30 years later.
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: The interesting thing is, I don’t see as much *quantum mechanics* denialism, though I understand that was big in the USSR early on under Stalin (until the physicists informed him that he’d get no Bomb if he didn’t cut it out, and, amazingly, this worked–the geneticists were not so lucky).
With quantum mechanics the problem is more a lot of mountebanks saying it is the mechanism behind magic wishing quackery.
Ken B
@Melancholy Jaques: I might try this:
Donald Trump made two and a half billion dollars in a morning by buying up depressed stocks, announcing a pause on the tariffs, and selling on the surge.
How much of that came from your 401?
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: I tried taking a graduate-level course in differential geometry, and man it was rough. Had no idea what was going on.
So I took it AGAIN. The second time, the prof realized there were a bunch of physicists in the audience and started kind of addressing things to us. And then it got interesting. Like, “You know gauge field theory? This is what you’re really doing there” interesting. But he was talking down a bit.
Professor Bigfoot
@WhatsMyNym: All of ‘em were in Nashville Tennessee. My home town, that I ran away from 2 weeks after I got my degree. ;)
We did have some humanities at my uni, but generally much lower level (100 and 200 level classes)— we engineers simply didn’t have time for more advanced 3, 4 and 500 level classes.
Professor Bigfoot
I think you’re exactly right.
Professor Bigfoot
@HopefullyNotcassandra: I think what the tech bros want is a bit more recent— like 1850; each of them plantation aristocrat with vast fields of toiling slaves… or vast cubicle spaces of toiling… yeah, you get the idea.
AM in NC
@Suzanne: Yep. That’s what I was thinking. We need video after video, ad after ad, Reel after Reel of young, hot women (celebrities and not) talking about how guys who vote Republican are totally uncool losers and won’t be given a second look by them. Evah.
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: Right now they’re intoxicated with the idea of machine slaves. Which has a long history in science fiction too. I remember being stunned that there was a big wave of anxiety about “mechanical men” in the 1920s and 30s, before there were even really computers.
Or, just using the threat of the machine slaves to keep the rest of ’em down.
Math Guy
@Matt McIrvin: Combinatorics: coding theory and design theory. Later, I picked up a fair bit of game theory. My current research is in physics, a source of very interesting problems. Trying to follow this thread and cooking a nice dinner at the same time. Sorry if I am OT. Just need to touch base with a community.
Professor Bigfoot
@Ohio Mom: During the Rush Limbaugh age… and dear lord, they were insufferable.
I couldn’t fly under the radar because, well, look at me here! I am temperamentally incapable of keeping my fat mouth shut.
Anyway, one of those searing images from those days was a red faced, spittle-flecked rant from a white guy saying “I don’t care, I will never agree with the gay lifestyle!” and I remember thinking at the time, “how is it any of your fucking business?”
But I kept THAT to myself.
Melancholy Jaques
@Ken B:
Majority of voters don’t mind his corruption.
Glidwrith
@WaterGirl: Aw, I’m sorry.
dnfree
@WaterGirl: I’m sorry too. You’re an inspiration and it must be frustrating sometimes.
Kayla Rudbek
@WhatsMyNym: as a science major, I was required to take humanities courses including two philosophy, two theology (I went to Notre Dame; it’s been useful in identifying Calvinist theology masquerading as e.g. economics), three courses in German (tested out of one; German being useful for physics and chemistry because of the pre-WW1 and WW2 research and terminology).
What drives me nuts now is when the AI field refers to ontology and I’m all “you are using that term Just Plain Wrong, you’re not philosophers, get that wording out of your mouth and never use it again”
Kayla Rudbek
@Jay: and M-16 machine guns merely annoy a polar bear…
Kayla Rudbek
@Matt McIrvin:
I was a physics major and I and/or any one of my fellow majors could have cleaned their clocks. And organic chemistry is just as hard as physics in a completely different way (Lord Rutherford was wrong about all science being either physics or stamp collecting, but he was an Englishman so what could you expect?)