Dan Mitchell

Dan Mitchell

@danmitchell.bsky.social

Reporter based in Oakland. An American, Chicago-born. Here, documenting the mainstream news media's catastrophic dysfunction and total failure to meet the moment.

5.9K followers581 following24.5K posts

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We need a team of top researchers from across the social and political sciences to examine how it came to be that a majority of Americans, very much including people with post-secondary degrees, believe that "viewpoint diversity" is tantamount to reason.

“I mean, ‘Iraq,’ am I right? Is it eye-rack? Eye-rock? Eee-rock? It’s all very confusing to me and so we must bomb all of those countries out of existence. “What’s that? No, I think Central Asia is fine. Nothing difficult about ‘Kyrgyzstan.’l

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

JD Vance says of the Middle East that it's "a region of the world made up of countries whose name I couldn't even pronounce"

The Internet revealed how dumb people really are, and we are not, as a society, able to process it. Perhaps the worst outcome: the kinds of people who always assumed (or pretended) that nobody was dumb, and that it was wrong and bad to say otherwise, have doubled down. See e.g.: The New York Times.

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Another, possibly bigger thing that makes so many of us feel discombobulated: people we always assumed were pretty smart are in fact also morons (at least when it comes to public issues and discourse). Look at the ranks of fingerdragging droolers in the opinion pages. And think about who hired them.

The point, it should be obvious, isn't to "insult" them. It's to stop taking them seriously and even promoting them (as the NYT does). This is perhaps the biggest problem we have: the one that underlies all the other ones. Global warming isn't a threat because smart people disagree about it.

The Internet revealed how dumb people really are, and we are not, as a society, able to process it. Perhaps the worst outcome: the kinds of people who always assumed (or pretended) that nobody was dumb, and that it was wrong and bad to say otherwise, have doubled down. See e.g.: The New York Times.

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Meanwhile, the rest of us don't have the faculties to deal with it. We're at sea. We don't know what, if anything, can be done about it. The first step has to be to acknowledge the problem and stop pretending that, at least as a default, there are no dumb or bad people.

"FAUCI CREATED COVID SO HE COULD KILL PEOPLE WITH THE VACCINE!!!!" "Well, my good sir, we're going to have to agree to disagree about that. But let us try to find common ground on other matters, for your voice is needed in the national discourse." Yeah, we gotta stop doing that shit.

The Internet revealed how dumb people really are, and we are not, as a society, able to process it. Perhaps the worst outcome: the kinds of people who always assumed (or pretended) that nobody was dumb, and that it was wrong and bad to say otherwise, have doubled down. See e.g.: The New York Times.

Not even "how dumb," but how *many* people are blithering idiots. And also, how many have no moral compass at all. Many were isolated. The Internet made them feel more comfortable letting their moron flags fly. And it turned them into a group, which has coalesced into a political faction. .

The Internet also caused them to be even dumber and more vile in an ever-increasing cycle. Many of them, like most people, probably had *some* doubts about whether what they thought was actually true, or moral. Then they saw millions of others saying even dumber, viler shit, with no consequences.

Dan Mitchell reposted

Replying to @volts.wtf

The minute Dems gain any power at all, watch them descend like locusts, hyping an endless series of fake scandals fed to them by the same RW slop machine that's been playing them for fools for decades. They can't wait.

They don’t even win the FIFA Prize.

The Bulwark@thebulwark.com

RFK: "There's five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don't produce science. They don't win the Nobel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature."

I wonder where this came from. It could easily be just another of his weird, senseless hobbyhorses that formed in his jacked-up brain, but it's so particular that I suspect someone might have said it to him. For what reason, I have no idea.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

Trump: "We will be officially BANNING the term, 'AI/Artificial Intelligence,' in all relevant documents, and everything else, due to its inaccuracy. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP"

Seems elementary. And yet.

Paul Waldman@paulwaldman.bsky.social

Reporters who have access to people like Vance, I beg you: The necessary follow-up is "That's a pretty serious charge. Can you give us A SPECIFIC EXAMPLE of El-Sayed expressing 'anti-white racial bigotry'?" Asking for specifics from people like him is a magic accountability tool. Use it!

Bellingmouse

Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social

Keep in mind, none of the parties involved have said this is the woman he cheated with. It may turn out to be true, but as of now it's simply something the internet has concluded based on "zoom in, enhance"-style close reading of podcast clips

I always hesitate to criticize trends among The Youths, because there has been so much moral panic about stuff like comic books, jazz music, Judas Priest lyrics, television, videogames, etc. But that doesn't mean some trends aren't terrible. Many Internet trends have clearly warped people's brains.

Just being constantly on social media, particularly through adolescence, is clearly detrimental (at least, for many). I think it's probably pretty rare for a kid who had spent hours every day alone in his room on 4chan to have grown up to be a well-adjusted adult.

I enjoyed all the people who were making fun of the many job-havers who said they'd never heard of these people. One guy said he was amazed that journalists were unfamiliar because they're supposed to be up on "culture," so not being familiar was a professional failing. They make "reaction videos."

Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social

For those just joining us, a (bafflingly) popular youtuber was found to be cheating on his wife. The internet has decided that an intern on his show was his mistress and is combing through clips finding "evidence" that she is a calculated stalker and malicious homewrecker.

Dan Mitchell reposted

I emailed Patrick Healy, assistant managing editor for standards and trust at NYT, to ask why their story about a House report with new details of rape allegations against the President of the United States included neither those details, nor a single use of the word "rape." archive.is/1s9AM

Dan Mitchell reposted

Replying to @andycraig.bsky.social

I don't care for how this has become almost a joke people throw in along with how he's old and fat and orange rather than a stomach-churning, existentially horrifying thing for a nation to know about its head of state.

Dan Mitchell reposted

I know there's a lot going on but I feel it should probably be more of an above-the-fold story that members of Congress released a thoroughly documented report directly accusing the president of the United States of being a serial rapist.

Dan Mitchell reposted

Especially since they were just fine doing so in 2016.

Marisa Kabas@marisakabas.bsky.social

The only reason I can think of for this news not being absolutely everywhere is that large media orgs don’t want to be seen as putting their thumbs on the scales a week before election day. And that’s cowardly as shit.

We all remember when he said "brother Trump" was "an authentic human being," right?

Jenny Cohn@jennycohn.bsky.social

“The nonprofit that helped get Cornel West on presidential ballots in 2024 received all of its funding that year through a conservative political network that has been bankrolled by Elon Musk, tax records reviewed by Sludge show.” 10/27/26 … 1/ share.google/s1Keh9Qx6ZDV...

Dan Mitchell reposted

“The nonprofit that helped get Cornel West on presidential ballots in 2024 received all of its funding that year through a conservative political network that has been bankrolled by Elon Musk, tax records reviewed by Sludge show.” 10/27/26 … 1/ share.google/s1Keh9Qx6ZDV...

share.googleMusk-Linked Dark Money Network Funded the Group Behind Cornel West’s Ballot PushPeople Over Party raised $7.7 million in 2024, all of it from the nonprofit behind the Fair Election Fund, which in turn got every dollar from a Musk-funded dark money group.

Dan Mitchell reposted

AES “facing questions over whether his family is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood”—NBC Nightly News tonight, going all-in on Islamophobia to help Trump and Mike Rogers win Michigan. Beyond gross. This is like the third or fourth time Nightly has rehashed this story in the last 10 days.

That El-Sayed “Tommy” video might gave made the campaign. I bet many racist-lite people in the suburbs saw that and thought, “he kind of comes across as a regular white guy,” and saw how reasonable he was. He was polite, but absolutely gelded Tommy. It was perfect.

Polling USA@usapolling.bsky.social

Michigan Polling: Senate: 🔵 El-Sayed: 51% 🔴 Rogers: 45% Governor: 🔵 Benson: 52% 🔴 James: 45% Glengariff / Oct 22, 2026

House Democrats are publishing their own news now. This is precisely the kind of thing that, 10 years ago, they would have taken straight to the NYT. I guess they didn’t want it watered down and bothsides.

Prem Thakker ツ@premthakker.bsky.social

NEW: "Donald Trump was an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women during the mid-to-late 1990s," per new House Judiciary Dem report. Report has new allegation that Trump raped a 24-year-old and then promised the victim a visa & NYU admission, demanding she stay quiet.

Dan Mitchell reposted

NEW: "Donald Trump was an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women during the mid-to-late 1990s," per new House Judiciary Dem report. Report has new allegation that Trump raped a 24-year-old and then promised the victim a visa & NYU admission, demanding she stay quiet.

Dan Mitchell reposted

In comments at a private police conference, Flock CEO Garrett Langley said backlash to the company wasn't "real" and the work of "bots." Also he said his wife advised him to never apologize. Read now: www.404media.co/in-leaked-au...

Killing FEMA Workers After a Quake: Profitable?

Bill McKibben@billmckibben.bsky.social

If you wanted one headline to explain what happened to us, this might do it: trying to make bank off a ten percent chance of killing us all

Apparently real, from Tim Pool. Later this week, in Pool's "coverage" of the midterms: "Roosevelt Planned Pearl Harbor"; "Kennedy Was Controlled By Vatican"; "Constantine: A Pagan Who Subverted Christianity"

Are people still giving money to these obvious scammers? A few months ago, people who should know better were arguing to me that they weren't fake at all. One actually said that *none* of them were fake. That person constantly reposted them, maybe still does.

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Most business journalists don't know shit about shit. "Growth." C'mon. This is vintage, 1998 bubblespeak.

The New York Times@nytimes.com

Breaking News: The A.I. company Anthropic disclosed its finances ahead of what could be the largest-ever initial public offering. nyti.ms/3WNJFV5

Thomas, Alito, and lord knows how many other of the wetbrained justices when this gets there, "Yes, they are. "

Robert Maguire@robertmaguire.bsky.social

Judge: “Can the president then offer on eBay to sell [official presidential papers], all of our national security secrets to the highest bidder?” Trump's DOJ: “they’re his property." (They're not)