Nato Powell

Shorter Trump: We will be creating the famous Skynet, from the great movie Don't Create Skynet.

Maggie Koerth is a well respected journalist so you can feel confident that you’re really helping.

In these trying times, please think of the truly persecuted—Bay Area hippie boomers who, after decades of seeing their 401ks and property values sky rocket—now must search for a parking spot. 🎵 How many roads must a man drive down, before he can find where to park? 🎵

“These are the people who will march in the street against Trump’s nativist’s rhetoric and then turn around and tell you that San Francisco is full.” young guy gives an impassioned speech on how lefty NIMBYs (in SF and everywhere) betray their values. The bill passed! www.tiktok.com/t/ZT6E4ov66/

he was a champion of free speech and if you disagree youre under arrest

For a basically empathetic person to retain some hope for Internet Era humanity, they must recall that if even 1/1000000 people are so damaged they spend all their time seeking threads in which to crap on trans people (or immigrants, or women, or…), that’s still hundreds of trolls in US basements.

22 years ago I pivoted from working on antibiotic resistance to pandemic viruses. Since then, I've argued that if we care about saving US lives in expectation, advance capacity for producing bird flu vaccine offers by far the greatest expected return on investment. ... We were so goddamn close.

Three things made the US a rich and powerful nation: the rule of law, its science & innovation system, and openness to foreign talent. Remarkable how Trump has taken a sledgehammer to all three. No enemy of this country could do more.

Not to be too pro technocrat, but it is astounding how much this country depended on the selflessness of like a few hundred thousand highly educated public servants who, for peanuts, made sure our food and medicine and environment etc were safe. And in return these servants were demonized.

crazy that an influx of dense infill housing can lower prices and make homeownership more attainable

My thoughts on the Take It Down Act as someone who used to handle copyright takedown (and other) requests at Google. 🧵 As many have said, this law will be used as the ultimate weapon for the Trump Admin to censor speech from their political opponents (and more). www.theverge.com/policy/62497...

This is fascism. I mean, far from the only example, but it’s one of the plainest signposts along the arc into increasingly pure forms of it. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/u...

Republicans being nutty is a dog bites man story and Dems being nutty is man bites dog, which is how we ended up with Her Emails and ultimately Trump.

The most daming claim in this statement IMO: Within 15 minutes of DOGE accounts being created… Attackers in Russia tried logging in using those new creds. Correct usernames and passwords. 2 options here. The DOGE device was hacked. And I don't think I need to explain the 2nd.

I wrote about the massive own goal this would be for the Dems: www.techdirt.com/2025/03/25/h...

/3 That’s because depression and anxiety lie to you, rob you of context, shut you away from hope. They make you forget and disbelieve the thing you know — that things can get better, that they WILL get better. That people care. That you can get help.

I have to wonder how Trumpists are telling themselves Trump is strengthening the US when they see the relative performances on this chart. Granted that most aren’t seeing it, but I’m sure those that do are telling themselves *some* story and I want to hear what it is.

Txt STOP to opt out of updates on war plans

This is fascism at its core. Trump is making lawyers fear who they take on as clients. This is happening before Trump uses the DOJ and FBI to go after his enemies. At that point, wrongfully targeted people won't be able to get the best representation. I am terrified. www.wsj.com/us-news/law/...

A fundamental story of the last decade is that a lot of basically incompetent people got fed up by competent people telling them they were wrong, constructed a more welcoming alternative ecosystem of competency cosplayers, and then somehow turned the whole government over to them.

The fate of LYMERix proves that senseless destruction that reverberated for decades could occur prior to the Trump era, but everything I’m reading suggests that senseless destruction reverberating for decades will be the mode rather than the outlier in his second term. www.wired.com/story/life-s...

An efficient facism does not require much direct state violence. It merely requires the assurance that private violence aligned with the desires of the regime will go unpunished.

Keeping minimally abreast of the news but still waiting for something concrete we can do about what’s coming, and trying not to exhaust myself or others thinking about all the things we can’t do anything about.

This has to be one of the most NextDoorish of NextDoor posts, earnestly complaining that prohibiting parking in front of a fire hydrant is too much of a hardship for drivers. Perhaps the daylighting law is causing some carbrained citizens to think of other ways their liberties are being crushed.

The article raises important issues, but it’s mind-boggling to me that threats of violence against city employees by people who want to defend parking are characterized in the headling as a “war on cars.” That’s a war _for_ cars, threats of violence to advocate *for* drivers.

Term limits and keeping the pay low for members of Congress are perfect examples of populism having the exact opposite effect. Term limits means that a legislature loses institutional knowledge and only lobbyists know how government works. Low pay means only rich people can run for office.

Some members of South Korean President Yoon's party are among those loudly opposing and voting against his attempted authoritarian takeover. Watching from America, I wish them luck, and can't help but think it'd be nice if we had that here.

Who made this? Ahahaha

im not saying you have to indulge any of the more toxic shit these guys often believe, but i think offering them another explanation for their feelings of alienation without dismissiveness and vitriol is pretty important if you want to win them over

I keep coming across this and laughing again.

College student Josh Shapiro wrote a very bad essay over 30 years ago, but his current positions re:Israel and Gaza are the Democratic mainstream. So, when I see people flipping out about him I think either their vote is ungettable or they’re fundamentally reacting to him being Jewish. Or both.

Political violence doesn’t succeed in a functional democracy, regardless of who the target is or whether the target is themselves committed to democratic principles. And this is how we want it to be; the moment political violence confers success, including against “the bad guys”, we’ve all lost.

Fight against daunting odds, because it’s the right thing to do, and because sometimes you win.

“I can’t do smart things, because I am not actually smart. But I ache to be smarter than everyone. So I believe in weird, stupid things, and spin it as being more brave, more smart, more perceptive than the people who don’t believe in weird stupid things.”