Matt Wright
Matt Wright
@mattwright.bsky.social
Restaurant owner in Austin, dad, hoops fan. Main interests: #rstats, data viz, Power BI, cheaper housing, Wem-V-P. (Not a frequent poster.)
1K followers751 following1.7K posts
Matt Wright reposted
Matt Wright reposted
Replying to @amandamarcotte.bsky.social
This report is genuinely overwhelming, in terms of the evidence both against Trump and of a ham-fisted cover-up. Including one instance in which Ghislaine Maxwell was actually about to mention one of Trump's young accusers and Todd Blanche told her to stop talking. The media response is "yawn."
Matt Wright reposted
“My Catholic Latina opponent wants to impose Sharia Law” is a hilariously desperate closing message. thehill.com/homenews/617...
The havoc The Apprentice unleashed on the world www.gelliottmorris.com/p/poll-low-i...
Every so often I think about the number and scale of catastrophes Trump has baked into the global economy/security situation that haven’t eventuated yet and then sort of shrug and pour another cup of coffee because I can’t do anything about it.
Matt Wright reposted
The fact that the president's doctors are giving him the dementia test over and over again -- tracking his decline, most likely -- and that the president keeps bragging about having to take that test should be a five-alarm fire.
Trump: "You know, the first question -- they have a lion, a snake, a giraffe, and a bear. And they say 'which is the snake?' ... by the time you get to number five a lot of people are left out on the road ... I get no credit for it."
Rarely can you chart quality of life dropping for an entire society like this
Once mass spam texts were made legal, younger donors vanished, leaving a grassroots fundraising machine that subsists on squeezing vulnerable seniors, some of whom give hundreds of times a day. It’s a horrific model. Consultants get generationally wealthy, and the party hollows out its future.
Matt Wright reposted
Matt Wright reposted
Matt Wright reposted
There is absolutely no viable path forward for this country that doesn’t hinge on extreme accountability for everyone involved in this administration. They’re going to whine about politicization and credulous media types will echo them, but the thing is, they’ve committed tons of obvious crimes!
I do not think an exec branch led by a man who thinks he is entitled to treat federal agents as an arm of his firm, refers to Somali Americans as “garbage” and has said racist things specifically about Omar is capable of neutrally applying the law to her, to put it mildly apnews.com/article/ilha...
Youth (2026)
“Our research suggests that Trump was not necessarily attracting male supporters who are as confidently masculine as the former president presented himself to be. Rather, our findings suggest that Trump appeared to appeal more to men who may be insecure about their manhood.” — Knowles & DiMuccio
Matt Wright reposted
“If ICE is going to act with criminal impunity, why should we cooperate with them at all?” www.texasobserver.org/wilber-garce...
Matt Wright reposted
Trying to convince NGO leaders and elected officials to take this seriously made me leave politics. Earned media is a hostile hellscape compared to where it was 20 years ago and there are very few people and orgs in positions of power trying to fix it.
I'm just gonna bookmark this for future reference when Dem pundits complain about how the party has trouble communicating its message to voters. The reason you keep running into trouble with your branding isn't campus radicals. The reason is that your opponents purchased all the media outlets.
By coincidence, before I logged on to Bsky, I looked at NPR.org and nytimes.com and nothing. This would've never crossed my radar. C'mon
This post just made me wonder for the first time: how do we know dinosaurs had tongues? How do we guess how big they were? What’s the history of tongue evolution? What a marvelous, weird device. (Might’ve also had some good scotch tonight.)
Proud to present my lifesize T. rex head, affectionately named Hannibal. I created this myself from start to finish- digital sculpture, resin 3D printing, painting, etc. Huge thanks to my friend @rj-palmer.com for instrumental crits and redlines during the sculpting process.
Matt Wright reposted
Matt Wright reposted
It would be a monumental improvement for America, but especially for the Republican Party, if we elected the President through a plurality vote.
Dems need to win PA by around 9 points to flip its Senate (~D+11 nationally). In that situation, they likely also take the state legislatures of WI, MI, AZ and NV Gov. Dems would have the votes to push the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact over the line and eliminate the Electoral College.
Matt Wright reposted
it's evidently too much to ask the rw justices to consider the irreparable harm to individuals treated to such inhumanity. they are complicit in this criminality. shame on all six of them. and shame on us for having a system that allows this illegality.
#BREAKING: Over dissents from the three Democratic appointees, #SCOTUS grants a stay in the third-country removals case; clears way for Trump admin. to continue removing non-citizens without a full chance to litigate the conditions in those countries (while also taking up the full merits appeal).
Texans, heads up: I got caught up in this when I moved this summer and changed my address for my drivers license, which never updated. I was still registered, but at my old address. Check and update here: goelect.txelections.civixapps.com/ivis-mvp-ui/...
After further reporting by @nataliaecm.bsky.social, we now know this error affected at least 200,000 should-be Texas voters. What a mess.
Matt Wright reposted
Matt Wright reposted
Matt Wright reposted
I enjoy how the piece repeatedly reminds us Rogan claims to know nothing about the most high profile events in the news - and yet his tossed off opinions set the trajectory of those events. Real Twilight of the Elites/Death of Expertise stuff until Tater Salad appears.
Believe it or not, I was already working on this before the Ron White episode came out. Thanks to him for making this seem less random. Behold, the world's definitive work of investigative journalism concerning whether Joe Rogan wants James Talarico to win: www.texasobserver.org/joe-rogan-ja...
My kids and I drove around the police blockade for this yesterday. I’ve lived nearby for a decade+, but that was the first time we’ve ever had to drive by the scene of a shooting. And it was a damn federal agent shooting a delivery driver in the back. JFC
ICE shot Wilber Rafael Garces Perez in Austin. He’s been taken out of the hospital and into ICE custody. If ICE deports him, the key witness to their shooting disappears. He must not be removed from this country, and he must receive proper medical care.
CNN has damning video in this story. Can’t believe they didn’t kill the guy. I don’t understand how it’s legal for them to do any of this but especially in unmarked vehicles. Fuck this www.cnn.com/2026/09/20/u...
Matt Wright reposted
That’s a pretty interesting point.
It should be pause for thought that the Communist Party of China, one of the world’s most paranoid organizations about threats to its power, doesn’t appear to be having a SV-style millennarian/apocalyptic freakout *despite* overseeing lots of frontier AI development.
Matt Wright reposted
I've spent a lot of years studying a lot of collapses, and the truth of the matter is that they're always mundane: mild climatic shifts that reduce crop yields, a dumbass in power who makes some terrible decisions, neglecting things that obviously matter but the will to fix them can't be summoned.
Certain kinds of smart people tend to have a "sexy apocalypse" problem when it comes to thinking about risk. E.g. skynet turning everyone in paperclips, while bad, is also *kind of cool and fun* at the same time. Where the reality is that most actual disasters are both stupid and disappointing.
starting my day on Bsky not all concerned. full thread: bsky.app/profile/segy...
i keep seeing 'this is all a psyop' takes from totally-not-effective-altruist-or-rationalist people so as one of the chief belligerents i want to make it clear that i am a free actor and i just do not like your faction everyone who knows who you guys are just saw you almost win and it terrified us
Matt Wright reposted
this thread turned out to be much longer than I intended if you have the ability to spend $39 on funding a kick-ass feminist media brand for a year, here's the link, I'm hoping to recruit 9 more new @theflytrapmedia.com subscribers before I zZZzzZZ tonight www.theflytrapmedia.com/no-slop
ok so let me just legit have a holler for a minute about co-running/co-founding an indie media collective in an era when slop is dominant, technofacists have unprecedented access to policy-makers, and we're all so goddamned tired making real shit is hard and costs money
2nd Annual Endorsement: This Is A Great Internship
New Opening: We're seeking a paid intern to help us cover the 2027 Texas Legislative session. A perfect opportunity for student journalists who are finishing their schooling, you'll work with Politics Editor @byjustinmiller.bsky.social to get hands on experience in political/policy journalism.
It got me the credential for the only viral photo I’ve ever taken: bsky.app/profile/matt...
I had this job in 2007, can’t recommend it enough. You’ll learn so much and find yourself with opportunities you never expected. In my case, I learned I did not want to cover politics for a living, but I had the opportunity to leave a small imprint on the mag with my camera and this pic of Obama
Matt Wright reposted
Replying to @gbbranstetter.bsky.social
You can be unhappy with Talarico's statements, you can even vocally criticize him for it. But I've spoken with the families that Ken Paxton has terrorized and I'm amazed at anyone who would avoid the opportunity to throw him in the metaphorical dustheap of our politics
AI this, fascism that, and then this British illustrator I follow pops in the TL with…
The Bitchdaughter Tower, seen from the section of wall in the other drawing. The tower had a gun mounted on it during the civil war siege of 1644 to augment two guns placed on the old castle motte. A sketch done during a lunch break when I worked in town. #pencil #watercolour #drawing #ArtShare