Connor Stedman
@connorstedman.bsky.social
700 followers 1.3K following 2.3K posts
Land, ag, climate, systems thinking, history. A Holocene, if you can keep it.
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Reposted by Connor Stedman
Elaborating b/c there's a lot of misunderstanding on this.

Insurrection Act does nothing except you can then use soldiers as cops. They can enforce laws, but they're the same old laws. It doesn't suspend the Constitution. No martial law, no closing courts, no removing state officials, none of that.
Even if he did, which I'd bet is likelier than not, none of this is true. The Insurrection Act is not a declaration of martial law. It doesn't close the courts. It doesn't suspend habeas corpus. It means you can use the military to enforce federal laws, but the laws themselves remain the same.
Trump: "I'm allowed as you know as president, like 50% of the presidents have used the Insurrection Act. Everybody agrees you're allowed to use that and there is no more court cases, there is no more anything. We're trying to do it in a nicer manner, but we can always use the Insurrection Act."
From a quarterly earnings perspective, rents and scams are way more immediate job security and wealth potential than building long lasting, durable, profitable industries.
I’ve done a mixture of physical labor and knowledge work for my whole working life, and yeah this is an important question and a good thread.
In this reckless spirit: if you consider “technology enabling people to move off subsistence farming and hard labor” a good thing*, I think you have an obligation to take the question of “what’s a good amount of physical labor for us?” seriously^.

*I’m in this group
^also in this group
Can’t remember for the life of me which Chinese poet/sage started off his book with something like “I’m gonna say some reckless things, so you should listen recklessly” but damn if that isn’t a Poster’s Creed
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Vibe shift in the culture towards earnestness
to be fair the book is structured top to bottom around weird extra metatextual layers. but also agree (and I still loved it)
I got to see Byrne in concert earlier this month and it was pretty transcendent. What a body of work, just one banger after another over so many years.
What a fascinating joy of a performance to watch.
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Dear @nytimes.com

The white house deputy press secretary just confirmed on X that this brown substance represents shit. Please update your headlines accordingly.
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once you get rid of the pollutant sources, lakes and rivers in particular recover astonishingly fast. The Thames, for instance, was biologically dead in 1957, now it's thriving. oceanographicmagazine.com/news/river-t...
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What are we doing here, folks? Why can’t the NYT describe events in a straightforward way. “Trump shares a video where he dumps shit on protesters,” what is so hard about that?? What is this “appeared to be” business. This sane washing has gotta stop.
President Trump posted what appeared to be an A.I.-generated video on social media showing him wearing a crown and flying a jet labeled “King Trump” that dumps brown liquid on protesters. He shared the video on Saturday, the same day that protesters participated in mass “No Kings” demonstrations.
Trump Posts Fake A.I. Video of Himself Flying a ‘King Trump’ Jet Over Protesters
President Trump shared what appeared to be an A.I.-generated video on social media. It shows Mr. Trump wearing a crown and flying a jet that dumps brown liquid on demonstrators.
nyti.ms
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he posted an AI video of himself flying a King Trump plane and dumping shit on the protests

that’s the bare bones factual description of what happened, no editorializing involved

publishing that is the absolute bare minimum if you want to call yourself the news
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The tendency not to cover what the president says and does is a bias. A fairly strong one. The public statements of any other president would get covered by the press.
Not a single mention of this across the Sunday shows as far as I could tell
Trump posts AI video showing him literally dumping shit on America
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Could not be clearer that we’re in a moment of almost universal elite rebellion against any kind of restriction or limit. You saw this shift in all the rhetoric too; Trump I was all about the little guy but everyone dropped that and started talking about grindset and being “aristocratic.”
one interesting thing is the collapse of mass support for trump before he took office. his in-person events were sparsely attended. his conventional fundraising (donations in the dollar to thousand dollar range) was more or less nonexistent.

Trump I was a grassroots phenomenon. Trump II was elite.
Republican rhetoric all week was clearly aiming to either depress turnout or inspire visible maga pushback. Neither happened and the press doesn’t seem particularly interested in exploring the implications of that.
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one interesting thing is the collapse of mass support for trump before he took office. his in-person events were sparsely attended. his conventional fundraising (donations in the dollar to thousand dollar range) was more or less nonexistent.

Trump I was a grassroots phenomenon. Trump II was elite.
Republican rhetoric all week was clearly aiming to either depress turnout or inspire visible maga pushback. Neither happened and the press doesn’t seem particularly interested in exploring the implications of that.
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You know, I’m actually pretty upset that the leader of my country has no regard for the laws that are supposed to protect my rights, my free speech, and my tax dollars, that he seems disinclined to ever cede any power, and that he regularly insults and demeans half the country, including me.
Good short thread on what the heck is going on at the Times.
the NYT decides on its narratives and really, really has a hard time adjusting coverage to reality. it was the biggest pusher of 'resistance is dead', reflecting the general desire among the US establishment for Trump to be a punitive force against their critics. #nokings doesn't fit its story
Those with sharp eyes might detect a subtle difference in NYT play last month of an event in one city, w 100,000+ attendees, versus play this morning of some 2500+ events w many millions of attendees, in all 50 states.

See if you can spot it! /s

Then you can find today's story on p A23
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as far as just messaging goes that video is probably the most embarrassing thing any president has done on the world stage in my life

and the fact that the sunday shows wont even describe it? total abdication of their responsibility
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If you can't report on what the President is doing because it is "inappropriate", maybe that's exactly what you *should* be reporting?
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Oh it’s not appropriate for your program to air the president wearing a crown and shitting on American citizens?

You’ll talk about it in euphemisms? Maybe call it the “crown video” and ignore the shitting part? Because that’s appropriate?

Tell me, was it appropriate for the president to do it?
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The president of the United States is destroying constitutional government and literally calling himself a king and the pathetic journalistic and political class of this country is busy winding itself into circular meta-debates over the correct way to perform their reaction or nonreaction to it.
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It is not honest for the New York Times to pretend not to know what that video is. They are lying to their readers.
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Loads of people were fired for quoting Charlie Kirk verbatim.

When Trump posts anything, it's just a joke and unworthy of reporting.
Not a single mention of this across the Sunday shows as far as I could tell
Trump posts AI video showing him literally dumping shit on America
Incredible stuff here.
Today's theft from the Louvre (
art-crime.blogspot.com/2025/10/jewe...) is making me think about my favorite series of museum heists. Buckle up for a 🧵 on priceless porcelains, the Dead Zoo Gang, a Pekinese named Looty, and the unsolved mystery of who's stealing Chinese art from European museums.
Jewel Heist at the Musée du Louvre
"A blog about art crimes, illicit trafficking, forgery, art theft and cultural heritage protection."
art-crime.blogspot.com