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Reposted by Nate Schenkkan

Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 27m

My version of this is that Vought, Yarvin etc represent a kind of braindead right-Gramscianism, which leaves out all the interesting subtleties and treats civil society _only_ as a realm of indoctrination, where one ideological master-narrative can readily be substituted for another.

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1h

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 2h

What he’s railing against is a profound shift in culture, status… He’s obsessed with the idea that America is controlled by a leftist “ruling elite” - but “elite” isn’t defined socio-economically or by political power, it means something like: Getting to define “real America” and who gets to belong.

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Nate Schenkkan @nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 2h

Actual dorm room stuff, talking for hours to strangers about comics as if no one else has read them and you have unique and profound insights from them

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Nate Schenkkan @nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 3h

This man is high as balls

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 3h

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

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Nate Schenkkan @nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 13h

A House of Lords, perhaps

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 14h

We need a Senator Emeritus role where they still get to go to events and feel important but that gives them a graceful retirement route

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Nate Schenkkan @nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 17h

As I was saying, this team is led by an elite ball-hawking defense and has an increasingly functional offense and breakthrough special teams play

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Reposted by Nate Schenkkan

Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 19h

It covers the university, unfortunately, rolling over & not having the comms fight out of concern for govt threats etc…something that was very frustrating to us at the time!

I think many people now recognize the playbook as the Administration goes after universities, Big Tech pendulum-swings, etc.

After Joe Biden's victory, the Election Integrity Partnership's efforts to counter viral manipulation became an obsession of the MAGA right. As DiResta recounts in Invisible Rulers, the attacks against her started with an election denier named Michael Benz, who had worked in Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson's speechwriting office before serving for three months in a low-level position in Donald Trump's State Department.
Styling himself a cybersecurity expert and free speech advocate, Benz alleged that the Election Integrity Partnership was a "social media censorship bureau" targeting the right and said that DiResta was wielding an "AI censorship death star superweapon." (Online, Benz also had an alt-right identity, "Frame Game," which he hid behind to raise the alarm about "white genocide" and to discuss Hitler's good points.) According to Benz's conspiracy theory, the Biden administration was utilizing the Election Integrity Partnership to prevent conservatives from using Twitter and other platforms to warn of fraud in the upcoming 2024 election. It was, as Benz put it with his usual understatement, "a scale of censorship the world has never experienced before."

DiResta and her colleagues first tried ignoring these ludicrous claims, then refuted them point by point, neither of which helped. She did not immediately recognize that she was being made into what she calls a "main character" in an upside-down viral narrative.
Podcasts hosted by Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, and John Solomon echoed Benz's charges. Right-wing Web publications amplified them; a story that appeared on multiple sketchy sites called the Stanford Internet Observatory a "digital reboot of the CIA's psychedelic mind-control experiments." Jack Posobiec, of Pizzagate fame, tweeted to his 1.8 million followers the false allegation that DiResta and a colleague were "behind censoring the Hunter Biden laptop."

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Nate Schenkkan @nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 19h

This team is legit bad, led by its QB who is below par even for college and was a preseason favorite as player of the year

(I am from Austin, I can say these things)

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Nate Schenkkan @nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 19h

How bad Texas is at football is an indictment of the whole college football analytical complex

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Nate Schenkkan @nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 19h

Holy, and I do not say this lightly, shit

Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 19h

Per CDC source: At internal leadership meeting this afternoon, it was shared that 1,257 people were RIF'd at CDC. Number may not be final. Apparently, chief of staff was unaware that RIFs were going to occur so not clear who is making decisions. (Short 🧵)

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Reposted by Nate Schenkkan

Foreign Policy @foreignpolicy.com · 20h

The deportation of pro-democracy dissidents to their home countries is a major reversal of years of U.S. policymaking on a topic that had bipartisan support.

Trump Is Supporting Transnational Repression

Instead of sheltering pro-democracy dissidents, America is now returning them for arrest.

foreignpolicy.com

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Nate Schenkkan @nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 20h

It’s also extremely New York City, which is what it should be. He’s running to be mayor!

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Nate Schenkkan @nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 20h

This is fucking cool

Tim Longman 🏳️‍🌈 @timlongman.bsky.social · 20h

This is a Democratic Party I could actually believe in and be proud of. Radically inclusive, welcoming, joyful, respectful, and full of hope.

Until It's Done: Sylvia Rivera

YouTube video by Zohran Mamdani for NYC

m.youtube.com

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Reposted by Nate Schenkkan

👁🌻🦊⚙️⚓ Bob, Engineer, Pusher of Paper @navmecheng.bsky.social · 22h

> It is 2025 BC. I am a soldier from one of the outlying provinces called to defend the pyramid in Memphis

> It is 2025 AD. I am a soldier from one of the outlying provinces called to defend the pyramid in Memphis

Soldiers at the Bass Pro Shops pyramid in Memphis, TN.

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Nate Schenkkan @nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 23h

Mediocre season time?

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Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social · 23h

Decades of cops being allowed to lie about traffic crashes, arrests, etc. with impunity — and often having those lies laundered through the press — have brought us to this moment where even when ICE agents are on camera they still think they can create their own reality.

Raider @iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social · 1d

ICE GOONS crash into car and then point weapons to kidnap man.

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Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · 1d

Argentina edition of Libertarian bible

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POLITICO Europe @politico.eu · 23h

Warning signs from an obscure part of the financial markets have got policymakers rattled, and one of their oldest and most profound fears may be about to get very real.

Warning signs of financial instability rattle policymakers ahead of IMF jamboree

Two big U.S. bankruptcies have revived memories of the last time the financial sector went bad.

www.politico.eu

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Sophie Sherry @sophiesherry.bsky.social · 1d

During a military-style raid on a building in Chicago’s South Shore, one resident heard a knock on his door.   It wasn’t the feds — it was a mom and her 7-year-old daughter, pleading for help.

He let them hide in his unit for the next 3 days.

chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...

Neighbor shielded 7-year-old during South Shore federal raid: ‘I didn’t want them to take her’

During the Sept. 30 raid one tenant protected a terrified girl and her mom. Remnants at the complex, including a detailed map of all the units, offer clues to what authorities may have known before th...

chicago.suntimes.com

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Nate Schenkkan @nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 1d

If the president is not allowed to make these decisions by himself without any judicial or congressional oversight, the American constitutional system will crumble

Matt Peterson @mattpeterson.bsky.social · 1d

100% *additional* tariffs. 155%!

Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 1d

Trump proposing 100% tariffs on China

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Phil Klay @philklay.bsky.social · 1d

Apparently providing aid to foreign countries benefits America. Now, if only we had an agency for that sort of thing…

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Tyler McBrien @tylermcbrien.com · 1d

INBOX: National Bar Association President Ashley L. Upkins calls the charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James “unjust and dangerous” and a representation of "the continued weaponization of our nation’s justice system for political gain."

Full statement below:

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Nate Schenkkan @nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 1d

Bold move cotton etc

POLITICO Europe @politico.eu · 1d

🚨 BREAKING: French President Emmanuel Macron today reappointed Sébastien Lecornu as prime minister — less than a week after Lecornu’s stunning resignation as PM plunged France into a political crisis.

Full story:

Macron picks Lecornu as French PM again

The 39-year-old head of government abruptly resigned Monday, thrusting the country into crisis.

www.politico.eu

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Nate Schenkkan @nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 1d

And a crook! He would literally be in jail if he weren’t so corrupt he sold out the city to save his hide

Award-Winning Reporter Dave Colon @davecolon.bsky.social · 1d

The thing the "Haha Mayor Adams we'll miss him what a quotable character" postmortems get wrong is that he's a jerk

City Nolan @ndhapple.bsky.social · 1d

Hizzoner delivers a pretty remarkable broadside against the press, claiming it was responsible for killing his reelection after a subway crime press conference, singling out reporters. We chased him out of the station.
Me: “Would you take the upgrades again?”
Adams: “I’m so glad your back”

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Reposted by Nate Schenkkan

Award-Winning Reporter Dave Colon @davecolon.bsky.social · 1d

The thing the "Haha Mayor Adams we'll miss him what a quotable character" postmortems get wrong is that he's a jerk

City Nolan @ndhapple.bsky.social · 1d

Hizzoner delivers a pretty remarkable broadside against the press, claiming it was responsible for killing his reelection after a subway crime press conference, singling out reporters. We chased him out of the station.
Me: “Would you take the upgrades again?”
Adams: “I’m so glad your back”

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