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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 4h

Making them look like such incredible losers on TV they can't even go to a high school reunion and admit what they do is good, actually.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 5h

I do not think a chatbot with the current sycophantic tendencies that is trained to respond to "do u do anal" is going to help with the growing pornbrain problem on the right.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 6h

I think they'll have to burn their current staff cadres. I suspect pushing them out of federal power isn't as hopeless as we think. I reject the learned helplessness that says states like Nebraska, Iowa and Ohio are unwinnable.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 6h

My hope is utter faceplant, but I don't know if that's just wishful thinking at this point.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 6h

A substantial wrinkle that makes me doubt we can fully predict the future of conservatism in this country is Trump is the first time the base earnestly fell in love instead of falling in line and I'm really not certain what happens when a Vance or Rubio tries to replicate that cult following.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 6h

I'll say again winning every election for eternity isn't realistic but driving the GOP into the wilderness long enough for leaders to clean house is doable, if hard and requiring unpleasant compromises.

Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 6h

The basic insight that decent people cannot work for the Republican Party remains true. The staff culture is gutter racism and misogyny all the way down. You either leave or leave your morals behind. It's going to get even worse until the party collapses.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 6h

The basic insight that decent people cannot work for the Republican Party remains true. The staff culture is gutter racism and misogyny all the way down. You either leave or leave your morals behind. It's going to get even worse until the party collapses.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 6h

That basic level of commitment to America and to working out our differences through peaceful political negotiations and elections.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 6h

George W Bush was many bad things, but an election denialist wasn't one of them. When Republicans got whupped in 2006 he took the loss with grace and humor and worked with Democrats in the project of shared governance. That's what Pelosi and others are pining for.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 6h

Tbf if you were born after 1995 a Republican who isn't a Groyper probably seems as mythical as the Olympian gods. But the point still stands.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 7h

And if so it'll make the current level of low effort slop look like the halcyon days.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 7h

Like the big models will stick around for people who need and will pay for frontier level performance, but generating goofy memes and other toy uses will shift back to local devices at a fraction of the energy use.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 7h

I don't think we're taking the possible personal computing-esque revolution in AI models nearly seriously enough. Seems likely to me the big cloud cluster era will prove just as transient as mainframes for traditional programming.

Nvidia sells tiny new computer that puts big AI on your desktop

The 1 petaflop DGX Spark system runs AI models with 200 billion parameters locally for $4K.

arstechnica.com

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 8h

Mercenaries. We call privately funded armies mercenaries. This is probably pure bullshit but billionaire warlords would put us all the way over on not a Western democracy anymore and how.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 10h

Trump: "I had a very wealthy person who called -- a donor, a great gentleman -- and he said, 'if there's any money necessary, shortfall, for the paying of the troops, then I will pay it.' Meaning he will pay it. How about that?"

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 11h

The problem with Trumpists is, taking a cue from dear leader, they don't respect the game at all and don't have that patriotic commitment to living to fight another day and keeping the USA strong. They'd rather commit arson than live in a country where other people get a say periodically.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 12h

I guess sporting behavior is another quaint idea that has been thrown out the window in the neverending Trump era.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 12h

I am a fan of healthy competition within reasonable restraints. Just gotta respect the game itself and refrain from salting the earth when things don't go your way.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 12h

No wreckers is a good rule I feel. You can disagree and make your case, passionately even, without sinking into paranoid conspiracies that spread mass psychosis.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 12h

Being able to fight without throwing the Democratic brand into the woodchipper is important.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 12h

Janet Mills is totally fine on important policy fights, she's just too old to establish a tenure in the Senate. It is actually quite good if Platner has to face a challenger who isn't him or herself a piece of shit so we can see if he's going to turn into another 5th column under pressure.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 12h

Democrats have clung to the norms for much longer. Republican hardliners have been willing to throw them out and finally gained the upper hand when Trump won the nomination. They might have pulled back if he lost in 2024, but we can't look at Earth 2 to know.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 12h

What's happened in America over my lifetime is that elite consensus has broken down and we've been in the middle of a cold Civil War for some time.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 12h

"Institutions" cannot survive if that consensus breaks down because you can always fire people and install cronies.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 12h

Small d democratic continuity of policy essentially requires elite consensus that partisan opponents have legitimacy and all changes are to be pursued through an orderly and measured process.

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Chris Wightman 🧟‍♂️ @wymancr.bsky.social · 15h

If we normal middle class people need to know the name and political philosophy of the OMB director something has gone very wrong.

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