I too am excited about all the other wins, but Charlotte also had a transit referendum that was very much uncertain and it passed and I am so happy to live in a city that’s actually investing in becoming livable without a car.
November 5, 2025 at 3:27 AM
I too am excited about all the other wins, but Charlotte also had a transit referendum that was very much uncertain and it passed and I am so happy to live in a city that’s actually investing in becoming livable without a car.
Many people’s experience of public life is now that everyone else is in your way, a threat, or both. Taking the most dangerous, hostile, and isolating activity and replacing it with one where we all share the same goal goes a long way towards not becoming an antisocial misanthrope about the commons.
i think if you ride public transit enough you learn that most weird behavior is not dangerous, and conversely i think driving a car teaches you that everyone is trying to kill you at all times
October 29, 2025 at 5:57 PM
Many people’s experience of public life is now that everyone else is in your way, a threat, or both. Taking the most dangerous, hostile, and isolating activity and replacing it with one where we all share the same goal goes a long way towards not becoming an antisocial misanthrope about the commons.
Reposted by Nicholas Payne
Furthermore public transit teaches you how to live with temporary minor annoyances and cars teach you that you're god's most special baby and your moment-to-moment comfort is the only important thing in the world
October 29, 2025 at 5:15 PM
Furthermore public transit teaches you how to live with temporary minor annoyances and cars teach you that you're god's most special baby and your moment-to-moment comfort is the only important thing in the world
Reposted by Nicholas Payne
i think if you ride public transit enough you learn that most weird behavior is not dangerous, and conversely i think driving a car teaches you that everyone is trying to kill you at all times
October 29, 2025 at 4:49 PM
i think if you ride public transit enough you learn that most weird behavior is not dangerous, and conversely i think driving a car teaches you that everyone is trying to kill you at all times
What is baseball even about
October 28, 2025 at 6:28 AM
What is baseball even about
Reposted by Nicholas Payne
The question now and always is whether we continue to yoke the country to propagandized electoral minorities largely insensitive to material conditions and new information or whether we enact the reforms necessary to become a more democratic society. That is the choice.
I think this probably hurts Trump. Is it a reckoning? The counties hardest hit by COVID in 2020 also went the most strongly for Trump. People are fully capable of watching their friends and loved ones literally die as a consequence of his actions, rationalizing it, and backing him anyway.
Since SNAP benefits are gone next month and the new ACA enrollment hikes also start to reveal themselves to consumers... it's wild to think that both programs are tilted towards states AND demographics that favored Trump in '24
The stove beckons
The stove beckons
October 27, 2025 at 5:05 PM
The question now and always is whether we continue to yoke the country to propagandized electoral minorities largely insensitive to material conditions and new information or whether we enact the reforms necessary to become a more democratic society. That is the choice.
Gotta stress the extent to which it really is everyone (at middle manager or below, anyways). I’ve yet to meet an exception who hasn’t personally bet the farm on the AI delusion.
Okay, for the folks who asked: here's the majority AI view, writing up the reasonable, thoughtful view on AI that the vast majority of people in tech hold, that gets overshadowed by the bluster and hype of the tycoons trying to shill their nonsense. anildash.com/2025/10/17/t... Please share!
The Majority AI View - Anil Dash
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
anildash.com
October 17, 2025 at 9:24 PM
Gotta stress the extent to which it really is everyone (at middle manager or below, anyways). I’ve yet to meet an exception who hasn’t personally bet the farm on the AI delusion.
Reposted by Nicholas Payne
Okay, for the folks who asked: here's the majority AI view, writing up the reasonable, thoughtful view on AI that the vast majority of people in tech hold, that gets overshadowed by the bluster and hype of the tycoons trying to shill their nonsense. anildash.com/2025/10/17/t... Please share!
The Majority AI View - Anil Dash
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
anildash.com
October 17, 2025 at 7:29 PM
Okay, for the folks who asked: here's the majority AI view, writing up the reasonable, thoughtful view on AI that the vast majority of people in tech hold, that gets overshadowed by the bluster and hype of the tycoons trying to shill their nonsense. anildash.com/2025/10/17/t... Please share!
Reposted by Nicholas Payne
I think the way dog people simultaneously stopped making an effort to train them and insisted their dogs must be present everywhere was an early indicator that many Americans started to no longer think we live in a society
October 10, 2025 at 9:31 PM
I think the way dog people simultaneously stopped making an effort to train them and insisted their dogs must be present everywhere was an early indicator that many Americans started to no longer think we live in a society
Reposted by Nicholas Payne
there's more to it all than this, and Schmitt of course was a theorist interested and then complicit in how such control shifts to self-declared dictators subverting the rules of liberal democracy, but we're already at a stage of assumed impunity to federal goons. Contesting it is what's left.
October 4, 2025 at 8:05 PM
there's more to it all than this, and Schmitt of course was a theorist interested and then complicit in how such control shifts to self-declared dictators subverting the rules of liberal democracy, but we're already at a stage of assumed impunity to federal goons. Contesting it is what's left.
Reposted by Nicholas Payne
wrote about a great writer thealexpress.substack.com/p/kaleb-horton
Kaleb Horton
Writing can be beautiful.
thealexpress.substack.com
September 29, 2025 at 6:27 PM
wrote about a great writer thealexpress.substack.com/p/kaleb-horton
Man. I didn’t know him so it feels crude to chime in, but he was on the shortlist of writers on here I was always eager to read, and it never added up why finding places for that writing seemed like pulling teeth. Incredibly sad loss.
It seems that Kaleb Horton has passed away. A devastating loss. One of the best writers of this generation. Kaleb was a friend for ten years and in all our conversations I was trying to convince him how good he was, something he seemed to know but also never fully believe. I am going to go cry now.
September 27, 2025 at 3:29 PM
Man. I didn’t know him so it feels crude to chime in, but he was on the shortlist of writers on here I was always eager to read, and it never added up why finding places for that writing seemed like pulling teeth. Incredibly sad loss.
The “fetish for getting yelled at” meme is too liberally deployed, but given both the content and ubiquity of rejection of this take, it might be the most it has ever applied.
my most unpopular opinion is that it's a sign of defective moral character if you point blank refuse to answer phone calls from unknown numbers. it's not that hard to hang up on spam/scammers, and you are probably missing important calls!
September 24, 2025 at 1:32 PM
The “fetish for getting yelled at” meme is too liberally deployed, but given both the content and ubiquity of rejection of this take, it might be the most it has ever applied.
Reposted by Nicholas Payne
This is simply untenable. There is no way forward with media and political classes captured by the right. Every time someone commits a crime you have to pray it's not an undesirable or it's purge time, then when it turns out to be themselves again they just shrug and wait for the next one.
September 12, 2025 at 7:55 PM
This is simply untenable. There is no way forward with media and political classes captured by the right. Every time someone commits a crime you have to pray it's not an undesirable or it's purge time, then when it turns out to be themselves again they just shrug and wait for the next one.
Reposted by Nicholas Payne
Kill recreational nihilism — wherever it comes from, whatever ideological mask it happens to be wearing. Do not engage in it. Do not indulge it. It makes you weak and it makes you stupid. If you haven't found meaning in something, don't make the void you have chosen everyone else's problem.
September 12, 2025 at 4:37 PM
Kill recreational nihilism — wherever it comes from, whatever ideological mask it happens to be wearing. Do not engage in it. Do not indulge it. It makes you weak and it makes you stupid. If you haven't found meaning in something, don't make the void you have chosen everyone else's problem.
Re:”political violence” as a discourse, again it is entirely possible to understand the ways we already live under extraordinary violence and also that the floor can fall out so much farther. It’s not that it affects those who were comfortable, it’s how much worse it gets for the already vulnerable.
September 11, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Re:”political violence” as a discourse, again it is entirely possible to understand the ways we already live under extraordinary violence and also that the floor can fall out so much farther. It’s not that it affects those who were comfortable, it’s how much worse it gets for the already vulnerable.
Reposted by Nicholas Payne
Police brutality is bad; systematic racial profiling and illegal deportations are bad; abortion clinic bombings are bad; mass graves are worse. You know what a child's skull looks like after multiple blunt-force traumas? That's the floor. Keeping everyone out of mass graves is the fundamental goal.
September 11, 2025 at 12:34 AM
Police brutality is bad; systematic racial profiling and illegal deportations are bad; abortion clinic bombings are bad; mass graves are worse. You know what a child's skull looks like after multiple blunt-force traumas? That's the floor. Keeping everyone out of mass graves is the fundamental goal.
Reposted by Nicholas Payne
People don't understand that civil conflict looks like your neighbors dragging you out of bed in the middle of the night and executing you in your living room simply because they're suspicious you might be a political enemy, and it really shows sometimes.
September 11, 2025 at 12:35 AM
People don't understand that civil conflict looks like your neighbors dragging you out of bed in the middle of the night and executing you in your living room simply because they're suspicious you might be a political enemy, and it really shows sometimes.
Lot of otherwise smart people that seem committed to pretending to not understand this today.
ppl saying 'we were already in a dark place!' yeah no shit! of course i don't think we were in some kind of stable environment before this. but i also don't really think its breaking news to suggest things can get worse and certain events can act as accelerants.
September 10, 2025 at 9:23 PM
Lot of otherwise smart people that seem committed to pretending to not understand this today.
Evenly divided between waiting for the Act I patch that is definitely coming, and pushing through for the pre-nerf Radahn “I beat Last Judge on launch” cred.
September 7, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Evenly divided between waiting for the Act I patch that is definitely coming, and pushing through for the pre-nerf Radahn “I beat Last Judge on launch” cred.
Have a theory that the combination of passive investing dominance and the remaining market movers embracing an unreality that ignores fundamentals is turning the stock market into a second social security for the upper classes where the only real variables are how many are paying in vs cashing out.
August 26, 2025 at 1:34 PM
Have a theory that the combination of passive investing dominance and the remaining market movers embracing an unreality that ignores fundamentals is turning the stock market into a second social security for the upper classes where the only real variables are how many are paying in vs cashing out.
Reposted by Nicholas Payne
Imo the real version of "Nobody wants to work anymore" is nothing works anymore. If the business you're dealing with isn't outright defrauding you it's incompetent at the most basic things
October 27, 2023 at 4:33 PM
Imo the real version of "Nobody wants to work anymore" is nothing works anymore. If the business you're dealing with isn't outright defrauding you it's incompetent at the most basic things
Reposted by Nicholas Payne
We're now in a redistricting arms race. Dems are properly fighting back.
But the endgame lets mapmakers pick lawmakers and render elections irrelevant.
Yet the problem is not the mapmakers; it's the maps.
The debacle reflects the urgent need for proportional representation.
From me:
But the endgame lets mapmakers pick lawmakers and render elections irrelevant.
Yet the problem is not the mapmakers; it's the maps.
The debacle reflects the urgent need for proportional representation.
From me:
The Redistricting Mess Shows How Our Election System Doesn’t Work
With our winner-take-all elections, the ideal of a ‘fair’ map is impossible. Proportional representation is the only answer.
prospect.org
August 8, 2025 at 1:55 PM
We're now in a redistricting arms race. Dems are properly fighting back.
But the endgame lets mapmakers pick lawmakers and render elections irrelevant.
Yet the problem is not the mapmakers; it's the maps.
The debacle reflects the urgent need for proportional representation.
From me:
But the endgame lets mapmakers pick lawmakers and render elections irrelevant.
Yet the problem is not the mapmakers; it's the maps.
The debacle reflects the urgent need for proportional representation.
From me:
Reposted by Nicholas Payne
All my friends should be made to live walking distance from me. I don't care if this massively upends their lives
August 8, 2025 at 2:45 PM
All my friends should be made to live walking distance from me. I don't care if this massively upends their lives
Reposted by Nicholas Payne
This article on on NYC landlords unable to pay their expenses gives a foretaste of what I suspect the pushback to a rent freeze is going to look like. www.thecity.nyc/2025/08/07/b...
Rent Freeze Proposal Chills Cash-Starved Owners of Bronx Buildings
Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani’s pledge is raising alarms as bankers refuse to finance regulated buildings where costs outstrip income.
www.thecity.nyc
August 7, 2025 at 11:48 AM
This article on on NYC landlords unable to pay their expenses gives a foretaste of what I suspect the pushback to a rent freeze is going to look like. www.thecity.nyc/2025/08/07/b...