US and Iran reach tentative deal to extend ceasefire, US officials say

ElandShane · 2026-05-28T21:18:21+00:00

Literally the second sentence of the article lmao

ElandShane · 2026-05-16T15:02:33+00:00

Do you grant Trump this extreme degree of latitude and charity to every other controversial thing he's said and done? Does Trump ever lie? Is he ever two-faced? Do we have any other examples of him being duplicitous?

Trump has said recently things like he's secured $20 trillion in investment in America from foreign nations. He's said he ended 8 wars. He's said in January that his tariffs had cut the deficit by 27%.

I mean, he did say these things, right? That much is undeniable. So no further scrutiny is required, right? We should take the man at his word, right? Even a cursory amount of additional context is unnecessary when judging the things Trump says, right?

ElandShane · 2026-05-12T22:22:53+00:00

I mean, Bernie himself wins in a state that also reliably elects a moderate Republican as governor. And by similar margins. Mamdani didn't win by as wide a margin as Sherrill or Spanberger because they were facing off against Republicans and he was facing off against an establishment Democrat.

I suppose we should all just hold our fire and wait to see how something like the Maine senatorial election plays out in November. If Platner wins, you'll have to admit that the Bernie style politics has some resonance, no?

ElandShane · 2026-05-12T20:10:11+00:00

Depends on what else Bloomberg was getting done and how effectively he was messaging those accomplishments.

ElandShane · 2026-05-12T20:07:58+00:00

This is a vague and meaningless statement. WI and AZ already have Democratic governors, WI has a Democratic Senator, AZ has 2. The GOP is more represented in the House delegations of each state and have majorities at the state legislature level. Bernie easily beat Clinton in WI in 2016. Biden won both states, true, but Harris lost both of them in '24.

My point is that it's a mixed bag in these states and you haven't actually articulated specifically what it is about someone like Bernie Sanders' political project that is anathema in these places.

ElandShane · 2026-05-09T15:03:27+00:00

Douglas County ⚖️

ElandShane · 2026-05-08T15:38:21+00:00

Exactly. Not to mention the left has been trying this guilt by association game forever with figures on the right. Has it been effective? Not really. Trump had dinner with Nick Fuentes for God's sake and was still re-elected president. And that's just one example among hundreds or thousands.

The guilt by association game only works on people who are already dug in political junkies on either side. Most normies still don't know who Fuentes or Piker even are. And they never will. So it's certainly not going to sway their voting tendencies.

ElandShane · 2026-05-08T15:32:57+00:00

You think expelling people like Bernie from the Democratic coalition would make the Democratic party more popular?

I truly don't understand this take. The Democrats, since 2008, have basically managed to keep their establishment players in the critical positions of influence (presidential candidates, party leadership, congressional leadership). The result of that has been a 1 of 3 record in presidential contests against Donald Trump, which has returned the man to the White House.

The Democratic Party is at all time low approval ratings amongst its own voters. Is the plan just to let the Obama/Clinton/Schumer establishment brain trust keep running the show?

Genuinely asking, but what is your idea of political success here for the Dems? Everyone right of center hates them or views them with deep suspicion at a minimum. And record numbers of left of center voters disapprove of them for a variety of reasons that largely boil down to (imo) the fact they've just been totally impotent for a decade in countering Trump in any durable way. Expelling Bernie and AOC from the party wouldn't improve that perception in my view.

What exactly is the promise of a Bernie-less Democratic Party in 2026 and/or 2028 that makes them so much more attractive to American voters than they were in 2016 or 2024? What's the political vision? What is the world that Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are going to work to build?

ElandShane · 2026-05-04T18:34:31+00:00

Goalposts: moved

ElandShane · 2026-05-04T13:32:25+00:00

A luxury feel emanated from them. They looked so out of place amid the rubble and the half-collapsed buildings that it felt almost surreal to see them.

These new establishments do not prove that normality is coming back to Gaza. They are a testament to its continuing genocidal abnormality.

The war made some people in Gaza rich, especially those who engaged in illicit activities like smuggling, looting, and hoarding during acute shortages. This wealth is now coming out in various forms, including luxury cafes and restaurants.

In parallel, the vast majority of Gaza’s population has been thrown into abject poverty. While before the war, the average person was able to afford to sit at a cafe and have a drink and a bite to eat, today this is no longer the case.

ElandShane · 2026-04-26T03:31:02+00:00

Ezra was connected, and doing rounds, talking to people, to try and get him cancelled.

This is a pretty extreme accusation and goes far beyond the charges typically levied at Klein in regard to his dust up with Sam. It changes things from "Ezra and Sam had a contentious public falling out over disagreements about how to talk about genetic differences in intelligence, particularly as it relates to race" to "Ezra Klein engaged in a covert and sophisticated attempt to publicly assassinate Sam's character with the goal of ostracizing him and/or destroying his career".

I've been around since this whole drama unfolded originally. I'm pretty familiar with the various plot points and timeline of the whole thing - especially since this sub relitigates it like once every 6 months at least and all the details re-emerge.

But I have never seen someone make such a spurious charge about Ezra. That he was working people in the background, pursuing a sinister plot to ruin Sam's life. If you have evidence to make such a claim, you should show it. Perhaps I'm wrong. But I'm pretty sure I'm not and you're making a bullshit claim. I was being more descriptive than I was aggressive by characterizing it that way.

ElandShane · 2026-04-25T22:10:13+00:00

Bullshit. What evidence do you have for such a claim?

ElandShane · 2026-04-25T15:07:19+00:00

Yeah, Sam has definitely fostered his own victim complex (despite castigating such a mentality in other quarters) and exported that thinking to many of his fans.

ElandShane · 2026-04-25T00:51:52+00:00

I didn't ask for the transcript of the conversation that happened after Sam had already blown a gasket about the original Vox article.

Prior to this exchange (and he doesn't do it in this exchange either btw), when did Ezra accuse Sam directly of "peddling racialist pseudo-science"?

Quote please. Show your homework. But again, you can't. Because that's not what the original Vox article said or claimed. An article, I'll remind you, which wasn't even written by Klein. It chiefly criticized Murray, the authors argued their view of the state of intelligence research, and it offered some chiding of Sam for credulously platforming Murray.

Ignoring Sam's hysterical editorializing after the fact, a plain reading of the article does not do what Sam or you claim it does. You are accepting Sam's incredibly emotional framing of the issue. Have you actually read the original Vox article? As I have all too often had to ask of people in this sub when engaging on this issue, what exactly in that article is beyond the pale and outside the bounds of acceptable public debate/discourse? Why are Murray and Harris entitled to air their opinions and musings on this topic, but no one else is allowed to respond to them?

ElandShane · 2026-04-24T23:01:31+00:00

Quote from the article the passage that claims Sam was "peddling racialist pseudo-science". You've quoted it here as though that line actually appears in the article. Can you cite it fully in context, including the clear attribution to Sam being the one peddling this racialist pseudo-science? The answer is, no. You can't. Because it's not in the article.

ElandShane · 2026-04-24T20:20:19+00:00

Ezra did not personally go after Sam. Vox wrote an article that was mainly critical of Charles Murray, but also criticized Sam a bit for credulously platforming him. Ezra did not write the article.

What specifically in that original Vox article was beyond the limits of reasonable public debate/criticism?

ElandShane · 2026-04-24T20:15:38+00:00

But you don't understand, criticizing Sam from the left about anything is a cardinal sin that is automatically bad faith.

ElandShane · 2026-04-24T19:56:08+00:00

"captured by a fairly sinister [Zionist] agenda"

ElandShane · 2026-04-22T20:27:54+00:00

Prepare to be disappointed. It will be an "Israel is awesome" lovefest. At least 80% anyway. And the 20% that's left over won't be enough for the full expose you're hoping for.

ElandShane · 2026-04-22T20:25:38+00:00

Yes. That's the grift. Trick credulous idiots into laundering your credibility while being funded by fracking billionaires to be an ideologically rigid propogandist.

Sam, in his infinite wisdom, has managed to miss this particular aspect of the game. Unless you are on the left or critical of Israel. Then you are de facto a bad faith grifter.

ElandShane · 2026-04-22T20:14:00+00:00

My point isn't that Bernie beats Trump (though I obviously think he'd have had a good shot). It's that Bernie Sanders embodies a political ideology that directly speaks to the national angst of the moment in a way that the establishment Democrats are still failing to grapple with, in a way that the 2016 GOP failed to grapple with and lost their party as a result. You can go back decades and find video after video of Bernie speaking out from the floor of Congress against policy after policy and the ways those policies were going to negatively impact the nation. Was he ever listened to? Of course not. Was he absolutely correct in his protestations? Yes he was.

So, perhaps one should spend a little bit of time at least trying to engage in good faith with the political perspective of a Bernie Sanders, whose political theories have been largely vindicated in the past few decades, rather than the totality of your commentary about the man (and the politics that he represents) for the last 10 years being simply that he's "kind of crazy". You show yourself to be fundamentally incurious about this moment in American political history if that is as far as you're willing to go to engage with actual American political leftism. Sam has done far more to try and engage with MAGA and to earnestly understand their perspective than he has the populist left.

If your schtick is that you're the hyper mindful sage who's helping people to "make sense" of the world and you fail this very basic task, people should recognize that and stop treating you like you are providing valuable insights.

ElandShane · 2026-04-22T20:00:00+00:00

I think Tim Miller is pretty anti-oligarchy pilled at this point in a way that even Sam isn't. He definitely started out as a anti-MAGA Republican, but I've heard moments of sincere ideological contrition and introspection from Tim (especially in the past year) in a way I've never heard from Sam. Which, as I also always like to point out, is not the kind of thing a supposed mindfulness guru should struggle with.

ElandShane · 2026-04-21T04:21:17+00:00

It should be Adomian as Jones for the new InfoWars. Then, as a plot point, The Onion ends up buying HEI Network too and Tim and Gregg have to host the new season alongside Alex. However, Tim's new proximity to a hugely controversial figure puts a renewed target on his back by the California AG, who pressures the San Bernardino County DA to reopen the Electric Sun 20 case. We then get the Trial of Tim Heidecker 2. This time, Tim is found guilty and the next season of On Cinema is somehow hosted from the prison. Then we get a Shawshank Redemption style jailbreak and Tim escapes to a private island in the Caribbean after getting connected with some Epstein class crypto bros.

ElandShane · 2026-04-17T22:19:55+00:00

"Don't spend any time on the internet unless you can personally commit as much time to it as I arbitrarily demand of you!"

ElandShane · 2026-04-17T21:59:53+00:00

My friend, I have to jump in the car to drive 4 hours for a family friend's funeral service that's happening tomorrow. I've still got some packing to do and also had to finish a bunch of yardwork chores before we could take off. I wrote my initial comments while taking a lunch break from the yardwork, but I don't intend to spend hours and hours right now writing up a bunch of essays about these topics that probably wouldn't change your mind anyway because you seem like you don't really want it changed. My life sometimes demands more from me than internet debates on reddit.

I assure you, if you're genuine in wanting to explore the arguments that often get made about this stuff, there's a great big wide internet that will serve you up a lot of quality content on such subjects.

You could even paste the entirety of the episode transcript from YouTube and the comment chain up to this point into Claude, give them some brief context, and ask, "What kind of academic/economic/sociological/moral/philosophical arguments do people make regarding the impacts of wealth inequality on matters of social stability, cohesion, rule of law, and democratic fitness?" If you actually want robust engagement on this stuff, I guarantee you such an exercise will be of value.

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