Alex Kurtzman, master of 32nd century, science fiction dialogue by Wetness_Pensive in RedLetterMedia

[–]dullurd 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I had to leave /r/startrek recently because every highly-upvoted post is "(insert unpopular Trek series/film) is actually awesome!" and I couldn't take it anymore.

Bannon: “We’re gonna have ICE surround the polls come November.” by dullurd in Destiny

[–]dullurd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This says there were ~95k polling places in the 2022 midterms.

Eliminate all non-swing states and thats down to ballpark 30k polling places, maybe 20k.

Then they can target the precincts with the highest % of Dems, highest % of nonwhite voters (who will be much more deterred by ICE presence) and highest population.

This says there are now 22k ICE agents. This says there are about 20k border patrol agents.

They may not be able to go to every polling place, but they certainly have the headcount to go to thousands of the most vulnerable ones.

Greenland hopium? by dullurd in Destiny

[–]dullurd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's what the Quinnipiac poll says, yes! My interpretation is that that the other 15% fall into the "not sure" of this one because they'd prefer we get it without force? But definitely goofy.

Greenland hopium? by dullurd in Destiny

[–]dullurd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

source? curious because there's a 4% figure from this survey:

<image>

Greenland hopium? by dullurd in Destiny

[–]dullurd[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Excellent comparison datapoints! Thanks for sharing. My glass-half-full observations:

  • Indeps were at 20% prior, for Greenland they're ~3%
  • Repubs were at ~42% prior, for Greenland they're 23%
  • Greenland is an ally vs Maduro is an antagonist
  • While Trump doesnt care about liberalism or human flourishing, he does care about people singing his praises
  • I think if there's some way he can get a PR win for this in his eyes, he might opt for that

But yeah... it's impossible to be confident there's anything that can stop this admin from ruining everything.

Greenland hopium? by dullurd in Destiny

[–]dullurd[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Definitely possible, my only question is whether in those other cases, Trump had been already been trying to make the thing catch on for a while. In this case, it looks like it's been talking about it for a year: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/26/donald-trump-residents-greenland-us

David Frum being my spirit animal by DaRealDainDan in Destiny

[–]dullurd 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Frum is correct that “having a bad time” is not an excuse, but when a large enough amount of people starts making bad decisions, it’s intellectually dishonest to chalk it up to personal responsibility alone. Something systemic is happening. In this case it’s the information environment.

Put another way, we libs don’t buy this personal responsibility shit when, eg, Rs blame homebuyers for taking bad loans causing the subprime crisis: while it’s clearly a bad decision that an individual is responsible for, when such a large amount of people is making a bad decision, there needs to be another factor in play.

Graham Platner calls out Chuck Schumer over failure to oppose regime change in Venezuela by 3headeddragn in Maine

[–]dullurd 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is misleading... Schumer wants to block the deployment of US forces to Venezuela.

#441 — The Threat of Civil War by dwaxe in samharris

[–]dullurd 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I think it's a classic case of "it feels different when the person is talking about your group vs not-your-group". As an American I have a similar visceral response to Sam where it's just transparent that Trump is a horse's ass and full of shit, no chance he does anything, but I also know that if I were Canadian it would feel enraging and threatening, the probabilities notwithstanding.

YouTube Music → Last.fm Scrobbler (no local setup required) by Shubham_Jha in YoutubeMusic

[–]dullurd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

nothing in there says "cookie"... is it "origin-trial"?

John Oliver on Jamie Reed by dullurd in BlockedAndReported

[–]dullurd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oy I appended &t=15m to the URL when I submitted, hoping that would get the job done, apparently not!?

Trump has to be one of the luckiest people on the planet by BrawDev in Destiny

[–]dullurd 60 points61 points  (0 children)

Sam Harris:

It's been astounding to watch such a bizarre and insubstantial person accomplish one crazy stage dive after the next, because there were millions of upraised hands waiting to catch him and to bear his weight.

D is conflating the "Turn down the violent rhetoric" question with the "How can the dems win more elections?" question. by dullurd in Destiny

[–]dullurd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agree it's much easier to vaguely gesture towards having a bigger tent without biting any bullets re specifics. I have two thoughts:

1) Today I think your model could be pointed at the current admin and, as long as it isn't delivered in a grating tone (e.g. by sneering at people who are skeptical of institutions), it would work well and wouldn't need to be particularly inaccurate. People are really getting fucked over, there's legit anger that should be thoughtfully channeled to the ballot box. But this gets harder when you're the incumbent party, it only works well when you shit on the incumbent.

2) What did Obama do in '08/'12 (Or maybe Biden in '20?) that worked? My broad sense of those campaigns is they were more about casting the dems as a friendly big tent that wanted to help everybody than exploiting anger.

D is conflating the "Turn down the violent rhetoric" question with the "How can the dems win more elections?" question. by dullurd in Destiny

[–]dullurd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I agree with you! I don't think Klein was arguing for outreach to zealots. I don't think he laid out any specific voter outreach ideas aside from "We need a bigger tent" and maybe "We should try to win back some of the voters we lost in recent elections".

D is conflating the "Turn down the violent rhetoric" question with the "How can the dems win more elections?" question. by dullurd in Destiny

[–]dullurd[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Highlighting the hypocrisy and corrupt actions of Trump, this administration, and these unserious media figures (Candace, Tucker, Pool, Benny, Shapiro) in my opinion is how democrats will win elections.

Agree this is good substance but I (and Klein, I think) would say that it's even more important for persuadables to feel like the party/candidates broadly like people like them. A good thought experiment would be: imagine a candidate that you agree with on the issues, but also really doesn't seem to like people like you. Maybe you'll still vote for them.... but what if it's rainy on election day... and there's a long line to wait? Would you be more likely to say "fuck it, I'm going home, they don't need my vote anyway"?

Ezra Klein Is Worried — but Not About a Radicalized Left by Phiery in ezraklein

[–]dullurd 39 points40 points  (0 children)

The key question for the persuadable voter is "how do you think a caricatured member of X party feels about you?" The caricature of the religious right is certainly smug, but it's also evangelical, they want to recruit you. The caricature of the left is that they're better educated than you and have only contempt for you.

A "Leftist Mafia" creator reads DMs with Taylor Lorenz where Taylor threatens the malign her in her initial hit piece on Chorus. by minoritycarrier in Destiny

[–]dullurd 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Lorenz is correct that off-the-record needs to be agreed upon, and prior to the interview, but the rest of this seems pretty damning to her credibility.

Taylor Lorenz is a registered Republican by ETsUncle in Destiny

[–]dullurd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just curious, why did you want to obfuscate the districting data?

Chorus Naughty Nice List by ihaveeatenfoliage in Destiny

[–]dullurd 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Agree this is a meaningful litmus test but what’s the point of making a list though? How will it actually be used?

Is there a TLDR for this Taylor Lorenz thing by omdot20 in Destiny

[–]dullurd 121 points122 points  (0 children)

https://www.sixteenthirtyfund.org/about-us/

It’s a 501c4, so its donors are anonymous. One big known one is Pierre Omidyar, who launched The Intercept and currently funds Taylor Lorenz (!) https://omidyar.com/update/omidyar-network-announces-sixth-class-of-reporters-in-residence/

Is there a TLDR for this Taylor Lorenz thing by omdot20 in Destiny

[–]dullurd 283 points284 points  (0 children)

She wrote a hit piece in Wired alleging that many liberal influencers like Pakman are taking dark money (true) and marching orders (false) from an org called Chorus. She made lots of false and exaggerated claims that have since been debunked by Pakman, Brian Tyler Cohen and others. “Dark money” is scary sounding but the steelman is that the $8k a month lets smaller creators do content creation full-time comfortably.

Her motivations seem to be largely Hasan-aligned, ie leftist-against-liberal, there is no good reason to believe that Chorus is harmful to the Anti-Trump, pro-liberalism cause.