137 Comments

I like having my own place to vent but have this principle about not enriching bad people, that is, my (and every decent person's) enemies like Zuck, Peter Thiel, Musk et al. So no Facebook, Xitter and the rest of big boys (except Instagram where simultaneously I am but also am not).

Of course Bluesky.

And being a social platform, of course people socially decided they didn't want Nazis in the neighborhood. BFD. Fucking nasty snowflakes...

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To say nothing about all the fcking ads

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Ah, yes – the ads. The primary reason we got rid of the last tv back around 1990. Ridding our home of that was one of the best things we ever did.

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Hell, I broke down and paid for YouTube Premium just to get rid of the goddamn ads every five minutes.

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And that still costs, like, $40 less per month than any cable/satellite tv contract...

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10% of what you pay to comment here goes to the bunch of fascists that own Substack

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...and 100% of my taxes go to many of the same sorts of entities, but at least on the 'stack I can distribute my pearls of mockery as I deem necessary...

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You have little alternative to paying taxes other than jail. Also, your individual taxes are miniscule in the federal budget, so you can pretend your taxes go to the things you like

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3 squares anna cot sounds OK to me...and I would regale the guards with my snappy comebacks from my time in court...what's that? Oh. Well..."Yes, your honor." "No, your honor."

But I'd say it with a sneer!

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There are laughs at this particular Substack, unlike “Trump 2: It’s a Nightmare Worse Than You Can Imagine”.

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Oy, I forgot about them.

But actually, there’s no direct connection between my comments attracting eyeballs here who wouldn’t be here otherwise and Substack’s cut. Which actually is a percentage of what we pay to get the full Ed Roso.

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My point being that you are "enriching bad people" which is a principal you espoused in your original comment regardless about "attracting eyeballs" that you tried to use to move the goalposts

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True. But they’re nowhere on a par with Zuck, Thiel and Musk.

Life’s about too many compromises…

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Nobody's perfect

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Pre-emptive blocking has been my survival strategy on TikTok, where the magnitude of bot-driven pro-Trump content skyrocketed since January. See one vid in my FYP, and hey presto! Outta there!

Now the lead-paint-eyed Gen X MAGA ladies are fuming mad bc other white women are just blocking them rather than engage. U can’t monetize a feed when everybody blocks u. They tried yt woman tears, now they’re making threats — telling anyone who will listen that the 4B movement in the US means assaulting MAGA women & stealing their husbands.

Ummm… sister, we’re good. U can keep “Mr. Middle-Manager-Can’t Manage-Not-To-Pee-On-The-Floor”….

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This seems...oddly specific.

Fair, but s-l-i-g-h-t-l-y creepy.

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Right, because the women who have worked to exclude toxic masculinity bullshit from their lives are going to latch onto MAGA guys, because reasons.

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Sometimes I feel so . . . left out? I mean, I'd love to join everyone in boycotting Musk's manhole, but I can't because I've never had an account there. The same way I'd really like to dump Zuckerberg's trash heap, but I can't because I don't have an account there, either. Nor Linked-In.

I might check out Bluesky. Maybe.

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You and me both. Can't be bothered. I have more than enough plated already – pouring blue gravy all over the top whilst potentially improving the overall blandness that is my life, would also spill all over the tablecloth, the carpet, the cat and whatever was left of that calendar I dropped the other day...

Life is exceeding short.

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You are enlightened beyond your incarnations, oh wise one!

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Finally! Someone who SEES me!

Actually, I do believe in life after death...er...that is, I don't believe in death per se. The thing is, the trillions of microbes that live inside me will take their own sweet time to bucket-kick, and most of what I leave behind will go on to nourish the next critters, molds, fungi, etc.

Not reincarnation, rather recycling...

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I am comforted by this belief system, which is now mine as well.

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Yoicks! Need to renew my guru card!

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I once had a radio-show host who specialized in uncovering people's past lives. It's always fascinated me that everyone in their past life was nobility or a warrior or some other well-regarded person. Instead of much more likely past lives of:

Died at birth

Died at birth and took my mother with me

Died as an infant

Died as a toddler

Got killed and eaten by a bear

Was gathering berries when I was killed and eaten by wolves

Was a farmer, died of an infection.

Was a beggar, got beaten to death by kids.

Was a slave, got beaten to death by my master's kids.

And so on.

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Yeah. When I worked RenFaire I was a beggar with a wooden leg. The only one. The nobility outnumbered me by about 600-1.

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Isn't that more reuse than recycling?

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One picks one's nits where one meets them.

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I pick every nit I see

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Alt.Process: Composting!

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You should. It’s quite pleasant.

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It is!

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I too have never had any social media past blogs, this and Linked-In

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Oh, I dabbled (entirely ineffectually) at blogs many years ago, but it was not time well spent, nor info well out-thought, nor value for money (and it was all free!)

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What's Linked In like? It's an actual social media platform? People do something other than post resumes?

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Yes, some people post articles and writings related to their area/work

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I'm still in thrall to the Zuck, mainly because after 16 years on Facebook I'm too lazy to change. I keep in touch with a lot of childhood friends and family there, and while I do post plenty of political stuff and engage in plenty of debate, I see it as more of a social outlet than anything else. I do have an account on Tribel, but that doesn't seem to have taken off the way I hoped it would when it was launched a few years back. I have more than a thousand followers over there which is funny because I don't really post much of anything except a meme when I find one funny. Tribel does have one good thing that Facebook doesn't, it's not swamped with ads. But the bots and contentious conservatives are becoming more of a presence there. If anybody wants to look me up over there I'm at @feminist (of course 😂 )

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That's Facebook's whole draw, the friends-and-family thing, and since it's the lowest barrier to entry around it's impossible to replicate. Dammit!

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I am in personal contact with everyone I want to be in contact with, and I do not think any of my family use Facebook

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I never Twittered (and if I refer to X I pronounce it "Shitter") but now I feel tempted to join the new club (only I'll pronounce it Bloo-ski).

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Glad to see you finally kicked the Twitter habit, Roy. I bailed right after Elmo bought the thing, but I didn’t have a big following or anything to promote, I was just a consumer and kibitzer. So it was easy. I did mastodon and threads for a while but eventually found that the best thing for my mental health was none of the above. So I think I’ll skip bluesky for now. Notes is bad enough.

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Mastodon... Roy's not exaggerating the weirdness of getting into that space. I looked into it for a couple hours one afternoon a couple years back and never even bothered o make an account. (I know, I know, there are people who will jump in and tell us how Mastodon is really simple and superior and I must be a doofus, but it's a fucking social media toy that I do not care to tinker with.

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There's a couple people, primarily fellow Subgenii, on Mastodon that I keep it around for. It's a pain in the ass to link to new communities on there.

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I know someone who is *really* invested in the awesomeness of Mastodon. I find him to be very sharp guy , but sometimes he gets a little bit more enthusiastic about something for my comfort. The thing is, he's constantly talking about BlueSky as "the Nazi bar." I look at his Masto feed every now and then, and once those words and sneering comments about "BlueSky isn't even federated" pop up too often, I tune out.

I don't have an account at BS [1], but I do look at a lot of people's feeds, and that's just fine for me.

[1] No social media accounts at all, after the bs at FB about "real names" and a bunch of people getting outted on there, I emptied that account out and deleted it.

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"-enterprise run by drug-addled, blustering nepo cunt"

Oh God , Roy. What's really amazing is how artful and poetic this is.

I don't think we get better until we get a handle on social media and I don't know how that's possible. So now we've got into a place where Judge Judy is liable be the next appointment to the Supreme Court

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Could be worse...could be – HOLY SHIT! THAT GUY's ALREADY ON THERE!!

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Janine "Box of Wine" Pirro is much more likely

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Also, too and re: the endorsement:

Boss, boss, boss...it's OK to take the money. Bluesky* owes YOU.

*Anyone else hear "Blutarsky?

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Blewto!

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We really missed an opportunity not making that the Bluesky term for posting. "Did you read my new bluto?"

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So what is the term for a post on Bluesky? I know it can't be called a "Truth" because that one's already taken.

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I think it's just "post", but I remember folks were trying to promote "skeet".

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I hear skippity-toilet is popular with the kids these days.

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I've been wondering what the FUCK all that is about, but I'm afraid to look.

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I had been considering deleting the X/Twitter app from my phone and talking to my wife about how to do i, but other than looking into it I had done nothing. Then yesterday I opened the phone and the app was gone. Very strange. Do you think that Elon heard me and I hurt his feelings so he took his app and left?

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Nah, he's too busy procreatin'. Woulda been a minion.

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No trip to Mars for YOU.

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Pennsylvania's answer to Napa Valley...

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or did your wife do more than talk

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Leave It To The Missus!

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The original title of Leave it to Beaver, or so I have read

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I tiptoed around that whole issue, like the tiptoein' weasel I am.

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Are you Tiny Tim?

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You guys are missing one advantage of a platform where moderation is sufficiently loose that Nazis feel welcome.

Loose moderation = you can be mean to the Nazis. Like, as mean as you want, limited only by your personal sense of decency. I kinda like that. Nazis thrive on being scary and intimidating and that’s a lot harder to pull off when some clown keeps yelling, “Sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up, Adolf. People are sick of your shit!”

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Yeah I'm still hanging in there for that reason.

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But, I really don't want to behave like the Nazi's

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Well, you know there IS a difference between punching up and punching down, right?

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a slight difference and I don't see Nazi's as being up from me

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Nazis Ascendant!

Straight up Queens Man's escalator!

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Shitter, the working class social media platform run by the wealthiest Nazi on the planet. That’s some cognitive dissonance right there. As far as I can tell, “elitist” now means “You pointed out the evidence that I am an uninformed know nothing who’s wrong.” These people need to realize that you can only cram so much bullshit into your brain before it becomes impervious to reality, a situation that led one of my colleagues to ask, “How do these folks live in a house with a bathtub AND a toaster?”

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"working class social media platform run by the wealthiest Nazi on the planet"

Ol' John Henry was a shitpostin' man

Said "I'll die with my iPhone in my hand"

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Take this iPhone, carry it to the Cap'n

Tell him I'm gone (great god) tell him I'm gone...

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Get up in the mornin', when that big bell ring

Go and check out the Xitter, see the same damn thing

Antivax and Incels, a buncha Nazis on the bus

Say a thing about it, you're havin' trouble with the Musk

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But that lucky old Trump got nuthin' to do, but troll around xitter all night

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I just got on Bluesky and so far my only problem has been the 250-character limit on posts. Threads is slightly more permissive, plus it's easier to make one post follow another of ours if you need the space (and I often do). My problem with Threads is that there are too many smug self-caricaturing humorless leftists there. Facebook for me is strictly socio-sexual. I looked at Twitter in its glory days and decided shoveling quip after topical quip wasn't for me.

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tbf most social media has too many "I want my tax cut centrists"

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"My problem with Threads is that there are too many smug self-caricaturing humorless leftists there." Maybe I was too hasty!

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This is the way.

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I'm actually starting to feel a bit optimistic that we'll handle this second time in the shitter better than the first time.

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My two cents about the "stay and fight" argument is just that it's really simple, Elon Musk is a rightwing ideogogue and he controls moderation and the algorithm. That's simply not a fight we can win; he's very capable of tweaking the feed and algorithms to make sure that only the content he wants to display breaks through.

Honestly I was a small fry on Twitter but the site had just become boring; it wasn't informative anymore as reporters from legacy media were deboosted, and it wasn't fun any more with increasing number of folks I followed leaving and the worst posters paying to boost themselves to the top of replies.

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Bluesky was fun when the entire nation of Brazil joined, because their Supreme Court banned the platform of the drug-addled, blustering nepo cunt thumbing his nose at the country's laws.

Right now, Bluesky has a bump in fascists joining in pursuit of liberals who've left Xitter. And post-election, the prominent Resistance grifters are showing up. Everyone I read has threads full of tips on how to identify and block deserving accounts. People left Xitter for a reason, and Bluesky's been growing into the place where people can have Nazi-free conversations.

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The fascista figured out there's no "triggering the libs" when there's no libs, and they'll find out folks on Bluesky will just block instead of engage. That's why all the pisswhine about "echo chamber". Gee, I live in America in 2024, how will I ever know what the conservatives think if I don't talk to them?

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And Bluesky has no algorithm gamed to push their BS to the top.

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Huh.

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currently

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I'd like to think that as more left-leaning people leave Xitter, the maga types will not only find it boring because they can't "trigger" anyone, but they'll also discover that they find others of their own ilk to be too insufferable to want to be around.

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Wouldn't want to be a member of any klavern that would have me.

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Hahaha! "It's not a gang, it's a club!"

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I'm nearly 54, so younger than you, Roy. I never clicked with Twitter. I had an account, tried "getting into it" a few times. Heard all the stories about how great it is for natural disasters, real time updates, etc back when it was Twitter, new and exploding. But something about it felt off to me, like i had to spew my own stuff too much just to understand it, get "into" it, and really get the right experience. I'm just not the type to spout opinions online. At my social media high-point, I used Facebook a lot to share weird, interesting, or funny links with friends and family. I posted photos when I went traveling so my crew could see what I was up to. I never got into it in a grand scheme kind of way. Never even crossed my mind that I would just keep amassing followers, which is what Twitter felt like to me. "Keep gaining followers, gain traction, get bigger." Never spoke to me.

So here I am again on Bluesky now. (@fizzyshellfish.bsky.social - follow me and get rich!) I like it so far. The starter packs are cool, and I like following science, archaeology, (some) video games, some plant stuff, some gardening stuff. But I don't want a barrage of next-gen political soothsayer wannabes linking Don's atrocities at me every day.

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" I don't want a barrage of next-gen political soothsayer wannabes linking Don's atrocities at me every day."

You and me both, brother. I figure if anyone actually gets around to DOING something about this shit, I'll probably get an email.

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I get the sense we are in the nascent stage of "who will be the next Matt Yglesias? Who will be the next Ezra Klein? And I just want no part of it.

I'm old. I swear to god I remember finding Josh Marshall a billion years ago from an old "weblink" or "jump" page (remember those?) where the site was just a huge list of links categorized by topic, but with zero description. I either clicked Josh Marshall or Talking Points Memo under Politics and have been following him ever since. This was likely around 1999, maybe even a couple years earlier? I found Atrios this way too.

I believe I even found Mr. Edroso this way, on a very different internet, in a different apartment, on a different chair, in a different political climate, when my hair was not gray, long, long ago (clicked Alicublog out of pure curiosity... back when the web was all about curiosity). Been an Edroso fan from the ancient days when we has DSL in our home because my wife ran a business and needed to be able to talk on the phone while connected online. We were super fancy and the envy of my friends because of that! So I've been web-stalking Roy for decades because I love his style and writing and I kept finding myself agreeing with his views. Still do! I even throw money at the poor guy!

I never signed up to pay for the new TPM, but I still check it from time to time for headlines which I then go read somewhere else. Even TPM has become a little sensationalist (I get it; the man needs a living, the man has employees who need a living) but I go back out of habit and because Josh has never been annoying.

Anyway, I don't want to even learn the name of the "next Matt Yglesias" at this point in my life. I wish to live decades without knowing any more of these weirdos.

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I found Alicublog through a "websites I like" list on Tom Tomorrow's web page. Good thing Roy picked a name that started with A, because I never got even halfway through the list.

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I keep thinking this crowd should have a name, but REBIDerati doesn't work.

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REBID Dogs

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REBID 3 Hearts

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It was the early 2000s when political blogging got going, in reaction to Bush Jr., Iraq, and everything where the NYT was not exactly giving us the real story. I felt lefty bloggers were doing what they could to create some mutual defense against the lies, and I turned to them as a kind of self-defense against being lied to.

Twitter became a response to Trump I. The daily volume of insanity became more suited to short, character limited observations, and posters could link to stuff for longer reading. It worked well enough to have to be targeted by Apartheid Clyde.

It's taken a while, but pretty much everyone worth reading at the former place is finally on Bluesky.

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"who will be the next Matt Yglesias? Who will be the next Ezra Klein?

nobody wants that. The originals are bad enough

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There's always room for Jell-O brand contrarian takes.

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I found Roy back in the 90's via Andrew Sullivan, who seemed to be namechecked a lot back then as someone worth reading. Andrew was a clever boy, in that British public school Gay Tory sort of way, good vocabulary, enough of an outsider than you could assume he agreed with you. Heck, he recommended Roy. Being dumb as a post, I was taken in by the gleaming bullshit. I read him until he went down the Trig rathole (consider yourself blessed if you don't know what that phrease means). But Roy's a keeper.

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I used to work with this white guy who was newly married to a Black woman. This "liberal" guy would repost Sullivan stuff all the time. I quietly messaged him about Sullivan's love of the Bell Curve and other racist shit, just thought he might want to be aware of what Sullivan really thought. This guy would have none of it... "Issues are more nuanced that you seem to think, Chicago Jeff... people are multi-dimensional... etc" even though I sent him several examples of Sullivan hyping that and other racist shit.

I mean; sure. Sullivan might have extremely worthwhile links to new archeology finds, or to developments in physics! But he's more nuanced than that... Sullivan is also a racist!

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That was Sullivan's whole schtick. He could have been David Brooks, but he could't keep a lid on the Tory stuff. Its the fly in his chardonnay that the obsession with low-class Palin is what drove him over the cliff, not so much his British Empire takes on race.

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I have, for a long time now, believed that Sullivan writes the way he does because he has a go-bag packed, a non-refundable airline ticket, and an updated passport. When shit goes sideways he's gonna fuck back off to Blighty. He'll be Tory Boy Made Good. Maybe even stand for Parliament.

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I wasn't web surfing until the post-2000 End of Our National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity (h/t, The Onion). But I'd think in the '90s the tubes were still new enough that voices not on the TV or in the NYT's pages easily might have seemed worthy of attention. At least, until a person got enough exposure to catch what the smooth talker was saying so smoothly.

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Sullivan recommended me? I'll be damned.

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Now now. Do NOT go back and look for it. Life's, as we all agree, too short.

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Think of yourself as an unwitting beard. His blogroll was pretty good, as far as dim memory can see. Like Hitchens, another clever boy, he was really good at tossing shiny trinkets mainly to the left to distract f4om the Tory stuff like The Bell Curve.

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I wish I could forget the current Matt Yglesias as well.

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I like following science, archaeology,

Do you watch Milo Rossi (Miniminuteman) and Dr. Brad Halford (Artifactually Speaking) on Youtube? They are both pretty solid on the archaeology

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