Touchy Funseeker

Not a serial killer

[Touchy Funseeker @SupDenman]

https://t.co/X3wAh1E4WT

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

"The rich are the problem" is the oldest excuse in politics. It's much easier than asking why governments that already spend trillions still haven't solved poverty.

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

The middle class actually isn't falling behind, they're getting ahead. But everyone thinks they're falling behind because they're constantly interacting with super-rich people online, and seeing rich people's lifestyles on Instagram.

[Sensurround @ShamashAran]

I have now read this highlighted sentence seventeen times because I assumed I wan't actually reading what was written. Surely my eyes didn't actually read this. Maybe someone accidentally pasted in dialogue from "The Onion." back when it was funny. But no.

She is saying that she delayed reporting a rape because she agreed with the accused, politically.

This is one of those moments where, if your IQ is over 85, your brain quietly excuses itself from the room.

We have apparently reached a point where politics has become the emotional-support animal for basic human survival instincts. "Yes, this person committed one of the worst crimes imaginable against me, but we both liked the same tax policy. Awkward."

If your political identity has become so central that it can outweigh reporting your own rape, congratulations: you hve joined a cult. Cults are famous for making people subordinate reality, morality, and self-preservation to the interests of the group.

I hate cults. I hate them a lot.
They don't ask you to ignore facts all at once: they ask for one tiny compromise after another until one day you discover you're explaining away things that should be absolutely indefensible.

What's sad isnt just that people end up there. It's that many of them don't even realize it. They sincerely believe they're making a principled decision when, from the outside, everyone else is wondering why the obvious isn't obvious anymore.

At least religious cults usually promise enlightenment, salvation, eternal life, or an alien spaceship hiding behind a comet. Political cults dont even offer that. They ask you to sacrifice your judgment, your relationships, sometimes even your own well-being in exchange for cable-news talking points, in favor of a politician who will sell you out for a pack of gum.

That's a spectacularly bad trade.

At some point, "my team" has to lose to "the person who committed a violent felony against me." That's not supposed to be a close game.

[Stu Smith @thestustustudio]

The Right should be more disciplined with the word Communist.

But with DSA, the label is often accurate. It has a massive Communist contingent, and much of its national leadership comes from openly Communist caucuses.

[Jesse Singal @jessesingal]

Who the hell is 'we'? Piker despises the Democratic Party and has nothing but contempt for liberalism. The idea that has any insight into "populist rage brewing in Maine" is laughable. Platner was completely underwater among noncollege Maine voters. Everyone is such a phony.

[Chris Freiman @cafreiman]

A reminder that the middle class is shrinking because many people are getting too rich to remain middle class

[AnarchoEcon @Anarcho_Econ]

Capitalism has created so much abundance that communists had to invent the idea of relative poverty

[Taya Bass @travelingflying]

Christopher Hitchens: ”In 1786, when the United States was barely a country, it was having its sailors taken as slaves by the Barbary states, the states of the Ottoman Empire and North Africa. Tripoli, shores of Tripoli. Ships stopped, its crews carried off into slavery. We estimate 1.5 million European and American slaves taken between 1750 and 1815.

Jefferson and Adams went to their ambassador in London and said, why do you do this to us? The United States has never had a quarrel with the Muslim world of any kind. We weren't in the crusades. We weren't at war with Spain. Why do you do this to our people and our ships? Why do you plunder and enslave our people? The ambassador said very plainly, Mr. Abdul Rahman said, because the Quran gives us permission to do so, because you are infidels, and that's our answer. Jefferson said, well, in that case, I will send a navy which will crush your state, which he did.

Islamic fundamentalism is not created by American democracy. It's a lie to say so. It's a masochistic lie, and it excuses those who are the real criminals, and blames us for the attacks made upon us.”

[Phil Magness @PhilWMagness]

Vance-o-nomics is fun.

[Jonah Goldberg @JonahDispatch]

I hate this argument. Should you use your eulogy for a family member to talk about politics? How about class time in a math class? Or should a surgeon eat up a patient’s time at an appointment with a stemwinder about politics? Everyone has a right to offer their opinion, that doesn’t mean it’s appropriate in every situation. So the argument isn’t whether people have a right to offer their opinion. The issue is whether they’re being selfish by doing it at an inappropriate moment. Also, if all opinions are valid at any time, why bitch about Gervais offering his opinion? Unless of course we can actually judge opinions by content and context.

[Nick Gillespie @nickgillespie]

Proud to be descended from poorly educated 20th century immigrants who came from the slums of Ireland and Italy, worked hard, raised families, and died in relative affluence here. This is a huge part of American exceptionalism.

[Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb]

BS- The U.S. is one of the rare countries --if not the only country --where aggressive & risk taking immigrants can make it big, get rich, & become part of the system without giving up on their identity.

[Chris Freiman @cafreiman]

If you create $2000 of wealth every day but your employer only pays you $200, it’s in the interest of competing employers to offer you more. By analogy, if someone is auctioning off 2,000 dollar bills and the highest bid is $200, wouldn’t you offer more than $200?

[SτξΜ Smittie GE.D @smittie61984]

Whenever these people praise socialism, they envision a system where they get unlimited money to paint pictures or write books. They never see themselves in the coal mine.

[Bonchie @bonchieredstate]

No one in America dies of a brain tumor because of medical bills.

That doesn’t even make sense.

Meanwhile, in America, you can show up at an ER with a migraine, have a tumor found the same day, and have it removed a week later.

Surviving > “Free” waiting lists

[Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 @JeremiahDJohns]

There's a common type of criticism of economics where people think up a reasonable objection - like Vance saying prices ignore important factors like quality and other things - and then assume economists have never thought of it before.

It's more likely that *thousands* of economists have done detailed research on the exact subject you're accusing economics of ignoring.

I promise you that you are not the first person to have dreamed up this particular objection. People much smarter than you have already thought of it, collected data, built models to explore it, and written about the whole thing exhaustively.

[Chris Freiman @cafreiman]

“The Big Tech oligarchs want to replace millions of farming jobs with tractors.”

[Touchy Funseeker @SupDenman]

@dmesg @PissnDaNiteAway @maxdubler

[Paula Pant @AffordAnything]

Abolish gyms. It should be illegal to buy exercise equipment and expect someone else to pay for it.

The exercise equipment would still exist, but its use would be limited only to the person who purchased it. They shouldn't make their wallet fatter just so others can get fit.

[Phil Magness @PhilWMagness]

One of the most pronounced themes of JD Vance's new book is that he does not understand economics, and it leads him to really, really despise economists.