Tootfinder

Bill Maher clashes with liberal actor over Trump, immigration policy (New York Post)
https://nypost.com/2025/07/14/us-news/bill-maher-clashes-with-liberal-actor-over-trump/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250714/p127#a250714p127

"While a Trump presidency might be bad news for, say, Tesla..."
Uh, I guess that aged well... just not in the way the author thought.
✅ These are the brands that divide America - Sherwood News
https://sherwood.news/business/brands-libera…

Just finished reading Dream State by Eric Puchner, and it kind of pissed me off. I think I can see exactly why it might be popular with a certain WASPy liberal "literati" type that probably includes a lot of influential reviewers, but to me, it's points about love & life, despite being much more complex, ring just about as hollow (and harmful) as a Disney movie.
I've got a lot of quibbles, but I think most galling to me was a throwaway line near the beginning about why platonic relationships get so much less glory in media than romantic ones, when so much of the plot proceeds to revolve around a stale agency-free romantic attraction model that's certainly more complex on its face than a Disney romance but which is ultimately just as misleading.
Go read Loveless or really any YA #OwnVoices romance (especially queer) and you'll be learning more & better lessons about the human condition.

The Clintons and Kamala Harris Descend on a Hamptons Wedding of Liberal Royalty (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/14/us/politics/huma-abedin-alex-soros-wedding-hillary-clinton-kamala-harris.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/250615/p4#a250615p4

#ai

This is one of the best descriptions of Gavin Newsom I’ve seen!
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKtDKkixTJQ/?igsh=NjZiM2M3MzIxNA==

Nathan Ramos-Park on Instagram: "#gavinnewsom in a nutshell to people who do not live in California #downtownla #community #losangeles #trump #conservatives #progressives #leftist #liberal #matcha #boba #kbbq #michelinstar #reginageorge #tonyawards #meangirls #patrickbatemen #americanpsycho #huntingseason #divabehavior"
90K likes, 1,834 comments - nathanramospark on June 9, 2025: "#gavinnewsom in a nutshell to people who do not live in California #downtownla #community #losangeles #trump #conservatives #progressives #leftist #liberal #matcha #boba #kbbq #michelinstar #reginageorge #tonyawards #meangirls #patrickbatemen #americanpsycho #huntingseason #divabehavior".

Some of the country’s largest liberal foundations are quietly working to raise at least $250 million
to help civil groups push back against President Trump and what they see as his steady drift toward authoritarianism.
The effort is in its early days,
working to secure initial commitments.
But the scale of the collaborative undertaking has turned heads in the tightly networked world of philanthropy.
It comes as donors are licking their wounds and many efforts to …

Liberal Fund-Raising Drive Seeks $250 Million to Aid Pushback Against Trump
Donors hope to raise huge sums of money to help those fighting what they see as a drift toward authoritarianism, but without attracting unwanted White House attention.

I like these.
✅ Liberal Tees | Official Merch Store
#liberaltees #trump…

They understood universities better in 1764 than in 2025. (From the Preamble of the Brown University charter.)

Maybe We Should Let Liberal Cities Burn (Derek Hunter/Townhall)
https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2025/06/10/maybe-we-should-let-liberal-cities-burn-n2658508
http://www.memeorandum.com/250610/p63#a250610p63

PLpol, pseudoliberalism
Tell me, is a "liberal" the kind of person to claim that a woman must not become a president, as she'll get mad with power? Does a "liberal" declare their tolerance for specific people by using insulting names for them? Does a "liberal" call certain minorities "loafers"? Does a "liberal" support dismantling public services for "cost reduction"? Yet these are the views held by the voters of PO/KO, the Polish party often called "liberal".
It is not a liberal party, and it won't be one, because they have too much to lose. For years now, they exist only as an alternative to the "conservative" PiS party — not as something truly opposite, but as a comfortable alternative that's not all that different. So the Polish can gladly focus their contrarian, hateful nature into voting against one or the other party, without having to worry too much that some immoral rainbow force will try to shatter the bubble of their worldview.
#PLpol

I find myself thinking about a long-lost friend a lot lately. Sometime in the late 90s, we both accepted that our friendship had run its course. I had come to embrace fairly low-key socialism and he was increasingly angry about the media's "liberal bias." The common ground we had once shared was gone. I imagine him cheering now, even as I recall his father, a deeply conservative Marine colonel, remarking that only authoritarian regimes used the military against their own citize…

“The colonial monopoly on violence is backed by the liberal demand of nonviolent resistance.”
— tsengputterman, 2024 on Twitter

I just re-read @… 's manifesto on liberal arts education.
It's really about #education in general, including vocational education, and including the fact that school is a subset of education.
Well worth your time.

Just read through "Sanctuary" by Paola Mendez & Abby Sher, which was electrifying as I read news about ICE kidnappings in local towns, including one in Waltham today where they left a kid alone on the sidewalk:
#ICE #kidnappings

Remember the people who said AI wouldn’t take away jobs? The current LLM/AI space is absolute shit at actually doing real work… but they are cutting and taking jobs anyway.
Oh, and we went from a Liberal Canadian government that at least had a Universal Basic Income on their radar… to one that is going to cut 1000s of federal jobs and, you guessed it, get AI to do stuff instead.
Liberal Government acting like Conservative government 😢
#ndp #canada #cdnpoli #canpoli #ubi #glbi #austerity #AI
https://mstdn.moimeme.ca/@EdwinG/114846392795126120

The stability of bi-polarization on dynamical directed graphs: an emergent game perspective
Yakun Wang, Yuan Liu, Bin Wu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08449 h…

The stability of bi-polarization on dynamical directed graphs: an emergent game perspective
This paper proposes a co-evolutionary model of directed graphs and three opinions, i.e., conservative$(+)$, neutral$(\odot)$ and liberal$(-)$. Agents update both opinions and social relationships with bias. We find that an emergent game suffices to predict the stability of bi-polarization under a rare opinion updating limit and a large system size limit. The bi-polarization is stable if and only if the emergent game has an internal Nash equilibrium. The necessary and sufficient condition is exp…

I still follow so many normal well adjusted people with standard liberal politics

In 'Serious Blow to Our Democracy,' Supreme Court Allows Trump Mass Firing Order
The high court's decision to "release the Trump's wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation," said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, "is not only truly unfortunate but also hubristic and senseless
https://www.

In 'Serious Blow to Our Democracy,' Supreme Court Allows Trump Mass Firing Order | Common Dreams
The U.S. Supreme Court lifted a block on U.S. President Donald Trump's February executive order directing federal agency leaders to craft plans to gut the government—a decision blasted by one liberal justice and a coalition of labor unions, local governments, and nonprofits.

Religion, PLpol
It's about time I elaborated on an earlier thought.
"Non-practicing Catholics" have more liberal worldview than "conservative" Catholics — and often they jeer at them. These qualities make it easy to forget that you're draining with Catholics. But when the push comes to shove, you discover that you can't rely on them. They won't openly oppose the Church, they won't protect the people who are "immoral" according to Catholic morality, and if they are forced to choose a side, they'll side with the Catholics.
The Polish PO/KO party (often perceived as "liberal") is just like that. Their views are more liberal than the conservative right wing, they love portraying themselves as an opposition to it, but in the end they are a right-wing party. When it's convenient to them, they happily present liberal postulates — but they are as fast to withdraw them to please their right-wing electorate.
#PLpol

Similarly, hostility to education cloaks itself as support by saying that education should be useful, should be practical, should be focused only on what students need, should be narrowed to what students need, should narrow students, should narrow students into being only what capitalism needs.
I wrote extensively about this dangerous line of thought here:
https://innig.net/teaching/liberal-arts-manifesto
6/

That bastion of liberal woke thinking "The Economist" reckons that Trump's bill is a bad idea.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/07/03/trumponomics-20-will-erode-the-foundations-of-americas-prosperity…

Law360 now requires every story go through an AI-powered "bias" detection tool before publication after a LexisNexis exec accused the newsroom of liberal bias (Andrew Deck/Nieman Lab)
https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/07/law360-m

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.06415 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csHC_…

Biased AI can Influence Political Decision-Making
As modern large language models (LLMs) become integral to everyday tasks, concerns about their inherent biases and their potential impact on human decision-making have emerged. While bias in models are well-documented, less is known about how these biases influence human decisions. This paper presents two interactive experiments investigating the effects of partisan bias in LLMs on political opinions and decision-making. Participants interacted freely with either a biased liberal, biased conser…

Supreme Court liberal delivers blistering dissent after hit to its 'reputation' - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/scotus-2672407149/

FFS
Ray Stevens, a Gold Coast Liberal National party MP has called for the return of vagrancy laws to allow police to prosecute homeless people amid an ongoing crackdown on tent cities in Queensland.
"The police reluctantly tell me they have no legislative power to move these people on, which I find incredibly disappointing..."

The liberal obsession with optics serves the right and persuades no one. There is literally an active ethnic cleansing happening in the US right now, and the only thing that matters is making that as hard as possible to carry out.
Anarchists destroying intelligence assets saves lives. Every escooter thrown at a cop car is one less escort for a goon too afraid to kidnap random brown people without being flanked by a branch full of bad apples. Spray paint is not violence. Vandalism is not violence. Community self defense in all forms is legitimate.
Make no mistake, these raids are about changing demographics. Demographic trends have been shifting blue for a long time, and the right has, for a long time, been blaming "white replacement." Conspiracy theory aside, Democrats have also been relying on the growth of black and brown voters as a block. The nuances of whiteness as an identity are lost on the current administration and their supporters. They see that "white people will be a minority by 2050" and equate that with the "end of Western Civilization."
The only way to "save Western Civilization" is to change those demographics. Forced birth and forced removal are two sides of the same white nationalist objective. Of course they can't have due process, because they need to be able to kidnap anyone who they see as a threat to their demographic future.
They don't care about optics. The plan is to murder away any threat and flood everyone else with propaganda. There is no mythical middle. There's no one unconvinced. They know this, but they win when democrats buy that myth and save the police the work of policing the protests.
If your protest is 90% "peaceful," they'll take pictures of the 10% that isn't. If it's 99% peaceful, they'll shoot rubber bullets and teargas until someone throws a brick and take 100 pictures from a dozen angles. If its 100% "peaceful" and no one can be provoked, they'll generate pictures with AI or photoshop like they did during the George Floyd uprising and the pictures from the CHOP/CHAZ. Do you have literally no memory?
#USPol #FiftyFiftyOne #50501movenent #resistance #NoKingsDay #NoKingsDayOfAction

Podem agradecer aos nazis do Kremlin e aos fascistas da Casa Branca.
https://masto.pt/@EsquerdaNet/114728251909797664

Esquerda.Net (@EsquerdaNet@masto.pt)
Anexadas: 1 imagem EUA juntam-se a Israel no ataque ao Irão: uma nova era de impunidade: Os contornos da política global estão a mudar diante dos nossos olhos. Longe vão as normas que serviram de base à chamada ordem internacional liberal. O risco é que, embora esse período tenha apresentado tragédia e sofrimento a uma escala quase inimaginável, rasgar o livro de regras seja ainda muito pior. https://www.esquerda.net/artigo/eua-juntam-se-israel-no-ataque-ao-irao-uma-nova-era-de-impuni…

Harvard's Fight Is a Defense of Democracy and Civic Virtue (Emily Chamlee-Wright/Liberal Currents)
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/harvards-fight-is-a-defense-of-democracy-and-civic-virtue/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250708/p132#a250708p132

Synthetic crystal rotation with spacetime metamaterials
I\~nigo Liberal, Alejandro Manjavacas
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.02495 https://

Synthetic crystal rotation with spacetime metamaterials
The interaction of light with rotating bodies has been historically limited to rotation frequencies much smaller than optical frequencies. Here, we investigate synthetic crystal rotations, i.e., spatiotemporal modulations mimicking the rotation of an anisotropic crystal, which grant access to large rotation frequencies. Spatiotemporal modulations change the fundamental symmetries of the electromagnetic field, breaking temporal and rotation symmetries, but preserving a spatiotemporal rotation sy…

On the new BC Ferries being built in China.
Do we all remember the last time the BC NDP went down the road of “building a shipbuilding industry to build ferries”?
It has its own Wiki, of course.
"In addition to major delays and cost overruns, the ferries never fully met their original specifications, and only operated briefly in a reduced capacity, before being auctioned off at a substantial loss by the subsequently elected BC Liberal Party government.”
No, I'm not thrilled that China, an authoritarian state, is going to be building these ferries. But no BC or Canadian firms bid on the contract. And right now, the expertise in ship building is in China and Europe (the Island and Salish class vessels were built in Europe).
I don't blame the NDP for not repeating the same mistake 30 years later.
And the ferries will still be refit and maintained for their full service life within BC.
#BCPoli #BCNDP #FastFerry #Shipbuilding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_ferry_scandal

I still see no signs that indicate that the D-party has the ability to win seats in 2024 or win the presidency (or house or senate majority) in 2028.
I am perceiving the D-party eroding-itself away leaving individual candidates to run their own campaigns.
Although I am much in favor of the goals of much "identity" based campaign messaging I feel that emphasis on those has cost the progressive/liberal voice too many seats. Those messages, valid and important as they are…

US political contradictions; knowledge systems
As Trump at least partially succeeds in constructing an alternate reality for his most ardent followers, it's tempting to think of his dogma as false, in contrast to some imagined "truth" which his non-followers are smart enough to believe in. But a more nuanced view of knowledge would admit that different groups of people have different shared truths, constituting different knowledge systems which each deviate from what's objectively measurable in different ways, and in fact they each accept different standards of what is objective, so there's not really a single "ground truth" we can even compare to to determine which of these knowledge systems is "more correct" (similar problems arise even if we only care about "more useful").
To make this more concrete, we can see that e.g., competing quantum physics theories, or likewise competing religious beliefs, have no reasonable basis on which to judge between them, either in terms of "truth" or "utility." So the Trump-dogma knowledge system, although bad, morally repugnant, etc., can't so easily be dismissed as "false" in my view. "Distorted" or "malignant" or "evil" or "contradictory" are better monikers, in my opinion.
But what I'm even more interested in thinking about is: in what ways does the current American liberal "common sense" knowledge system already bear the scars of past fascist lies & contradictions? I can think of a few:
"Columbus was an explorer."
This is "factually accurate" in the same way some of Trump's propaganda is, but it's also a cruel distortion of "Columbus was a child murderer," and it's a misrepresentation that serves an evil purpose, yet which is widely taught in elementary schools today.
Another: "dropping atomic bombs on civilians in Japan was necessary to end WWII."
Perhaps in the future we'll have "family separation & the 2025 ICE crackdowns were necessary to end the immigration crisis," although I dearly hope not.
"Reparations for slavery aren't reasonable," is yet another...
I'll close this rambling with a question: what other fascist lies have you noticed that are normalized in America right now from past Trump-like leaders (or even from less overtly fascist institutions)?

On his 2025 inaugural date #DJT signed an executive order titled "Ending The Weaponization Of Government.”
...and every #MAGA accusation is instead a confession, as the troops from federal agencies under his aegis go after any perceived political enemy he sees.
This week alone: * DJT

Trump's DOJ Brings Baseless Charges Against Lamonica McIver
What's really behind the Justice Department's baseless charges against Rep. McIver?

It is so obvious. Why isn't a new, liberal Democratic Party being founded in the #USA?
Forget the #Democrats. They have shown themselves to be completely incapable in the current enormous crisis. They are afraid for their sinecures, act tactically and the welfare of the citizens is as little important …

On Sunday, voters are casting their ballots in the decisive runoff between
Rafał Trzaskowski, the liberal-centrist mayor of Warsaw,
and Karol Nawrocki, a right-wing historian who has helmed a nationalist effort to rewrite Poland’s role in the Holocaust.
The candidates offer starkly different visions for Poland.
Trzaskowski promises cooperation with the European Union and social changes, such as loosening restrictive abortion laws and allowing civil unions for LGBTQ peo…

The Implementability of Liberalism
H\'ector Hermida-Rivera
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.16059 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.16059

The Implementability of Liberalism
This note shows that under the unrestricted domain, there exists a choice liberal and Nash implementable social choice rule if and only if there are at least three players and the outcome set is at least twice as large as the player set. A social choice rule is choice liberal if and only if for every player, there exists at least one pair of outcomes such that if this player strictly prefers one over the other, the one he prefers is socially desirable and the other one is not. A social choice r…

Media Matters sues the FTC, says its inquiry into advertiser boycotts of X is part of a "campaign of retribution" by the Trump administration and Elon Musk (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/technology/media-matters-ftc-lawsu…

Media Matters Sues F.T.C. Over Advertising Investigation
The liberal advocacy organization said in a lawsuit that the Federal Trade Commission’s inquiry into boycotts with other advertising groups was “retribution.”

excellent analysis of covid state of play
From Julia Doubleday.
"Each time a new wave crops up, the media scrambles to let the public know that COVID is spreading “again” ... But each time, it fails to inform the public that nearly half of COVID cases are asymptomatic, that COVID looks different in different patients, that vaccines do not prevent infections, that rapid tests have high false negative rates, and that COVID is fully airborne.
"Taken together, the virus I’m describing is much more difficult to control than the one the press presents. The press frames the virus as something that can be halted by familiarizing yourself with the symptoms, staying home once you feel sick and test positive, and avoided altogether by simply getting vaccinated or keeping ones’ distance from sick people. ...
"The misinformation that reigns in liberal spaces is not the result of accidental miscommunication. People don’t know that the virus is asymptomatic 40% of the time because there is simply no universe where that virus is controllable without an elimination strategy, or a day-to-day mitigation strategy."
#covid #misinformation #denial #CovidIsAirborne

Does the Working Class Vote Against Its Interests? (Justin Vassallo/The Liberal Patriot)
https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/does-the-working-class-vote-against
http://www.memeorandum.com/250602/p151#a250602p151

The Liberal Misinformation Bubble About Youth Gender Medicine (Helen Lewis/The Atlantic)
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/transgender-youth-skrmetti/683350/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250629/p90#a250629p90

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg‘s recent public support for Donald Trump did not come as a shock to those who know or have closely worked with him.
Dozens of people who have either worked with or known Zuckerberg told the Financial Times that the CEO’s more public shift toward Trump is just Zuckerberg displaying the more “authentic” version of himself to the world,
even though he was once known to support liberal ideology and voiced opposition to Trump’s policies during the first admini…

Zuckerberg’s political shift didn’t shock Meta staff: ‘The whole time this was all one inch underneath’
Meta has implemented policy shifts that are more closely aligned with the administration since Trump was elected

A United States senator forced to the floor and handcuffed by federal agents for interrupting a news conference.
A mayor taken into custody by masked officials in military-style fatigues.
A political candidate pushed against a wall and handcuffed in a dispute at an immigration courthouse.
A government crackdown is extending to the political opposition.
“This is executive authority, especially in the Department of Homeland Security, running out of control,” said Senator …

Images of Handcuffed Democrats Are Piling Up in Trump’s Immigration Crackdown
Federal agents have arrested a growing number of the party’s elected officials, fueling liberal outrage and conservative accusations that Democrats are carrying out publicity stunts.

Canadians: Replace Ardern with Trudeau and use other Canadian touchstones in place of #nzpol and you have an accurate article for Canada.
Which should speak to what Progressives actually need to do here, and everywhere.
"Ardern’s leadership has often been described as emotionally intelligent, compassionate, and people-centred. But compassion is not liberation. Empathy alone does not redistribute wealth, dismantle police power, or decommodify housing. What Ardern perfected was a mode of governance that couched neoliberalism in progressive language. A style of leadership that appeared anti-fascist, anti-racist, and feminist, while presiding over deepening inequality, mass incarceration of Māori, ongoing colonisation, environmental destruction, and a housing system that serves landlords and property speculators.
Ardern’s “politics of kindness” masked a status quo commitment to capitalism and state power. Her government’s housing policies floundered under the weight of market logic. Despite the crisis of homelessness and unaffordability, the Labour government never seriously considered nationalising housing, implementing rent controls, or seizing vacant properties from land-bankers. Instead, they protected the interests of property investors, many of whom were MPs themselves."
#canpoli #cdnpoli #trudeau #Liberal #Ardern
https://www.anarchistfederation.net/the-cult-of-kindness-the-reality-of-jacinda-arderns-leadership/

At some point I expect Canada’s Liberal Party to regress like Labour is doing in the UK. Our political class still look to both the UK and USA for direction, like meek children.
#canada #canpoli #cdnpoli #transrights #lgbtq2s
https://tech.lgbt/@grayface_ghost/114772720087665845

All the talk from the G7 about India and Canada working together to use AI for government "efficiency" sounds a lot like outsourcing our education and public services to a call centre.
This Liberal government seems hellbent on destroying the public service and public programs.
#canpoli #cdnpoli #AI #G7