Tootfinder

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

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

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…

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.

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

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 …

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.

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".

"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…

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 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

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

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

"You should know Trump isn’t doing this on his own. The Hoover Institution has been plotting revenge against FDR since 1932. Groups like the Heritage Foundation and Heartland Foundation are generations old. The Federalist Society has been promising to overturn liberal justice since the 1960s. The Religious Right started working to overturn Roe v. Wade the day it was promulgated. All these groups have big money, and they play the long game.
What’s happening today is their platform, backed by their research. The fact it won’t work, that the 20th century won’t be put back into a bottle, that the Amendments put in place after 1865 somehow aren’t part of the “real” Constitution, is yet to be proven by events."
https://danafblankenhorn.substack.com/p/all-in-the-family

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

#ai

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

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

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…

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…

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?

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…

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)?

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

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

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

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/