Tootfinder

Naming Your Kid 'Donald' Has Never Been So Unpopular (Dave Levinthal/NOTUS)
https://www.notus.org/donald-trump/donald-baby-name-popularity
http://www.memeorandum.com/260623/p4#a260623p4

#nowListening #listeningTo https://soundcloud.com/scarper/popular-tracks

Popular Front recently did a piece on the current conflicts in Ethiopia:
https://popularfront.substack.com/p/everything-you-didnt-know-about-the
It's a good primer for anyone who's unfamiliar, but is definitely lacking if you know any Ethiopian folks or pay attention to much news out of the Horn of Africa.
The interplay between authoritarian liberal nationalism, as represented by Abiy Ahmed and his government, and tribal federalism , represented by various tribal factions, reads to me very similarly to the liberalization of Europe (enclosure of the commons, a push to sacrifice ethnic identities for nationalist ones, etc). Like the liberalization of, say, France, it's a lot more complicated than "old thing bad, new thing good."
Liberalism was violent and authoritarian. It often sacrificed leftists. Liberalism's focus on borders and national identity led directly to pogroms and Nazism. Similarly, liberalization of Ethiopia has led to genocide and ethnic cleansing.
People think of "the terror" in France as a leftist thing, but it wasn't. It was a Liberal thing, centrist extremism, carried out against right and left.
I understand that tribal federalism is also not a good system, but I don't have a ton of depth so I'm not going to try to explain it. During the European Liberal revolutionary period of 1848, ethnic minorities would often side with some monarch or emperor against liberalism out of fear of liberal nationalism. It makes sense to support a system that's bad if your other option is a nationalism that erases your identity.
But even in Europe at that time, anarchism offered an alternative but that alternative often also drew from simply a different branch of liberalism that also suppressed culture and identity. Today the world is different. Democratic Confederalism offers a solution to *exactly* this problem, tested for more than a decade in Syria and developing now in Myanmar.
But the cross pollination between Syria and Myanmar in terms of fighters really made the ideological cross pollination possible. I don't think anything like that is happening now in Ethiopia.
Eurocentrism makes it easy to ignore what's happening now, but Addis Ababa is the seat of the African Union Commission. Ethiopia is a major military power in the region, so these developments carry a lot of weight. Especially as the US collapses and the world becomes more multipolar, the development of regional powers like Ethiopia will have a big impact on how that part of the continent develops.
If any folks are more familiar with Ethiopia than I am (which shouldn't be hard since I'm basically not), please correct me or add context if anything is missing or wrong.

Source: smart ring maker Oura filed confidentially for a US IPO, set for later in 2026; SF- and Finland-based Oura had an $11B valuation in September 2025 (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05…

Oura, Maker of Popular Smart Rings, Files Confidentially for IPO
Oura Health Oy, a maker of popular smart rings that track health, fitness and sleep, filed confidentially for a US initial public offering, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Cowboys lose top LB target to new contract with Dolphins https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2026/07/21/popular-lb-acquisition-for-dallas-cowboys-is-no-longer-an-option/90997019…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has sacked the country’s commander-in-chief General Oleksandr Syrskyi,
after days of widespread protests against the removal of the country’s popular defense minister.
His replacement, Mykhailo Drapatyi, 43, is a younger general
often described as representing a newer generation of military leaders who have forged their careers during the current war with Russia.
The shake up comes after Zelensky last week fired defense minister …

Zelensky sacks Ukraine’s military chief following widespread protests
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has sacked the country’s commander-in-chief General Oleksandr Syrskyi, after days of widespread protests against the removal of the country’s popular defense minister.

Rocked by the Iran war, the UAE sours on Trump: 'We got played' (Rachel Chason/Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/06/24/trump-was-popular-uae-then-he-went-war/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260624/p33#a260624p33

Sen. Bernie Sanders has co-sponsored a bill that would cut taxes on families making under $92,000 and increase taxes on the wealthy.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, two pillars and allies of the progressive movement, are in disagreement.
Democrats have in recent months proposed a variety of tax cut proposals, seemingly in response to President Donald Trump’s popular “no tax on tips and overtime” policies.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen wants to eliminate inco…

Democrats’ Tax Cut Plans Are Splintering Progressives
Could new proposals from Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Cory Booker to cut taxes come at the expense of expanding social programs? Progressives don’t agree.

The money behind a network of sham "progressive" super PACs (Judd Legum/Popular Information)
https://popular.info/p/update-the-money-behind-a-network
http://www.memeorandum.com/260622/p30#a260622p30

The latest baby name data from Washington, D.C., reads like a roll call of 19th-century senators and their wives:
Lucy, Eleanor and Caroline for girls.
Charles, John and George for boys.
These are not the names you might expect from one of the most progressive cities in the country.
The same pattern exists in New York,
where some of the most popular baby names include
Charlotte, Emma, Henry and Theodore,
according to newly released state name data.…

D.C.’s baby names reveal luxury beliefs
The affluent may say they dislike convention. But they name their kids Charles, Eleanor and Henry.