The Blue Wave Democratic Club is a rightwing astroturf group controlled in part by Santa Monica city councilmember Lana Negrete, not a real Democratic Club.
Local politics. Yikes!
Yudkowsky also claimed that his (non-profit) company was probably the only one that could make AI safely[...] It is also a pitch for people to give you total control over them, because if they do not, the world might end.
Thorough write up of (one of) the suicidal sex cults that currently runs the American government.
This industry approaches regulation in this way because it has, at its core, a millenarian death cult that worships and fears AI, believes AI will end the world, feels compelled to create AI, and at least somewhat wants to destroy AI as an entire field.
Edit: The article has been deleted. Archived version available here.
US imperialism stands as the greatest obstacle to everything that communists want to achieve, and it is urgently important for communists in the US to build an anti-imperialist opposition.
Good piece in Cosmonaut arguing the need for better discipline within the DSA for anti-imperialist stances.
Many members in DSA argue that, by campaigning for Democrats like Zohran Mamdani or AOC, they are already building a workers’ party. They say that DSA’s elected representatives are merely “using the Democratic Party ballot line”. This is a delusion.
New York Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who is pretty clearly running for president in 2028, made a disappointing statement recently. She was asked about the idea of defunding and/or abolishing the police, and she responded that “woke 1.0 was crazy.”[...] I found that disappointing.
You know, I think the broad point of this essay is sound -- that the oppressor forces will always find a way to denigrate their opponents, whether or not that is "logical", and thus it is worthwhile to not play that game -- but I found myself kind of annoyed by the end of it. Here, take this passage:
Even if we grant the rather large assumption that [communism] is a de facto danger, communism isn’t the remotest danger for any of us. It’s the very furthest thing from us in an empire currently in end-stage capitalist collapse. Like being in a leaking submarine and fearing a volcanic eruption.
I fully agree with the author that it is silly for Americans to be afraid of communism and that the reason why most Americans are scared of communism is due to decades of propaganda. But this passage demonstrates that the author, too, has fallen for a bit of that propaganda.
Of course, the framing within the piece that delineates a difference between socialism and communism is a tell, but this passage -- with its implication that it is the "furthest thing" from "an empire in collapse" is just. Well, it's silly. Empires in collapse are where communism has sprouted up (the collapse of the Russian empire, the chaos of the Chinese monarchy, the revolutions of Vietnam, etc)!
Furthermore, that is a good thing! In moments of rupture there are also opportunities. That is not to minimize the potential harm inherent in rupture spaces like the one we are facing, to be clear, but we have to be open-eyed about this.
"Communist" is not just a bully's label -- though it is a bully's label in the current American political discourse, and it is one used by both the Democrats and the Republicans -- it is a political stance and a goal. Yes, we should all be Communists, but not as a defensive marker, as an identification with a program greater than the one we currently live under.
Yet, just as the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west, so too does the center of gravity shift toward those who reject unilateralism. As American dominance wanes and the US regime digs its own grave, more and more countries have shifted accordingly, diversifying and thereby further hastening the fall of American hegemony.
How Democratic consultants, committees, and party leaders built a fundraising spam pipeline that funnels money from a captive pool of elderly donors into their own operations.
A thorough analysis of the current DNC method du jour of soliciting money from citizens -- weird-ass spam texts written in all-caps targeted at the elderly. It is a disgusting, shameless tactic and a great example of why the Democratic party is a capitalist dead-end.
New York City may be part of a dying empire, but the USA is the dying empire. [..] The only reason DSA has gotten this far in the first place is that we are in an era of imperial decline, meaning the status quo will no longer be good enough. Normal methods of governance no longer suffice, not even from the standpoint of the elite.
The contemporary DSA is rife with arguments for and against supporting a hypothetical AOC run for president in 2028. The "inevitability" of AOC is often bandied about and I cannot say I am a fan -- we are many legislative sessions from that point and AOC has not had a flawless record on those. I consider it viable to run candidates that are outwardly identifying as Socialist/Communist, assuming that the goal is not victory for the candidate but victory for the party, and the party remaining the spearpoint of the people.
I do not believe that AOC, or the current incarnation of the DSA, fits that bill. The DSA is not (yet, perhaps) an electoral Communist organization. Even if it was, I would have some concerns about an electoral-first strategy (an extremely Kautskyist angle, if I may say so!).
In summary, to meet the minimum standard of "good governance," AOC would need to go well beyond liberal progressivism and embrace a radical socialism that she has thus far avoided.
I found this piece a good dismantling of some of the assumptions surrounding the electoralist, Kautskyist approach that favors Just Winning The Presidency as the be-all-end-all of American socialism. The goal is not the presidency, the goal is the world.
My argument, as laid out in both of the two relevant articles, is that a President AOC with DSA’s endorsement but no accountability to its program will not be willing or able to do what it takes to have a "successful" socialist Presidency, thus fatally discrediting the movement when she flounders. Hopefully the evidence already provided makes it clear which of the two futures is more likely.
Anti-transparency is a fundamental pillar of right-wing politics. The right of powerful people to do as they please is only useful if it’s free of consequences, and the only way to assure that is if no one knows what they’re doing.
A well laid out, interactive map of the current Trump administration's connections with crypto. Really cool artifact.
The neoliberal austerity regime has left no shortage of opportunities for alternative and counter institutions to fill the gaps left by the state, and capital continues to chase exponential returns on worthless scams rather than providing for many basic human needs. Those gaps, along with the social alienation inherent to capitalism, are the lowest hanging fruit for a dual power approach.
well-reasoned materialist analysis of how dual power can work, looking at examples from social democratic Sweden and islamic nationalist Palestine. I appreciate very much how this keeps the grounding of dual power not as an endgoal but as a tactic.
Three weeks ago, I watched you walk off a stage at the Lambda Legal National Liberty Awards, and I thought: she already knows who she is. That’s the hardest thing. Most people spend their whole lives trying to figure it out. You’re sixteen, and you’ve got it.
With a bipartisan acceptance of innocent death as the cost of doing business in the Muslim and Arab world, it is not a surprise that a kind of casual contempt for its leaders and peoples oozes from the orifices of both Republican and Democratic administrations.
Excellent piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates about Kamala Harris' awful record on Gaza and her unceasing support of Israel. Naturally, it is the opinion of this author that Harris' stance on Gaza absolutely tanked her popularity among her own base, something that a functioning political party would probably take into account.
Muslim delegates and attendees hoping to participate in the state Republican convention were shunned and rejected by members as they espoused themes of party unity ahead of the November election.
Look, man. Come on. Come on, lmao
U.S. oligarchs desperately want to build the biggest right wing propaganda and infotainment machine ever constructed. One that pummels the misinformed plebs with soggy class warfare and divisive culture war agitprop. But they're all profoundly stupid, wildly overconfident, and drunk on sycophancy.
Good, stirring writing with only one head-scratching implication of Evil China, which I have to call out because it is stupid. Rest of the piece is good though. I appreciate the anger!
Voluntarism, programmatic idealism, and strategic moralism are typically treated as separate mistakes. This essay argues that there is one error in three domains—the substitution of an ideal political form for material analysis—and that only reversing the direction of determination can correct it.
Don't agree with 100% of this piece but found it an interesting, if deeply academic-brain written, read. Loved this little tidbit from the American analysis section:
The absence of an American labor party is not a contingent historical lacuna waiting to be filled by the right organizational initiative. It is a structural feature of American class politics that has shaped the forms in which class interests can be expressed and the terrains on which they can be contested. The two-party system is not simply an obstacle to socialist politics but a terrain through which class forces are organized. The question of what engagement with that terrain can produce is a strategic question requiring analysis, not a moral question requiring a verdict.
Where I principally break with the analysis is with takeaways like this:
The democratic and electoral terrain is not, as the abstentionist position maintains, simply a mechanism for reproducing ruling class hegemony without remainder. It is the primary terrain on which the political consciousness of tens of millions of American workers is being actively shaped, and the question of whether the left engages with that process or withdraws from it in principled disgust is not a moral question but a strategic one with determinate political consequences.
To which I would say: Is it? Did the Sanders campaign make actual waves in the American proletariat? Is Mamdani a win for socialists, or is he an absorption of New Deal liberalism into the Democratic Party program? From within the borders of the States, I don't think these are easily-answered questions. Working within the electoral frame has some advantages, but I truly doubt the easy answer of "a lot of people vote, therefore that is where power lies and where we must strive". American voting is a complete mess -- both in terms of participation as well as upper class capture. Not to mention the number of institutions in the American government that are not beholden to any mass politic (like the Supreme Court, or in a broader sense the American military). It's things like that that make me doubt the so-called "democratic route to socialism".
To condemn an anti-imperialist state that is actively improving the Global South and other oppressed peoples’ material conditions is to condemn internationalism itself. This is akin to tying a weight around your ankle before running from a predator. Iran has done more for Palestine and Sudan than any “nonviolent protest” ever could.
[The No Kings website] then goes on to cite the anti-China protests in Hong Kong, where demonstrators used yellow umbrellas and yellow ribbons used to represent resistance to Russia in Ukraine, as its two specific examples to align the movement with. Both of these examples are in line with the US foreign policy interests shared between the Democratic and Republican parties. In the case of the Hong Kong protests, in both 2014 and 2019, the US government was accused of directly interfering and helping to direct the demonstrations, especially through its CIA-linked soft-power projects like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
I have so much suspicion around No Kings and this article gets at one of the main reasons why.
A map of the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral primary through its political geographies: Conservative LA, Liberal LA, and Left LA.
Beautiful website with some claims I find a bit presumptive but still educational. I agree with the authors that there are effectively three cities voting in LA, I am not so sure about the projected turnout in races.
None of the three front-runners I believe will be substantively different than Bass in running Los Angeles -- Raman is a compromised candidate with a spotty voting record especially on public housing, Bass is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative liberal, and Pratt is a fascist. I have no faith that Raman will not fold immediately to conservative interests, Bass already has folded to conservative interests, and Pratt... is a fascist. The biggest scam in Los Angeles' city budget remains the LAPD, and I do not believe any of the three front-runners have the power to dismantle the funding apparatus of the LAPD.
Anyway, that's my opinions. I recommend reading the piece regardless -- my commie griping aside, I do think this is a well-argued article with some really lovely data visualization work. Where I am fully in agreement with the authors is the fact that this sort of power mapping is crucial to understanding how and why LA is the way it is.
The NYPD plans to hire 580 additional uniformed officers by the end of the year, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Monday, revealing an unexpected staffing increase given Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s vow to keep police headcount flat.
I feel like I am simultaneously more critical of Mamdani and more sympathetic these days. Of course he's making these concessions, they are concessions that (unlike most DNC representatives) actually are allowing him to get things done in other ways. But that doesn't excuse the fact that since he is working within the current system, the compromises he makes will be to the fascist elements of our ruling class.
The police in America I think functionally act as an arm of the ruling capitalist-fascist class. The desire of the capitalist-fascist class is to maintain stable rule over the populace and they see the expansion of the police forces as the way to do that. That is not going to change unless those class elements are purged from power in America, which is not going to happen without a comprehensive revolution.
So like, yeah I mean, I get it. Mamdani is able to execute quite well in his office -- better than many other Democratic representatives -- and that's praiseworthy! It's understandable for him to make these sort of concessions/compromises. Also, these compromises fucking suck and I wish he was not in this position, because the sort of charisma that he has could really be useful to an actually revolutionary organization/position.
The balance of power has shifted, and nations of the Middle East will no longer accept a regional order dictated by the US and Israel.
History continues apace!