The Village and the Sewer – Behind the "Blueskyism" Debate
programmablemutter.com
programmablemutter.com
(2) It deserves a discussion which is entirely separate from "the river", whatever X is now, MAGA, etc. That is, it needs to be contrasted with what a healthy political culture of the left would be that would set us up to win.
(3) If you go looking at random Bluesky profiles you will find many that say something in the summary like "Blue Crew", "Always Vote Democrat", "No MAGA" and if you are unwise enough to click on it you will find they repost 20 items about Trump administration outrage a day. If you've got any sense you don't follow them or your feed will be nothing but that.
If you have a policy of not following that kind of account, blocking on the first hint of negativity, and blocking a few keywords, you can have a really nice feed.
(4) For me, the algo feed for Bluesky suppresses about 75% of that kind of content as opposed to the "following" feed. The thing is it has "More like this" and "Less like this" buttons which I use consistently... They work.
(5) Looking at random Bluesky profiles a lot of people have dropped out. I don't have real statistics that I wish I was keeping (if I did I could get my agent to accelerate things) but my impression is that scientists and other experts have a high rate of attrition -- I think the jerk users drive them away
(6) Folks like Silver, Yglesias and Noah Smith can most effectively create controversy by promoting this sort of antagonism, it's even possible they can peel a few people off to their point of view. Personally I think the future of the left is deliverism combining some of Ezra Klein and some of Matt Stoller.
(7) Even Silver is starting to realize that "The River" has aged poorly https://www.natesilver.net/p/one-year-later-is-the-river-win...
Reform in governance has to start with learning specific processes from Swiss, Irish (the country), Latin American and even Chinese/Korean institutions (eg Cuba medical training from that nice thread) -- and not from divining ideological positions originating from European countries -- that unfortunately get the bulk of the "humanist" attention
It'd be like reading a Design magazine and getting upset with the editors' fixation on Balenciaga
(5) though is an interesting observation, please do those statistics. I think what STEM academic types that don't thrive on Bs and X (like you and OP) have, broadly, that is undervalued by technocracies- a hidden talent for cognitive plasticity that translates better to agency
(Edit: what silver calls "decoupling")
But yeah, I one of those strange liminal figures that won't ever put his head up to be counted around the University because it would be trouble. If I meet a professor in the hallway and start asking questions pretty soon it is... "You're not a civilian are you?" Grad students frustrate me because the kid who works on density functional calculations for metal organic frameworks can't answer "how do you make a MOF?" which got me to go home and look up the answer which is really simple, "mix the ingredients and bake in the oven"
In those few areas where I really am an expert in something it is frustrating as hell to deal with communities that don't recognize it, it's one reason why I never played the game for stack overflow -- for a lot of subjects my opinion is mid, but in cases where I've fought hard to get the right answer I'm not going to play a game I don't want to play on a site to get to post it.
A lot of people at my Uni are really stuck up: my current nexus of frustration is in sports photography where nobody with any actual authority in sports or communications at my Uni wants to acknowledge my work because my camera is my only press pass. I know I am going to get some recognition of some kind some day because I keep working at it and I wind up meeting some of the players and assistant coaches and the people from the alumni associations who put on the tailgates and as much as I appreciate it when sports comm does things I know are hard I know I can be there sometimes where they aren't getting results in my own way.
[1] if the “Blueskyist” really wants things to get better politically (maybe they don’t) they are the ones who need to understand the case against it
Meanwhile Trump delivers almost nothing of substance and it doesn't seem to matter to the right. They even stopped caring about Epstein as soon as Charlie Kirk's murder gave them something to froth at the mouth about.
I don't know what the future of the left should be but to me it doesn't seem like economic policy is driving either side - even the "price of eggs" thing seems like a post-hoc rationalization for votes people were already going to make. If anything the problem seems to be that the Democrats aren't channeling the outrage of their base as effectively as the Republicans, and there isn't a third option for leftism in the US at that scale. Maybe the left should abandon all hope for the White House and just focus on state-level activism, and build up support for an actual leftist party and agenda.
I talked to quite a few family members in NY whose vote didn't count who saw that they did have a choice between Trump and Harris and did not feel like they had to vote to support their tribe. The election was rather close and you're going to win it by getting these people to change their mind, not by motivating the most motivated Democrats or demotivating the most motivated Republicans.
To people like that a demonstration of competence or at least that you have a pulse or that you support something rather than you got selected and nobody should vote for the madman because.... that just doesn't work.
There are just many things about the American experience with the public sphere that turn people away from it. It's not a matter of safe or unsafe but rather pleasant vs unpleasant and a lack of recognition that pleasant vs unpleasant matters. Go to China and the subways don't screech the way the NY subway does. You drive over the same pothole for five years because it doesn't get fixed until they can get a federal grant to fix it. Stuff like that.
Believe it or not there were people who voted: Obama - Trump - Biden - Trump and had the D’s managed to reach that person we would not be in this nightmare.