I am sending my most evil prayers to Rupert Murdoch and its wretched company. May they adopt AI and lose their fan base.

Receiving support from a political party and the ability to influence policies behind the scenes requires playing the patronage game, which means protecting incumbents, especially in the Senate and presidency. Given this, I’m honestly surprised that no third parties have been able to win seats in safe districts, because doing so would somewhat fix this problem by making those representatives a genuine independent bloc able to negotiate bilaterally with the major parties. Are voters seriously content with the two-party system just because there are primaries?

I dread the (IMO likely) possibility that users will just accept Zuck’s overlordship since everyone they follow on Twitter will be on Threads as he enshittifies the platform with industrial-scale data harvesting, endless ads, a stiflingly puritanical content policy, and algorithms designed to maximize short-term profits rather than spark conversations, leaving users wanting more than pablum with nowhere to go. It would be the end of an era of social media freedom if that were the case.

If I was French and had to pick between Macron’s hand-picked successor and Le Pen, I would go insane. Vesting so much power in the presidency can only turn presidents into strongmen.

It must be nice having a government which stands up for its citizens.