Tyranny of the majority is a real thing (you don't want the 51% to hog all the resources while the other 49% are miserable) though for various reasons it rarely happens in practice, but it's insane how many "solutions" pursued are functionally "let the 49% rule instead"

It is interesting (and good!) how bad politicians are at gerrymandering. Obviously it's in part because there are incumbency interests at stake, but a big part is also just that politicians are dumb

I'm with Schumer. Not sucking up to dictators is actually really important

A must-read post (this and the next one) on the state of prediction markets. Kalshi is run by fucking morons. (Polymarket is too btw)

Miserable game of football. A bit of excitement in the 4th quarter but too little too late.

Kelsey Piper Alex Godofsky the president is functionally just as much in charge of statutory law as congress is and every time people blame "congress" for the law i die inside.

I've written about this system before!

Dems seem to have great candidates in the slam dunk senate races (NC, GA) as well as some speculative senate races (OH, AK, NE?), but in the actual doable-but-tough senate races (ME, TX) we are stuck between a mediocre candidate and a bad one. Great job everyone

People are misunderstanding this. It’s bad because it’s a ploy to evade accountability by not tracking anything comparable to other firms or to some ground truth. It’s not because Gallup approval polls were valuable in and of themselves

Glad to see the FDA seeming to backtrack on this decision

Woke is so fucking back

Staff at NIAID have been instructed to remove the words “biodefense” and “pandemic preparedness” from the US institute’s web pages, according to e-mails Nature has obtained. Read more about the shift in direction for NIAID. go.nature.com/4kUhyff

Here's a take I'm not sure I believe: Democrats shouldn't focus on cost of living, where they have a temporary edge that is sure to switch back as soon as a Democrat has the presidency. Instead they should focus on Medicaid or whatever, where they can develop a more durable edge

Gotta wait for the Divided Argument podcast about this one

“But think of the uncertainty striking down tariffs creates” is a nice illustration of how divorced some of these Republican SCOTUS judges are from reality

Always interesting to see legal takes from people who have clearly never thought about law before every time there’s a major SCOTUS opinion

This was a really easy case and the fact that it took so long is just indicative of how hard it is for the conservatives to rule against Trump. As pointed out by everyone in the majority, the power to “regulate” does not include to tax. MQD, history, intent, etc. are just icing