Fish Stark

The ABC moderators are proving that the CNN moderators should never work in journalism again

Bills blurring church-state separation and sending public money to discriminatory religious schools are moving in states across the country. You can help stop them! No experience needed, we’ll train you on every step of the process. americanhumanist.org/advocatewithus

What some of the conversations on this site sound like

So, when it comes to evangelicalism in the United States, which tends to be a unifying religious idea in the US, there's been a real push in the last 10 years or so to replace the idea of "right and wrong" with "masculine and feminine." Have you ever heard the phrase "toxic

@MadelaineLucyH And the thing I hate most is the people who say these things are equivalent!

The thing I hate the MOST about the left is the culture of trying to punish good-faith people for not being off the deep end of academic language and in-group signalling. The thing I hate the MOST about the right is brutal violence, racism, rampant sexual abuse, oppression, paedophilia, and white supremacy

We are going on offense for empathy and I am having the time of my life doing it!

Ro Khanna has led on Epstein, Iran, and the West Bank. In doing so, he is far more in line with Democratic voters than those Dems who have hedged,

This had better be true

Here's the data about religious attendance from two of the "gold standard" surveys in the polling world. 18-29 year olds are 4 points more likely to never attend religious services than 30-49 year olds. 2-4 points less likely to be weekly attenders. No revival to be found.

@RachelBitecofer @valpyuk You understand, though, that you are operating in a political context where that is what many people mean when they say socialism, I assume? 40% of Americans want "socialism" but I guarantee you like 2% of them want to live in Cuba So why argue with people who don't exist?

@valpyuk That is not socialism 🙄

Just fucking no. Socialism kills individual freedom. There is a reason there’s no a single free country that’s communist or socialist. In fact, Stalin killed even more people than Hitler. Read some history. Utopias always end in tyranny.

American humanists are committed not to governments or nation-states, but to the safety and dignity of every human being. The Iranian people deserve peace, safety, and the right to self-determination - now, and always. (To be clear - we don’t support temporary wars, either.)

compelled to post this new yorker reject from years ago, for some reason

@baseballcrank @daveweigel He has never been in a genuinely competitive election. He was afraid to face Jerry Brown - and not that Brown was a slouch, but there will be multiple candidates on that debate stage more formidable than Jerry Brown at age 70.

I've seen him in drips & drabs for years, but my biggest exposure was the debate with DeSantis. Which featured a pattern that I think will be fatal to Newsom: he's such a people-pleaser that he agreed on live TV to keep the debate going, then his team (reportedly his wife) dragged him out of there during the commercial break because it was going poorly. I think if he's on a stage with some Democrats who come to fight, he'll go the way of TPaw.

Vance isn't charismatic, but (1) he's young & speaks in complete sentences, which we haven't had in a very long time & (2) if he's the nominee, he has at least a 50/50 shot that his opponent will be a weirdo, a creep, a lunatic, or hair gel incarnate.

@mcdermott Isn't that just @TheAthletic

My pitch for a The Cut for men.

In his newsletter The Rebooting, @bmorrissey and I go back-and-forth on Clavicular, legacy magazine titles alienating young male readers, how this helped fueled the manosphere, and why publishing needs a male version of The Cut. therebooting.com/p/mogging-main…

@HeatherOleson1 @CartoonsHateHer This was pretty good: -Efficient system so people willing to play by the rules don't have to wait years and criminals are kept out -Let undocumented immigrants earn their way to citizenship by paying a fine and learning English -Deport violent criminals -Crack down on employers

@CartoonsHateHer How do you think it should be enforced?

Free article! I address my actual political views (libbed out) and why, despite what some people suggest, I am not a Republican (but I also explain why people think I am sometimes.) Link in replies.

@mattyglesias I don't prefer Shaprio but I'd 100/100 take him over Newsom

@mattxiv Ah yes. Regular Guy Gavin Newsom knows what Normal People want

We Abandoned LGBT People In The 2024 Election And Lost. Here’s Why We Need To Do It Again.

@NateSilver538 OK, and normies hate it when you knock on their door to get them to vote, but they vote at higher rates when you do it anyway. What's your point?

One thing the normies are right about is that there's such a thing as "politicizing everything" and the people who do it are super annoying.

@NYBATs @AlecStapp For an individual kid, absolutely. For a teacher/classroom I would also agree small differences are more noise than signal. For an entire state? I don't buy that standardized test data tells us *nothing* about what's going on state-to-state in aggregate.

@fishstark @AlecStapp ALL standardized test data is flawed as most multiple choice responses are guesses. So extrapolating “better/worse” from a 1-3 point difference, not controlling for dozens of factors ranging from holdover rates to the weather on testing day, is unscientific yet highly politicized

This is a really astonishing claim: Students in Mississippi & Louisiana score higher on reading tests than students in California & New York despite spending way less money per pupil and having higher child poverty rates. Decided to double check the data because, if true, this should be alarming for blue state leaders. And yup, it checks out. Reading performance (NAEP 2024, Grade 4 reading, average scale score): Mississippi: 219 Louisiana: 216 New York: 215 California: 212 Child poverty (SAIPE; “estimated percent of people age 0–17 in poverty,” 2023): Louisiana: 25.2% Mississippi: 24.3% New York: 18.6% California: 15.0% Per-pupil spending (public K–12 “current expenditures per pupil,” FY2023, inflation-adjusted to FY2023 dollars) New York: $29,588 California: $18,568 Louisiana: $14,822 Mississippi: $12,238 It should be unacceptable to spend that much more taxpayer money while delivering worse results for students.

@mattyglesias This is an example of woke language that makes perfect sense. If you define someone who's paid their debt to society by their past criminality, few will hire them. Not having a job makes someone much more likely to re-offend. Reducing recidivism > owning the libs, Matt