David Atkins

@fandompulse and then they didn't bother to actually create a story plan for the "new stories" and nobody cared. Imagine that.

Former Walt Disney World VP Dan Cockerell on who killed the Tatooine-Themed Star Wars land: "We got a call one day. They said, ‘Well, we got some news for you all.’ And the Imagineering guys, they’ve heard this line many, many times during their careers. And I had never been through this.” "They said, ‘Well, yesterday Bob Iger met with Kathleen Kennedy, who as a lot people may know was sort of George Lucas’ protégé and headed up Lucasfilm. And they had a conversation. They had a meeting. And Kathleen Kennedy, her point of view was, there are way more Disney Star Wars stories ahead of us than behind us. So we really should think about do we want to build a Tatooine, and build what all the fifty-somethings remember Star Wars is or do we want to build something else which is going to appeal to all the upcoming generations who are going to know the new stories.' And that day Tatooine was killed at the Studios. And all of those concepts were put on a shelf and I’m sure they are sitting in a vault, and I’m sure they’re going be shown someday about what that land looked like and what the attractions were going to be." How disastrous was this decision?

It’s time to curtail the president’s pardon power, @DavidOAtkins argues. washingtonmonthly.com/2026/02/05/its…

It turns out that Bari Weiss is in fact as terrible and corrupted as everyone at Bluesky said she was.

@ClayDesert @katewillett sprawl is bad, though, in a lot of overlapping ways especially where water is limited. Densification isn't degrowth.

@DavidOAtkins @katewillett Confining housing to more density is nimby degrowth adjacent.

There is now software that allows landlords to set price by algorithm, working as a group to fix prices and strategically withhold vacant units to drive up rents. You would think Yimby’s would regard this an existential threat to a plan to drive down market rents.

Why aren't more Republicans breaking from Trump like Marjorie Taylor Greene? They're damned if they do and damned if they don't. But they should start at least considering their own post-Trump future if not the health of the country. My latest at Washington Monthly below:

Mark Kelly notably declines to endorse Chuck Schumer as the leader of Senate Dems going forward

The factional grifters will hate this, but the Mamdani-Spanberger-Sherrill axis actually suggests the outlines of a broad, emerging Dem coalition organized around both anti-Trump *and* affordability politics, not a party bitterly divided against itself.

Just coming back here from the better place for a bit to say that if you are still mostly posting here, your brain is cooking in a far-right bubble. Nazis do not speak for America. This place is not representative of reality.

What both sides of this debate are missing is that candidate positioning doesnt matter nearly as much as the media environment. You need both persuasion and mobilization, but neither prog nor mod messages can win on a tilted field. And this app is also a tilted field.

@TheWelcomeTeam Do you idiots genuinely believe that median marginal voters are responding to a party platform rather than a relentless hostile takeover of the media environment by far-right conservative activists?

How did Democrats go from winning in states like Florida, Ohio, and Iowa and having U.S. senators in North Dakota, Montana, Missouri, and West Virginia to pundits now warning of a permanent Republican majority in the Senate? Here's how: welcomestack.org/p/deciding-to-…

This story really makes it sounds like a Border Patrol agent tried to murder an anti-ICE protester in Chicago and DHS lied to cover for him chicago.suntimes.com/news/2025/10/0…

Moreover, Democrats can't go back to business as usual when we are back in office. You can't have one side governing for all when we are in power, then have the other side engaged in a cold civil war spoils system when they get the reins.

Trump is crippling the entire economy while giving bailouts to his foreign far-right friends. Then he is selectively giving domestic handouts to make up for the devastation--but only to his supporters while getting blue states. You can't run a united country this way.

@WanjiruNjoya @maddog301 @devil_n_details Not really an opinion. That one is a fact.

@DavidOAtkins @maddog301 @devil_n_details That's a very interesting opinion, thank you for sharing.

Immigrant academics now preach that Robert E. Lee was a traitor to America. "Gen. R.E. Lee was the son of a cavalry general in the American Revolution and the nephew of two signers of the Declaration of Independence. His wife was the great-granddaughter of Martha Washington."

@WanjiruNjoya @maddog301 @devil_n_details Virginia was engaged in treason against the United States of America in defense of murder and slavery. Everyone at the time got to choose because traitor states and the United States of America. Lee chose treason.

@maddog301 @DavidOAtkins @devil_n_details He took up arms in defense of Virginia.

@WanjiruNjoya @MinuteofZombie @devil_n_details no, but the thing is I don't *care* if flat-earthers from the Mises institute who value "heritage" over actions respect my opinion. You might as well be trying to cure the flu by balancing the Humours.

@DavidOAtkins @MinuteofZombie @devil_n_details No, nobody has to respect your opinions. I certainly don't.

@WanjiruNjoya @devil_n_details you know, conservatives used to make fun of liberal for moral relativism. Now we're just supposed to "respect your truth" or whatever. Nah.

@DavidOAtkins @devil_n_details You think they're wrong, and they think you're wrong.