I run a newsletter/podcast called Volts about clean energy & politics. Subscribe & join the community at volts.wtf!
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2026-10-28T05:32:23Z Event JSON
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Last Notes npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts The US periodically murders, without trial, people in boats that it has deemed to be involved in drug smuggling. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Lefties care about expelling heretics way more than they care about winning. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Promising! npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts The political media is visibly chafing at the current situation, where Republicans are glaringly awful, fucking everything up, running deviant candidates everyone hates, and Dems are just being normal & winning. The force is out of balance. They are viscerally eager to go after Dems about something. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts This has been the fundamental mechanism through which political media operates my entire life. The right makes a bunch of noise about a fake scandal, the mainstream media "covers the controversy," & normie voters get the vague impression that Dems are constantly involved in scandal. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Homelessness is a solved problem. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts "The US conservative movement is engaged in a nationwide effort to reverse child-labor laws and reinstitute child labor" sounds like a crazy leftie conspiracy theory, but ... yeah. It's real. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts What a thought. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts One widely loathed, ketamine-addicted, white-supremacist billionaire can single-handedly keep a failing political party afloat, through the brute force of money. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Republicans, man, I dunno. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts I consider myself a fairly compassionate & empathetic person, but the more I read about people in this particular demographic -- wealthy Gen X white men radicalized by social media & group chats -- the more I loathe them. I understand them *too well* to sympathize. They are contemptible & weak. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Since 2020, electricity bills have risen 34% for customers of investor-owned utilities, but only 19% for customers of publicly owned utilities. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Just wild that this is the explicit message. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts The more combative Dems get, the more of this they will run into. It will be a coordinated wave of elite opinion, scolding them, tamping them down. The fight strategy *only* works if they are willing to bull their way through it, blow it off, mock it. (Their history does not raise one's hopes.) npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Today on Volts: the new federal permitting bill is 417 pages long. Some people love it, some hate it, some are just confused. With Daniel Palken, I methodically walk through why it's happening, what exactly is in it, & the political rationale for doing it now. This one is epic & fairly technical. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Well we certainly got here faster than I expected. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Holy shit. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts The press will do stories on Republican sex creeps, but it will never, ever point out -- much less make an ongoing narrative out of -- the fact that the GOP has been *ridden* with sex creeps for decades. You have to be blind not to see the pattern. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Every NextDoor post sounds like a parody of a NextDoor post. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Remarkable: an industry that is dying because it can't compete in the market writes a Republican president, asking him to keep the industry alive by brute force, and he says, ok. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts The administration has found yet another way to fuck with solar power. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts I love this paper so much. If I had my way every single journalist, pundit, analyst, and politician in the US would read it & then read it again. I want to quote all of it. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Class solidarity. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Republicans made climate partisan. Republicans are keeping climate partisan. The exact words & tone that people who give a shit about reality use to talk about climate are not the reason climate is partisan. Using different words will not make climate less partisan. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Oooh, Copper has released the 2.0 version of Charlie, its electric induction range. It now can plug into a normal 120V outlet! Bigger battery, more power. NYC is gonna buy a bunch of these for public housing, help bring the cost down. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts I think it's under-appreciated how much the threat of physical violence by Trump supporters is an undercurrent in our politics, keeping a lot of people who might otherwise speak out quiet. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Always a good time to remind ourselves that the US Confederacy was, even judged in historical context, evil -- a pathetic, morally repellant movement led by some the smarmiest narcissists ever known. It had no redeeming features & should forever be regarded with disgust & contempt. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts If I were emperor for a day, one change I'd make: npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts This seems absurdly simple, but: Republicans talk *all the time* about how Democrats are bad. Not this or that individual Democrat, but the party, the ideology, the very idea of Democrats. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Having already fucked up wind and solar, Trump is now fucking up batteries. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Distributed solar power, the most potent tool available for bottom-up economic development & empowerment, is racing across Africa. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts I think I can say categorically: there is not a single prominent right-wing media figure, including many that regularly campaign with & for Republican candidates, who has not said worse things than the worst thing Hasan Piker has ever said on at least a weekly basis. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Professional chefs are increasingly realizing that induction cooktops are superior to gas ranges, for a million reasons, but that won't stop people from herding into the comments with all the old "but mah wok!" and "but mah char!" shibboleths. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts All the e-biking I did in Vancouver & Victoria got me psyched up about possibly getting an e-bike, so I started googling around "how to choose an e-bike" and my god I will never escape this rabbit hole. There's too much internet these days. How does anyone actually make this decision? npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts My work-from-home life, summarized in one image. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Headline of the day. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Did you catch that the Trumpies want to permanently end appliance efficiency standards? They have saved US consumers billions of dollars over the years, but they are a mild inconvenience to the makers of less efficient appliances, so. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts I hope everyone caught this Lancet study confirming that Elon Musk & DOGE are responsible for genocidal levels of suffering & death. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts "The proposed system would capture heat from subway platforms, store it underground and redirect it to nearby municipal buildings during colder months." npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Been getting invites for Climate Week and feel obliged to share what is evidently a minority opinion: npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts There is basically no distinction left between the oil companies & the administration. The casual corruption here is just breathtaking. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts I guess we're all supposed to just accept the notion that the right-wingers involved in this debate *actually support* viewpoint diversity, but history suggests that the minute they get power, they will expel or suppress anyone different. The administration is doing it *as we speak*. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Climate change is going to fuck up our infrastructure in ways that we can't even imagine in advance -- ways that are not captured in all the faux-precise climate-damage models. We were really stupid to run this uncontrolled, irreversible experiment. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Redneck racists?! In *Texas* you say?! npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Today on Volts: in 2008, physics professor Ramón Méndez Galain was made energy minister of Uruguay. Over the next 7 years, he led the country to a 98% carbon-free electricity system. With his nonprofit, Ivy, he's now attempting to export the model to other countries in the global South. We discuss. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Just weighing in from vacation to note the obvious: Ossoff's use of "Natalie" in that address was a brilliant way to play the attention economy. It works *because* it drew controversy -- by drawing controversy, it drew eyeballs & ears to a story Trump doesn't want in the news. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts China is going all-in on electric freight trucks. 1/4 trucks sold in China in 2025 was electric. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Solar getting more efficient all the time. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts I know you're not allowed to say this during the current debate, but the reason the left dominates academics, art, comedy, and music is that the right has stupid, discredited ideas, they're not funny, and dull resentment does not make for good art. No grand conspiracy required. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts This is unfathomably stupid, petty, & counterproductive, even to the administration's own stated goals. Hundreds of hours of good-faith expert work, vaporized. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts The Trump administration does not want Puerto Rico to have more distributed solar power to build resilience against blackouts. Assholes. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts I think what we're seeing around the internet right now, vis a vis AOC & her ex-boyfriend & her eggs, is just a tiny, tiny, tiny sliver of the absolute madness that will break out if she runs for president. No matter how f'ing weird you think people will be about it, they will be much, much weirder. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Not to beat up on Douthat even more, but I'll just say: it has never, in all of post-war American history, been more crystal clear exactly who your enemy should be. Never. If it's not obvious to you, you are morally & intellectually defective. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Abdul El-Sayed's main challenge in getting elected will be the naked islamophobia that is ubiquitous in both political parties, in the media, and in the electorate at large. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts In July, on ABC, CBS, and NBC, there were 194 segments on the extreme heat waves rolling across the US. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Trump's support for coal is showing results. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts jesusfuckingchrist npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Don't look now, but the world has now installed 3TW of solar. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts On Thursday, I'm talking with Ramón Mendez Galain, the guy who helped Uruguay decarbonize (see story below). npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Has any other Republican called for Miller to step down yet? npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts In happier news, it turns out that blueberries grown beneath solar panels turn out sweeter! 🫐 (via @[email protected] ) npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts In my halfass pursuit of fitness, I've been pondering getting one of those weighted vests. I walk my dogs 3-5 miles a day regardless, I might as well get a little more cardio/strength benefit out of it, right? npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts You say that hiring young people purely based on their ability to be obnoxious and provocative and racist enough to attract an online following might present some problems when the time comes to actually govern?! npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts However horrible you think the Tate brothers are, I promise, it's worse than that. It's insane that Dems aren't making a bigger deal of the GOP embracing these grotesque monsters. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Today on Volts: in lithium-ion batteries, the cathode has been evolving for 30 years, but the anode has remained stubbornly graphite. Now silicon anodes, which promise 5X the energy density & charging speeds, are finally reaching commercial viability. I talk with a silicon-anode pioneer. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Kinda wild that @[email protected] is the only person saying this clearly in a high-profile media outlet, but I'm so glad he is. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts I genuinely don't know what to do about this. In our diseased information environment, one MAGA-adjacent "influencer" can do more to shape public opinion than mountains of studies or facts. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts On Friday, I'm recording a podcast with two Idaho state legislators -- one R, one D -- about the set of bipartisan housing-reform bills passed in the state last session (with more on the docket for next session). We're going to dig into the bills & the coalition that supported them. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts This is morally monstrous behavior. These are ordinary, innocent people that Trump is condemning to suffering & death out of political vindictiveness. Every decent human being, regardless of political party, should condemn it. Where is the fucking *anger*? From the press? From civic leaders? Pols? npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Israel is giving Trump's former campaign manager millions of dollars to fill the internet with pro-Israel articles written by AI, not so that anyone will actually read them, but so that *LLMs will train on them* & regurgitate their perspective. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts One of the most interesting dynamics going on in energy world: as the need for storage duration creeps up, are li-ion (and na-ion) batteries going to keep up or will some threshold be crossed where either long-duration storage or clean-firm becomes more economical? npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Every Republican who passively watches on as the president loses his mind in public deserves to be loudly & repeatedly condemned in public. Everyone has decided that Republicans don't give a shit so it's not worth stating the obvious, but it *is* worth stating the obvious. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts It's got something to do with "familiarity breeds contempt." The sheer brash lawlessness of Republicans strikes them as some exogenous, alien phenomenon, like the weather, whereas Democrats' sins feel closer to home— endogenous, something that implicates them somehow. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts The US press *covers* Trump, I'm not saying they don't. But you can tell when they *care*, when they are genuinely *angry*. They were furious about Biden & Dems constantly. You could feel the umbrage. They don't get angry about Trump. He doesn't seem to offend their sensibilities the same way. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts I don't know why these two particular episodes (out of so many) stick out in my memory, but: the Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan & Claudine Gay "plagiarism" "scandal." npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Imagine admitting this in public. This guy's bio says he's an "investor" and a "financial philosopher." npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts As energy bills rise, the US DOE deletes money-saving energy efficiency tips from its website. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts My main wish for politics is that people would spend less time fighting people who aren't the fascists literally destroying the country as we speak and more time fighting the fascists who are literally destroying the country as we speak. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts This is the real fruit of the 60-year RW propaganda war against Democrats & RW domination of media: no matter how bad & obviously a Republican fucks up, no matter how low their approval dips, people still don't like the other party, the one that keeps repairing the country after GOP fuckups. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts As I keep saying, the big winner of the Iran War is China. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Virtually every country in the world *except* for the US is responding to the Iran War in a rational way -- ie, trying to reduce their reliance in imported fossil fuels. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts We didn't previously integrate wildfire-smoke costs into the supposed cost of climate change for the US, and it turns out to be bigger than all those other costs combined. Oops! Gosh I wonder if we're underestimating anything else. Probably shoulda done something about this. Ah well. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts I wonder where people get their optimism that a Democratic establishment that is currently devoting most of its energy to slandering & destroying leftist challengers is going to pivot, in the event of a big Dem victory, to imposing serious accountability on Republicans. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts An amazing quote from Lindsey Graham in this Atlantic story. It really captures an essential truth about politics that too few people ever really come to terms with. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Read/listen all about how a "land value tax" can discourage land speculation & encourage dense building on the highest value land, ie, land near urban cores. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts The thing is, doing sports like Norway (focused on fun, companionship, team spirit) rather than the US (focused on intensity, suffering, competition, which individual is "best") isn't just healthier & more pro-social, it produces *better athletes*. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts This is, of course, a self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating cycle that has the side effect of immunizing Republicans from accountability. They *know* they won't get the Platner treatment. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Let plug-in solar cook! It's perfectly safe! npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts There's a revolution happening in urban transportation across the world. It's not EVs, not even autonomous EVs. It's got nothing to do with AI. No tech mogul is getting rich off it. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts "Epstein got away with rape because people get away with rape. Far more people get away with rape than get punished for it. This is a hideous and inconvenient fact." npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts I hear people say this all the time and it gives me FOMO but I just honest-to-god can't think of an example that's relevant to me. What plugins? What automations? What are they doing? Can you gimme an example? npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts People are always whining about the "system costs" you’re supposed to add to the price of solar, but, uh ... npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts 🧵 One feature of a social media world -- or more broadly, an information environment where anyone/everyone has a microphone -- is that, if you focus in on any particular ideological or policy or shared interest group, you can find obnoxious people making bad arguments. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Even at that early age, before I could fully articulate it, it just seemed so *obvious* to me: once you decide that some people are worth basic moral consideration & some aren't, you've cracked the door to every injustice & barbarism in human history. It all starts there. That's the line! npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Discussing the death penalty with other people in my early teens was my first hint at something that would become very very obvious later: my instincts & values are not widely shared. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts If you doubt, lots of evidence here: npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts In the US as in every western democracy, the non-college whites are the ones who want blood-and-soil nationalism & authoritarianism. The founding precepts of the US, as laid out in the Declaration of Independence, have always been an elite project. That fact is awkward for all factions so we 🤫 npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts There's a simple fact that no one in US politics is allowed to acknowledge publicly: the demographics most likely to play the role of Real Americans in the elite imagination are the least likely to support the core American value of pluralism. The most American are the least American. npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts Cars & sprawl consume more fossil fuels, produce more pollution, drive more climate change, occupy more productive land, destroy more communities, drive up more healthcare costs, and generate more antisocial politics than ... npub1vczptl8zuf39qmwgf74qay9mkcfsr3nwqt7sr5ancftntsu4aerqww53eu David Roberts This is the most purely anti-American thing I've ever heard a politician say, but the media is too obsessed with 3 DSA candidates winning local elections in NY to pay any attention I guess.