Notices by JA Westenberg (daojoan@mastodon.social)

The "move fast and break things" era is over. "Move thoughtfully and fix things" is up.

If you want to know who has privilege, look for the people who are allowed to be catastrophically wrong in public without losing status.

There is no culture war. There is a resource war disguised as a vibe war to keep the internet busy while the extractive class finishes loading the truck.

The phrase ‘living wage’ itself concedes remarkable territory: we’re literally debating whether working full-time should be enough to earn survival.

The MAGA movement is an exercise in seizing the wrong end of the stick and using it to beat yourself to death.

If you’re still buying Tesla stock in 2025, you are knowingly backing a man who performed a Nazi salute, openly hates transgender people, tried to buy elections, supports eugenics and boosted the far-right AfD. You are either actively endorsing a white supremacist future, or profiteering off it.

Intellectual monocultures function exactly like agricultural ones: impressive yields in the short term, catastrophic collapse in the long term. See: the New York Times.

Calling the United States a developed nation seems increasingly inappropriate

Instead of confronting fascism, Thomas Friedman invented a whole new political identity based on... squints at notes... Google's self-driving car subsidiary.

You can't make this stuff up.

And nor should you.

My analysis of elite denial:
https://www.theindex.media/no-tom-friedman-robotaxis-wont-save-democracy/

If we approached climate policy with the same risk-mitigation framework we use for national defense, we’d have mobilized for a green transition decades ago. A 1% probability of foreign attack justifies trillions in spending, but a >90% probability of climate disaster doesn’t.

Conservatives: “Why is everyone so angry and divisive?”

Also conservatives: spent decades kicking minorities, workers, students, queers, and the poor

You lit the match. Now you’re mad there’s a little heat?

A system that can’t tell the difference between confidence and competence will eventually promote the most captivating liar.

We don’t live in late capitalism. We live in the awkward adolescence of something much worse, and nobody wants to name it.

The internet didn’t make us stupid. It made stupidity scalable.

“Put yourself in their shoes” assumes shoes fit universally. Real empathy is more like: “Acknowledge they’re wearing shoes made for feet unlike yours, walking paths you’ve never trodden.”

We've created a society where being confidently wrong pays better than being cautiously right. Is it any wonder we're drowning in bullshit merchants?

"I did my own research" = "I watched a YouTuber who confirmed my biases do it for me while I nodded along."

The only consistent thing about the right is projection.
If they accuse someone of it, they’re doing it.
If they say it’s you, it’s them.
If they fear it, they’re planning it.

The "marketplace of ideas" was always a flawed metaphor. Ideas don't compete on merit; they compete on memetic fitness—how easily they spread, how good they make believers feel, and how effectively they suppress competing ideas.

i was born in the comments section and i’ll die in the quote tweets.