Ron DeSantis does not wear women's suits.

Deepfakes could lead people to mistakenly believe that Ron DeSantis was the star of the beloved NBC sitcom “The Office” https://t.co/l1hUOqPBPY

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 27, 2023

"There are all kinds of things you can do to develop and retain [a blog] audience... but the single most important thing you can do is post regularly and never stop...."

"[The demand for content] is so insatiable that there is currently no real economic punishment for content overproduction. You will almost never lose money, followers, attention, or reach simply from posting too much. It’s this last part that is often most difficult for writers to accept.... Before they post, therefore, many writers mentally calculate: Is this post 'good enough,' or does it dilute the overall quality of my work, alienate my audience, etc.? But [WaPo's Matt] Yglesias profile’s very existence reminds us of an important rule of thumb for navigating the content economy in the 21st century: Under the present regime, there is no real downside risk to posting.... Even the most anodyne, mediocre writing fulfills the requirement of regularity. (What is the 'Wayne Gretzky' quote? 'You miss 100 percent of the audience conversion opportunities you don’t take'?)... What do the top text-based content-creation entrepreneurs of our time have in common? Logorrhea.... It’s easy to see why writers reared in the hothouse reputational marketplace of Twitter are desperate to avoid the shame of negative attention. But... people forget, or move on, or don’t really care.... Feeling shame that prevents you from doing or saying inappropriate things is maybe a useful way to navigate complex moral-social arrangements, but fearing shame that prevents you from adhering to the first commandment of blogging ('post frequently and regularly') is counterproductive. As Yglesias says, it's the best time there’s ever been to be somebody who can write something coherent quickly. Put things out. Let people yell at you. Write again the next day."

Writes Max Read in "Matt Yglesias and the secret of blogging/How to be a successful content entrepreneur" (Substack)(riffing on the WaPo profile of Yglesias).

Max Read doesn't mention artificial intelligence, but if his idea of successful blogging is right, then bloggers can set their blogs to automatically generate endless posts. And that's why he can't be right. But by his own terms, he doesn't need to be right. He just needs to load in more words words words. 

I'm on record not being able to detect sarcasm in Matt Yglesias, so I'll just give you this plain:

It was smart of Trump to repeal the Obama-era prohibition on saying “Merry Christmas” and I note that at this point even the libs have surrendered in the War on Christmas, which was definitely a real thing.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 25, 2022

Impossible things before breakfast.

It’s too bad Twitter ceased to exist several weeks ago when those layoffs happened and everyone shifted to Mastodon; I used to like posting there.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 5, 2022

He's writing in a place he asserts doesn't exist. 

He's also writing badly: "... everyone shifted to Mastodon; I used to like posting there." Don't write it like that unless "there" means Mastodon. You're writing one damned sentence and I have to do the editing work in my head.

You know, if he'd given a link, I'd have checked out his writing on Mastodon. I even tried googling his name and Mastodon, and I couldn't find it. I found the — a? — Mastodon site and searched for his name and got 4 links. I clicked on all 4 and found no content.

Somehow "everyone" is there, but I see no one.

UPDATE: Commenters are telling me it's sarcasm. I don't know why I wasn't more attuned to the kudzu of the internet.

"... the theory that depolarizing opinion on electric cars by making Musk a right-wing culture war hero helps Tesla?"

doesn't this cut against the theory that depolarizing opinion on electric cars by making Musk a right-wing culture war hero helps Tesla?

— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) November 19, 2022

Matt Yglesias wants process rights to vary depending on the substance. At least he admits it.

We should strive to achieve some genuine views about process and legitimate tactics, but it’s hard to completely divorce them — you’d want to say extreme measures are legitimate to defend fundamental liberties, but then which causes are the fundamental liberties?

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) February 19, 2022

"I don’t think many on the left are actually super enthusiastic about these diversity trainings, but the general sense is also that only a bitter crank would actually complain about them."

"But there is real evidence that they are at least sometimes making things worse, which strikes me as a big deal. For example, Michelle Duguid and Melissa Thomas-Hunt find that when you tell people that stereotyping is widespread, they stereotype more. This suggests to me that a very underrated step toward progress would be to eliminate the judicial and legal standards that suggest diversity training has litigation-protective effects...."

From "How to be an anti-racist/Diversity training doesn't work — here's some stuff that does" by Matt Yglesias (Slow Boring).

What people are actually reading...

The NYT, displaying editorial judgment, has plastered their home page with Afghanistan news.

But what people are actually reading is Maureen Dowd trolling, talking shit about Lindsey Graham, some art story, and Covid maps. pic.twitter.com/RvFBlsZeCh

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) August 15, 2021

"What’s fascinating is that Fox is shifting harder right to recapture the audience it lost to OAN/Newsmax during the Stop The Steal era but they’re not actually booking Trump..."

"... to appear on their air. The conservative movement has deplatformed Trump, but it’s more convenient for them to pretend that Twitter did it and it would somehow be impossible for him to communicate through other media." 

Tweets Matt Yglesias.

Missing piece of info: How do you know the Fox hasn't tried to book him? Since Trump hasn't done any interviews since leaving office — correct me if I'm wrong — the most rational inference is that Trump is declining to do interviews. 

Peel away the assertions about Fox, and Yglesias is saying something about Trump: He's not completely deplatformed. He can't do Twitter, but he could submit to interviews. You're not that censored if you can still go on somebody else's show to try to get your message our.

But Trump has lost his preferred mode of communication, a form that allowed him to speak directly to everyone who chose to open the channel. That's a tremendous loss of freedom of expression for him and for all of us who wanted to hear whatever it was he saw fit to type out. But Yglesias seems to think complaints about that loss are exaggerated, because some news outlet could or should give him a slot of their time and structure him with their questions, interruptions, and framing.

Which reminds me: When in the last year has any news media outlet subjected Joe Biden to a rigorous interview? 

"If you’re comfortable saying that it’s fine for politicians to be politically pragmatic in their approach to alcohol regulation, but that guns..."

"... are such a transcendent question of conscience that you can’t stomach it, I think you should examine where that’s coming from. I suspect that you drink alcohol yourself and that alcohol consumption is common in your social circle and in fact it’s woven into the rituals of communal life. And I can relate! That’s me too. Indeed a lot of people like me don’t realize that drinking is much less common among working class people. The point is that guns are just like this for a lot of other people. And while the centrality of booze and guns to people’s social and communal lives is not great for public health, basically everyone understands that with regard to alcohol you have to work within the confines of political reality. And guns fundamentally are just not different from that." 

Writes Matt Yglesias in "National Democrats' misguided re-embrace of gun control/It costs votes and doesn't produce any gun control" (Slow Boring). 

He links to "Drinking Highest Among Educated, Upper-Income Americans" (Gallup, 2015): "Americans of higher socio-economic status... are more likely to participate in activities that may involve drinking such as dining out at restaurants, going on vacation or socializing with coworkers...."

I wonder how Yglesias is doing with this new project. He's put up a very long article, but some of that length is verbosity — really bad verbosity. That second-to-last sentence, above, needlessly trips up the reader: "And while the centrality of booze and guns to people’s social and communal lives is not great for public health, basically everyone understands that with regard to alcohol you have to work within the confines of political reality."  I got confused by "is not great." If the "centrality" "is not great," it's supposed to mean the "centrality" is harmful, but it could also mean the "centrality" is not a major factor or not really all that central. And "centrality" is a rather silly subject for that sentence. 

"[T]here is a lot of demand for me to address the situation at Vox in detail or to assimilate my personal story into a larger narrative about 'wokeness' or the culture wars."

"Personally I’m not a huge fan of navel-gazing. So I’ll just say that my personal interest in reclaiming my status as an independent, blog-like voice transcends any particular issues with any particular publication. I wanted to do this, not go find a different job, and I thank those of you who’ve joined me on this journey."

Matt Yglesias has a thing called "What's wrong with the media" at Slow Boring, his new place.

Are you a fan of navel-gazing? 

Navel-gazing or omphaloskepsis is the contemplation of one's navel as an aid to meditation. The word derives from the Ancient Greek words ὀμφᾰλός (omphalós, lit. 'navel') and σκέψῐς (sképsis, lit. 'viewing, examination, speculation'). Actual use of the practice as an aid to contemplation of basic principles of the cosmos and human nature is found in the practice of yoga or Hinduism and sometimes in the Eastern Orthodox Church. In yoga, the navel is the site of the manipura (also called nabhi) chakra, which yogis consider "a powerful chakra of the body".The monks of Mount Athos, Greece, were described as Omphalopsychians by J.G. Minningen, writing in the 1830s, who says they "...pretended or fancied that they experienced celestial joys when gazing on their umbilical region, in converse with the Deity". 

However, phrases such as "contemplating one's navel" or "navel-gazing" are frequently used, usually in jocular fashion, to refer to self-absorbed pursuits.

As long as Yglesias brought up wokeness, I just want to say that the jocular use of "navel-gazing" is a micro-aggression. You've got an unexamined premise that there is something backward about Hinduism (or the Greek Orthodox Church).

I see Matt Yglesias is doing a sunrise picture... but it's for politics, not, apparently, for any love of nature.

“I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.” pic.twitter.com/tKtzHmJ2gO

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 2, 2020

I've got 2 poetry posts this morning, and I thought Yglesias's quote might be another poem... Maya Angelou, perhaps? But, no, it's Benjamin Franklin:

On the last day of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin observed that he had often wondered whether the design on the president's chair depicted a rising or a setting sun. "Now at length," he remarked, "I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun."

It's okay to use nature metaphors in politics. Reagan has his "Morning in America." It's nice to see the optimism, even though, I assume, Yglesias's optimism is an expression of the belief that Biden will win. If Trump wins, it will be... I had the transitory glimmer of happiness believing I was looking upon a rising sun, but no, no, it was a setting sun and darkness has fallen upon us once again.

Ah, whatever. Here's the sunrise I saw this morning — witnessed and loved purely as a sunrise and not any sort of metaphor:

"Also, lol at the hair-splitting of: I don't want these writers to be canceled — I just want them to be stopped from getting published anywhere ever again! Reminds me of that old joke: 'We're not lost — we just don't know where we are!'"

Writes jaltcoh.

"Harris saying 'inflection point' seems like kind of a call-out to FiveThirtyEight readers, to be honest."

"We’re still waiting for the first vice presidential nominee who says 'regression analysis' on stage though."

Said Nate Silver at 11:03 PM in the FiveThirtyEight live-blog of the Democratic Party Convention last night.

A reader sent me there, because I too reacted strongly — though quite differently — to Kamala Harris's use of the phrase "inflection point." I'd seen a lot of news sites pulling that quote and, like Silver, pleased with it. But here's what I blogged at 7:55 this morning:

I'd like to see person-in-the-street interviews testing whether people even understand what it means to say we're at an "inflection point." I don't think I've ever used the phrase "inflection point" on this blog...  The literal meaning of "inflection" is bending. America is at the point where we are bending? But what is a bending "point"? I've heard of the breaking point. And one often speaks of bending as something that is done to avoid breaking. If we're bendable — and perhaps therefore not breakable — aren't we always bending? Is there some particular place for bending, and why is it now? Why are we at "an inflection point"? I have to infer that it means that we're at a point where if we stand rigid, we risk breaking. The next phrase is "The constant chaos leaves us adrift." We're "adrift" and "afraid" and "alone." And therefore it is time to bend....

"Inflection point" has a specific meaning in math, and that has led to its use in the business context... Politicians who believe that ordinary people hear "inflection point" as plain English are perhaps betraying an excessive alliance with business and finance.

Silver heard a "call-out" to himself as a highly trained statistics analyst — with a strong background in math and economics. I heard it in an emotional and literary way — with empathy for the less-well educated. I feel sympatico with this Matt Yglesias tweet (from yesterday morning, before Kamala said "inflection point"):

People go to college (good!) where they read books (good!) and learn things (good!) and as a result they start to use new words and phrases (good!) in new ways (good!) but when politicians are giving speeches they should remember most voters haven’t graduated from college.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) August 19, 2020

It's obvious to Glenn Greenwald that "the Letter was signed by frauds, eager to protect their own status."

1/ Regarding the apparent fact that the Letter’s organizer wanted to have me sign but the luminaries actually in control cancelled me (I was never asked), it’s been obvious from the start that the Letter was signed by frauds, eager to protect their own status, not the principles. https://t.co/HfeMi8Gtzd

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 18, 2020

He continues in a series of tweets:

2/ I’ve been defending these principles for decades, as a lawyer & journalist — **not** as a way of protecting honored elites from criticism, but by defending those with no power punished for their views: often by people like those who signed The Letter: [link to "GREATEST THREAT TO FREE SPEECH IN THE WEST: CRIMINALIZING ACTIVISM AGAINST ISRAELI OCCUPATION"]

3/ That large numbers of the Letter’s signatories don’t give the slightest shit about principles of free speech & discourse — many have been at the forefront of “cancelling” — but are only petulantly objecting because they now hear criticisms is obvious. Dozens of them are frauds

4/ All that said, that many of the Letter’s signatories are frauds does not impugn the principles they’re cynically invoking for their petty, self-absorbed interests. I devoted our show yesterday to this: it’s the marginalized that need these protections: [link to the video "Elites are Distorting the 'Cancel Culture' Crisis - System Update with Glenn Greenwald"]

Also, in that thread, Matt Yglesias responds:

I’ll just say I had nothing to do with deciding who was and wasn’t asked, had no idea who else was signing it, but think the obvious spirit of the enterprise was that they should welcome as many co-signers as possible.

Greenwald answers Yglesias:

I’m sure that’s true. TCW has been clear that he worked with a small handful of people — 4 in particular — to help spearhead the letter and I’m sure they’re the ones who played the key role (“outvoted” as he put it re: me). I’m almost sure I know who did it but won’t speculate.

Poya Pakzad asks:

I think Chatterton was being unclear about who did the voting. In that interview he said they were five ppl that did the reaching out to people. Were it those five people that out-voted you and didn't want to associate with you, or were it some of the signatories?

Greenwald answers:

Yeah, one was George Packer. He and I have had harsh criticism of each other’s work over the years. I’m sure it was stuff like that that drove it. But that’s kind of ironic, no? They were all proud of themselves, claiming they wanted to sign with those they disagree with.

"Okay, I did not sign THE LETTER when I was asked 9 days ago, because I could see in 90 seconds that it was fatuous, self-important drivel that would only troll the people it allegedly was trying to reach — and I said as much."

Tweeted Richard Kim, the enterprise director of HuffPo, quoted in "Artists and Writers Warn of an ‘Intolerant Climate.’ Reaction Is Swift. An open letter published by Harper’s, signed by luminaries including Margaret Atwood and Wynton Marsalis, argued for openness to 'opposing views.' The debate began immediately" (NYT). (Here's where we discussed the letter yesterday.)

From the NYT article:

[T]he letter... spearheaded by the writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, began taking shape about a month ago.... “We didn’t want to be seen as reacting to the protests we believe are in response to egregious abuses by the police... But for some time, there’s been a mood all of us have been quite concerned with.”

The trap.

It's a good trap because you can't see the trap. That's the point. Looks simple to you.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) July 7, 2020

By the way, Matt Yglesias was the specific person I was referencing when I wrote — in that last post — "Since before some of the signatories to this letter were born." Yglesias is 39.

ADDED: Did Matt Yglesias take his tweet down? The embedded material is only displaying one tweet now, instead of 3. But I happened to have a screen shot! Here's how the embed looked when I put up this post:

Room Rater gives Matt Yglesias a 6 out of 10 even though the background is an unmade bed.

This grading on a political curve is ridiculous:

Art. Window plus. Reframe. Someone woke up on the wrong side of the unmade bed. 2 point deduction. 6/10 @mattyglesias pic.twitter.com/xOfY90Cckj

— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) June 26, 2020

"No one looks at Trump and says 'He's like me.'"

I say, after reading this tweet out loud:

One thing I like about Pete Buttigieg is he seems the most similar to me, personally, not like some of these “identity politics” candidates out there.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) April 7, 2019

Meade says, "A lot of people look at Trump and say: same tribe." I always ask Meade before I use quotes from him here, and I myself was confused about why he said, "tribe." I thought, if I were fictionalizing this dialogue, I'd have Meade say something like: "Actually, strangely enough, a lot of people look at Trump and think he's like me." But Meade explains his use of "tribe." He's saying people look at Trump and recognize that he is one of us, one of our tribe, the American tribe, our people, our team.

"Engaged protesters were not able to block the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act or Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, but they did render both toxically unpopular."

"The resistance spurred an unprecedented level of interest in special elections, swinging seats across the country, and powered Democrats to sweeping wins in the 2018 midterms. And then it stopped... The resistance has demobilized.... A swirl of controversy about anti-Semitism and ties to Louis Farrakhan cast a shadow on key leaders of the official Women’s March organization in the months leading up to the third annual march.... [T]he controversies depressed turnout. Nancy Pelosi took over as speaker in early 2019, which left liberals less alarmed. But it also left resistance to Trump with a clear leader and focal point, and House Democrats do not appear to be particularly interested in grassroots resistance work.... One veteran operative who’s deeply involved in party-aligned work on corruption issues tells me he thinks congressional leaders have deliberately demobilized the resistance because they’re so afraid of the impeachment issue.... A vigorously contested presidential nomination is a healthy part of the political process. But throwing small-dollar contributions into a zero-sum struggle for the crown nine months in advance of the first primary balloting is an inherently low-value use of people’s money, to say nothing of their time and emotional energy....While candidates run against one another — and will likely continue running for a year or more — it falls to congressional leaders to provide a unifying intellectual and emotional orientation. Opposition to Trump is, easily, the most natural candidate for the job. But to tap into it, House Democrats need to remind the resistance that there are ways to fight Trump in the here and now, not just in 2020."

That's some interestingly ineffectual handwringing by Matt Yglesias, in "The demobilization of the resistance is a dangerous mistake/Remember when protest was the new brunch?" (Vox).

Isn't the resistance dangerous to the Democratic Party in the lead-up to the 2020 election? It's hard to imagine "a unifying intellectual and emotional orientation" coming from House Democrats and controlling the "resistance." I would assume the Democrats want the resistance demobilized.