Thor Benson (@thorbenson.bsky.social)

@gelliottmorris.com Oct 11, 2026, 12:01 PMReposted by @thorbenson.bsky.social

Charlie Cook says there's no "blue wave" but a "red undertow." I think he's wrong about this. The Dem Party and candidates are currently more popular across the board than the Republican Party and candidates. And Ds are in better shape than 2018

www.gelliottmorris.com/p/2026-10-11...

@thorbenson.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 4:07 PM

Lollll

@thorbenson.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 3:41 PM

MessAIh

@donmoyn.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 3:24 PMReposted by @thorbenson.bsky.social

This is what competitive authoritarianism looks like - we still have elections, but under conditions that are not equal and not fair.

@thorbenson.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 3:22 PM

Has anyone called the Cybertruck a rolling dunce cap. I think that's what it is

@thorbenson.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 3:12 PM

I'm not having a debate in someone's replies but it wasn't just the protests. It was a lot of things

@thorbenson.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 3:08 PM

The two things I'm most looking forward to doing before the month is over are going to see the Musk documentary and voting early. I am a nerd

@thorbenson.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 2:50 PM

Mullin is just a dumb brute

@thorbenson.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 2:45 PM

I thought there were some concerning trends regarding speech between like 2014 and 2016, but I feel like a lot of those trends went away and people pretended they didn't

@thorbenson.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 2:39 PM

Now you have to do a media tour about how you're being silenced

@carlquintanilla.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 2:32 PMReposted by @thorbenson.bsky.social

“.. Since the final F-150 Lightning rolled off the assembly line in December, it has become one of the most coveted cars in America ..”

@bloomberg.com $F
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

@thorbenson.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 2:26 PM

You don't really have to make an obscure legal argument here. A lot of this stuff is plainly impeachable

@thorbenson.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 2:24 PM

There are many offenses, but even if you wanted to play it safe, "bribery" is specifically named in the Constitution and that's obviously happening

@adamserwer.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 1:45 PMReposted by @thorbenson.bsky.social

After years of championing "free speech," Texas lawmakers have enabled a dramatic rise of censorship in Texas universities, banning concepts, canceling courses and closing departments seen as "woke," and even using AI bots as censors. All in the name of freedom. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...

In other professors’ syllabi, the bot flagged the Pulitzer Prize–winning play Angels in America by Tony Kushner, essays by the Mexican American MacArthur genius grant recipient Sandra Cisneros, and materials related to a class about the Holocaust (that professor was told to drop material regarding Nazi persecution of LGBTQ people).

Putting aside the ideological slant of the new rules, the bot, like many large language models, seems to “hallucinate,” or make mistakes. The AAUP lawsuit lists texts banned for their “sex-based ecofeminist framework” and “gendered ecofeminist frameworks.” These phrases might sound persuasively like academese, but the academics behind the lawsuit had never heard of them; these concepts “do not exist,” the complaint says. Matthew Pehl, a history professor at Tech, told me that he knew several people who’d received reports from the system that were “plainly written by an AI that had hallucinated content or confused content from one class to another.”

@thorbenson.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 1:53 PM

He should retire and return to the enchanted forest

@thorbenson.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 4:22 AM

Ironic considering Trump is dismantling our national parks

@kenjennings.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 4:15 AMReposted by @thorbenson.bsky.social

(waggling my eyebrows sexily at Washington State and California)

Jake Grumbach@jakemgrumbach.bsky.socialOct 9, 2026, 4:54 PM

New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854

Taxing Entrepreneurial Wealth: Evidence from
Norway, 2021-2025
Marius A. K. Ring
WORKING PAPER 35854|
DOl 10.3386/w35854
ISSUE DATE October 2026
Whether imposing higher taxes on business owners adversely affects business activity by constraining investment and inducing capitalist flight is a central question in the ongoing debate on how to tax the ultra wealthy. To shed new light, I exploit a series of related Norwegian reforms during 2021-2024 that increased dividend tax rates, removed migration-related capital gains tax loopholes, and nearly doubled the effective marginal tax rate on business wealth. These reforms spurred international debate and, allegedly, an "exodus" of Norwegian billionaires (Financial Times,
2023). While I document clear effects on migration, these responses are concentrated among the top 0.1% of the wealth distribution and mostly confined to 2022 and 2023. My results indicate that at most 100 individuals left due to the reforms. I find no evidence of significant outmigration or reduced inflows of startup founders or inventors. I estimate that absent any outmigration, wealth tax revenues would have increased by 75% from 2021 to 2024. Reform-driven outmigration lowers the revenue gain to 71.5%. My findings further show that outmigrating owners' firms remain economically active and do not reduce investment. In a broader set of analyses, I examine whether business outcomes are affected, regardless of whether owners outmigrate, since firms may reduce investment both due to liquidity constraints or distortions to owners' savings decisions. I compare firms owned by Norwegian individuals subject to the wealth tax with firms owned by foreigners and other tax-exempt entities. By merging historical ownership data from Orbis with the Norwegian shareholder register, I perform these analyses on both Norwegian and foreign-domiciled firms.
Across settings, I find no evidence that Norwegian-owned firms pay out more dividends or invest less after the reforms,…

@chrisgeidner.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 4:08 AMReposted by @thorbenson.bsky.social

BREAKING: In responding to one of two lawsuits challenging the legality of the Trump-praising DHS propaganda ads, DOJ tonight does not defend the ads on the merits — instead arguing that the ads are set to end on Sunday, so there will be no irreparable harm. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

PRELIMINARY STATEMENT
Plaintiffs' motion should be denied because the alleged improper final agency action of which they are complaining "run[ning] partisan political ads, funded by U.S. taxpayers," Plaintiffs' Brief in Support of Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order and Section 705 Stay (Pls. Br.") (ECF No. 26) at 1-will not continue past tomorrow, the date on which briefing on their motion for a TRO will close. As such, Plaintiffs cannot demonstrate that a TRO is necessary to prevent imminent irreparable harm to them from Defendants' future conduct.

@thorbenson.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 4:11 AM

It's only fair