cuteroid

benedict arnold was an outstanding general. at saratoga, bhe showed enormous courage leading the charge that broke through burgoyne's lines. but he was a vain and sensitive man, who felt that he had been badly treated by congress and the army. in april 1779, arnold persuaded washington to put him in charge of west point, the fort on the lower hudson. once there, he arranged to sell the fort to the british. the plot was discovered; arnold escaped and was made a general by the british, but they never trusted him, even after he moved his family to england.

papers intended for benedict arnold detailing the sale of west point to the british are found in a fellow traitor's boot. image

the 2026 vmas felt less like a celebration of where pop culture is going and more like proof that pop culture is increasingly living off its own past.

madonna dominated the night, snoop dogg hosted, nirvana got the video vanguard award, dolly parton was honored, and taylor swift became the most awarded artist in vma history.

for an awards show that was once supposed to tell you what was next, a lot of its biggest moments came from people and legacies we already knew.

maybe nostalgia isn’t interrupting pop culture anymore. maybe nostalgia is pop culture. image

the bandwagon effect is our tendency to believe, like, or do something partly because a lot of other people already are.

a restaurant has an hour long line? suddenly it must be amazing.

a random song is everywhere for three days? somehow you know the chorus.

sometimes popularity is the result of something being good. sometimes popularity is the reason we decide it’s good.

riverside, illinois is one of those places that feels intentionally different because it literally was.

it was planned in 1869 by frederick law olmsted and calvert vaux, the same team behind central park, with curved streets, lots of trees and green space, and the des plaines river worked into the design instead of the usual street grid.

kind of wild that a suburb designed more than 150 years ago can still feel more thoughtfully planned than a lot of places built today.

the idea that capitalism can exist, but it should not be allowed to decide everything.

markets still function, private companies still make profit, and people can still become rich. the difference is that healthcare, education, labor protections, unemployment support, pensions, and other basic parts of life are treated less like luxuries and more like social guarantees.

historically, social democracy grew out of the socialist movement, but modern social democrats generally try to reduce inequality through elections, regulation, taxation, unions, and the welfare state rather than abolishing capitalism altogether.

the u.s. calls itself a democracy, but in practice it’s more like a system that just looks like one on paper.

first off, the u.s. is not a true multi-party system. it’s structured to push everything into two poles: democrats and republicans. technically there are other parties, like the green party, libertarians, and a few others, but the system is designed so they can’t really compete.

why? because the u.s. uses a “winner-takes-all” voting system. whoever gets the most votes in a state wins all the representation, and everyone else gets nothing. so if a candidate gets 49% of the vote, they get zero representation. smaller parties with 2 or 3% of the vote get completely shut out. over time, voters learn that voting for anyone besides the two big parties is basically wasting their vote. so even if someone likes what the green party stands for, they’ll think “if i vote green, it’ll only help republicans win.” tactical voting becomes the norm: “i can’t pick what i really want, but at least i can try to block what i really don’t want.” this is why third parties get called “spoilers.”

then there’s money. running for office in the u.s. costs millions. the big parties can easily tap into corporate money. the media focuses only on the two big parties, and third parties barely get heard. parties that aren’t seen as having a shot get treated like a joke.

the most blatant example of the system’s flaws is the electoral college. americans don’t elect their president by popular vote. they vote for electors, and those electors decide. with 538 total electors, a candidate needs 270 to win. this system makes it possible for someone to lose the popular vote by millions and still become president. it’s happened more than once: in 2000, al gore got about 540,000 more votes than bush and still lost. in 2016, hillary clinton got around 3 million more votes than trump and still lost. so “one person, one vote” isn’t really a thing here. the system also forces candidates to only campaign in swing states. voters in places like california or texas basically get ignored.

now add lobbying. the 2010 citizens united supreme court ruling made things even worse. it said that spending money on elections is a form of free speech. so now corporations, unions, and the super-rich can pour unlimited money into “super pacs” that run ads and shape public opinion. politicians can’t really win without tapping into this money. and after the election, these donors have huge influence on what laws get passed. ordinary people have little voice compared to big donors.

so how do americans still think they live in a democracy? because at this point “democracy” is more of a brand than a real system. like “freedom” or “justice” or “peacekeeping.” it’s a label people have been taught to be proud of since childhood. public schools teach that the u.s. system is unique and the freest in the world. the media repeats this constantly: “look at china, look at russia.” they never say “look at switzerland or norway.” so americans grow up believing “sure, our system has flaws, but it’s still the best.”

for most people here, democracy means: do we have elections? yes. can i vote? yes. can i criticize the government? usually, yes. so that must mean it’s a democracy. but things like fair representation, media monopolies, and the influence of money barely register for most people. criticizing the system feels like criticizing america itself, and people get defensive. it’s less about what democracy actually is and more about what it symbolizes. for many americans, democracy isn’t a functioning system, it’s part of their national identity.

in american politics, aoc is probably one of the clearest examples of how the term “sjw” changed meaning.

her actual politics are much broader than culture war stuff. she campaigns on wages, housing, healthcare, climate, unions, immigration, and corporate power. she also came out of grassroots organizing and defeated a senior democratic incumbent in 2018.

but online, critics often flatten all of that into one label.

“sjw.”

that is what makes the term interesting politically.

it can describe a real style of activism, but it can also work as a shortcut that turns a whole political program into a stereotype.

sometimes the label tells you less about the politician than it does about the person using it.

latin for “after this, therefore because of this.”

the mistake of assuming that because something happened after something else, the first thing must have caused it.

many middle and upper-class families knew little about immigrants problems. jacob riis a danish immigrant-and a photographer and journalist-exposed the suffering experienced by many immigrants. riis's work, how the other half lives, published in 1890, helped people realize that government action was necessary to improve conditions in city slums. image

justice carried out where courts are weak, distant, or simply ignored.

in the american frontier, that could mean vigilantes, posses, public punishment, or an entire town deciding guilt before any judge ever saw the case.

the romantic version is simple people creating order where government could not.

the darker version is equally simple.

when the crowd becomes the court, justice can turn into revenge very quickly.

born in a log cabin in kentucky in 1809, raised in poverty, and almost entirely self-educated, abraham lincoln became a successful lawyer in springfield, illinois, where he married mary todd. lincoln came to the presidency with little experience-a few years in the illinois legislature and one term in congress. but he had a remarkable gift for helping people see the war as a test of popular government, "of the people, by the people, and for the people" (gettysburg address).

after his assassination in 1865, lincoln came to be seen as a leader of nearly mythic proportions-a towering, legendary figure who had saved democracy and freed the slaves.

(see: emancipation proclamation)

a goddess who somehow makes being a redneck look good.

nike shares have lost about 76% of their value over the past five years.

the company’s market value has fallen from around $264 billion to roughly $57 billion.

the main reasons seem to be a flawed direct to consumer strategy, a lack of innovation, the rise of competitors like hoka and on running, weakness in china, and heavy discounting caused by excess inventory.

management has admitted to some of those strategic mistakes and is trying to rebuild relationships with traditional wholesale partners, put more emphasis on product innovation, and clean up inventory.

the problem is that the market seems to expect the recovery to take a long time.

personally, my reason for moving away from nike is much simpler: comfort, design issues, and declining product quality.

the last four pairs i bought all had problems.

when a company this big is selling shoes that literally squeak with every step, something has gone seriously wrong.

right now, this is probably the best ai video model on the market for cinematic output.

the biggest difference is how well it can work with reference material. a lot of other video models still struggle with that, but seedance 2.5 handles it well enough that the gap suddenly feels pretty big.

people are basically watching what this model can do with their mouths open.

and with bytedance behind it, the company that owns tiktok, it also has serious money and infrastructure behind the technology.

if it keeps improving at this pace, advertising is going to feel it first, and the film industry probably will too.

according to aristotle, one swallow does not make a summer.