bluesky got sports so it makes sense that we’d also get some “it’s time for some game theory” lunatics

April 06, 2026 - 04:07 UTC

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He deserves some pushback here but your characterization is not warranted or hepful
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there's a genre of take that boils down to "the reason trump is providing for his actions doesn't make sense, so there must be another secret reason that DOES make sense." it is always wrong.
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This. Yes, he has authoritarian impulses, but he’s not disciplined enough to carry it out.

He has been a bully his whole career. He only knows how to bully. Of course he’s going to ratchet up his threats.

But he’s not playing 4D chess.
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They have to convince themselves he’s some brilliant machiavellian manipulator because the alternative is admitting they’ve been losing at chess to a dog for a decade now.
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They’re unfamiliar with Occam’s razor.
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i’m in awe of the type of brain that would watch trump do what he’s been doing for a decade and still try to cram his actions into the rational actor framework
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As always, the Simpsons shows the way.

youtu.be/yR1QL7CJltQ?si=X4-FPda1Hbrl872W
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I keep saying it: Trump doesn't play 5D chess, he plays 1D chess and chews on the pieces. He lies and is corrupt and everything but nothing he does is particularily complex.

So many people here act like a guy who rarely manages to
finish a sentence without drifting off is some genius super villain
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There is an entire class of pundits and political operatives who keep making up fantasy scenarios about Trump's secret plans because they're in denial that they, or people like them (the savvy politics knowers) lost to an idiot
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Stephen Miller is a devious little fuck, though
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Genuinely don’t understand why so many folks still don’t want to come to terms with the fact that yes, Donald Trump is indeed that fucking stupid.
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These are not very bright guys... and things got out of hand.
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Trump is a genius orchestrating multiple distractions from the Epstein files, which is why *checks notes* he campaigned on making the files public and then awkwardly pulled a 180 alienating several of his strongest supporters in Congress.
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I generally go with "he's a dumb lazy asshole" and am still batting a thousand afaict.
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dat type of guy thinks “Occam’s razor” is a magic the gathering card
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I was very susceptible to this mode of thinking at the start of 2016. I just couldn't believe the world could be so dumb
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*wistfully tears in my eyes* why does Hulk smash?
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Trump is playing one-dimensional chess.
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This piece by @davidjroth.bsky.social remains, in my mind, one of the most important pieces written today:

thebaffler.com/latest/the-president-of-blank-sucking-nullity-roth
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Sometimes there's a secret reason that also doesn't make sense.
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what he perceives as planning and secret strategies is just trump destroying things out of stupidity and malice and later actions are trump exploiting an opportunity
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Yo Peter

who did the 1999 Russian apartment bombings
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Every one of these self-important idiots believes he is playing 4D chess so they don't have to confront the truth that he is just flipping the game board and ignoring the rules. It can't be that he's a petulant toddler. He must have some grand strategy!
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Yeah, when he wants to do something, he doesn't like being told there are reasons not to do it ("it won't work" is included there)
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He is trying to get a terrorist attack on the homeland for his own aggrandizement.
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This is *exactly* like the "secret good episodes of Sherlock" theory
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I think it’s more like the way we talk about evolution, as if each individual creature proactively developed some feature to protect itself from a predator. Obviously that’s not what happened, but we need to acknowledge and name the patterns and processes that happen over and over.
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It’s so hard for smart people to just let Trump be a fucking Venus flytrap. That’s all he ever is.
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People think that just because they can craft some rube goldberg scheme that sounds good out of a bunch of nonsense, that it is somehow more realistic than, "These dudes are macho brained dipshits followed by a cult of morons."
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yeah I like how hard he tried to head this off at the pass with the whole "if you think this is a bad read of Trump that just means you've fallen for his scheme so actually I am even more right" bit
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Trump might be oblivious, but I guarantee you that at least one person on his staff thinks it’s great that we killed all those civilians because “the Democrats will have to spend their next term cleaning up our mess, and that means we can get away with a *lot* of evil bullshit.”
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Pathological narcissist declining into dementia does erratic, irrational and disinhibited things. Time to break out the red string and cork board.
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Not so much "there just be a plan" but "how are they likely to take advantage of this crisis"
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you can say what you want about Snyder’s work, this is a 17 post thread about Trump’s motivations that doesn’t mention Israel once.
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game theory: Trump bombs civilian targets because he thinks it's a super strong move that's only banned because it's too powerful
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The producers of The Apprentice consistently had to edit and modify the episodes' narratives to be consistent with Trump's random inputs and judgements. Don't discount that similar isn't happening here. "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."
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Holy shit Donald Trump was Sans Undertale this whole time?!?
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I mean, I *am* having a bad time... It all makes sense!
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That thread is very 2017-coded
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Ok but Snyder is not a lunatic and nothing hes saying is crazy
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half right
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love you but snyder didn’t mention israel or netanyahu once
it’s all msnbc rachel maddow russia brain worms shit
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His entire thread is functionally, "If you ignore every other gigantic self-dick punch that Trump has engaged in... this is actually a genius plot to do a genius thing."

At some point, assuming Trump has a plan instead of just being a racist grandpa with the keys to the warmachine is crazy
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Ah this old chestnut
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I’m a fan of the “Trump is a big fat baby and doesn’t know what he is doing” theory for all of us this
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He's not a lunatic, he's a historian (no jokes please).

But he's in way, way over his head with this, and getting pulled even deeper.

It's not Trump Derangement Syndrome because Trump is the one who's deranged.

Call it "Trump Toxic Shock."
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He’s making a rapid pivot to Seth Abramson posting, I’m sure it’ll be lucrative for him.
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I don't necessarily subscribe to this theory, but jumping straight to calling him a lunatic seems excessive. Can we not advance various possibilities with one another and debate their merits without going nuclear on one another, so to speak?
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Yeah. I don't think Trump is masterminding some kind of 4D chess move, but I do think he would exploit a terrorist attack on US soil. Nothing is off the table and I don't see the point of dismissing Snyder's concern
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Calling a guy a "lunatic" is in no way "going nuclear". And this idea is based on the fantasy that Iran's response to further attacks on its civilian infrastructure will be terrorism in the US. Iran has demonstrated that attacks on it are replied with attacks on Gulf states/Israeli infrastructure.
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The core mistake is people think Iran is like Isis. Iran would not support a major terrorist attack on American soil. They are an educated population with a deep and rich history. They do not have issue with the avg American. They know such an attack would be an excuse to go scorched earth.
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It’s also weird that the only nation state to do something remotely like this is Saudi Arabia with 9/11 but Republicans love the Saudis and Saudi basically funds much of the American right-wing political project. But the media thinks that fine.
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People debating the original post have mentioned Snyder's expertise and judgement on the subject. And some have mentioned how he left USA b/c of Trump. But in my opinion, the latter was based on paranoia and hyperbolic mis-estimate of the danger he was in, and that informs how I view current post.
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Exactly. To me it speaks pretty loudly to main character syndrome and that's not what I want in my fascism experts. Snyder was just about as safe as a person could be.
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Calling everyone you find having a weaker moment a lunatic will not help you build the coalition you need to win against the fascism, btw.
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Is this the “we need a bigger tent” argument I’ve heard about? Do we need to bring in conspiracists like MAGA did for Qanon?
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I advise fleeing to canada about it
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one of the worst types of guy imo
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I don't think he's saying Trump *personally* has some grand plan. Trump sees what Putin/Orban have and wants it, so he does strongman stuff. For him it's all surface and ego, but ppl around him (Miller, Vance) know it can have strategic utility
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Also, I think Snyder is right we should prepare in advance for continuing electoral bullshit from this admin, as well as perhaps a false flag--or, more likely, framing any random thing that might happen as an act of terrorism that they then use to justify more electoral bullshit
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For the first 60 years of his life the name Donald Trump was synonymous with "rich, low-class buffoon", but yes, I'm sure that like most people he got much smarter as he got older and more racist.
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More and more I am convinced that people really struggle with accepting that rich people are more often than not stupid as shit. Probably because its been ingrained in society that we are a meritocracy.
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he’s doing the secret: geopolitics edition
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Tim Snyder sure isn't William Spaniel, that's for sure.

Remember folks, just because Putin plays chess (not 4-D chess, but bad chess) doesn't mean Trump plays chess. Trump just does whatever Bibi, Putin and/or MbS tell him to do because by following orders nobody is talking about the Epstein files.
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*seeing Trump make decision after decision with obviously zero preparation and learning how everything works on the fly…

“He must have a much grander plan!”
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It drives me crazy that “smart” people are so incapable of imagining the workings of the imbecile mind. It’s like it’s still inconceivable to them after all this time that the guiding hand could be pure chaos and id
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Mostly I want “already fled to Canada guy” to keep his thoughts to himself.
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It doesn’t make him not an expert, it just makes him a coward
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This makes more sense than the OG game theory thread but fails to consider that Trump has already had several securitization-prompting moments and thus far... nada. He moved on from the Kirk killing basically immediately
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The other thing that makes Snyder come off as a crank there, besides the total refusal to consider that Trump can be irrational, is that his "I'm telling you this so you can *prepare*" bit amounts to nothing new or usable. Prepare by... being willing to protest, not follow illegal orders... ok, and?
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I mean, it's obviously not true that people who care enough to be reading Snyder in the first place would just forget to resist during a Trump coup if they hadn't previously convinced themselves it would be this specific type of coup. There's no special method of preparation for this...
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I'm not dismissing any potential Trump actions at this point. He's not a strategic genius, but he is certainly capable of exploiting opportunities that he bumbles into
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They claimed China and Italian satellites were used to change votes in the 2020 election. There is nothing they won't try and Snyder knows a shit ton more than you.
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This isn't just some rando though, Timothy Snyder specializes in the study of authoritarianism, and him being concerned is enough to give me pause
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Yeah he also wrote his important Double Holocaust nazi revisionist bullshit.
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That guy immediately hauled his ass to Canada when Trump got re-elected, but has the gall to tell the rest of us how we need to “resist.” Fuck him
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well that's probably a big part of why he's posting like this. he's under a lot of stress and very worried. it's understandable.

in a movie this is where someone would slap the panicking expert and say "get it together, man!"
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he wrote a seventeen tweet thread about why we're at war with Iran that did not mention Netanyahu or Israel once
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I don't disagree that Trump isn't some mastermind trying to influence the scenario by threatening war crimes. But even assuming that he's just throwing a tantrum, his statements and actions still make retaliation (false flag or otherwise) more plausible.
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But we don't even have MatPat...
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Used to have conversations like this for years after 911. "No, I don't _know_ that the terrorist won't attack us, here, somehow, at some time." People just made up all queda dirty bombs, grid attacks and such, which maybe? Sure.
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I had a friend in law school who defaulted to “game theory” in every conversation, like life was some zero-sum analysis with clearly defined rules everyone followed. The only rational application you can place on Trump is that he cares only about himself. Everything else is a crapshoot
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*eric garland's entrance music starts playing*
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And here it is.

youtu.be/6MYAGyZlBY0?si=Ftq4op5-F9N2Ihzy
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Maybe sports talk will *save* this apparently dying website
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