bluepointer.bsky.social
Anti-fascist science, physics, and finance dweeb who views tariffs the way an MD views bloodletting or phrenology. Low Brass player & general fact knower. I build things and I write things. Reclaim Woke, and Slava Ukraini!
952 posts
240 followers
320 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
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I am - sadly - old enough to remember when government got things done that we couldn’t do on our own. Everywhere I look it’s rubble. Even the language is rubble.
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Really questioning the role of the Gray Lady in this moment: usually, if they run a story, the facts are right and the writers do their jobs well. But first there needs to BE a story… and don’t get me started on the headline writing. (Headlines are never by the writers, always by the editors.)
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My elderly mother’s comment on your realization: “the older I get, the more dead people I know.” (She lived to almost 89. )
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I was the guy at my company who heard invented pitches as part of our patent committee.
I had a Keurig pod of “Candy-Cane” flavored coffee.
I would hear the pitch and sometimes hand them the pod: “…some things just shouldn’t be invented. Just because you can do a thing, doesn’t mean you should.”
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fascism lies to your face, not in order to persuade you, but just to demonstrate that truth is an irrelevancy.
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Why are we even here? The regime believes in power, not trade, plus they truly hate their followers. There’s no simpler way to pick the pockets of the Poors, who are more than happy to believe the regime’s pronouncements. Those of us in the reality based world have to suffer along.
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Better late than never, but courage is contagious.
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Sudoku for me. When I can’t take it any more.
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My friend from Germany forwarded this to me: so proud to be an American!
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Once we all realize that there’s no bottom to these people’s awfulness, and that there’s no line they won’t cross, then we might stop giving them deference and benefit of the doubt.
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All the best people…
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No one can believe the “just fck you” parts of this administration. Our only hope is that coal is a stupidly inefficient thermal resource and we’ll use less and less.
Related: the lost jobs just at Joanne’s Fabrics is more than half of all coal miners. Yet - no one is campaigning about them.
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Secret guilty pleasure. They are not peanuts, they are orange, and they taste like bananas. What’s not to like?
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Secret guilty pleasure.
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I used to naively think that people were stronger-minded than to fall for this infection; now I realize that cruelty is contagious, as the lessons of history confirm… not every Nazi was a sociopath, but they fell in line anyway, and became party to the destruction.
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Freshman year of college, back when the earth was cooling: “If you want to major in Chemistry, learn German, since so many of the keys to the modern world were found by Germans.” Seemed sad then that they removed themselves from their peak. The parallels with the US today are scary and clear.
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Stand for something, or fall
for anything. I miss Targé, I really do. But - voting with my feet and wallet since I have no other voice.
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This is so cool - and thanks for showing a forlorn world how it’s done.
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Nice to see the rebound in sanity & thanks for sharing!
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Bury me up to my neck in horse manure, and I’ll be happy because there must be a pony around somewhere! Seriously / taking one for the team had some benefits elsewhere.
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Was thinking the same thing. And like any rational person, I just don’t get it: he, and importantly the team he built, did astounding things to pull America back from the brink… yet there’s a cottage industry of professional haters who, well, crap on it all. And who will develop amnesia some day.
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Reading that next. Reading this now…. And while only halfway through, I can highly recommend it.
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America misses real leaders (I mean, the ones in power just can’t even.)
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Kinda wished this occurred to them to publish, oh, almost 100 days ago. But still important to get the word out. It’s amazing how few people “get” the rapid unwinding of America as a titan of health sciences… it boggles their minds and sounds like fake news despite being all too real.
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I spend all day, every day, trying to stay in business fighting both domestic tariffs (“just” 30% on China?) and retaliatory tariffs in some of our key market areas (25% imposed by Canada): for many businesses, EBITDA is taking a fcking beating if they even make it to the next quarter.
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Winner!
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… you were part of that history; so many people who weren’t born yet or who have been marinated in alternative facts are unaware that such a thing even happened. I fear we will learn again that history matters, but too late.
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Our parents were super happy to line us up for measles shots when they came out: they lived in an age when a) lots of people got the measles, b) many of them were left with chronic health issues, and c) some children died horrible deaths.
This was before we all forgot what our parents knew.
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This is what researchers call a
“natural experiment”: we are doing this LLM stuff in wealthy/access-available countries, and others have to study and put pen to paper. Let’s check back in a few decades, shall we?
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Jr. High and High School. It was super popular and part of Phys. Ed. Of course we didn’t have history class then, since it was so long ago, before they invented history.
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I live in a Trumpy though slightly purplish district. Go to a protest to see all the demographics of dissent: kids with bones through their noses and shrapnel in their eyebrows, college kids robbed of their futures, grannies, vets, people from every nation, and a lot of white boomers. We’re all mad.
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Happily married for decades. My wife changed her name out of tradition… to mine, which no one can spell nor pronounce. In retrospect, I should have changed mine.
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Learn to ice skate. Wear knee pads at first: they make you fearless. Ice skate in the summer and benefit from knowing that Ben Franklin would have approved your technological indulgence.
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At no point in the history of tariffs-as-mercantilist policy did anyone think it was a great idea to tariff raw materials. That’s the only clue you need that these guys have their heads firmly up their well-padded asses.
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Shocked! Shocked that there’s any lack of truth in Truth Social! I mean - it’s right there in the name!
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We do “manufacture”
more than people think: higher ed, financial services, and a whole lot of other physical goods… all of which are being wrecked by this regime’s belligerent ignorance.
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As a manufacturer, most people have absolutely zero idea how much unproductive time is spent at the highest levels, trying to mitigate the impact of these idiotic tariffs, and how many real people will be hurt by them. I suspect it’s more “the cruelty is the point” since there is no other upside.
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Still got mine!! (If you grew up with them, you learned to steer with your feet, in a way which is impossible to explain, and impossible to recreate with more modern systems.) SPD awful since pivot point is too far back; LOOKs are better but… not the same.
Geek much? Yes, Ma’am, yes I do.
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My life is better off xhitter; but I do miss watching a good xhit show where I can enjoy some
popcorn.