fatbird.bsky.social
Coder, bookbinder, woodworder, imminent umarel.
330 posts
77 followers
103 following
Getting Started
Active Commenter
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I think an unremarked-upon aspect of this that will be noted only by later historians is this: "the internet encouraged me to do it."
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You figured out how to report from the inside of a fascist regime in just a couple months. You've got this.
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What's the value of being a nuclear state when your nuclear missiles are more likely than not to get shot down? A nuclear attack more than likely makes you guilty of the escalation, without the benefit of a detonated nuclear device, which changes a lot of the calculus, doesn't it?
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Hard to win more than that.
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Ambulance crew bursts through ER doors with a patient on a gurney.
"We got another jerker here!"
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The west has always been known for its frontier spirit and enjoyment of autoerotic asphyxiation.
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I think you're dead on and it's a bit crazy making that other people don't get this.
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I first read that as "gangbutt" and was absolutely captured for a moment.
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"artificial" implies planned, which implies a reasonable attention span, which neither has.
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There was also pulling over at a gas station to ask for directions, and the fights over doing that.
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Except now Trump has secret police and a foreign prison to back up his story.
So many conflicted feelings about this!
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Trying to imagine putting chicken wire domes over every major base.
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A crucial part of the metaphor for me is that in the leadup to the Iraq War, there was plenty of opposition--protests numbering millions of people, stories in the press about how the case for it was bogus--and it made not one bit of difference. We knew then it was bullshit and still ended up there.
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The irony of printing that in WAPO
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JESUS FUCKING CHRIST ON A STICK
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Are they going to soar because the trade wars are over, or do they have just enough foresight to consider what how much more extreme Trump's actions will be?
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there's a growing, desperate need for confirmation that congnitive loop will be closed. See also: the market rebounding every fucking time Trump "pauses" tariffs, like Lucy putting the football back in place.
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Absolutely, but there's an unremarked-upon accumulation of angst around the fact the actions seem not to have consequences. People vote for Trump for stupid reasons, suffer from it immensely, and never connect the two, and it's fucking infuriating. For the "reality based" community...
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If it's hanging around the neck, it provides a convenient target for punching someone in the heart.
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Bullying is definitely still a problem, and the age of social media has opened expansive new avenues for it.
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My wife, a now retired teacher, made an "....enhhhhhhh" noise indicating "ok, I see the logic of that" but followed it up with "I don't think bullying has been much reduced in the last 20 years.
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Have you written about your process?
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It occurs to me that the fantasy we're being sold by AI is that we can all become the middle managers of our lives. Which, to be fair, might be attractive to some.
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i feel like i've becoming fairly well-acquainted with the concept of a scoop and simply calling something a scoop does not make it a scoop.
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Still need to get that mole looked at.
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With Peter attending, and on the recording, you can repeatedly hear his tired "Goddamnit..." sighing in the background.
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You didn't like A Dark Song?
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Great movie.
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Also, at first glance, it looks like the movie is 30% filler shots of people's faces looking concerned. 50% if all the ponderous walking is included.
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Among the many creepy aspects of this movie, no one ever looks directly at anything. They always look like they're focussing on something, but their point of focus is on dead air in front of them. Zero eye contact even when they're talking to each other.
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On Emo’s episode he tells my favorite joke, “I used to think the brain was the most fascinating part of the human body. Then I realized, look who’s telling me that”
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Now I'm feeling better about my appointment for mole removal tomorrow.
Glad you're ok.
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None of us are that blessed.
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I'd rather relive the ladybugs episode.
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Yes, it prevents third parties in the US. Its effects are worse when you have those third parties and they're perpetually marginalized.
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I didn't say, and I should have: the difference is that we're a true multi-party democracy. FPTP works for binary party systems. There were five viable parties, all of whom won at least 1 seat (and have provincial counterparts who actually win elections). Only the Greens haven't won a provincial.
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But the only reform possible is switching to something like Ranked Choice or Single Transferable Vote, and explaining those to the voters is an impossible task. And those and similar schemes elevate smaller parties at the expense of larger parties, so no one who actually wins will do it.
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So you get 1 vote, by party, in your local race, that decides everything. Cons got more seats than their share of the popular vote (actually, that's like the US), while Liberals cannibalized their rivals on the left.
I'm ok with the result but I hate our voting mechanism.
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FPTP saps support for smaller parties and actively facilitates winning by vote-splitting the opposition. This time around, there was one con party (in the past there's been 3) while the left splits between 3 (Liberals, NDP and Greens). And voting is only by riding (i.e., congressional district)...
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tl;dr: Trump's first 3 months became an anchor around the CP's neck, and the Liberals brought in someone who could capitalize on it.
That said, our parliamentary, first-past-the-post voting system had its typical effects unlike anything in the US, and need to be understood to fully interpret it.
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ngl, it's amazing.