i have a headache that refuses to end
I am the host of Behind the Bastards and overlord of podcasts at Cool Zone Media
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i have a headache that refuses to end
Sep 1 all forms of THC/CBD vapes become illegal in Texas, hitting my already declining store hard. I’ve paid for the first 1/4 of trade school largely by selling plasma which I’ve had a couple hiccups with. Licenses/tools cost too, and you can donate to me directly here or simply appreciate my hat
hell yeah paul
If the “plan” mentioned in the above article sounds effective to you:
If you are okay with this, if you think this is justified, if you think people living on the street have brought this upon themselves, if you think this is good leadership, you may be able to fool yourself that you care about others but you don’t fool me
tariff? me no like it
I often talk about the fact that MAGA does not access the same news as the left wing. I present to you Exhibit A. Dr. Daskalakis’ resignation letter excoriated RFK Jr. and shared that RFK Jr. was lying to the public, manipulating data, and ordering unethical actions. This what Fox News served.
i shouldn't still be surprised by how much i like John Cena as an actor but he really is quite good
i don't know that the U.S. ever produced a finer general than U.S. Grant
yeah and it took a war to end that right perhaps it'll take a war to fix the problems we have in this country at present. Unfortunately i know which side has most of the guns.
and that certainly will reduce some kinds of gun violence but most spree shooters are unlikely to be dissuaded by some taxes imo
a lot of suggested gun control laws basically do that by increasing taxes on things like ammo or gun ownership itself or by requiring insurance. all do have the same result which is trying to ensure only people with money are armed
Yes I was specific when I said "gun deaths"
sure, voting for the party that promised stricter gun control certainly didn't help the problem.
ok good luck replacing the supreme Court, i seriously hope you figure out a way to do that
really easy to type stuff out when you don't care about what will pass constitutional muster or is even possible to legislate
Literally every thing you might ever say about gun control will be in the wake of a goddamn shooting feel however the fuck you want but after eighteen years of voting for Democrats and watching the problem get worse i am not optimistic talking and thinking the same damn way is gonna get shit done
Now the issue is waiting periods only reduce some kinds of gun deaths. They don't really stop for example dedicated spree killers or terrorists but they can reduce deaths from people who are suicidal or domestic abusers acquiring a weapon in a moment of passion
California is trying the heavy taxes approach, and fighting that in the courts right now. Requiring home visits by law enforcement is unlikely to pass constitutional muster. Waiting periods exist and are one of the most proven effective methods of reducing certain kinds of gun deaths
Ok you say that *should* be possible. Is this based on any knowledge of what's been tried and passed constitutional muster?
You don't have the supreme Court or Congress. the only gun control that can pass right now is state and local. And if you don't know the law and the technical specifics 1. The law will get overturned 2. Gun companies will find loopholes to sell basically the same thing you thought you'd banned
If you manage to figure out a way to overthrow the government and replace the supreme Court sure Otherwise any gun control law that you want to pass will have to be written understanding both the law and technical realities or it won't function
Ok how do you do that
None of those countries had a constitutionally protected to bear arms and a supreme Court that recognized said right an individual right. Looking at other countries is useful to make the point that gun violence is worse here than damn near anywhere else. But it doesn't provide a roadmap at all
the lower receiver yes
pointless statement. no other country has ever had this many firearms or a gun industry this large and politically organized. we don't live in the land of If Only. the US is the way it is. if you want to change it you have to know how shit works here.
no one made that claim. all I am saying is that people proposing gun control regulations should have a legal and technical understanding that allows them to avoid just creating new loopholes
It depends on how the laws are written so far the single law type with the best public health returns (and the least loopholes) is a waiting period. I don't know how you pass a ban on gun advertising in 2025 but sure worth a shot
i don't see why it's controversial to point out "these laws are badly written and companies figure out loopholes almost immediately to keep selling guns". because that's literally what keeps happening
and the you're simply not going to ban semi automatics without completely changing the supreme Court or the constitution. categorical bans like that are unconstitutional under present law.
I mean it didn't actually. that's just a false statement. the whole individual right to bear arms thing is quite new but gun laws related to what qualifies as a firearm and how accessories are regulated and when and how they might be carried do go back centuries
how are you going to throw it out because I've heard this rhetoric for years and the conservatives just keep winning so
No the point is that firearms are legislated in a specific way in the United States. we don't even define what part of a gun is legally the firearm the same way as many other countries. if you don't understand how the law works you are not going to write legislation that works
man that is not at all what I'm saying. I quoted a tweet with this image in it for a reason. It shows a New Jersey legal AR-15, which is the result of a law being written to try to restrict a weapon by people who did not understand how to actually do that and wrote a law that was easy to get around
Again you're stating this is what I feel should happen but there's no way to actually write that as a law. Specifically trying to restrict all guns that have a variant in military service is unconstitutional and would be ruled as such by the supreme Court
this is immaterial to my point if you want gun laws in the US that do something you have to understand firearms legally AND technically otherwise you will just create loopholes
That's not even useful for the US. Australia had to confiscate a couple hundred thousand guns. We have more firearms than people in the USA. These are not equivalent challenges.
think that's stupid? It shouldn't be this way, fuck you? Well lots of things shouldn't be the way they are but guns have a couple centuries of complex jurisprudence behind them and if you believe in voting and courts and stuff you probably want to understand this shit
if you or someone you care about is being shot at, then yeah a gun is a gun but in legal terms, a firearm is a very specific piece of the larger whole we refer to as "a gun". you would be shocked at the number of things that look like an assault weapon but legally aren't
I understand how people get so disgusted with guns they just say "ban them all", but that's not a workable policy proposal in the US. if you want regulation then you'd better have people writing those regulations who understand what a firearm is- in a technical and a legal sense.
There’s an enormous amount of stuff in this book I’d like to highlight, but start with: “What emerges as the most elementary insight is that, since we do not now have any ways of making computers wise, we ought not now to give computers tasks that demand wisdom.”
This, from the Quakers, is a pretty good example of how to resist pressure from bigot lobbying groups. Effectively “we legally can allow trans people to use the loo, we morally should, and we tried it and nothing bad happened”
I think you're inventing a quote because I've never said that. I've in fact repeatedly outlined how there is no single tool historically that prevents fascism from winning within a country.
well most gun owners like most cops are fairly supportive of our current government. so I'll ask you again: what's your plan for taking power from them?
because the government isn't controlled by your side and the current occupants don't plan on giving up power peacefully.
Two rural, South Texas Dems joined Republicans in passing the bathroom bill: Rep. Sergio Muñoz (D-Mission) and Richard Peña Raymond (D-Laredo)
who do you intend to have do the disarming? how is this fantasy future government supposed to exert power when law enforcement and the military have been taken over by MAGA?
"I recognize an insanity bubble, and I recognize hubris."
Fucking hell we had an actual Son Of Sam Altman situation. Horrifying. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chat...
“While ChatGPT use has been linked to suicides and mental-health hospitalizations among heavy users, this appears to be the first documented murder involving a troubled person who had been engaging extensively with an AI chatbot.”
wait what
ok y'all complain when he wastes money on a gold plated toilet but somehow it's also bad when my man cuts costs with some golden spray paint?
another truly grand jury
the people who made this thing should be treated like dealers who mix fent into drugs.
This month, outlets like @washingtonpost.com and @npr.org have let DC Police union head Greggory Pemberton present himself as an authority on crime statistics. But he's at the heart of an ongoing scandal that led to the first ever sanction of a DC prosecutor for manipulating and hiding evidence:
Would William Hurt's career have been better or worse if he'd changed his name to Billy Pain?
I’m sorry this person was not an O9A acolyte, they more closely resemble the True Crime Community fandom, which uses O9A references cause other mass shooters have and were more affiliated. Some nazi satanist types help facilitate the Columbine fandom/TCC, but there’s no solid 764 connection here.
Here's a quick script: share.google/sxOKnVqeKgsj...
My guess would be he tossed it in there because it was baffling and incomprehensible
If I were publishing an article on this i might well title it "Psycho Killer, Skibidi, Breivik"
The Minneapolis / Annunciation mass shooting is the natural extent of mass shooter fandom. You've got a Loss meme, referencing a 20-year-old gamer webcomic, under the name of the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter. All of it is equally absurd and meaningless to the shooter.
New It Could Happen Here 🏳️⚧️ Mia talks with journalist David Forbes about two recent horrific anti-trans bills in North Carolina and how Democrats made them possible. @miawong.bsky.social @davidforbes.bsky.social www.iheart.com/podcast/105-...
because Alien and Aliens, the good movies in the series, are great horror films. I am tense the entire time. Even after dozens of viewings I get nervous watching. I don't feel that way about the show. It's fun but it's not scary and there's not much real tension.
It's not going FTL though
physics doesn't work that way. that's the issue with suspension of disbelief.
the most irritating thing is that Microsoft refuses to take "no" as enough with this shit. every couple weeks i re open Word and i have to say no to copilot again, or I get prompted to enable it when doing something else on my machine leave me the fuck alone, @microsoft.com
we should at least get lawn darts back if that's how it's gonna be
it's not a crime because Sam Altman is a billionaire
When someone started tampering with Tylenol bottles in 1982 the company recalled $100 million worth of bottles immediately even though they clearly weren't at fault
if a human being was caught talking with a minor about suicide this way they'd face criminal charges
it's wild that The Fifth Element made one of the most accurate predictions of all 1990s sci-fi, anticipating the rise of the streamers and influencers as major celebrities.
one irritation: the show is EXTREMELY lazy about how space / air travel works. a dead alien in a pool of acid blood is left in an open container in a hovercraft next to a bunch of humans. nothing is ever secured like it would be in a moving vehicle so the ships always feel like sets
Alien: Earth isn't a particularly good Alien show. But as a sci-fi horror series with a decent budget about an alien zoo crashing into a trillionaire's city-state and causing chaos? It's pretty fun!
ok but they'll just say you and every other Democrat supports flag burning. They don't care what you think and throwing people under the bus for protected speech won't change that.
i meet people constantly who think Portland burned to the ground in 2020. you're a fool if you think you can defend reality from these people. the only way to win is to offer a reality voters like better than the one the GOP is selling.
regardless of your feelings on the matter there are 350 million ish people here. any protests of sufficient size will always have someone willing to burn a flag. you can either get blamed and be forced to answer for that person whenever it happens or refuse to participate in the discourse at all.
you will never succeed in doing this. There are tens of millions of people in this country. Whenever one chooses to burn a flag you can either get blamed for it or reject feeding into that discourse in any way.
great question i don't know how feasible that is. historically the odds are much better that (best case scenario) Trumpism fizzles once he dies or is incapacitated by age and this is followed by a gradual reclamation of the rights lost under his admin
the point isn't "he has done no wrong" it's "this guy made public support of trans kids in his state a vocal part of his admin and repeatedly vetoed anti LGBT bills and is still the second most popular governor in the US as a dem in a red state". perhaps the DNC should make a note of that.
no? again the thread in question was about how the Democratic party could be more effective. I have examples of politicians they should be learning from rather than repeating the exact same playbook that keeps losing.
no, the question my initial response was replying to was someone asking who Democrats should be looking at. I cited Beshear as an example of the fact that you can succeed electorally in red states without ceding every point to the Republicans share.google/oHAMGqDo1F8L...
he vetoed a conversion therapy bill this year. bringing up the fact that he's got very standard bad opinions doesn't change the fact that he's repeatedly risked his political capital to take a risky stance. he's the best you're gonna get for that job. share.google/d2NswNAUwYBp...
they created the impunity for themselves. you simply refuse to lean into or add power to the news cycle. none of this shit lasts long on it's own anymore.
if you want a step by step guide on how the Democrats can win in 2028 lmao you're not getting that in a tweet. but i will call out shit that isn't going to work and what I see that is working.
trump tried to ban flag burnings take over the Federal reserve and create a volunteer federal law enforcement agency made up of right wing goons TODAY what has slowed down?
I would suggest rebuilding the party with these lessons and teams in mind and not endlessly trying to make Obama 2.0 or Clinton 2.0 happen again, which is most of what the Democratic party elite seems to want to try
pritzker's messaging has been mostly very good. i think Mamdani's campaign has a lot of lessons in how to bring out activists and voters in blue cities. meanwhile i think beshear shows you how far you can get sticking to your principles in a red state if you govern competently.
caring what the enemy and their pet journalists say has only gotten us losses so far but maybe this time it'll win
if no one ever burned another American flag they'd just loop old footage of flag burnings and call Democrats the flag burning party as long as they thought that might get them a vote. stop pretending reality matters and start playing the damn game.
people who think this matters have ignored how Trumpism actually handles inconvenient stories. They simply pretend awful things done by their supporters weren't awful, weren't done, or weren't done by their supporters. you never hand the enemy points by condemning your own side.
Newsletter: My 16,000 word opus - How To Argue With An AI Booster, a comprehensive guide to arguing with AI boosters, addressing both their bad faith debate style and their specific (and flimsy) arguments as to why generative AI is the future. www.wheresyoured.at/how-to-argue...
if this is all an act he deserves an Oscar I would vote for him
wow seems like some people aren't thrilled about AI
New from me: a podcaster who is a former pastor and current member of Pete Hegseth's church advocates for public executions, thinks abortion should be a capital crime, and thinks ICE raids are biblical. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Finally got a print edition and you can really see the chest hair
UPDATE: Fox News reports that ICE told Kilmar Abrego Garcia they are going to deport him to Uganda on Monday.
don't worry, you won't!
Ed's got a significant scoop here, an under-the-hood look at GPT5 that suggests why it feels like such a step back to users. The incompetence from OpenAI here is truly remarkable.
Here's a bonus ep of Better Offline. I report on how OpenAI’s new "router-based" ChatGPT-5 makes it impossible for OpenAI to cache the static prompt for any model or tool it uses every single prompt, doubling token burn for mediocre gains. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b... Linktr.ee/betteroffline
