Trade unionist, socialist, unpublished fantasy author.
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I know Trash also said this, but "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" is the best summary of the man. If you work to normalize politics as war, up to condoning violence against your enemies, well, it's not surprising you meet a violent end, just as insurgents often do.
Word to wise, as I've been trying: publishing anything over 100,000 words as a debut author (even in a genre known for doorstoppers) is pretty much a no-go now.
How much leeway to MO Republicans have to either schedule a special election following the referendum before 2026 filing opens, or to push back filing (which starts February 24th?)
It doesn't seem he had any offline experience with the left. Some of the bullet casings had anti-fascist messages, but they also were references to Helldivers 2, so it could have just been largely apolitical internet brain rot. Worth noting that groypers also called Kirk a fascist, though.
There is no such evidence. He clearly comes from a very conservative background. His dad is a LEO from a very Republican part of Utah. He had firearms training. He went to a pretty conservative school in Utah. He posted conservative memes online in the past.
Too early to tell if he's a groyper, suffered from extremely online brain rot, or might have been drifting to the left. But he's a 22-year old white guy with a LEO dad from a deep-red part of Utah, who went to a pretty conservative college, and has posted right-wing memes online in the past.
BLITZER: Now we’re getting reports that one of the bullet casings was engraved with a message saying that if you are reading the casing, you are gay. We must warn our viewers we’re about to show the photo and don’t know at this time whether the engraving is what makes you gay or if it just tells you
The take I hate the most is "this isn't who we are." Even if we overlook the brutal crushing of slave uprisings, the genocide of Native Americans, the Battle of Blair Mountain, etc. - what was the American Revolutionary War? The Civil War? Violence is fundamental to American politics.
The U.S. was founded on armed struggle against the United Kingdom, and forged into the modern union via the Civil War. Violence against political enemies is fundamental to the mythos of the United States. To argue otherwise is simply ahistorical.
Who said anything about quitting - I've seen far more trashfire Trek episodes than this. Being there for the trashfire is part of being a Trek fan. That said, as a parent, the idea of a kid as a "reward" given as part of the full-life package is morally repugnant. Kids are people.
I think it's different from the Nexus (or the Inner Light probe) because there wasn't a conscious entity (who purportedly loved him) actively creating the scenario. Picard couldn't blame the probe aliens or the Nexus for the fictional children he never had. Batel, though...
Also, sincerely love that Batel had a love for Pike so deep she decided to gaslight him into thinking he had a daughter! He'll take those "happy memories" of a child he can never meet with him to the grave.
I guess I'd give it some kudos for a halfway decent Inner Light ripoff too, but I know you're feeling on that one.
What a fucking mess. When I was watching that awful scene where Batel was explaining her destiny, I just kept thinking this:
Yeah, I'm aware. Honestly, I think the burden of proof people are setting for evidence of ancient life on Mars is a bit too high. Early Mars would've been habitable to Earth microbes, and we know bolides were exchanged. It would be stranger if there was no life at the time.
This all seems weird to me as an American, but casual anti-trans attitudes are pretty much verboten within the center-left/liberal actor space (since it's what Republicans do). Seems like in the UK it's just been normalized as something that cis people don't need to publicly give two shits about.
"Ethical capitalism doesn't exist" can arguably excuse there being no "proper" method to say consume everyday essentials. It doesn't excuse well-off to rich people working for a piece of garbage when they've got plenty of other options.
That said, I don't blame the band personally. They were 15 at the time Frogstomp came out! The problem was industry elevating a bunch of kids who knew nothing but grunge as a novelty act. My understanding is they became a legit band later on, though I had no interest in exploring that.
I was 16 at the time, and yeah, I'd argue so. This was the pivot point where any sort of organic feel to alternative began to die. Presaged the rise of The Spice Girls and Hanson the in the following two years, which was really weird with bubblegum having been dead since Nirvana.
People still argue regarding the earliest chemical evidence of life on Earth. We've got bona-fide fossils from 3.5 GYA, but some disputed claims as old as 4.3 GYA. Unless we find a Martian fossil stromatolite, I'm not sure we'll get a smoking gun.
Leave Robert Smith alone!
Personally, I just love that in Ireland, I have a medium-sized head. Really liberating after a life of finding no hats fit me.
Thanks. Missed the start of the premier, but catching up now. I'm "1/4 Irish." My grandfather was so into his Irish ancestry that he donated money yearly "for the cause." My mother jokes that I'm part colonizer because I have a small bit of English ancestry from my dad's side.
The #1 reason I think we will ultimately win is authoritarians need to actually understand their enemies in order to defeat them, and these yobbos don't know shit.
I passively consume a good deal of Booktube, and I find there's a lot of younger people still reading say Foundation and Dune. What I don't see much is youth connecting with authors I cut my teeth on as a kid/teen. Bear, Brin, Benford, Baxter, May, Tepper - they're not even in the conversation.
Had that flare up in my late 30s. Orthopedic sneakers worked wonders.
People saying Trump is dying or possibly dead, but I for one would urge caution, because it is quite possible a second healtbar will appear as he enters his second phase and a gargantuan centipede will burst forth from his torso, so be careful of his new sweep attacks and toxic buildup from bites.
It's sticky tofu candy for me, thank you very much.
Find yourself someone who'll look at you like P.J. looked at Nick Cave.
I think it's more "I am the law" than anything.
Machine politicians are among the worst when it comes to having actual people and political skills because if the machine actually elevated folks with legitimate talent, they might develop enough of a popular base to not need the machine any longer.
To steelman an awful fascist here, it seems like his argument is "It's going to be so cheap for us billionaires to support you proles in the future, we're going to just give shit away." They already ruin lives for rounding errors now. Why would that change with smaller rounding errors?
I remember as a kid reading that there's been more than a few cases of birds which are male on one side of the body, female on the other. Complete with differing plumage on both sides, and the ability to lay eggs and "father" eggs.
I am highly doubtful this generation of AI will be profitable, due to the "hallucination" issue making it useless in most work environments. However, they could easily monetize it by dropping suggestions you buy crypto or something in the middle of your chat with an "awakened" virtual friend.
It will tell you repeatedly how you're a font of brilliant insight. It will bend over backwards to be helpful, even to the point of making up shit rather than admitting it doesn't know something. It's not optimized to do work, it's optimized to make you happy with it, and to keep engaging.
I had a realization the other day - I think we're all misunderstanding what LLM's are trying to be. They're not productivity tools, but just another case of algorithmic optimization in order to capture attention. Think about how sycophantic ChatGPT tends to be if you engage with it.
If they suspend it until say December to "properly doctor" things, we'll all have gotten used to using the ADP numbers to find out if payroll is growing or declining, at which point whatever the BLS comes up with will seem like a joke.
The right wing aren't even hiding what they mean when they talk about "crime" any longer. It's just code for "I saw a poor and/or black and/or disordered person, and it made me uncomfortable." They're 100% fine with high murders, if they stick to Anacostia and far away from tourist zones.
I watch a fair amount of booktube, and it's interesting to me how a lot of young folks still seem to read like Foundation and Dune, but the the most acclaimed SF books from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s have basically dropped off the face of the Earth.
Mind blown that our president is declaring martial law because a 19-year old government employee got beat up by some teenagers. What does that say, other than we have an administration that cares more about "Big Balls" than us normies?
Masturbation. Whether of their ego or nether regions.
This is so obvious I can't believe I missed it.
I got weekly allergy shots when I was a teenager. It made it manageable, but never really eliminated the problem.
I'm old, so I watched Politically Incorrect in HS, when the guy was a Bob Dole supporter because he wanted a "mean old man to watch my money." It's facile to note Marr was always a conservative. But it's more his schtick is being a hater. And he hates whoever he sees as popular. Hipster.
Yeah, I didn't think the BLS data was doctored before, but the data quality had notably worsened due to DOGE fuckery even before this.
Doctored CPI reports are coming too, and even more damaging, because companies use CPI to calculate things like setting contracts and wage increases. If official statistics say inflation is 1.5%, but you know it's at least three times that, but it might be four, what do you do?
Yeah, my take as well is turning the BLS into a propaganda arm of the state will be useless for propaganda, but absolutely awful for business.
The funny part about this is the experience from Biden's term in office show that good BLS numbers on jobs/inflation are completely useless from a PR perspective if voters are upset about the economy. Literally the only impact will be making it harder for businesses to make projections.
This is fucking awful, but I'm genuinely glad he didn't decide to pull an Orban and turn PBS/NPR into official tools of state propaganda.
This might be a weird-ass observation, but where the heck are they eating out where the base meal is $450 bucks but they get a shitty printed receipt like that? I don't think I've ever spent much more than $150 on a meal tops (to take out 4), though I'll admit I don't drink wine.
This map is awful, but I honestly expected worse They gave Cuellar a *better* seat, and didn't really shore up their two RGV incumbents at all. Gonzales gets a worse TX-28, but Biden still won in 2020, so it's winnable. The new TX-09 and TX-35 are both still winnable in a wave too.
I always think back to how the earliest written human stories - like the Epic of Gilgamesh, or the Iliad - aren't simple tales of good vs. evil. Our fictional conflicts got dumber over time. And I think our expectations of reality did as well.
Looks fantastic! My one complaint about earlier Prehistoric Planet is the weird-ass way they jumped across the globe to have a vaguely "biome" based theme. I really hope we don't just bop around from South America to Europe to Australia in a span of a single episode. It'll just confuse people.
It's not about merit. I'm not sure they even believe in merit, and they explicitly want to return the federal government to the spoils system.
I think the way to put it which wins these people over is maximal density in yuppie neighborhoods means less of them move to yours.
It's usually invoked if anything is antithetical to what Gene claimed TOS was about when he started doing the con circuit in the 70s (or what he tried to do in early TNG). So if the show doesn't have people who "evolved beyond" religion, interpersonal conflict, grief over death, etc.
Trekkies not understanding the difference between canon and continuity always irks me. To me, though, I tune out as soon as someone says "Gene's vision."
He didn't specify "safe" to mean safe from physical harm, after all.
A lot of it just boils down to nerdy people who like educational content not watching much TV any longer. Still, even looking at streaming, science documentaries are pretty meh, minus a few prestige shows like Prehistoric Planet. YouTube creators absolutely dominate this niche, now.
I remember darkly joking with some friends after the 2024 election that at least in 2028 Gaza would no longer be a salient political issue, because there would be no Gazans left. Unfortunately, it looks like my prediction will prove accurate, absent a massive international response.
I wrote the story concentrating on the father's pain, as a refugee from a city, now destroyed, seeing the last dreams of his culture die as his child transforms into something he doesn't understand. But I wrote a queer metaphor and didn't even realize it. Something I'll sharpen on redraft.
inhabited by both seemingly bestial, hairy ape-things, and children, living alone. Of course, the ape-things are what the children become when they grow up. The same eventually happens to the son, and the father learns to accept that the transformation isn't a death by the story's end.
Took me awhile to get to this, but I want to thank you for this. I've been writing a fantasy story, and the perspective of your essay really helps crystallize what I need to do on the next draft. Background: The story is about a father and son, stranded on a desert island, the island is...
Due to the Norman invasion causing French words to be wealth-coded in English, one can argue that mispronouncing French is a form of class resistance.
Twinsies. Took a picture of a drone on my deck the other day too, though it's sadly out of focus.
I think part of what we're seeing on the right is being a conservative has developed into a quasi-ethnonationalist thing. They've developed a tribal identity which has overwritten shared American patriotism. So they respond to attacks on conservatives as if they are attacks on the nation itself.
If I changed my icon to not be a picture of me, a completely ordinary middle-aged dude, would I stop getting all these random catfishing profiles trying to add me?
I can understand, if you're a billionaire, having biological immortality as a goal. But you cannot believe true immortality is possible if you have any understanding of probability. At some point, a random accident, assassin, infectious disease, etc. is just gonna do you in.
Trump is likely out to lunch on this stuff, but there's no way that Stephen Miller doesn't understand what they're doing. I'd even argue a lot of that ilk care more about reducing the U.S.'s nonwhite population than whether the Republicans win again any time soon.
Suddenly remembering for no particular reason how a half dozen Miss Teen USA contestants said Donald Trump walked in on them in dressing rooms like a decade ago and we just ignored it.
Trump disgust finally caused your boyish face to show signs of visible middle age. Curse that man!
Fuck, I walked right into that one, huh?
My goal is to be the Omega Male, outlasting the remainder of the human race.
Seems worth noting that the only truly conservative colleges are small Christian schools located in the middle of nowhere, like Hillsdale and Liberty. When a school gets bigger - becoming a Baylor or Bingham Young - the student body starts moderating.
I believe that book was where I found out the hiccup may be an evolutionary remnant of when our fishy ancestors needed to pump water over their gills.
I'm also concerned the BLS has gotten unreliable. But if Trump's DOL was cooking the books, they should make the job growth look weaker (and inflation look lower) in order to provide the rationale for rate cuts.
True enough. But my understanding of the economic analyses is the primary impact beyond the direct removal of folks from the labor force is inflationary. Worker shortages in food production + construction raises the cost for almost everything tariffs didn't touch.
Of course not. But the point is free/easy credit with low interest is supposed to juice up job growth, but businesses can't expand if they can't find anyone to hire, and we're creating the conditions for a labor market shortage. So we'll have a steep recession + plenty of open jobs .
Capitalism is nearly always one banking crisis away from a stunning and rapid collapse. Particularly given how much of it is built on speculative bubbles. That said, Trump has been trying to lance the bubble with rebar since inauguration.
Oh, it's going to crash the economy worse than the tariffs. Cutting 5% of the labor force will cause a steep recession by definition. That said, it will create conditions where there's tons of job openings even in a recession, because it's caused by artificially restricting the supply of labor.
The sensible, moderate, popularist position should be that Israel is a sovereign state, can do all kinds of nasty things if it wants to (like China, Russia, etc.) and shouldn't expect a dime of U.S. money.
For better or worse, Bluesky culture is very different than the Nazi site. If you have a single iffy experience with someone, you're supposed to just block and move on.
I cannot understand why Trump keeps pushing for rate cuts when (according to official numbers) job growth is holding up, while the CPI is starting to tick up a bit. Particularly because with mass deportations, we'll have plenty of job openings, shortly. Does he want to have 9% inflation again?
Much like a sequel to a long-beloved book/movie will always be a letdown due to each fan having different expectations, there could be no satisfaction here. You can't beat headcanon, or vague ideas that can be 20 things at once.
Rich/powerful elites have a lot to lose if the Trump regime targets them, while random-ass voters do not.
Something I've never quite been clear on is the number of fingers with claws across Ornithopoda. I always thought an absence of claws on digits IV and V was basal to archosaurs (crocs don't have them), but some ornithopods are reconstructed with a claw on digit IV.
My understanding is tracking makes smart kids perform better, but kids who struggle perform worse. The latter may be because peer effects outweigh any additional attention given. In the end, maximizing achievement and reducing academic inequality run cross currents. Pick your poison.
Always so weird seeing young Michael Eddington with a full head of hair.
This is what we do now instead of arguing about whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, or the Father alone. Less people die, anyway. Marginally.
Not begging you for a beta read or anything, but I'm jusylt saying I spent a ton of time researching 18th century slang and diction. Was a ton of fun.
I don't have any expectation of making any money off of my fantasy novel, but one day I hope someone's interested enough to want to have a conversation about it.
While I agree, Dude is 33. Presuming he gets two terms, he'll be 42 when he's term limited out. He seems to like public service, and is going to have to do something with the rest of his life, even if it's becoming a congressman from Queens.
I went to college at UMass Amherst, and due to the universities supporting PVTA, it was entirely fare-free on the major routes nine months out of the year (you did have to pay in the summer). IMHO it seems like a total no-brainer.
I am doubtful of the existence of an afterlife, but if I can meet anyone at the pearly gates, I 100% want it to be Kermit.
Well, I'm glad that's settled. Seriously though, the most important part about this is it's going to be very, very hard for them to climb down from this in six months if Bibi asks us to bomb Iran yet again.
You could always support Jim Walden in the GE. He seems like he aligns best with your politics.
I think a good deal of this is just Spotify brain makes people more likely to dive into back catalogues. I'm 46, with a 15 year old daughter. She listens to Elliott Smith, Jeff Buckley, Mazzy Star, Fiona Apple, etc. Not just that stuff, but the more she listens to, the more is fed to her.
Glad to see you enjoyed yourself here! You gave a pretty comprehensive view of the city! The one notable omission I saw is Oakland. Yeah, it's a student neighborhood, but if you want to see lots of higher-density multifamily, it's somewhere you need to walk through. I guess the next visit.
