fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
No bio...
User ID: 2896
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
3mo ago
Edit: this debate is a waste of time.
It was a waste, but we couldn't be certain of that going into it. The previous debate showed how a bad performance could have consequences. But as it turned out, neither were that bad.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
3mo ago
That might be it. No crowd, muted microphones, and a known time limit if one happens to be into that whole "preparation" thing.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
3mo ago
It seems worse, somehow. But maybe I've just forgotten.
Harris got a question, explicitly said she'd answer all the points, and then all she did was elaborate on "my values haven't changed".
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
3mo ago
It looks like the current state of the art is to avoid answering questions, and instead treat them as an opportunity for impromptu rambling on a vaguely related topic, or a canned sound-bite on a vaguely related topic. Why not, there are no negative consequences.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
I'm not exactly sure what to call this, but I salute you. Brav-statistically-o.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
Do you recall where? I can't seem to find it. (Although perhaps your identity here is intentionally separate from whatever identity you posted it as.)
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
I ... take the position that some of this is simply responsible journalism, and the way things should normally be done. We don't need minute-by-minute hot takes from official news sources, and usually when they happen they say more about the reporter's biases and expectations than they do reality. Not that I'd expect this level of caution from the same outlets if Biden were nicked, but still. I semi-seriously applaud their journalistic restraint, and wish they'd apply it more often.
"Trolley delayed by shark"
https://readcomic.me/comic/kurt-busiek-s-astro-city-1995/issue-tpb-part-1/58
Time for me to sign off and have a beer or two.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
Looks like NYT photographer David Mills actually captured the bullet in a photograph!
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/07/13/us/biden-trump-election
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
That's great footage!
Do you think one of the shots hit that forklift at around 0:15? And it sounds like there's another shot, from a different sort of gun, at 0:19. Were some of the second group of (4) shots from the Secret Service, or was that last shot from them?
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
From a narrative perspective, it lacked the subtlety I expect from Villanueva.
Yeah. The two Dune movies have caused me to re-examine my generally good impression of Blade Runner 2049.
It's strange, because we can tell that Villanueva actually understands the themes of the book and a lot of the subtleties. And yet so much of it is lost!
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
That's great too. Teddy was actually shot, though, and I kinda prefer the dismissiveness of Teddy's reaction. "Pff, whatever, I have enough medical knowledge to know that this chest shot isn't fatal, so I'm going to deliver my speech now." On the other hand, he lost.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
My current worry (personal estimate of the conjunction of most likely and most bad) is that some Trump supporter somewhere does something very stupid and very violent, and then Trump fails to condemn it strongly "enough", leading to a spiral of violence on both sides. I hope I'm just worrying too much. I had similar worries about Oct 7, but it didn't spiral into a regional nuclear war, but I don't think this current domestic scenario has an equivalent to Biden ordering 2 carrier strike groups into the neighborhood.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
Teddy Roosevelt is still the GOAT, IMO.
Yeah, that sounds like sniper work, not something that someone on the ground with a handgun could reliably pull off?
Maybe a better conspiracy theory would be that Trump had a blood packet in his hand, and clapped it to his head, or something like that. Maybe his guards would have to be in on it? Most likely his doctor would, unless they've got a way for Trump to shoot himself afterwards, but I expect that he'll be under close guard for a while. And whoever shot into the air, and whoever killed and framed the "shooter". So at least 4 people including Trump, and probably a few more.
Edit: Looks like the shooter was a sniper on the roof of a nearby building, and was picked off by Secret Service snipers almost immediately afterward. So it's unclear what was going on in the crowd.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
In case you're interested, some previous discussion is here.
Someone else somewhere on the Internet came up with the theory that part of what was going on with Chani was that she was being used to externalize Paul's internal ambivalence about the jihad. Jessica being pro-jihad was basically in the text, not so much that she explicitly wanted it, but that all her choices and actions would lead directly to it. And so Chani was used to represent the other side of the struggle, where Paul wanted to live amongst the Fremen, have a normal relationship with a girl/wife, raise some children, and not soak the galaxy in blood. This sounds like a very clever idea for avoiding a lot of boring voice-overs. But unfortunately, it led to Chani's character being unrecognizable.
Also, and this is just personal opinion, I have yet to see evidence that Zendaya can play someone who is happy and emotionally healthy. Her resting face seems to be a cynical scowl, or possibly a pout if you want to go that direction. I can hardly imagine it showing joy.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
I've generally felt that the election is too early to call, because there's so much room for people on both sides to do very stupid things. I think now the idiot ball is in Trump's court, and it's his race to lose, if he or a follower picks it up.
Given that the shooter is dead, I predict an uptick in the popularity of the movie "Bob Roberts" and its associated conspiracy theory (fake assassination attempt, blamed on a plausible person of the opposition party). Thoughts?
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
Cat-1s aren't usually that badly off, mentally speaking. It's mostly folks who used to have jobs (and some still do), and could still hold down a job if they could find something appropriate. They can work, they can pay bills, they can pay rent, they can maintain a home, but they're low on social and economic capital and finally slipped through a crack. The current system works decently well for them, but it could always be made better, especially by increasing the availability of cheaper (crappier) housing.
Your categories use "psychotic", but there's a large range of potential mental problems that can cause (or result from) homelessness (or excessive drug use). And sometimes someone who looks like Cat-1 is actually suffering from some untreated mental problem that finally got too nasty for their coping mechanisms to deal with, causing them to lose their job and get kicked out of their home. Those are the ones that need special support like you suggest, but they're not really what you refer to as Cat-1, or are only superficially Cat-1.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
You indicate through later context that you're specifically interested in reactions on the Motte, but to take the earlier part of your statement literally, you can't get closer than this:
https://projects.propublica.org/parler-capitol-videos/
Seriously, anyone interested in the topic needs to watch all of this (although it takes hours).
(Parler, a right-wing social media site, got hacked shortly after Jan 6. One of the things done with the data was to filter videos by time and location, and the result is a collection of videos from the event itself. ProPublica has a known but relatively mild left-wing bias, so if - like me - you come out of it thinking "oh, that wasn't so bad, then", it's probably not the result of propaganda.)
(Also I should probably note that yes, I'm aware that anyone present who actually had bad intentions would probably not have been posting videos to a social media site. At least, not if they had half a brain.)
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
who the fuck is running the country today while Biden is apparently unable to carry a conversation?
There's a theory that it's Obama. Who is living in DC (which I think is highly unusual for a former President), and who has connections to a lot of the members of the Biden administration.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
5mo ago
Parties can choose whoever and whatever they like, for whatever position they want. But democracy is sacred enough in America that there's always pressure for parties to select their candidates through a democratic process with an open vote, and sometimes parties cave in, probably because they think it will get them votes in the long run. No one wants to alienate that weird fringe who might wind up voting for the mainstream candidate, so why not give their fringe candidate a chance to compete in the primary? Of course that only works if your mainstream candidate is viable, or if you're good at rigging the process.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
6mo ago
I also like Slashdot's system, but Less Wrong has an improvement, too. They've got 2 vote counts, for more-or-less "quality" and "agreement". I think it's helpful practice to separate those two aspects in one's mind, even if one never votes.
In general, I try to use the votes here as a combination of quality and agreement. I try to upvote high quality posts even if I don't agree with them, and downvote low quality even if I do agree. But it's hard. And so because of the norms here, most of the time I use upvotes as a substitute for posting a one-liner saying "this!" or "I agree" or "this seems important" or "I think this is the part of the thread everyone should read" or "more of this please", and use downvotes for the opposite.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
6mo ago
Wilton Cardinal Gregory
Is that a formal style of name?
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
6mo ago
This is mostly a joke, but... Jewish grandchildren?
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
6mo ago
Straight out of Lovecraft...
shakes head
While I basically agree that Nate Silver did as good a job as possible, this is a real problem. Garbage in, garbage out. He built a model that relied on free public information, and the quality of that information has degraded over time. I think it's entirely possible that his "business model" (or whatever you want to call it) is no longer viable. Once upon a time there wasn't an Internet, and then there wasn't enough data on the Internet, but eventually we entered the age of Big Data. Now maybe it's ending.
One of the reasons we used to have good polls is that we had well-funded mainstream media sources that were interested in accurately reporting the state of reality. But funding went down, the number of sources doing ground-level reporting shrank, they've become more cautious about taking risks, and most importantly, many of them have stopped caring about reporting reality, and are more interested in shaping reality toward their preferred political pole, or almost worse, they just say whatever the current party line is.
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