Aardvark Cheeselog

@wades.bsky.social

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Grizzled veteran of the War on Christmas.
Please do not feed the trolls: block, don't engage.

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The only reasonable response is to come out flaming the questioner for the heartless stupidity of even asking such a question, as if it could possibly be moral to interfere in those most difficult decisions anybody ever makes. Only a completely ignorant person could imagine otherwise.

Quietly, maybe the shittiest, most despair inducing moment of the debate was Dana Bash asking Biden "Do you support any legal limits on how late a woman should be able to terminate a pregnancy?"

Superannuated boomers represent

if you’re posting on this site congratulations you’re an honorary elder millennial congratulations and/or sorry, I don’t make the rules

Dear NYT editors: More like this please.

Excited to introduce a project I've been working on for a long time: a thorough comparison of Biden and Trump on the issues. "The stakes, not the odds," to borrow from Jay Rosen. The initial version has 6 topics, but I'll be adding more, as well as updating with new statements/policies. Gift link:

Where Joe Biden and Donald Trump Stand on the Issueswww.nytimes.com Here’s what President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump have done and want to do on abortion, democracy, the economy, immigration, Israel and Gaza, and Social Security and Medicare.

That is, the entire concept of "deserving poor person" is bullshit to enable being inhuman to most poor people. Poor people are poor because they were denied access to resources when they were growing up, basically. The true down-and-outer who grew up in a stable home is almost unknown.

one way you know that all the people who care about "fiscal responsibility" are full of shit is that they are happy for the government to spend significantly more money to make sure that nobody who is "undeserving" receives benefits than they would if they just paid out claims

Shit, pay people to get the stick

This is amazing. Now make it free

Indeed, while the question of whether people have free will is vexing, it is easily seen that we can have free won't.

Points were made.

This was basically my first thought. Bring the House to total paralysis with this. Sometimes the right thing to do is to stop trying to be constructive.

Sure would be a shame if every Dem in the House mentioned Trump being a felon over and over and over

I'm certain that, in 60 years of reading, there are some words that I have read and never heard spoken. And that the pronunciation in my head when I read them is wrong.

The curse of the precocious reader: Knowing what words mean, but not how to pronounce them. This is why I pronounced "hyperbole" as "hyper-BOWL" until I was almost 20.

I feel like the term of choice should "pederast." "Pedophile" is too euphonious, sounds maybe anodyne. The straight-up match with "nasty" OTOH...

It's weird how pedophiles keep winding up in convicted felon Donald Trump's group of advisors! What a coincidence!

This is your periodic reminder that the court-packing scheme must increase the number of Supremes to _27_, all of whom need to be 40-something firebrand liberal women, to reduce the illegitimate lawless imposter faction to an irrelevant rump.

the combination of the Federalist Society's efforts to raise a generation of judicial reactionaries and the fact that judicial impeachment is a dead letter have led to an unsustainable situation far from threatening it, court packing and reform are necessary for rule of law to exist at all

Specifically, _progressive_ taxes. Tax rates that are designed for social engineering over revenue collection, even.

taxes

The most amazing magical power that Gandalf had was the ability to command bad-faith talkers to be silent until they had something to say worth hearing. Way more powerful then any Fireball or Lightning Bolt.

What world is she living in?

Lara Trump Just Made Bonkers 'Truth And Facts' Claim About Republicans—And Everyone Had The Same Responsebit.ly RNC co-chair Lara Trump told a Turning Point USA crowd Republicans were the party of truth and facts.

I have considered at length that this state of affairs is a direct outcome of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, in which our corporate owners arranged for the phone system to have caller ID spoofing built in to the infrastructure, for reasons they thought were good at the time.

I am once again asking you to consider that an entire information ecosystem established as the primary form of communication over a hundred years and allegedly regulated by the federal government was destroyed by scammers virtually overnight and we just don’t, like, ever talk about it

Somehow this got inappropriately flagged as "intolerance" by the mod algorithm

Hi @darthbluesky.bsky.social! I know you are probably inundated w these type of requests but my best friend just had a baby and her doggo has suffered some lameness in a short amount of time. Is there anyway you can help share this to support a new dad and mom this Father’s Day? gofund.me/580e9f8f

Help Bermuda Get Back on Her Paws!, organized by Daniel Garciagofund.me Help Bermuda Get Back on Her Paws! Our Story: Meet Bermuda, our beloved mount… Daniel Garcia needs your support for Help Bermuda Get Back on Her Paws!

Is there a major national news daily that doesn't suck? I ditched the NYT for the Post years ago and at first it seemed like an improvement. Looking to move on, if there's one that's worth moving to.

Amazing that they’re doing all of this, rather than just canning the problematic new editors from Murdoch-land.

Nym checks out

To be Scrupulously Fair, it is also a hallmark of liberalism that most people agree with our goals and that if only we could get them all to vote, we would win resoundingly. I used to believe that, until the 2020 election.

It's part of convincing themselves, or rather reinforcing a preexisting belief: one of the essentials of conservativism is a belief everybody really sees the world as they do, and acting on that projection.

I feel vindicated that some actual philosophers agree with me, that LLMs are best understood as "automated bullshit generators," in the Frankfurt technical sense of "bullshit." link.springer.com/article/10.1...

ChatGPT is bullshit - Ethics and Information Technologylink.springer.com Recently, there has been considerable interest in large language models: machine learning systems which produce human-like text and dialogue. Applications of these systems have been plagued by persist...

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Aardvark Cheeselog

Reply to

Jay Kuo

I still am surprised that they were just going to forge their way into a coup -- and it seems to get so little real anger. Every time a GOP person suggests that the voting system is rigged, remind them over and over that multiple GOP cronies in multiple states committed blatant forgery.

Yet Another data point on how Tolkien's Middle-Earth was realistically textured in a way his imitators could never approach nathangoldwag.wordpress.com/2024/05/31/t...

The Moral Economy of the Shirenathangoldwag.wordpress.com Who paid for this? There's a certain meme that I see making the rounds on Facebook every so often about the bucolic nature of life in the Shire, from Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, an...

The story of the beginning beginning is illustrative. Cohen made a bank account for the Stormy payments, which did not trigger any special scrutiny. But later, he *re-used the account* for influence-peddling and the scrutiny drawn by that drew attention to the Stormy payments. Cohen fucked up there.

this is an underappreciated point if the genesis for the investigation is "we gotta get this guy" and then it turns out, well, there's absolutely something to get him for that you can prove before a jury the guy has been gotten, regardless

One of the lesser crimes of the fash is appropriating symbols of American patriotism in service of white supremacy. This one in particular. They've made it toxic to anybody who'd like it as just a demand for autonomy.

i need a beach house just so i can fly this

This would be great messaging, but a lie. Consider what's been normalized in the last two years. Trump could gag to death on a hamberder right now and things would not go back to "normal." Mike Johnson would still be Speaker, and clowns would have veto in the House.

"The reason you are bored of this shit, and the reason you're uneasy about the country falling apart is Trump. He's the reason. Since he came down those escalators he's fucked up this whole country, unleashed the worst impulses of the worst people, and you feel it too. Tell him to GFY November 5."

Duck-footed lizard-bat-pornstar chimera family crest. Surely symbolic of something or other.

come across an unfamiliar aristocratic surname - Faà di Bruno - among the judges on this FWW-era military tribunal I'm working on, looked up the family and am reeling at the world's most surreal family crest

I look at America's political future and wrestle with depression and fight despair but I am reminded that at least I am not out there as a target, and that I have no dog in the Gaza fight, and that makes me fortunate. prospect.org/politics/202...

My Political Depression Problem—and Oursprospect.org Granular study of the ever-more-authoritarian right didn’t demoralize the author as much as reaction from the left.

@erikloomis.bsky.social did you see it

"Nigeria’s main labour unions have shut down the national grid and disrupted airline operations as they began an indefinite strike over the government’s failure to agree a minimum wage." www.theguardian.com/world/articl...

Nigeria suffers national power outage as labour unions shut down gridwww.theguardian.com Flights grounded as unions protest against failure of President Tinubu’s government to agree minimum wage

Completed mainstreaming of QAnon, completed mainstreaming of "elections only count when we win," completed mainstreaming of contempt for rule of law... Things are not going back to "normal" even if Trump gags to death on a hamberder tonight

Fox & Friends closes by reiterating Trump's promise to declassify JFK, Epstein, 9/11 files. I'm fine w/ declassification; but focus on this trio gives us Trumpism '24's full conspiracist core, its completed mainstreaming of QAnon, just a booster rocket that's fallen away. END

Hey, if you don't listen to anything except the chorus, it sounds downright jingoistic rah-rah. Something Harlan Ellison said 50-some years ago, about the dangers of trying to put a message into a song lyric.

conservatives have been missing the point of that fucking song since before I was alive

@bretdevereaux.bsky.social with respect to taking a month off from the blog, it is _not_ true that a month without Unmitigated Pedantry is like a month without sunshine. Also I would rather you not get sick of blogging and quit.

Seems truthy

In the grunge years Seattle had like a zillion bands because broke musicians could afford rent. Now it's got no good bands and a bunch of lefty political hipsters attacking each other over obscure stuff that normies don't get. YIMBY housing policies --> more bands --> more successful left politics