Do they not sell kids joke books in the check out line at the grocery store anymore? Used to be tons of those.

I think Pennsylvania’s Governor Shapiro is a good choice, but Michigan’s Governor Whitmer is also an excellent idea. Both states are needed to win and have been looking choppy electorially (to say the least). I don’t think Sanders would take the call (for various reasons, none of which are bad). AOC is too “east-coast” when you’ve already got one of the more progressive Democrats on the ticket in Harris. Besides her time as a DA, Harris is fairly progressive. She was originally put on the 2020 Biden ticket as a nod to progressives within the party… so far as VP, she’s stayed to the left of Biden on most things.

Same where I’m at. 😞

The average American has been convinced that when they are done being a worker for the day, they become something “better” and more important… the consumer. The consumer has no needs other than consumption. The consumer has no wants other than consumption. Their fellows economically simply become their servants as that is the illusion created by the culture of consumption.

Look at most folks making less than $100k/year and who are voting Republican. Ask them why they are voting and they will give you a myriad of reasons, but (in my experience) it mostly boils down to “they’re hurting the other team and I want to be part of the winning team.” Some liberals will give you the same type of response, but it’s less common (or less enthusiastically so maybe). It’s less that our electorate has been dulled to political activity and more that politics has been turned into a participation sport with teams, branding, and merchandise.

In my experience, the greatest example of this are the folks who’ve been completely demoralized saying “both sides are the same.” It is true that both the Republicans and Democrats are the same… if the only way politics affects you is economically (or if you can convince yourself that that is the case). It’s not the politicians or even the parties that are hurting the average American, it’s the Consumer Capitalism all sides of our politics back that’s hurting us. Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you a fairytale like “USSR was good actually” or “PRC is good actually.” Just as America and it’s systems have problems, those countries and their systems had/have their own problems.

Being the core of the post-WWII Western hegemony, American politics has problems that are uniquely it’s own; the old adage of “there are no poor Americans, only temporarily embarrassed millionaires” sadly holds true. It affects every level of our politics, culture, and society to the point where no one needs to propagandize to that effect… it’s merely self-reinforces at this point. You work doubles at the Walmart to feed your family and to afford your cell phone plan because you’re just one magic algorithm lift away from TikTok stardom… it’ll happen -any day now- why worry about politics?

As a cis dude who’s asexual, I’ve gotten weird questions from straight dude bros… one asked me if I “had to be super careful” to not get myself pregnant. Honest question coming from a person our country’s education system has failed.

Blake’s a good guy, but a little off-putting in person. He’s what my grandmother would call “a character.” I have no doubt he believes what he says, but I doubt the versatility of his claims on this.

The British Royal family. I’m an American, living in America, and the number of people here who follow the royals to the point of being sycophants is so freaking weird. I literally do not care about the machinations of a bunch of rich fucks who’s sole claim to fame and fortune is being sprayed out of the correct penis before then falling out of the correct vagina.

I think the most good I could do would be to go back to the mid-1700’s colonial America, probably a center of education like Philadelphia, Boston, or New York. Patient a couple of simple but yet-to-exist technologies like the addiator calculator, rifled gun barrel, etc, but especially the optical telegraph. I would try to leverage these devices/systems into myself joining the Continental Congress as a representative. The optical telegraph is 100% technology that was possible, but not in existence and one that I think could have had unforseen relevance to the founding of the United States. Imagine if long distance, nearly instantaneous communication had existed when the Constitution was being written… think about the implications of that for communication privacy protection. Might even be able to convince the founders to include such a system to be part of the constitutionally mandated post office. I think all it would take would be to point out how important communications had been in the War of Independence: “imagine Savannah has been attacked by Spain. It would take several days for a place like Boston to be alerted to that event… with the optical telegraph the whole nation would know within a matter of a few hours.” After all that, I’d probably try to help get germ theory off the ground and write rebuttals to push back on the various scientific racism theories floating about at that time.

I personally know Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who announced publicly in 2022 that he believed Google’s LaMDA large language model was becoming sentient. He doesn’t have a whole article about him, but he’s a whole section on LaMDA’s Wikipedia article.

Found out yesterday that a manager that hates me is extremely demoralized, currently job hunting, and already tried to quit.

Earlier this month, I found out that a different manager, who in the past tried to get me fired, themselves tried to resign at the beginning of the year. That manager’s contract is up in August and their department is failing on just about every metric imaginable so, they’re likely going to quit or be asked to resign at that point.

Finally, a coworker who was working with that second manager to try and get me fired was themselves fired by corporate for a multitude of reasons. These reasons include but are not limited to: credible accusations of drunk driving company vehicles, harassing and bullying others, offering cocaine to both coworkers and clients, and allegedly attempting to extort someone else out of their job… which is a felony (we’re currently encouraging their victim to go to authorities, but it involves leaked nudes and they are understandably embarrassed about the whole thing… which is their decision, no one can force them). This fired coworker once told a whole room of people “well if [TrueStoryBob] and I both walk into the GM’s office, who do you think is gonna walk out with a job.” Well, we can now definitively say it was them who would walk out of that office unemployed. They had to be forced off company property; like physically escorted onto the sidewalk by the GM and the Business Manager.

All of this has legitimately put a pep in my step. Overall, I like my job, however I was already putting my CV out there just in case. Now, I can stop the job search and not worry about potentially having to move as I also like where I live. By the way, my manager is an absolute dream who’s been watching these other two departments burn to the ground with unadulterated glee as both of these managers walk ass backwards into their own demise.

Jeans, a t-shirt, unbuttoned long sleeve flannel, and crew shoes. I keep a hoodie in my desk just in case.

I work at a TV station, it’s 68°F (20°C) in here all year round.

I think it means like a person is taking something that is foolish or misguided far to seriously.

Differential, différentielle, or diferencial

In English, French, and Spanish, it just sounds cool no matter what accent.

He’s already got my vote. He’s by zero means perfect, but I live in a swing state and cannot throw out “meh it’s terrible, but good enough considering” because it’s not perfect.

Here’s some things he could do to make “meh, it’s terrible but” into just “good”:

• Put any kind of pressure on Israel.
• Expand the Supreme Court.
• Executive order giving the NLRB Sectorial Bargaining at the Federal Level.
• Force the FCC to regulate data collection.
• Go back in time and allow the railroad workers to strike and threaten nationalization if the hedge funds that own the railroads don’t play ball.

I mean, it’s a bunch of Linux people and communists… dunno what you were expecting.

In Catholic school in the nineties and early 2000’s, we were all told that the sex abuse scandal was serious but that it was also “a small number of incidents.” That we needed to pray for the victims and the souls of the perpetrators.

Then I went to college. Come to find out not only was the child rape widespread, not only did the church actively hide monsters from legal scrutiny, not only was this all directly effecting the local arch diocese (not my school specifically, but church leaders were forced to quickly rename another high school when allegations against a dead bishop proved too numerous to ignore)… not only all that but that it’s still going on, just not in first world countries with robust networks of journalists and legal systems. That an alleged pedophile was (while I was in college) living in the Vatican, being directly sheltered from extradition by South American authorities.

I guess the lie was that it was all over. That it was a small problem. That the church was a safe place people could turn to. I left the church at 18 over it, became an atheist by 19, and that’s where I’m at now at 35.

Good news then! With an algorithm fueled by human self-loathing, Instagram is the platform that hates you back!

Slither (2006) fucked me up the first time I watched it. Now I can watch it and laugh. Also, Pam from “The Office” is in it as the police dispatch/receptionist… so, I guess she just got type cast.

Mastodon, Peertube, PixelFed, and (unfortunately) Threads. [I’m forced to have a Threads account because of my job in media. I’m on Instagram and Twitter for the same reason]

I’m also super excited for Loops, but it hasn’t launched yet.

I’ve had good support from Carhartt brand stuff.

Solidarity my flat footed amigo!