Stay classy, telling a reporter to “kill yourself” for factually reporting on Connolly publicly announcing his cancer diagnosis.

Why does the party value fealty and seniority so implicitly? There’s a place for the ‘elder statesman’ voice to share institutional wisdom and tribal knowledge, but this man cannot seriously have had more vigor and energy to pour into leadership than someone under half his age…

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of “The Times’ and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames…

This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs—to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance.

• 1984, George Orwell

Which is more disturbing; the fact that it’s increasingly hard to discern Kayfabe from grift? Or that the difference no longer matters?

Me researching a topic that piques my curiosity;

Okay so I after all the open source info lead nowhere, I made a throwaway account on a 2000s era hobbyist PHP forum and THAT’S where I found the research paper that unlocked everything after translating from Russian and pre-standardization local units

Also me trying to replace a three-way light switch

Man idk, this seems like a really hard to figure out this wiring diagram

It’s a shit spot to be in, as basically all of them work cases in federal court. If your lawyers are physically prevented entry to federal property because some orange buffoon bans the entire firm by the stroke of a pen, that law firm is completely impotent and unable to argue in federal cases, even those that don’t end up in a courtroom. Judges chambers, pre-trial motions, informal meetings, etc all are impossible or vastly more difficult.

It was a very targeted and deliberate move to put these firms in a lose:lose scenario - give an absurd amount of pro-bono work to your abuser, or wither and die as your clients are forced to move to another firm:

The orders threatened to bar attorneys from where they work, courthouses and federal agencies and cancel the contracts of law firm clients. For example, an aerospace company could lose its federal contracts if it stayed with the firm. A senior partner at one firm told us the president’s orders were, quote, “diabolical.” “Intended to bankrupt [us].”

I have worked professionally with Chinese vendors and suppliers for years, both pre and post COVID. China offers the whole range of manufacturing, not just cheap labor but high tech and precision devices too. You want cheap injection molded toys for Happy Meals? Done. Precision machine tools for CNC? Can do. Medical imaging devices? No problem. Mass assembly of automotive cable looms? Easy. If a business wants quality product from China they can do it.

And much like the classic European model where a textile or steel industry would collect in a valley for logistic/resource reasons and organically form an industrial ‘core’ the same is true in China, but with a centralized planned economy. Vocational schools feed local industry with skilled workers like engineers or tool and die makers, so that region experiences further and further specialization and conglomeration.

There’s no coherent or comparable manufacturing:educational alliance in the US, closest we have is ‘feeder schools’ that partner with individual industrial/scientific giants on an ad-hoc basis.

Just buy a seam ripper, and sanitize your branded sweater/blanket/jacket/etc from their embroidered trademark.

Isopropyl alcohol or xylene can take off most printed/transfer logos on plastic or metal objects.

Worst case scenario you give it to someone else/homeless so it doesn’t end up in a landfill or wastefully recycling an otherwise usable product.

In any other presidential term, that can be a fair assessment only a few months in. The economy can be compared to a Panamax oil tanker - it moves with huge momentum and can’t be steered quickly.

But this tariffs nonsense detonated a bomb below the waterline. You may not be able to steer the ship quickly, but deliberate sabotage can absolutely cripple it and spread damage everywhere. Quarterly 401(k) statements are being sent out, plus it’s tax season, so people are very in touch with how this is impacting them and their money

Marco Rubio suicide watch has been sooo cathartic during this administration. The Zelenskyy blowup especially - after decades of waiting and maneuvering, deal brokering and sycophancy, he finally has the job where he can ‘outshine’ Kissinger… and the wave he’s riding is with these idiotic blowhards.

Absolutely. My best learning experiences in life - both collaborative like mentoring/educational setting, or competitive like sports - have been when I was massively outclassed. Because if you put aside your lizard-brain feelings of being less than or inferior and listen/observe, you can see how it’s working for them and understand what it is you are/aren’t doing or do/don’t know.

Observe. Ask. Understand. Decide… and Review.

But humility is understated. It doesn’t sell on TV, it doesn’t captivate a crowd or rally the masses. “I don’t have the answer, but let’s find out” is honest but doesn’t have the same pull as “the problem is clear, and I know the solution”

And all he had to do was shut up, and take credit for the federal apparatchik doing all the work for him with COVID. Blather at a press conference to his followers to stay home and ‘beat the China virus so America stays strong’ - and then play golf. Push on industry and suppliers to build ventilators, hospital capacity, and facilitate lockdowns and remote school/work.

Imagine if instead of nearly a million direct deaths, we had a mortality similar to Europe - better even as we bought our way to the front of the vaccine line. An actual ‘America first’ in recovery from COVID and the economic slowdown, instead of fumbling the ball so hard in his fourth year and making Biden president.

How anyone thought that he would be the right choice to manage any crisis, let alone economic woes is dumbfounding. The ‘smartest person’ in every room he enters, he’s incapable of anyone else to having the right answer.

FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS

I will bulk purchase grey-market bootleg toner from shady overseas websites before I go back to a inkjet…

Because for the right, the concept of people coming together as a grassroots movement and setting aside some political differences to unite as a group, was unheard of until Tea Party/MAGA.

It’s an implicit admission - how else could ‘those radical lefties/gays/immigrants/etc’ get these crowd sizes except by astroturfing like the right has to?

Basically any military surplus store really. Online stores all tend to have very aligned pricing so but you cannot inspect the (used) item for issues, sizing, stains or damage, etc so I’d recommend finding your local military surplus store - just recognize that you’re thrifting not shopping. Not everything is available, nor worth having necessarily, and it’s commonly been worked hard and not cared for before it found its way to the shelf.

If you want to roll the dice and get some serious deals, there’s usually a liquidator or auction website for your local PD and/or government to offload their outdated but workable gear and tech. But they usually have very particular rules around shipping and pickup, you arrange all that on your own.

People SCREAMED at the party. Muslim Democrat voters made all the democracy moves, and got told to get lost:

• Organized a massive protest movement,
• Made their desires and convictions known publicly and directly to leadership who’d listen
• Turned out and protested in person
• Were snubbed any kind of representation or platform at the DNC, even for a curated speech by a sitting Congressional member
• Ran a massive protest vote in the Democratic primaries, which if sustained (which it was in the general) meant that the Dems would loose Michigan at a minimum (which Kamala did) and its 15 electoral college votes went for Trump

The party has to be listening for anyone’s voice to be heard. Until you hit your FEC donor limit and the throw down even more for a Super PAC, or pay for a seat at fundraiser dinner/chat a you’re definitely a nobody to them. We need a new party:

Organizers said about 700 people attended the fundraiser. Ticket prices ranged from $3,300 to a half million dollars. Political experts said this visit is essentially a trip to the ATM.

August 12 Zoom event with North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, where tickets ranged from $1,000 to $25,000

Yeah. I understood the (good faith) arguments that the presidency is a high tempo, stressful, 24/7 job and that Biden was wiped out in interviews or public appearances - but that’s an excuse not an exoneration.

If he couldn’t make it through the work each day without being cooked, every single day, then he should have stood aside for someone younger/sharper who could. I voted for Jimmy Carter 2.0 in 2020, not for Biden - the downslope was apparent even before then if you cared to look beyond the news headlines. He never should have ran again in 2024.

It’s hard to truly know what went on behind the scenes, but there was a large amount of common disdain for Biden staying in the race after “we beat Medicare” - anyone who hadn’t already been clued into his cognitive decline was suddenly confronted with that reality, and people knew he was a clear loser at that point.

For Biden the floor only fell out beneath him after Nancy Pelosi and the donor class publicly announced they wanted Joe out NOW that the DNC/Biden camp realized the gig was up.

Jk on them, my most regular receipt is just that hotdog. Walk right through the registers, eat food, leave with nothing else.

It’s a damn good hot dog at an absurd price - on the scale of processed meats, let’s be real.

probably involving sex with minors.

Rape. It was rape. A minor cannot legally consent to have sex with a partner of near/equal age, let alone a man decades older than them.

Trump was semi-ineffectual during his first term because he was an outsider candidate. It was Jeb’s turn to get the RNC nod, but Trump won and spent the first year plus of his four trying to wrestle power from the entrenched Republican establishment and define his own administration and agenda.

Not anymore. We’re still weeks away from Jan 20 and the Republican talking heads are already murmuring about recess cabinet appointments. He’s got the party wrapped around his finger, and loyalists running the RNC, complicit Supreme Court, a House majority leader in his corner, and an affable Senate majority leader.

I hope he gets distracted trying to unfuck the effects of his policies or bogged in culture war distractions, but honestly there’s a lot of damage he can do solo as the chief executive.