dasfoo
9mo ago
It would be closely related to the "Sicilian immigrants are eating our horses" meme as featured in The Godfather.
Uh, what? I think a re-watch might be in order.
dasfoo
4mo ago
My daughters have been giving me Spotify playlists of recent music. Swift stands out as one of the most idiosyncratic and emotionally complex lyricists working today. She captures a cognitive dissonance between introspection and compulsive habit that most pop songwriters would never consider. And yet is also so recognizably "normal" that she avoids the edgelordy bullshit of more progressive artists and easily appeals to a wider audience. I've become a huge fan.
dasfoo
9mo ago
What about this is blood libel?
If you wade into the X threads where the Cats thing got started, there are now nascent claims of voodoo and, yes, cannibalism.
dasfoo
10mo ago
In some countries, they refer to this as a "coup".
No, it isn't.
First, a party can nominate whoever it wants; it doesn't have to go through a "democratic" primary process, and the Democrats only did that in the most disingenuous way possible for this election.
Second, it's absurd for people on the right to try to claim that, both, A. Biden is mentally unfit; and B. It's a "coup" to replace him. If A, then B must happen in the name of civic responsibility.
I'll grant that a lot of Democratic Party shenanigans stink to high heaven, and this whole election process makes them look like the most cynical operators. But it's rich for people, most of whom don't even think Biden was legitimately elected in the first place, to try to claim that switching out nominees in this case is somehow deeply illegitmate.
dasfoo
10mo ago
There was no mystery as to the identity of the shooter
Officially, maybe, but speculation about Maxwell Yearick is still circulating on social media.
dasfoo
10mo ago
The difference is that nothing positive can break for Kamala.
What if Biden is declared unfit in early October and a new wave of enthusiasm for the First Woman President gives her a 5% boost to carry her through the election a week or two after she assumes office?
dasfoo
11mo ago
the real target is the companies that feel safe hiring such people
Please, no. We don't want it normalized for employers to scrutinize their employees' politics, regardless of ideology.
dasfoo
4mo ago
or else you have a chomskyite view of russia as soviet union which you fondly remember as a noble altruistic project that was sadly misunderstood by the ungrateful eastern europeans
My most pro-Russia friend is also a Chomskyite former-Leftist who has found himself realigned as a Trumpist right winger, and I've always found the consistent position on Russia informative even if he denies it's relevant. This faction was anti-US Imperialism (pro-communist) in the 1980s and are anti-US Imperalism (anti-WEF/neoliberal Communism) now, with Russia as the noble bulwark against The West. I have to say that Putin's narrative building in this regard has been very shrewd. He's known which buttons to push.
dasfoo
5mo ago
Sisters Brothers was fantastic.
I also loved Sisters Brothers as well as A Prophet. This is not to the same standard.
dasfoo
9mo ago
No, I'm honestly just emotionally over it all.
This is OK. Just stop paying attention to politics. It will make little difference to your life beyond the improvement of shaking off the stress.
Almost any claim that X disaster will happen if you don't vote for Y is garbage. Most people just keep working, living, loving and tune out politics.
dasfoo
9mo ago
Here's a fun example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toads_in_Australia
dasfoo
11mo ago
Or "a" Somali flag rather than "the" Somali flag: https://www.sportskeeda.com/pop-culture/news-the-united-states-losing-identity-new-minnesota-state-flag-s-resemblance-jubaland-somalia-sparks-controversy-online
dasfoo
11mo ago
The fear of being too pro Israel isn't so much about votes as a first order effect
It is about votes if you need to win Michigan.
dasfoo
2d ago
The reason people thought there was a "client list" to begin with was because of people using "Epstein list" to refer to the lists of everyone who ever flew to a party hosted on his island
It's broader than that. The flight logs are mostly (IIRC) NY <--> FL. Epstein seemed to be very generous in flying celebrities and other notables around the continental U.S. on his plane. He was an avid networker. Only a fraction of the total guests in his logs flew to LSJ or the ranch in the western U.S. where some rumored dirtiness went down.
dasfoo
4mo ago
The conservative in me wants slow, methodical cuts that do the least damage to the good parts. But I also understand that those cuts are easier to block/mitigate, and maybe the best thing is to destroy and rebuild the good parts. People will suffer in the process, but that's true of all change.
dasfoo
5mo ago
Audiard's previous fiim, Sisters Brothers, is an interesting, complicated, funny and heartbreaking contemplation of masculinity using the lens of the traditionally masculine Western genre (not at all the silly comedy of its marketing campaign), so it wouldn't surprise me if he had something more subversive on his mind in Emilia Perez. He's clearly capable of it.
dasfoo
10mo ago
Do you resent any other politician for their lies?
Anyone who pays attention knows politicians tell tactical lies nonstop.
If you hold Trump to a special standard I think that's ridiculous. Otherwise yeah, resenting the lie is probably the most rational response possible.
I don't agree that Trump is lying is most cases like this. Almost worse, it's that he doesn't care to know if it's the truth. It sounds good to him to say, and the truth of it is irrelevant.
How many things does Trump say during debates and his speeches that are merely poorly remembered memes he saw on X or Truth?
IMO, it should behoove a leader to care to make the best case for their argument, and that includes understanding and optimizing for the biases in the medium through which the argument is presented. If Trump knows he is going to be mercilessly fact-checked, it's on him to make life tougher not easier for the fact-checkers. He makes valid arguments sound like lies because he doesn't bother to make them sound as true as possible, and that's unforgiveable.
Point to actually existing government. "Do you really want Joe Biden/Donald Trump deciding how much toilet paper you're allotted or what books are worthy of being published?"
Yes, I like to say, "Never support giving the government any power you wouldn't want your least favorite politician to possess." It's remarkably unpersuasive, because the notion that the means of government is more important than the ends is completely lost on post-1960s liberalism.
EDIT: IMO this is why it's so easy for the right to assume that the left supports electoral fraud: it would be insane to want an all-powerful government and also support literally Hitler having a shot at winning. Of course, you would fix an election to prevent that from happening.
dasfoo
10mo ago
but the category error made is thinking that the consensus shifts mainly through some actor above the grassroots
A good example of this is the split between Trump and his base on the Covid vaccine's Operation Warp Speed. He could brag about that non-stop and it would convince none of them. But within an hour all loyal Democrats will replace their Twitter profile pics with Ukraine flags and make jokes about couches. It's an open question whether the centralized media/messaging on the left and the decentralized media/messaging on the right is reflective or formative of the respective groups and their information heirarchies.
dasfoo
11mo ago
What does this mean?
Here she is recalling indulging in the smell of burning tires as an evocation of our times: https://x.com/JessicoBowman/status/1820975378485100928
There's another one of her hoping the riots / looting last as long as they need to. I'll post it when I find it.
dasfoo
11mo ago
Trump has successfully convinced people that he wasn't making the decisions and the Deep State is to blame for the screw-up.
It astounds me that this and the stolen election narrative have somehow redounded to Trump's benefit among his supporters. To me, they sound like the plight of someone who is grossly incompetent at understanding and exercising the power he holds as President.
dasfoo
2d ago
As I understand it -- and this is largely from reading through the "new" materials released last year, and looking through the flight logs before that -- all we really "know" that Epstein did wrong was inviting teenage girls to his dwellings and coercing them into sexual massages. There are lots of Miami police interviews with girls who give exactly the same account of this happening. This is what he was arrested for and subsequently put on that weird house arrest arrangement. All of the more salacious accusations came from two witnesses, Virginia Guiffre and Sarah Ransome, both of whom have erratically made and then withdrawn wilder claims, hurting their credibility. This is not to say that their claims of debauched, star-studded island sex parties are incorrect, but they have yet to be substantiated by credible witnesses or evidence. Since all we know about Epstein is that he enjoyed criminally procured sex for personal gratification, there may well be no clients, and there for no "client list" to speak of.
dasfoo
5mo ago
But I just don't see how 'nobody else is stepping up to do the hard thing that someone is already doing' supposedly proves that the hard thing isn't worth doing and the second guy is a chump for bothering.
You never know if someone else will step up until the person already doing it steps back and opens up that opportunity.
In my view, if any truly important program is shut down along with USAID, someone will step into that vacuum, whether it's a non-profit or a private philanthropist or a religious organzation. Maybe there will even be a new federal program created if such a need is identified.
But this idea that the U.S. government is responsible for all charity throughout the world is not only a logistical problem but also a conceptual problem, neither of which will ever be corrected as long as the US govt continues to enable it.
dasfoo
5mo ago
Anyway, this is not the thing to be confused about.
It is, though, if you then question why USAID is upset about the SoS/DoGE having access to these supposedly insignificant and/or perfectly normal classified materials. Whether they are up to no good or just reacting politically to the change in admin, it looks like bad faith on their part and completely legitimate for the Trump admin to audit the fuck out of them.
The woman in the right corner at just after 9 minutes who transitions from shouting "USA! USA! USA!" to "FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!" is a perfect ecapsulation of the ugliness of the current American body politic.
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