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
9mo 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
9mo 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
9mo 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
9mo 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
11mo 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
11mo 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
11mo 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
11mo 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
11mo 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
11mo 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
11mo 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
11mo 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
11mo 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
11mo 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
11mo 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?
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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