In the olden times, it was a big point of pride of American politics that a lot of people didn’t want to kill the leaders. It was sort of assumed that in feudal style European politics, of course the common people kind of wanted to kill you, because you were threatening their safety and taking their stuff. In America, the way we did things was to earn the respect of the people you governed. The people actually wanted this person to be in charge. Why would I shoot that guy? That’s who we picked, we like him.

Of course there are some caveats (slavery large among them). The reality never matched up to the ideal. But we’re going back to where even the approximation of consent of the governed that we used to have, isn’t assumed anymore. Fuckin bullshit

One of the most important parts of a propaganda framework is the introduction of code-words, little phrasings that automatically call to mind a particular narrative you’re trying to construct. “People are fleeing California to move to red states” may be true, it may not be, it may be because of property values more than anything else. Doesn’t matter. By incorporating that same phrasing and framing into as many different contexts as possible, it does two things:

1. It gives people security. It’s like a little affirmation that gives them assurance they’re on the right side. They can slip it into conversation on their YouTube channel, in their press conference, at their dinner table. It reminds them that everyone on the “enemy” side is stupid, and losing, and they’re on the right side. It gives them camaraderie, it strengthens the bond.
2. It creates an artificial external reality. If you just walk up to people a few times a week and say, “Democratic policies are a failure,” they’ll think you’re super weird, and they might even disagree with you. But if you just use the code-word, if you allude to it, even in contexts like this that have nothing to do with anything, it’ll smuggle its way into their worldview without them even noticing. Eventually, it’s reach a point where if someone tries to tell them it’s not that way, they’ll scoff and decide the person is stupid, because everyone thinks that, they hear it everywhere.

It’s very effective.

Oops

I fixed it now.

it’s actually better for stallions to carry a bit more weight

It is clear that this horse knows what he’s doing. Just give him oats and lady horses and let him run around and do his thing. Humans are fuckin’ weird.

Edit: I’m not up on my horse lingo

Hm… yeah, maybe so. They linked to taz, they quoted a random member of Masch, and they cited some other cases, but yeah maybe it would have been good to have an actual legal expert weighing in on how realistic it is that this will mean anything significant.

That’s not really clear in actuality. Different people have different opinions on what might be the results, and a few of them are quoted in the article stating their takes on it. The fact that the reality isn’t clear yet isn’t exactly the article’s fault.

The headline isn’t clear. The article goes into quite a lot of detail (the situation is much more complex, and the headline is probably a pretty misleading summary) and is perfectly clear.

Yeah. I am hopeful that he’ll run into resistance from the rank and file he is trying to depend on to get this stuff done. The California National Guard is already pissed about LA, and now he’s asking for support and cooperation from the same force that watched his supporters beat the fuck out of the Capitol Police like a medieval siege not that long ago and then him give them hearty congratulations for it.

I’m not saying it won’t work as he keeps trying (and as ICE gets staffed up and better funded), but I’m glad he’s a moron, that’s all I’m saying.

Why not just replace it with a cap that isn’t a flip-top? Screw it on tight, squeeze the bottle slightly before putting the cap on so there’s a slight negative pressure. That would be my first thing to try.

So the bottle doesn’t break, it just pops open? This still sounds like a packaging issue. Maybe unstopper / squeeze / stopper the bottle, so it’s got negative pressure. Maybe replace the cap with some other more permanent type of cap (one that doesn’t have a little flip-top, if the ones they’re including do, just a solid cap and then ship the flip-top one alongside it)? IDK. How is it coming apart in transit? It’s not literally the plastic bottle breaking, is it?

This has got to be the packing, not the bottle. I have never heard of a bottle being shipped that suddenly broke on its own, without impact with its environment being the issue.

A buddy of mine was leaning towards joining the military, and it was interacting with the recruiters and observing that they seemed miserable that changed his mind about it.

The pay is closer to $43k.

Oh, well in that case

I won’t say 100%, but they’re generally pretty good. Big ones I can think of:

• They’re going to apply every attack against Kamala Harris that they did against Biden
• Trump is going to be infinitely worse for the Palestinians even than Biden was

The first is a little bit qualified I guess. I was somewhat against replacing Biden for that reason (definitely before the debate), which was absolutely a mistake. But I think in retrospect, the way that they were able to blame Kamala Harris for Gaza and inflation and make it work was pretty spot-on to what I predicted.

The second one, people were furiously telling me how wrong I was, how impossible it would be for anyone to be worse than Biden, and in early days saying that Trump had achieved a cease-fire and it was just proof of how easy it would have been if only Biden had put some slight effort to it.

Yes, how dare they invade a sovereign nation and have their state TV call for exterminating every single one of its population, and threaten people with nuclear weapons, because those countries committed the sin of maybe joining a defense alliance which would make it more difficult for them to do those things without getting their nose bloodied for it. Or, wait, that was fine. You were talking about the other guys? Yeah, those guys. I get it.

Russia had no choice, at the end of the day. It’s from the “I didn’t mean to break her arm but she said she was gonna call the cops on me and you know I can’t have that shit” school of enlightened statecraft.

You may be right, but I don’t think he’s even as organized as that. I think he’s just wandering around playing big boy and pooping on himself, as he usually does.

I feel like they’re pretty ahead of you. I doubt that anyone in Ukraine or EU is taking Trump’s opinion on the “peace deal” or the war all that seriously. They can’t just openly ignore him, just because the US is still providing a ton of weapons, but I would be very surprised if they’re taking him seriously.

I cannot overstate how wonderful this is. Thank you.

Same as anything really

They actually observed the natives setting those controlled burns, and decided to themselves, “Yeah they’re wild savages, they clearly don’t give a fuck about anything or know what they’re doing, here’s me with syphilis and muskets and I think it’s time to share civilization with them, they’ll thank me later.” All that magic prairie ecosystem (which is basically gone now) was a carefully constructed environment maintained over generations to make hunting big game cheap and easy. But no, let’s have railroads and lead paint instead.