I'm backing away from the tech companies where I can without cutting myself off too much. I should try to find another email as I have only Google accounts.
I need to find some media worth subscribing to. I now have a regular donation to Wikipedia and a TPM subscription, but that's about it.
You want reporting specifically, as opposed to opinionage?
Yes. I do give to the Guardian. But I'm looking for an American one.
Half my friends are switching from Whatsapp to Signal, and half are staying put, so that's a real fucking pain in the ass.
Unfortunately I'm really devoted to IG and would be sad to give it up. Like I bookmark all sorts of cute funny things to share with the kids, and then when we're sitting around waiting for an appointment, we go through the Kids Folder and just have a blast.
Gabbard confirmed on party line vote. It's Susan Collins' world, we just live in it.
Wow. I really thought from back in December that she'd be the one that failed.
I do have a Signal account now. But I've never used it.
I think the Republicans are fully in the cult now.
I don't trust the CEOs of all the MSM not to be Republicans.
Not sure how bad it is going to get on the media front.
They are clearly pulling punches all over the place now, but still mostly within the "both sides" framework they have cemented over the past 30 years that privileges the lies of the Rs.
I suspect that T et al are actually somewhat comfortable (for now) with the "frenemy" stance of the "liberal" media to attack.
But there will be increasing threats against non-media interests of the owners.
Whatever happens, the NYT will be the paper of record of the Kleptocratic Autocracy, whatever that requires.
8: Yeah, things now are not m like then. You see 9and R senators see) how quickly a "serious" person like Marco Rubio goes all in and realize what's the point.
Are the Five eyes actually still sending us intelligence?
2: I got a Wired subscription. The talk radio at my local PBS/ NPR affiliate has been pretty brave, so I'm upping my contribution. The station WGBH, however, took down all references to DEI on their website which is concerning and changed it to Community or something.
I'd really like a TPM- lite subscription for $35 instead of $70. The Philadelphia paper seems to be pretty good. I am subscribed to the Boston Globe.
11: And what it measn to be a republican now is much more than it meant in say 1995.
I think US media might ot some degree be slightly constrained by what happens in other world media. Will there be viable competitors for the US market who are not full on Pravda?
7: Oops, McConnell voted against. What a world.
I would definitely like recommendations for nob-google web-based e-mail. I'd be willing to pay something but not a huge amount.
Honestly, I can't get away from Google or Microsoft because of workplace subscriptions, so while I could change my personal accounts, it feels like it would be kind of pointless.
16: I'm with Will Stancil on this:
it's dramatically appropriate that mcconnell is forced to live in a hell he himself created, but I wish I wasn't also forced to live in it
Patel seems like the only one that still might not actually be confirmed. Even that's questionable given everything else.
I don't know how they'd confirm Gabbard and not Patel. Unless it's because Patel lied to their faces much more recently?
I don't get it exactly, but maybe some personal grudge like with Gaetz. Grassley holding over the nomination seems like a sign of something but I'm not sure what.
Fuck it I'm breaking out the bourbon even though I have to go to work tomorrow
definitely like recommendations for nob-google web-based e-mail
I'm happy with Fastmail.
17: Protonmail. They have a free service but there's also a sale going on the plus-level tier right now. Easy to migrate and forward everything from gmail. Good VPN too.
Not sure what the Proton mail CEO thinks of Trump now, but (screenshot of tweet being referenced). I have seen people say that the product is still fine from a security perspective.
The problem is not gmail so much that I've got my entire life embedded in Google Drive. And various other google apps.
Maybe I should subscribe to a worthwhile Canadian newspaper?
My problem with abandoning gmail is that I have the addresses for my actual name. With no numbers.
28: Yeesh, gross. Hadn't seen that. I mainly like having E2EE. But I'm guessing for most people who don't have weirdly intense or niche email needs the diff between fastmail and protonmail is small.
29: I use the calendar. I have dome photos in google drive but mostly back up onto idrive. Wondering if Apple is any better for any of this stuff.
28: Speaking of companies you want to avoid because of the politics, are there Musk-controlled entities other than Tesla and Starlink we shoukd boycott?
30: For Canadian news to sponsor - Canadaland and Halifax Examiner are my choices. And I need to start reading The Tyee for the other coast. Some others listed at this question with comments:
https://ask.metafilter.com/384251/Help-me-know-whats-happening-in-the-frozen-northlands
Is something like the Toronto Star any good for international coverage? I want to replace the Washington Post and an willing to learn about Ontario if it gets me better coverage.
The Globe and Mail is the canonical one. Their Doug who's an international columnist and occasional Berlin resident is mostly astute. Plus he gave me a bluesky code back when those were necessary.
Only $11 for a week of home delivery.
Speaking of companies you want to avoid because of the politics, are there Musk-controlled entities other than Tesla and Starlink we shoukd boycott?
Don't forget Twitter, but also consider Visa for helping him build a payment system, through which I assume he's going to force everyone to have an account so they can accept their Social Security checks as $MUSKBUCKS.
Hark! Look to the brave, principled Democrats! They valiantly hold the line on preserving decorum in the face of
the immoderate bleating of their unreasonable constituents:
Fetterman seems to be a piece of shit whose main achievement is being marginally better than a fake doctor.
||
After practicing sorcery during his youth in order to avenge the hardships inflicted on his family by a cruel uncle, Mila began to regret the sufferings he caused through his success in the black arts.|>
So we're going to be issuing letters of marque now? This is going to get a lot of American tourists and expats in Mexico killed.
Madness
https://x.com/reptimburchett/status/1889719640923762971?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ
where's Ralph Nader to say that the Corsair's were unsafe at any speed
Unsafe to you, losers!
The Corsair was based on the Crusader, which was very definitely unsafe at any speed:
1,261 Crusaders were built. By the time it was withdrawn from the fleet, 1,106 had been involved in mishaps.[25]
Though the article does note that if you accidentally took off with the wings still folded in half, it would fly more or less OK (this happened several times).
40: I was thinking about that. We mostly use Amex, but we also have Mastercards from Apple. We have an RBC Visa that Tim has that's tied to a Canadian bank account. For in- person shopping Costco only takes visa. We order bulk items and medications (antihistamines) online and use the Mastercard, but in-store you have to use Visa. I want to support Costco, because they've resisted challenges to DEI by right-wing activist shareholders.
What does 46 say? Can't read the link.
51: A loon congressman says he's going to propose a bill that will allow the president to issue letters of marque to private individuals to "seize persons or property of any cartel or linked organisation". He's probably lying to get attention.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/why-asteroid-collision-course-earth-111928076.html
Why an asteroid on a collision course with Earth is actually good for humanity
"Another thing to appreciate about the current risk from 2024 YR4 is that a 2.3% chance of an impact in 8 years is still lower probability than the odds of a similar sized undiscovered object hitting before that time."
||
Wouldn't it be great if some smart tech person developed a program that was basically one click that disabled all the AL shit the various platforms are pushing on us? Wouldn't the developer become a zillionaire?
|>
No, wait, I like the American League! I meant AI.
Acrobat has gotten to be such a shit about AI that I read pdfs in Edge sometimes.
Any tech kabillionaire who tried to protect us from enshittification would get Batman-levels of idolatry.
58: I was going to make some kind of joke about the Designated Hitter Rule, but then I had a vague memory of reading that the National League adopted it too. I checked and yes they did in 2022.
There's no doubt the US has fallen from grace.
57: YES
I would also like to be able to set my Epic record to block automatic notifications to bulk messages so that I Know when to log in. Even better, if I could have n automatic reply which said, "this message was rejected because it was sent to multiple addresses or was written using AI".
50. Don't rely on Amex if you visit Europe. Almost nobody takes it. OTOH Visa is ubiquitous. Apparently Amex takes too big a cut from the retailer. MC is everywhere too.
51: Here's the X-tweet from 46, BG:
Rep. Tim Burchett
@RepTimBurchett
I'll be introducing the "Cartel Marque and Reprisal Authorization Act of 2025" which would authorize
@realDonaldTrump to commission privately armed and equipped individuals or groups to seize persons and property of any cartel, cartel member, or cartel-linked organization.
11:54 AM · Feb 12, 2025
·
Discover is accepted in "99% of places", I can't help but know from watching sports on TV
At first everyone thought the Republicans wanted to bring us back to the '50s, but then we realized that the target date was actually in the Gilded Age.
And now, we're talking letters of marque and reprisal - that's really going back there.
Wikipedia is good on this. I have learned that
[S]ince the American Civil War, the United States as a matter of policy has consistently followed the terms of the 1856 Paris Declaration forbidding the practice.
I have to admit, this strikes me as the upside of casting aside international constraints. Pirates are fun! At least, more fun than Nazis.
Is there any remote chance that Hochul will remove Adams from office now that it has really blown up? (I'm guessing not.)
Has this lit a fire under the freaking Times at least? They buried a story on $80M being taken back from NYC coffers I noticed. Don't have the heart to look if they are giving this story its due.
46, 65: Submitting crazed bills that they know will die has been an R specialty since the days of Gingrich. But now that so many of crazed delusions have been made immanent within the Republican party who even knows what they might actually do.
NYT front page right now:
"Adams Case Provokes Justice Dept Upheaval"
"U.S. Attorney and Others Resign After Refusing to Drop Charges Against Mayor"
and
"An Ambitious Prosecutor Quits Rather Than Do Trump's Bidding"
So it's a big deal for some reason, maybe you'll find the corruption if you click through and read for a while. They do include the letter, which a different newspaper may have considered worth quoting in a big headline.
The DOJ are now effectively mob lawyers, and the work is underway to turn the FBI into made men. And so on.
stealing from someone on Bluesky, I was led to believe by REM that I would feel better about this.
CNN.com is currently featuring the very important revelation: "NASA astronauts weigh in on Trump's rhetoric"
Smaller text and to the right is: "Acting US attorney in New York and five others quit after being told to drop Eric Adams case"
Six people resigning rather than doing something corrupt is kind of a big fucking deal!
Scroll down a bit further, and you find:
"Drama over Adams case raises questions about Trump administration's 'weaponization' of justice"
and then
"Analysis: Americans voted for Trump. Did they vote for this?"
Can't wait to find out the law is nothing more than whatever people wearing MAGA hats in diners think it is.
It seems like if Hochul can really remove Adams and she did it, that would make the story pretty hard to downplay but she's probably got consultants saying if she does that, she'll lose some slice of voters in some suburb of some city somewhere in the state who care more about the price of dog food.
CNN must read Unfogged because they've now reversed the placement of the astronaut story with the Adams/DOJ story and raised "weaponization" to the leading headline.
||
and the virtuous wife of a doctor is sentenced to just a week in the poisonous waters of purgatory in order to expiate her husband's crime of imprudently bleeding (in the medical sense) his patients.|>
67. If they wanted to bring back the 50s, they'd have to swap out Trump for Eisenhower. I'd take that.
I have a dumb fear. Has this administration somehow caused my spam filter to deteriorate? I'm literally seeing a lot more extremely-poorly done spam, with weird fonts and bold lettering that feel like ~2003, and a surprising amount of it invokes Elon in some money-making scheme. Based on the subject heading at least.
More in my yahoo account than in my gmail account.
It would seem more likely that that your addresses have been leaked via the incompetence of the Doge crew.
64: when I temped at a division of American Express in the 1990s, there were posters around the office exhorting employees to turn in retailers who claimed to take American Express but then discouraged customers from using their card when presented. I don't know if that's still a problem for them, but if you're relying on random employees to narc out your contractees, that would seem to suggest there is a flaw in your business model.
When I had a job with a company credit card, it was Amex - which is the only time I've ever actually encountered it. It was really noticeable how many places in Europe would only take Visa and Mastercard.
My suspicion is that Amex survives in business by having a crap product but being very good at persuading large organisations to make their employees use it, see also BAE Systems, Boeing, Microsoft etc.
American Express has a weirdly prominent place in Patricia Highsmith's European novels.
Travellers' cheques and freight forwarding was how they started out. The cards came along later.
81: The Supreme Court found that American Express's high transaction fees benefited consumers and therefore it was okay for the company to demand that retailers not discourage the card's use.
So merchants can't provide discounts to users of Visa and Mastercard because that's what's best for the customers.
Usually being defrauded by the other characters!
That reminds me. Last night a guy at the bar ran up a $43 tab, put down $45, and said "keep the change."
And if that guy just happened to get run over on his way home, well, Hick drivers are notoriously accident prone.
I always walk to the bar. But it was a very big week locally for overturned cars. Fortunately, I didn't have to go places by car.
Overturned cars because of weather or sportsball? Or something else?
My uninformed guess is that Trump being a piece of shit and getting away with it has encouraged young men in cars and trucks to try the same, but gravity doesn't play. My theory doesn't entirely work because the one nearest to me was a woman. But she really didn't overturn the car so much as drive the car into a retaining wall (after narrowly missing a bunch of school kids legally crossing the street).
But certainly not weather and no one here is overturning a car for an Eagle's win (though I think most people did want them to win).
But her car was a Jeep Wrangler, so at least that stereotype was supported.
My experience of Jeeps is definitely that they suck and one crashes them.
I'm having odd reactions to the steady torrent of bad news: I think I decided long ago that I wasn't going to be reactive, and so I've conditioned myself to be calm and stoic in the face of most of Trump's b.s. I think I'm now at the point where I'm clearly failing to resolve the cognitive dissonance effectively, but the will not to react is incredibly powerful. It would be nice if I could turn it to some better use.
We've had three Jeeps (none were Wranglers) and I've only totaled one.
I'm having odd reactions to the steady torrent of bad news
I'm really struggling with the urge to do more vs the urge to check out. Actually it's a triangular struggle between three things:
1. I should be doing more because what if all of our collective resistance is swelling to some imperceptible but important-in-hindsight tipping point?
2. I should not be doing more because I'm already harried and cranky about how much I've got going on (mostly kid-related but also local politics)
3. I should compartmentalize more because it's going to be a really fucking long four years either way, and I might as well not ruin my mental health along with it.
ALSO!! Here's a question:
Hawaii is really struggling to cope with wondering which adults in her life are Trump supporters. She's sussing out the teachers she likes, etc, and asking them point blank. She's never been a counterculture kid, so there's a real potential for people she admires - dance studio teachers, etc - to be Trump supporters.
The bleg is specifically about her OCD therapist. She's been amazing for the OCD. But what if she's Republican?
- Arguments against: therapists are pretty realistic about the problems of the world.
- Arguments that she might be: she lives in the next town over, which is a world of upscale Trump supporters. (Their county broke 70% for Trump.)
I'd say there's a 30% chance she voted for Trump, and it's unlikely she's full-throated MAGA. But usually the advice would be "discuss this with your therapist", and usually the therapist wouldn't answer. But she might indirectly answer in a way that tells us too much. I'm worried that if we get the wrong answer, we really can't see her anymore, and she's been extremely helpful.
Do I just advise Hawaii to keep it professional and not ask?
I am in a weird emotional place. Intellectually, I think this round of Trump is much more dangerous than the last one -- he's trying much more sincerely to disassemble our system of democratic government, flawed as it always was. I honestly believe that the risk that our government is unrecognizably changed in five years is meaningful.
But emotionally it's all kind of funny to me. Eight years ago I was upset and poised to resist (not that I did much of anything but show up at some demonstrations.) This time, I can't take it seriously. I know it's serious, but I'm not feeling it.
Lemons, lemonade. Train her to murder Republicans, leaving only meticulously cleaned crimescenes behind.
I'm similar to 99. Though the whole "end scientific research in America" thing is piercing that bubble a little. Presumably it doesn't go through because they suck at doing anything legal, and because big hospitals have real lobbyists, but it is a bit of staring at the void. Mostly staring at the void and chuckling because it's so ridiculous, but the void nonetheless.
With the new HHS, maybe it will become obvious which therapists are really into Trump because it looks like they're going to target mental health.
Hawaii's a teenager, isn't she? I think she's old enough to decide what rocks she needs to look under. Lay it out for her -- this is someone who's helping her a lot and would be hard to replace. There's a significant chance she's a Trump voter: what would Hawaii want to do if she is, stop seeing her or go on seeing her anyway? And based on that thought, does she want to know?
There's not a right answer, all you can do is lay out the pathways.
Yeah, that was basically the conversation we had. I know she's really consumed by this question, though.
Last spring, the theater director picked the play they'd do for theater competitions. He picked a play about refugees trying to cross into Texas and running into Border Patrol. Then Trump got elected. The play got cast maybe in December. Now a lot of the leads are terrified that their families are going to be deported.
The director is being very responsible around this - he's opened the conversation to whether or not they want to switch plays. He's pulling in counselors. They're doing a lot of processing, and for the time being, they're continuing with the play.
It's been super eye-opening for Hawaii though, and she's filled with rage that anyone could support Trump. She's down in the weeds the way you are when you first start to realize how shitty and ignorant people can be.
This is me just sharing. It doesn't really affect anything.
98: People voted for Trump for different reasons -- all based on misconceptions, in my opinion, but still different. This includes a lot of bright, competent people who are locally capable of empathy and insight. That said, I have no fucking advice. Maybe you can make an analogy with shitty people making powerful, lasting art? Sometimes (often? usually?) competence just isn't that broad-based.
I am a little cheered by all the noisy resignations from the Southern District NY US Attorney's office over DOJ's attempt to use the corruption charges against Adams to extort him into enforcing federal immigration policy. Don't know if it'll do any good, but they're saying the right things.
They're going to have to touch the stove
Funny how when you put a little incentive like "not getting disbarred" up there, suddenly Republican lawyers are willing to do the right thing.
I wonder how many other USians under 50 have never used a traveler's check? Even in 2002, when I was in Red China, it was already a simple matter to take yuan out of the ATM using my regular debit card.
107.4: I'd be happy to send her a copy of Living My Life if she hasn't already read it.
112: I remember going to England with two terms worth of expenses in traveler's checks in a belt under my trousers.
I bet if you never traveled abroad before 2000, you haven't used travelers checks.
My parents used to use them on domestic travel. Every few days, they would find a bank or something to cash them at.
Wow. How long did they keep that up?
My parents might have, I suppose. I wouldn't have paid any attention. But they certainly stopped by the 90s.
My parents certainly stopped that by the 90s. No local banks had ATMs until maybe 1984. Lots of places wouldn't take credit cards in the 80s, including most stores. You'd pay with a check at home, but out-of-state checks were sometimes hard to use.
My mom still holds up the grocery line to balance her checkbook after writing a check, rather than moving off to the side to record the details. It's a pet peeve of mine.
98/107. Would it be helpful to say that other people have lived in worse places, where interpersonally decent neighbors supported the awfulness? Not that helpful for dealing with social aspects of wilful ignorance and a preference for lies that are social reality now in the US socially, but the psychology of cognitive dissonance as a lifestyle is not new. Since the touchpoint is theater, has she ever read/seen Havel's plays? Audience and A Private View both deal with the psychology of much more severe alternate realities/cognitive dissonance.
It's better than holding up the line to explain why beans are woke to the cashier.
121 social social social I need an editor
I spent a semester in DC in the late 1990s and some students set up local bank accounts because their banks didn't make it easy to withdraw from out of state. I think I might have brought travelers' checks with me as a backup when traveling to Europe for the first time around that same time, but I don't think I ever used them.
111: I'm not inclined to be cynical when people do the right thing, especially when shitty people decide to step up. (I realize that this puts me at odds with the folks who would reject Liz Cheney's endorsement of Harris.) I imagine that a lot of these prosecutors were Federalist Society types, so coming down on the right side of the rule of law is a big step for them. And yeah, Giuliani and John Eastman and a few others got in trouble with bar associations but I think that's basically because they got in trouble with government prosecutors. I don't see the DOJ taking action here, and even the states are going to think twice.
On the other hand, do we think Sassoon et al are safe from Trump? I wouldn't be so sure.
My daughter got a sweet internship with a federal government agency that now may be withdrawn. But she voted for Jill Stein, so she deserves it.
(What must it be like to be a young American nowadays? I'm old enough that when I was a kid, adults were talking about how cynical kids were getting because Watergate had destroyed the idea of virtuous US leadership.)
I don't even get foreign cash before traveling before. I did last year at SFO, and then realized they had screwed me so bad with fees I said never again.
I used traveller's checks, and I even collected mail held for me at American Express offices. This was early 1990s.
I kinda don't think the first bit of 108 is a statement you want to make when a Germanist is around.
It's 100% a statement I am making as a quasi-Germanist (PhD included a lot of German literature). I'm not excusing fucking anything. Bright, competent, locally empathetic and insightful people who vote based on misconceptions do incredibly evil things (and yet they're still human; there's no moment of damnation that we can discern). I didn't vote for Trump, but I have to hold out the possibility that I myself am such a person despite all my Germanistik and noble impulses. I'm also spiraling pretty badly right now on a personal level, apparently.
As it happens, my German department advisor co-taught a class with Peter Thiel and I'm almost certain he voted for Trump, at least in 2024. I wonder if he regrets it yet, and I have to wonder what particular ironies he sees or doesn't see, but I will be done giving that fucker any thought when I hit the period key. (Nosflow knows what I'm talking about here, I think.)
So DOGE just published NOFORN NRO budgets on their website.
The fox is in the henhouse.
I have to admit I'm surprised by the pro-cancer policies.
One quasi- to another then, the people who joined the Party late, or for business reasons, or because they thought they could change it, or from social pressure, they were all of them -- however bright or locally competent -- still Nazis.
Enough crankiness, though; is there any way this imaginary friend can contribute to unspiraling?
The only German I know well at all is a radiologist.
He looks a little bit like a younger, very fit Werner Klemperer.
Jesus fuck
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-musk-doge-posts-classified-data_n_67ae646de4b0513a8d767112
We have the American Express, because we get cash back. It's like 6% on groceries up to 6k, then 3% and. 3% on gas, 1% on everything else. We used to have the Costco Amex, but they parted ways. Amex also lets you use Venmo (send and split) without giving Venmo your bank info.
112: I am still under 50. When I went to France for summers on school trips/ family home stays, they did not expect 8th graders to have debit cards, so we were told to get travelers checks. We were also supposed to send letters to our parents, and to make airmail affordable there were special, extra light envelope and letter in one with postage.
64: We have the Apple Mastercard because it's a handy way to buy phones and computers. And Costco online takes it. I figure that I can use Mastercard in Europe and don't need to use Visa. Is that not so? I think they now give small businesses a better deal than they used to. Square trade is the most famous, but there are others.
136: People keep pointing to Federal laws he's violating, but I'd like to know about state laws so that we can prosecute him.
I'm morbidly fascinated to see what the new Kennedy Center does. The New Criterion crowd has debased themselves so far for Trump, I'm no longer sure they'd push a European High Culture ca. 1950 program. I don't know who else in the Trump right even cares for that sort of culture. Maybe it will just be screenings of the Melania doc, adaptations of the Turner Diaries, and Elon Musk talking over AI-generated garbage.
139: wait, what? I used to read ten New Criterion when I would take breaks from studying in the library. I was young and stupid. It looks like it's declined in quality, but also I was young and stupid when I read it regularly.
133: I mean, I get that usually when people say "don't lose sight of other people's humanity" they mean "temper your negative views with [excuse-making]," but that's not exactly where I'm coming from here. I feel more like I underestimated the enemy for a long time. Masha Gessen has been on this "people who do bad things for good reasons" theme in the Times, but I think I've shared those links already.
That said, I'm at a bit of a disadvantage because -- to a large degree by chance -- I've lived in a liberal bubble for the vast majority of my life, and I just haven't evolved the defenses against right-wing America that most of you possess. I went from being dismissive, to mildly curious, to dismissive again, to more fearful and vigilant, and right now I feel like the bubble is simply gone and won't ever come back. I can see exactly how human these people are now -- they look and sound just like me -- and they're my enemies. The cartoon version of this confrontation with evil that so many people think they "know" growing up is not the real thing. The schematic versions of political struggle that I diligently typed out or took to the streets for years were also shadows of the real thing. What's happening now is the real thing.
Even when Putin came to power in Russia in 1999, 2000, first he was prime minister, then he was president. And then when he was finally inaugurated as president it felt pretty fast. He immediately unleashed an attack on the media and on businesses, trying to get the oligarchs to line up.
I felt like I was living on a chessboard and somebody was picking off pieces and I couldn't predict which piece was going to get picked off next. It felt like I would turn around to say something to somebody, and they'd say: Oh, but I support him now. Or: Oh, but we can't run that article because of all the good reasons.
But in this country, it's faster. And it's worse. We saw the big money line up and genuflect before the inauguration.
Defenses against right wing America? I have hardly met them and have a very difficult time believing they're real, which is part of what makes me so inimitably ineffective. I had that job at the weird little law firm twenty years ago now with a bunch of rightwing partners, but they were still very New Yorky.
But other people probably have defenses. Or at least familiarity.
Yeah, it's one thing to know from history that people had others sent to the gulag to get their apartment, or their furniture, or to settle some other score. It's another to say, Hey look, let's not get anywhere close to that kind of public life and government because Americans are not a different species and some of them will denounce others and get them deported or sent to Guantanamo or whatever franchise it develops in order to make some minor gain or settle some petty grievance. It's yet another to see counties offering up their land to build Guantanamo franchises. I'm not close enough to have any idea of who's tipping off ICE, but that some of them are normal-seeming is a bet you can take to the bank.
[blush] you GUYS, I do have familiarity avoiding political talk with people around me unless I know for sure they're not lunatics!
Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
Hey, this is a safe space for passing harsh judgments. 147 to what exactly?
139: I'm looking for a place I can bet on Ted Nugent to be one of the next Kennedy Center honorees.
Jonathan Swift says "We have just enough religion to make us hate but not enough to make us love each other."
JD Vance replies, "That's right! We have precisely the right amount of religion!"
I confess to many flaws in my dictionary, there being no definitions therein for heebie, nor jeebie, nor teacher, nor professor, nor yet mathematician.
143/144: Yeah, I was thinking of my interlocutor Doug, apo, Cala, heebie, Barry, Upetgi, and a bunch of others who have right-wing neighbors or associates. I just don't (apart from my extreme outlier academic adviser in the humanities, I suppose). I guess my maternal grandparents were fairly right-wing in the pre-9/11 era, but that was easy to chalk up to senility and Catholicism. They got a lot of alarming junk mail. There was one pitch I remember vividly, by a guy who was frothing about the Radical Homosexuals coming to take over America: he couldn't afford an office, he'd gotten kicked out of his house, he was living in a utility sink or something and your donations were more needed than ever so he could keep up his desperate fight with the gays. I was a young adult, not a kid, but I'd never seen anything like that before (i.e. a completely unappetizing, deranged scam) and it blew my mind.
98: My wife faced this with her current therapist and her previous nurse practitioner during Trump 1.0. The practitioner was pretty enthusiastic after the election, and she put of going to appointments as a result. (The practitioner did retire after about 6 months, or she'd probably have finally switched to a new doctor.)
For her therapist, it's more inference rather than enthusiasm -- neither of them bring up politics much; when they do, it's often in the context of my wife discussing how she really shouldn't read the news so much, then passing along recent outrages. Fortunately the therapist's response is usually surprise - she seems very uninterested in policy and politics, and doesn't seem to know how government machinery really works. For my wife, that's fine - it's a red county and we interact with plenty of people from all walks and political persuasions - but it's probably helpful that they've invested a few years at this point.
...so he could keep up his desperate fight with the gays
Maybe he's winning? I heard that the Village People have gone straight.
154: Only the cop; all the rest have been replaced at some point.
They resigned rather than go straight.
I heard that the Village People have gone straight.
Straight and abusive. The Full Trump.
But wearing a leather vest over bare skin is now saved.
My shrink is Jewish and studied European history as an undergraduate. He's pretty strongly anti- Trump.
At work after the election, they suggested people go to EAP, presumably to learn coping skills. I certainly never got any hint of the idea that Trump's election wasn't a really terrible thing. What I find really bizarre is that in 2016 everyone at work was very anti-Trump, and they talked a lot about protecting immigrants. There are a couple of doctors I've talked to who sympathized when I said I was upset, but the non-clinical folks are pretending like everything is normal, and it's so weird. Nobody talked about po,it is AT ALL. I mean there are coworkers I knew from before I switched to corporate who I called on their cell phones who I know hate Trump, but the ones I've met since 2024 never talk about it.* The Latina practice manger Ik ow commented to me about how silent the hospital had been. I think they thought that if they kept their heads down they could keep their funding.
I texted my Brazilian-born coworker last weekend when all this shit about Musk came out. (Luckily he got his citizenship in 2023.). I asked him if this is what it was like being in Brazil under Bolsonaro. His response: "it is worse."
he couldn't afford an office, he'd gotten kicked out of his house, he was living in a utility sink or something
Why do all these homosexuals keep stealing my caulk?
144: most of the time it's what would have been a good faith disagreement except that the media ecosystem is shot so they think that DOGE is cutting waste, and that Utah joining the lawsuit to get rid of the 504 won't mean their disabled kid can't go to school, because the actual Project 2025 is bonkers but sounds like it's in the neighborhood of something sensible.
The bill that's destroying the university is a great example: woohoo, cut waste! Wait, they mean this class?!? But it's a good class and I like it!
145: Somehow this comment gives me pause. It is making me rethink my interactions with others that could inform authorities of my strong political leanings. The idea still seems remote but has now moved within the realm of possibility. I still remember when Trump season 1 sent the federal goons to Portland, and things are moving much faster this time.
How does Portland feel these days? Same chill as everywhere?
So DOGE just published NOFORN NRO budgets on their website.
Doug (?) wondered what it might take to get the American Operation Valkyrie moving. I think things like this are a strong candidate.
I was taken aback by a paragraph in the New Yorker article about U.S. military recruiting difficulties:
China's military is far larger than America's, with more than two million members. And, as the U.S. hollowed out its industrial capacity, China expanded; its steel industry is the largest in the world. In war games simulating a conflict between the two nations, the United States usually loses. According to the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, an American research firm, the Air Force would run out of advanced long-range munitions in less than two weeks.
Those who know anything about militaries: how true is this? Is "usually loses" a common understanding at this point? (Presumably "loss" could mean a lot of different things depending what sort of conflict they're simulating.)
167: True. (With your parenthetical caveat correctly held in mind.)
165: I don't know how Portland is doing. I haven't been getting out much, but it does seem weirdly quiet given all that is going on.
The last comment was me. I do know several people with disabilities and/or very limited income that are really terrified of what lies ahead.
