R. Eric VanNewkirk

Honestly, didn't know he was still alive.

The fact that at the time of his death, Gritz was no longer one of the worst and most toxic right wing cranks in the United States unfortunately says nothing about Gritz and everything about what the American right is like these days.

In my day we knew how to do relationships right: professors dating their students or managers dating their subordinates, marrying one, then divorcing them 7-10 years later (or 20 years later if they had kids). We didn't need all these "apps" and "services". Technology, phooey.

Maybe we don't go far enough and we should lock the leadership in simulators and let them fight pretend wars with themselves...

Oh good grief, I've accidentally reinvented Roger Waters "Fletcher Memorial Home".

We all cope with grief in our own way.

Sometimes he lies awake at night, and he imagines a tortilla, and he weeps until the darkness wraps him in sleep's somnolent burrito.

Now suffering from PTSD--Post-Taco Stomach Distress--he can no longer look at tacos and similarly-shaped foods bring him sorrow and sleeplessness; no gyros, hot dogs, pita wraps, or cheesesteaks for our poor German wanderer.

And finally, finally, finally having the long-dreamt-of tacos, he bites into one he's innocently laden with lethalish amounts of green salsa, and with a single scorching bite the fantasy, the dream, the entire sense of human purpose is lost, plunging him into a gut-burning spiral of despair.

Tugging the sleeves of strangers and saying, "Taco? Taco?" while miming putting something in his mouth, rubbing his belly.

People looking at him in bafflement until someone understands, understanding takes pity, talking pity takes him by the arm and points him towards the tacos.

Imagining a little German man at home reading about tacos, dreaming of tacos, having an opportunity to travel across the Atlantic and immediately thinking about all the tacos he'll eat.

Imagining him anxiously researching, clutching a tattered guidebook as he wanders through Times Square.

As ridiculous as it is, I do have to admit, "As there is no possibility for me to eat tacos in my small German hometown, I was looking for a good taco restaurant in NYC," is one of the most forlorn sentences I've read recently and made me feel sorry for him on several levels.

It's a time-saver, a game-changer, a replacement for dumb humans until somebody has a civil tort claim or potentially even a criminal complaint, and then it's "this is still under development" and "you should've read the EULA more closely."

I mean, yes, but also in some fields this is why practitioners are required to carry malpractice insurance and/or their professional regulatory bodies maintain client security funds to compensate malpractice victims. Things that AI developers absolutely don't want to be on the hook for.

I just need this story to have a happyish ending and have been dreading updates and other shoes dropping every time "cute monkey with doll" pops up in my social media. It looks like maybe (fingers crossed) it's headed in a good direction.

This exactly. To lie would be to acknowledge, even if only to themselves, that they had something to be embarrassed or ashamed over. And a bad feeling would be a Consequence. And they don't want to be affected by Consequences.

And, at least in the States (your mileage may vary elsewhere), it's not like you've got a social safety net you can rely on as you face the prospects of body and possibly mind failing you over the next decades, or live in a society where a pensioned retirement is a reasonable expectation.

Not to keep beating the same personal dead horse, but one of my worries is LLMs *can* do everything, if your definition of that includes "doing them like an ethically compromised incompetent facing no accountability," and some proponents seem to be okay lowering everything to that standard.

I do see posts from LLM enthusiasts that boil down to “critics are just mad the computer is better than them at trivia now” and idk, I think *most* critics are just genuinely terrified they’ll never find work they don’t hate that pays a living wage again in the current batshit climate

If I had a nickel for every time Franz Ferdinand was involved in the precursor events of a world war, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird it happened twice

"Captain Smith, if you want to diminish this Arctic threat, if you want to guarantee that the White Star Line sets a speed record that will stand the ages, show some guts and ignore these ice warnings we received on the wireless." - J. Bruce Ismay, April 13, 1912 (probably)

The administration and its apologists are not consistent about very many things, but you can always trust them to have an absolute disregard for human lives.

I don’t think Trump and his people are capable of engineering “distractions,” I think the mind-numbing chaos we see every day is straightforwardly the result of giving the dumbest, cruelest, most corrupt, most selfish people of a generation near-unmitigated power

I guess the thing with the Semiquincentennial being less than 4 months away is that Trump is running out of time to finish us off. 🫤

TheCybersmith @thecybersmith.bsk... • 1d • Joined May '23 Birth of a Nation is a misunderstood film, IMO, depiction is not endorsement, and DW Griffith's contributions to cinematography shouldn't be overshadowed by the fact that some people decided to interpret his film as supporting controversial political agendas. O1 cartoon dog gf @jazzpomegranate.c... • 1d • Joined Jul '23 @ Bard @2 Cleric have you seen it? 0312 17 •~... TheCybersmith @thecybersmith.bsk... • 3h • Joined May '23 Wait, I just found some clips online. That's... look, I'll take Griffith at his word that he wasn't trying to seem borderline-fanatically bigoted, but really man; this could have used a second draft. 03

■ TheCybersmith @thecybersmith.bsk... • 3h • Joined May '23 Oh, fuck. 0 4 91104日日. TheCybersmith @thecybersmith.bsk... • 3h • Joined May '23 Yes, I can see why people thought he was promoting intolerance here. • 1 TheCybersmith @thecybersmith.bsk... • 3h • Joined May '23 Was it just impossible to find mixed-race extras back then? All of these half-breed northern soldiers are played by white actors in makeup!

目 TheCybersmith @thecybersmith.bsk... • 2h • Joined May '23 Huh. The film's treatment of Lincoln is surprisingly sympathetic. I think I can see what Griffith was going for, but some of the choices he made really detract from the more nuanced ideas he wanted to put across (why do the black characters speak like that?) 031 04 TheCybersmith @thecybersmith.bsky.social • Joined May '23 THAT'S NOT A TRIAL! THAT@S JUST MURDER WITH EXTRA STEPS! 3:07 PM • Mar 8, 2026

friends, I have brought you a gift

Can we tell them it's Switzerland but fly them to Antarctica?

"This place is so white, man, even the ground is white. You'll love it. Just get on the boat."

TRUMP: Hey, I know we killed your wife but my people say gas'll be like five bucks a gallon and all the rednecks who voted for me with their gas guzzlers with truck nuts and shit are gonna be pissed. Can we call this off?

KAHMENEI: what

TRUMP: They're shaped like testicles. I know it's weird.

The Coens love humanity the way a lot of Americans love our country: you can recognize people are ridiculous, irrational, and frequently awful while recognizing there's something basically good there.

Everyone forgets Hudsucker Proxy because it's not their best work despite being a sweet and charming film.

Strait of Hormuz is why various advocates of opposing Iran urged against all out war.

Yet another instance of refusing to believe warnings that the stove is hot.

Wasn't even a debate between hawks and doves, but between hawkish types who value smart strategy and stupid hawks who say it'll be fine.

There's no political will in the States to make Marshall Plan sized investments anywhere, even if we still had the ability (which we probably don't), and this is the real reason it's stupid for us to act the way we do about it.

The way I'd put it is that Germany and Japan show that the United States is exceptionally good at nation-building when we're willing to spend billions of dollars and a 40-year occupation, but we've stupidly convinced ourselves you can somehow do it on the cheap and quick. (You can't.)