Paul Slimin'

vs “unrelated layoffs being spun as AI replacement.” I think a decent bit of that has gone on this year.

you ever just sit down and cut loose an absolutely enormous fart

I would like to take you all back to the Warring States period of China.

I’m so sorry. Best wishes to you and yours.

Separately, though, I’m kinda principally opposed to the idea of life tenure in any position.

And funny enough, this satisfies the traditional conservative critique of administrative agencies as well by respecting separation of powers.

I think there’s a world where this doesn’t happen but I’m worried we’re not headed for it. If the Court kills his tariffs and the economy rebounds, and efforts to subvert democracy fail because they’re too half-assed, it seems likely everyone will forget the fascist freefall period this year.

Man detained by ICE found dead, hanging with hands and feet tied—attorney The Chinese national died in Pennsylvania in August, but his family's requests for answers from DHS have gone unmet.

My god.

After 4 days in ICE custody, they found the man in a shower stall hog-tied, with a sheet around his neck.

The medical examiner claimed there were other instances of this.

Which means this is not an isolated case.

Trump's Lynching America

If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features."

There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.

This is one reason I'm expecting intense natural selection in forms of government and cultural norms returning to the fore.

If you don't have a society that's at least reasonably inclusive towards migrants, children, and parents, your country is gonna literally fucking die.

Everyone gets an A in every Harvard undergrad class no matter what. Just have the TA’s finish it and let the students collect their perfect scores.

Lmao why would they make Mamdani and option

Starting to become convinced that liberalism’s logical endpoint includes vegetarianism.

This is how I feel whenever I spend more than five seconds thinking about the weirdos from the Old Place:

Honestly I've been negatively polarized against Catholicism lately because everyone keeps doing the "wow they're so woke" routine with them while pretending every Protestant is Matt Walsh. They still hate abortion and gays and women!

Wait, Kendi was not serious about the DOA? How can you tell?

Reading Barbara Tuchman’s “A Distant Mirror” this year actually gave me a greater appreciation for how accurately Martin portrays the medieval nobility. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had taken that book as inspiration.

Wait, I feel like ASOIAF gets this right? Lots of lords fighting in there.

They like Trump and want to help him

Me to Infinity Ward:

This is the sort of slop I'm sure many donors love to hear so I don't expect it to go anywhere. But let's not all act shocked when people who talk like this get mopped in the next Democratic presidential primary.

Rather than saying why you would fall on the correct side of the "identity politics/affordability politics" line, a strong message would be to say "there is no such line!" and draw your own. (May I suggest, "fascists vs. decent folk"?)

You don't win wars or political struggles by operating within the framework your opponent has set up for you; you do it by creating your own framework.

Buttigieg is one of the politicians searching for a message that resonates with the maximum number of voters and carries him into the White House, but this isn't how you do that. This sounds a lot more like MattY than Obama.

A still frame from a David Perdue Senate re-election ad reads: “David Perdue: Totally Exonerated, No Wrongdoing.” Exonerated is underlined. David is smiling, but he doesn’t look very sure of himself.

It’s this sort of thing. Everyone immediately grasps why this ad sucks:

The reason messages like this strike everyone as weak is because Buttigieg (and others like him) are talking about what their party is *not*. Every time you talk about the accusations against you or your group, you draw your audience's attention back to the accusations.

More than anything else, powerful men - like the ones who run the NYT - believe in the legitimacy of power itself. Because if it isn’t legitimate, they have to start asking hard questions about the world and themselves.

Guardian headline: “John F Kennedy’s grandson Jack Schlossberg announces run for US House seat”

No thanks. We’re full.