Andrew Tobolowsky

I think bluesky would be roughly 300% better if people here were capable of reading “this is an assessment of the empirical reality of a situation” without assuming it comes with an implicit “and therefore I endorse the reality of that situation”

Me about that Ranger wandering about Hobbiton

*me dying in a nuclear war* this isn’t going to work on me, I’m too focused

And if in the first term, there were still sane people who understood this was all idiotic, now there aren't. At the same time, the ray of hope is that in the first term the American people were overly shielded from the consequences of his idiocy

But he couples this with having a child's understanding - or the average republican's understanding - of military force. So he just bombs people or kidnaps people because he figures that its only result is that it'll make people afraid of him and then they'll do what he wants. No other consequences

Being insanely aggressive is his literal negotiating strategy, he wants to be able to levy a 50 percent tariff so he can end up with a 15 percent tariff and he thinks that having to consult anybody keeps him from being able to arrive at the brilliant result of 15 percent tariffs or whatever

One of the big problems with Trump is that he only has one move - attempted intimidation. And part of the reason he resents the law so much is that he sees intimidation as a valid negotiating move he needs to keep in his pocket. A lot of the time he doesn't even mean it -

somebody tell these professional contrarians that you can’t have a Sister Souljah moment with your entire fucking base. at some point you do actually have to represent the values of your voters instead of identifying another disfavored minority group to throw under the bus

It's very funny to be like "we came to an agreement with the DoD which just fired another company for claiming to have any kind of ethics - good news, they're big on ethics"

Finally, it's trick shot hours

AI can't do the things they're talking about because it's - not actual AI

I really think there's more to this. Conservatives, being on average far less capable of critical thought, have convinced themselves that AI is actually sentient. They really think you can just tell it kill the ppl we don't like and it will, and its just principle that's holding it back.

What all these STEM weirdos believe themselves to be talking about is reaching the silent majority. What they are actually talking about is the belief that lefties ought to give them permission to go after bigots and stick with them to EXPAND the tent in that direction. V. Different

If there were a big lane for the middle in this country, then there would be national politicians who are middle, which there are not because no one likes them

As always, what Matt y is missing and apparently could not arrive at without a large, cartoon mallet, is the lack of evidence that telling people you want to bully trans ppl just so makes them like you EVEN IF they actively say that's what they want. But it's just his personality, now.

Pete Hegseth, no cap on the fifth of bourbon he’s holding: “the United States military needs to know what your kids’ genitals look like”

HulkSmash.gif

Got a new trick shot for ye

Openly and explicitly exactly. A lot of STEM brained people can’t imagine that visibly changing your whole thing to do whatever people say they want can’t isn’t the same thing as championing what people want

I think a lot of the shrug about CNN is that people are running out of energy for catastrophes they can’t affect. Every dem candidate has raised a kajillion dollars but somehow only their rich people engage in media consolidation. What am I supposed to do man

Sometimes it felt like Judah was just teething for two whole years

Book history? The history of books?!?!

We had this book that was like "your baby will go through stormy phases when they make mental leaps" and it had this calendar chart of sunny and stormy but it was pretty much just all storms. Little guys are going through so much! Angrily.

Monotheism and Divine Aggression Cambridge Core - Religion: General Interest - Monotheism and Divine Aggression

Just finished reading @collincornell.bsky.social's terrific short book Monotheism and Divine Aggression. I was able to download a pdf through my university library. Highly recommend!

doi.org/10.1017/9781...

When you get this at McDonalds you get fries who know they're doomed

One of the main reasons bosses wanted to crush the tight 21-23 labor market, and elected Trump to ensure they would, was because workers wouldn't put up with shit like this in a world where unemployment was 3%

too late for this guy

Trans people, I love you all and I'm sorry for everything that these evil motherfuckers are doing and trying to do to you.

Sometimes I write scholarship, but MOSTLY I shoot hoops