Martin Guerre (real)

the thing that makes me angriest about arguments from Yglesias and Bazelon is the bland, placid insistence that it is not just imperative to vote for politicians with no principles, but that if you as a private citizen have principles then you may as well be turning on the gas chambers yourself.

Tremendous handle btw

Thank you for standing up for him, Senator. I won’t forget that you did.

Yes! The anti establishment pose winds up being a hollow vessel you can fill with a lot of different politics.

The rugged individualist man/earth mother woman stuff turns out to embed some really vicious gender politics

Yeah, that’s exactly right

You can look at MAGA culture as the final, morbid symptoms of a necrotic 60s counterculture. A rejection of propriety, institutions, and collective action, shorn of the movement’s once-animating ideals and utopian impulse.

Woo is a reactionary force. Its association with hippies concealed this for a long time, but it has always been true.

My cousin just goes to work and home. He’s too scared to do anything else, and I don’t think he’s wrong given his situation. But it’s like he’s in house arrest.

you'll spend your entire life thinking "that's not her, not really" and pushing the thought away. you'll never truly grieve. you'll become attached to a simulacrum, something that isn't your grandmother & never was; it will eventually replace her in your memory. you will live in hell before you die

The USPS posting a NINE BILLION DOLLAR LOSS!!! sounds terrible. Certainly worse than if you said "USPS costs thirty dollars per person per year" even though that means the same thing and more accurately describes a government service

@thewrongstation.bsky.social, “Palaces Below”

Who would Jesus double tap missile strike?

This is very true. I’m a union steward, and when I guide people to accommodations I am careful to frame it as being for “any disability or other health issue of any duration”. Employees are a lot more open to that framing than when I described it as a disability of any duration.

You have to wonder, what did imagine she was going to be asked about?

Uh huh

Zing! Wow, you fuckin got me! You used a meme that has shit all to do with me. Nice!

Oh noooo, not the general vibe! You might try logging off sometime.

Amazing, I guess you’ll have to take that up with whoever said it to you.

Yes. There’s a widespread popular desire for protest and a more confrontational posture toward the administration etc., and political entrepreneurs are going to capitalize on that if the Democrats refuse to.

That’s true, but the Italian futurists were also good.

Horror and comedy are kind of similar: we judge comedies first on whether they are funny in some way, whatever else they may try to do. Similarly, horror should create a feeling of fear. [edited to remove weird typo]

Their fries were good as hell

A lot of people of different ideological stripes seem to think holding the most beautiful ideas in their heads constitutes the best form of politics. The tendency is so widespread I think it must be structurally encouraged by social media. But faith without works, I dunno.

The show is a real mixed bag for me, but Chris Chalk is so good

Christian bracket: Hark the Herald Angels Sing
Secular bracket: have yourself a merry little Christmas

I have to know, what is the Wrong Station endorsement for best Achewood strip?

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. "The order was to kill everybody," one of them said. A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck. The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack - the opening salvo in the Trump administration's war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth's instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

This is murder. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Have you read Aziz Rana’s Two Faces of American Freedom? It’s been a while but I remember it being very good on that point.

Thanks!