PMonet

*Something has shifted. You see, it's no longer about the skyrockety ketamine. Instead, it's about fortifying the crab-basket

A Twitter thread by David Rees from 2017/05/17, part one: "RE: #ComeyFiring, I think the GOP will now go along with anything Trump does. I mean literally anything. It’s TIME FOR SOME SHAME THEORY! I believed GOP was going along with DJT because they thought he could get them their precious policy outcomes: tax cuts, etc. -- and, that if DJT’s malfeasance ever decreased their chances of enacting those policies, they would jettison him. I now think this political calculus has been replaced by a deeper, darker, calculus: a psychological survival strategy. GOP will agree to anything - I mean anything - because they can no longer afford a moral reckoning with what who and what they’ve enabled. Once you've gone so far that checking in with yourself would shatter your belief in your own humanity/decency, there are no limits."

A Twitter thread by David Rees from 2017/05/17, part two: "At this point, there are probably GOPers who wish Trump would suspend the constitution outright. Really just GO FOR IT, so that we leave this liminal, sorta-not-quite-authoritarian space with its semi-sorta-functional institutions behind, and enter a new American era, where their collusion/treason(?) can't be judged by old norms. If you've ever had an affair, or drug issues, etc, you probably know the feeling. The bender/lost weekend/flirtation with hitting bottom. At some point, your shame at your behavior, at the norms you’ve violated, leads you to double down, go ALL IN, obliterate your old self. I used to be a bully in middle school, so I know this amazing, complex feeling of exhilaration and revulsion, the poison rush of living your worst self, resenting *the part of you that knows better.* Not enough to ignore it; you must destroy it."

A Twitter thread by David Rees from 2017/05/17, part three: "Congress had to enter DJT’s orbit in order to pass their sacred tax cuts/repeal the hated ACA. They thought they could contain him. But DJT poisons everyone he touches. The price for working with him is pretty hefty: your humanity and dignity (h/t @joshtpm). Healthy people (and banks!) learned to avoid DJT decades ago. He surrounds himself with damaged goods: Stone, Flynn, other freaks/losers. We are watching that community of damaged psyches expand to include an entire political party. GOP pols must avoid a moral reckoning at all costs. But not just a public reckoning -- a private one. Can’t admit to moral suicide. If #TrumpTrain stopped, GOP would have to answer for putting up with PussyGate, deranged tweets, lies, damaged institutions, all the Russia stuff, etc. etc. The list is overwhelming, unprecedented, debilitating. That reckoning absolutely cannot happen."

A Twitter thread by David Rees from 2017/05/17, part four: "Trump, an experienced abuser, knows this on some lizard-brain level. He has captured the GOP. His transgressions will increase. “Comey was irresponsible about HRC” is deliberately absurd; a power move by Trump to see if GOP will agree to any reality he proposes. Answer: YES. #winning Back to the bender analogy. We’re in the middle of a crazy bender. What would bottoming out look like, when GOP says: ENOUGH? My theory: As of yesterday’s preposterous justification for Comey firing, there is no bottom. The GOP will never call Trump out. In fact, GOP pols must now encourage further transgressions, to destroy the current context in which feeling shame re: DJT is appropriate. Maybe I’m wrong! But my prediction is GOP would agree with DJT if/when he says he’s canceling the 2018 midterms. THE END"

Your point reminds me of a very astute Twitter thread about shame, by David Rees (of Get Your War On fame), from early in Trump's first term. It's hard to find now, so I'm going to post the whole thing here.

Each one of those three missiles costs 33% more than the annual budget of the national park where I work.

While we sit around to find out how bad exactly it all is, a bit of cheer: the best baguette of Paris competition was won by a Sri Lankan who appears to have started as a dish washer in restaurants and eventually trained as a Boulanger.

www.paris.fr/pages/la-mei...

God, the way this unlocked memories of how Get Your War On got me through the early 2000s

I am 5 years old and the US is bombing the middle east.
I am 15 years old and the US is bombing the middle east.
I am 28 years old and the US is bombing the middle east.
I am 35 years old and the US is bombing the middle east.
I am 50 years old and the US is bombing the middle east.

كل طفل هو كون

The truth is not the average of a fact and a lie.

I have said this before, but eliminating programs that teach a lot of students but don’t have many majors is like a restaurant not buying flour in its grocery delivery because people aren’t ordering flour on the menu.

i actually think this is the wrong way to think about the direction this is going. fox news is the default channel in many public spaces — most troublingly, us military bases, has been for decades. this was not a matter of policy afaik, it just slid into place. it's not hard to lock it in as policy.

YouTube video by TopPop Thin Lizzy - The Rocker • TopPop

PUNK AS FUCK youtu.be/BF3NnFruoWQ?...

This probably fucked so hard

The Handbasket 100% independent journalism by Marisa Kabas

Now that CNN and WBD are set to become state media in a sale to Paramount/Oracle/TikTok, it is especially important to support independent media.

Off the top of my head:

www.thehandbasket.co
404media.co
www.garbageday.email

Add your favorites in the replies. Fuck state-backed media monopolies.

Netflix Backs Out of Bid for Warner Bros., Paving Way for an Ellison Takeover

The richest man owns X.

The second and third richest men control Google.

The fourth richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The fifth richest man owns The Washington Post.

And now the sixth richest could soon take over both Paramount and Warner Bros.

See the problem here?

so yes, you can transform a CBS or a CNN into right-wing slop, and yes that will have an impact, but it is also true that americans will have access to a large universe of other information AND they will continue to build new venues for telling stories about the world and sharing their views…

and that reality is why i’m not prepared to come to some definitive conclusion about what it all means. i don’t know what it means! not yet at least.

the consolidation of major media institutions by the president’s oligarch friends is obviously bad, but i do wonder about the ultimate impact. it is clear that trump and his allies believe that you can buy up media and pull an orban or a putin. but…

stanley tucci with members of the gold medal winning USA women's hockey team

crying in the club* (*at my desk) bc stanley tucci took the USA women's hockey team out for a meal at his favorite restaurant and they gave him his own jersey

Post old memes to confuse young people

Every stage of this process - his arrest, spending a year in jail, being dumped on the streets to die - would be deeply shameful in a society that actually valued human life.

YouTube video by XTCVEVO XTC - Life Begins At The Hop

youtu.be/RoSfTe9cI-M?...

Kash Patel Faces Backlash After Partying With Nancy Guthrie’s Captors

Kash Patel Faces Backlash After Partying With Nancy Guthrie’s Captors https://theonion.com/kash-patel-faces-backlash-after-partying-with-nancy-guthries-captors/

Me: “Why am i so angry at everything all of a sudden? Why am I being fucking bombarded at every second i make a GD post? Why am i so GD annoyed at everything i see beyond the obvious?!??“

**realizes that I wound up on the Discover feed by accident**

Me, still annoyed: “Well thats one part of it.”

Urgent dispatch from the desert: it is bunny bullfighting season

in addition to favoring conventionally attractive people & raising barriers for disabled folks, video pivots pose an additional threat: further elimination of online anonymity.

to be heard, you have to be seen. when you're seen, you can be recognized. when you're recognized, you can be punished.

affinity is a pretty great deal as compared to creative cloud (for graphic work) but it's super annoying to have to learn different ways to do things i've been doing in illustrator for approximately 185 years

at last, we have invented retrophenology from the classic Discworld text Don’t Invent Retrophenology

A significant number of Americans think that being racist should be free speech but calling someone racist should not be.

*Language models achieving the goals while never actually "thinking", while also making-up some verbiage that looks like thinking in order to satisfy the humans. #omission #fabrication #scheming

medium.com/ai-advances/...