And remember how they made a big deal about Bernie’s age in 2020? They asked for medical records, and even after getting letters from two or three doctors, that wasn’t enough. It was like the birthers all over again: when they got what they asked for, they moved the goal posts and wanted the long-form documents.

Meanwhile, not a peep about Biden, who is Bernie’s junior by fourteen fucking months, as if that made all the difference.

And then, four years later, it wasn’t an issue anymore. Just run the guy again.

On top of that, the DNC would condescend to anyone left of center about electability.

Typical leftist cancel culture. You commit just one white supremacist terror attack, and all of a sudden you’re a pariah!

TERFs will also straight-up join with anti-feminists. It’s okay to be anti-choice, anti-gay, “socially conservative,” whatever. Despite yelling about how they’re protecting women, none of that matters so long as they hate the same people.

Yep. If they ban drag performance, and don’t recognize trans identity as valid, then trans people presenting as their gender would be considered “in drag.” Merely going out in public would be criminalized, which is the point. They want extermination, but will take disappearance in the meantime.

It might even be simpler than that. Capitalism just doesn’t care past the next quarter. And when ownership is disconnected from labor or even from customer, than it’s just a really rudimentary collective intelligence. The shareholders just want the line to go up, and everyone in the corporate structure is accountable to the shareholders, so they all do their part, big or little, to make that happen. It completely dispenses with personal responsibility, whether for negative externalities, direct harm, or even the future as close as months from now.

The last time Google pulled out all the stops to fight ad blockers, I had to update uBlock Origin every now and then until the whole thing passed. That’s all.

So I’m not worried. But I am amused that they keep making ads more obnoxious, which pushes more people to use ad blockers. I didn’t even use sponsorblock until a particularly egregious bit of native advertising. They could probably gain ground by just making ads less irritating, but they absolutely will not.

Huh. I kind of do this in between sessions. I like to read a few pages, maybe a chapter or two, from whatever rulebook, just so I’m constantly brushing up on the rules.

As others have said, “in-ear monitors.” However, it’s not technically about the quality. Earphones sit in the outer ear, while IEMs go at least a little bit into the ear canal. They do better with blocking out sound, which is better for audio quality, but sometimes you want to be able to hear things around you, so it’s a matter of context.

Also, while audiophiles can get wild with it (and there’s a lot of snake oil in that area), I just got some Salnotes Zeros for <$20 and they’re great.

Tankies: The word ‘tankie’ is meaningless because it gets overused by disingenuous people on the right.

Also tankies: Everyone who criticizes my position is right-wing.

It honestly reminds me of fascists saying that harsh criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic. It’s a dishonest rhetorical game.

And capitalist regimes. The Russian Federation was literally founded by a betrayal of a reformist movement in the USSR, and China consulted with Milton Goddamn Friedman on their economy, ending up with billionaires. I even saw .ml users crying about Russian *oligarchs" having their assets seized (“stolen,” as they said), and unironically citing Matt Taibbi. Not even “back in the day” Taibbi, but literally The Twitter Files. Using bought & paid for corporate propaganda to make their point.

They’re just campists. I don’t want to run afoul of a “No True Scotsman” situation, but fuck, for people who seem to think they’re the Only True Socialists, they’re willing to drop socialism in an instant if it means they can be edgy dickheads on the internet.

even apart from audio quality, Spotify is just plain terrible as a music library.

For someone who lives in playlists, it might be fine. But I like to pick and choose albums and songs, and be able to sort the whole collection on the fly. Spotify, and unfortunately a whole bunch of the competition, will have three separate lists for “liked” songs, albums, and artists. Only want to save the studio tracks, and not the demos and live versions? Fuck you, you can like the album or not, it’s all or nothing! And the special edition is the only version we have! enjoy the solid hour of shittier versions of the songs you actually wanted!

Seriously.

It’s like when you see a post about punching Nazis, and concern trolls show up to complain about people misusing and overusing the term. They don’t offer a correction, and they’re not defending anyone because no specific person or group of people was called out. They just saw a negative post about Nazis and fascists, got defensive, and tried to muddy the waters. A hit dog will holler.

Also, obviously any term will be misused and overused, and I don’t know every context people are talking about. But, for my part, I see complaints about people being called “tankies” way more often than people being called tankies, and in situations like the above. And it’s usually accompanied by complaints that right-wingers are calling people tankies, something I don’t actually see all that often. What I see more often than that is the terminally online, gatekeeping left. So, is the problem coming more from actual conservatives, or from leftists that other ostensible leftists want to dismiss out of hand?

I don’t know what’s in anyone’s heart, the specific people they’re talking about, or the contexts and personal experiences they’re talking about. I’m not going to assume bad faith. But, when I see people jump in to say “tankie” is a meaningless phrase, it just sounds like the same rhetorical game when people try to say “Nazi” and “fascist” have become meaningless.

I do appreciate the fact that the Cybertruck was so clearly designed by someone who had no idea how to design a car, and that it’s Musk’s pet project. It really drives another nail in the coffin of the idea that he deserves all the credit for the work his companies do.

Then again, his most die-hard supporters draw no distinction between ownership and labor. They’re also somehow able to look at a Cybertruck and think “Wow!” rather than “Wow, is this some kind of a joke?”

And will get stained by tree sap. You should avoid the extreme use-case of parking near trees.

It’s also why I love the fact that it has a tent accessory, despite being a car that can’t handle being outside.

I just checked, and yeah, just over. The graduating class of 2024 has 1,980 students.

Just for context for those who haven’t heard the podcast: the Christmas episodes often center around non-bastards. This is one of those. :P

A hit dog will holler.

Yeah, pretty much. It ties into the “white genocide” and “great replacement” conspiracy theories, where the mere existence of nonwhites is taken as violence. It also often blames Jews for orchestrating it. It doesn’t make any sense, but it appeals to paranoia and supremacy, and provides a scapegoat for literally any actual systemic problem.

At least in the contexts I’m talking about, and I’ve never seen it used in another, it’s really not that. It’s coming from talking heads fearmongering about nonwhites, portraying nonwhite immigrants as criminals, ginning up a “border crisis” narrative, and even calling it an “invasion.”