I didn't know that about your childhood. Thanks for sharing.

> I've deeply offended several people I've known almost the entirety of my life for being rude to people who say their own child's healthcare should be paid for but not those people's kids because they are brown. For being rude to antivaxxers who are trying to spread their misinformation in a community that is protected from dangerous infections BY vaccines and masking precautions.

Have you had any success in changing anyone's mind? I could use some pointers for climate skeptics down here.

No.

I'm not certain that the opinions of adults can be changed except by reflection after something traumatic happens to them personally or sometimes a loved one.

I've told this to multiple people but still can't work out an emotionally tolerable handle on the situation.

I am only alive because the very rare and life saving open heart procedure I had as an 11 year old was paid for by a program called Children's Special Healthcare of Michigan. As child/ adolescent would be star of the GOP, I argued against socialized medicine on the basis of 'cost' while my own family would have been at best, bankrupted and homeless trying to pay for my procedure, or I would have died in an emergency room of a preventable infarction.

For the entirety of my life, when this program has come up for reconsideration for funding in the Michigan legislature, Michigan Republicans have voted to try to defund it. They don't campaign on it because it would sound ugly, but candidates my parents voted for, supported removing the program that saved my life. They still do.

I have wept salt tears several times since the election because this program and others like it are not likely to survive the coming purges. The number of preventable deaths among a community I am deeply connected to is going to rise and I feel helpless to do anything about it. Particularly because among the parents of sick children, there are still republicans arguing that they SHOULD be bankrupted by their children's medical expenses. That their child SHOULD die if they can't afford to pay for a life saving surgery or medication. I don't know how to deal with this. I've deeply offended several people I've known almost the entirety of my life for being rude to people who say their own child's healthcare should be paid for but not those people's kids because they are brown. For being rude to antivaxxers who are trying to spread their misinformation in a community that is protected from dangerous infections BY vaccines and masking precautions.

I'm heartsick, and grieving already.

My new therapist who I had only seen a handful of times was recently put on life support and is expected to pass away soon if she hasn't already, I haven't heard an update in a over a week.

My disability got renewed again without fuss, which is good. Been fighting with the spouse which is bad. Going to couples therapy which is good.

I fucking hate this time of year. If I could just be put into a chemically induced coma until December 26th I'd go full jordan peterson russian detox in a heartbeat.

just spatchcocked the turkey for tomorrow

I had Reddit sockpuppets in the names of every major character in The Dying Earth. In my opinion, Jack Vance and American fantasy are the Bauhaus if Itten didn't leave. Don't get trapped into thinking there's a lot of it; the original Dying Earth is an anthology of short stories written prior to 1950, and then there are two legit Sagas written in the '80s. They're okay but not relevant.

I was entertained, but ended up confused by both detractors and praises.

I think the more an egghead likes a book, the more they make it "important." I've never wanted to bother with Salman Rushdie; prior to his fatwah nobody really gave a shit so all of a sudden his work had to take on enough meaning to support an East V West clash of ideals. What was that shit newspaper in France? Charlie Hebdo? Ain't nobody said anything nice about Charlie Hebdo until AQAP started shooting cartoonists.

My go-to is Margaret Atwood. She's a shitty author (shut up, she is). She's self-important. She's, by all accounts, a dreadful person. But because she writes pulp sci fi along the lines of "fear the Republicans" the eggheads support her in her assertion that she doesn't write sci fi, sci fi is grubby and she's important. Lather, rinse, repeat for David Foster Wallace. Meanwhile, Stephen King was out getting rich in the literary wilderness for 40 years, bane of English teachers everywhere, until he started dissing Trump on Twitter. All of a sudden his shit's literature.

No comment on Dean Brown; that thing practically fizzled out by the time I was in 4th grade.

He's a terrible writer and you don't need to read him ever. All you need is the following:

1) Anthony Burgess' review of Holy Blood, Holy Grail in 1980 was "someone should make this into a novel"

2) Dan Brown did exactly that

3) The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail sued him for plagiarism

4) Dan Brown argued "holupaminnit, you said yours was non-fiction" and the authors came back with "well... but nobody really believed that, did they"

5) Things went as well as expected

Holy Blood, Holy Grail? A breathless pseudoacademic conspiracy theory. Da Vinci Code? An Encyclopedia Brown mystery. If you ever come across a copy, voice Robert Langdon as Bullwinkle the Moose and Sophie Neveu (yes, really) as Rocky the Squirrel.

I've been unmedicated for the last six weeks, and although my energy level is all over the place, nothing feels as 'alien' as it did before. Interacting with people isn't grating on my nerves. My hearing isn't overloaded all the time. Random anxieties feel like outside thoughts that can be dismissed instead of taking over like they used to. And seasonal disorder is the real deal; I'm drowsy and yawning all the time without a trace of antidepressants in my body, despite having tweaked every screen to flood my eyes with extra blue light. 'Hazy' is a good word.

This is a temporary, motivated to both check my heart etc while meds-less and gauge mental changes, gonna go back to quetiapine in a couple of weeks, but it's been truly an eye-opening experience.

https://imgur.com/a/great-flood-ElKd7SS

Ancient post is ancient. I've been flip-flopping on this whole issue of language extinction and preservation, and it's really hard to leave the "if it's so culturally important, how come nobody cared to use it to communicate culture?" position by some point. Maybe this will prompt discussion, maybe I'll get lynched. Let's roll.

Language isn't anywhere near as much of an art form as it once was, and in my opinion, that is a shame.

I agree with you, spirit of the Talk Like a Yoda Day's past, but few people of ability could ever take 11 years to write something, averaging out 40 syllables per week under a lucrative patronage.

Funny, just last night I flooded my kitchen by walking away from the sink refilling it to thaw a turkey.

Cheers to being damp.

Gotta love when the holiday starts with your mom looking at you and just saying "I'm done caring about you." Why is it I came home again?

On the bright side I got to eat a lot of good local food and am leaving Friday and not staying through the weekend so that's nice.

Hope all y'all are doing well and I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving (if you celebrate) and otherwise have a fabulous and normal week!

It was a water main that pinholed, and then that pinhole became a waterjet.

When I found it - under ten inches of water - it took some skin off my thumb from sheer pressure.

This is the new place? So was the water actually coming from guttering / piping / leaks etc or was it surface runoff getting trapped under the house?

What was that shit newspaper in France? Charlie Hebdo? Ain't nobody said anything nice about Charlie Hebdo until AQAP started shooting cartoonists.

Couldnt resist the chance to correct you. Charlie Hebdo was well revered in France before the shooting.

Not only for its carton but for a lot of articles who proved some corruption in France politicians, and ruined some career.

Very local corruption affair, and very french newspaper , but revered in the country.

Your point stand, never heard about Rushdie before the Fatwa. Still he probably was revered in his home country

Bloody hell. Sounds expensive. Hope the damage wasn't too extensive.

Kriwaczek makes the point that from an external perspective, civilization can be evenly divided into "Babylonian" and "not Babylonian" as civilization centered in and around Babylon had about a 2000-year hang time. He also argues that they were nasty - a lot of their recorded cruelty to others is likely hyperbole meant to scare the provincials but theirs was a nasty and brutish empire, to themselves and to others. They were also highly regimented - the modern analog Kriwaczek uses for Babylon is the USSR, with its politbureau, its nomenklatura and its cronyism-based welfare state. Babylon didn't use coinage for internal trade, everything was state diktat; not only that, their language and math was deliberately obscure and cloistered so that their technology couldn't be stolen by the barbarians they relied on for luxury goods.

We don't know exactly how the Babylonian empire fell because they started using papyrus rather than clay to write on and all the records are gone. We do know that they were superseded when their trading partners in Anatolia developed a pidgin Babylonian to trade (and do math) among themselves which effectively cut the Babylonians out of their monopoly status. Babylonian was lost as a language for over 2000 years while the barbarians kept at heel for a millennium proceeded to invent science and culture.

History is a push/pull between old and new. Old never wins. You can be mad about that but ultimately the point of language is for dialog and the easier that dialog, the more successful the language.

I wonder if we will have elections again or not

I agree. But until you have a message you believe in and are willing to put out far and wide without apologizing for having an agenda. Look at the GOP — they believe in stupid things, but I guarantee you that everyone reading my words can absolutely tell you what the6 want to do and why they want to do that. The words are repeated in every organ of the GOP, every radio show, every news organ, every podcast, every white paper issued by a GOP think tank all have a message. And because they have that message and actually not only believe in that vision but are absolutely committed to it. I don’t think I could make the same bet on the democratic side. They have no vision of government, of culture, or why they think that. The democratic organs of culture mostly document GOP bad and snipe at other democrats. There’s nothing really to hold people to doing.

The basic issue, as I see it, is that the Republicans can pander to divisive social issues (because they don't cost anything) and then give money away to business in the Name of Freedom™. Democrats can be liberal AF about social issues (because they don't cost anything) and then ask for a whole bunch of big government projects that cost a fuckton and interfere with big business.

Spitballing, I'd say Democrats (the voters) care about health insurance, social welfare, global warming, reduced police militarization, cheaper college and cheaper housing. And I would say that for every one of those concerns there's a billion dollar lobbying machine hell-bent on the destruction of anyone who poses even a vague threat to them.

Republicans? When there's money involved it's invariably takes the form of Give Tax Revenue To Crony Capitalists.

Any democrat who actually runs on doing what democrats want is going to get creamed.

I guess - I mean it works but govt subsidies for big industry is not like the exciting sort of thing that makes the press, and is such a small patch on the big issues.

Their weed policy was to pardon like a thousand people and otherwise change nothing , their healthcare policy is same old same old , they did very little to tax billionaires or fight inequality , everything they said they wanted to do was conveniently blocked , the people calling for a green new deal get iced out. The student loans was blocked by the courts so they shrugged. Roe v Wade ended while Dems had the presidency and they shrugged. Trans people are being attacked while Dems had the presidency and they shrugged.

Legit, the only things they did was CHIPS ($$ to billionaires) IRA ($$ to billionaires + some actually good climate stuff), $$ for more highway lanes and billionaires, and as much funding to Israel as they could possibility manage. Not sure what's really there to brag about.

Found it! Its not on her main issues page, instead its buried as point three here: https://kamalaharris.com/agenda/

Read that and tell me they're making the media's job easy.

Kamala also has the opposite problem of Trump. We -know- Trump's going to do things so we can assume he'll do our favorite subset but be blocked on the things we think are awful. Like, surely he's not ~really~ going to . . . etc etc

Whereas Kamala can say whatever but we all know she's going to not care about our favorite thing. Maybe she'll do a tiny bit of it? Which tiny bit?

I mean sure she could say she will but she's said a lot of things. I don't think anyone believed she would legalize weed. I certainly didn't.

Never heard that part of her campaign before the election fwiw, but someone online showed me where it was hidden: on a four paragraph part of her site where she said what she'd do for black men mainly talking about how much she knows how much they like bitcoin.

I hate NYT as much as the next guy but if her messaging was awful you can only blame the media so much.

Edit: its nowhere to be found here: https://kamalaharris.com/issues/

Nor is anything remotely comprehensible. Its ten thousand words long and carefully written to say nothing. I dare you to find anything interesting there to talk about.

Honestly I think part of the problem is how long the campaign is. It takes several years to run for president, and the formal kickoff is often more than a year out. People in formally elected offices basically spend 70% of their time in office preparing to campaign and actively campaigning for office. Of course they need that much money.

I don't think Joe ran on it, but Kamala did announce that she would legalize weed veryyyyy late in the campaign, to the point where even if the press would have been willing to make a big deal of it, it wouldn'ta mattered. The campaign was.. it was OK. Almost! It was almost OK. It was certainly not great, but again, clearly Trump has proven that the quality of campaign largely doesn't matter. Like five days ago Walmart was like "oh btw, tariffs would probably be mostly passed on to the customer, simply, yeah", and it was just... no one's job during campaign season to explain that. Nobody's. Same guy we gave "reasonably explain what mass deportations likely entail" to. Again, the press's true failure in this moment cannot be overstated.

But yes, as elsewhere has been mentioned, the dems are definitely a controlled opposition party. There was just a quick wrest within the oligarchy, the south africans struck in the twilight of the campaign multiple times, and with large investments.

Unsolicited, semi-concrete predictions, you say? Great idea. I suspect they'll 25th Amendment Trump, but I don't know when. I don't know when I'd want them to, or if. They're all too socially inept to realize that JD doesn't have the juice, and maybe handing Ozempic Jr. "whatever [donuts] work[s], I guess" after Trump has done god knows what for even one year is gonna be like Peter Theil's suicide, for starters.

No, no we are in no man's land. And one thing, li'l silver lining, is that I don't have to give one flying fuck what the dems do or say anymore, because that's all about to be completely irrelevant.

But thank god, nuclear war averted, Ukraine will be surrendered af and Russia will threaten Moldova and the Finns, and fuck, we might join 'em, maybe bomb Mexico, it's big peace time cunts.

edit: history will probably show that the Israel shit was singularly Biden. Singularly. Yeah I'm real torn up to see him go. This fucking country deserves itself, honestly. It's fine

Yeah I don't think the issue is really "doing something", it is effectively communicating what has been done. We do not have a press capable or willing to communicate that. I mean look at Figure 1 - https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/unpacking-the-boom-in-us-construction-of-manufacturing-facilities . The disconnect in public perception is a rift of several billion parsecs, feels like.

Danielle Allen did a series of ten pieces for the WaPo but they didn't exactly set the world afire.

I'll say this: WA state does jungle primaries, which helped contribute to outcomes like this:

Our Trump-annointed gubernatorial candidate was Semi Bird, who walked out of the primary with 11% of the vote (even though the Republicans had registered five candidates with the same name as the Democratic candidate). The most contentious and expensive race in Washington was for Commissioner of Public Lands, primarily because the Republican who was running was a big timber shill who got primaried for impeaching Trump.

EDIT: hot off the presses

I have my favorite solutions

I love that idea so much,

I've been saying it to everyone I meet since you posted it here, gotta be almost a decade ago.

Its overwhelmingly cute and would help so much and is so doable and Nobody seems to be talking about it

Democrats are not doing anything because they’re captured. They take money from the same business interests and banks that the Republicans do.

I think I would temper this by arguing there's no real alternative. The 2024 elections cost $16b. Bill Gates gave $100m, Elon Musk gave $150m. Kamala Harris got 74m votes; in order to counterbalance Elon Fucking Musk every Harris voter would have needed to chip in $2. In order to counterbalance Musk & Gates, they needed to chip in 68 cents.

But now we're talking campaign finance reform and we're both already asleep with boredom.

Democrats are not doing anything because they’re captured. They take money from the same business interests and banks that the Republicans do. It’s almost a controlled opposition party— they exist to hold things in place until the next republican term. They aren’t there to do things, they barely bother to pretend to be interested in that. In fact, I’d say they’re not even really an “ideas” party. If they had ideas, they’d want to get them out. They don’t, which is why Heritage Foundation can spend millions on Right Wing media outlets, radio, TV (multiple channels), websites, and so on. Democrats had Air America, but didn’t really invest in it. So now it’s NPR, MSNBC, and Bread Tube. That’s how into getting things done they are. Podcasters, Vaush, and MSNBC and the three political shows on NPR. They don’t even believe in their message enough to bother getting it out there. The way most people find out about anything the democrats actually want to do is republicans telling them it’s bad. Completely rearguard action.

I do not trust Gluesenkamp Perez. I can't remember what she did or said years ago that first raised my warning flags, but the recent banana peeling claims are another questionable installment. Honestly I get Paulina-Luna vibes from her. If you have to be a pandering liar to get elected, again, curtains for democracy. Speaking of which, I'll get back to you about the information environment in that other thread soon. Have a good Monday bro(s).