ROLEY

  • Thursday, February 23rd, 2023

    A reminder that these new posts are also in podcast form, over on my Patreon Page

    • I think I may have hit upon one of the reasons I’m having the issues I’m having: Too many inputs. Or, more specifically, too many unwanted inputs. It may be time for me to go be quiet myself for a little while, and figure out how to cut these unwanted issues, or mitigate them.
    • I noticed today that the phrase “The Mask Mandates Did Nothing”.  Bret Stephens wrote a column in the New York Cage Liner.  This is the same guy who opined that climate change is mass neurosis and claimed that climate science had been discredited, so let’s make sure we know what kind of idiot we’re talking about.  I don’t often speak directly to the redhats, but let me make an exception in this case.  Yes, morons, I know that a lot of you made it all the way through a once in a lifetime pandemic without getting vaccinated or wearing a mask.  I also know that you feel really good about that.  Maybe you should.  I would also feel great about not taking a single precaution to protect myself and not dying.  A better word to use would be relieved, but let’s not get confused because you know what’s going to happen to that once in a lifetime pandemic because you feel no obligation to anyone around you?  It will become a twice or maybe even thrice in a lifetime pandemic.  We’ll get a more deadly mutuation that we don’t yet have protection for, or we’ll get some new novel disease we haven’t thought of yet.  When we do, you’ll stay true to your cult.  I invite you to, because Russian Roulette is not an infinite game.   What boggles my mind is the number of pastors and radio talk show hosts in the last three years that beat their chests and shouted at the top of their lungs until they had a tube down their throat and begged for your prayers with their last dying raggedy breaths.   But what we’re not gonna do is gaslight people by saying mask mandates didn’t work when a large and very stupid portion of the population kept shouting “MUH FREEDOM” and crying “MASK HURT MUH FACE” at the same time, or just lying about religious objections (I know one person who just out and out lied)  or underlying medical conditions (I was behind one person straight up RUNNING past me into a Walmart and when asked to put on a mask by the greeter said “I have asthma” as they ran right by) , and then say “MASKS NO WORK, HA HA STUPID LIBTARDS”.
    • Would someone who cares about this person please tell her to shut the fuck up?
    • Do you remember about a year ago when Ron DeSantis got butthurt over Disney saying they were suspending political donations over the “Don’t Say Gay” Bill, and abolished the Reedy Creek Improvement District, accidentally setting in motion a transfer of the 1.2 Billion dollars in bond debt to the taxpayers in the counties where Disney World resides?  Well, Sour Puss wants to be President, so he’s claiming victory while backpedaling like a motherfucker in defeat. He’s about to sign a bill that renames the district, gives him the power to name the board, and leaves the financial arrangement alone.  So, no new taxes for the residents of Orange or Osceola Counties.  If I’m a guy who doesn’t want Ron DeSantis to be President, I’m running ads about about how the butt-hurt got in the way of thinking things all the way through.  Seems to me that’s something I’d want in a President and his administration.  Knee jerk revenge-oriented politics is dangerous, and that’s the part that worries me more than anything.  I don’t want that guy anywhere near the football.  I bet there’s ketchup on the walls at his place as well.
    • Apple Fanboi news: Apple is close to the holy fucking medical grail: A continuous non invasive blood glucose monitor on the Apple Watch. The methodology already exists. For example, the Freestyle Libre is a sensor on the back of your arm that monitors a related fluid. The watch would do the same thing, but with sensors on the bottom of the watch. Nothing breaks the skin. As a diabetic, I can’t stress how huge that would be if they nail this. I don’t know of any other watch that is doing this right now, feel free to correct me. This one is personal, I would buy this immediately. Apple Watch is 300-400 dollars? Drop in the bucket compared to meters, strips…I probably spend that in supplies right now EASY. This would make life so much easier for people. I wonder what the ROI for health insurance companies to provide an Apple Watch for a co-pay of 75 to 100 dollars? Would that save the company money in other areas? Would it lower our co-pays or premiums? Would we need to consent to sharing that information? Probably, but I’m curious about the risk/reward ratio for this.
    • Wave a magic wand, and cable news is gone tomorrow. The infotainment model of news across the board as a format is gone. What replaces it?

  • Wednesday, February 22, 2023

    • First day back to work after the holiday, which is weird.  Since I work for a gubmint-related thing now, I get gubmint-related holidays off.  This is one of the most un-call center-like things about this job.  Most places like that give a minimal amount of holidays, and in some cases, you work them on a volunteer or round-robin kind of thing.  I worked last Christmas, may I have this Christmas off?  No?  Shit.   (This actually happened.)  When I got married, the place I worked wouldn’t approve the actual DAY of my wedding off, but approved the WEEK of my wedding.  That is how the Week of Fun Started.  Looks like for the 3rd time in 29 years we’ll have to put off the Week of Fun again this year.  The way our vacation allotment shakes out is that I get the full amount in September of every year, which makes it a challenge for the following July.  Since Kimmers didn’t start her job until November, she doesn’t have PTO.  For the year.  Which is also weird.  I’d have thought they’d pro-rate, but it doesn’t appear so.  Also strange because she was just in the hospital for a week, so that’s fun.  That’s enough bitching for how, let’s navigate to the meat.
    • In a piece of news I will file under “I want off this ride”, let me pose a question to you:  If the principal of your elementary school leaves his gun in a bathroom stall, and a third-grader finds it and reports it to his teacher, what is the correct thing for that teacher to do?  Clearly, It’s sending another third-grader to the bathroom to check if it’s a real gun. What–and I can’t stress this highly enough–THE FUCK.
    • Britney Griner signed a one-year contract with the Phoenix Mercury, making it her 10th season with the team.  Of course, she missed last year because of her detention in Russia.  Now, I’m not a big basketball fan, (note: watch this space for the day they announce the Sonics are coming back), but before today I had not seen a news story mention why she played in Russia to begin with.  The NPR article I linked here says that WNBA athletes often play overseas in the off-season to supplement their income because of gender pay inequalities with their NBA counterparts.  Now, admittedly, this may be a different situation from the USA Women’s soccer team which has carried the load for US Soccer while the men have done fuck-all, but if the pay difference can be argued as a safety concern?  “Hey, if y’all would pay me I wouldn’t have to go anywhere else.”  I’m not the brightest bulb on the tree, but that would be my argument next time salary arbitration comes up.  Does the WNBA even HAVE a player’s union?  (They do.)
    • In the next town over, Chesapeake, BM Williams Elementary School went into lockdown and was dismissed early because they received a bomb threat email accusing them of ‘devil worship’.  BM Willams is the school you may have heard about in the news because they have the After School Satan Club.  The email accuses a Chesapeake school board member, the Chesapeake schools superintendent and the organizer of the After School Satan Club of ‘promoting devil worship and unIslamic values.’   Without evidence to the contrary, the letter implies the writer of the email is Muslim.  I don’t believe it for a second, but I’ll be willing to admit it if I’m wrong. However, let’s be clear about what we’re dealing with here.  This is a person who saw the word Satan and didn’t look beyond the paint.  I’m not a member of The Satanic Temple, but I know that’s there’s a big difference between them and Anton LeVay’s Church of Satan.  To begin with, The Satanic Temple doesn’t actually believe in Satan.  They don’t worship Satan.  They use the imagery to troll evangelical extremists.  They use satire to get under the skin of people.  They’re activists that preach—if you’ll pardon the expression—equality, social justice, and to point out religious hypocrisy.   They’re all about personal autonomy, curiosity, pragmatic skepticism.   The after school program is an answer to the Good News Club, a Christian after school program.  It doesn’t try to ‘convert’ kids, it teaches “about rationalism and understanding the world around us.”  in other words, how to make sense of the world using critical thinking skills and natural curiosity.  Questioning everything.   That’s a good thing in my opinion.  In fact, the only group of people I can think of that wouldn’t think that’s a good idea are folks more interested in indoctrinating their kids.
    • Lastly, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Gonzalez v Google today, this is the first of two cases regarding the Internet and Section 230.  I’ll have a deeper take on it in the coming days, but here’s the link if you’d like to hear it.

  • Tuesday, February 21st, 2023

    Has anyone else experienced the following:  You’ve been stressed out past your limit so much for so long that you stop holding back about things?  That’s where I’m at right now.   Whether that’s good for my mental health–or anyone else’s–is up for debate.  Film at 11, as they say.

    • RIP to Richard Belzer, most likely the first comedian I ever saw on TV and knew what he was.  A brilliant comedian.  The character of John Munch will have him on TV from now until the heat death of the Universe because SVU is playing on TV somewhere on the planet.  I heard yesterday that he took the settlement money when Hulk Hogan dropped him and bought a house in France that he named Chez Hogan.  I don’t know if that’s true, but that sounds like him.  And, of course, let’s never forget his brief moment of MTV stardom.

    • MTG posted this tweet this morning (it’s there as I type it, card subject to change) where she says:

      “We need a national divorce. We need to separate into red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”


      Honestly, I’m warming up to this idea, but not for the reasons she would like.  It would appear that the red states are more dependent on Federal Aid than the Blue states, which generally have a higher income and GDP.  The Blue states pay more taxes, and the Red states appear to be the–to be generous–slightly larger beneficiary of those taxes. But, of course, this ‘national divorce’ will never happen.  She knows that.  This is just red meat for the ignorant.  Her citizens will expect the same services they’re getting today with a fraction of the tax base.  You have to make up for that somehow.  Someone should ask her how she plans to….oh, wait.  Right.  What plan, right?


    • MTG Related: Could someone please tell her that giving access of the 1/6 tapes to Tucker Carlson is not the same as releasing the tapes?  If there are 41,000 hours of footage, you can bet Tucker is going to release about 30 seconds of some guy from Dubuque taking a leak in the Bushes and claim it was Antifa, so TOTAL EXONERATION.  Of course all that footage will NEVER be made public, but that’s ok.  We have C-Span.
    • To get back into photography, I’ve signed up for a newsletter from Digital Photography School.  This week’s challenge appears to be about using lines in your images.  I received a beginner’s guide to street photography for signing up for their newsletter.  I was today years old when I realized one of the best tips about street photography is to find a place you like aesthetically and JUST FUCKING WAIT THERE.  I’m the Goofus walking around with a camera making everyone uncomfortable.  Plus, the last time I went out shooting street photography, I had my Canon T5i.  My iPhone 12 camera with the Moment Gear is much more suited to this purpose.  So, I think I have two things to work out this week.  Let’s see how it goes.
        • Photography related:  I see that Canon is releasing the R50, which seems to me to be the entry level mirrorless camera.  This is clearly meant to be replacing the M50; the M Line was Canon’s first excursion into Mirrorless cameras and after a while it was clear that Canon wasn’t going to devote more time to it.  A fine camera, but a limited amount of glass.  The R50 along with an 18-45mm and 55-210mm lens is out for pre-order for 1029.00, and I have to tell you I’m wanting this one.  There is an adapter for my EF Lenses, so there’s a way to keep my current glass involved.  My more professional friends might laugh at wanting just the entry level camera.  I don’t need more than that. I’m not a pro, but I do want a new camera.  My T5i was out of date when I bought it at a pawn shop with two lenses for 300 bucks.  I’ve held off on getting a new camera until Canon made an ‘affordable’ replacement they were going to stand behind, and this R50 is that camera.
    • Jimmy Carter is entering hospice care, and the amount of tributes he’s receiving for the life he’s led post-Presidency is nice to see.  Honestly, he wasn’t the greatest President, but he’ll be leaving this Earth knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that he wasn’t the worst.  I stand by my belief that Carter freed the Iranian Hostages in the hours before Reagan’s Inauguration, and Ronald Reagan got credit for it, and I hope in the coming weeks the tributes make that abundantly clear.  Of course, there will be the vultures, you’ll see them come out of the woodwork the moment the announcement is made.  I suppose I’d ask them how they felt when someone spoke ill of Reagan when he died, but they’ll never answer that question as long as the white hot hatred of Carter/Clinton/Fonda/Ted Kennedy fills them with impotent rage.   That Venn Diagram is the most perfect of circles, you can be assured of that.
    • The human equivalent of the slime you scrape from a hull under the water line James O’Keefe has resigned from Project Veritas.  No doubt he’ll find another grift, they always do.  On the other hand, maybe he’ll end up doing dinner theater in Branson. Kind of a coin flip, truthfully.
    • At last, the true power of AI: Let it decide who gets laid off.  You know this is how we get Friend Computer, right? Please report to the Food Vats for…uh…Reassignment.
    • Lastly, I’m starting a little experiment.  This post is also a Podcast on my Patreon Page.  It’s got what you see here, plus a little more in the way of my flavor of crazy because it’s me.  I’m making every Monday Patreon show public so it can be shared and promoted.  Feel free to check it out, share and subscribe.  Thank you.

  • Sunday, February 19th, 2023

    Welcome back. That’s more for me than it is for you.

    • I haven’t had as much time for blogging–or anything else– as I have for other things that require my time. Specifically, in the past little while, my cat died, my wife’s parrot died, and my wife almost died. So, I’ve been busy. I haven’t been well, but I appear to be returning OK. It’s incredible what having access to the meds you need to be a functional human being will do for you. It would appear that my mental situation was directly tied to my lack of access to those medications. In this case, it was not my anti-depressant; it was the fact that I am now a Type 1 diabetic and am now insulin dependent. My A1C, a metric of my blood sugar levels over 90 days, was 10.1. A person who does not have diabetes would have an A1C of under 7.   Today, my estimated A1C is about 7.7, which has led to clearer thinking, more energy, and in this case, depression. I feel a lot more like my usual chaotic good self, so I’ll see if I can get back into creating more things.
    • At the beginning of the year, I set out a list of goals, separated by quarter. Due to the above, I’ve not met any of those goals for the 1st quarter. Let’s go over those:
      • WORK: Professionally, identify one area of my job where we could improve the workflow–DONE
      • WORK: Average between 700-750 items a week at my job.  — FAILED (managed 500-700 items a week. More than anyone else on the team by a lot, so might need to revise.)
      • WORK: Outline and propose Multimedia Training for my department — ADDRESSED, REJECTED due to Personal information being the hangup. PII Security is important in my line of work.
      • CREATIVE: Podcast and Patreon at least once a week in 1Q — FAILED; see above.
      • CREATIVE: Gain 25 subscribers on Patreon.  — PENDING
      • CREATIVE: One Tentpole article a month — FAILED; see above
      • CREATIVE: One Photo and one Video Essay in 1Q — PENDING
      • ACADEMIC: Dedicated Learning Time once a month in 1Q — PENDING
      • FUN:  Karaoke once a month — PENDING
      • FUN: Photo Challenge once a month — FAILED; see above
      • FUN: New song on guitar once a month — FAILED; see above
      • FUN: Something that doesn’t involve work or creativity once a month – well, depending on how you look at it, spending more time in a hospital than anyone should qualify, but FAILED in the spirit of the intention.

        Since I feel better and things are getting as close to normal as things get, I intend to try and catch up on some of those pending and failed items, but we’ll see how it goes.


    • I didn’t go into much detail about this, but you’ll notice that this website has returned to a WordPress site. I don’t have a bad thing to say about Squarespace; I no longer require or desire the bells and whistles they provide. Still, even WordPress doesn’t quite capture what I want. The closest thing that captures what I wish is Dave Winer’s Scripting News, run on Dave’s outliner program Drummer. To get as close to that as possible, I make one post a day with all the items I want to cover. I don’t believe I have the ‘fu’ required to create something in Drummer. I intend to try, and if I’m successful by some quirk of fate, I may redirect the domain there. In a perfect world, I’d try to run it from my server, but it doesn’t look like that’s possible. I could be wrong. In the end, what I want is (maybe) simple:  One date per day, my writing for the day underneath with anchor tags for each item, and the ability to post those items to Twitter, Mastodon, etc.
    • Speaking of social media, I’m frankly getting sick of it. Facebook sucks, Instagram no longer focuses on photography,  Elon is intent on making Twitter a garbage fire, TikTok is OK, but mainly for fun, and LinkedIn is not what I’m trying to reach. Mastodon is OK, but I feel meh about the whole thing.   I no longer have a clear understanding as to why I’m on social media at all. It was to try to direct eyeballs here, but I spend so much time on those platforms that I spend next to nothing here where I should. I’ve half a mind to cancel all my social media accounts and work on optimizing everything for search to come here. That sounds like the direction I want to go. Or, I cross-post links to those places and not deal with them outside of that. The bottom line is that I no longer think that social media serves any purpose other than to agitate, and I don’t need that drama anymore. I certainly don’t need the distraction.
    • Not sure how this post is going to work going forward.  I’ll either post it in the evening, or write a bunch of stuff and post it the next morning.  Frankly, I’m leaning towards the latter.  That waym I might have the time to research anything that comes up and give you something more than my usual gas-filled take on things.  We’ll see.  if that’s the case, the next post will probably be Tuesday.

  • Wednesday, November 16th, 2022

    • Let’s start today with a Mea Culpa: Yesterday I released a Patreon Podcast. I had previously said that all the Patreon stuff would be public until January 1st, but some dumbass named Roley forgot to make the podcast public. It’s fixed now, I’ll try to remember that in future, and let us never speak of it again.

    • So, we’re not starting WW3. That’s a relief. I think this may be the first time I was happy to hear “It’s not so much a rule, it’s more like a guideline.” Granted, you and I both know there’s a long path from what happened yesterday and Mutually Assured Destruction, but for us 80s kids who lived with that shit, it was Tuesday.

    • The Senate is voting to invoke cloture on protecting same sex and interracial marriage right now. They have 62 votes right now to limit debate. It’s a procedural thing, but the fact that in this age you can find 60 votes on anything, and of all the things you can get Republicans to vote for? Mind. Blown. That means they can now proceed to HR 8404, the Respect for Marriage Act. This has already passed the House. Keep your eye on this.

    I don’t have a lot today; I have a Pod to get out for Patreon. See y’all tomorrow

  • Tuesday, November 15th, 2022

    • A week ago, I watched the distinguished prune from Arizona go all ranty after voting and I said to myself, “That is not coming from a position of strength.” There were some other things before Election Day that had me thinking that she was behind, like her challenges to GOVERNOR-ELECT HOBBS that she debate her. The lengths that she went to try and get a response from Hobbs was unusual to me. In retrospect, Hobbs–or someone on her team–knew what the hell they were doing. They didn’t give her the attention she wanted, didn’t give her a legitimate platform to spew her bullshit and let her sink on her own. Lake’s team knew they were behind on Election Day. If you don’t have people in your ear telling you this, you don’t spend your money wisely. Kari Lake had a tell, and that was projecting over the top strength. I know she won’t go away, because people like Lake rarely do. She’s going to end up on one of the conservative news networks as a paid contributor until someone taps her to be in a position in someone’s administration. It wouldn’t surprise me if that were the plan all along. To run, lose, cry foul, play the tired GOP persecution game, and end up with a bigger paycheck than the one she left. The grift is strong over on that side.

    • On my task list is a reminder that I want to do some kind of outline for a video. It’s mainly to keep those chops up, but my idea machine is empty where that’s concerned. I’m probably overthinking it. That said, I just don’t think my life is that damn interesting to make a video out of, say, the things I’m posting here. It’s also possible that the reason my life isn’t that damn interesting is in line with what I said in yesterday’s post. To quote Taylor, “It’s me, hi. I’m the problem, it’s me.”

    Damn, I love that song. I have no idea why.

    • From the Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing Dept. You might think there’s a grassroots opposition to offshore wind energy. That grassroots opposition is being funded by the fossil fuel industry. Because fuck you and the planet, that’s why.

    • An exceptional example of humanity* called into Washington Journal this morning and complained about the one bottleneck we have in government: The Veto. He says if the Congress passes it it should become law. I too would love to transition to a Parliamentary System of Government, sir. Something tells me you didn’t think this all the way through…

    • Today in the Muskocalypse (I can type that better than I can say it) Elon is all up in his feelings and fired the 20 people that made him feel bad. Apparently Elon’s idea of free speech absolutism is that absolutely under no circumstances should you criticize Elon. Everyone else is fair game. Haven’t seen the friendship corollary yet where you get fired if you make fun of Elon’s friends, just wait a day or two.

    On a related note: Mastodon apparently has an edit button. That’s a selling point right there.

    • Watch This: James Baldwin debates William F Buckley. Then, ask yourself why some people don’t want to talk about this subject anymore. I submit that they don’t have a fraction of the intellect displayed here. I said what I said.

    • Just caught on the news that the shit has hit the fan re: Russia. Perfect. Wolverines. Great. More tomorrow if we’re not vaporized.

    *Absolute fuckhead

  • Monday, November 14th, 2022

    • As we begin another week, I want to note what happened last week. While the craziness was going on, my wife was in the hospital, and it wasn’t a good thing for the first couple of days. Thankfully she turned a corner, and we returned home on Sat. So, she is fine, and WE are fine.

    But, on the other hand, I am not OK, and I’m not anywhere near fine. I haven’t been fine for a long time, and I’m surprised that I even have the self-awareness to recognize it. What I can’t do, haven’t been able to do, is define the problem. I can tell you that not a lot matters to me right now. I’ve just become indifferent to just about everything. My default response lately is a shrug and some Meh. I don’t want to be around people, haven’t wanted to be around people for a while. I’m getting sick of social media, I’ve almost deleted all my accounts 3 or 4 times in as many months. I basically feel like disappearing, I feel like no one would care much if I did, and I might just be ok with that. To be clear, I’m not having thoughts of self-harm. Not talking about unaliving. I’m talking about checking out from the world and being alone.

    I’m exhausted. I’ve had so much on my plate for so long it’s finally gotten to me. One of my ex-girlfriends from the Mesozoic Era that still keeps in contact with me every now and then tells me that I’m on the verge of a breakthrough. Doesn’t seem that way. A breakDOWN on the other hand, I’ll buy that. Of course, I probably can’t be having a breakdown if I’m thinking I’m having a breakdown. I don’t think that’s how it works. I’ve said on occasion that I think I need to see a therapist, the trick is finding the time to see a therapist. That’s funny. I know this, every tool I’ve learned to use since my moment of clarity in Sept 2005 isn’t working. I think I need help.

    • I heard someone ask another person if knowledge and belief had a divorce inside them, and that has got to be the politest of burns. I must remember that one.

    • Congress is back in session today to begin their ‘lame-duck’ session. I encourage you to watch the proceedings on C-SPAN and stop letting other people tell you about it. See it for yourself. As we get closer to the end of the Continuing Resolution to fund the Government on December 16th, start taking note of the things the parties say. They’re going to complain about being held up in DC when they could be home for the Holidays, just like they’ve said for every fucking year they kick the can down the road and put themselves in this position. This is the beginning of an education on how the playbook only changes colors every few years, but everything else is the same. Watch what happens in the House if the GOP take the House. The Dems will start using all the complaints and parliamentary tricks the GOP used. They also won’t actually solve anything definitively. Ever. This should make you mad.

    • On a related note, the pleas for bipartisanship will last about a week until the President says or does something they can interpret as not really meaning it. Just like they do at the beginning of every Congress as long as I can remember. Really. This bullshit rarely changes, and that should outrage you. I promise you, if people actually watched Congress do it’s job, they would demand better Reps and Senators. Also, younger. Grassley is 89 years old. He voted with a feather and a fucking inkwell when he started. I’m begging y’all. Start paying attention to first degree sources, and stop giving the outrage machine, the angertainment, the infotainment…the NOOZ your time.

    I’ll leave you with a photo Kimmers took of a minor victory. Oreo is very clearly Kim’s cat, but she’s starting to trust me. I think some guy abused her and abandoned her, and that’s why she lives here now. This was a pleasant surprise.

  • Sunday, November 13th, 2022

    Hey, there’s a new Podcast in the feed today. Also, if you’re so inclined, there are four new bonus podcasts over at Patreon. Until the end of the year, those Patreon podcasts (and anything else I put up there) are available to everyone. Enjoy.

    I’ve been playing around with Mastodon a little, and it just reminds me of the path we took to get to this point on the internet timeline. Most of us regular (old) folk started in a walled garden like CompuServe or AOL. Then we branched out with things like Netscape, ICQ, Usenet, and IRC. Things became more open. Social Networks swung the penduluum back in the other direction and made the data we gave them a commodity to be traded, and then someone figured out how to weaponize it. That’s why I find the Fediverse so intriguing. There are open alternatives to the social networks we use today. Is it ready for prime time? Not quite yet. The Mastodon server I selected was on the verge of a nervous breakdown for the surge of signups. I’d say take a look and play around with these alternatives. It can’t hurt. Not sure if this is the future, but it’s an option if you’re sick of the status quo.

    Following the Senate races, I’m glad to see the side interested in preserving democracy held on. That said, I don’t trust Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema any father than I could comfortably spit a rhinoceros. Here’s a scenario to consider: Let’s say that Georgia proves that it’s brain dead and elects Walker. That means the Senate remains 50/50 as it is today. If I’m Mitch McConnell, I’m offering the moon on a goddamn string for one or both of them to pull a James Jeffords, switch parties, and hand control of the Senate to the GOP. Manchin is the likely candidate to flip, but don’t take Sinema for granted. Those two will go to the place they can have the most power, and exert the most influence.

    Let’s say that the Dems hold both houses and the Senate at 51/49 with Warnock winning the runoff. Then Biden realistically 12 months to put the fucking hammer down and pass his agenda, maybe 18 if you want to push it. You put so much pressure on Manchin/Sinema you make diamonds out of them., eject the filabuster, hit the warp speed button, and pass all the things. Codify Roe and Obergfell. Pass the College Loan Forgiveness Plan. Pass 35 dollar insulin for everyone. Expand healthcare to be on par with the rest of the world. Pass gun control laws, paid family leave, fund the bullet train we should have had years ago…every ding dang thing. I promise you once those things kick in and start to help us regular folks, that’s the thing that scares the GOP the most. They know they’ll be back in the minority for a generation at least.

    Here’s something else that scares the GOP: the calendar. By 2028, Millenials and Gen Z will be the largest voting block out there. By 2035 or 2040, white folks will be in the minority. They know this, and every trick they play to supress the vote, gerrymander districts and the like are designed to keep Evangelical White Republicans at the top of the food chain. It’s literally an economic and political apartheid if they get their way. We can’t let that happen, and I think the young people are going to ensure that it doesn’t happen.

    Remember to hug a pollster today, they’re very fragile right now. Thoughts and Prayers.

    Assholes.

  • Wednesday, November 2nd, 2022

    • I might be nitpicky here, but I saw an ad for a product called the Bionic Spotlight last night. I don’t want a Bionic Spotlight. I don’t know who they’ve been. A roundabout way of saying that words mean things.

    • From the Wayback Machine, ABC News from 11/8/1979. The show that would become Nightline was originally a daily recap of what was happening with the Iranian Hostages. So early on that Ted Koppel was a reporter, and Frank Reynolds anchored. Koppel was at his Alfred E. Neuman best.

    • I have reached the point that the candidate who tells me that my mailbox is not going to be stuffed with election bullshit, and my phone isn’t going to blow up with text messages will get my fucking vote. I’m really more upset about the mail, trash that just takes up space.

    • I may have mentioned this before, but I think I have figured out one of my main problems. The experts call this object permanence, which is a fancy way of saying if I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. That’s why I’ve been so unsuccessful at keeping a journal of any substance. On the other side of the coin, having all that shit out on my desk looks cluttered, and my poor brain has to reconcile that. No wonder I’m fucked. I literally have a journal that I wrote “DON’T PUT ME AWAY” in Sharpie. WHY BRAIN DO THIS?

    • Last night, something happened to my website, it caught a critical error. Anytime I’ve run across this in WordPress, where it happens suddenly after having been writing a draft earlier in the day, it’s a plugin. What I didn’t expect after deactivating the plugins in PHPMyAdmin and reactvating them one by one, it was Jetpack that was the error. It had updated during the day automatically and borked my site. I think what I need to do is control when these plugins activate and not let them auto-update. Hive mind, what say you? Yeah?

    • Update about the Patreon podcasts: They’re public for now. I think I’ll keep them public until January 1st, and then flip the switch to put them behind the paywall. Everything will be that way until after Jan 1st, I think. …and there was much rejoicing…

  • Tuesday, November 1st, 2022

    • Back in the deep, dark 1980s, there was a shop at Pembroke Mall called A Bit of England. This was the place you went to find chessboards and darts accessories, and most importantly, role-playing games stuff. It was in that store I found my two favorite games, Shadowrun and Paranoia. Pembroke Mall has gone through a cubic shitload of changes in the ensuing years, and Bit of England got the shit end of the stick. Eventually, they got evicted from the Mall because getting knocked down to build a senior living community. If you consider that the demographic that still goes to a Mall is my age, it was already a senior living community.

    I ran some errands and found the store’s new location. I had to walk in. It was just how I remembered it. I ended up walking out with a set of RPG dice on impulse. I haven’t played in years. Call it a memento, I guess. I’ll put them on my ‘shelf of the ego’ and look at them now and then. Nice to walk in the past for a moment.

    I’m not a person who chooses to walk in the past for very long. Like a lot of people, I didn’t have a particularly nice childhood. I have parts of the backstory that I love of course; I will talk your ears off about Guantanamo Bay in the early 80s. There was something special about that place, and I loved living there. But the common thread of my backstory is how often I was left to my own devices. I understand that’s common among my generation, but I don’t wear it like a badge of honor like some creators do on TikTok. I’m Gen X, and as we like to say, “Whatever.”

    • I see the former guy appealed to SCOTUS in another attempt to keep the House from seeing his tax records. I don’t know why you’re even trying at this point. If trends are accurate, the House is going to flip Republican, and that’s it. That effectively means Trump is going to get away with a lot of stuff he should be going to jail for, because our justice system grinds ever so slowly for people in that rarified air. You and I would be well into our first year in Federal lockup. Of course, once the former guy announces he’s running for President again, all investigation is going to halt. He’s counting on that, and he’s counting on heading back to the WH so that he can’t be touched for another four years. We should have arrested him when you had the chance. We’re all kinds of fucked.

    • A serious question: What is the objective reality that we agree exists? I’m afraid it got drowned in a bathtub somewhere. Not to delve too far into Ayn Rand, but one of the central tenets of Objectivism is that A is A, or a chair is a chair. I honestly believe that we have somehow split off into two groups, one that believes in an objective reality that can be observed, and one that believes what they are told is reality. Maybe it’s been this way for a long time, but this darkest timeline we’re living in has brought it into a sharper focus for me. I don’t know how else to explain it other than to say when presented with a demonstrable fact, there is a group of us here in [American] society that can deny its existence based on [insert bullshit here]. How do we resolve that? Can we resolve that?

    • Finally, the first bonus pod dropped into the Patreon Feed today if you’re so inclined. First ep of the main show will be this weekend. LFG, as the youngs say.