No, fuck you, too. You don't fucking quibble over specifics, you ignore everything I fucking say so you can find some corner that allows you to be crazy. Here's what I fucking said to you THREE FUCKING YEARS AGO And I don't see a mechanism by which things get better. I believe what I say and I say what I mean and you know what? What I've been saying is pretty consistent. I can look back on my wild-eyed bullshit ideas from ten years ago and go "mmmyeah, pretty much" about 98% of the time. So it's not fucking optimism - it's a studied assessment of the situation at hand as I see it and understand it, and I share that. And 99% of the time it fuckin' whooshes right the fuck over your head because you're too busy trying to find some reason to freak out. Spiritedness is fine but when you fucking put words into my mouth for fucking jollies it's fucking over. I'm fucking sick of this shit and I don't fucking deserve it.You've got some decisions to make, my friend. Because between the way the politics are going and the way the environment is going, you're in Taliban country.
how the fuck is that my fault It's possible That maybe I feel this more than you It's possible That maybe this is what I've been screaming from the rafters for forty fucking years It's possible That much of your outrage of the Supreme Court you learned from me But that didn't fuckin' stop you from needin' a hit of that Outrage Juice that keeps your blood pumping. It didn't stop you from taking a swing at me, the guy who has always been careful to address what you're saying, not who you are. The guy who drops whatever you've got going on minute by minute, hour by hour, life by life, to address the thing you wanna bring up. Naaah. You decided you wanted a fucking fight and the way you were gonna get it was by ridiculing me. This is one thing where nobody can come up with an upside and here I am, trying to get through my fucking day, and you decided that you know what? The Internet has decided it's cool to piss on "centrists" so here you are, knowing I'm always good for a laugh. I'll humor your bullshit no matter how tangential. I'll come back with something, anything to try and turn your mood around and what did you fucking do with that? You made up an opinion for me and decided I should defend it. FUCK YOU.
Once more with feeling: fuck you.
Fuck you. I've been pretty clear about what a catastrophe the Supreme Court is since Day Fucking One. You've got this bullshit idea that "well ackshully" I'm just an apologist for whatever it is you don't like but let me say it again - fuck you. Some of us have had the attention span to piss and moan about this shit since the MUTHERFUCKING EIGHTIES and if you wanna try and score points off me fucking come correct. It's not my fault you don't have the attention span to be mad at something other than the cause du jour. But it is your fault that you'd rather piss on this strawman you have of me than actually hold a reasonable facsimile of me in your head. I deserve better and you know it.
Fuckin'... do you even realize how much your snark interferes with your happiness? a deeply involved process involving constant diplomacy combined with a wearying Israeli electorate has resulted in a change in the legitimacy and acceptability of Israeli reprisals and you're out here going "see? I told you we should have stood in front of the stampede in the first place, they would have never dared to run us over!"
What's really going to bake your noodle is in my circles it's still considered cool to release on cassette so "let's crunk an MP3 down to fit on 1.44MB" is so fucking hipster that not even the Witch House people bother
This shit is easier than most people think. There's a motion control company that makes their servos play tunes at IMTS for 20 plus years.
THAT'S IN LIKE SEVEN HOURS
The original event mostly caught fire because of the blatant use of AI. Reality was quite different. It's the cause du jour of the Very Online.
Operation Downfall called for SIXTEEN atomic bombs. Basically nuke it, march through the fallout, nuke it, march through the fallout, nuke it, march through the fallout, up to Tokyo. And if they had to keep going after that well, the US will have had time to make more bombs. People forget that the B-29 was more expensive and more of a strategic priority than the Manhattan Project. People also forget that Germany spent more on the V-2 than the US spent on the Atomic Bomb. "Big boom" is the horror weapon we all freak out about now but the WWII mentality was "the way we win this is by indiscriminate unguided bombing at scale from an extreme distance." We've created this false narrative around "should the US have used a horrific weapon like the atomic bomb" when the real dilemma, acknowledged by both the United States and Japan, was "will the Japanese be made extinct as an ethnicity before hostilities are over." The truth of the situation is the Emperor of Japan saw Hiroshima, went "stop this madness", was nearly murdered by a military junta, and enough loyalists regained control for the Emperor to declare unconditional surrender after Nagasaki. Anyone who wants to waffle around the absolute and total genocide anticipated by both sides of the conflict is a simp. We were gonna turn Japan into Carthage and the Japanese were all in on it.
sigh what might my conclusion possibly fucking be You don't NEED to make this so exhausting
So there's "your faith" and there's "where things go." If there's any one nugget I want you to keep in mind it's this: Joe Biden's career was destroyed 27 years ago. Pulled out of the presidential race in shame. Chaos reigned, articles about how everyone who was anyone knew he was a cheating fucktard who needed to burn in flames. Then Lee Atwater died. I've said this before and I'll say it again - Biden - and the Democrats who grew up with him - have been battle-tested by the meanest mutherfucker ever to grace the campaign stage. They were fucking flayed. You wanna talk straight antichrist it's Lee Fucking Atwater and everything that has come after has been comic opera in comparison. The heinous political environment we inhabit now was built, brick by brick, by a dude so evil his own brain killed him for the betterment of all mankind. Every skirmish since then has been in the ashes of his conflagration - ain't no Contract With America without Morning in America, ain't no Tea Party without Contract with America, ain't no Make America Great Again without Tea Party. But you can't say "maybe they're more clever than we give them credit for" without some wag bringing up "3d chess" like somehow being smart is worthy of snark in and of itself. I think impeachment was a foregone fucking conclusion until Lee Atwater led the party to a place of antibellum evil. Now? I mean just fuckin' ask Moscow Mitch.
There are also lazy, incompetent ideologues who are perfectly happy to go "myeah, let's just toss Roe because we fucking feel like it."
I haven't seen any discussion on it. pretty much any discussion of the supreme court gets howls of "COURT PACKING!!!!!!1111one" so I'd probably play it close to my chest, too. If you look at actions, you see Biden appointing women and minorities nearly as fast as Trump appointed lickspittles. Meanwhile the conservatives are really mad about the idea that there has historically been one supreme court justice per circuit, which would put the number at 13.
All you need to know about the Supreme Court is in their 2000 Bush V. Gore decision, whereby they say "we're giving this to Bush because we fucking well feel like it, it will never set any sort of precedent, except we know damn well it will, eat it libs."
The Supreme Court has not surprised me since June 2012, when Roberts ruled "mmmyeah, healthcare gets to stand because of interstate commerce laws." We were coming back from Vandenberg, having shot a video of the Delta IV Heavy with the last KH11 go up, specifically to spy on bin Laden. Listening to NPR for some reason and lo and behold, Obamacare. It's abundantly clear that Roberts' politics are to the right of mine but it's also clear he values his job over his ideology. That's what's saved the court in the past - pragmatism. They have no enforcement arm. They rely on reasonable agreement between the branches or it all falls apart. The "switch in time that saved nine" was a conservative court not wanting the New Deal so badly they were willing to become 17 justices. There are pragmatists on the court. There are also lazy, incompetent ideologues who are perfectly happy to go "myeah, let's just toss Roe because we fucking feel like it." The more ideological the court becomes, the more they depend on their ideology being in office to not get circumvented. Lost in all this shirt rending is the undeniable reality that the Republicans have the positions they do because of parliamentary procedure, not popularity; they acknowledged back in Tom DeLay's time that they were going to be a permanent minority and the only way to preserve power was through gerrymandering and packing the court. And it either goes full fascism or it snaps back. Period.
I'll drop it Monday
I just... had a huge get land in my lap as a DJ. It's weird. It's like being the bar owner when Garth Brooks shows up for a secret show like he did back in the '90s except the show isn't for four days and you can't tell anyone. Like, we're putting out press releases under embargo so that nobody knows what crazy shit is gonna happen at midnight on a Sunday. And it looks like a letter I wrote a couple-three weeks ago is going to make about 50 hard-working women about $30m a year. Which is CRAZY but a couple people i know who between them have been the head of benefits for like six giant corporations you've heard of said "normally this would be commissioned by inside counsel to get drafted by outside counsel by the company you're sending it to, not the other way around, and they honestly couldn't have written something this good. They're going to have to pay it and if they don't the insurance commissioner is going to have their hides."
It's February.
Nothing the Biden camp says now will make anyone vote for them in November and everything the Biden camp says now will be hopelessly parsed and regurgitated and recontextualized and recut like the Dean Scream until it's all butter emails butter emails butter emails butter emails. When your enemy is making a mistake, do not interrupt him. - Napoleon Bonaparte The correct move is to let Donald Trump hold the spotlight for everything that is about to happen to him until it stops happening to him. And it's not going to stop happening him for the foreseeable future.
You're so close to getting it. Donald Trump is a carnival barker. So was Hugo Chavez, so was Huey Long, So was Benito Mussolini. Historically, carnival barkers have ended up in the church because a pastor who can deliver a rousing message to reassure his flock is a valuable thing indeed. It's a symbiotic relationship - he makes them feel batter about their lives, they puff him up and make him important, everybody wins. I mean that sincerely. A good charismatic leader who values the well-being of his followers? That's how history is made, the good kind. It goes wrong when the carnival barker is venal. When the barking matters more than who is listening it can take off on its own. I know Rulon Jeffs was a good carnival barker because he absolutely inspired a lot of craziness among people who weren't getting their best shake and they just took it. I know Warren Jeffs wasn't because shit fell apart on his watch. Note that Warren Jeffs never would have built his own flock. He's too venal. He does not tend to the organization, he makes sure the organization tends to him. That's an important factor, too - the shitty ones usually toil in ignominy because they don't have the makeup to create a self-perpetuating organization. Joseph Smith? Never met the man but you can't deny he started something big. Hell, William Wilson made something that lasts. But for every Hugo Chavez there's a Nick Maduro, for every Rulon there's a Warren. You know what I'm reading right now? Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto. I keep meaning to read The Condition of the Working Class in England because fundamentally, the basis of Communism was the British being horrible but I needed something audible and the library had The Communist Manifesto. It's puerile. It's accelerationist. It uses the word "highfalutin" which is hilarious. But it is also a deeply unserious work. You know what's an interesting book? 1917: Lenin, Wilson and the Birth of the New World. 'cuz here's the thing. Neither Marx nor Lenin thought Russia was a good spot to debut Communism but the opportunity arose. Neither Marx nor Lenin had any respect for Russia or Russians and it shows. They really figured America was the perfect place for Communism to take root and fundamentally, 1917 is a book about how wretchedly, hopelessly full of shit they were. Communism took root in Russia because it was a weakly-run hinterland with ridiculous wealth concentration and a history of warlord rule. It was a weak power structure where a weak insurgency could overthrow an unpopular monarchy and consolidate power because once you decapitate a monarchy you're the new king. Lenin Stalin Khruschev Brezhnev Andropov Chernenko Gorbachev Yeltsin Putin Medvedev Putin 110 years right there and really, we shouldn't count Lenin, Chernenko or Medvedev. Stalin ruled almost as long as Katherine the Great. It did not take root in America because Americans went "huh, the proletariat is restless, let's make their lives suck less lest we find ourselves guillotined." 1917 is fundamentally a book about how structures respond to stress. _______________________________________ Shah Reza Pahlavi was a weak man. Mossadegh was also a weak man, but he was stronger than the Shah... until that was inconvenient to our purposes at which point we gave him the strength he needed. Tsar Nicholas was a weak man. Lenin was also a weak man but he was useful to the Germans and he was useful to Stalin. Donald Trump is not a builder, no matter how much he thinks it will make the ghost of his daddy love him. He's an oaf eating sticks of butter like they were Snickers bars, the perfect face of a greedy power structure that has long stopped trying to make anything. The system had to be weak for Trump to happen and, once Trump happened, things could have collapsed. But they didn't. ________________________________________ This is me calling you out: It has been patently obvious since January 7th 2021 that the Republican candidate for president in 2024 would be Donald Trump. The Republican Party is in a doom loop. They know it. We know it. Everyone knows it. They sold their soul for this and they were never more than one demagogue away from it happening. I'm old enough that I remember when we thought it would be Pat Buchanan! But no, they needed someone trashier who had been introduced into more living rooms as a virile and successful man-about-town. But it has been equally obvious that you can't step in the same river twice. What do you know about Reconstruction? I knew fuckall because there's a lot of hand-waving and coughing and hastily moving on in every history class in the United States so I read WEB Dubois' history and I was shamed. I was moved. I was cowed. Because the 60 years after the Civil War were all about doing anything not to have to fight it again, no matter the costs to Black people, no matter the gains by Southern racists, because oh holy fuck if the British had gotten ahold of the South the rest of us would be a suburb of Canada. Woodrow Wilson advised Truman a lot, believe it or not. And after VE Day Wilson told Truman that he could have vengeance or he could have peace but he couldn't have both. And that's the New World Order right there -letting the guys who got all the gold keep it so that the Communists don't try something. I say " Everything else has been a contentious free-for-all to figure out how the fuck to move on" and you go "f we had moved on, the prosecutions would be over, Trump wouldn't still be lying about it, and the GOP wouldn't be helping him do it. " Yes. You're right. IF we had moved on, yes. Or maybe things would be even shittier, like Reconstruction. But we HAVEN'T moved on. We're all trying to negotiate a way to be friends with the uncles who cheered on someone taking a shit on Nancy Pelosi's desk. We're trying to figure out how to live with the Hang Mike Pence crew. Because you have to win the peace, too. Winning the peace doesn't mean spooling up fever dreams about JD Vance successfully launching a presidential run. I mean are you fucking serious. The only contenders in the race that even thought about criticizing Trump dropped out early because of course an appalling percentage of the country wants nothing more than to own the libs. That's never going to change. What's going to change is their ability to hurt the rest of us. Trends of history aligned in 2016 to express a worldwide backlash against neoliberalism. That backlash took the form of fascism, some more some less. Those trends have not been arrested but they have been slowed. And yeah, it fucking sucks. And it's fucking uncomfortable. And it's scary - the Democrats are all in. They're betting on a Republican collapse. They're betting that if they can keep enough people from getting swept up in the vortex they'll be able to make a government again and there's no precedent for this in living memory. But there is historical precedence. Hitler arose in a shattered economy ruled by venal elites. So did Marcos, so did Pol Pot, so did Lenin. The closest we ever got here was Huey Long and he got sidelined when FDR said "hey those are some good policies how 'bout I just take most of them." Trump? Trump is the effect, not the cause. If he had more sense he would have stayed out of it. But he was the right person at the right time with the right amount of vanity and the right amount of stupidity and here we are, four years later and the pied piper is still piping. But there will be no one after Warren Jeffs.but I think you have to concede that if I'd asked you two or three years ago if Trump would be the GOP's guy again in 2024, you'd have said no, right?
You're smarter than this. THE FUCK MAKES YOU THINK SO A sentiment like this betrays a gawping lack of understanding around fascism, populism and politics. You wouldn't say "we'll just have another Obama" or "we'll just have another Hilary" or "we'll just have an other Reagan" or even "we'll just have another Mitt Romney." WHO. WHO is your household-named Russian tool blowhard running in 2028? Peter Thiel? Surprise! Born in Frankfurt to Germans. Elon Musk? South African. JD Vance? Have you seen that mutherfucker talk. Who's the populist who's gonna rise up instead of Trump in the next four years? Gimme your best bets. Your understanding of history fucking sucks because you haven't listened to a word I've said in eight goddamn years. It was called "January 6" and they lost. Everything else has been a contentious free-for-all to figure out how the fuck to move on. Nobody's happy, everyone regrets it, nothing is set in stone, things could still swing the other way but every day brings us further and further from the inflection point. Death threats from Trump's cult have proven to be extremely lucrative and clout-building... unless you're Republican. And that's a dynamic that, if you actually listened when asking for historic examples, you'd grasp: a populist who protects his retinue is an iconoclast. A populist who eats his retinue is a despot. Both iconoclasts and despots need to be entirely free of reasonable threats to their power and we fucking voted Trump out of office. That, really, was his mistake and he made it because he's a fucking idiot: don't act like a dictator until you actually are one. Counterpoint? he wouldn't have been elected if he didn't act like a dictator. The system was incompatible with Trump's goals in 2020 and it has only become less compatible over time. I don't think we have nothing to worry about? But I also find this "and then Mike Johnson just doesn't seat Democrats and we all sit on our hands and go merrily to hell" bullshit extremely tiresome. There are enough problems in the world to worry about without carving doomer fanfic into your gray matter. The whole way we got here is we were incapable of grasping demagoguery as anything short of Hitler. So when Trump did his demagogic best the Left went "see? HITLER!" without having a fucking clue about Hitler or Trump. It's all right there. Everything you need to grasp WTF is going on. All you have to do is take off the HitlerSpex.we'll simply have another younger and just as demented figurehead of Trumpism in 2028.
In my understanding of history,
there is no shaking it off without some violent, near-cataclysmic reckoning.
staying quiet becuase ya don't wanna get death threats from Trump's cult.
Do you now. The same Elise Stefanik who hitched her wagon to Kevin McCarthy? That Elise Stefanik? Hey what happened to Kevin btw Look. It all comes down to this. Don't go but but but don't glide over it so you can make another crazy-ass Charlie Philadelphia meme, don't go oh yeah and also lemmechangethesubjectrealquick LISTEN It feels good to back a winner. It feels bad to back a loser. The past four years have been about turning Trump from winner to loser. The libs love to go "sick of winning yet" as if they're expecting the Red Hat Crew to go "you know what you're right I don't know what I was thinking will you ever welcome me back into the Brethren of Chinstrokers" and they won't. They'll just take off the hat and change the subject. Let's look at some data. Here's the first thing I want you to look at. Since 2008, the leading political affiliation in the United States has been "fuck this bullshit." They don't actually vote that way, though. When you look at polls? you are looking at the hard blue and the hard red. The screened back shit doesn't count unless you're specifically looking at "independent voters" and then your survey results are just fucked. When was the last time you saw an accurate poll? You keep listing them as if they're papal bulls but the simple fact is polling was shitting the bed in 2008 and became hot bullshit in 2016 and hasn't reverted back. That's not the only challenge. The challenge is winning the primary without losing the general. Go ahead give me your doomsayer theory on why Lauren Boebert had to change districts. Whatchoo got. he didn't take care of ANYBODY. I don't know if you've really internalized what Trump's retinue looks like right now but he's done burned all the Sidney Powells. Peter Navarro is going to fucking jail. This is a guy who used to get up on CNBC and say Rich People Things while watching his portfolio and the dude's lookin' at government shoes. it feels good to back a winner. It feels bad to back a loser. The victories experience by the right have them doing facepalming shit like hastily drafting "we didn't mean IVF tho" bills and having to try twice to impeach a cabinet official that nobody outside of Gab even knows who he is. And here you are, rending your shirt about the triumphant rise of Elise Stefanik.I see Elise Stefanik going meteoric because she did batshit lies the right way.
But the head fucking clown is still popular enough to legitimately win the electoral college, despite having already tried to feed the circus audience to the lions on live TV.
The tribalism has made the party turn hard right because (and in tandem with the declining number of competitive voting districts) the only challenge is winning the primary,
which was basically "Just worry about me, and I'll help you when I'm back in office". Now, a lot of that is brazenly trying to capture of the financial arm of the GOP, but some of it is perceived as "oh once the boss is back in the office, he'll take care of me".
Trump in 2016 was a potential. He'd never held office before. He was a protest vote against the political structure of the United States, a savvy billionaire known to the masses through his decisive behavior on reality TV. Trump in 2024 is a known quantity. He'll be Trump 2020 but still more defiant against norms and rules. He is a protest vote against democracy, a bombastic demagogue known to the masses through his autocratic behavior through four years of holding office. In 2016 you could tell yourself "maybe this will be better." In 2024 the only people telling themselves that are fascists. And say what you will about the United States, we do poorly with fascism.
sigh Thom Hartmann has been the Mike Lindell of the left since Air America. He owes his entire public career over liberal panic over George W. Bush; in an era of Al Franken and Randi Rhodes he was the howling moonbat bringing up FEMA camps and the New World Order. I read one of his books once. He's not insane, but he definitely knows his audience - conspiracy-soaked liberals who think MKUltra was the point of the CIA, not the low point. Doesn't matter what the historical milieu, there's a moustache-twisting GMan lurking somewhere nearby, hell-bent on American totalitarianism. Check the language: When I published the article ten months before January 6th, I received concerned and even alarmed communications from several Democratic strategists and a few elected officials who basically said they didn’t think there was any way Trump would try such an audacious move and, if he did, he wouldn’t get away with it. But I was right and that was exactly what Trump had up his sleeve. We saw it play out on January 6th. The only thing that stopped him was Pence’s unwillingness to go along with stealing an election. So in March of 2020 there were rumblings that Trump wouldn't leave if he lost but most people were focused on making him leave. Come January 6 and the Trump administration had tried literally everything to stay in office. The narrative has become "boy howdy are we lucky that Mike Pence believes in constitutional law" and I don't disagree with that? But it's not like that's the only thing keeping us in democracy. Mark Milley told Pelosi, Schumer and his entire chain of command "our only priority is a peaceful transfer of power" and while an uncertified election would have been sticky, it would not have been the whole country going "well I guess we're fucked now heil Trump." Let's focus on one core thing: somehow the dynamics of an incumbent who could not keep power while being surrounded by loyalists will be oh-so-much-more favorable if... Mike Johnson is the speaker. The reason we had a government after January 6 is that the majority of the people and politicians in the United States are disinterested in this Clown World bullshit. The Clown World contingent has lost, not gained power in the interim. And while I am certain down to my very bones that Clown World has all sorts of contingencies like this, that does not change the fact that they are clowns. GIMME DEM KLIXLike the author, over on whatshisname.com,
Back on March 13, 2020 — almost exactly four years ago — I wrote an article that was published at alternet.org laying out how Republicans were then, ten months before January 6th, planning to partially repeat the debacle of the election of 1876 by having Vice President Pence refuse to certify swing state votes and thus throw the election to the House to keep Trump in office, no matter how the election went.
That keeps Speaker “MAGA Moscow Mike” Johnson in charge of the House, so they can also refuse to accept the Electoral College certificates of election from a handful of states where they claim there are “problems.”
The best way to prevent this from happening is to widely publicize their scheme so public opinion will become so intense that they fear the consequences.
I think this illustrates the failure of imagination at the heart of all of this. There's an idea that if you train the model on the world, it will understand the world and if you train it HARDER it will understand it better. That's not how Robert Mercer made his money. He trained it on the rapid moves of high-frequency trading with a 50ms window and ignored any stock data whatsoever. It's not how autocorrect works, it's trained on a dictionary and frequency. It's not how predictive text works it's trained on everything that's been typed into it. If you want better performance in a specific task, train it on that task, and the bigger the task you give it the bigger the error bars. Right now we've got MidJourney drawing any goddamn thing. Okay, sometimes you end up with extra fingers and by and large, you're getting the Wish version of what you actually ordered. But how useful would Midjourney trained on jewelry hallmarks be for antique dealers? It'd be a tiny model, it'd run on the smallest nVidia jetson and if you hit it for 5 cents a query it'd make everybody happy. Especially if it came back with "nope, no idea" because that's definitive. Especially if it came back with "here's five guesses pick the closest and let's keep hunting." I don't need God I need a thesaurus, dammit, quit trying to sell me a deity.
that sounds so fucking awesome Well what you're doing is ringing out the frequency response, right? You're trying to find constructive modes that are going to fuck you over while strapped in a rocket. You do that with an equalizer if it's sound or filters if it's an electromechanical system. I've linked this before, the eldritch magic starts at 3:35: For the record the last time I used ANSYS it was a command-line program that ran on a DEC Alpha. that sounds so fucking awesome You are grossly underestimating the ease with which bad mixes can be produced. The computer music cats have been doing "generative music" for a long time. It's easy as shit and doesn't require an LLM. Most of them are some form of neural network somewhere; "random ambient generator" has been an off-the-shelf product category for 20 years. Here's a free plugin for Kontakt. Here's a walk-through for Ableton.My co-worker would bolt a plasma spectrometer with accelerometers on it to a vibration table with some special isolators between the instrument and mounting baseplate,
and we'd shake them with a sine sweep survey starting from like 1 Hz up through, I dunno, 40 kHz or something like that, and a power spectrogram level was input to govern the amplitude around each frequency. JUST like what you're doing with mics? We do it too.
We'd already calculated the approximate normal modes of the instrument from 3D CAD models (we used Ansys)
By the way, at GSFC, they have like a 10 foot diameter gramophone to just blast shit with.
Which has its uses, heh, though perhaps mostly uncommercializable.
Hadn't heard any AI tunes yet, and figured there was good reason for it. I don't go looking for them, and a really good one would have found its way to me by now if it existed.