chapotraphouse

A late 20s early 30 guy was walking in front of me after he just exited a McDonald’s and then proceeded to walk slow in front of me and then would do a side eye to see my reaction. He would then briefly gesture as if letting me through and then would quickly resume position of not letting me through. I said “this fucker” and he replied with “go ahead do something” and I just got so mad I nearly cried. He would increase the speed of his pace and then slow down just to edge me and I was becoming more and more flustered all the while he kept doing the funny side eye. I didn’t think the situation called for violence because I could easily have pulled his top hat over his side eye and then kick his balls but then I would be in trouble. He kept doing it for about 5 minutes and then he took his hat off and offered me an apple that was hiding in his hat and I said no thank you and then he balanced it on his head and put the hat back on. I just walked on the road for a bit and then ran away and caught the train home. Not a very nice experience

https://x.com/s626ch/status/1846699668442697890

Better hater than Trump

And he could do self promotion like no one else

Very relatable

fucking NY Times is just a bunch of the worst NYC twitter libs at this point. Hopefully some donald trump chud takes them out. I would shed 0 tears.

this is by far the most horrifying, heart wrenching thing I have ever watched, this video needs to be projected on every government building, on every major website

the world must see this we MUST get this video broadcast as widely as possible

Written by Robert Hewitte Wolf and Ira Steven Behr (prolific ds9 writer and ds9 showrunnwr from season 3 on respectively), audiobook narrated by Armin Shimmerman as Quark being paid to write this and doing it as cheap as possible. This shit slaps.

I kind of like how blatantly ugly it is. But maybe that's nostalgia talking

All the poor artists and creators on Twitter.

Prior to today, you could opt out of having your posts used for AI / generative training. The new amended terms and conditions have made it impossible to do so.

Will this artist exodus make Blue$kkky better? probably not but it would be funny if it did

Uncritical support to whoever braved the heights of the billboard to change the image

Maggie Haberman is a tool and an access journalist but she's spent 9 years covering the guy and she's probably had a hand in writing more than a million words about the guy at the NYT.

She knows him better than maybe any other journalist. And as much as I hate her - I trust her observations on this. In fact - I assume she's sitting on lot of recent juicy examples that will only appear years later in one of her books.

05:47 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSWa6S1r6Ec&t=347s

"The music thing is a big thing for him. It was how people would basically 'reset' him in the White House."

~7:42 She talks about him at a dinner.

"It was as if he had no sense of who he was in front of or who he was talking to... It's like he's devoid of context. It's like he's showing up and behaving."

---

Rant

Media outlets need to provide transcripts. It's super annoying to hunt for this sort of crap.

If he can say something about the good Hannibal Lector, he can say something about the Eichmanns

Gosh, it's a Euphonic crunchy name

Rolling hills—western Wisconsin. A lonesome road. A cobalt bus, wandering through the quiet expanse. Inside, two aged men anchor themselves to opposite ends of an empty aisle.

Witness Mr. Dick Cheney, former vice president—architect of war. He reclines on the frontmost-right bench, savoring a rare moment of quiet—a peace denied to the countless victims of his ambition and greed. For Mr. Cheney, this journey is nothing more than a temporary detour—a trivial rebrand, a welcoming audience, a new color of tie to mix with his suits across the month.

In the rear of the bus, we find Mr. Bernie Sanders—senator, figurehead, reformist. He is hunched in the back-left corner, his gaze locked beyond the window of the emergency exit—bolted shut. His pupils trace the receding line of asphalt, the tires feeding it to the meadows. There is a weight in his posture, as his very being is tugged towards quiet resignation—a closing whimper into the end. For somewhere, deep within his thoughts, a terrible truth lingers—this is a one-way trip.

Between them, tossed askew against a bench, stands a lime-green placard—large enough for two. The stretched Arial typography remains legible, yet blurs faintly into the backdrop, as to retreat from clarity—an unalloyed declaration: brat fall

A scene that, just eight years ago, would have been unthinkable to some. But this bus has long since departed a commendable politic. Its destination? The Twilight Zone.

In response to a story about North Korea mobilizing troops. https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1g50q25/north_korea_claims_mobilisation_of_14_million/

Maybe the one where they all dress like baseball ghosts.

Chuds may have popularized "don't think, just consume product and look forward to next product," but I decided to sit for a moment and extrapolate upon the idea.

Considering how much artificial pressure is pressed on us to conform to vague and unspecified but persistent demands to be surveilled, to agree to coercion, to toil and buy (or license/rent) and to spread the message of toiling and buying (or licensing/renting), I thought back to an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force where one of the characters went on the internet and clicked "yes" to every popup that showed up.

Think of a typical western consumer (fuck you techbros, I don't mean this literally) like an internet-connected computer... then imagine turning off all adblockers and other comfort/safety features.

What would that extremely credulous and loyal consumer be like?

Everything for them is "smart" and connected to everything else in the "internet of things." Everything they do is surveilled, tracked, which isn't far off from the rest of us but this consumer pays subscriptions to be especially surveilled and tracked under pretenses of monitoring health and so on.

When New Exciting Retail Products come out, not only does this consumer know first, they push the New Exciting Retail Product on everyone else, sort of like a ruptured cell full of replicated viruses. They get superficial rewards for this aggressive voluntary marketing, disproportionate to the profitability to corporations benefiting from these efforts.

They are chipped, wear a dorky AR/VR headset at all times and see everyone around them through varying levels of simulation and simulacrum. They have a tracking bracelet, a tracking ring, and are a walking, living, breathing security center that is paying for that privilege.

They gamble. Legally. Constantly. Maybe they get slightly ahead because of access to the most competitive available information that continues to try to pick apart what still isn't known about the near future. Money comes in, then money is spent on the choir of services already signed on to and paid for. They buy a clunky vehicle that is itself full of surveillance devices.

That clunky vehicle has licensed imagery of a subversive and rebellious cyberpunkerino protagonist on it. Or more likely, that protagonist's waifu.

“Being an employee of The New York Times was one of the most shameful, useless things I’ve ever done in my life,” said longtime columnist David Brooks, noting that while he had continually applied to work at The Onion over the years, he had been promptly rejected every time. “Compared to the editorial staff at The Onion, my intellectual faculties are that of a cockroach, and I wish I’d never tried to compete with what is so clearly a superior newsroom filled with brilliant, brave reporters who have a moral conviction I wholly lack.”

"My entire career has been a waste,” Brooks added. “I’ve spent decades of my life writing the most pathetic drivel here every day and never gotten a single story right.”

thx @Tomboymoder@hexbear.net

https://www.newsnationnow.com/entertainment-news/food/mcdonalds-french-fries-production/

I pitched Mother Jones back in the day. It's in the book, but I obtained evidence that the former governor of Michigan and his top officials just deleted their phones right before the launch of the Flint criminal investigation—kind of a big deal—and they asked me, is there a Trump angle to this?

...

When I say it's a disaster, that's not to be dramatic. I'm telling you, the water is still bad. It's not as bad as it was in 2016, but you have brown water coming out, you have smelly water in many homes. Residents are showing rashes they're still getting. Residents are still losing hair. And from a just a plumbing and engineering perspective, it's common sense. Ten years later, they have not replaced all the damaged pipes. If you haven't replaced the damaged infrastructure that was badly corroded by essentially acid water, it doesn't matter if the water coming through is as clean as if Jesus blessed the water from the plant. If it's going through busted pipes, shit's going to peel off.

...

With that said, the people of Flint were overjoyed to vote for Democrat Gretchen Whitmer and Democrat Attorney General Dana Nessel because those two ran on Justice for Flint. Gretchen Whitmer ran on opening up the water stations that the Republican governor had shut down. That's where the residents got free water. The Attorney General said that the investigation before her was basically incompetent. Well, my reporting shows she fired those prosecutors. They were building a case against the Republican governor for involuntary manslaughter. You mentioned murder. They were building a case against a governor—this would have been a historic event for involuntary manslaughter, because he knew about the deadly Legionnaires’ outbreak and did not notify the public. She fired them, and she sabotaged the investigation, I believe, so they couldn’t follow the money.

But the bottom line is, Republicans caused this, and Democrats, it seems, are helping to sweep it under the rug.

A metaphor that I've been using in Covid arguments with types is that the Republicans may have poisoned the well, but the Democrats are still insisting that we drink from that poisoned well. I forgot it's not always a metaphor!

Ask me anyrhing