1) scrolling down my skyline, I took in your post at a glance and misread the word "clock".
2) scrolling back up after my "WAIT, WHAT?!?" moment, and reading the post correctly, I'd like to thank you for the reminder about DST beginning or ending or whatever it's doing when we "spring forward."
This is one of the reasons techbro libertarians are so annoying: they've got no respect at all for the legal systems that enable them to be such huge dicks about not wanting to have legal systems.
I think the "but seriously" response to the tongue-in-cheek question is that if your micronation genuinely isn't recognized as falling under somebody's civil jurisdiction, you're simply a target for somebody to send the military after without any due process concerns at all.
Thinking about this caused me to recall that one of the most chilling performances ever caught on film is just Ian Holm covered in milk with his head stuck through a hole in a table, and: yeah. Not trusting Holm to convey Bilbo's bout of madness really is cheating the actor and the audience.
Was reminded of this little piece of pop perfection earlier. I'd forgotten how good the video is.
And on paper, they're the kind of band I should love, and I just don't! I even love some of the members' side projects, like that great record Rostam did with Hamilton Leithauser from The Walkmen! But the second I hear Vampire Weekend on SiriusXM, that's a channel change!
If I ever had the opportunity to see Ian McKellen and Brad Dourif do a two-man show with no props, no set, no costumes, just those two on a bare stage--insert Fry "Take My Money" meme, y'know?
As an illustration of the latter: to this day I do not understand why you would hire one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of his generation and one of the greatest Method Actors of his generation for roles in which they have a dramatic confrontation and then turn it into a bit of CGI business.
But I'm not sure how much of that is aesthetic and how much is substantive: people obviously love those movies, including people who are clearly JRRT fans, but I really do think Peter Jackson and his collaborators don't understand Tolkien and that some of the choices they made are objectively hacky.
I'm not sure where the line is between "substantively wrong" and "aesthetic objections" in this case, but I loathed The Two Towers so much that I have never seen The Return of the King.
The way the Republicans keep insisting one of these military adventures will provide America with oil, they've started to sound like the kid in the old joke who insists there's a pony hidden in the house because he found horseshit in his stocking Christmas morning.
Makes you wonder if The Apprentice would've caught on the way it did if his catchphrase had been "You're transferred!"
I might be growing up a little at age 54: just deleted a thread of spleen-venting replies because I just don't have time for the flak I was about to draw.
First they came for the trans people, and I said nothing because I wasn’t trans. Then they were like actually I’m pretty sure you are trans and I said no I’m not and they went okay well show us your penis then and I said what no get out of my face and they said that one’s a girl get her
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It's a weirdly consistent theme, whether the issue is gerrymandering, ICE occupying cities, or the war they just started: surprise and whining that somebody who just got hit didn't get the memo they were just supposed to stand there and take it instead of hitting back.
I had no idea they'd gotten as far as casting Buckeroo Banzai Against the World Crime League, much less taken any production photos of any of the cast in costume and mak--wait, what? This is real? You're telling me this is a real guy. Sure, and pull my other leg while you're at it.
Please note that when I acknowledge Rusk and McNamara possessed competence, I'm not glossing what a fiasco Vietnam was or their culpability in making it so--it's more of a "you see how this is worse, right?" deal: McNamara in particular fucked up despite being indubitably qualified to be SecDef.
Between this and the news that Iran is getting information from Russia, I guess we're doing Vietnam again but in the Middle East and with an administration, but without the competence of Rusk or McNamara.
Trump does, however, have an RFK near at hand. 🫤
Indeed one of the bizarre features of Reaganist conservativism is that it can't reconcile a low taxes and small government with having the military a chest-thumping militaristic nationalism demands, so it doesn't even bother trying. It just pretends there's no contradiction.
I think it's worth adding that the glorifying of the military and dismissal of Everyone Else In Government is downstream of a decades long project by Taft/Goldwater/Reagan conservatives to discredit and dismantle the Fed government. You can't honor people you want to figuratively drown in a bathtub.
It's really very simple: if it's something you can make money off of, like a copyrightable work, it's their speech, and if it's something you could be held liable for, nobody wrote it. It's a ratcheting racket where money and accountability only flow one way.
That's not necessarily meaning that the authors *are* liable, only that they *may* be, depending on their answers and where they're located.
Holding Google responsible for Gemini engaging in unauthorized practices is doing nothing more than making them accountable as a human author might be.
A fatiguing thing about AI discourse is constant recourse to fatuous analogies. When a search engine returns results, it provides an index, not an answer: Google Search isn't telling you how to file a small-claims case, it's linking you to articles by people who may be liable for their advice.
Pretty difficult to refute a single thing in this perfect assessment of where the f**k we are, from @iandunt.bsky.social:
Things are looking so bad these days, there's even increasingly common reports of rampant cannibunism on the rise.
Getting real "You never beat us on the battlefield"/"That may be so, but it's also irrelevant" vibes when they make these kinds of statements.
Credit where credit is due: of all the people in Trump's circle accused of fingering somebody, at least this guy kept it not just above the belt but over the collar, too.
Obligatory.
