Last few days before summer break. All my final projects are in and I've got one last final exam to study for. Home stretch. Just gotta make it a few more days.
got some teva sandals for children that i'm digging and a shade hoodie for those really hot days when i don't wanna wear sunscreen.
went to the beach over the weekend, which echo loved! jean (little dog) hates the water, and i didn't want to have to clean all the sand out of loki's coat, hah.
new to us (15-year-old) mazda5 was awesome for hauling all three dog crates and our gear, but the AC stopped working 1/3 of the way back home, so it was a hot ride. 🥵
I have two shirts like this from (the company) patagonia and they breathe until I start to sweat about ten minutes later. If yours was better than that, care to drop a name for me to go look into?
Our boy would sympathize with Jean - he loves the beach but not the water. We still take him every so often, but he wants the smells right on the edge of the waves and sometimes the ocean sneaking up on him is just too much
If yours was better than that, care to drop a name for me to go look into?
i ended up getting the sahara shade hoodie from REI because it was on sale. i don't have much to compare it to, but i thought it was really breezy! i even wore it on my ~10 mile bike ride and didn't feel too bad as long as there was a bit of wind.
When Barrett was nominated, my comment was, "she is the kind of woman that would vote to make herself chattel." Anything even remotely rational from her is a win. Historically, the Court has had a tendency to make justices more liberal. They're generally smart people and exposure to well argued positions does tend to make you think.
Of course Thomas is out there besmirching the entire legal profession with his shameless acceptance of graft. I wonder if he lets Harlan refer to him as "boy."
I want to start by saying: you don't need to have a link to post to Politics! I think there's probably a subset of Beeple that prefer that anything politics related stays to that community, so they can filter it out easily if they don't want to engage with politics. My personal belief is that EVERYONE should be engaged with politics, but I know bad days happen and on those days just seeing Trump's name can push some people into a deeper spiral.
But you make a good point. For how conservative and corrupt this court is, it's surprising that they haven't been more brazen. In a lot of cases, when they haven't gone with the more politically-conservative ruling, it seems like they've aimed to reject the conservative argument on technical grounds more than anything. That said, they went scorched earth on the biggest rulings that have taken place since 2020, and to me, that says it all. They hear Congress and the President openly questioning their integrity, and they know this will lead to actual reforms of the Court if they let this continue. So they go back in their cave, and go back to making quiet little inconsequential rulings wherever possible. Then, when the bribe check is big enough or the ruling is important enough to the Conservative mission, they'll come back out swinging with a 6-3 ruling that ruins all of our lives even more.
But idk. I'm no expert, and it sounds like you are more plugged in to SCOTUS news than I am. Just some of my thoughts.
I’m sick to my stomach. My healthy labrador died suddenly on Saturday. He was fine Friday afternoon, got nauseous Friday night, and I was waiting for the vet to open at 8am Saturday to get him in there. He got unresponsive and barely breathing around 6am and I rushed him to the vet ER, and he didn’t make it. The vet said he had a “torsioned spleen” or something like that.
I’ve got an absolutely soul crushing amount of guilt that I didn’t get him to the ER on Friday night. My dog trusted me to protect him and take care of him, and I completely betrayed that trust. I’m in such a place of deep sorrow that it’s impossible to explain with words. Every time I start to fall asleep, I’m suddenly wide awake trying to figure out why I decided not to act sooner.
Not sure why I’m sharing this, I guess I just had to get it off my chest.
I'm so sorry for your loss and what you're going through 🫂
It might not be possible right now but please give yourself some grace. You were attentive to his condition and when it worsened you acted immediately. I can't imagine a better kind of human to place trust in, and I can't imagine him not knowing how hard you tried, how much you cared, or that he would ever blame you.
Hey thanks, I appreciate you. What you’re saying is all probably true, but I can’t shake this horrible feeling that I failed him. I like my dog more than I like most people I meet, and he was with me all day every day. I hope this feeling lessens with time.
I'll tell you that it does - or at least, the remembering becomes slightly less painful as time goes on. The lessons really stick, but it becomes easier to remember all the good stuff, and those are the things you should hold on to the hardest during those difficult times.
And I'm glad you shared with us, if for no other reason than helping you process your grief. I'm sure we're all sending our love, hoping to lighten the load in some small way.
We have to vote for the people who will admit to that and get rid of them. The U.S. is going to have to choose between a leader who tries to install good people to run the government and one who intends to install people bent on dismantling the government and giving loyalty to the leader alone.
I largely share your thoughts. I honestly expected Biden to at least be prepared enough to counter the usual Trump tactics of making things up and using strong words to impress his base while deflecting blame or critical questions.
Instead, we got Trump basically having free rein to appear strong with simple (and wrong) answers to complex questions, twisting the truth to support his positions and straight up lying and deflecting when finally confronted with something.
I'm not a big fan of Biden, but IMO he's the obvious, rational choice out of two candidates way past their prime - if you're into rationality over the antics of a con artist.
But this isn't a fair fight, and Biden isn't the showman Trump managed to be today. Biden was barely audible and mostly on the defensive while appearing weak, Trump was the opposite of that.
I can't imagine any Trump voter switching teams after the debate, but I can image more than a few more emotionally motivated democrats second guessing their choice.
I don't really think one debate decides who people vote for. Plus you have the electoral college. So you were fucked since forever, you just never noticed. But please vote against Trump because you probably don't get to vote again if he wins, that has a big influence on the world too
I largely share your thoughts. I honestly expected Biden to at least be prepared enough to counter the usual Trump tactics of making things up and using strong words to impress his base while deflecting blame or critical questions.
He can't because he's 2637361873 years old and can't think fast enough to have actual replies. The rules of the debate were no notes and no communication with staff so Biden had to rely on what little working brain cells he has left to form responses and recall history. I also wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised to learn both him and Trump have been using stimulants, but only Biden stopped talking them for the debate since there was so much talking about that beforehand.
It was an absolute travesty that there was no fact checking from the completely useless moderators.
Don’t know if that helps you - here in Europe it doesn’t look better. In all countries you can choose between the crazy, the stupid and the as-always. I‘m afraid the politics machine transforms you in one of those or scares away the motivated.
I hear you. A few years back I was rooting for Jeremy Corbin to be Prime Minister and could not understand how the populace didn't choose him. More than that, I sympathize with people who dislike illegal immigration into their respective countries because, well, I can see how it FEELS like, "We built this country to be good and prosperous, and these folks want what WE built while they never built anything like it for themselves" -- but that is a false perception for so many reasons (Was their home a colony or otherwise oppressed? Our ancestors built our countries, but we're just born to them. Climate change is driving equatorial people to Northen climes -- to countries complicit in the climate change that has made their homelands dry and cropless, etc.)
So I don't have a solution for immigration (which Trump harped on constantly). Fixing the climate might help for the long term, but for the short term it won't fix that immediate complaint.
I look at U.S. history and I don't see a strong track record for austerity helping. More the reverse. In The Great Depression, one of the things that seemed to work was letting the government take on debt to give a bunch of people 'stupid' jobs so they could put that money into the economy. Of course, that came with stepp progressive tax rates, too. It was much harder to get rich when the highest brackets were up to/over 90% of income. I doubt the current crop of rich people would allow that to happen in the modern world, but I'd vote for it.
We don't have much control over this, frankly. But if we have any, I say we use it.
My personal attitude is that although I will concede that it is possible for Biden to win, if we don't want to have to hope for a prayer, the only way things get better is if we all pop the bubble that Biden and his supporters are in that they can just ignore reality and hope for the best.
It has to be so clear to the Democratic party that not only are they likely to lose this election (and obviously with it, democracy), but they're going to lose their jobs. No one who works in the election industrial complex is going to keep getting invited to cocktail parties and get hired on for whatever Potempkin election follows this one if Trump wins. No LARPing that they're "the resistance!" in their endless fundraising emails while they enjoy being in the minority FOREVER. Rattle the fucking cage. Make it clear we blame them for this nonsense, and will continue to assign them the blame for choosing to run a failing candidate in a time of crisis because no one wanted to be the one to speak up and suggest doing anything else.
People keep getting mad when I criticize Biden, as if doing so is helping Trump win. My take: NOT doing so is helping Trump win. Protest this guy like our lives depend on him dropping out of the race at the convention. (They might).
In 2020, people believed they were voting for healthcare, defunding the police, emptying the migrant concentration camps, protecting Roe v Wade, etc.
When you fail to do the things that brought people to the polls, and do the things the opposition wants instead, the opposition's voters still won't vote for you and your own voters just don't vote.
Trying to appeal to moderate republicans just lowers your own voter turnout. The republicans will always vote for fascism over diet-fascism.
But no, pointing out these very obvious mechanisms just gets me labeled as an evil conservative Chinese Putin-bot trying to disrupt the election.
dropping out of the race at the convention
The face of the party is infinitely less important than the impact the policies have on people's lives. It doesn't matter if it's Biden or Pete Buttigeig at the front, the dems only shot in hell is to use every power at their disposal short of drone striking Trump and the SCOTUS (maybe) to demonstrate to voters that 1. They want the same thing the voters want (eg, not genocide) and 2. They will actually do those things (no blaming the parliamentarian or norms or some rules you set or fear the SCOTUS might ask you to stop).
That's true, but I don't think they can do that with Biden at the top of the ticket. He's spoiled goods.
I'm not a Democrat. I left and joined the Green Party. I'm that crazy lefty. But even I can readily concede that I'd like democrats to win, and I think they could with someone like Elizabeth Warren. Or Cory Booker.
I'm not demanding Bernie or AOC or that Ro Khana be the nominee. But don't act like there aren't a few Democrats who have credibly taken a stand once or twice in their career for the greater good. They aren't the majority, but they're not so rare as you couldn't find one.
I also want Cornel West, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, etc. I was sold in 2020 that we could move Democrats left. Democrats moved right. I do not want milquetoast neoliberals.
Selling a Democrat is harder in 2024, but I could be convinced to vote for a different Democrat candidate. The outcome is better than fascism.
It annoys me that we can understand this issue, but yet the people in power just don't seem to get it? Maybe they just don't care. It kinda feels like it's a game to them. Will high-ranking democrats really feel the pain from losing? I feel like people with money always seem to not be burdened nearly as much.
I lived and worked inside the DC beltway for ten years. They don't care. The stuff they worry about is so far removed from our everyday lives it doesn't even register.
We care about stuff like getting to work on time, covering rent, and not yelling "This is all bullshit!" during daily standup. They care about getting a position paper from a lobbyist summarized to read in the car on their way to a meeting (they tend to be one or two hundred papers in length and can serve as general anesthetic) and making sure that some other person on the same committee will vote the way they agreed ("You back my $foo, I'll back your $bar").
As a rule, if you have Money you can hire folks that do all of the drudgework for you. For example, a secretary fields all of the requests for meetings, looks at your calendar, comes up with a couple of possible time slots, and negotiates the time and place.
It's not just the people in power, though. When I look at primaries, where people actually have some hope of affecting outcomes, they consistently vote for the worst people. I mean, it's hard for normal-ish people to even get to through the party structure to get on the ballot, and then they just get crushed. In 2020, Dems could have had Bernie, Warren, Buttigieg, even Klobuchar, but Biden won pretty handily. That's on people people.
Dems could have had Bernie, Warren, Buttigieg, even Klobuchar, but Biden won pretty handily. That’s on people people.
Is it though? The media confusing people by claiming Biden is more electable because his policies are closer to what republicans want isn't on people, nor is every conservative candidate dropping out at once to endorse Biden, while Warren remained in to keep Bernie's share divided (ensuring that none of the popular policies the former Reagan campaigner ran on were actually implemented), nor is the DNC giving Biden debate questions before hand.
Keep it up! In fact, if you get criticized, you can point out that you'd rather have a leader you CAN criticize than one that gets treated like a God-ling. Point out that one of the differences in the generic liberal versus conservative thought is the idea that a leader might be flawed but generally good at leading versus the idea that everyone needs to support the leader (or the cause) no matter what -- until their transgressions become too extreme and gets them ostracized. Please. Let's criticize early and be ready to replace them sooner rather than later.
We could've watched Biden collapse months ago while figuring out who is actually fit to run a good campaign. Now we're going to have to go through it the hard way, because they tried to hide from the obvious for about the last 8 months.
Do I honestly have any hope as a trans woman. I feel beyond doomed. I'm in a liberal area of a liberal state but like will that even matter at this point. Am I fucked 😔
I think if you're in a Blue state, you'll be safe. It's the folks in Blue enclaves in Red states, like Austin, El Paso, Atlanta, that I'm really worried for.
My wife and ai keep talking about this. We plan to flee our deep south red state, but it fills us with survivor's guilt knowing we have the means to do so, and so so many just do not.
I do not believe you are fucked. I also know the feelings of doom. I have been expressing gallows humor to my peers about how I will probably end up on some train to some camp.
Times will be hard. Now is a good time to develop survival skills and community. We need all the horizontal power we can get to overcome hierarchical power.
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