#The Trump Debacle

[llycaons]

I wish I had that 'kill the fandom in your head' post but I've never actually seen it. but it sounds like a succinct way to remind people that real issues impacting living people exist outside of fictional media and in most cases (if not ALL) its extremely inappropriate to talk about those issues through that lens, especially publicly, ESPECIALLY to the person who's talking about them in the first place. the exceptions might be public or mainstream perceptions of x issue as influenced by y piece of media, or issues directly relating to media consumption

its also critical to just be able to separate fiction from reality in your head so that you can discuss actual issues within their own context and with respect to the actual guiding historical and sociocultural forces that shaped them. if it's difficult to view the significance of real life issues on their own then that's something to really work on

[odinsblog]

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[wilwheaton]

There is a whole separate column to be written about how Johnson is without question the most dangerous person ever to lead one of the three branches of American government, due to the extremism of his Christian nationalism. The four-term congressman does not believe in our country’s founding principle of separation of church and state. And among the views Johnson would force on the United States would be the total end of women’s reproductive rights and a full undoing of LGBTQ liberation, fueled by his radical views opposing abortion because women need to pump more “able-bodied workers” into the economy and that healthy gay relationships are “a dangerous lifestyle.” Then there’s Johnson’s climate denial, bought and paid for by Louisiana’s Big Oil.

Trump’s looming dictatorship is the only real winner in House Speaker debacle

This entire column is very much worth reading and sharing.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Conspiratorialism and the epistemological crisis

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me next weekend (Mar 30/31) in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON, then in Boston with Randall "XKCD" Munroe! (Apr 11), then Providence (Apr 12), and beyond!

Last year, Ed Pierson was supposed to fly from Seattle to New Jersey on Alaska Airlines. He boarded his flight, but then he had an urgent discussion with the flight attendant, explaining that as a former senior Boeing engineer, he'd specifically requested that flight because the aircraft wasn't a 737 Max:

https://www.cnn.com/travel/boeing-737-max-passenger-boycott/index.html

But for operational reasons, Alaska had switched out the equipment on the flight and there he was on a 737 Max, about to travel cross-continent, and he didn't feel safe doing so. He demanded to be let off the flight. His bags were offloaded and he walked back up the jetbridge after telling the spooked flight attendant, "I can’t go into detail right now, but I wasn’t planning on flying the Max, and I want to get off the plane."

Boeing, of course, is a flying disaster that was years in the making. Its planes have been falling out of the sky since 2019. Floods of whistleblowers have come forward to say its aircraft are unsafe. Pierson's not the only Boeing employee to state – both on and off the record – that he wouldn't fly on a specific model of Boeing aircraft, or, in some cases any recent Boeing aircraft:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/22/anything-that-cant-go-on-forever/#will-eventually-stop

And yet, for years, Boeing's regulators have allowed the company to keep turning out planes that keep turning out lemons. This is a pretty frightening situation, to say the least. I'm not an aerospace engineer, I'm not an aircraft safety inspector, but every time I book a flight, I have to make a decision about whether to trust Boeing's assurances that I can safely board one of its planes without dying.

In an ideal world, I wouldn't even have to think about this. I'd be able to trust that publicly accountable regulators were on the job, making sure that airplanes were airworthy. "Caveat emptor" is no way to run a civilian aviation system.

But even though I don't have the specialized expertise needed to assess the airworthiness of Boeing planes, I do have the much more general expertise needed to assess the trustworthiness of Boeing's regulator. The FAA has spent years deferring to Boeing, allowing it to self-certify that its aircraft were safe. Even when these assurances led to the death of hundreds of people, the FAA continued to allow Boeing to mark its own homework:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8oCilY4szc

What's more, the FAA boss who presided over those hundreds of deaths was an ex-Boeing lobbyist, whom Trump subsequently appointed to run Boeing's oversight. He's not the only ex-insider who ended up a regulator, and there's plenty of ex-regulators now on Boeing's payroll:

https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/boeing-debacle-shows-need-to-investigate-trump-era-corruption/

You don't have to be an aviation expert to understand that companies have conflicts of interest when it comes to certifying their own products. "Market forces" aren't going to keep Boeing from shipping defective products, because the company's top brass are more worried about cashing out with this quarter's massive stock buybacks than they are about their successors' ability to manage the PR storm or Congressional hearings after their greed kills hundreds and hundreds of people.

You also don't have to be an aviation expert to understand that these conflicts persist even when a Boeing insider leaves the company to work for its regulators, or vice-versa. A regulator who anticipates a giant signing bonus from Boeing after their term in office, or a an ex-Boeing exec who holds millions in Boeing stock has an irreconcilable conflict of interest that will make it very hard – perhaps impossible – for them to hold the company to account when it trades safety for profit.

It's not just Boeing customers who feel justifiably anxious about trusting a system with such obvious conflicts of interest: Boeing's own executives, lobbyists and lawyers also refuse to participate in similarly flawed systems of oversight and conflict resolution. If Boeing was sued by its shareholders and the judge was also a pissed off Boeing shareholder, they would demand a recusal. If Boeing was looking for outside counsel to represent it in a liability suit brought by the family of one of its murder victims, they wouldn't hire the firm that was suing them – not even if that firm promised to be fair. If a Boeing executive's spouse sued for divorce, that exec wouldn't use the same lawyer as their soon-to-be-ex.

Sure, it takes specialized knowledge and training to be a lawyer, a judge, or an aircraft safety inspector. But anyone can look at the system those experts work in and spot its glaring defects. In other words, while acquiring expertise is hard, it's much easier to spot weaknesses in the process by which that expertise affects the world around us.

And therein lies the problem: aviation isn't the only technically complex, potentially lethal, and utterly, obviously untrustworthy system we all have to navigate. How about the building safety codes that governed the structure you're in right now? Plenty of people have blithely assumed that structural engineers carefully designed those standards, and that these standards were diligently upheld, only to discover in tragic, ghastly ways that this was wrong:

https://www.bbc.com/news/64568826

There are dozens – hundreds! – of life-or-death, highly technical questions you have to resolve every day just to survive. Should you trust the antilock braking firmware in your car? How about the food hygiene rules in the factories that produced the food in your shopping cart? Or the kitchen that made the pizza that was just delivered? Is your kid's school teaching them well, or will they grow up to be ignoramuses and thus economic roadkill?

Hell, even if I never get into another Boeing aircraft, I live in the approach path for Burbank airport, where Southwest lands 50+ Boeing flights every day. How can I be sure that the next Boeing 737 Max that falls out of the sky won't land on my roof?

This is the epistemological crisis we're living through today. Epistemology is the process by which we know things. The whole point of a transparent, democratically accountable process for expert technical deliberation is to resolve the epistemological challenge of making good choices about all of these life-or-death questions. Even the smartest person among us can't learn to evaluate all those questions, but we can all look at the process by which these questions are answered and draw conclusions about its soundness.

Is the process public? Are the people in charge of it forthright? Do they have conflicts of interest, and, if so, do they sit out any decision that gives even the appearance of impropriety? If new evidence comes to light – like, say, a horrific disaster – is there a way to re-open the process and change the rules?

The actual technical details might be a black box for us, opaque and indecipherable. But the box itself can be easily observed: is it made of sturdy material? Does it have sharp corners and clean lines? Or is it flimsy, irregular and torn? We don't have to know anything about the box's contents to conclude that we don't trust the box.

For example: we may not be experts in chemical engineering or water safety, but we can tell when a regulator is on the ball on these issues. Back in 2019, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection sought comment on its water safety regs. Dow Chemical – the largest corporation in the state's largest industry – filed comments arguing that WV should have lower standards for chemical contamination in its drinking water.

Now, I'm perfectly prepared to believe that there are safe levels of chemical runoff in the water supply. There's a lot of water in the water supply, after all, and "the dose makes the poison." What's more, I use the products whose manufacture results in that chemical waste. I want them to be made safely, but I do want them to be made – for one thing, the next time I have surgery, I want the anesthesiologist to start an IV with fresh, sterile plastic tubing.

And I'm not a chemist, let alone a water chemist. Neither am I a toxicologist. There are aspects of this debate I am totally unqualified to assess. Nevertheless, I think the WV process was a bad one, and here's why:

https://www.wvma.com/press/wvma-news/4244-wvma-statement-on-human-health-criteria-development

That's Dow's comment to the regulator (as proffered by its mouthpiece, the WV Manufacturers' Association, which it dominates). In that comment, Dow argues that West Virginians safely can absorb more poison than other Americans, because the people of West Virginia are fatter than other Americans, and so they have more tissue and thus a better ratio of poison to person than the typical American. But they don't stop there! They also say that West Virginians don't drink as much water as their out-of-state cousins, preferring to drink beer instead, so even if their water is more toxic, they'll be drinking less of it:

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/03/14/the-real-elitists-looking-down-on-trump-voters/

Even without any expertise in toxicology or water chemistry, I can tell that these are bullshit answers. The fact that the WV regulator accepted these comments tells me that they're not a good regulator. I was in WV last year to give a talk, and I didn't drink the tap water.

It's totally reasonable for non-experts to reject the conclusions of experts when the process by which those experts resolve their disagreements is obviously corrupt and irredeemably flawed. But some refusals carry higher costs – both for the refuseniks and the people around them – than my switching to bottled water when I was in Charleston.

Take vaccine denial (or "hesitancy"). Many people greeted the advent of an extremely rapid, high-tech covid vaccine with dread and mistrust. They argued that the pharma industry was dominated by corrupt, greedy corporations that routinely put their profits ahead of the public's safety, and that regulators, in Big Pharma's pocket, let them get away with mass murder.

The thing is, all that is true. Look, I've had five covid vaccinations, but not because I trust the pharma industry. I've had direct experience of how pharma sacrifices safety on greed's altar, and narrowly avoided harm myself. I have had chronic pain problems my whole life, and they've gotten worse every year. When my daughter was on the way, I decided this was going to get in the way of my ability to parent – I wanted to be able to carry her for long stretches! – and so I started aggressively pursuing the pain treatments I'd given up on many years before.

My journey led me to many specialists – physios, dieticians, rehab specialists, neurologists, surgeons – and I tried many, many therapies. Luckily, my wife had private insurance – we were in the UK then – and I could go to just about any doctor that seemed promising. That's how I found myself in the offices of a Harley Street quack, a prominent pain specialist, who had great news for me: it turned out that opioids were way safer than had previously been thought, and I could just take opioids every day and night for the rest of my life without any serious risk of addiction. It would be fine.

This sounded wrong to me. I'd lost several friends to overdoses, and watched others spiral into miserable lives as they struggled with addiction. So I "did my own research." Despite not having a background in chemistry, biology, neurology or pharmacology, I struggled through papers and read commentary and came to the conclusion that opioids weren't safe at all. Rather, corrupt billionaire pharma owners like the Sackler family had colluded with their regulators to risk the lives of millions by pushing falsified research that was finding publication in some of the most respected, peer-reviewed journals in the world.

I became an opioid denier, in other words.

I decided, based on my own research, that the experts were wrong, and that they were wrong for corrupt reasons, and that I couldn't trust their advice.

When anti-vaxxers decried the covid vaccines, they said things that were – in form at least – indistinguishable from the things I'd been saying 15 years earlier, when I decided to ignore my doctor's advice and throw away my medication on the grounds that it would probably harm me.

For me, faith in vaccines didn't come from a broad, newfound trust in the pharmaceutical system: rather, I judged that there was so much scrutiny on these new medications that it would overwhelm even pharma's ability to corruptly continue to sell a medication that they secretly knew to be harmful, as they'd done so many times before:

https://www.npr.org/2007/11/10/5470430/timeline-the-rise-and-fall-of-vioxx

But many of my peers had a different take on anti-vaxxers: for these friends and colleagues, anti-vaxxers were being foolish. Surprisingly, these people I'd long felt myself in broad agreement with began to defend the pharmaceutical system and its regulators. Once they saw that anti-vaxx was a wedge issue championed by right-wing culture war shitheads, they became not just pro-vaccine, but pro-pharma.

There's a name for this phenomenon: "schismogenesis." That's when you decide how you feel about an issue based on who supports it. Think of self-described "progressives" who became cheerleaders for the America's cruel, ruthless and lawless "intelligence community" when it seemed that US spooks were bent on Trump's ouster:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

The fact that the FBI didn't like Trump didn't make them allies of progressive causes. This was and is the same entity that (among other things) tried to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr into killing himself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter

But schismogenesis isn't merely a reactionary way of flip-flopping on issues based on reflexive enmity. It's actually a reasonable epistemological tactic: in a world where there are more issues you need to be clear on than you can possibly inform yourself about, you need some shortcuts. One shortcut – a shortcut that's failing – is to say, "Well, I'll provisionally believe whatever the expert system tells me is true." Another shortcut is, "I will provisionally disbelieve in whatever the people I know to act in bad faith are saying is true." That is, "schismogenesis."

Schismogenesis isn't a great tactic. It would be far better if we had a set of institutions we could all largely trust – if the black boxes where expert debate took place were sturdy, rectilinear and sharp-cornered.

But they're not. They're just not. Our regulatory process sucks. Corporate concentration makes it trivial for cartels to capture their regulators and steer them to conclusions that benefit corporate shareholders even if that means visiting enormous harm – even mass death – on the public:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

No one hates Big Tech more than I do, but many of my co-belligerents in the war on Big Tech believe that the rise of conspiratorialism can be laid at tech platforms' feet. They say that Big Tech boasts of how good they are at algorithmically manipulating our beliefs, and attribute Qanons, flat earthers, and other outlandish conspiratorial cults to the misuse off those algorithms.

"We built a Big Data mind-control ray" is one of those extraordinary claims that requires extraordinary evidence. But the evidence for Big Tech's persuasion machines is very poor: mostly, it consists of tech platforms' own boasts to potential investors and customers for their advertising products. "We can change peoples' minds" has long been the boast of advertising companies, and it's clear that they can change the minds of customers for advertising.

Think of department store mogul John Wanamaker, who famously said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." Today – thanks to commercial surveillance – we know that the true proportion of wasted advertising spending is more like 99.9%. Advertising agencies may be really good at convincing John Wanamaker and his successors, through prolonged, personal, intense selling – but that doesn't mean they're able to sell so efficiently to the rest of us with mass banner ads or spambots:

http://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

In other words, the fact that Facebook claims it is really good at persuasion doesn't mean that it's true. Just like the AI companies who claim their chatbots can do your job: they are much better at convincing your boss (who is insatiably horny for firing workers) than they are at actually producing an algorithm that can replace you. What's more, their profitability relies far more on convincing a rich, credulous business executive that their product works than it does on actually delivering a working product.

Now, I do think that Facebook and other tech giants play an important role in the rise of conspiratorial beliefs. However, that role isn't using algorithms to persuade people to mistrust our institutions. Rather Big Tech – like other corporate cartels – has so corrupted our regulatory system that they make trusting our institutions irrational.

Think of federal privacy law. The last time the US got a new federal consumer privacy law was in 1988, when Congress passed the Video Privacy Protection Act, a law that prohibits video store clerks from leaking your VHS rental history:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/07/why-vppa-protects-youtube-and-viacom-employees

It's been a minute. There are very obvious privacy concerns haunting Americans, related to those tech giants, and yet the closest Congress can come to doing something about it is to attempt the forced sale of the sole Chinese tech giant with a US footprint to a US company, to ensure that its rampant privacy violations are conducted by our fellow Americans, and to force Chinese spies to buy their surveillance data on millions of Americans in the lawless, reckless swamp of US data-brokerages:

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/14/1238435508/tiktok-ban-bill-congress-china

For millions of Americans – especially younger Americans – the failure to pass (or even introduce!) a federal privacy law proves that our institutions can't be trusted. They're right:

https://www.tiktok.com/@pearlmania500/video/7345961470548512043

Occam's Razor cautions us to seek the simplest explanation for the phenomena we see in the world around us. There's a much simpler explanation for why people believe conspiracy theories they encounter online than the idea that the one time Facebook is telling the truth is when they're boasting about how well their products work – especially given the undeniable fact that everyone else who ever claimed to have perfected mind-control was a fantasist or a liar, from Rasputin to MK-ULTRA to pick-up artists.

Maybe people believe in conspiracy theories because they have hundreds of life-or-death decisions to make every day, and the institutions that are supposed to make that possible keep proving that they can't be trusted. Nevertheless, those decisions have to be made, and so something needs to fill the epistemological void left by the manifest unsoundness of the black box where the decisions get made.

For many people – millions – the thing that fills the black box is conspiracy fantasies. It's true that tech makes finding these conspiracy fantasies easier than ever, and it's true that tech makes forming communities of conspiratorial belief easier, too. But the vulnerability to conspiratorialism that algorithms identify and target people based on isn't a function of Big Data. It's a function of corruption – of life in a world in which real conspiracies (to steal your wages, or let rich people escape the consequences of their crimes, or sacrifice your safety to protect large firms' profits) are everywhere.

Progressives – which is to say, the coalition of liberals and leftists, in which liberals are the senior partners and spokespeople who control the Overton Window – used to identify and decry these conspiracies. But as right wing "populists" declared their opposition to these conspiracies – when Trump damned free trade and the mainstream media as tools of the ruling class – progressives leaned into schismogenesis and declared their vocal support for these old enemies of progress.

This is the crux of Naomi Klein's brilliant 2023 book Doppelganger: that as the progressive coalition started supporting these unworthy and broken institutions, the right spun up "mirror world" versions of their critique, distorted versions that focus on scapegoating vulnerable groups rather than fighting unworthy institutions:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

This is a long tradition in politics: hundreds of years ago, some leftists branded antisemitism "the socialism of fools." Rather than condemning the system's embrace of the finance sector and its wealthy beneficiaries, anti-semites blame a disfavored group of people – people who are just as likely as anyone to suffer under the system:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_is_the_socialism_of_fools

It's an ugly, shallow, cartoon version of socialism's measured and comprehensive analysis of how the class system actually works and why it's so harmful to everyone except a tiny elite. Literally cartoonish: the shadow-world version of socialism co-opts and simplifies the iconography of class struggle. And schismogenesis – "if the right likes this, I don't" – sends "progressive" scolds after anyone who dares to criticize finance as the crux of our world's problems as popularizing "antisemetic dog-whistles."

This is the problem with "horseshoe theory" – the idea that the far right and the far left bend all the way around to meet each other:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/26/horsehoe-crab/#substantive-disagreement

When the right criticizes pharma companies, they tell us to "do our own research" (e.g. ignore the systemic problems of people being forced to work under dangerous conditions during a pandemic while individually assessing conflicting claims about vaccine safety, ideally landing on buying "supplements" from a grifter). When the left criticizes pharma, it's to argue for universal access to medicine and vigorous public oversight of pharma companies. These aren't the same thing:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/25/the-other-shoe-drops/#quid-pro-quo

Long before opportunistic right wing politicians realized they could get mileage out of pointing at the terrifying epistemological crisis of trying to make good choices in an age of institutions that can't be trusted, the left was sounding the alarm. Conspiratorialism – the fracturing of our shared reality – is a serious problem, weakening our ability to respond effectively to endless disasters of the polycrisis.

But by blaming the problem of conspiratorialism on the credulity of believers (rather than the deserved disrepute of the institutions they have lost faith in) we adopt the logic of the right: "conspiratorialism is a problem of individuals believing wrong things," rather than "a system that makes wrong explanations credible – and a schismogenic insistence that these institutions are sound and trustworthy."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/25/black-boxes/#when-you-know-you-know

Image: Nuclear Regulatory Commission (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/nrcgov/15993154185/

meanwell-packaging.co.uk https://www.flickr.com/photos/195311218@N08/52159853896

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[lakewillowmerewraith]

"Love would trump even a mating bond."

Apparently this quote is pretty triggering to Gwynriels and/or Eluciens. Specifically, whether or not in can be applied outside of the Elain/Graysen debacle.

This line comes after Grayson rejects Elain after seeing her as Fae for the first time. The full quote is this: "Some sliver of hope that had shattered today. That Grayson would still love her, still marry her - and that love would trump even a mating bond."

So apparently to the antis, events in previous chapters do not affect things later on in a book or series. Things we learn about a character, cease being true without the reader ever being told. There is no such thing as character or plot continuity.

Basically, there was a TikTok video that put this quote over a picture of Elriel. The quote was attributed to Feyre about Elain. People decried in the comments that this quote is "always taken out of context" by Elriels.

I want to know what this context is? Sure, if someone said that this quote is said by or about Azriel, then that is wrong.

But this quote refers to Elain - to her desires and wants and hopes. Elain, from the moment she came out of the cauldron, did not want her mate. She wanted a love that would trump the mating bond. This hope is dashed in Graysen. He lets her down.

Down the road, Elain still does not want Lucien. In fact, she has begun to fall for a second male. A second love interest. Is it not reasonable to say that Elain is still the same person? That what she wanted/hoped for in a romance, unless stated otherwise, is still the same? That now that she has a second chance at love who is also not her mate, that she will not be looking for the same - a love that trumps a mating bond. Is that a reasonable connection for a reader to make?

How can it be out of context when it is about Elain's love life, and she now has a second scenario that parallels the first, where that hope may finally be satisfied? I just don't get how these people (who according to them, all have literature degrees) say that is unreasonable or jumping the gun for us to connect these two events?

The definition of context: "the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs." Are these not 2 interrelated conditions? Elain's love for Grayson, and now her new feelings/burgeoning love for Azriel? Both which happen to same person, both which happen while Elain has a mating bond that she does not desire?

Why are we debating such basic, fundamental literary comprehension??? I feel crazy.

[contemplatingoutlander]

How to save the Supreme Court from Alito’s ethical malfeasance

The justice’s unconscionable violations of ethics demand the court be reformed.

Jennifer Rubin clearly explains why Alito went too far in allowing a symbol of the insurrection to fly over his home, and why the Roberts Court needs to stop slow-walking the presidential immunity decision if the Court is to regain any credibility. This is a gift🎁link so anyone can read the full article, even if they don't subscribe to The Washington Post.

Among the Supreme Court’s abominations — shredding precedent to obliterate reproductive freedom, financial impropriety, partisanship — none compares to the upside-down flag, identified with violent insurrectionists, that flew over the home of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. Ethics experts and lawyers (including former judges) of all stripes expressed their outrage. “His statement — which says his wife displayed a symbol associated with a failed coup to subvert democracy because she was offended by an anti-Trump sign one of her neighbors displayed — is so incoherent it is insulting to our collective intelligence,” constitutional law professor Leah Litman emails me. “And a Justice who resides in a house that displays symbols glorifying a coup should not participate in cases that will determine whether people who participated in said coup will face any accountability.” [...] Alito (alongside Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife encouraged coup plotters) has heard multiple insurrection-related cases, including the pending immunity case that could absolve Trump of criminal liability. In letting his home stand in solidarity with constitutional arsonists, Alito made a mockery of his oath to “faithfully and impartially discharge” his duties under the Constitution. Any other judge (especially one implicated in financial misconduct) would be compelled to resign and/or face the threat of impeachment. So what about Alito? Immediate Triage Unlike its speedy disposition of the 14th Amendment case (24 days after argument) and of many lesser matters, the court put the immunity case in deep freeze, making it near-impossible to try the ex-president before the next election....The Alito debacle only deepens the impression that the court has its thumb on the scale — or the brake — for Trump. [...] As constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe warns in an email to me, if Roberts “wants the Court to retain any credibility at all,” he must compel the court to “bite the bullet and issue its decision, ....” Then, Tribe explains, “Judge [Tanya S.] Chutkan either can hold whatever hearing the Court thinks necessary to decide exactly which charges against the former president may remain” or can begin the trial itself, which “should have been over by now.” Alito’s ethical self-immolation leaves Roberts no alternative if he wants to dispel the perception that two ethically compromised, partisan justices have thoroughly corrupted the court. (He also should implore Alito to recuse, but who believes that’ll happen?) [emphasis added]

[fallingskiesandrisingseas]

Back when I was a kid the Narnia series was my absolute favorite. It was fun, magical, and the Pevensies were my favorite. But something always bothered me.

What drove Peter to spare Miraz in their duel?

Peter challanges him to find time for Lucy, and beats him. He doesn't beat him to death with his fists, but turns his back. Then Miraz attacks him. Peter manages to evade the strike and delivers a critical blow. At this point in the fight, he has every right in the world to finish Miraz off then and there. Any code of honour has been disregarded, Miraz has clearly shown contempt, and the fight was to the death, anyways.

Miraz is on his knees, vulnarable to Peter's mercy. There is no reason he should not execute him. He has probably done it before as High King. He has no moral qualms about killing Miraz, either; it is not as if he holds kings and queens in higher regard, as we can see when he waltzes in to fight Jadis. If you watch Edmund closely, you can see him expecting Peter to kill Miraz. "Not the time for chivalry, Peter!" Furthermore, our High King tells Edmund beforehand that he doubts the Telmarines will keep their word. He was prepared for this betrayal.

So why doesn't he kill him? My suspicion is that he wants to test Caspian.

At this point, Aslan has not shown up yet. The two have a shaky relationship, which is further damaged by the debacle at the castle. They are allies, yes, but Caspian is still a Telmarine. One who has shown once already that to him, revenge is more important than the plan. And Peter has been High King for decades; he is intimately aware of the court politics that led to Caspian being by his side instead of opposing him. There has not yet been a time where we see him fight for the Narnians instead of for himself.

Peter wants to know what kind of man Caspian is.

Will he kill the man who raised him in cold blood? Will he let his need for revenge trump his reason? Or will he keep his cool and understand that Miraz no longer needs killing?

By every means, this is a test: a test to see if they can leave their kingdom to Caspian, if Narnia will be safe in his hands. Is Caspian an honourable man? Does he truly care about Narnia? Or will he be a despot? A Telmarine like all those before him?

Playing into this is also the fact that Peter just won't know how Caspian would react if he just kills Miraz in front of him. Their relationship here is not the best. What's the etiquette for killing your friend's abusive adoptive father? Peter killing Miraz himself might make Caspian mad, and he doesn't want that on the brink of their most important battle.

What further complicates the equation is that Edmund, being the diplomat that he is, has undoubtedly picked up the tensions between Glozelle, Miraz, and the other general. He knows they are plotting something. He has shared this with Peter as well, of course.

He says that "Miraz's life is not his to take", but underneath that is a calculated risk. He knows that there is a high chance they will have to fight the Telmarines. He is ready and prepared for it. He also knows that Miraz will likely not survive the ambition of his generals.

What he doesn't know is if he can trust Caspian at his side, send him to lead his troops.

Caspian passes the test. He does not kill Miraz, overcoming his own hatred against him for the good of Narnia. And never again do we see Peter doubt him. They are close brothers after this fight.

It is a very clever piece of writing, and I love the producers for it. It shows so clearly that no, this isn't a 16 year old boy, this is the High King, an extremely skilled warrior, a brilliant tactician, and a clever diplomat. All of it in one scene.

[rejectingrepublicans]

She’s on twitter doing a rap to sell Trump merchandise at the failed border convoy debacle.

[spurgie-cousin]

ok after hearing Trump essentially say he wants to rid the country of Muslims and that he will absolutely double down on supporting Israel, i think my voting debacle has been solved.........

still totally support people doing whatever they want but at least Biden's admin has to pretend to care about the humanity of Muslim Americans and gay, POC, and female Americans. that's not to say i think his admin is good to any of those demographics but he at least has to maintain the status quo to keep support......

[kinnersonne]

My roommate is watching Trollhunters for the first time and I am rehashing ALL the feelings so it’s time for some ~Stricklake Headcanons!~

• Barbara will not hesitate to yank him along by the horns if he’s being a buttsnack

• She also likes to bring up the whole enchantment debacle as her trump card to win arguments or make him do something. Normally she can persuade him with other means, but she’ll resort to that if she has to

• Slit-pupilled eyes means he looks like a big doofus if he looks at her too long because “his eyes get all big, like a little cat’s!” (Barbara’s words)

• “I’m not cute, I’m horrifying!” “Sure, sweetie…”

• Walt is lovely. But living with Stricklander the troll would be like the worst parts of having both a) a cat that hates everyone and b) a big dog that’s Too Dang Old. Scowls and hisses for no other reason than He Can. Sleeps all day and keeps you up at night with possum noises. Refuses to let you touch him until he suddenly decides he wants physical affection, at which point he’ll clamber all 200 rocky pounds of him into your lap and growl until you pet him. Gets VERY whiny when you pay attention to somebody that’s not him, even if he’s been ignoring you all day. 50/50 chance of attacking any given guest, verbally or physically

• Pet names: Mr. Creature, Lakeluster, ‘dearest’ (B) and ‘sweetie’ (S) but only ironically, NOT Babs, only misogynist jerks at the hospital call her that

• Barbara won’t confirm this but Strickler may or may not have tracked down and pulled a hit on James Lake Sr. Barbara denies all knowledge of her ex’s sudden and violent death

• Troll society is matriarchal (yes I know there’s almost no evidence of this in the show it’s a headcanon), so anytime Barbara gets a little girlbossy or shows her Mama Bear it’s actually a major turn-on for him

• I was enamored with the idea of changelings purring, since they’re too small and impure probably to roar like real trolls do (like how cheetahs aren’t actual members of the panthera genus and they make adorable chirping noises). But I came up with something worse:

• It’s not just changelings that purr, but it is only males, and only under arousal. Originally it evolved as a defense mechanism, as a way of soothing their mates and dissuading them from maiming/devouring them in the heat of the moment

Please. Please help me.

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

Google appears to be moving away from the radical politics it has previously been tolerating in-house, presumably as a result of the recent pro-Palestine sit-ins by staff that resulted in 28 Google employees being fired, and also the Google Gemini "woke" debacle, which will have lessened their popularity and usage (and share value?) in the AI space.

It's too early to know whether this is something genuine to be trusted but it being a position taken does at least seem reflective of a wider shift in the cultural narrative that has been taking place since Trump and then Elon Musk taking over Twitter, in which people in all walks of life and the public eye are at last able to address far-left identity politics as the hateful, intentionally divisive and destructive forces they actually are.

[wilwheaton]

Eight years ago Will Saletan said “The GOP is a failed state. Donald Trump is its warlord.” There’s probably no short summary, phrase or aphorism I’ve repeated more times on TPM. Because it’s that good. Today we’re seeing another permutation and illustration of that enduring reality. This is more basic than a fractured caucus or any of the personalities involved. It is the logical end result of a party and political movement based on rule-breaking, as a central value and mode of operation. When rule-breaking becomes the norm organizations and polities fall apart … without a strongman. For eight years Donald Trump has been that strongman. It’s Trump’s general indifference to the House Speaker debacle and perhaps focus on his unfolding legal woes that has allowed the chaos to drag on. This is always the relationship between civic democracies and the broken states where strongmen thrive and dominate. Civic democracy operates through an organized competition between different stakeholders in society. It requires a consensus to litigate disagreements through a prescribed set of rules. The breakdown of those rules creates an opening for strongmen who traffic in raw power and sell their ability to impose order. It is both the cause and result of the species of civic and moral degeneracy we see as the mother’s milk of Trumpism.

The Party of Rule-Breaking Trundles Toward Its Inevitable End Point - TPM – Talking Points Memo

[beardedmrbean]

Lawmakers have started reacting to Google’s admitted racial and historical bias, and one Republican senator wants to see the "breakup" of one of the most well-known and profitable tech companies.

"This is one of the most dangerous companies in the world. It actively solicits and forces left-wing bias down the throats of the American nation," Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, told FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo in a "Sunday Morning Futures" exclusive interview.

The Alphabet-owned tech giant is scrambling to right the ship after pulling the plug on Gemini's image generation features, with CEO Sundar Pichai telling employees last Tuesday the company is working "around the clock" to fix the tool's bias, calling the images generated by the model "completely unacceptable."

Social media users had flagged Gemini was creating inaccurate historical images that sometimes replaced White people with images of Black, Native American and Asian people.

Fox News Digital previously tested Gemini multiple times to see what kind of responses it would offer: when the AI was asked to show a picture of a White person, Gemini said it could not fulfill the request because it "reinforces harmful stereotypes and generalizations about people based on their race."

Sen. Vance expanded on how the alleged bias can have ripple effects on other information sectors, including politics.

"Think about the effect this has on the presidential election when unbiased, non-committed voters are searching things about Donald Trump, and also about Joe Biden, right before they cast their ballots," the senator said.

"We cannot allow a company that is in bed with some of the worst people in the world to control the flow of information and to bias it in a left-wing direction," he continued. "We [have] got to break this company up and bring back some common sense standards."

Addressing the likelihood that legislative action may be taken against Google, the senator claimed there are "growing calls" across the political spectrum for a shakedown on the tech giant, noting it’s gotten "too big, too powerful."

"My friends on the left, Maria, say they feel like our democracy is under threat. The biggest way our democracy is under threat is you have these massive, international companies that are sort of controlling what we think, what we read, what information we consume," Vance said.

"That's a big problem. But I actually do think that there's going to be growing momentum to rein Google in," he added. "We saw this with the release of Gemini. This is a radically left-wing company that is trying to control how we consume information. If we let that happen, we are going to get exactly what we deserve."

On Saturday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, wrote a letter to Google parent company Alphabet, demanding that the company explain whether the Biden administration influenced Gemini’s A.I. error.

[inky-quilled-dragon]

So I have not seen John yet (not in the US) but in anticipation and celebration of his return I wanted to list everything that the stupid fucking corporate greed of Big Production prevented him from covering over the past months.

Because we will NEVER E V E R blame the writers. It's all Business Daddy's fault.

Anyway here is my list of everything HBO stole from us: John Oliver Live Reaction Edition.

Toxic Gossip Train, because holy crap that still feels like a fever dream.

Donald Trump's mugshot, and the return of the We Got Him banner by proxy

The Oceangate incident, because holy crap it's a built in 'gate' debacle and was controlled by a Logitech controller.

The WGA Strike as a whole, because gawd dayumn that would have been some good damn journalisim

X. FUCKING X. Elongated Muskrat as a whole really.

I don't even wanna mention this but Kylie and Kendall debuting with Timothée Chalamet and Bad Bunny respectively because wow.

KING CHUCKY CHEESE'S CORONATION. LIKE WHAT THE HECK THE BRITISH MAN HASN'T COMMENTED YET.

The Grimace Shake, just for the lolz

Plenty more that i just can't think of rn cuz it's 3am i am surprised i am this coherent

And of course.

Of. Course.

The worst, most horrible thing corporate greed took from us when it comes to John Oliver reactions.

BARBIE.

[notalostcausejustyet]

What do you think voting for Joe Biden will improve? Genuinely asking to learn a new perspective

It’s not about improvement. Although up until the Palestine debacle he managed pretty well. You’re welcome to look up employment, taxes and any other number of things he helped make significant strides in. Biden is a stop gap. He isn’t how we treat the injury to our democracy, he’s how we stem the hemorrhage.

You’re welcome to look up Project 2025 and see what conservatives have in mind if they get into power. We’ve already seen sharp losses in human rights because they tilted SCOTUS during Trump’s presidency. They flat out published a manifesto on how they plan to finish dismantling our democracy if they get the chance this next go around.

We have all of human history to see how it will go if we don’t walk it back from the edge now. It isn’t about better. It’s about having someplace left to stand so we can at least start the work of fixing this shit.

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

In addition to Russians going on a purchasing spree in the UK, the UK upper classes have been courted by the Russian oligarchs for more than a generation. Their now-grown kids all went to UK private schools and both the kids and parents made friends.

This has been happening in the US, as well, for the better part of three decades, since the early 90s when the USSR imploded and Putin and his oligarchs proceeded to embezzle billions from the Russian people. In NYC especially, then-real-estate-developer DJT (deeply in debt after his Atlantic City casino debacle) - and enabled by then-NYC Mayor Giuliani - jumped right into bed with the Russians and their money, which needed to be laundered. Even his sons have admitted that a large portion of their business and money has come from the Russians, who own much of Trump Tower and other Trump properties. The info is all public domain for anyone to research.

And it’s pervasive, not just centered in NYC. Russian oligarch money and political influence is rampant on the West Coast of the US (Devin Nunes, allegedly, anyone?), on the southern Gulf Coast with its oil industry, and nationwide within the NRA. House Speaker Johnson, a Congressional Representative from Louisiana/LA, has been backed financially/politically for years by Russian oligarchs active in the LA/Gulf Coast oil industry. And we haven’t even begun to speak about the influence of China or of the Saudis/ME (MBS giving DJT’s SIL Kushner $2 billion to invest…and LIV infiltrating the PGA, aided by DJT’s golf resorts…). 

(PS: RTA, that was you sending in the detailed security analyses to Empress, etc? Thanks!)

***********

Exactly. Foreign investments have been happening all over the place. A lot of people don’t realize how bad it is, nor how much foreign money is keeping US government afloat.

I don’t remember if I submitted the national security stuff to Empress, but it’s been awhile. I definitely remember talking about it with Honey in the run up to the coronation, and I’ve been digging into her archives to find those posts but I don’t remember when...7 months is a lot of time to cover in Tumblr!