I need to start setting an alarm. I keep meaning to attend Romancing the Gothic talks, which are uniformly fascinating. Unfortunately, the main thing I've learned recently is that I'm very bad at remembering to do things on Saturday mornings.
Cannot recommend Creepy Nuts strongly enough. (Japanese band; played at Coachella.)
I think the only chance of reform is to shutter DHS and start over from where we were in the 1990s. We took an interdepartmental communications problem and used it to excuse building nightmares.
If he's the best candidate I'll vote for him anyway. Because I'm not handing over my primary vote to the sorts of people who thought Trump was a better choice than Harris. I'm going to vote my conscience in the primary and then try to rally people to vote theirs in teh general.
That line about "the votes of white people in middle-America" is such a tell. I'm usually aligned with "the left," but this whole "women and POC have to vote for us, obviously, but damned if we're going to vote for them" thing is just white supremacy wearing a Che T-shirt.
Best Star Trek crew, wrong answers only.
Tell me about it. We have a majority party that’s feral and a minority that’s less Thomas Paine and more Thomas Paine’s extremely friendly tax accountant.
We have many, but not a majority, and CERTAINLY not a supermajority.
I mean, the biggest problem is that we jumped too early, so there was still a king-shaped hole in the governance structure. So we decide to elect a “we swear he really isn’t a king, guys” which worked for a really surprisingly long time before it didn’t.
The real problem is that it would be fake news. The two-thirds requirement for conviction is one of the worst bits of nonsense Alexander Hamilton pulled out of his glorious constitutional random number generator.
Any system is worthless if enough people just agree not to follow it.
And we were always full of shit about the whole “checks and balances” thing. That should’ve been obvious — or system was so amazing that it lasted 80 years before collapsing into one of the bloodier civil wars in history.
The basic problem is that our constitution is increasingly being ignored. Under the constitution, penalties aren’t needed — the president can’t spend money on something Congress has blocked. If we’re ignoring it, it doesn’t matter what they pass, penalties or not.
The Elf-Based Guide to Near-Fantasy Genres There is an Elf, who... PARANORMAL ROMANCE: has always loved you, and can finally be with you always (Welcome to Japan, Elf-san!) ROMANTASY: falls in love with you over the course of your epic adventures together (An Archdemon's Dilemma: Falling in Love With your Elf-Bride.) CONTEMPORARY FANTASY: lives down the street and runs a lovely tea shop (The Invisible Man and his Soon-to-Be Bride) PARANORMAL MYSTERY: works as a detective and solves crimes with a supernatural element to them. (Copcraft) COMIC FANTASY: keeps having bad things happen to them despite their best efforts (Delicious in Dungeon) URBAN FANTASY: runs a gritty street gang or an evil corporation (Demon Lord 2099)
Bidding a fond farewell to "Falling in Love with Love: A History of Popular Romance," @romgothsam.bsky.social 's wonderful course from last term.
No, that’s right—I should’ve said “in normal flight.” During an emergency their workload is enormous.
I can see it in stories where your FTL system is just a Skip Boring Parts Engine, so you’re always either getting to orbit or back down again.
I mean, that’s almost how airliners work now: pilots take off, get six miles up, then tell the computer to let them know if anything interesting happens.
I’m sure “birthright citizenship” tested as a good villainous phrase for white suprematist nutters, but why is anyone else using the term? This is still jus soli citizenship, same as ever. It’s the same 14th amendment we’ve had since the civil war.
The Mighty Wurlitzer of the right plays on.
A reminder to all — what’s being tested in the Supreme Court today isn’t “birthright citizenship.” It’s just citizenship. Either the 14th amendment stands or it doesn’t, and if it falls none of us are citizens. Not one.
That is not the sort of question that it would ever occur to me to ask. "How does one cat lady have the patience to photograph pastries that look that good instead of just eating them," would have been much closer.
Give us all a shout when it posts and can be registered for?
It's very strange ending on romantasy — it's the one piece of all this I was familiar with before taking the class. It's weirdly like ending the class by returning home.
!!!!!!
I can't stay for the whole thing, but I will DEFINITELY watch as much as I can. Ladyhawke is an OLD favorite; I've seen it at least a dozen times.
Do these guys ever have that one shining moment of clarity when they stop to wonder which of their life choices led them to be contenders in the Sycophant Olympic Games?
Bringing up Baby and Bride & Prejudice.
That last line has been important here for years. Trump's made it worse (that's really his specialty), but our health care system has been the "at least we're not..." for everyone else for decades.
"The weaker Canadian dollar made Florida Trips too expensive" is so wrong as to make me suspect an AI wrote this:
Jan 20, 2025: 1 USD=1.43 CAD
Now: 1USD=1.37CAD
So what are they referencing? An article talking about the CAD falling to a 12-day low against the USD several months ago.
The writing in that article is atrocious. Two of their "10 reasons why" are essentially the entire story--Trump threatened Canada and jacked up tariffs illegally to do so.
that they think we've fallen from due to the presence and prevalence of a despised minority group.
It's much too easy to pass the "not the Third Reich yet" test, even when people should be deeply concerned about your position. (3/final)
Because we conflate the two, we make it hard to notice when a party's ideology becomes increasingly fascistic—it's too easy to say something like "but the government looks nothing like Germany in 1935" when you're trying to point out that a party is hearkening back to a mythical glorious past (2)
I still wish we didn't use "fascist" to mean both an ideology and a governmental form. The modern Republican Party is very clearly fascist in ideology. The country is not yet fascist in governmental form—I can post this without getting arrested, for example.
Principal Cast of Hen Fever: Miss Lydia Wraxhall and Mrs. Harriet Boyne: California Greys (acting as the fictional Bickerton Greys of the story). Mr. Bromme: Brahma Mrs. Outerbridge: Gold-laced Bantam Miss Inch: Booted Bantam (couldn't figure out what a Pinwheel Bantam is) Miss Rushcliff: Scots Dumpy
Not actually helpful like my previous character lists, but I couldn't resist. @romgothsam.bsky.social