the fact that they *gave her a medal* is honestly the most hilariously galling thing I've learned about Russia's ratfucking in a long while. credit where it's due because MY GOD, they are the world champions at this bullshit lolol. THEY GAVE HER A FUCKING MEDAIL!!

There's a lot that could be said about this on a cultural level or a political level, but we have forgotten the personal level: people owe Joseph Biden, the man specifically, an apology.

Lolol, I like this one. Hello, I'm the 2017/18 h1n1 influenza virus! Six days in the ICU, two full weeks in the hospital, and a year of very slow recovery that never quite got me back to 100%. (All that while vaccinated, too!)

I've spent a lot of time over the last several months wondering if I'm losing my mind or if all the data my weather apps are pulling really is that much less accurate & timely than it used to be a few years ago because holy shit, all my weather apps have gone to hell.

this man has nothing to do all day other than dream up novel ways to continue debasing the presidency of the United States even more than he already has.

I have to give a major, day long presentation on a nearly 200 page security report on a range of services offered by my employer here in a few weeks, and it is taking every shred of willpower I can muster to not title it: 'Everyone is Behaving Badly, and All of You are Trash.'

100% correct, and you will be drawn & quartered for dropping into the comments On Here to point this out when we're specifically talking about AI-derived slop. this is exactly why I have stopped engaging altogether lol.

ngl, something on my many trips to Europe that has always gotten me *extremely* freaked out is just how lax what we here in the US consider to be fundamental fire & safety standards for businesses like bars & restaurants are. I don't care if your buildings are all old af, fireproof that shit.

I know I'm obviously in the minority of users On Here with this opinion, and I'm definitely not going to QT the very popular post of it, but I genuinely think that getting Bernie fuckin Sanders, United States Senator for, uh, Vermont, to conduct his public swearing in is actually *extremely* cringe.

We are now getting the occasional piece on this but of course nothing like the Biden blanket coverage

Literacy regressing to the historical mean hasn't been a boon, either

an important observation that I personally feel is at the very center of why social media has turned into such a massive net negative for global society: the glorification of ignorance as a noble & acceptable alternative to nuance & understanding is something that the apps have made 1000000x worse.

... Asus makes phones??

this is ... NOT why those advances didn't come about. also, the 80s & 90s saw some of the largest technological leaps ever known throughout all of human history, wtf do you even mean it all "slowed to a crawl"?? this is some Charlie-Brown-had-hoes level explaining.

I haven't started watched Part Five yet, so I don't want any major spoilers, but a hill that I will die on is that introducing The One Unifying Bad Guy (with daddy issues) was simply a godawful choice and that explaining all the monsters as just eldritch monstrosities was 10000x better & scarier.

"Hitler was a genius—all serious historians agree," is legitimately one of the most laughably ahistorical assertions I have ever heard. Hitler and almost all of his hand-picked high ranking Nazis were genuinely *not* smart; it's like the primary reason why they destroyed everything they touched!

it obviously really really REALLY bothers John Roberts that he knows he's going to go down as one of the very worst Chief Justices this country has ever had, but he's 100% brought this on himself. (and HOO BOY, is that ever a tall hurdle to clear because we've had some genuinely *awful* ones.)

lololol every detail about this is sus af, from his obvious, blatant lies about what's ailing him, to the impromptu & totally unscheduled interview that he apparently gave to the WSJ that kicked off this piece.

soooo ... did I miss anything?

siiiiiigh I think I'm probably gonna have to deactivate til sometime in January. I've got a report I'm building for work sitting on my desk that's already north of 90 pages, I'm not even halfway through yet, and I made an insane promise today that it'd be done and ready for print in three weeks.

one of my takes on this has always been that people also fail to appreciate how large the cultural differences are between the disparate parts of the US, too. like, if you think some European countries are distinct from one another in terms of culture and history, wait til you hear about the states!

I mean, nobody in Big Oil wants the untapped reserves in Venezuela for the exact same reason that the Keystone XL fell apart: since the turn of the century, we've realized that crude that is trapped in *oil sands* is too expensive to extract & refine. NOBODY wants it; it's too damn cost intensive.

To be fair, there were some 19th century Speakers that had even less control over the House than Johnson does now, so I think technically he's just the weakest Speaker *in modern times*. Otherwise, yeah, the man is officially out of the driver's seat. The clown car definitely has no driver atm.

I live in what is famously one of the best water districts in the state, we are proud of the fact that we have a water team so skilled that it's called to help with water emergencies around the world, and a data center here would not make a dent in our small-ish supply because IT'S WELL MANAGED.

Insanely fuckin stupid idea grounded in 100%, pure, unadulterated reactionary primitivism. I simply cannot overstate how genuinely unserious this is. I honestly think less of him for just thinking about less, let alone posting it online, and I already thought VERY little of this man.

this is an incredibly important point that I think a lot of people are overlooking because they want to believe that Trump is simply infallible to those people, and I think this moment is proof that he's really not. there was *always* going to be something to undercut it, sooner or later.

I said so yesterday, but I really do believe that in the near future we're going to be looking back at Trump's Reiner screed as a hugely important moment both for him personally & for this administration more generally. he has finally said something they can't ignore or chalk up to "personality."

1. they've been trying to figure out a way to kill Obamacare *without* having to turn it into a vote, and they finally found a roundabout way of doing it. 2. this would have passed because around a dozen House Republicans have already said they were in favor of extending them.

it's definitely the most significant piece I've read about any Trump staffer in a good while; it's maybe the most important interview any of them have given since he was sworn in again. everybody needs to read it because we're not given many unvarnished firsthand accounts like this.

I know that a lot of folks avoid the Nazi bar site at all costs, but out of morbid curiosity I've been using a sock puppet account on X this morning to dig through the discourse On There about Rob Reiner ... and you guys, I think Trump might've actually screwed the pooch on this one.

Interviews this candid would get any other chief of staff fired. If Wiles survives this, it's another sign that Trump has absolutely zero control over his White House.

CoreWeave is under contract to build *hundreds of billions of dollars* worth of computing power for AI companies, but it's on the verge of collapse because of construction woes & unforgivably huge fuckups like a failed acquisition. if it collapses, there are gonna be huge, market-wide consequences.

Sen. Mark Kelly on Morning Joe atm, and damn, he is *exceptionally* good in this format. he can speak extemporaneously on incredibly dense topics with the best of them.

the thing about Signal, despite it being the true gold standard in encrypted messaging, is that it can only ever be secure as the sloppiest person in all of your group chats. got someone who never deletes, invites strangers, & leaves his devices unlocked?? your Signal chats are NOT secure, friend.

If I am understanding the complaint correctly, the FBI got wind of this plot in late November from a paid informant and managed to get an undercover agent into the working group by December 7th. Hilarious.

yiiiiiiiiiiikes, that is definitely not good. emptying the coffers to go all-in and become full diamond 💎💎 hands HODL on a.i. does not strike me as a particularly sound strategy.

to be fair this "deal" had all of the legal sway that my doodles on the back of a bar napkin do, and neither party seemed particularly intent on sticking by it. but this is just one more drop in the bucket full of reasons why nobody on Earth can trust the US while Trump & the GOP are in charge.

I have to go to bed super early because I have a Zoom meeting with some lovely Londoners at 4:30 a.m., but I look forward to reading this wonderful new Ken thread in full when I wake up! Also, that THIS crowd was the one who tried to do The Thing ... let's just say I am unsurprised.

This is one of those issues where I think the blue state folks, especially the coastal ones, have been getting a little high on their own supply because anyone who lives in a red state could've told you that a full shift to EV was a fucking *insane* thing to believe.

He's gonna lose just about everyone on this one. It's already starting. When John Kennedy and MTG have said the man should stfu about Rob Reiner, he should stfu about him. But he's so goddamn insulated that he likely has no idea how much this is blowing up on him.

I've been genuinely worried about the leadership of Providence being able to keep up with combatting the fuckery coming out of the White House because I've got a lot of friends in that city, I've spent a lot of time up there for work, and their city leaders ... do not inspire a lot of confidence.

Dear Turtle Island Liberation Front: I guess it’s too late but you might have found this helpful bsky.app/profile/kenw...

important to note that Stand By Me and A Few Good Men are considered *essential* works within the lexicon of conservative American film standards, and that's actually what most conservative Americans know Rob Reiner for--NOT his political activism.

that's right, double down, you hateful piece of shit, even your own supporters hate this, they're just starting to realize that all stick no carrot means they get the stick, too

I never want to hear anybody complain about Obama's dRoNe wArZ!^! ever again. anyway, super happy that the allegedly anti-war people got exactly what they wanted out of the 2024 election, I'm sure everybody involved learned the lesson they all claimed we needed to learn.

Congrats again on the anti-war crowd getting their preferred guy back in office

I just kinda sorta inadvertently threw my boss under the bus harder than I think I've ever thrown anyone at work before by sharing an email with our VP that I thought she already had, and uhhh ... oops? my bad, bro.

this is something that I've believed for a long while: the overwhelming majority of Trump people are actually deeply ashamed of him, they are genuinely embarrassed over him, but in their minds, admitting that you were wrong is literally the worst thing one can do. they are looking for off ramps.

people crying over chomsky on this website are repulsive frankly. he was quite plainly a piece of shit long before anything related to epstein came out