Wizard's First Rule

Thinking about this today for no reason at all.

I live in a place where the *highway* has a kind of congestion pricing (lanes you pay to use that cost more depending on traffic). It's not that hard?

The people in the comments insisting that they have read a bunch of books, none of whose titles or authors they can recall, is crazy to me. I couldn't name every of the half dozen or so books I read in the last year, but I could name at least one!

Microblogging platforms structurally resist nuanced discussion on any issue. Their proliferation is a substantial contributor to dumbing down of the discourse.

Insane but true fact: making US roads as safe as Canadian, Australian, or European roads would save more lives than eliminating murder from the US.

if tumblr dies I need this video to make it's seasonal rotation here instead just in case, Happy holidays 🎄

Once upon a time I would have put "independent redistricting" on a list like this. Disturbing that today that feels like pre-emptive unilateral disarmament. Although, feels like a similar kind of logic could extend to a lot of these proposals...

On the one hand, I agree that lots of websites have become awful to use because of ads. On the other hand I use an adblocker (uBlock Origin w/Firefox) so I never experience this. At some point consuming the web this way is a skill issue.

Super cool how there is ~no remedy for fourth amendment violations like this!

Honestly, one of the great American poems. Arguably the great American poem.

Reminder that Violent J of Insane Clown Posse has the correct response to a lot of the shitty things he said in the early days.

Now imagining a world where blacksky or some other PDS alternative to bluesky becomes big enough to be a threat so they block the whole provider at the relay level. Speed running defederation.

Even granting Bluesky/ATProto can achieve the decentralization they want, why doesn't this end with all the problems Mastadon has? "Yea you can see A's posts on AppView X but not Y and you can only see B's posts on Y, but not X." Bluesky is currently Twitter but wants to be a Mastodon instance?

i think this picture, from a public promo stream for a video games starring one of the most popular comic book characters of all time owned by the disney corporation, should be used on every single story about storefronts taking down lgbt content

Playing FF Tactics for the first time? Here’s a tip. Go to Mandalia Plain. You’re gonna spend 5 miserable hours having all your characters power up like goku next to a terrified bird or have them throw rocks at each other until they’re max level. This is the best game ever made btw.

Finally: remember to take care of yourselves. There is a long road ahead, but we’re in this together.

The free speech activist who built a list of professors he worked to get fired for their speech must be celebrated for his support of free speech, and anyone who quotes his speech accurately in context will be fired and/or face state punishment by the champions of free speech, do I have that right?

congratulations to charlie kirk on becoming a good fascist

This is my hot take but abolishing the filibuster by any means necessary needs to be prority #1. If Republicans do it to pass a shitty continuing resolution, it's win-win.

Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars. OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.

Never been more sure there is something awfully damning about Trump in the Epstein files. He's crashing out.

“The New York Times collaborated with a white nationalist eugenicist hacker and agreed to keep his identity a secret to publish a Zohran Mamdani hit piece” is a way bigger story than “18 year old Zohran Mamdani ticked ‘African American’ on his Columbia application because he was a citizen of Uganda”

posting this bc if I see one more doomer take im going to kill someone with hammers

Really getting a preview of what a world without universal injunctions could be like with the AEA litigation. It's not good!

tomorrow's my bday and as such kitsune tails in 25% off only on itch itch.io/s/152818/kit... not only that but if you pay a single extra dollar for the bundle you also get the prequel, kitsune zero!

My latest for @liberalcurrents.com We need to stop listening to commentators who spent a decade being arrogantly wrong about the fascist threat www.liberalcurrents.com/trump-alarmi...

I think Maine Governor Janet Mills had the correct response, "See you in court."

This post seems confused. If a shutdown *does* give the executive all of these powers... why did you vote for one? Did you want Musk and Trump to have sweeping powers to fire federal workers? This past is a defense of passing the CR but that's *not* what senator Whitehouse voted to do!

Maybe it's my own perception but it's crazy how much American political dysfunction is traceable to arcane procedural rules of the United States Senate.

I hope America is as lucky as the delta jet - everyone survives but the right wing explodes

A phrase I think we are going to hear a lot in the coming years: "arbitrary and capricious". www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/...

The measles outbreak in Texas is reminding me of the public letter Roald Dahl wrote about losing his daughter to measles in 1962, just before the vaccine was publicly available.

All the way from 1998! en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achievi...

Elon Musk claims it’s a crime to publish the names of the engineers who work for him who have access to systems they shouldn’t. Here they are: Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. Come and arrest me.

Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran

With alt text:

Reposting with alt text

As we learned in the Trump treason case Section 2 renders Section 1 of no effect beyond whatever laws Congress has already passed.

This is so crazy. 1). This is happening because people like Schumer voted in favor of it. He literally voted Yea on this outcome. 2). This is happening because of a bill passed by Congress. If you want more time, pass another bill! It is literally within Congress' authority to fix this!

LMAO. Elizabeth Prelogar just threw her phone across the room.

Enjoyed this. Different vibe than I got from reading a live skeet thread. Looking ahead, how does the 30% threshold play with a tailoring analysis? Seems arbitrary to me.

IANAL but aren't there obvious problems with tailoring if TX law subject to strict scrutiny? "We have a compelling interest in preventing minors from accessing porm which is why it's fine to show minors porn if your site is 29% porn by volume but not if it's 31%." Seems obv under inclusive?

Gotta get himself, Harris, Trump, Vance, Johnson, Grassley, and Blinken so we can get President Yellen.

"The government should be abiter of what information is restricted to adults."

Happy to be proven wrong on this, at least on the first ballot. Good job House Dems!

This. But also, the number of people treating this chatbot's output credulously is unreal.