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mozz

@mozz@mbin.grits.dev

"You know, you can't have sex with animals. You can own them. You can kill them. You can eat them. But you can't fuck them." -Bobby Fingers

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mozz , (edited )
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He constructed it a little cleverly: Said that if it was a Republican, they'd be in the electric chair. I don't think it was criminal.

Of course, he also openly tried to have his own vice president killed, and collects non-murder-related felonies like bottles for recycling, and at least so far all of that has been mostly okay of him to do, so I'm not sure how much it matters. 😕

mozz , (edited )
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Lessons in headline engineering

Another possible headline was "At Morehouse, Biden says dissent should be heard because democracy is 'still the way'" or another "Biden tells Morehouse graduates that scenes in Gaza from the Israel-Hamas war break his heart, too"

Outside of the ceremony, a small number of protestors gathered while the commencement itself did not see any major disruptions.

Last week, Morehouse College President David Thomas said he would rather halt proceedings than have students escorted away for protesting.

"If my choice is 20 people being arrested on national TV on the Morehouse campus, taken away in zip ties during our commencement, before we would reach that point, I would conclude the ceremony," he said on NPR's Weekend Edition.

But, none of that happened -- either halting the ceremony or tackling or pepper spraying any of the people who were draped in Palestinian flags or turning their chairs around.

DeAngelo Fletcher, Morehouse College's valedictorian, closed his address to his classmates by addressing global conflict, particularly the Israel-Hamas war.

"For the first time in our lives, we've heard the global community sing one harmonious song that transcends language and culture," he said. "It is my sense as a Morehouse Man, nay – as a human being – to call for an immediate and a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip."

IDK how much more pro Palestinian than that he got, and it sorta sounds like "both sides." But whatever. Anyway apparently Biden stood up and shook his hand after. Here's the whole video; Biden's part starts at around 1:43:30. Comparing the tenor of the thing if you take a look at it firsthand, against the tenor that's created from reading this particular headline, is a good little window on what they were trying to do by writing the headline that way (i.e. not to inform about what happened), and what ozma was trying to do by posting it here.

I don't actually think it matters all that much what anybody says about Gaza. Biden stopping the weapons shipments, pushing for an immediate cease fire and humanitarian aid, and supporting an ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu would be a good start. I think mostly this commencement speech is notable in that, hey look, (1) there was protest and it was ok (2) you can make things sound way different depending on which aspects you present in the media coverage.

mozz ,
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Tracy Morgan, too, has a very important message

mozz , (edited )
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I'm legitimately surprised that so few of the trolls have hit on the idea of coming in being fake pro-establishment. Like if there were more people here being super pro-Israel and doing the "Hamas is lying about casualties" "what on earth is Israel supposed to do, not defend themselves" talking points, to provide some justification for all the other trolls claiming that Lemmy is filled with pro-genocide-ers and they're just doing their part sticking up for the unrepresented Palestinian viewpoint -- I think if I were running an influence campaign I would probably sprinkle in some of those people, too.

I think "of course Joe Biden is dogshit, we all agree on that of course, but by God you better sit up and salute when he's around, signed, your friendly Lemmy authoritarian person, fuck the protestors" is a likely candidate for one of those. If this is genuinely how you look at it though, have you considered reaching out to some of the shills and seeing if maybe you can get paid for posting this stuff? I think this would be a good tactical addition to what they're doing.

mozz , (edited )
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Good for them. They're standing up for what they believe in, and I agree with them, and I definitely think that this type of thing has some impact on Biden's policies. Although at this rate, all the Palestinians will be dead before he works his way slowly and gradually around to the idea that maybe he'll have to do more than a sternly worded phone call with Netanyahu in order for the killing to stop.

You'll note that, because Biden bears little resemblance to the monstrous authoritarian caricature you try several times a day to paint him as, he and the college (who I'm sure talked with him about this exact issue, beforehand) both made no effort to "crack down" on them, and in fact he explicitly called out their protest as a good thing, during his speech.

(My point wasn't that the headline was a direct lie, but an example of engineering a single true fact by blowing it up and warping it to create a slanted picture of reality in the reader's mind. That's why I sent the full unedited video, as a way of contrasting it with a single event or a single picture taken from the perfect angle. I actually can't visit X video links since Elon fucked things up, but if you want to send me some non-X videos I'm happy to take a look at those, too.)

(Edit: Actually, I think the thing that they walked out as he gave his speech might be an actual lie. According to The New York Post, which seems to be the source for ozma's photo, it sounds to me like the students who left stayed through Biden's speech and then left during a later part when he was still on stage.)

mozz ,
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Don't forget, he also has a photo of 2 students facing away from Joe Biden and all the rest sitting facing the normal direction

mozz ,
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Ha ha ha, yeah it's (suddenly starts crying)

mozz , (edited )
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Hey, quick question unrelated to that obviously insane thing you just said: You posted a while back about how upset you were Joe Biden betrayed everyone, after he promised to decriminalize marijuana, and then didn't do it even though he could literally do it at any time he wanted and that's just one more example of him being shit. I listed out the things he had done (basically: federal pardons for possession, telling the DEA to reschedule it, and putting a decriminalization bill through congress), and then I asked you what else you would like him to do.

I think your post got removed as misinformation right after that, so I never got a chance to hear the answer. What else was it that you wanted him to do? That he could do literally any time, that you were upset that he betrayed everyone who voted for him by not doing?

Surely, since your goal is to push Biden left, not to just oppose him at every turn and make sure he doesn't get elected, you are interested in non-propaganda information and discussion on topics like this.

mozz , (edited )
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I don't think you're a Trumper/Republican because you don't support Genocide Joe. I think you're a Trumper/Republican because the way you don't support him doesn't make any fucking sense. You criticize him for things he objectively didn't do, and you offer no particular solutions that would seem to lead to a better outcome for those of us who live in the US and want it to do less killing here and abroad, and the only solution that you seem to offer -- refusing to vote for him and offering an endless drumbeat of propaganda about him -- has an excellent possibility of leading to a catastrophically worse outcome for everyone. Including Palestinians. And, you're so vocal and consistent in criticizing him -- and only him -- for such a big variety of things real and imagined that it's hard for me to take away any possible conclusion than that you're trying to make sure he doesn't get elected.

It's possible that you're simply a very confused leftist. IDK. But that's my take on it. I note, also, that the story linked to also explicitly contradicts the headline, in terms of when students left ("walked out") from the ceremony:

Several students walked out of the graduation ceremony while Biden was presented with an honorary degree following his speech, CNN reported.

So they stayed to listen to him speak, and then walked out in protest when he was done speaking? This is impossible, to me, to read as anything other than a deliberate propaganda construction built on people leaving to go to the bathroom or something. IDK, maybe I'm missing something.

(Edit: Also, when I said the protestors were awesome and it's good that they let them protest, because it's a message Biden needs to hear because he is wrong, and then you immediately pretended that I had said the opposite and started lecturing me about how legitimate it is to disagree with Biden, I honestly didn't even notice because I'm sorta numb to that kind of thing at this point.)

mozz ,
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I know that if I was a Palestine protestor, and President Biden was going to speak, and the college said that they would immediately just end the ceremony if things got too out of hand, I would immediately think "Well that definitely wouldn't be a good outcome. I better quiet down; I was going to have this big protest, but if it'll end the commencement ceremony entirely, then I won't, because that would attract some attention to the cause I'm trying to promote. It might make the news or something. I'm scared of that outcome and wouldn't want it to happen; that threat is effective."

Your conclusion makes perfect sense that the crowd was mostly filled with people who were seething with contempt for Joe Biden, but cowed into obedient sitting-facing-towards-him by the threat that if they made too much ruckus, it would successfully disrupt the event.

mozz ,
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I sorta had a feeling you wouldn't make even the slightest effort to defend that bullshit you had said.

politicians are not your friends

No, politicians are not at all your friends. What you mean when you say "support" for Biden or that Biden betrayed us, or that thing shills sometimes say about "falling in line behind" the Democrats and how they don't want to do it, is very weird to me.

Nobody in politics is your friend. The government is just a big, corrupt, very dangerous machine. It runs on money and propaganda and defense contractors, and sometimes good things come out of it and sometimes bad things, and Biden is one little cog in that machine. That's why I'm comfortable saying good things that Biden did, or that he's doing a very bad thing by enabling a genocide -- I'm not viewing either of those as a statement of my "allegiance." It's just, like, hey I am a free person and here is how I am viewing the world and what the truth is.

Ralph Nader did an excellent interview talking about productive ways to push the Democrats to the left, and how upset he was at Democratic voters who were throwing away an opportunity to get some concessions from the Biden administration in exchange for their vote. His viewpoint makes a ton of sense to me.

Your viewpoint -- sort of based on emotion, this sort of teenager mentality like "YOU'RE DEAD TO ME NOW I'LL CALL UNCLE TRUMP TO COME OVER AND BURN THE HOUSE DOWN BECAUSE WHO CARES YOU BROKE MY HEART" coupled with a lot of the sins you're accusing him of actually being things he didn't do, is just weird. Like, if you want to push Biden left, fuckin go for it man. Sounds great. But if you've decided that if Trump comes to power and nukes Iran and makes being gay illegal and puts all the Hispanics in camps and cancels the next election, that's just the price the country will pay because Biden said this wrong thing about racism and it was so hurtful to you and he's definitely a bad person and that good person / bad person is even relevant to how to vote, then okay sure. I won't tell you not to. But I don't think you should pretend that I'm the one treating my politicians in a strange parasocial non sensible way.

mozz , (edited )
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Back in the Clinton/Bush era 20 years ago when he said that, I actually think it made quite a bit of sense. The Democrats were a lot more corporate-friendly (dropping corporate tax instead of raising it like Biden did, boosting the WTO instead of telling them to go fuck themselves like Biden did), and the Republicans weren't trying to kill their political opponents or put minority groups into literal concentration camps.

I'm not even gonna comment on "'they' keep scrubbing it from YouTube."

mozz , (edited )
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Yeah. It's a big shame. I read Lawrence O'Donnell's book about 1968. It's so fucking sad. I couldn't finish.

And then, even with all the justification all the progressives had for quitting from the political system -- basically on par with if the US was directly sending 19-year-old US citizens over to Gaza and having them blow up hospitals and get their balls shot off, or if Biden himself were approving of the brutalizing of protestors, like sending them to the hospital with nightstick fractures and covered in blood, not "just" pepper spraying them and putting cuffs on them -- I feel like you can draw this absolutely direct line from 1968 and the disillusionment that stemmed from it into the grim nightmare politics that took over in America, because only the assholes were still voting, from Nixon to Reagan to Clinton until now we have just a wreckage of a system that someone from the 60s wouldn't even recognize.

Basically I feel like 2016 was a repetition of that same betrayal, and I'm really hoping that 2024 isn't a repetition of the same fascist takeover that's enabled by it, because now we're much much closer to the edge. Daniel Ellsberg said that all the things Nixon did to him that formed one piece of his collapse and fall when they came to light, they're all legal now.

mozz , (edited )
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I notice that this conversation has a very particular type of flow -- Innuendo Studios talked about this in Never Play Defense.

Actually, I went back and looked at it's significantly worse than the example the video constructs. The video's example was dishonest, but the exchange was actually pretty coherent. I think this message is a particularly strong example of the flow you've been doing -- where I say the protestors are right and I'm glad that Biden is letting them speak and hope he will take their message on board because what he's doing right now is wrong, and then you get all hostile while lecturing me that not everyone who disagrees with Biden is a Republican. The Republicans in the video are never bad-faith to that comical a level, although the overall flow of "wild new assertion / coherent response / repeat" is pretty similar.

mozz ,
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Chin up boyo! You said you were gonna keep doing this all the way until the election. That's like 6 more months, you can't get all downhearted about it already just about some messages explaining why this one was bullshit too.

mozz , (edited )
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I can't open X links; I'm on Firefox and it's fucked on Firefox now and I don't really feel like hopping around on browsers just to keep Elon Musk happy. I'm happy to look at it if you can find it somewhere else. I did search for the quote and I didn't find anything.

You wanna address the thing with the second part of the headline, though? Because I'm not real sure I trust "freedomrideblog" on Twitter and I would want to know more details about how Biden's campaign is using the speech, and all that, but it definitely looks like part of the headline you posted was objectively a lie. No?

mozz ,
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You wanna address the thing with the second part of the headline, though?

mozz ,
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So we're moving goalposts and just straight-up refusing to answer a simple question about why it seems like the thing you posted was not just misleadingingly framed, but actually false. Sounds good.

I do understand that I haven't been real polite to you and it creates a certain pressure to "get a win" by making some kind of counterpoint. Mission accomplished, I guess. Biden did actually give the speech he was invited to give, even though he's also campaigning and that makes things more complicated in some ways. It's true. You caught him.

mozz , (edited )
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This is the problem with "ism"s. At whatever point you decide that philosophy X is the answer to everything, you start being wrong about a lot of the world, because whatever it is, there's at least like 30% of situations (and potentially a lot more) that your particular ism actually isn't the answer to.

Libertarianism or anti-imperialism or ACAB or socialism or pro-the-Democrats or anarchist or whatever it is, it's never always the answer. Trying to hold a debate about, well is it philosophy X or philosophy Y that's always right about everything, or any other discussion that feeds into the basic wrong premise, is just compounding the imaginary non-situation-dependent way of looking at it.

Although yes some of them are wrong a lot more of the time than some others.

mozz ,
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It’s a bold strategy

mozz ,
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You got:

  1. Ukraine actually attacked Russia, not the other way around
  2. It's all the West's fault our country fell apart and all our former colonies hate us

But you forgot:

  1. Russia is winning! Basically already won
  2. Ukraine = Nazis, therefore Russia = good guys, QED
  3. The sanctions aren't working, Russia's doing great
  4. No YOU shut up
  5. Russia wants peace, we keep having these peace talks where we say let us keep what we already stole and stop shooting us please until next time we feel like taking more, and our perfectly reasonable proposals get met with such rudeness you wouldn't believe, WESTERN SABOTAGE

I can tell these jokes because the US aid package came through. It's definitely not a simple thing and I'm not trying to make light of dying people, but I'm okay with making light of transparent bullshit

mozz , (edited )
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They took the guy who led the legendary team that made the search not only work instantly at a previously unimaginable scale, but also freakishly well as far as "finding exactly what you want based on almost any query," back in the late 2000s, if you remember... that guy, when he started pushing back against the people who wanted to fuck up search results to boost imaginary metrics that were theoretically (and, probably, not really) going to make more money from ads, they pushed him out.

This absolutely excellent article goes into detail about the exact moment, if you had to pick one, when Google stopped being a legendary tech company and simply became yet another behemoth coasting on its past successes until the market changes under it and it can't adapt, fades, and takes its place with all the others, all the way back to IBM and DEC. Nothing's changed in a big enough way for it to get knocked back into that obscurity yet, but it clearly will at some point.

mozz , (edited )
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Idaho?

Prediction: Literally everything they are complaining about, will be an instance where they're unhappy about the will of the majority of Oregonians

Brb

Edit: Yeah pretty much

Crook county voted for Donald Trump, a Republican governor, against decriminalising drugs and against restrictions on gun ownership. The state went the other way every time.

Fuckin' democracy

They want to get rid of agriculture

you need to drive an electric car

Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that my government would say, ‘You can’t go to church.’”

IDK, man. I do kind of get it; I think the underlying complaint is probably more just that no one likes feeling like everyone in their community looks at it one way, and there's a force from outside preventing them from doing it that way when they mostly want to (like drug legalization, or having to wear masks or closing churches during Covid). That part honestly does make some sense to me.

I'd be curious how much is some real agriculture or legislative issue where they actually were being overridden, and how much is culture-war bullshit that doesn't impact their daily lives in any way except when they see it on the propaganda-news that's trying to get them all riled up. But I had more sympathy reading about it than I thought I would.

mozz OP ,
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How would I feel about people who are not LBGT+ but claim to care deeply and powerfully about them, so much so that they're advocating for Mike Pence to be in charge of the country, because Biden was okay with "Don't Ask Don't Tell" back in the 1990s and so clearly he's just as bad (or whatever the argument is)?

How would I feel about an LBGT+ person speaking up, in that situation, saying hey please don't do that, I don't like it at all, that actually will make me unsafe in a terrifying way? I would feel like, hey I think I should amplify that person's voice on the issue.

And so, that's why we're here in this post. Hello! Good to meet you.

mozz OP ,
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Honestly, you can either understand the plain and simple English of what the Palestinian person said that I then linked to, or you can't. If you can't, then it's probably not my place to try to break it down for you, and my effort to do regardless hasn't been working anyway.

So, good luck with your political advocacy. Cheers.

mozz OP ,
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Giving criticism and resistance to the genocide I'm very in favor of; maybe that wasn't clear so far. Taking the leap into "and that's why we don't need to keep Trump out of power anymore" is the only portion of it that starts to confuse and alarm me.

To your point - can we verify that all of the people saying it's very important not to vote, for the sake of the Palestinian people, are being genuine about where they live and their background and motivations?

'Cause I have some questions about some of that shit, if we're doin' verifying.

mozz ,
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Who among us has not been the horse, at one point or another

mozz ,
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How did the police go insane?

They shut down traffic to work a fatal accident, he ignored a detective who told him to stop, something happened that led to the guy getting dragged for 30 feet and sent to the hospital with minor injuries, so they arrested him and from the only video I was able to see they were walking pretty calmly with him during the arrest. Once they realized who he was, they let him out of jail in time to play golf, but he's still facing some charges.

Am I missing context where something crazy happened? That all sounds pretty straightforward.

(Aside from the conservative person being shocked and appalled that a wealthy golf player with a little white-person smirk on his face is being subjected to the rule of law as if he was one of the poors, that part I can agree is pretty funny.)

mozz ,
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IDK man. I'm having trouble coming up with a scenario where the police just decided out of nowhere "Fuck this PGA vehicle, I hate it now! And will arrest the driver for no reason" when the driver was just following all their instructions exactly and all of a sudden the cops all got angry and it was all very confusing (which was more or less Scheffler's version.)

I also note that Scheffler and his attorney didn't say anything that sounded like "nobody got dragged by his vehicle, that part didn't happen" or anything that directly contradicted what the cops said. He just said that when it happened it was confusing and scary.

I'm happy to wait for the bodycam footage too, though. Presumably we'll be able to see exactly what happened during the critical events.

mozz ,
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See this is why I don't like ACAB. Once you start taking this cartoonish version of any given type of people, you start looking at things in this really skewed perspective. People could be good or bad or a mix of both or whatever, sure, but once they're "the enemy" and everything they do is stupid and evil and wrong, the kinds of things you start thinking are plausible start to become off kilter.

I think there is about a 0% chance that the cop just didn't say a word and ran up to the car with his gun out and started trying to break in like a crazy person, and that was the first thing that happened. Maybe it's 100% true that the cops miscommunicated and one guy had told Scheffler to go, and another then told him to stop, or something like that, but I'm still real curious about this blank space between "He was proceeding as directed by another traffic officer" and then there being a cop attached to the outside of the car and Scheffler still moving the car forward and it being a "chaotic scene."

I mean, he stopped after 30 feet, instead of continuing on his merry way through their accident scene or whatever. Sounds like if what happened was the cop grabbing the car and not letting go, then his strategy worked. My bet would be that the bodycam video will show some other less chaotic things they tried to do to get him to stop, as a first step, and the majority of the chaos stemming directly from Scheffler's actions. IDK, maybe not and maybe it's silly to talk about what the video will show before seeing it, but that is my feeling.

mozz , (edited )
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Part of the point is that they were working a fatal accident. There could have been medical people walking around in unexpected places, or still a body in the road he could run over, or who knows what. If he was driving towards the road that was closed for that reason, then absolutely yes; physically stopping the car if the guy isn't responding to verbally stopping the car is part of the cop's job, not just letting him go and good luck to anyone walking around in the accident scene. (I don't really know, so maybe it wasn't that, but also as far as I know maybe it was.)

It's actually really common that cops have trouble getting people to understand that there's some urgent physical reality that overrides their "but my house is right there" or "but I have to get to work" or "I'm too important to have to stop" argument that in their mind is way more important, and so they need to be able to drive right through the place with the gun battle or the dead body or the downed electrical wires, or whatever.

mozz ,
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IDK what's up with Jared Bernstein or why he apparently fucked up trying to answer a question from Stephanie Kelton's documentary.

But the other half of the claim this story is making is that Janet Yellen "gets basic econ wrong" because she doesn't like supply side economics.

Yellen also claims that “trickle down tax cuts” don’t fuel economic growth and only benefit the wealthy. Yellen is attacking Supply Side Economics, which economists have embraced for centuries. Statistics prove the economists’ version of Supply Side Economics.

Secretary Yellen gave a speech in Kentucky recently. Yellen announced that the Biden administration will implement what she refers to as Modern Supply Side Economics. This so called modern theory is really just a rehash of what economists refer to as “industrial policy”, mixed with investment in infrastructure. The traditional industrial policy favored by the Biden administration has a dismal track record globally.

Does it, though?

The big complaint that according to them goes against what economists have embraced for centuries, is that Janet Yellen wants to invest in infrastructure, instead of giving more money to the wealthiest people and then it'll trickle down?

All economists know that supply side effects of tax cuts really exist, we just disagree over the strength of these effects. Yellen is playing like a trick here. Some Republican politicians have exaggerated supply side effects of tax cuts, by claiming that their tax cuts will produce overnight miracles. Harvard economist Martin Feldstein pointed out the difference between statistically proven Supply Side Economics and the disproven politicized version of Supply Side Economics decades ago. Yellen surely knows all of this. Yellen is guilty of using the Strawman Fallacy to dismiss a sound alternative to Biden’s absurd industrial policies.

I don't have time to dig up the chart decade by decade of every single economic metric affecting both macro-scale economic well being, and individual well being for working people, and showing that during times of tax cuts for the wealthy every single one of them gets worse and during times of taxing the wealthy to fund doing other things with the money they all tend to get better, but that's what happens. It's almost comical how strong the correlation is and how universally it impacts every single metric.

mozz ,
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Dude what the HECK lol. You gotta subtle it up my man.

You gotta say something along the lines of, no I'm just a good concerned native English speaker citizen of the United States and I feel like both sides are sliding into fascism and just, Biden's so old, and anyway what about Gaza, and I'm so concerned and turned off from politics in general, I mean I don't feel like it matters, blue MAGA, amirite, etc etc and so on stuff like that.

If you lead off right away with kakistocracy democratic Marxism social justice you're gonna get all these Lemmy people saying fuck yeah Marxism let's get some Marxism and social justice up in here, but you're wrong tho Biden WISHES he was a Marxist, anyway viva la revolución

mozz , (edited )
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Dude, just don't say anything

Bringing your wife (or for some reason your neighbor apparently) into it is going to be good for no one

I have no idea whether Alito actually wants to overthrow our democracy and affirmatively decided to promote a symbol of his desire to do so. But I just know tactically that unless the explanation is simple and straightforward, which in this case it isn't, him trying to explain any of the details is a mistake

(Side note: I absolutely love that the US still is set up so that even if your neighbor is a Supreme Court justice you can walk over and call them a cunt and it's okay. Rand Paul's neighbor punched him in the face and apparently that was okay, too. You don't have to treat them special just because they've got this special job. I'm not kidding; I think that's awesome.)

Edit: I am wrong, Rand Paul's neighbor got a felony and is facing maybe 10 years. I'm assuming that calling Alito a cunt was still allowed.

mozz , (edited )
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I love that some of these politicians are assholes on a personal level about things like the leaves on the street or whatever the Rand Paul issue was, and that their neighbors feel empowered to deal with it on a purely interpersonal level. I'm not kidding. I can't stop talking about how much I like that the political system in the US is that way.

I think -- I'm being dead serious -- that in the vast majority of countries, if you punched a politician for a reason of pure interpersonal conflict and nothing related to politics, the police and courts would make it a huge deal, because that is a special type of person you're supposed to honor the better-than-you-ness of.

Edit: I am wrong, dude got a felony and is facing maybe 10 years

mozz ,
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God damn it

mozz ,
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So, I saw this story and I typed a comment about how it was pretty much guaranteed (given Musk's cutting of the engineering department and the scale of Twitter's operation) that this would cause some slight amount of breakage for the forseeable future, and the unfixable and unflattering nature of the ensuing jank would be the nail in the coffin for Twitter (which for some reason still is home to a lot of journalists and primary sources and etc even to this day in its wrecked-up form).

Then I thought, you know what, I don't actually know that that's how it'll happen, and deleted the comment and moved on with my day.

And then just now I just tried to click on a Twitter link, and saw a black page with this:

Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot.

(Button: "Try Again")

⚠️ Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection (Strict Mode) is known to cause issues on x.com

Oh shit, it must be Firefox's fault! Yeah, must be causing issues. My bad man, you're right; I guess I will need to switch browsers now so I can have the privilege of using Twitter.

mozz ,
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The gambit left him little choice but to immediately accept when the Biden campaign offered debate dates in June and September

I think this is vastly understating how prominently placed is total transparent bullshit, in the Trump mental model, and how willing his followers are to it

He can simply pretend that October 2nd is the real debate, and Biden is the one trying to back out because he’s too old and scared to debate Trump. If his followers also watched news with some connection to reality, and cross checked Trump’s pretenses against it, then they’d see the lie, but they don’t and they won’t.

mozz ,
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If he doesn't show up, Biden should call Trump direct on his cell phone with a spoofed number from one of Trump's associates, and then ask him live on air why he's not at the debate, and offer to have the debate right then and there with Trump on speaker.

If you're gonna be in charge of the USA's intelligence apparatus, and your opponent is okay with weaponizing the power of that exact same apparatus against you when they feel like it, I think you should be allowed to flex with it just a little bit from time to time.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Not even that complicated; just invite a religious scholar to explain what Jesus said, starting with caring for hungry people and immigrants and in general literally just what he taught and what he cared about

They'll shut that shit down like a female student with unpermitted clothing

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Yeah, maybe so. I'm sorta just playing devil's advocate. My point wasn't that Russia isn't a terrorist state which is visiting pointless destruction on the world at large in a stupid and dangerous way, more that the US has also roamed around the world killing innocent people for a variety of reasons, and we still get to go the Olympics and everything.

(I mean I'm not saying they're the same, and I kind of like that Russia got excluded from some of the friendly people's clubs when they started behaving like a rabid dog. Just, I'm saying maybe extending an olive branch every now and then is okay.)

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Yeah.

Russia invades Ukraine and bombs apartment buildings, it's like hey WTF those are perfectly innocent people

Israel turns the whole of Gaza into a wasteland of corpses and famine and it's like well of course, they're seeing to their security situation, as any country would, here's some bombs my loving brother

I don't think Israel should be allowed at the Olympics either, FWIW

mozz , (edited )
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

But the fire will also incinerate my tent

I don't think that's the answer, although I get the sentiment

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Haha all good

And a moderately sized fire every now and then is ok, I think

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Working in tech support be like

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Yeah. You would have had to triangulate your way around to getting the information that is exactly the information that you knew already that it was.

"Sir, I need you to go to the oil that you used and check if it is non-hydrogenated or hydrogenated. It should be printed on the back of the label."

"What do you mean, I never had this problem before"

"Yes, I'm aware, they have changed the oil constitution recently. I'll be able to resolve this problem for you, I just need to know if the oil is hydrogenated or not."

"I don't see what that has to do with anything"

"Can you just check the back of the bottle, please? Then I'm sure we'll be able to get your recipe working again"

"Okay, well I didn't actually use oil, I used toothpaste because it was expired and I wanted to get rid of it"

"Aha! Okay, I understand sir. I'm glad we were able to get to the bottom of the issue you're having. So, if you make the recipe with toothpaste, it definitely won't taste the same or have a good consistency. I think if you switch back to using oil you'll find that the pancakes still taste the same as they used to"

"But I think I should be able to use toothpaste."

"Absolutely. Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

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