BertramDitore, 4 days ago

The Onion was recently bought, and the new CEO is a well-regarded former disinformation reporter. Literally a journalist who reported on fake news, is now running the world’s preeminent fake newspaper. Only the Onion could make that work. There have been some great interviews with the new CEO, he seems to really give a shit about the company.

To run Global Tetrahedron as CEO, Lawson hired Ben Collins, formerly senior reporter at NBC News covering “disinformation, extremism and the internet.”

“My friends and I now own and run The Onion. I’ll be the CEO,” Collins posted on X. “We’re keeping the entire staff, bringing back The Onion News Network, and sharing the wealth with staff. Basically, we’re going to let them do whatever they want. Get excited.”

BertramDitore, 4 days ago

Wow, these extremists are getting really good at talking out of both sides of their mouths.

Catholics and evangelicals appear to be increasingly “putting aside theological differences in order to bond together so that they can push back against the creeping, secular humanism that is happening in America.”

And yet, in one of the recent Rolling Stone pieces about Alito, he was caught on tape essentially saying seculars and religious nuts can’t live in peace, one side has to win out.

Justice Samuel Alito spoke candidly about the ideological battle between the left and the right — discussing the difficulty of living “peacefully” with ideological opponents in the face of “fundamental” differences that “can’t be compromised.” He endorsed what his interlocutor described as a necessary fight to “return our country to a place of godliness.”

So it’s okay for different sects of Christians who disagree on a lot to band together to fight against secularism, but god forbid the same grace is extended to seculars to live in peace with Christian nuts (puns intended).

As a Jewish atheist, I’m flabbergasted. I’m clearly not welcome here according to any of these assholes.

BertramDitore, 4 days ago

Well said. Fat lot of good the “Never again” mantra did…

BertramDitore, 4 days ago

….Chuckles nervously……

True that.

BertramDitore, 10 days ago

I mean…

If the government can take away the right to basic reproductive healthcare for half the population, there’s no reason they couldn’t do it for the other half. They likely wouldn’t, because the right wingers obviously believe men deserve more rights than women, but let’s not underestimate the government’s capacity for making terrible policy in furtherance of some fantastical pseudo-purity culture that only exists in their minds.

Oh, I see your edit now. You meant they can’t take it away after they’ve already had one. True that.

BertramDitore, 11 days ago

Yeah I loved his whole arc. He was a well rounded and fully developed character. I started off hating him when he first showed up, but ended up sympathizing with him hard as he redeemed himself.

BertramDitore, 11 days ago

I agree her behavior is abhorrent and she needs to feel some consequences, and I totally understand your sentiment, but violence isn’t going to help, nor will violent language. That’s what they do. We need to stay above reproach when it comes to threatening political violence. Just about anything short of violence is okay in my book. Civil disobedience? Absolutely. Sustained protest? Yes please. Harm to property? All good with me. But threats of personal violence need to stay off limits.

Dems need to grow spines and be more willing to fight dirty politically. They need to take some pages from the right wing book, but leave all the chapters about violence unread.

I don’t mean this to antagonize you, I totally get what you’re feeling, but I’m just really worried about this place and where we’re headed.

BertramDitore, 15 days ago

It’s a very short piece, but the gist is that the noise Trump is making about the guilty verdict is proportional to his level of fear about the potential consequences. But that ultimately his supporters have already decided that they prefer him over our justice system.

BertramDitore, 15 days ago

We need to call him a rapist as often as possible. He has done some truly awful shit, but on a basic human level I think this is the worst. He was found by a court of law to have raped a woman. And based on Stormy Daniel’s latest account of their weird consensual sex, Carroll was almost certainly not the only person he raped.

He is an adjudicated rapist.

BertramDitore, 16 days ago

Ugh I don’t miss that fool. He’s apparently writing fiction now…

BertramDitore, 17 days ago

Well then, it’s time to start impeachment proceedings. I know we wouldn’t actually succeed at impeaching him, but it’s still a fight worth having. As of now, only a few dems have spoken out about this with any passion or substance. Their lack of urgency is incredibly frustrating.

They can’t use the “impeachment would be a partisan issue” excuse. It’s nonpartisan to want our Supreme Court to be nonpartisan.

You can’t win a fight if you never start it.

BertramDitore, 17 days ago

That’s right. The Supreme Court’s legitimacy comes from our collective acceptance of their legitimacy. It’s a bit circular, but they stop being legitimate once we stop seeing them as legitimate. They have no enforcement mechanism.

I guess it would take multiple blue states blatantly disregarding their rulings to effectively send that message.

BertramDitore, 22 days ago

That is such a wholesome and lovely thing to hope for.

BertramDitore, 22 days ago

Leaving aside the traitorousness of it all, this man owns two houses, that I know of. I can barely afford my rent with a solid 60K salary. Justices’ salaries are over $300K a year. Is that really enough to buy two houses these days? Or is something else fishy going on here?

BertramDitore, 24 days ago

I’ll be honest, I fell for it. I thought I had my naivete under control, but man she was convincing to me.

I really didn’t think she would endorse him. Didn’t think she’d endorse Biden either, let’s not be ridiculous. But still. I’m embarrassed that I’m disappointed in her.

BertramDitore, 23 days ago

Charlemagne has a massive audience and significant influence over a ton of people. It matters because he matters to a whole lot of people, many of whom are underrepresented.

BertramDitore, 24 days ago

That was a great piece, it lays out most of Alito’s bullshit and his blatant disrespect for all of us. This man hates us, primarily the women among us, but he has obvious disdain for anyone who isn’t a card-carrying maga asshat.

This really drives it home:

Samuel Alito is one of the worst judges of his generation. He rejects the very basic idea that courts must decide cases based on the law, and not based on their partisan views. He routinely embarrasses himself in oral arguments, and in his published opinions, with legal reasoning that no sensible lawyer can take seriously. And he even tries to distort public debate and silence critics.

BertramDitore, 26 days ago

Sorcery!

But for real, I’ve never heard of the yolk dehydration method, definitely going to try that.

BertramDitore, 26 days ago

This is important. Our system is so fucked that the only votes that matter are a few thousand people in a few swing states.

Let that sink in for a minute. A few thousand people, in a country of 340 million, will decide if we have a boring, mildly effective hypocrite as president or a raging racist rapist bent on our collective destruction. I’m not telling people to stay home, every single person who is able, should vote for Biden. But 99% of our presidential votes are meaningless.

The electoral college has got to go. Reminder that the last republican to win the popular vote in a presidential election was George W. Bush in 2004, and that was almost certainly because of 9/11. Extreme right-wing ideas are not popular with the majority of Americans, but the system is set up so the crazies get to grab power anyway. Minority rule is the antithesis of what this place is supposed to be about.

BertramDitore, 29 days ago

The article could have ended after the very first sentence.

Art is subjective.

BertramDitore, 29 days ago (edited 29 days ago)

If you haven’t already, I recommend everyone listen to the audio of some Supreme Court arguments. Sure they’re usually dry and boring, but they’re also a great way to hear for yourself what an absolute dick this guy is. He regularly parrots Fox News talking points, treats his colleagues and the solicitors with utter contempt, and asks disingenuous and misdirecting questions to hide his true intent.

He’s also wildly inconsistent from case to case, making arguments that he himself had argued against in other cases. He’s not a real judge, in the definitional sense, because he doesn’t apply the law consistently or impartially.

He’s a venal, spiteful, misogynistic, vengeful piece of shit who doesn’t respect the people he has such inordinate power over. Very few public figures make me as viscerally angry as Alito does.

Edit: here’s a link to all the audio

BertramDitore, 29 days ago

True that. It is genuinely horrifying that the attempted rapist is only the third worst man on the court.

BertramDitore, 29 days ago

I never thought much about why Thomas didn’t ask any questions for all that time, but that makes so much sense! Damn. Also helps explain his ridiculous corruption. He was never going to change his mind, plus his job isn’t bound by any ethical standards, oh and his job is for life. So he might as well milk it for all its worth, I guess because his feeling were hurt after nearly coming close to losing his nomination for being a sexual harasser? So pathetic.

BertramDitore, 30 days ago

There is nothing more attractive to me than a dominating, independent, secure woman who’s smarter than me.

Ugh it’s too early for me to be this wound up.

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

Leaving aside the fact that this is about the UK, I’ll take a crack at this. Many large colleges in the US have what’s called an endowment, which is essentially a massive pot of money that they can’t spend, but can invest. I think they typically can spend the interest that the endowment accrues, so they invest it so it grows. Many of the Ivy League schools have endowments worth multiple billions of dollars. It’s a very strange system.

I could be wrong on some of the finer points, so folks can feel free to correct me.

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

DO YA REALLY WANNA DO YA REALLY WANNA TASTE IIIIT!

I just watched it twice in a row, thank you very much.

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

Yeah I can’t tell with them anymore either, so I’ve stopped reading the nytimes entirely. It’s a shame. There are still a few reporters I respect over there, but it’s not enough for me to keep wading through all the bullshit.

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

They really deserved this. That series was exceptional. I’d call it the gold standard of investigative journalism.

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

That show was so ahead of its time! It had depth, complicated characters, and didn’t shy away from exploring situations with questionable morality. I didn’t know Frakes was involved!!

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

Holy shit! You’ve blown my mind. Guess I watched Gargoyles before I knew much about Star Trek actors.

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

Fully agree. This edutainment disclaimer also applies when it comes to explanations of archaeological sites and the “daily life” of ancient populations. The stories the public hears are based on the best understanding of complex interpretations of ceramics, surface features, architecture, stratigraphy, etc. You could ask two equally talented archaeologists to interpret a site and get two equally convincing but completely different explanations. We just can’t know any of this for sure, it’s all filtered through the lens of the researcher, their methods, and their biases. And that’s okay. The best we can do is apply the most relevant and current methodology to interpret the evidence, be transparent about potential shortcomings, and be willing to change our conclusions if better evidence arises.

Lots of people are uncomfortable with “that’s just our best possible guess at the moment,” but that’s how interpretive social sciences work. Until we invent a time machine, educated guesses based on all the available evidence are the best we can do.

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

I’m not French, and my opinion is based on pretty much nothing but a smattering of headlines, but I really dislike Macron. He strikes me as an opportunistic little boy trying to make everyone happy while pissing off his parents (the French electorate) at nearly every turn. He tries to push his way into the global spotlight by meeting with Putin and Xi and thinks he looks like some neutral peacemaker, but we never really see any results other than a small boost to his profile.

Maybe I’m totally wrong, like I said I’m just a spectator. Maybe it’s just his face.

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

I definitely smell the McKinsey stench now that you mention it.

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

I appreciate the pushback, I really do want to get a more well-rounded sense of Macron and his popularity.

I don’t usually like LLM summaries as a general rule, but since my opinions were admittedly based on vibes and not much substance, this might be a good use for it.

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

Yeah I’ve always been surprised that court fines aren’t on a sliding scale. Us normals shouldn’t be expected to have access to large amounts of money to pay fees or fines, but as the right consequence should have to pay enough to feel it without totally ruining our lives. The wealthy should have to pay enough relative to their net worth so they feel it at the same level.

$1000 a day is a massive life-ruining expense for most people, so for Trump it should be more like $100,000 or even $1 million a day if it’s actually supposed to disincentivize violating a court order.

But that sounds too fair for America, so I doubt we’ll ever see it.

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

A reminder that the US is not a member of the ICC and does not recognize its authority.

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

Mmm I love bok choy. Hot and fast is my preferred method. Get a quick char going and you’re done.

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

The Israeli government consistently lies about these things, so the US position is facially absurd. The only reason you’d be against an investigation into an atrocity is if you didn’t want people to find out what actually happened.

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

Ugh it seems like it. The article is also listed under the “five-alarm fire” category, which no, it’s not that. I hate all these meaningless buzzy words.

It’s basically “Five-alarm fire after Liz Cheney nukes the Supreme Court.” But, like, why?? Why the hell use words that don’t mean what they say? Especially when the actual meanings of those words are so specific and extreme?

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

For someone as apparently intelligent as Mark, it’s amazing how stupid he is.

It doesn’t matter what you do or say, Mark, I will never buy something produced by or associated with Meta. Don’t care how groundbreaking or revolutionary it might be.

I see you, Mark. I’ve watched how you operate for the last 20 years, Mark. I’ll never give you a cent.

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

I feel you, and part of the reason we don’t have access to cheaper and better options is because of Meta’s monopolistic instinct. They bought oculus, which had been actively innovating, instead of competing with them and strengthening the market by developing their own product. It’s not like they didn’t have the money.

I don’t fault anyone for buying their stuff if it’s cool, my stand is purely a stubborn one at this point. I just won’t touch Meta with a ten foot pole.

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

Two Thousand Billion is not a number I’m capable of conceptualizing.

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

Yup, it is. I can’t really conceptualize a thousand billions or a trillion, though. These are not numbers that translate to reality in any practical way for me.

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

The attorneys general said they object to the Biden administration’s use of Title VI to “advance what it calls ‘environmental justice,’” and complained that the EPA aims to create “a condition in which no racially or economically defined group experiences adverse environmental impacts.”

And why is that bad? EPA’s whole purpose is to regulate industry so no one experiences adverse environmental impacts. They often don’t get it right, but they’re doing more than most. I don’t understand why these AGs and governors hate their constituents so much.

BertramDitore, 1 month ago

Same. This is why words matter, and sensational headlines do more harm than good. I always feel like I’m screaming into the void on this point. Headlines should not have cute puns or misleading language. They should be simple and direct. We need words to mean what they mean, especially in times like this. No more slamming, slicing, bleeding, or flaming unless those things actually happened.

BertramDitore, 2 months ago

It most-likely won’t be the thing that ends the war, but it does add to the pressure on Biden. The pressure is now coming from so many different directions, that if he doesn’t act soon he’ll be in serious political peril, which means American democracy could be nearing its end.

With stakes that high and tens of thousands of dead children, every bit of extra pressure helps.

BertramDitore, 2 months ago

As a descendant of Jewish victims and survivors of the Holocaust, aside from all the dead children and innocents in Gaza, this is the thing that bothers me most. I am not Israeli, but I am deeply ashamed of any Jew who thinks this genocide is okay or can be justified for any reason.

BertramDitore, 2 months ago

I was happily chomping away on my massive Tony’s chocolate bar during that episode. When he started the main segment, I sheepishly put it down and vowed to never buy chocolate again. Then he got to the part about Tony’s being one of the only ethical brands and I glanced at the half-eaten bar with relief and gladly scarfed down the rest. It’s nice when you don’t inadvertently support slavery.