Al Petterson

I know there's a lot going on but I feel it should probably be more of an above-the-fold story that members of Congress released a thoroughly documented report directly accusing the president of the United States of being a serial rapist.

These people don’t want to win; they don’t even want to persuade. They want a world where they are a pure and rarified elite, with none of the responsibilities of actual power, only the smug gratification of being right.

Trump is heckled for a third time at his speech in Mississippi: "SHOVE THAT BALLROOM UP YOUR FAT ASS!!"

How have I not ever seen this image with this comment before

One person legally entitled to vote, who is prevented from voting for any reason - time to reach the polls, lacking proper ID, line too long, poll lacking ballots, unclear ballot - Is *precisely as destructive* as one person not legally entitled to vote, who nevertheless has a vote counted.

I’m tired of being angry. I’m tired of being divided. I’m tired of cruelty being rewarded and decency being treated like weakness. I miss leaders who bring out the best in us… We deserve better than this. Now, go VOTE!! 😎🇺🇸✨

This is one of the most holy sh*t stories I’ve ever read in my life. www.vanityfair.com/story/jared-...

There was a fucking hole in our planet’s *atmosphere* Like a legit, no joke, “this will unravel our entire ecosystem” hole in the world, and then we fixed it by working together across national and political lines As a species we decided, “we will survive” Let’s do that some more

AI HR hiring AI candidates to do AI jobs selling AI products which are advertised on AI channels producing AI content for AI views to make AI stats go up. They won't even notice when the humans die out. That's the dead world aliens are one day going to find.

Also: absolutely losing it over Jake and Nog maturing and giving genuinely good romance advice to Ben Those boys are ALRIGHT

It's fucking wild how openly "trying to put a bandaid on oil before the midterms" is Trump's only goal and something he's using our nations armed forces to achieve and all the normal "uh you gotta respect the troops!" guys don't say anything about it

posted without context

I swear to god so much of this is literally just people confusing measles and chicken pox

"Loss of Congress will limit Trump's power, but by no means eliminate it. He will retain immense capacity to inflict destruction... At this point, anyone who says something like 'we should look forward, not back' is making it significantly less likely that we will have anything to look forward to."

yeah corporate pride posting is kinda bleh, and they won't have your back in the pinch, but what it means is the C suite execs think you are winning and/or must be placated

still trying to keep my november hopes in check but some of these republican candidates seem a little surprised they have to run an actual campaign and answer questions

my take on this remains consistent: far more americans are bigoted on this front than I'd like, but transphobia is a luxury belief it's the kind of thing you can get people mad about if and only if they don't have real problems to worry about, and there is no shortage of real problems right now

Not really what I want to admit in all cases, but there's very little that is not true here.

Ahem. As an engineer whose first professional job, in 1989, was development and marketing of a neural network simulator, I can be reasonably argued to have been among the regretful midwives present at the birth of this monster. The birth name of this technology is "dot products".

The problem isn't just him. He suggested the nation we're at war with could 'take out' Los Angeles or San Diego, and his crowd *cheered*. The problem isn't just him. That crowd wasn't American. I don't know what it was, but it wasn't American.

An opinion I’ve held for years that I don’t think I’ll ever change my mind on is that Americans have got to be one of the most propagandized populations in the world 

Urban homicides are at almost historic lows and still falling.

Deserves amplification

hot take: software people are going to regret not unionizing when we could

I love that the U.S. government now has ideas so dumb that the fact checks are simply “yeah this isn’t a parody, it’s real”

"Imagine being the dumbest senator from your state when the other one is Josh Hawley." - @stevehofstetter.bsky.social

As a former pretentious little shit who grew out of it, rationalists (et al) annoy the piss out of me because they are adults with the mentality of tweens - they are somehow still convinced they are the greatest geniuses who have ever walked the earth. It is the worldview of an arrogant baby.

By virtue of their needed expertise, engineers possess real power to determine the structure of much of everyday life To not understand that power within its political and historical context is to reduce oneself to a blind tool for use by whoever is willing to pay

A systematic, critical understanding of history, especially the long history of technically skilled people either being used by elites or being blinded by their own high modernist ideology to do incredible harm, should in my opinion be a requirement of any technocratic profession

fixation on vocational education is really a plague in this country. I would think especially in engineering, with technology accelerating, the ability to think. the ability to assess historical trends would actually be quite helpful vocationally. as well as making you a better human being.

Future utilitarians living in a solar punk utopia having anguished debates about the credit owed to President Trump for supercharging green transition.

And for the record, I don't think literal "apocalypse" is a likely outcome of either AI or CC, but the hyperfocus on that singular outcome in both realms makes far more plausible, and possibly still very bad, outcomes short of human extinction *more* likely, not less.

To a remarkable degree, it really does seem to be surfacing latent fears surrounding lack of control. I guess that makes the notion of "choosing your own apocalypse" appealing to many.

It's too depressing and obnoxious to write about, but virtually all of the doomy/horny AI hyperventilating is transparently displaced anxiety about our fucked climate and political situation. Even rich idiots know it's bad and being permitted to get worse. They're trying to write their own ending.

if you are merely a dilettante that’s not cutting it. gotta be a camp-out-for-the-premiere, platinum tier bigot to care more about 8th grade sports than $8 diesel

NEW: @apnews.com confirms that ICE has begun electronically "disappearing" people in the agency's custody who have final orders of removal. As of last week, anyone jailed by ICE with a final order of removal will NOT appear in the ICE Online Detainee Locator System, making them effectively vanish.

hi hello it is me "normal" guy in tech please go after the guys running my industry I am not alone, I promise you

The US already got a do over. A mulligan. A second chance. Much of the world, especially US allies, were ready to write off Trump’s first term as a fluke. The American people’s choice to put him back in power—as a convicted felon, after an openly bigoted, anti-democracy campaign—showed it was not.

this isn't "these guys are annoyed at regulation and if we tone it down they'll go back to being on our side" this is "elon is now the single biggest GOP donor and everyone else has had their brains cooked by group chats and have gone full fash"