Fils de Cœur de Lion

"Moving towards the center" on any issue of human rights is, mathematically, moving away from human rights.

The hyenas were going to eat Scar sooner or later, Simba returning just accelerated things a bit.

It's really tough to be in higher ed when two existential threats of fascism and AI are hitting at the same time. Either one is overwhelming on its own. We just want to teach and do science and scholarship to expand human knowledge. And they are trying to make that impossible.

What increasingly keeps me up at night is that Trump's pattern of "If I can't have it, I will destroy it" likely applies to the whole world.

The Trump regime isn't just evil. They are anti-good. They actively go out of their way to punish those seeking to do good. That's a new level of depravity that I can't think of a historical comparison for. Plenty of regimes have been far more murderous, but none this spiteful or petty.

Flock Cameras look exactly like Combine tech in Half Life 2. Take from that what you will.

We have more technology, more productive capacity and more wealth than any civilisation in history. Yet we are exhausted, insecure, in debt, struggling to afford homes, food and energy, while a tiny minority accumulate more than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes. We. Are. Being. Robbed.

Its so exhausting to constantly have to devise good-faith arguments that can anticipate and withstand bad-faith critiques.

Its so strange to be in the time when elderly people have color photos of themselves when they were children. For a long while, that black and white/color transition was a stark generational divide.

Discouraging seeing the smug reactions about Platner from fellow progressives. We deserve better candidates who have been vetted more carefully, and we need to find a replacement, but this is bad. It hurts our chances of unseating Collins and taking control of the Senate and saving our democracy.

The Vandal Follow my cartoons and accompanying written commentary on Substack: nickanderson.substack.com For @rawstory.com

Let's have a do-over and call the 250th anniversary of the US June 21, 2038--250 years after the Constitution was ratified by all 13 original states and the US came into being as a Government.

The thing about living in a failing empire is that the decline can last for hundreds of years, without resolution or catharsis, just an endless series of crises and lowering of expectations and standards, with low key bad vibes the whole time.

We should give every person running for public office and every political appointee the Voight-Kampff test.

Trump's continual "changing his mind" also serves as a reminder that there is no longer any coherent US foreign policy or set of strategic goals. Its all just the whims of one careless, bored man. Its an authoritarian flex.

Sometimes I am hopeful, thinking about Japan and Germany's postwar revivals, that we will come out of this and be a flourishing democracy again. But then I remember that the US was the architect of those reforms, and there is nobody who will have the same power and influence to do the same for us.

Happy Birthday David Attenborough! From the earliest days of television, to controller of BBC2, to bringing the wonders, beauty and fragility of the natural world to our eyes & attention - you’re a legend! www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

I hate him.

We have been saying this for a year now: STOP PRESCRIBING ACTIONS TO THEM IN ADVANCE. If we say things like "they'll never impeach!" that *gives them permission* to never do it. Don't obey in advance. Don't prescribe their actions in advance. Demand better of them. Be relentless.

No matter your beliefs, Good Friday serves as a reminder of the injustice, cruelty, and inhumanity that reigns in the absence of conscience and empathy. It is the default state of the world, and it is our shared moral duty to constantly work for something better.

Chrono Cross is the first Squaresoft game that I quit. I finally reached the end, wasn't nearly strong enough to beat final boss, and I just can't bring myself to go back to the arcane set of elaborate multi character fetch quests to get better gear. Its just not fun. I really wanted it to be.

I don’t think there is ever a great time for humanity to turn our future over to a set of intelligent machines, but I know that doing so while the globe is dominated by an Epstein Class of anti-human fascists is definitely the worst time.

Distraction from the Epstein Files or depraved nihilistic sadism, both are plausible and entirely sufficient to explain the evil Trump is unleashing on the world. Nothing is beyond these people. And they will never stop of their own accord.

Happy 40th birthday to the Legend of Zelda. The greatest Christmas present I have ever received. If you were 7 years old in 1986, this was pure magic. And I'm grateful to be somebody for who the magic stayed.

"I felt like Good wasn't working well enough for me, so I switched to Evil" is one hell of an admission a lot of people seem comfortable making.

"Reading between the lines" doesn't mean you shouldn't also, like, read the actual lines.

One of the biggest problems is that people with money only seem to want to use it to get more money. Nothing else works like that.

It turns out that Final Fantasy VI held the most important political lesson of my life: just because someone is a ridiculous clown doesn't mean they aren't also a nihilistic, sadistic monster. And they don't need a reason to burn the world to the ground, they'll do it for amusement alone.

It turns out that having and standing by principles, rather than just being strategic, is actually a really good strategy.

“Please get the truth out about our son.” Read and share the statement from the parents of Alex Pretti, the VA ICU nurse who was shot and killed by border patrol.

They are liars to the core. They murder the truth. And its a shockingly short distance to murdering their fellow human beings, because without the truth, nothing matters. There is no wrong or right, or good or evil. They will lose. But the price to us all is getting steeper every day.

2020: "I don't know why you were are all so worried about the toddler with the handgun, he keeps missing everyone so far!" 2026: "Well what were you expecting if you let a toddler have a handgun!?!"

Maybe its selfish, but I don't care about the current sorry state of the gaming industry, because I have such a huge backlog of excellent games, mods, and homebrews that even if another game never came out, I won't get through my current library during my lifetime.

Abolishing ICE doesn't mean not having any immigration enforcement. It means realizing that the current agency is terminally compromised and needs to be replaced in its entirety. Reform isn't enough.

It is never "too late" to defeat fascism. In fact, their defeat is inevitable. It is only that the costs of doing so continue to rise, and they can rise catastrophically high.

"But what if we gave the biggest toddler in the world the biggest gun in the world?"

Maria Shriver, niece of JFK: He was a man interested in the arts, culture, education, language, history... It is beyond comprehension that the president has sought to rename this great memorial. C’mon my fellow Americans! Wake up! This is not dignified. This is not funny... It’s downright weird.

Just really awesome how our financial elite just spent the last several decades admonishing people for pursing the humanities and creative fields, and are now suddenly pedaling the idea that "there are no good ideas anymore" after spending the last 5 years laying off everybody with a brain

If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and moral, then it’s not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power. - Dwight Eisenhower

Department of Defense Law of War Manual, Sec. 18.3.2.1 states the "requirement" to refuse illegal orders. What’s its key example? Wait for it . . . It’s "orders to fire upon the shipwrecked."

At this point, impeachment and removal would be a mercy.

Notice the official framing of the swastika-lenient policy as "potentially divisive" suggests that hate symbols are the cause of division rather than the expression of it.

I'm beginning to think that in the Boy Who Cried Wolf, there was, in fact a wolf every time, but nobody wanted to deal with it.

If a swastika isn't a hate symbol, then what is?

"... A swastika is one of the most clear definitional and most violent symbols of hatred in all of humanity, let alone in the United States, and so to remove that from designation ... is quite shocking and it indicates a possible collaboration with those very elements ..." Rep. AOC