Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

In my day, never was longer.

Wait, what?

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

No one could have predicted…

So many bastards, so little time.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

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Saturday Night Open Thread

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Just an absolutely gorgeous day in the mid 70’s today. Spent a lot of time doing things around the house, and a significant amount of time exploring. Found a fruit shack that sold all sorts of citrus and stuff, and I had a delightful hand squozed limeade and picked up some Meyer lemons. Also got a cheap haircut and beard trim, so I look just a skosh less mountain man/wanted sign and now look like a very respectable recently paroled January 6th defendant.

Was going to make a dinner tonight but we are both pooped and going to do leftovers. I’m gonna make chicken stuff with cheese and broccoli with some green beans for dinner tomorrow because I need to use up this broccoli and have cheese and chicken and panko. I saved the ends of the loaves of bread I made and tomorrow am going to make french toast with an apple compote with some of the bushel of apples I hauled cross country. So that means I do not have to leave the house at all tomorrow and it is supposed to rain, so I think we are just going to stay in and do some things around the house and watch a movie or two. FWIW- Joelle absolutely loved Anatomy of a Fall. I did not watch, having recently been snookered into watching Saltburn and Midsommar at her urging, and the circle of trust regarding movie selections needs some time to repair.

Oh, yeah- a bunch of you were asking about why I went to the dispensary. Not sure if you all remember but last November and December in the span of a few weeks Lily died, Tammy died, my dad broke his other hip and then got covid in the hospital, and then I got covid and the flu at the same time. I was basically at my breaking point when I went to Florida to dogsit. And I can not restate this enough- I was one minor crisis away from going Leaving Las Vegas last year. So while I was decompressing alone in Florida, I decided that this shit is not working and I needed to change some things.

Long, long, time readers will remember the anxiety attacks and depression from 2007-2009, at which point I went on antidepressants. And I had been on them, never missing a dose, since. And yet here I am, at rock fucking bottom. So I decided to make some changes. I didn’t tell my doctor, but I immediately started titrating myself off the Celexa. I shouldn’t have been on it that long anyway. After getting down to 20mg a day instead of 40, I told my doctor, and at my own pace have weened myself off them.

At this point last year I was on 40mg a day, now I am on 5, and going off when these run out in 12 days. Will be a major relief for a lot of reasons, but most of all because the 10mg pills are super tiny and it is a total pain in the fucking ass using a pill cutter on them to get to 5 mg. I will also add that one side effect of no longer being on celexa is being able to feel my genitals again. That comes in handy.

I’ve also changed how I eat and lost about 20 lbs. and am getting more exercise and looking to shed another 40 this year. Together, along with obviously being happier with Joelle than I have been in a long time (if ever), I am feeling pretty good.

Having said that, I still have a lot of aches and pains. My shoulders are a source of chronic pain, especially the right one from the Lily incident, and my fingers and knees always hurt and I have carpal tunnel in my left wrist. So at some point in September, driving home dinner, I saw a dispensary near Wheeling for Medical Marijuana, which just became a thing in WV, so I popped in to talk to them. Had a visit with a doctor a couple of weeks later, waited a month, and got a medical card.

I was actually super nervous the first time I went in. I have not really smoked marijuana in decades, and the couple of times I tried it were back when I was drinking, and it was just a horrible experience- super paranoid, anxious, really down on myself, etc.

But I spent a while talking to the employees, all of whom are into weed like super nerdy dudes in the late 90’s were all into craft beer and what not. Satvia, hybrid, indica, resin, keef, cartridges, terpines and on and on. And I explained to them that I’m not really looking to get high, what I want is something for pain relief and anxiety, and I’d like to microdose basically. And he knew exactly what I wanted- these little pills that are 2.5 mg of thc, 2.5 mg of cbd, and 2.5 mg of something else. And according to him (I can verify none of the science), the dose is so low and that the cbd binds to the receptors that get you high so the thc can’t, and that it will just make everything smoother and calmer.

And he was right. So I take one every morning and I take one every night before bed, I have not taken ibuprofen or tylenol or any other nsaids, they don’t get me high, and they just make me calmer. I don’t know how to describe it other than to say that is the difference is like eating food that has been seasoned and food that has some salt on it. The food with salt is better, always. One of the very noticeable effects for me is a slight increase in visual acuity.

I don’t care for any of the cartridges or other stuff- I tried cartridges and it is very easy with them to get a very tiny hit, which is nice, but it is vaping and who knows what hell that is causing your lungs. Plus they all seem to be flavored with these noxious flavors- razzleberry blast or some other bullshit. I buy these ten mg edibles that are chocolate tabs, and I break them into quarters sometimes, and those are very smooth and relaxing. And flower (what we used to call bud) is so highly specialized with all these different terpines and strains- like super rabbit holes if you want to lose hours googling. Like everything else, it has become both better and more complicated.

Overall, it’s been great. And it is so cheap. Forty of the microdoses are only about 20 bucks, and you add in the loyalty points and veterans discount, and a month supply is about 25 bucks. Cheaper than antidepressants and advil. I didn’t want to talk about it because who knows what kind of stigma is still associated with it when it comes to employment, and it looked like I was going to be on the job market, but yeah, it’s really changed things for me. My head is less racey, I’m calmer and more focused, my shoulders do not hurt as much and I am not waking up in the middle of the night with a frozen shoulder, and so on. Just a win all the way around.

I wish I could get my dad to try them, but he is worried he will get too dizzy.

The other thing I have noticed, at least at my place in Wheeling, is that almost every single license plate is a veteran, a firefighter, or a retired miner plate. I often wonder how many of them are still around just because of this.

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Open Thread: President Biden Is Good At This

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President Biden has spent time in North Carolina, getting lots of local press, meeting with folks, and doing it right.

Yesterday in North Carolina, I stopped by Eric’s house to have lunch with him and his two sons. I brought some Cook Out. They were an impressive family—Eric’s an award-winning educator and his sons are both athletic and academic all stars. We talked about the importance of family, building intergenerational wealth, the state of our schools, and I gave his oldest son Christian a couple of tips on what he should get for his first car. Eric had a lot of student debt forgiven, and he told me what a big deal it was for him and his boys. I go to work for families like Eric’s every day—hardworking folks who want to leave something behind for their kids. I loved the time I spent with them. Thanks Eric, for hosting me. Come by our place next time.

 

Here’s the original TikTok video (I like to make sure creators get the clicks they deserve):

@christiandior.1 dinner with POTUS #president #fypシ #biden ♬ original sound – cdior

If you can’t see it here is the link

This is an open thread

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Eternal Fascism: The Key Elements (Open Thread)

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One of our Balloon Juice peeps posted a link to this in the comments on Friday or Saturday, but I think it deserves a wider audience.  (If that person was you, chime in with a comment and I will credit you.)  h/t RevRick, Elizabelle and possibly more!

I’m not sure what I can add to this – it was written nearly 30 years ago, but if someone can read this and NOT recognize exactly what we have been seeing today, then they haven’t been paying attention.

How do we use this information to fight back against this dangerous trend?

(Wikipedia)

This is from a renowned essay authored by the Italian philosopher, novelist, and semiotician Umberto Eco. First published in 1995, this influential essay provides a comprehensive analysis of fascism, the definition of fascism, and discussing its fundamental characteristics and traits. Drawing on Eco’s personal experiences growing up in Mussolini’s Italy and his extensive research on fascist movements, the essay offers valuable insights into the nature of fascism and its manifestations.

Summary

“Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt” delves into the core characteristics of fascism. Eco outlines fourteen key elements or traits, which he refers to as “ways,” that commonly appear in fascist movements. While not all these traits are present in every fascist movement, together they create a recognizable pattern. The essay is structured around these fourteen ways, providing an in-depth exploration of fascism as a multifaceted and adaptable ideology.[1] He argues that it is not possible to organise these into a coherent system, but that “it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it”. He uses the term “ur-fascism” as a generic description of different historical forms of fascism. The fourteen properties are as follows:

  1. “The cult of tradition“, characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.
  2. “The rejection of modernism“, which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.
  3. “The cult of action for action’s sake“, which dictates that action is of value in itself and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.
  4. “Disagreement is treason” – fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.
  5. “Fear of difference“, which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.
  6. “Appeal to a frustrated middle class“, fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.
  7. “Obsession with a plot” and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society. Eco also cites Pat Robertson‘s book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.
  8. Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak“. On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.
  9. “Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy” because “life is permanent warfare” – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to not build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.
  10. “Contempt for the weak“, which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate leader, who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.
  11. “Everybody is educated to become a hero“, which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, “[t]he Ur-Fascist herois impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.”
  12. “Machismo“, which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold “both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality”.
  13. “Selective populism” – the people, conceived monolithically, have a common will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he alone dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of “no longer represent[ing] the voice of the people”.
  14. “Newspeak” – fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.

How do we use this information to fight back against this dangerous trend?

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Writing Puzzles (video game open thread)

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I’ve mentioned now and then that I’m working on a video game with a friend. It’s an adventure game/dating sim with a modern Lovecraftian setting, probably called “Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery”. We’ve successfully launched board and card games in the past, but we’ve only ever made toy computer games, so we aren’t total noobs but it’s still shaping up to be a real journey. From scripting to engine development to finding artists to work with, it’s been really great learning all the tricks of the trade, though it’s been less fun internalizing the well-known fact that game development is harder than you think. And it’s going pretty well, thank you for asking! We have most of the functional requirements down and are stapling everything together, skinning it, making it Feel Like A Game, etc. I also haven’t written more than an outline past Act 2. So, 90% of the work is done, we’ve just got the other 90%. And then we can do a Kickstarter with a playable demo. Anyway…

Part of the gameplay is inspired by the old LucasArts puzzlers like Monkey Island. You know—click on stuff to interact, get witty banter, maybe add it to your inventory. Apply items to other items or to somewhere else on the screen, witty banter, maybe something happens.

(This new Monkey Island game is a blast, by the way, if you’re looking for something to play.)

Coding up this part of the engine was pretty straightforward. What’s been much tougher is learning how to write fun puzzles! Last year I was talking about this with a friend who makes augmented-reality games as a hobby and he introduced me to a concept that Ron Gilbert (the grandpappy of these games) came up with at LucasArts: the Puzzle Dependency Graph. This is a super interesting tool and I thought I would share it with you all. Part flowchart, part mathematical construct (you can calculate metrics from it)… It’s not just useful for writing puzzles; I’ve found it to be helpful in plotting out the actual mystery too.

I’ll be stealing some images from Ron Gilbert’s blog post on the topic. Here’s his example for a very simple puzzle, where your goal is to open the basement door:

I always work backwards when designing an adventure game, not from the very end of the game, but from the end of puzzle chains. I usually start with “The player needs to get into the basement”, not “Where should I hide a key to get into some place I haven’t figured out yet.” […]

So… first, we’ll need figure out what you need to get into the basement… And we then draw a line connecting the two, showing the dependency. “Unlocking the door” is dependent on “Finding the Key”. Again, it’s not flow, it’s dependency.

Now let’s add a new step to the puzzle called “Oil Hinges” on the door and it can happen in parallel to the “Finding the Key” puzzle…

Writing Puzzles

The end goal is a series of act-sized diamonds:

Writing Puzzles 1In an adventure game, providing a fan-in/fan-out shape like this is very important. It allows the player to work on things in parallel, if they get stuck on any particular sub-puzzle; and, if you’re doing a branching-narrative thing, can provide both choice (or sometimes the illusion thereof) and structure for plot-driven stories. So, in addition to being a useful way to map out what you’re doing, it can also let you know, at a glance, whether you’re doing it right, and how complex any given section will be for the player. For a real-world example, here’s a slice of Day of the Tentacle, from a talk excerpt that goes into some of the mathematical concepts you can apply to the graph, if you are interested in that:

Writing Puzzles 2

In puzzles and stories, your characters obviously have to do some things before they can do other things. You can expand each of those things into a sub-graph of other things, or collapse them, as necessary. If you want to give the players more time with something, or expand complexity in any given area, you can simply choose a node and expand it into another diamond. For example, in the newest Monkey Island game, at one point you need a mop. You could just have the character ask the right guy for a mop. But the game instead has you ask the guy for a mop–and then he sends you on a quest to find the “mop handle tree”, which is in a secret place, which requires you to find a map for it, but the cartographer needs something else…

Or suppose there’s a hole in your novel where act three should probably be; the hero goes from point A to point B with minimal trouble. This is immediately visible on your graph. So you take the one node, “gets to point B”, and branch it out. Maybe the road they need to take is closed, so they need to take a detour. Okay, so they have to figure out which detour to take. They pull up Google Maps on their phone–

Okay, so Google hasn’t mapped this area, so they find the nearest gas station–

Okay, so it’s a spooky gas station abutting the woods. The attendant tells them–

The attendant won’t tell them, because…

You get the idea. I’ve used it to map the actual mystery plot of the game too, and it’s been very helpful, especially for keeping track of the things that are happening offscreen.

So what’s everybody playing these days? I’ve got Monkey Island to finish, and some dating sims for research (Coming Out On Top and Monster Prom), and like many I am still chewing my way through Baldur’s Gate 3… and finishing Persona 4… I play a lot of games. Finally beat Metroid Dread, that was very fun.

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Keep on rollin’

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We went for a boat ride Friday just before a cold front arrived:

We hadn’t taken the jon boat out for a while because the water level in the river has been uncommonly low, about as low as I can remember. Old timers have seen worse; they recall a drought so severe that cattle from ranches on one side of the river crossed the muck to forage in the woods on the opposite shore.

There’s a dam upriver that’s visible at a distance in the video, and the water level difference is a couple of feet. Sometimes after the rainy season, you can run an outboard right over that dam. But this summer, the regular afternoon thunderstorms didn’t materialize on this side of Florida.

Thanks to a dreary, wet winter, there’s finally enough water to comfortably run the outboard. Canoes are better for us and the planet, but in my opinion, nothing compares to puttering around in a small boat, looking at birds and appreciating the wild scenery, cocktail shaker in hand. Pure bliss.

We acquired the boat from my dad when he sold off his dive shop/marina rental stock and retired. It’s a 1980s-era boat that had an outboard engine of the same vintage which we used to call the “Ancient Mariner.” But it threw a rod, and we replaced it with a virtuously quiet Yamaha 15 HP 4-stroke.

The engine is the only clean, modern item associated with our boat. During yesterday’s excursion, I noticed how filthy the boat is, how stuffed with cypress leaves and sweet gum doodads every crevice is, how covered with lichen all vertical surfaces are. I was thinking we should probably haul her out for a deep cleaning, but possibly the lichen is the only thing holding her together!

There’s a cheap doormat on the bow which can be seen briefly in the video. That’s for the dogs to stand on during the rare occasions they come along for a boat ride — it provides purchase for their claws so they don’t skid across the metal when there’s a sudden change in speed.

When a boat is underway, any dogs present immediately turn into Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic — king of the worrrrrrrrld. But our two are too excitable to bring aboard often. They bark and raise hell and leap over the benches, generally harshing our mellow. So mostly they get left behind.

Thanks to the cold front, today is too chilly for boating, so we’ll probably loll around watching playoff football. But it will warm up during the week, so we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled waterborne birdwatching and cocktails ritual. I think we’re gonna need that this year more than ever.

Open thread.

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Saturday Morning Open Thread

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Wow.  My eyes literally got big as I watched this ad.

Didn’t we have a conversation here recently about how more people would connect with  “dictator” than “authoritarian”?

Their most powerful ad yet, I think.

≠

Trump needs to write some basic information on his hand like… was it Palin … did?  Oh wait, hands too small.

Perhaps he needs a notecard:  Nikki Haley ≠ Nancy Pelosi.  George Conway ≠ Concord NH.  Barack Obama ≠ current President

≠

Did everyone see this?

≠

Justice Department Releases Report on its Critical Incident Review for Uvalde

A few excerpts from the announcement.

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: New Hampshire, *Not* Living Up to Expectations

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Saturday Morning Open Thread 28

(Danziger via GoComics.com)

 
Jeff Danziger lives in Vermont, which has a historically… complicated relationship with New Hampshire. They both rely heavily on tourism, but Vermont is the ‘good brother’ that does its best to remain true to its flinty yankee heritage, resisting anything that smacks of ‘development’ and living within its meagre budget; NH is the shiftless prodigal that charges visitors to enter, charges visitors again to leave, and is more than willing to shill everything from fireworks & booze at state rest stops, to Jersey-Shore-style bikers’n’bikinis festivals in between.

Mocking NH’s First! In the Nation! primary every four years has been one of Vermont’s affordable pleasures, but it’s looking like they’ll have to find a new target…


Politico is perturbed — “‘You don’t see the frenzy’: The New Hampshire primary is a bust”:

The storied New Hampshire primary is a dud.

Debates are off. The frontrunner, Donald Trump, chose to spend a day in court. His main rival, Nikki Haley, is keeping a light (by New Hampshire standards) schedule. And Ron DeSantis, already an afterthought here, is effectively ceding the state and moving on to other contests.

“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before in my 32 years of New Hampshire presidential primary experience,” said New Hampshire GOP strategist Mike Dennehy, a veteran of John McCain’s presidential campaigns here.

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