Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

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

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Come on, man.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Our messy unity will be our strength.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Let there be snark.

You are here: Home / Archives for Midnight Confessions

Grey Dawn Open Thread: ‘Savvy’ Is A Curse

by | 90 Comments

This post is in: ,

Yes this is blatant "We Have Always been A War With Eurasia' scale propaganda to defend Trump's economic record after four years of constant attacks on Biden's economic record but don't worry ya'll the guys who spend 21 hours a day online have assured me they're not influenced by media narratives

[image or embed]

— Weedle (@weedle.bsky.social) March 16, 2025 at 7:17 PM



I am too Savvy to believe in *anything*, say the Deeply Savvy, except for mocking whatever you less refined sensibilities might think you unironically enjoy. Oooh, a superior viewpoint! It’s the perfect worldview for an angsty teenager, but making this one’s personality after the age of 25 is detrimental not just to the individual, but to Living in A Society.

My ultimate pretentious philosophy take on the Trump era is that it's more or less the final form of the "I'm far too mature and intelligent to dirty myself by *believing* in anything" mindset that's been spreading across American culture in various forms for the past ~60 years.

— politiburb (@politiburb.bsky.social) March 16, 2025 at 6:22 PM

And I think once we survive this and win (yes we're going to win), the ultimate takeaway will need to be a full embrace of cringey stuff like "belief" because now we'll know the alternative is extinction.

— politiburb (@politiburb.bsky.social) March 16, 2025 at 6:23 PM

"Believing in the virtue of your country" feels very eyeroll-worthy and it makes you a lot of cool friends to say you think your country has no virtue (derogatory). But eventually what happens is that someone declares your country has no virtue (laudatory) and then things get bad.

— politiburb (@politiburb.bsky.social) March 16, 2025 at 6:34 PM

Terry Pratchett was a wise man as well as an excellent wrier, and Death is one of his best recurring characters (Susan is Death’s granddaughter, by adoption.) A quote from HOGFATHER, his alternate-world Christmas / Winter solstice story, to get us through the next few months & years:

“All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

“So we can believe the big ones?”

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

“They’re not the same at all!”

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”

MY POINT EXACTLY.”

We (collective we!) are the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape. Let us honor both halves of our heritage.

Grey Dawn Open Thread: ‘Savvy’ Is A CursePost + Comments (90)

Open Thread: A Note, and Thanks, from the Night Shift

by | 56 Comments

This post is in: ,

I owe everyone who offered good wishes & positive thoughts a special thank you. Bronchial pneumonia, at least for an old fat person with comorbidities: Cannot recommend! But, all blessings upon the memory of Alexander Fleming, after ten days of dual antibiotics I can walk across the room without having to sit down & pant for five minutes, so that’s a nice improvement. (Even if I’ve been informed my lungs won’t be back to ‘normal’ before the end of March.)

Also, thanks to the Blogmaster for the nice words last night, even though I am compelled to point out that the bit about ‘answering an email in less than 30 minutes’ — that’s absolutely WaterGirl, not me. We have separate, mostly complementary skill sets, and I don’t wanna take credit I don’t deserve!

So, along with all the general depressing news, I have not been functioning at my best for at least the past couple months. For better or worse, this is what you get; I can do no other.

This would be an embarrassing admission, if the longtermers didn’t know it already: I keep vampire hours, because I’m retired from paid employment, so I can. Which means that I put together my infamous Early Morning Open Threads and post them before stumbling off to bed. I always read the comments, but not for some hours — even a day or two, if there’s a whole bunch of HOT NEWS breaking when I wake up. And, especially over the last few months, this has saved us all a *ton* of bad posting. By the time I can see any of y’all Being Rong on the Internet, either it’s no longer a hot topic, or possibly someone else has corrected the misapprehension. It’s, y’know, calming. Good for the blood pressure.

If you find some of your fellow jackals infuriating, perhaps you should follow my example. Don’t comment — don’t read the comments — until you’ve had the chance to step back and read something else, or maybe count to ten thousand. We are, after all, in this together!

Open Thread: A Note, and Thanks, from the Night ShiftPost + Comments (56)

Late Night Open Thread: Space Walking

by | 132 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Late Night Open Thread: Space Walking

(Joel Pett via GoComics.com)

On the one hand, very cool view! On the other… I got motion sick on the 60th floor of the Hancock Tower skyscraper on particularly windy days, so: *never* a good candidate, me.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A tech billionaire popped out from a SpaceX capsule hundreds of miles above Earth and performed the first private spacewalk Thursday, a high-risk endeavor once reserved for professional astronauts.

Tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman teamed up with SpaceX to test the company’s brand new spacesuits on his chartered flight. The daring feat also saw SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis going out once Isaacman was safely back inside.

This spacewalk was simple and quick — the hatch was open barely a half hour — compared with the drawn-out affairs conducted by NASA. Astronauts at the International Space Station often need to move across the sprawling complex for repairs, always traveling in pairs and lugging gear. Station spacewalks can last seven to eight hours; this one clocked in at less than two hours…

show full post on front page

Late Night Open Thread: Space WalkingPost + Comments (132)

Late Late Saturday Night Open Thread: Too Soon?…

by | 55 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

C.R.E.A.M…


 
Trigger warning: Snark to keep from sobbing:

show full post on front page

Late Late Saturday Night Open Thread: Too Soon?…Post + Comments (55)

Late Night Open Thread: Thousands Are Sailing

by | 31 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Thousands are sailing
Across the western ocean
Where the hand of opportunity
Draws tickets in a lottery
Where e’er we go, we celebrate
The land that makes us refugees
From fear of priests with empty plates
From guilt and weeping effigies
Still we dance to the music
And we dance…

My mother’s people — well, my maternal grandmother, who was born (but not conceived) in New York; her husband died when I was too small to remember him — were very much Lace Curtain Irish. My father’s people… were not. Although the epithet ‘Shanty Irish’ was never used in their presence, that I remember.

It wasn’t till after those grandparents and their only child, my dad, had died that one of my siblings discovered the skeleton in our closet. We knew they’d both grown up in the same small Connemara community, separately emigrated to Montreal as the Troubles intensified in the early 1910s, and moved to New York shortly after marrying. What we did not know (my father probably never did) was that while my grandfather was raised in the (Catholic) Church, my grandmother… well, they had every reason to leave the Olde Sod, and then to move further away from their extended families once they were able to plight their troth.

And I’m officially one-quarter Ian-Paisley Orange.

That’s the heritage I blame all my least attractive failings on.

Late Night Open Thread: Thousands Are SailingPost + Comments (31)

An Anniversary: Twenty — Well, Almost Thirteen — Years On

by | 65 Comments

This post is in: , ,

I got through all of last year… and I’m here!

Cole invited me to become a front-pager back in May 2009; it took a few weeks to get me started, because even then I was old enough not to be very tech-savvy, or to have much hope of ever becoming so. He was patient, partially because he’d already asked two other prolific commentors to become his site’s first Vagina-American front pagers, and been separately told neither had the time for such foolishness a commitment.

My first post was a book recc for Castle Freeman‘s All That I Have. I referenced Terry Pratchett and Donald Westlake, because I figured at least some of the Jackaltariat knew (and approved) those gentlemen.

Somewhere along the way, I figured out that I could produce a brilliant, witty, heavily-researched post every week… two, in a good week. Or I could (sometimes also) churn out a steady stream of aggregations and open threads, twice or three or four times a day. Since there were always other front-pagers to step up with the B,W,H-R posts (points to anyone who recognizes the light literary reference!)… well, I’m looking forward to my 15,000th post, which should fall somewhere around the end of March, pandemic reading and Murphy the Trickster God willing.

An Anniversary: Twenty — Well, Almost Thirteen — Years OnPost + Comments (65)

Late Night Seasonal Open Thread

by | 51 Comments

This post is in: ,

In case you’re worried your parents and/or housemates may be getting a little too into the decorative spirit…

Late Night Seasonal Open ThreadPost + Comments (51)