THANK YOU! I get that, from the outside looking in, it looks like we aren’t doing anything; but short of open rebellion, we don’t have many options that don’t leave us, at best, homeless. And the “at best” scenario is increasingly the least likely outcome. When the GOP gains seats in the house this November, the latter part of this year could get interesting.

In the meantime, everyone watching is repeatedly punching ourselves in the national crotch, needs to be putting as much pressure as they can on their elected representatives not to treat the US as a pariah, but to pressure it to fall back into some semblance of sanity. Treating the US as a pariah will do exactly what nobody except Trump and Putin want - the unholiest of unholy alliances (outside of Bibi & Trump, that is). A New Axis (and they’ll probably call it that because they don’t know what irony is) for the world to deal with.

When did they start bothering to defend it?

Turns out the US has already had its last democratic(-ish) election. Any bets on how big a majority the GOP gets in the House this November?

Seems like, if nothing else, Ai might finally force corporate accountants to acknowledge that the cost of a good backup strategy far outweighs the cost of losing all your data because some MBA thought he could write a product update himself with Claude code.

This is a really good point! It used to be “a computer is only as smart as its user.” The same can be said of AI: the model’s results are kind of dictated by the prompt. while anyone can prompt an AI with whatever they want, it takes experience to use an AI to develop a project from idea to v1. At the e d of the day, the AI can search the web better than me, and type faster than I can - but I know what I want my code to do, and I know how I want it done. Those two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Adding an obscure one: Judy Greer did a short-lived sitcom with Chris Parnell in the late 00s called Miss Guided. She played a high school guidance counselor. The theme song was played for all of about 2-3 seconds at the beginning of every episode, but that was enough for me to find the band. The song is Beautiful Possibility by The Lisa Parade.

So many really good ones. I’ll add a couple I haven’t seen:

1970s Battlestar Galactica Buck Roger’s Original Brady Bunch (I hate it, but damn if it isn’t catchy) Happy Days You’re The Worst Coupling Better Things

OK Go did an awesome update to the Muppets theme. The video is great, especially the end.

That was a banger!

Didn’t know “descent” was an adjective for “acknowledgement” or “recognition”

Sean Hannity has entered the chat.

Unfortunately, would have to happen after he’s out of office, but that would have to be the single largest class-action lawsuit in history!

American Taxpayers vs. Donald Trump

I want to see this so bad.

My first thought, too.

I mean, despite all of that he’s still alive. IMG guessing that was the GOP’s take, anyway. Almost certainly Trump’s.

At this point, most of the power they have is performative. They can’t actually do much of anything, but they can make noise. It’s nice to see them doing that. The only shot they have at convincing the MAGA politicians to flip is by flipping public opinion more than it already is.

Even then, I’m not sure it would matter. What are people in red states going to do? Vote for a Democrat!? The mere thought of such a thing!

This really needs to be brought up at every turn. Any time someone praises that orange abomination for his “strong leadership”, they should be reminded that his scrapping of the original deal because of his rampant racism and narcissism is why we are in the mess. Something along the lines of:

“How would you define strong leadership? Because I would characterize it as peacefully achieving your stated goals with a treaty internationally regarded as a Good Thing. I would not characterize it as throwing that treaty away without any plan for anything better, and the throwing bombs at it years after every miserable failed attempt at undoing your original fuckup. But I’m interested to hear your thoughts.”

What is this “War Crime” thing I keep seeing mentioned. I see so many articles talking about people committing these “crimes,” but I never even see anyone being tried, let alone convicted, of any such thing.

Adding: not saying anyone shouldn’t be genuine, like plastering on a big psychotic grin and reply with, “I’m great!” Maybe just responding with something like “g‘morning,” “hey”. Even, “Been better, but thanks for asking.”

This is going to come off with a heavy “if life gives lemons” vibe, but over time it does work. Where I went to college, there was a day every year, I think during Fall or Spring, where everyone greeted everyone. Nobody made a big production about it, just a simple, “hi” or “what’s up.” Weird thing is it had a tendency to keep going beyond the day. Most people only did it on the day, but a surprising number of people kept doing it outside of that. Including me, eventually! I still make an effort to be nice to people, and I trace it back to that. No, it doesn’t magically make my day better, but it’s one nice thing that happened. Plus, over time it helps me see/appreciate even small positives, which helps keep me from getting too weighted down by the bad stuff.

Don’t mean to trivialize the bad stuff in your life, OP. I do hope you’re able to manage it, and not let it beat you down. When I started college, I was a pretty negative person. While I wouldn’t call myself “sunny” all these years later, I do see a big difference in my general outlook compared to younger me.

Making sure I understand this: All the SCOTUS has done, really, is accept the DOJ’s abandonment of the case? Not getting into whether or not he is guilty (he is), or whether or not the DOJ is doing this for purely political reasons (they are), but if the DOJ no longer wants to prosecute the case, isn’t this just the SCOTUS saying, " OK?" which was probably a foregone conclusion after the Solicitor General told them they were abandoning the case back in Feb?

Don’t get me wrong, it absolutely sucks, and I’m not at all surprised. But didn’t we all know this was going to happen? Just like we all know Bannon, and likely Navaro), will successfully sue the DOJ for some absurd sum that they will “settle out of court for undisclosed amounts.” Right? Everyone knew this, right? This is/will be another example of the taxpayers paying Trump’s henchmen.