Bent Chinrest

@scalzi@mastodon.social Well! Looks like someone's exhaust pipe cutting tool got quite a workout

@Social_Recluse2@mastodon.social @benroyce@mastodon.social Paraphrasing Doctorow: good speculative fiction doesn't predict the future, it diagnoses the present All those authors weren't telling us what was going to happen, then were pointing at attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs already present, warning us to take note and protect the things we love

@benroyce@mastodon.social @jonesmurphy@mastodon.social @LogicalApex@thelounge.network @MxVerda@lgbtqia.space and to a one, those whiners are "independents" who have voluntarily foreclosed their ability to select better candidates because they can't be assed to know how how their electoral systems work

@ovoao @danyork I don't. I'm extremely near-sighted. Like, "dangerous to walk a residential sidewalk" without corrective lenses. My eyeglasses cost USD700+ *for the lenses* I struggle to gin up any sympathy for someone casually dropping USD1400 on a vanity-trifle like Meta glasses As for the accessibility and disability angle, if we're re-ordering society to accommodate corporate spying, we could just take a crack at being better to humans all around

@paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange @heidilifeldman@mastodon.social there is a lot we can *do* individually, but not much we can *achieve* individually your (later in this thread) post about Carlin's hold-waits is so welcome and needed because everything that's beyond our *individual* reach is within our *collective* grasp The tyrants at - and within - out gates couldn't get there by themselves. No one can oust them alone. *Everyone* needs allies, needs co-conspirators, needs accomplices, needs mutual aid. They built theirs over 40 years, right out in the open. Plaintext blueprints, posted in the public square. The master's tools will not dismantle the master's house, but that sclerotic waste can never stop the street from finding its own uses for things.

@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org @a_cubed@mastodon.social @benroyce@mastodon.social ok but the religious right was already on board with all that domination-narrative stuff "pro-life" was a catch-phrase to smuggle that trash into the mainstream it was radicals branding themselves as "reasonablists" because who is going to identify as "unreasonable" or "opposed to life"?

@danyork people buying these are ot considering such circumstances where their (precious) consumer choices aren't sacrosanct to all others And now they're getting these things with prescription lenses, so removing them becomes onerous and "unreasonable"

@ElizabethEiler@universeodon.com @BlueDot@left-bank.net @mastodonmigration@mastodon.online @benroyce@mastodon.social I'm quite afraid that Blanche already is the greater evil at DOJ His dark legacy will make Bondi seem rational by comparison

@benroyce@mastodon.social @GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social Prediction: 90 days until those sexualized chatbots get racialized, too, with submissive language patterns that would make GwtW cringe

@tante "Ned Ludd wept"

@floreana @crouton @unlofl @pluralistic Might be a regional difference - S1 had the (ill-advised) jump to Mirror Universe and dealing with Capt. Lorca S2 was Red Angel, Capt. Pike, jump to far future S3 was in the future, post-Burn S4 had the DMA gobbling up planetary systems S5... maybe we can all just forget that one happened

@MissConstrue@mefi.social @benroyce@mastodon.social @QasimRashid@mastodon.social I'm not seeing the red caps that were everywhere a year ago The campaign flags have all come down The house with a Trump lawn jockey (really not clear on the imagery there) still has it out front, and the hand-sprayed anti-Communist plywood yard signs are still there but... the public shows of Trumpism don't seem to have survived the winter Let them stay gone, but never forgotten

@floreana@poliversity.it S4 does Book's character dirty, takes him in a bad direction that I didn't appreciate S5 seemed like the writers just forgot that all the characters had stories and personalities already and forced them into a bad Bonnie & Clyde plotline

@floreana @crouton @unlofl @pluralistic someone else who can mention DISCO without going red-faced! I think that was season 2 with the struggle against Starfleet's rogue intelligence branch (Section 31) and its AI that basically decided the I, Robot movie plot was a "revealed preference"

@the5thColumnist@ottawa.place @Daojoan@mastodon.social in that case yes, you would be immediately enrolled in Facebook

@theloopfarm@mastodon.social @georgetakei@universeodon.com Sadly, that doomsday cult is nothing new. I was surrounded by its particular brand of accelerationism as a child and they are, to a one, Zionist (because "God's Chosen People") and thoroughly Reaganized. They decorate their spaces with fake scripture verses and partial US flags. They vote reliably, because their lay-clergy instruct them to, and how. They accept and repeat provable lies as articles and demonstrations of faith. Their Holy Bibles are plentiful and unopened

@jonah@mastodon.neat.computer I suspect it's much, much less about locking people up than about having legal cause to shift from the "mass surveillance" VPNs help evade to "targeted surveillance" to extend the state's coercive powers Govs have learned that "national security" has lost some power, but "protecting children" endures, especially while Epstein affiliation can still take down national figures

@aj @taylorlorenz Yes! Talk about features, not requirements

@georgetakei@universeodon.com this amounts to a confession, the specific wrongdoings are easy enough to find #Nuremberg2