“We would just like to stress that this isn’t typical.”

I love America. I’m rather less fond of some of the people in it. The land is beautiful and varied. There is so much space here. And the constitution is really special, I think, though not perfect. The biggest flaw is people haven’t been taking politics seriously and have elected unserious people.

I swore to defend it many years ago. At the time I was a kid just paying lip service to a required oath, swearing to a god I never believed in, but the truth is I do love it and I would fight for it, warts and all.

I don’t understand the Jaguar at all. He keeps it in a storage facility and I’ve never even seen it. Whatever. I never counted on any kind of inheritance from them, so I guess they can spend it up however they want, but I’ve been out of work for three months now, chewing up the meager retirement I’ve managed to save just keeping bills paid, and it’s just frustrating.

My parents have never helped me. They’ve never been able to. On the other hand, we’ve given them a fucking car to make it easier for them to help us out with watching kids and running them around. Then my dad bought a Jaguar. And he has a boat. And a truck. But they didn’t have air conditioning for about a decade because they couldn’t afford it.

I love them, but they are selfish and stupid when it comes to money. As long as they leave my sister (who is disabled and unable to work) some extra money when they pass so I don’t have to pay a bunch for her, too, I’ll be happy.

Troublingly, the electorate rather resembles the coverage: highly partisan or just moronic.

That 1995 thing was a huge fucking deal at the time. It came out that shit like that happened before more than once and the army protected the perpetrators. But that particular potato was just too fucking hot and those fuckers did time in a Japanese prison.

Might’ve been the incident that made me realize the rest of the world might not think we are big damn heroes.

My ring used to do that shit. I stopped using it for like a year. Then I was bitching about it and someone said they just got one and it worked great. So I tried it again out of spite to show what a piece of shit it was and now it works within a couple of seconds. shrug

I didn’t say he did. I agree. Just trying to set expectations.

Some people are going to be offended unless you participate in their games. In the army I had someone tell me he was going to punch me if I didn’t drink at a get together. So I drank. I probably would’ve anyway, but he was super weird about it.

Redirect conversation, be noncommittal, let yourself get pulled away by duties, etc. Eventually if you’re lucky you just won’t be in the clique any more. But they’re never going to understand what you’re telling them without offense because they just don’t want to. There is no polite, easy way to do this that isn’t going to upset them. They will feel like you think you’re better than them.

They voted to give him all that money again after a judge tried to save them. I don’t even understand. No one is worth that kind of money.

I was thinking a Pinto.

Punk indicates rebellion against the status quo as part of the theme. If that isn’t part of it, then IMO it has no place in the name.

I think it’s this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Star_Wars

Other than the narrator it was all original audio from the movies I think. No idea who the narrator was.

It’s incomplete, but it’s here: https://youtu.be/72rovnIg85k?si=NZxuz7VqM4GjKaZp

I had Episode 4 and maybe 6?

It’s not the soundtrack. It’s like, the radio play or something. I can still hear the narration.

Vader grips the rebels throat

“We intercepted no transmissions. This is a consular ship. We’re on a… diplomatic mission.”

The Star Wars audio cassette. No idea what it would do for me today, but I miss that tape.

Now I just listen to rain or ocean waves on Alexa.

I had multiple interviews with a company and was told they went so well they stopped interviewing other candidates. The interviews did go quite well. Then they hired internally.

It was a bullshit short term contract anyway, but that’s the best interview I’ve had in 3 months of searching. I don’t know if that counts as a “fake” job, but it was a huge waste of everyone’s time.

I think there is a lot this fails to capture because certain things are unprecedented. Michigan’s GOP is in utter disarray and it isn’t the only one. And overturning Roe v Wade has energized the left and disillusioned whatever center remains.

Now these facts are baked into the polling already, so obviously that’s a big concern, but I believe this means polling is too far right across the board. I think who makes up likely voters has shifted. RvW drew in younger voters and I think now that they are engaged they will remain so.

Time will tell. I’ve seen far less Trump support this year than I did in 2020, which yeah is anecdotal, but I think it’s an indicator. Of course, even if I’m correct, Michigan isn’t going to carry the election alone, and it looks like the rest of the rust belt is further to the right.

AI coding in a nutshell. It makes the easy stuff easier and the hard stuff harder by leading you down thirty incorrect paths before you toss it and figure it out yourself.