Republicans Never Resign

There is apparently this mass delusion that Republicans can be shamed, embarrassed, or compelled to resign for anything that they do. For some reason, we keep seeing articles and statements from well-meaning but delusional people who think that they can be.

Clarence Thomas is not going to resign. Historian Michael Beschloss reminds us that Abe Fortas was essentially forced to resign a Supreme Court seat because he had some dealings with a rich businessman. It was also mentioned by others that this whole story was the product of Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell, and the end result was the Burger Court. What Thomas has unequivocally done in his dealings with billionaire Hitler-fan Harlan Crow, is far worse, but we can count on the fact that Thomas is going nowhere, and that any pseudo-investigation launched by Chief Justice Roberts will lazily drag along and disappear.

Just like the question of who paid Brett Kavanaugh’s large debts. Or even the fake FBI investigation of him which was a response to the allegations of sexual assault against him.

Or look at George Santos, who lied about everything in his past, and now laughs about it. That was a story for a while, now it is not. Santos is going nowhere.

Meanwhile, Democrats always give in to the pressure ramped up by so-called scandals which the Republicans set up and get the media to jump on. There are always Democrats who out of some sense of purity or moral signaling, leap in to demand that the Democrat resign. Al Franken is a textbook example. I am almost certain that he did nothing which warranted censure, much less being forced to resign from the Senate. Jane Mayer, a journalist with strong feminist credentials, did a thorough investigation of the women who suddenly “came forward” to accuse Franken of hugging them or trying to kiss them; and concluded that their stories were not credible, and that they were lying. No matter, the media outcry egged on by Roger Stone, who set the whole thing up, was so loud, that out Franken went, never to return to office.

Katie Hill was another one. She resigned of her own wishes, but the media was all over a nothing story. Andrew Cuomo is not admirable, but apparently the heralded allegation of fondling was found not to be true by an investigation, which was finished after he was forced to resign.

The key point is not the individual stories, on which some people may differ as to the facts. It is that Republicans never die, and they never fade away. They stay exactly where they are, in essence contemptuous of any efforts to hold them accountable for violations of public trust, unethical behavior, or even criminality. They just wait it out, until the story goes away. And almost without exception, no Republican comes out and demands that they resign, It is like the Mafia code of silence, where you never say anything against the family.

It is so pathetic and frustrating, but it goes on. Clarence Thomas should not be on the Supreme Court. He has clearly been given major financial favors from someone who is in various ways a party to cases which come before him. He has deliberately not disclosed the money given, or declared it in any way. But he and the Republicans don’t care, because they want his vote. They would not try to get rid of him as long as a Democratic President has the power to make the replacement choice. That is all they care about. Their fascist agenda, let’s call it what it is. In their world, there are only them, and then their enemies, who are Democrats, liberals, or even non-political people who call for a morality which the Republicans scorn, because their only “morality” is “might makes right,” and whatever helps them win, is good.

Governor Abbott in Texas is ready to pardon a man who killed a Black man, and who is found to have written racist screeds, saying that Black people are animals, and he wants tot hunt them. He was convicted of murder, but Abbott jumps in to pardon him. Because the law, the power of a jury, means nothing to Abbott, or the people who support him. How this differs from medieval “justice” under the most tyrannical kings, is impossible to see.

And now we have Jack Teixeira, who by all indications, severely damaged American security, the Ukranian desperate effort against Russia, and other such immensely crucial matters, by giving out highly classified information to his friends in a chat room where the sentiments were likely similar to his right-wing ones; and to who knows who else, surely the Russians saw and used it. And Marjorie Taylor Greene is supporting him, and so are some other fascist Republicans. Why? I guess because Teixeira’s anti-Ukranian and White Supremacy positions, along with anti-semitism, fit into Greene’s philosophies, if one would call them that; so that she supports treason, as long as it is her kind of treason.

The justice system will take care of Teixeira, but not before the usual media and political suspects try to turn the story against Biden or George Soros, or any of their enemies, real or concocted. Teixeira will go to jail, but he has helped their cause. I would not be surprised if a Republican president pardoned him, along with all the January 6 insurrectionists, and anyone else who shot any member of a minority group.

It is almost a kind of dreadful parlor game, to see if any Republican is ever forced to resign from anything, or punished for his or her crimes, moral or legal. This immense imbalance is far beyond not fair, it tears at the fabric of our tenuous democracy. If you imagine some playground game, where one team always tries to play fairly, and admit it if one of their players dropped the ball, or it went foul; while the other side always cheats, and makes every call in their favor, you would say that the honest team should stop playing and find another game. If there is a town, past or present, where the criminals have total control, you would either tell the honest citizens to somehow bring in an honest sheriff, or move to another town. But in our political system, there is no exit, unless you want to concede, and let the criminals and Nazis run things.

So either we do everything we can to go after these evildoers, or we lose; or least are playing a game where the attrition is only on our side. If any well-meaning and moral person ever doubted it, the actions and statements of the likes of Greene, Abbott, DeSantis, the Tennessee legislature, “Fox News,” even a faux serious publication like the Wall Street Journal, which keeps trying to defend Clarence Thomas, clearly show that one side is not playing fair, is actually so biased and destructive and vindictive, that you can’t negotiate with them, can’t reason with them, can’t even get anywhere by expressing your outrage at what they say and do. You can of course try to vote them out, literal and figurative gerrymandering and all. They will never resign.

Tennessee Republicans think they are saving the country

You have to listen to this. It’s a meeting of the Tennessee Republican legislators pointing fingers at each other for not expelling the white woman legislator along with the two black ones after their participation in a gun violence protest.

It made them look like racists, they whine. They’re so misunderstood. They’re really at war with Democrats:

⚡️NEW LEAKED AUDIO: TN House Republicans infighting over #TennesseeThree votes.

CEPICKY: “You gotta do what’s right even when you think it might be wrong.”🤔

Leadership says Barrett made them look racist, Cepicky says they're at "war", etc. must-listen. pic.twitter.com/mUkzwWXvav

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) April 13, 2023

I’ll be back later to discuss.

Wordle Playing Adventures

With the Wordle word for April 12 being quite challenging, I thought it was time to update the last few weeks, starting where I had left off, on March 29

I got them all, they weren’t too difficult except for the most recent one, but not too easy, either.

For the first word, I had – r – – -, with an a, e, and d, in two guesses. I guessed dread, because I am always wary of a letter used twice. It showed – r e a d, and there was no t in the word, so it was BREAD.

Next, I had r, e, and y, in my first three tries, not in the right spots. I was pretty sure that y was last, so – – – – y, with an r and e, and with some consonants eliminated. I tried berry, one of my favorite words, and it showed an r fourth, and the y fifth. So I had – – – r y, with an e, and no double r, so not merry or ferry. The e was first or third. I thought that it was likely that there were two e’s in the word. But it could not be leery, no l, or beery, no b. So maybe it was e-e r y? EVERY.

On April 1, my grandmother’s birthday, I had a and r after two tries, and then c h as the last two letters. So – – – c h, with an a and an r. No l, so not larch, no p, so not parch. So MARCH.

Then I had t, c, s, and o, after three guesses. O third. c fourth. So – – o c -, with an s and a t. STOCK.

A harder one. After two tries, I had an a, an r, and an o third. Then I got an l. So – – o – -, with an l, a, and r. R not second. O a r to finish the word not very likely. An a first could not become aroma, because there was an l in the word. Alors is a French word, not admissible! And no s, anyway. If l first, what came before the o? Not a or o. So L likely second, and then FLORA.

On the next one, I had a, r, o, i and t, in two tries! So the word was RATIO.

Then I had an s, an a, third, and an h, fifth . – – a – h, with an s. and a. No t, for swath No other vowels. No c. So the s could well come before the h. – – a s h. No l, for slash or flash. So I tried smash, and the word was SMASH.

The next Wordle showed an a, third, and an l, first, and then an e and a y. Lea – y, almost surely. I tried leaky. It was not the word, but it showed l e a – y. So LEAFY, a better word!

Then an s, o, u, and c. The s was last and the u was fourth. So – – – u s, with an o. Then I got a c. I thought of comus, is that an English word, or an anglicized Greek or Latin word? Before I decided to try that out, I thought of – – c u s. Focus. But it was not the word, but trying it showed – o c u s. So LOCUS.

Then a word with e last, an l, a d, and no other vowels. l – – – e, with a d. There very likely was another e in there, so led – e. LEDGE.

A tricky one, with an a, third, an s, and a u. I had no idea, but I got an n, so – – a – -, with u, s, and n. U very unlikely to be first, and unlikely to be second. No e at end, not suave, and there was an n in word. Word did not end in s, not – – a u s. If s began word, then s – a – – with u and n. I finally thought of SNAFU!

Then an easier one, with d, r, e, u, and n, in three tries. UNDER.

The next one was challenging. A third. U in word. I kept thinking of u a. – u a – – Could not be quail, no i. But quack was possible, I like ducks in ponds! But it was not. It did show q u a – -. So I guessed qualm, and that was the word. QUALM.

And then, what I thought was the hardest one in the last group. I had an o, and an a, and an r. None in the right spots. I decided to try razor, always wary of a repeated letter in a word I was unlikely to get, unless I actually guessed it, not deduced it. And I could see where the r was, by this guess. Well, I could not, since razor was not the word, and there was no r first or fifth.

So the r was third or fourth. The o was not third or fourth. The a was not second or third. I focused on the r. Third or fourth. I decided to try a word with consonants, but none of them were in the word. So just the a and o and r, no y, word not foray. Not aorta, no t.

I had used up four guesses. – o r a – ? Not coral. Not moral, I thought of various letters. No n or c or z. X? I thought of borax. But is that a brand name, thus not likely a word in Wordle? If I guessed it, and it was not the word, I would only have one guess left. The problem was, that if it is considered a brand name, Wordle might accept the word as a guess, but it would not be the answer, so a waste of a guess, if you follow. I decided to try it, and it was the word! BORAX

So those are the Wordles through April 12. I know that there is a list of all the words used so far, but I have never looked at the full list, so that I probably guess words which cannot be the answer, which makes it harder. Some intense player wrote something complaining about the word borax, because he said that borax is not used in some European countries, so how would they know it? This bothered him all day, though he got it in five guesses, he said. Wordle is an intense game!

Randy Rainbow has more words in his songs than Sondheim.

And so topical:

A Few Recommendations

I was thinking, what shall I write about today? There are so many current issues, with immense long-term implications. The Supreme Court, in various contexts The depravity of the Republican Party. Guns. Climate.

Washington State did a great job in passing the first statewide ban on the sale of assault weapons. So much credit goes to their legislature, governor, and the group “Moms Demand Action,” founded by the heroic Shannon Watts, who stepped down from the leadership, with all the horrible attendant death threats, a few months ago, but is still very active.

A great step–except of course that we know that if and when the Supreme Court hears the case, they will strike the law down, and very likely write an opinion which will invalidate any other state’s effort to write such a law. And this is so depressing and upsetting; particularly the fact that millions of people who should have realized this, refused to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, for various self-indulgent and stupid reasons. It did not take a PhD in Logic to have known what would happen to the Supreme Court if Trump got to appoint two or three Justices.

But there were enough people who were so full of themselves, that they thought they would manifest their presence by voting for Stein, or Johnson, or Trump, or not voting at all. And by being so utterly selfish and stupid, they were instrumental in getting Trump elected. And here we are, And how many years will it take to switch two or three seats on the Supreme Court?

And then I thought, maybe I could hold that in abeyance for at least a while, and write about a couple of movies and a television show I liked. That is actually a rather big deal for me, because there are very few movies and shows which I like. I don’t say this in a supercilious fashion, though I do think that I have good taste. I just think that the writing in these genres is generally not nearly as good as it once was; and that “political and social correctness,” and agendas, find their way into much of it, spoiling or circumscribing it.

That doesn’t mean that because I like something, you necessarily would. But it is always nice to be able to find some art to recommend.

The first is a full-length movie, “The Lost King.” It is a British film, and almost completely a true story. It is about Philippa Langley, a British woman who has a respectable but fairly mundane job, from which she is unfairly not promoted. She has two cute sons, and a sort of ex-husband who lives there, but sees another woman, as part of their arrangement. She suffers from something like chronic fatigue syndrome, but gets by all right.

She takes her boys to see a performance of Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” She is engrossed by the story, and learns that there is a small but dedicated group of people who are devotees of a sort, and believe that Richard III was not the evil figure of the Shakespearean play. The forces of Henry Tudor defeated Richard and his army at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, and Richard was killed and his body supposedly thrown into the river.

Philippa becomes animated by the possibility that Henry, who became King Henry VII of England, may have wanted to enhance his prestige and the validity of his ascension, by having Richard portrayed as a villain. This narrative would then have been continued during the reign of Henry’s son Henry VIII, and then that of Henry VIII’s daughter Elizabeth I, who of course was Shakespeare’s patron, as was the case then with monarchs. And Shakespeare accepted this history in framing his play.

So Philippa takes a surprising leap into action, and is determined to somehow get the financial backing so that she can have a search for Richard’s bones which may have actually been interred, perhaps under what over 500 years later, is a car park in Leicester; and that perhaps evidence will show more, including whether he was a hunchback as portrayed in the play, Her serious yet amusing efforts; her husband and young boys becoming involved, too, make this a vivid story, with a good deal of charm, and a message about the possible inaccuracy of historicaI canon, I very much liked the film, and was touched by it as well, from the side of Langley, and of King Richard III.

Then there is a short animated film which won the Academy Award in that category. “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse.” Many people have loved it, some think that it is “saccharine” or filled with homilies. I am not someone who ordinarily likes cartoons or after-school specials with a message. But this is a beautiful film, if only for the brilliant animation, which really captures the style of E.H. Shepard, in his immortal drawings for “Winnie The Pooh,” or “The Wind in the Willows.” If for nothing else, the short film is a treasure. And the mole is particularly cute.

It is based on a book. It is a simple and yet unusual story of a young boy who is walking in the snow He meets a mole. The boy says that he is looking for a home, he has not found it yet. The mole is mostly looking for cake his favorite food. They walk along and meet a fox, trapped in a snare. The fox ( I very much like foxes) seems fierce, but the mole helps free him. The fox travels along with them, perhaps embarrassed by their first meeting, hanging back. But he later saves the mole, and they all travel along together. Then they meet a very beautiful white horse who does most of the imparting of wisdom. This is the story, about 30 minutes.

One doesn’t need to appreciate the thoughts on life and love which are imparted, though they are gentle, and not heavy-handed. The story could be seen as a metaphor, about life and loneliness and purpose. Or one could just look at the beautiful drawings, the four characters walking along together in the snow. I don’t think that the people who disliked what they saw as greeting card moralizing, are right.

The film is not preachy or trying to teach life lessons. It might even been seen as a dream. It has a happy ending, and is affecting. And the mole gets his cake in the credits! This film beat out “My Year of D- – – -s” for Best Short Animated Feature; and I am glad of that, because it deserves it, and because I am not interested in seeing another self-referential humorous tale of coming of age, or a bunch of harmless but jerky guys whom the female protagonist encounters on her journey toward maturity. So if you have not seen “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse,” you should at least take a look.

Finally, the one television show that I have liked this year; or I guess it came out earlier than that, on BBC, but those usually show up later here. It is “Slow Horses,” it is based on a series of books by Mick Herron, about the “strange, strange game” (the lyrics of the title song by Mick Jagger) of spycraft.

It is reminiscent of John Le Carre, but less elegant. Gary Oldman is the star, and he said it was to be his last performance. It has run two seasons, and has been renewed for a third and fourth season; finally a show I like which does not get taken off the air after one season. Oldman is ostensibly in charge of Slough House, a place where MI-5 people are sent when they are believed to have botched something, or have some kind of flaw, but not badly enough to be fired, so they are sent to this place, where they are essentially supposed to do nothing but bureaucratic work, to no purpose.

Oldman’s character is in some ways appalling, with his slovenly appearance, and references to bodily functions, which thankfully dissipate as the story goes on. He is obviously smarter than his persona. The other “slow horses,” the play on words here, are actually capable; and somehow they get involved in serious maters, where they are scrambling around to avert a human and political catastrophe.

The writing is quite good, and the second season story is better than the first, but they are both quite watchable. The elegant Kristin Scott Thomas plays an icy, aspiring woman who is “Second Desk” at MI-5, aspires to First Desk, and is willing to manipulate to get there, while still seeming to retain some degree of moral sense. Her interactions with Oldman are great. Also notable is Saskia Reeves, whom I used to see in various BBC dramas, who is a very smart person who has apparently been sent to Slough House because of an alcohol problem that she is trying to overcome; and Jack Lowden, a bright young man whose father was a very important person in this realm, now retired; and who has ended up in Slough House because he failed a training exercise which might possibly have been rigged against him.

All of them are tested, particularly in the second season; and so it is a human drama as well as a political one. It is not a perfect show, very few are; but it is much better than almost all of the other shows I have tried to watch an episode or two of. If you like spy stories, you will like “Slow Horses.”

Those are my recommendations; and even if you don’t want to see any of them, it is nice to know that there are at least a few good shows being made. Of course, everyone seems to like “Ted Lasso,” and I did not, so these are just my opinions, of course. I fear for the future of independent movies, as it seems that movies will be dominated by a series of superhero or graphic movie stories, which make hundreds of millions of dollars, while a film like “The Lost King” has grossed only a little over $4 million so far.

I don’t know what has happened to the audience for intelligent, involving small-budget films, which have usually been the ones I have most liked in recent decades. I try to go to them, because they need our support, even though one has to get through some dross to unearth the few nuggets of gold. As to television, there are so many shows being made; I rather wish that I had some cachet in the area, so that I could make a few of them, because they greenlight so many shows, most of which are very predictable, and/or stultified by “correctness,” not wanting to offend anybody; and not that well written. The exceptions are what one looks for, even though it can seem like searching for buried treasure in the wilderness.

MAGA plays defense

They are out in force today.

“Oh, they don’t believe in VIOLENCE. But January 6 wasn’t a coup.”

“If Clarence Thomas is impeached then there are plenty of other politicians on the other side that are guilty of OBVIOUS CORRUPTION than also need to be impeached because both sides do the same thing in exactly in the same degree.”

They are about to be hoisted on their own petard. Here’s why:

We liberals are always willing to prosecute and we take down our own over tiny peccadillos. We do it all the time, sometimes to our detriment, unnecessarily.

So, if the right wants to impeach or prosecute someone on the left, we are going to stand on principle and say, “Sure, we don’t like crime and corruption. It’s bad for everyone.”

All the right has to do is say who did the offense, what they want us to do about it, and present the evidence and we’re there.

BUT (and here’s where the right screwed up) the charges and the evidence need to supersede extortion of a foreign government for campaign purposes and inciting a violent attack on the US Congress in order to halt a certification, send the election back to the House and overturn outcome of an election. In other words, a coup.

Anything short of that standard is going to fail.

It’s a very high bar to get over. We had plenty of evidence, eloquent impeachment managers and the actual victims of the crime voting on conviction or acquittal and it still wasn’t enough.

So, unless you have incontrovertible evidence that your target lefty politician has done worse by shooting live puppies and 2 year olds with an assault rifle (scratch that, assault rifles are protected by the 2nd amendment) or sold nuclear arms to Mexico so it can blast a hole in Texas and let all the father rapists and drug queens in, that prosecution ain’t going nowhere.

Impeaching Clinton over a blow job pales in comparison to what happened on January 6 and that is now your benchmark.

Good luck!

Whoo-Hoo! It’s attack the Liberals week!

The shtuff I see on various social media platforms about Liberals is incredible, as in not to be believed.

Liberals are not Americans. Except for those of us who hold US passports and were born in the US.

Liberals hate Donald Trump. (Not sure this is true. We just hate what he’s doing. I’m perfectly indifferent to Trump as a person, which I understand drives narcissists crazy. 😂😅🤣😂🤣😅)

Liberals are the just like crackheads if they expect Republicans to work with Biden to solve the issues Republicans most care about, which they SAY are “Inflation, Illegals, Chinese bribery, and Crime”. Biden is waiting but House Republicans seem to think they don’t have to do anything for $178000/year. Sooo… does that make Republicans who ran and won their seats freeloaders or welfare queens? 🤷🏼‍♀️

They say liberal like it’s a bad thing. Throwing that word around is the like calling someone an orc. And they seem to think they can see what we’re thinking or they’re using some device that reads our minds. Just a heads up, people who fear liberals, you bought a dud mind reading machine. You have no idea what we think. Caveat emptor. That means, oh f]}# it, go look it up.

Anyway, we don’t care.

Clarence Thomas still engaged in unethical behavior (dare we call it graft? I think we dare.) and Donald Trump committed very serious crimes that he’s about to be indicted for.

Clean up your own house first.

Boogie Woogie Easter

Have a nice one whatever you celebrate!

Tennessee and Obama.

Excuse me for saying this but Obama weaponized the word racism. It got so bad in 2008 on this site that consisted mainly of Hillary supporters that we had to throw the words “racist” and “racism” on the moderation list. No one deserved to be called a racist just because we preferred a different candidate for reasons that had nothing to do with race.

When he became president, any time he did anything controversial, out came the R word. We were all racists because the stimulus package was anemic or Obamacare had too many poor people falling through the cracks or he wouldn’t let Plan B to be sold to girls his daughters’ age because of his dad feelings. 🙄 ANY critic of Obama was a racist. Then we got so used to hearing “racist” thrown out that people were sick of hearing it.

And what was done to address racism during the Obama administration? 🤷🏼‍♀️

I would dearly love it if Obama had made eliminating racism one of his priorities but liberals should stop lying to themselves when they think that just the fact that a black man was president was enough to change discrimination in the US.

There ARE racists. We saw them in Charlottesville, we see them in Florida and we see it in action in Tennessee with the expulsion of two black state representatives. It’s appalling, disgusting and takes us backwards by 60 years. THAT’S racism, the real thing. It’s not disagreeing with the policy initiatives of the first black presidential candidate.

So, I’m sorry, I don’t think Obama has anything extraordinary to say about racism right now. He cheapened that word and used it cynically and now it has lost its punch when we need to use it the most.

Controlling the news on Twitter

Check out this thread by Akash Gupta on Twitter about Twitter’s new algorithm that was just released:

Twitter revealed its algorithm to the world.

But what does it mean for you?

I spent the evening analyzing it.

Here’s what you need to know:

— Aakash Gupta 🚀 Product Growth Guy (@aakashg0) April 1, 2023

Short summary: Twitter is definitely going down the path of DailyKos where tweets can be promoted based on how many likes your tweets get. That’s never been important to me on Twitter because I’m not a mover and shaker. I used to go there because it was a pretty amazing news aggregator and I trust my ability to sniff out disinformation.

But I think Twitter is now using the excuse of sniffing out disinformation – for your protection- to manipulate what actually gets into your feed. It resembles DailyKos in that you can post something that your collaborators will “like” in large numbers. That tweet will get the greatest reach. Well, what political operative wouldn’t like THAT?? Emotional tweets don’t necessarily have to be disinformation.

Other interesting things: there are some Ukraine war topics that will be decremented. It wasn’t my imagination that some of the Ukraine war Twitter accounts were disappearing. I thought it might be because some accounts had NAFO in their bios. Now I have to actively seek Ukraine War tweets. Also, if Twitter doesn’t recognize a language in a tweet, it gets decremented. That’s interesting I because Twitter translates Russian with no issues but it doesn’t translate Ukrainian. How conveeeenient. Maybe Elon would like to clarify why the algorithm is making these decisions. Im all ears.

There’s one more thing that got my attention. Twitter now groups your account with other like minded people. This is really irritating. A couple of months ago, two tabs appeared at the top of your account: “For you” and “Following”. For you is the kitchen sink tab. You’ll get a higher number of r@cist tweets and a heavy dose of Marjorie Taylor Greene tweets. I’ve even found some new porn accounts in that tab so you never know what you’re going to get. The “following” tab has all the accounts you actually like to see. Suddenly, all of the paleoanthropology and light source accounts are back after a mysterious hiatus. (what?? I like reading about new crystal structures even if I don’t have a laptop to play with them anymore because I can’t afford to replace my MacBook Pro. So sue me.)

Following is a bit of an echo chamber. That’s because the algorithm is using knn classification instead of K means clustering. I’m not going to go into the complicated math for how this is done because I’ve forgotten a lot of it and I would just sound silly. But basically, knn depends on finding out what accounts are similar to yours based on a previously determined class you’ve been dumped into while K means is based on a similarity score without class. So let’s say knn has determined that you belong in the Suburu Outback introvert, geek PhD, fine wine class. You’re more likely to get tweets from other people in your class and maybe the Volvo and BMW, mid-manager level suburban female professional class but maybe not the knit-your-own-sandals raw vegan pacifist Chomsky class or the military analysts and foreign service specialists who used to work at the pentagon or Foggy Bottom class. Come to think of it, I don’t see that last class in my Following feed anymore.

The problem is there doesn’t seem to be a way to adjust this setting. You’ve been dumped in a class and carefully sequestered away from all the dross and porn in For You. But that tab also contains a lot of stuff you will miss but won’t be aware of. For instance, you can get a pretty good idea of what the talking points du jour are for the right wingers and can figure out over time what dark archetypes they’re hitting. Sure, you don’t want to see the tweets from ALL of the Freedom Caucus. But a subset of that group, plus a soupçon of Ronna McDaniels might be ok. I’d also like to see war strategy accounts that pop up here and there and read their threads and look for convergence instead of only the accounts that I actually put in my following list. Anyway, you get the idea. It’s either an echo chamber or the equivalent of the Confluence moderation queue where you have to wear hip waders to fish out IBW’s lost comments.

Why is it like this? Why did Elon decide to break something to see what it was made of and thereby leave the path of wisdom? (Thanks, Gandalf, for that timely quote). Some of it seems to be to make it better for the whiners who didn’t want crap in their timelines but it appears to be over corrected. Why not just let users set the % similarity of the classes they want to see? I’d pay for that instead of the stupid blue check mark that announces how important I think I am.

The other reasons seem a little more devious and manipulative. You could create an account or accounts targeting a specific class, get a bunch of collaborators to work with you and make sure that any carefully worded tweet meant to provoke a response in that class rockets to the top of the list where it would get noticed.

My inner demon thinks that would be great for slowly deprogramming some MAGA Republicans. But this is ELON we’re talking about. It could also be used to fragment the unity of the sane people who are fighting against illiberal democracy. AND it’s a lot harder to find accounts outside your class to find nuance, subtlety, differences of opinion to do reality checks and look for convergence. Plus, look how much money he could make by selling access to the classes? They’re giant focus groups perfect for micro-targeting. Who needs Facebook or Cambridge Analytica anymore??

So, it looks to me like Twitter is continuing its downward spiral and all the news sources, subject matter experts and first hand accounts better start creating accounts on Post. or the next big thing before the next election cycle.

Memento mori, Twitter.

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Followup on the post below. Check out this sign seen recently (yesterday in Tennessee maybe?) that sums up the quid pro quo evangelicals signed onto in order to get Roe overturned.

They had to agree to everything on the Republican agenda. And that agenda doesn’t really include policies, except for going after social security, Medicare etc. It means making alliances with other groups that Republicans made a quid pro quo offer to. Ordinary voters can’t vote for Supreme Court justices directly. Only presidents can nominate them and only Senators can confirm them. So evangelicals threw their lot in with all of the 2A types and r@cists and hard core libertarian anti-tax nuts with their votes for whoever it was the operatives were trying to get elected.

It wasn’t weakness. It was just that those kids were collateral damage so that the campaign donors could get what they really wanted.

And anti-choice Evagelicals agreed to letting their principles slide on everything else.