Semisimian

He seemed to be taken by surprise at the blowback from Riyadh. His reasoning was “the governments can suck, but the people are great. I perform for the people.” It’s a viewpoint convenient to his wallet, but now he doesn’t really bring it up.

He still sees his job is to speak truth to power and always punch up, not down, but I believe he is also ignorant of the totality of the Saudi’s evil. I’d rather try to bring him over to us than cast his voice aside.

I absolutely agree with you and I’m sorry you are the focus of so much vitriol from ignorant sociopaths. Still, I encourage you not to stand by and choose nothing over the least bad option when the final decision affects everyone. It feels like I’m always holding my nose while in the voting booth. I’m about to do it big-time next week to put a proven corrupt crony in office to keep a reprehensible creature out. I hope we will have better options in the future if we have Reps and Senators that work and succeed to get money out of politics.

The “all or nothing” approach to voting is not realistic. If Turek checks all but a few of your boxes and Hinson checks none, then vote Turek into office. THEN you can work on him to change his mind about whatever issue you have. You’d have zero chance to do that with Hinson.

I’d argue you should even stump for him. Go out to your trans friends and say “what he said is gross and awful, but his stance on expanding healthcare, lowering the minimum wage and refunding SNAP will help all marginalized people, including trans folk.”

It’s a bad take, for sure, but I encourage any voter in Iowa to read about his platform on every other subject: https://turek4iowa.com/platform/

It’s an old letter that is the “th” sound. Some.people.are trying to bring it back.

Zelenskiy: “President Trump is facing pretty difficult midterm elections. His personal popularity is very low, diesel prices in the U.S. are very high, and the war that he started in the Middle East is not going the way he wants it,” the Sky News reporter asked. “Do you think you are being treated as a scapegoat for his own problems?”

Zelenskiy took a long pause, glanced at the papers on his podium, and then looked up, smiling. The whole room laughed.

“This is my answer,” Zelenskiy said.

I watched it yesterday and interesting is the appropriate word. The interviewee is a young guy, 28, which Jon brought up at the start of their talk. Jacob just shrugged his shoulders. After watching Jon for so many years, I thought it was an oddly unprofessional start, and since Jacob didn’t take the bait, it fell flat.

The interview goes on, with Jon poking the well-known, glaring holes in the AI debate, with Jacob nodding along. It seems like they agree. Then Jon mentions the future ramifications of AI. Jacob disagrees, starts repeating the utopian rhetoric. Jon picks at him to get some inroads into a debate. Jacob agrees, not giving up his position of a utopian outcome, but always circling back to the probable dangers.

I like that Jacob was on and that Jon did the interview. This was a tough one, because Jacob exists in a different world than Jon, and as much as he tried, he could not pull Jacob out of it.

Jacob understands there is great danger in the way AI is being developed. He has enough sense to know his employers were reckless and possibly homicidal. What he doesn’t understand is that this technology isn’t inevitable. He’s seen the back end, he understands the leaps and bounds LLMs have made, but he didn’t live through the “inevitably” of nuclear war, the “inevitably” of every computer going dark on Y2K. Even video calls were seen as the future norm in Sci-fi movies, but with all this capability, we’d rather text.

I like that they gave the interview time to breathe. It might not have been the most engaging TV, but I appreciated its awkwardness. Jacob is a tech-bro. We don’t often get a journalist on Jon’s level to give him the what-for. Watch it while you can.

Memes are educational.

"Among the most prominent allegations are that Boebert conducted a four-year “romantic and sexual relationship” with a senior female staffer, named as Clarice Navarro Ratzlaff, then paid her $200,000 when Ratzlaff broke off the affair and threatened to file an ethics complaint of her own.

Additionally, Wheeler alleges, Boebert had a sexual relationships around the same time with Raven Finegan, a congressional employee and the congresswoman’s district chief of staff, and Jeffrey Small, who was her chief of staff from 2021 to 2025."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/21/lauren-boebert-sexual-relationships-ethics-complaint

Stumblin!

https://www.reddit.com/r/LiveFromNewYork/comments/1nss5gh/stumblin_2010/

Should be “shonetines I git shad.”

“prospective”

You sly dog.

“Companies are looking to slowly chip away at the burden of choice that comes with shopping, travel, and dining.”

Ugh.

From SCOTUSblog,

“Based on two words separated by 16 others in … IEEPA—‘regulate’ and ‘importation’—the President asserts the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. “Those words,” he continued, “cannot bear such weight.” “IEEPA,” Roberts added, “contains no reference to tariffs or duties.” Moreover, “until now no President has read IEEPA to confer such power.”

“Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the main dissent, which was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.”

Fortnite? My kids don’t play it anymore, I don’t know.

This is for the 30-55 year old demo, for sure. Young enough that you had to learn to keep pace with technology and old enough that devices your kids use are mostly plug and play. Bit at what cost? AT WHAT COST?

Woo-oooo-oo-ould.

Those of us possibly even older may point to the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in '87. From Wikipedia, the fairness doctrine “required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints.” In short, it’s repeal paved the way for Fox News and led all the way to CBS under Weiss.

But to your point, there are 3 things on my platform that I tell anyone who wants to hear it. 3 actionable items:

1. Reinstate the Fairness Doctrine.
2. Repeal the Patriot Act.
3. Overturn Citizens United.

I didn’t say it would be easy.

So, she shares a name with The Walrus of Love himself, Barry White. Cool. There’s a joke in there somewhere…

Flip it and you got me.

I’m missing context on this one. I walk away from Lemmy for ONE day and…