#lameduck

[lasseling]

New FTC Decision Could Force Businesses Across Country to Comply with DEI Agenda, Commissioner Warns

Lame-duck President Joe Biden’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has just issued a new decision that could force businesses across the country to comply with the Democrats’ radical diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

Tomorrow (December 5), I'm at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC, with my new solarpunk novel The Lost Cause, which 350.org's Bill McKibben called "The first great YIMBY novel: perceptive, scientifically sound, and extraordinarily hopeful."

#15yrsago Berlin hacker con will use RFID badges to simulate life in a totalitarian panopticon https://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/wiki/OpenBeacon_with_OpenAMD/

#15yrsago RIP, Forrest J Ackerman https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-ackerman6-2008dec06-story.html

#15yrsago Googling Security: book that opens your eyes to how much you disclose to Google https://memex.craphound.com/2008/12/05/googling-security-book-that-opens-your-eyes-to-how-much-you-disclose-to-google/

#10yrsago 75% of American silent feature films lost https://variety.com/2013/film/news/library-of-congress-only-14-of-u-s-silent-films-survive-1200915020/

#10yrsago NSA collecting unimaginable quantities of mobile phone location data for guilt-by-association data-mining https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-tracking-cellphone-locations-worldwide-snowden-documents-show/2013/12/04/5492873a-5cf2-11e3-bc56-c6ca94801fac_story.html

#10yrsago Democratic lawmakers share a squalorous house in DC https://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/04/politics/real-alpha-house/index.html

#10yrsago Rob Ford police document: allegations of heroin use and more https://torontolife.com/category/city/toronto-politics/2013/12/04/new-bombshells-from-police-documents-suggest-rob-ford-may-have-tried-heroin-been-blackmailed/

#10yrsago NYPD shoot at unarmed man, hit bystanders, charge man for making them shoot https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/nyregion/unarmed-man-is-charged-with-wounding-bystanders-shot-by-police-near-times-square.html?smid=pl-share

#10yrsago Orange UK plumbs the depths of insulting, stupid marketing, finds a new low https://memex.craphound.com/2013/12/05/orange-uk-plumbs-the-depths-of-insulting-stupid-marketing-finds-a-new-low/

#5yrsago What it’s like to be a woman reporter on a cryptocurrency cruise where nearly all the other women are sex-workers https://web.archive.org/web/20181205144647/https://breakermag.com/trapped-at-sea-with-cryptos-nouveau-riche/

#5yrsago See you in court: amid protests, shameless Wisconsin GOP neuters the incoming governor in an all-night, lame-duck session https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2018/1205/Wisconsin-GOP-pass-slew-of-measures-during-lameduck-session

#5yrsago British Member of Parliament publishes 250 pages of damning internal Facebook documents that had been sealed by a US court https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-committees/culture-media-and-sport/Note-by-Chair-and-selected-documents-ordered-from-Six4Three.pdf

#5yrsago The longest-serving Congressman in US history proposes a four fixes for American democracy https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/john-dingell-how-restore-faith-government/577222/

#5yrsago RIP, George HW Bush: a mass-murderer and war-criminal https://theintercept.com/2018/12/05/george-h-w-bush-1924-2018-american-war-criminal/

#5yrsago Trump cybersecurity advisor Rudy Giuliani has no idea how the internet works https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/rudy-giuliani-doesnt-seem-to-know-how-the-internet-works.html

#5yrsago Not just breaches: Never, ever use Quora https://waxy.org/2018/12/why-you-should-never-ever-use-quora/

#5yrsago Obamacare study: 25% decline in home delinquencies among newly insured poor people https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-04/how-access-to-obamacare-cuts-late-housing-payments

#5yrsago Poland rejects the EU’s copyright censorship plans, calls it #ACTA2 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/11/poland-saved-europe-acta-can-they-save-us-acta2

#1yrago Monopoly's event-horizon: The true capitalist singularity https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/05/eldritch-physics/#wouldnt-start-from-here Banning surveillance ads and banning drm as good politics

It's EFF's Power Up Your Donation Week: this week, donations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation are matched 1:1, meaning your money goes twice as far. I've worked with EFF for 22 years now and I have always been - and remain - a major donor, because I've seen firsthand how effective, responsible and brilliant this organization is. Please join me in helping EFF continue its work!

[my-mt-heart]

I'm one of the Doubting Thomases that think Caryl will not go canon in the finale. There are too many clues that point to it not happening, most obviously including the blatant lack of meaningful conversation between the two longest standing characters for the entire season. It has felt like a complete retcon of their relationship after the intimacy of last season, which I'm fairly certain is largely due to studio meddling (aka Gimple). It's bittersweet that Kang has been such a lameduck showrunner this season after bringing so much emotional truth to the table in S10 only to have it all fall apart with a clumsy plotline that didn't belong in a sunset season.

But it's nice to know others still maintain hope for Caryl. People are free to make up their own minds.

If one of the rumored yet-to-be spinoffs is for Carol I'm not sure I could stomach to watch it because I've lost trust in the entire franchise being able to tell a meaningful story. Though I'm sure Melissa would make the most of it as she has all these years. She's right, Carol has more story to tell, but we'll have to leave it to the fanfic writers to truly do it justice. Or, perhaps you and SF could join forces and write it? I would totally crowdfund that project. As I'm sure many would.

But in the meantime, here's to all the writers that kept the torch burning all these years and made sense when there was none. Thank you! Please keep writing, writers! We need you now more than ever to keep our love of Caryl alive. You are the unsung (and often under appreciated) heroes of our fandom.

But the fact that Kang did bring so much emotional truth to S10 should tell us something about S11, shouldn’t it? Did the story suffer because Angela simply lost her touch, nothing more or less, or could there have been too many cooks in the kitchen? Consider the power structure, the fact that even showrunners have people to answer to. Consider what past seasons looked like. I know what makes sense to me, but everyone’s free to make up their own minds just like you said.

As for Caryl, you say all the signs point to no canon, which is interesting because I see the seeds Kang planted to potentially get us there. I just think it’s a matter of whether or not bts shenanigans stopped her from pulling the trigger, which we’ll find out soon. Am I happy with Caryl’s story so far? No, not at all. Again, like you said, the lack of meaningful conversation and emotional realism is super frustrating. But I still think there’s reason to hope for something good in the end. 

I’m super wary of the spinoffs too. All we’re asking for is good storytelling, but so far it seems like all we’re getting is gimmicks. I’ll talk more about it on Sunday. I agree the fic writers in this fandom are the unsung heroes, and I hope they’ll find inspiration to keep writing. I hope to make room for Caryl content too :) 

[thepoliticalvulcan]

Look, I'm still coloring in the right bubble but...

I feel like we should all be able to express some collective anger and frustration. What even was the point of bullying Biden off the ticket if Harris is going to go on interview after interview and repeatedly say she can't think of anything she'd do differently?

This is the Dem elite thesis that the only thing making Biden unpopular was Biden himself. I.e. he was too old. A lot of polling even seems to be bearing this out. Either Biden had already lost the 2020 coalition or Harris can't put it back together and is unwilling to take any risks to seek out new voters. And by risks I mean actually take a different and definitive policy stance on something besides abortion.

Going on Fox is admirable. I really and truly respect that. Get out of here with that "platforming" nonsense, Dems need to be able to take a rhetorical punch, show they can think on their feet, and that they don't think red team are entirely brainwashed zombies incapable of changing their minds. So going on Fox is great.

Its political malpractice of the highest order to be be completely unprepared to answer obvious questions that are incredibly important to purples who might be tuning in to reevaluate their priors like "would you do anything different from Biden?" and "you say all the time you worked closely with him, did you ever have concerns about Biden's fitness?"

Because you can't go on Fox and say "no" without having an explanation as to why you're the candidate now and he isn't. You just can't.

Either throw Biden under the bus or don't and be prepared to argue that you disagree with the "Biden too old" discourse (even though you're using it against Trump now), that he really did have a bad debate night, that everything else is some mix of his stutter, senior moments, uncharitably interpreted, deceptive editing and his actual ability to make decisions is sharp while his ability to express himself is not; but everyone understood that that narrative had taken hold and trying to fight it was swimming upstream.

But you can't just say "he's awesome" and pivot to how Trump is a wreck. You'd have to be super super super blue pilled to not recognize this as bad politics if your goal is to persuade the persuadable undecideds and shore up the NeverTrumpers.

I don't understand what this campaign is doing and why it thinks any of this is good unless there's a lot being unsaid.

Things like maybe they don't really think democracy is actually on the ballot in a substantive way that will foreclose the possibility of competitive elections in the future. Which I think is an incredibly dangerous assumption if true but you never lose by betting on establishment Dems assuming rules and norms will hold.

Things like Biden not being a lameduck as President is more important than winning.

Things like the administration's Israel policy being rhetorically critical but when it comes to consistent delivery of offensive weapons, its virtually uninterrupted. Ukraine, who almost exclusively only fires on military targets has to beg and plead for every bullet. Israel? I wouldn't even be surprised at this point to see an announcement tomorrow they'd been given cluster munitions.

Bragging about having the endorsement of the Cheneys when you need votes from people who were of military age during the Bush years and worried about a draft to go to Afghanistan or Iraq or had friends die or be horribly maimed.

On its own the Cheney thing could be read as "not even Dick Cheney will associate with Trump" but paired with the hawkish foreign policy? It looks like the NeverTrumpers are acting as a stereoid for the part of the Democratic coalition for whom its not just doctors who are the experts we should listen to, its also Department of Defense and NatSec think tankers who have spent their entire careers working intimately with their Israeli counterparts on a host of issues and developing deep affinities and friendships.

Put another way, if someone has worked in defense for 30 years, not one single year of their career has taken place prior to the original Gulf War and 23 of those years and counting have been since the dawn of the Global War on Terror. I kind of suspect that doesn't make those people all that good at separating the conditions that fuel Islamic guerilla warfare from the often quite heineous things that members of these movements do.

That DOD, State, Homeland Security etc. has tended to recruit heavily from people already predisposed towards thinking that ethno-chauvanism isn't bad if its the right people doing it before they even spend 30 years working alongside Israeli military and security officers is another thing I can't rule out.

Again, don't @ me here. I'm going to vote for Harris to vote against Trump. Although as a red stater, I don't know that my vote matters. I do want to signal that I think Biden running in the first place was a mistake and voting for Harris is the only way I know to do that.

But I'm frustrated. And I'm worried, because everywhere I see signs of a re-alignment back towards the center right and beyond. Not just towards pragmatism but fully disavowing the moral ideals that have crept into the Democratic party from the progressive side during the last two decades. A lot of progressive policy after Trump won was stupid and poorly thought out. That demands corrective action, but the high minded principles were worthwhile and I think we're rapidly losing those too.

[babyawacs]

#on_the_person_scholz #on_berlin_is_not_germany @potus @vp @statedept .@berlin .@potus .@vp statedepartment germanchancellor currently isone of the monst unloved persons oftheland like a worker level functionary underdog without the businessnetworks and no credit how stable nonescalatory he held the moderated the mess based on tradehub hamburg northern seas spot mroelike trade freetown. heis like a lameduck in complicated alliance in bashed while wait out september elections whilemany bet theywontbe able. benice to scholz mistrust the germans enjoy how shallowsurface nice day all is and canbe

#on_the_person_scholz #on_berlin_is_not_germany @potus @vp @statedept .@berlin .@potus .@vp statedepartment germanchancellor currently isone of the monst unloved persons oftheland like a worker level functionary underdog without the businessnetworks and no credit how stable nonescalatory he held the moderated the mess based on tradehub hamburg northern seas spot mroelike trade freetown. heis like…

[queensqewed0722]

All this character build-up of Jon Snow wasted. All these Easter eggs throughout the show certainly got scrambled. The Prince that was Promised became a lameduck: he wasn’t the one to kill the Night King; he didn’t even ascend the Iron Throne to usher in a new golden age to Westeros. He just got exiled for killing Daenerys, when he was within all legal rights ( at least in the context of their world), to do so.

[timlussier]

11/15/2022: Six years ago today I wore TeslaTim hat as Trump beat Obama and they met behind me in White House. - today GOP flipped Congress makes Biden lameduck but last time we fired Pelosi was 2012 I was paid Romney staffer v Obama in ‘12 Election. Yes today is 18 years for me in politics includes 9 elections. Hate or love me I keep fighting so we all can pursue happiness.

[omg-on-a-budget]

"It was pretty clear that by the end of that speech that President Biden gave it was the beginning of the lame-duck presidency," she said. "He has lost the trust and confidence of every member of the military and the military families I’m proud to be a part of. He’s lost the trust and confidence of our allies who are now negotiating without us because they don’t know why we’re going what we’re doing. He’s lost the trust and confidence of the American people."

[jonostroveart]

Lame Duck

[lovetransaction]

by now there's no point pretending i don't try to find a rational non-psychotic reason for John's behaviour at any given point lol so: I think at least once, maybe a couple of times, 'sending Dean away' was John's lameduck attempt at separating Dean from their shitshow life. Sam was never gonna have that option because Sam was being hunted from day one; John needed to keep that child in his constant sights.

With Dean, though, there was the possibility of getting out of it. But trying to say that to Dean? That he should be away from Dad and Sammy?? Never gonna fly. So off he went to places where John thought he might learn that a different way of living was possible.

To me with all the available info, that's a plausible reason. Another reason is that John was run so ragged looking out for two kids on his own while hunting monsters that he just thought fuck it. I'll park this kid somewhere for a while and if he tells me to screw off when I come back for him, so be it. If I leave him with the cops, well, there's a reason all those "scared straight" programmes exist, right? They must be based on some kind of success rate.

Maybe sometimes John was at the end of his rope coming up with ways to discipline the kids and he decided to pass the buck. Maybe he had a job he was doing where he couldn't take kid Dean (any number of the sexually-tilted hunts he went on) and leaving him and Sam in a motel wasn't feasible and he could only find temporary care for Sam. Maybe he was irrationally big mad at Dean for something and did it out of spite so Dean could see how much worse it could be.

There's a million potential reasons!!!! I LOVE THINKING ABOUT THEM

I need y'all's thoughts on this...

Okay, so in Prophet and Loss (14x12) Dean tells Sam that sometimes John would get so mad at him that he sent Dean away for a while. He said it to make sure that Sam knew it was never that Dean had run out on him. What did Dean do? Where did John send him? And for how long?

If you have any thoughts about this I want to hear 'em! I'm open to PG or X rated and everything in between. Gen or Cesty? Yes please and thank you!

[jonathandesverneyusanews]

Lame-duck Trump is determined to execute as many people as he can before Inauguration Day

Lame-duck Trump is determined to execute as many people as he can before Inauguration Day

Donald Trump and William Barr got the go-ahead for capital punishment last summer, and they are not going to let a little thing like a presidential transition interrupt their killing spree. On Thursday night, Brandon Bernard became the second person executed since Election Day, with four more executions planned before Inauguration Day, including one on Friday, just a day after Bernard. Bernard’s…

[socialsf]

Thanks Hannah McKay 📸 @reuters for this #amazingphoto #lameduck #pardonsturkey https://www.instagram.com/p/CIBdl6IhZTA/?igshid=1u7qq8lj2ysac

[wataplease]

#bidenharris2020 #clearwinner #LameDuck (at Ohio) https://www.instagram.com/p/CHjj_GoDmW1/?igshid=3hkf12jhmu6q

[christian-zich]

Morning everybody. Yesterdays walk in the fog. A few calm minutes after an exciting weekend. Still happy about the outcome of the election. #trump #bidenharris2020 #enjoythemoment #error262 #pb5m #joewedidit #lameduck (hier: Kleinschwarzach, Bayern, Germany) https://www.instagram.com/p/CHXPx3whtV9/?igshid=1uorugtj3qoyq

[artofjosecabrera]

Poster I did a few years back! Says it all! #getout #thejerkmovie #lameduck #justice https://www.instagram.com/p/CHVzBAchyw5/?igshid=1te2yy8mslwjr

[extraordinairethegreat]

We not done roasting yo ass yet .... you maybe feeling these darts for the rest of your life son #donaldtrump #lameduck https://www.instagram.com/p/CHTp_yXB4c4/?igshid=1ktbolrbks5b