weevil-mastermind

[weevil-mastermind]

The first weeks of the Trump administration have been chaotic, but who could have foreseen this? We were given absolutely no warning of any of this, except for the dozens of times everyone involved told us exactly what would happen, for several months. Perhaps the most warned about event in history actually

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People who go on every cute spider post to go 'eew >:( how do I never see this gross horrible creature ever again' like have you considered you don't actually need to comment on everything

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There was a reviewer or commenter who said "I always keep track of how many mistakes the protagonist makes and after three, I stop reading the story and never look back".

I think about that person pretty frequently. We read for our own enjoyment, and therefore there's no wrong way to read a book so long as you're enjoying yourself, but ... maybe I don't actually believe that. Maybe there are wrong ways to read a book, and this guy found one.

[weevil-mastermind]

Elon Musk Suggests Getting Rid Of All Regulations In Midnight Call

President Donald Trump’s “government efficiency” cheerleader Elon Musk proposed simply ignoring all federal regulations during a public call shortly after midnight Monday morning. Musk, whose newly formed “Department of Government Efficiency” team has in recent days executed a dramatic power grab at several government agencies, called for “wholesale removal of regulations.” “Regulations, basically, should be default gone,” Musk said. “Not default there, default gone. And if it turns out that we missed the mark on a regulation, we can always add it back in.” “These regulations are added willy-nilly all the time. So we’ve just got to do a wholesale, spring cleaning of regulation and get the government off the backs of everyday Americans so people can get things done,” Musk said, adding later: “If the government has millions of regulations holding everyone back, well, it’s not freedom. We’ve got to restore freedom.” Musk replied, “If it’s not possible now, it’ll never be possible. This is our shot. This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have. And if we don’t take advantage of this best hand of cards, it’s never going to happen, so we’re going to do it.”

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the groundhog reportedly saw "a blood red sun. in the foreground a massive wheel framing the sun in the sky. the wheel has ceased to turn". nobody is sure what this means but its probably fine

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unlike some scoundrels on this site i was never memed into disliking lemon demon

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every star wars alien is so good and then there’s

this

[weevil-mastermind]

[weevil-mastermind]

dead-easy prophecy to make about the future:

self-driving cars are going to get good enough to become legal. at some point. i dunno when; there's been overpromising and hype cycles about it for like a decade now- but at some point it gets there.

they're going to kill someone every single day. every single day, a self-driving car will make a mistake and someone will die as a result. it will be in the news constantly- we're going to call them, like, "slaughter machines", and talk about how the self-driving car business is run by literal blood money.

and this is going to happen even if they're ten times safer than human drivers and actively saving lives.

in just the US, there's 100+ vehicle fatalities per day. if 10% of the cars on the road are self-driving and they're 10x safer than human drivers, there's going to be 1+ fatalities per day. every single one of them is going to make the news. some of them are going to be photogenic children. everyone is going to have a story to tell about a friend of a friend whose friend died in a self-driving crash. it'll be common knowledge! everyone knows that these things are incredibly unsafe, and that getting into one is highly irresponsible.

(we know this will happen because it's already happening! everyone knows that Teslas are shitty cars that spontaneously catch fire all the time, even though there's ~43k annual vehicular fires in the US, and 1% of the cars on the road are Teslas, so you should expect ~430 annual Tesla fires but there's actually like 50-something. 50-something is enough for something new that people already hate to be in the news every single week! they got that nasty musk all over them- and self-driving cars are definitely going to have that nasty musk all over them.)

i don't have any illusions that making a tumblr post about this is going to stop this from happening, but know that once it does start happening i will be shaking my head condescendingly about it every time i see it.

[weevil-mastermind]

“If I had time travel I’d kill Hitler” “If I had time travel I’d stop my favourite politician getting assassinated” you’re all thinking way too small. If I had time travel I’d stop Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from dying on the moon due to Soviet sabotage, kicking off the Great Nuclear War and devastating half of the planet.

[weevil-mastermind]

IF YOU ARE UNMARRIED, DON'T HAVE KIDS, AND HATE YOUR PARENTS PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD HAVE A FUCKING WILL

this has been a public service announcement from your friendly neighborhood probate lawyer

[weevil-mastermind]

I get why the conversation is taking this form, and these people are probably right on the merits, but it feels weird that people are discussing the shutdown of USAID in dry theoretical terms like “soft power” and “US hegemony” when in the immediate term what’s at stake is whether a guy in Ethiopia will get the medication he needs to not die of AIDS.

[weevil-mastermind]

Lol

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sorry kids daddy lost all his money betting on rhinoceros beetle fights again there won't be a christmas this year

[weevil-mastermind]

say it with me: deserts aren't inherently bad. deserts are very important and are home to many ecosystems. you want an unhealthy, over-exploited desert to become a healthy, thriving desert. you don't want an unhealthy, over-exploited desert to become a forest. deserts and forests are distinct, separate biomes that are both indispensable. you want to see them both at their best. and a desert at its best doesn't look like a forest at its best. they're each beautiful in their own way.

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The [George W. Bush] aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

October 17, 2004

[weevil-mastermind]