Bartimaeus

People shouldn't die for their beliefs. But I also think people's automatic response to schoolchildren getting murdered on the regular ideally shouldn't be saying absolutely psychotic **** like i t ' s s o m e t h i n g w e ' r e j u s t g o i n g t o h a v e t o a c c e p t b e c a u s e f r e e a c c e s s t o g u n s f o r a l l a l w a y s n o m a t t e r w h a t. . . especially if it's not actually your friends or family that are the ones being sacrificed by and for this mad, sick country. Like, talk about being hoisted by your own petard in a nasty fit of cosmic vengeance. The only country where this happens, and we've tried almost nothing to prevent it, and the little we have tried has been stupid and misguided, and it's all only going to get worse - especially as people are increasingly impoverished, isolated, radicalized, and deranged. Increasingly, I think the U.S. might well be facing something its own version of Ireland's The Troubles over the next decade or two... It's not going to be pretty.

As someone who had an active Democratic lawmaker in my state get assassinated (and with a nearly successful attempt on another) earlier this year with barely a media peep while I now have to hear right-wing conspiracy theories from brain-impaired troglodytes in real life about how the shooter was actually under orders from Governor Tim Walz because he'd been appointed to some 60-member work/labor recommendations board back in 2011... ... ...I'm guessing this will be a little more of a stir-up than those assassinations.

Charlie Kirk assassinated by some white guy in his 60s while giving a speech at Utah Valley University. Boy, our country sure is in an interesting place right now, isn't it? Utah just passed a "open carry at colleges is legal" law earlier this year, too... "Charlie Kirk Says Gun Deaths ‘Unfortunately’ Worth it to Keep 2nd Amendment" Hey, as long as it's not you or your kids, I guess so, right? Well...one of those rare cases where some right wing piece of **** got the chance to actually practice what he preached, so good on him.

It all sounds pretty on-brand. Maybe #3 is a little extreme, but that's just some additional gamification of already existing issues underlining the series, really.

Sometimes, I kind of wish Keyrock were still around so that we could all make a point of repeatedly saying what a stupid piece of **** RFK Jr. is.

I've been in a re-watching mood. 12 Angry Men is so good, it's a film that can really change someone's entire outlook on how they perceive the world and all the assumptions they make about it, and the impossibility of really trying to figure out what's actually happened or what's truly right or wrong given our pathetically limited point of view.

3 Women (1977). Second time watching this. I didn't remember it being quite this potent a nightmare. Robert Altman was really off his marbles, but I'm glad he was able to make a truly great movie with Shelley Duvall here - I both despise and love her in this movie, and that's a very strange place for her to be and I think that's wonderful.

You only have to look at one of those grizzled old farmers that wore t-shirts and jeans for their entire lives to know sunscreen is a good idea: upper body, they look like a leathery dried out raisin about to keel over because of skin cancer, but lower body looks like they've de-aged 40 years. Yeah, I think I'll keep wearing sunscreen.

I was just thinking about your erstwhile watching of Space Adventure Cobra the other day... I think you'll enjoy it more than I did. I mean, I enjoyed it fine, but it was a little bit of a lukewarm enjoyment.

@Hurlshort, what post of mine did you like three hours ago and why is it now in one of Trump's extralegal gulags where I'm not allowed to visit it

What finally made me leave Google a few years ago was when I was suddenly and inexplicably logged and then locked out of my account from my home PC on my home IP address...and I realized that the whole system is completely automated and that it's impossible to get any actual support in the event of system error. No matter what information I gave them, they thought my log-in attempt was suspicious and just kept asking for more information until there literally was nothing else left to ask and I still wasn't allowed back in. I ended up switching to ProtonMail where I can log-in from any device on any IP, and where you can setup TOTP 2FA, which is pretty much the only type of 2FA that I want - texts, phonecalls, emails and the like are all dumb, as are Google's random security and account history trivia questions. ProtonMail isn't perfect from a UI standpoint, but at least I don't have to worry about getting banned by some automated system for completely inscrutable reasons anymore.

I re-watched Chernobyl. It's fantastic television despite the fact that there is way too much misinformation and even straight up lies for the sake of drama and also just because the showrunners apparently did not do enough research...but there's really always been one thing that bothers me more than anything else about this series, even the lies that are so blatantly in the face of the single most major theme of the show. In episode 4, there's a new POV from a hitherto unknown liquidator conscripted to help clean up Chernobyl. The POV is meant to help us understand the human element of the job, how difficult it really was to take everyone away from their homes and kill every last living creature in the Zone and upturn the very earth itself, and how many of these guys were basically just kids that wouldn't have ever signed up for any of this...but I hated watching it even the first time, it just didn't work for me. On this re-watch, I couldn't help but notice... Is that ****ing Barry Keoghan, from The Banshees of Inisherin, The Green Knight, Dunkirk? I seem to hate this guy literally everywhere I see him, automatically, no matter what. I'm really starting to think I just must not like this guy for some reason.

The Boy and the Heron (2023). Uh... Hmm. The initial setup and pacing of the film really stink: it doesn't feel like the film starts until literally the 45 minute mark, and after that, the characters, writing, and direction are all still just...kind of aggravating. I'm very much reminded of a very slow and messy Spirited Away, which was already incredibly inexplicable and messy in of itself...but this is much more meandering and with way less appealing music and characters. Deep and meaningful themes unfortunately don't mean squat if I wasn't able to enjoy the journey meant to relate and explore them. I hope Miyazaki at least found meaning in making it. To be frank, I expected to dislike this movie at the outset, ever since I read the most basic details revealed about it, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised...but somehow, I liked it even less than Ponyo. Man, I wish Isao Takahata were still alive.

While the healthcare cuts are terrible and will cause many critical access (read: rural) hospitals and clinics to close (hopefully leading to as many completely unnecessary MAGA deaths as possible, though we regretfully know that there will be many affected who are anything but MAGA), I think the actual worst part of this bill is that it will increase ICE's funding by many times its current, and they're expecting to roughly triple its current workforce. Trump's secret police will be better funded than most countries' militaries, and I can't imagine there's anything else he wants more than his own private army that personally supports him and only him with the bill mostly footed by the taxpayers of all the states that he'll be unleashing them upon.

Jimmy Swaggart My mom's dad was a pastor involved with a lot of the scumbags like Swaggart and Copeland early on into their ministries/proto-televangelist careers. Swaggart probably isn't as evil as Copeland is, but I can't say I'm terribly sorry to see him go, little good it does now.