Notices by Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us), page 2

since there’s no longer any website called “twitter”, i think “tweet” should become a site-neutral term for a microblog post on any site, or for posting one. i am tweeting this on Mastodon.

Chicken: She started it!
Egg: No he did!

i love this guy.

of course he was crushed.

from #BenRyderHowe https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/yellowstone-club-real-estate-public-land-montana-crazy-mountains.html

ht @lollardfish @maeamian

a democracy is a China shop. a billionaire is a bull.

Called a Lyft, first time in more than a year. “Wait and save” feature added ~10 mins before trying to match a driver, an arbitrary delay to save $5. Then promised a driver in 20 mins. Driver got to my neighborhood, parked, evidently canceled. Without asking for confirmation, Lyft started searching for a new driver. Found one, another 20 mins. Assuming this one comes (not a safe assumption perhaps!), the hail-to-arrive delay will have been about an hour. Just like calling a cab, back in the day.

“A fully developed hurricane releases heat energy that is the equivalent of a 10-megaton nuclear bomb every 20 minutes — more than all the energy used at a given time by humanity, according to National Hurricane Center tropical analysis chief Chris Landsea.” https://www.oregonlive.com/nation/2024/10/can-humans-control-the-path-and-power-of-hurricanes-like-milton-or-helene-no-chance-scientists-say.html

“Will Milton author ‘Paradise Lost’ for Floridians?”

am i the only person for whom the names “vance” and “walz” code as oddly similar? i sometimes hear a claim about one and misinterpret it as referring to the other until i double-check myself.

are campaign rallies an effective form of campaigning?

Winner-take-all markets make first-to-market the only thing, which means best-to-market may never come at all.

it seems like the more the Harris campaign wins endorsement of high-profile ex-Republicans, the worse it does in the polls. hmmm.

i liked it better when “the facts of life” referred to sex stuff.

“The point of Open-Source isn’t and has never been ‘source available’. That’s just a prerequisite and a nice to have. The purpose has always been giving users the freedom to use for whatever purpose, or to fork the software, which in turn translates to lower development costs for the software makers.” @alexelcu https://alexn.org/blog/2024/09/06/trusting-open-source/

if you vote early or by mail, but then die before election day, does/should your vote count?

If it says “urgent” in the subject line, it’s not.

If it says “personal” in the sender line, it’s not.

the “broken windows fallacy” is indeed a fallacy, but let the windowpane lobby gain a lot of influence and you’ll find policy develop to encourage just this kind of “growth”.

#economics

“Stephen Colbert, unforgettably, labeled Republicans’ habit of uttering things that feel emotionally true, even though they are made up, as ‘truthiness.’ The Democrats had their own, photo-negative version of truthiness: utterances that are meticulously factual, but that convey an unmistakable emotional falsiness.” @Rickperlstein https://prospect.org/politics/2024-08-26-say-it-to-my-face-democrats-truth/ ht @ddayen

fraud fraud is when you fraudulently allege a fraud that in actual fact was not fraudulent.

trying desperately to undo what he has done to himself, Trump will soon announce he supports abortions until age three.

“Generally speaking, firms with more market power can price gouge, so [price gouging] laws are sometimes known as ‘antitrust as last resort.’” @matthewstoller https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-price-gouging-vs