Notices by Matthew Loxton (mloxton@med-mastodon.com)

@GottaLaff
LOL, what now?
Are they actually trying to look stupid, or is this just whomever has a usable grift?

@GottaLaff
Obviously, a big part of the fascist playbook is to just heap outrage upon outrage to exhaust observers and throw chaff so they don't notice the important stuff they are getting up to. I guess they also don't really care if these departments grind to a halt and become useless, so long as they have a nice list of powerless people to blame.

Food quality sucks? Obviously illegal immigrants
Resurgences of childhood diseases? Again, illegals
Drugs unavailable or unsafe? Trans people!

@jon
Kinda how fascism works.
"Buy my shit product, or I will influence the laws to harm you, and sic a crowd of nuts on you"

@brembs
It took me years to build up to 10k followers. I was a big user of Twitter, including hosting my own tweetchat on healthcare quality and safety. I had literally thousands of followers for my blogs, my short stories, and my research work.

Then Dorsey sold that to an arsonist who promptly fucked it all up.

I am sure as hell not investing that sort of effort again, only to have Jake Fucking Dorsey sell it again as soon as the numbers looked good. Fuck him.

@pluralistic

@seachanger
Right, but the voters must decide between getting a flawed but friendly candidate or an actual fascist. They must also decide between performative posturing, and participating

@HistoPol
Thanks
I seem to be fine now.
It was lack of blood sugar, and after a meal, it all worked out

Thanks though, much appreciated

I contrived to fuck up five times in a row merging spreadsheets

https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/07/with-this-latest-deal-flipboard-looks-to-build-a-news-ecosystem-beyond-x/

@JenniferSlack
For the past fifty years at least, the game has been that Democrats will save Republicans from making really bad mistakes that would hurt everyone, and the Republicans would vilify them and blame them.

That isn't happening anymore, but it is taking voters a long time to realize why we can't have nice things and why everything is bust and ugly

@mekkaokereke
"The relative drop in freedom for a Black man under full fascism, is much less than the relative drop in freedom for a white Dem voter"

Oh, for sure, and especially immigrant, female, or LGBTQ, and especially T.

"racism is just fascism practiced on Black people first"
100%
Racism was just the opening foray and training exercise, like immigrants and Trans people will be.

"it is not insane, stupid, or selfish"
That is the bit where we part. Most of those protest votes were all 3

@mekkaokereke
Again, Mekka, I admire you, follow you, boost you, but on this topic we are never going to agree.

I am unlikely to see this as anything other than a very costly gesture that is essentially irrational.

I also disagree that Black men are not going to experience worse outcomes as a result. I think they are in fact very likely to see a big increase in risk and harm. The thing is though, the millions that walked away or made protest votes were not just Black men. Loads of white guys

@mekkaokereke

Right
Same issue though
When walking away gets you the Nazis, it is insane to take that option

There are research games that explore this, and "costly punishment". If A offers B an "insulting" bid, although getting something is better than nothing, many B players "punish" A by rejecting the bid. That actually makes sense IF (1) there will be more rounds with A, and more importantly, the stakes are low. Neither are true here

MANY people will die or be immiserated now

@jeromio

@jeromio
I'm a Progressive, I frankly didn't give a shit what reasons Harris/Walz gave, but they gave a ton. Going after price gougers, huge infrastructure investment, securing women's health, etc. PLENTY stuff that would be great reasons.

But again, even if they had simply said, "we aren't *that*", my mission would have been clear. I defy anyone calling themselves "progressive" to be faced with a choice of "not appealing" and "fucking terrible" and saying "meh, I'll take the default"

@jeromio
Right, 18M people made an insane choice.

They were offered a choice of several candidates, only two of whom could possibly win - one of which would be somewhat better than status quo, and the other would be far far far worse. 18M either picked an impossible option, or walked away and got the default, which is the far far far worse option.

That is insanity

That Dems reached across the aisle to broaden the tent, or to depress the other candidate's turnout, is really irrelevant

@jeromio
I totally understand *why*.

I am saying that the decision is insane. It is not a rational decision to say "fukit" when the outcomes are so severe for so many people.

I didn't like that they reached across the aisle, I loathe the Cheney's, and I am very aware that all these Lincoln Project, Bulwark, etc people are the exact bastards that ushered the current situation in and bred, enabled, and released the cancer.

But, saying fukit and walking away is an insane act

@mekkaokereke

@johnmark
Let's say for argument's sake that you are right, and that she linked arms with Cheney and even agreed to adopt a Cheney policy (which she didn't), what of it?

Are you really saying it would be better to have the other guy win than vote for Harris?

Is that what you did, or are you saying this is how some hypothetical person voted?

I ask, because that would be an insane thing to do. Like actually insane.

@PJ_Evans @mekkaokereke

@winterwind

And what is the cause?
The voters, or the party?

The party ran the best campaign ever against the worst campaign ever
So where were the voters?

@Azuaron @mekkaokereke

@mekkaokereke
"I think she lost the election in September and October. Don't go after mythical swing voters. It doesn't work, and loses you Black turnout."

I don't think she had much of a choice. I think her people did the numbers and concluded that it was a better bet to court swing voters or at least depress RW voters, and risk losing some of the Black and Left vote.

TBH, even if I had been an undecided voter before, the threat of putting RFK over HHS and have him setting public health policies, would have tipped me way over the edge toward Harris.

Like you would have to be far beyond insane to give *that* guy control over anything that could affect anyone's health.

@DebR
Push your representatives to demand that DoD review his contracts and security clearance
@GottaLaff