The Flapping of Butterfly Wings: July 11

Various Bluesky remarks I wish to preserve

• Never forget that Susan Collins is part of a current fascist party. Graham Platner bore the symbol of a defeated fascist government; Susan Collins is part of the current fascist coalition that dominates the United States.

• Having looked at the new MS NOW terms of service, I proceeded to access the website via a VPN using a secured browser window.

• “Flying Bribery Palace.” Just wanted to admire that phrase.

• I think private prisons probably ought to be forbidden as “cruel and unusual punishment.” Perhaps there ought to be laws that forbid…oh…perhaps the 13th amendment already does. When one gets right down to it, much of what ICE/CBP is doing is part of what the Framers rebelled against.

• In advertising supported publishing, the articles are there to get people to buy the magazine so they can show people advertising. With LLMs, there’s no need for a human author to actually write the articles. This is the same problem we have on the advertising supported web, in print.

• Do not put monarchists on the highest law court of a
  democracy.

• The unitary executive is otherwise known as a monarch.

• There’s a faction of the Democrats, I think both center and left, that thinks they can get the herrenvolk behind figures like Platner and Fetterman. But why would the herrenvolk accept substitutes, when they can vote for actual Republicans?

• It’s ICE that should be locked up.

• It becomes more and more clear that the New York Times ownership might as well be Trumpers.

• Liberals returning to X wouldn’t work. We wouldn’t get our message out. The reason we were heard, the reason we were able to come together and form a consensus that Platner was bad news on Bluesky was because the platform allowed us to do so.

• Well except for the part where Instagram is ripping everyone off and feeding their imagery to AI. [They did later rescind this policy. No-one knows if that decision will stand.]

• I will pay attention to Iranian pronouncemets on the USA when Iran starts obeying maritime law.

• Even assuming this lot is swept out of power in the next two elections, which I am not certain of, I don’t know how the hell we survive another two and a half years of this. The country will be an absolute shambles.