This judge, I imagine: “I hereby decree, with the power I’ve vested in myself, that no poor shall be allowed financial relief of any kind whatsoever, now or any time in the future, whether or not that relief is warranted or legally mandated. Furthermore, I hereby decree, that any relief initially intended for a poor shall instead be transferred to the coffers of one or more of the lobbied corporate entities listed in the appendix of this ruling. This apolitical and logic-based ruling cannot be challenged by anyone with a net worth less than $1 billion. See appendix for relevant appellate account transfer and verification details. Use coupon code BOOTSTRAPS24 for a 5% discount.”

I finally got around to restarting God of War. I played the first few hours on PS4 a while back, and was overwhelmed, felt like it threw too much at me all at once, and I couldn’t be bothered to learn all the combat and mechanics. I got it for PC and started fresh, took it slow and used exploration to learn all I could, and shit, now I get it, this game is a masterpiece. It looks gorgeous in 4K, and the combat is loads of fun. And quite possibly my favorite thing is getting to hear Teal’c again (I freaking love Christopher Judge).

Now I just need to play something mindless to fill the next few weeks before Ragnarok releases on PC.

Fuck. This is clearly a stunt meant to appease people with a tiny discount on a single bill. They’ve pulled this before, and it’ll do nothing to lower our bills.

I’m a single guy with a TV and a computer, and when I moved to California less than a decade ago my energy bill averaged around $70 a month. Now it averages around $150 a month. Same behavior, twice the price. That’s unacceptable.

Reminder that at least one utility company in CA is a convicted felon for causing the deaths of multiple people in wildfires. They’re bad companies operating in bad faith.

That’s some expert baby-handling, very cute!

I was existentially afraid to watch this movie as a kid, because I was convinced it would never end. My kid-brain was sure that if I ever started watching it, I would never be able to stop.

I struggled to get through the first season, and right when I started to think I might like one or two characters, they recast them. It didn’t keep my interest, and I probably won’t watch any more of it. I’m not one to give up on shows like this, I usually power through them and find something to like. But I have no interest in GRRM’s world anymore.

I’m someone who read ASOIAF voraciously as they came out, went to one of GRRM’s lectures, met and chatted with him while he signed my book, and just generally was in love with his world-building. I’m done now. No more disappointment for me.

True that. Respect is probably too strong a word.

Yeah, I don’t think she’d ever choose a maga nut, but as much as I respect Kinzinger and Cheney for standing up for democracy I do not want them in the cabinet. They still have wildly different political positions than Harris.

Totally. Having self-awareness is step one. Acting on that self-awareness is step two. Sadly most people don’t even get to step one, so you’re way ahead of the curve.

Totally fine, politicians change their views. The more concerning thing for me was this:

The Democratic nominee also revealed that she would name a Republican to serve in her Cabinet if elected

Why?!? The people give the president power by voting them into office, the president wields that power on our behalf. Now would not be the time to share our power with the party that doesn’t believe in democracy. I can’t think of any good reason to voluntarily give a cabinet post to the other side, bipartisanship is not the point here.

Rape jokes, even those directed at pieces of shit like Bannon, are not cool.

Last time I flew, I had a screaming baby in front of me, a screaming baby behind me, and a screaming baby next to me. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t relax, and my noise-cancelling headphones did very little to help. Know what I didn’t do? Complain, berate the parents, or confine the babies to an unsafe and enclosed space.

Babies cry. There’s usually nothing they or their parents can do about it. That’s life. Flying sucks, and this is just a part of it.

I think it’s worth picking this apart a bit to show just how complicated it all is. Your motivation seems right, but there’s an inherent contradiction in your suggestion. One of the purposes of DEI best practices is to have BIPOC people in the room at all levels of the organization, in decision-making roles, and normal worker roles. It helps everyone feel welcome, heard, and equal. Often this feeling is intangible but has very real impacts on how works gets done, how coworkers interact with each other, and how satisfied the workforce is. If you have a meeting full of diverse staff, its much less likely that the white folks will spew microaggressions and make everyone else uncomfortable.

That means yes, interviewers should absolutely be diverse themselves, because they’ll typically hire a more diverse workforce. But how do you suggest that we require interviewers be diverse to avoid bias? We need DEI training and enforceable policies for that. So we’re stuck in a vicious cycle.

I thought it was just me and my old iPhone, but I’ve also been having a lot of trouble connecting for the last few months. Since May, really.

My parents used to use AAA TripTiks to plan our trips. Granted this was decades ago in the olden days of paper maps, so I have no idea how good they still are, but apparently they still exist. Worth checking out.

I did a cross-country move about 8 years ago, and just planned each leg of the trip separately. I chose where I wanted to sleep, planned the route to get there, and then did the same for the next leg. There’s really no wrong way to do it as long as you connect the dots and go the way you want to.

I fucking love her character.

I think “For Now” should be in that headline. No progressives I know are okay with this, but they are okay with her political messaging shifting, for now, in order to get elected. We understand how politics works, but she better not betray us.

Cool, if you have nothing to say, then please don’t say anything.

FYI this is a right wing Christian news site that, according to their About Us page, was founded in 2004, in response to Pope John Paul II’s call for a “New Evangelization."

Amazing. It’s such a great combination of symbolism, memory, and warning.

I spent some time in Berlin, and I was genuinely moved at how present the history is. There is no attempt to hide anything, and I respect and appreciate that immensely.

As a Jew, I appreciate this. It might be presumptuous, but I assume you’re somewhere in Europe, maybe Germany? Europe endured incredible generational trauma, and it would probably be easier to ignore all of it and not put up plaques, but some countries put in serious work to try to make things right and make sure something like that doesn’t happen again. Hell, I was recently offered an application for citizenship to the European country my grandparents escaped from, as part of their reparations program. What I’m saying is, there will be trauma and long term pain, but it’s also possible to heal and grow. Since there are other genocides going on in the world right now, it’s important to remember that these atrocities continue to happen in the modern world, but that it’s possible for us to stop them and move on.