During the Trump presidency, I read a book entitled “They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45”. In it, a journalist gives an account of his interviews with people who had been rank-and-file members of the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. It really is remarkable what similarities there are.

There are some things that I think will keep the US safe, at least for now. One is that Trump himself is old and will slow down soon. The other thing is that Hitler came to power against democratic institutions that were much, much weaker and younger than what the US has. The Weimar Republic had been established just 15 years prior, whereas the US has had a continuous government for nearly 250 years.

Trump or anyone trying to follow in his stead simply has a lot more in their way. Of course, that’s no reason for complacency.

In the context of the US, it most certainly is. Other places, maybe not so much.

All politicians meet with lobbyists. It’s hard to get a handle on the needs of the nation (or state, or so on), and lobbying is how people inform their representatives of that need. Now whether those lobbyists are scumbags or saints, that’s a different question.

https://www.tiktok.com/@dimension20/video/7348878466697202987

Now wait until you hear about skinteeth.

I was ready to hear something like a story from someone who had signed onto a medical trial and was upset the trial was ending. Nope, instead an absurdly short support period that seemingly is fed by the same culture of replacement over repair that has infected our economy.

YOU CAN HAVE MY COBOL ON COGS WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS.

It’s a bit much.

I’m gay. Personally, I’ve just never had trouble in situations with non-sexual nudity. I’ve been to nude beaches, about ten of my city’s World Naked Bike Ride, and of course locker rooms. Plenty of hot guys around, it’s hard not to notice, but never had the smallest issue with anything being evident. It feels like it’s largely based on the setting.

On the other hand, I’m gay and breasts just don’t do anything for me. Now a guy with a decent set of pecs (but not ridiculously oversized), now we’re talking.

What? All you have to do is edit a few files with ed, run some simple commands in the terminal, and you have a working system

Definitely start with a nice beginner friendly distro, like Gentoo, NixOS, or LFS.

Or as one sausage restaurant sign nows says:

IMMIGRANTS EAT OUR DOGS

I am a very narrow supporter of eugenics. Specifically, I am against any further breeding by Elon Musk.

I nominate Vivian Wilson.

Muskrat? They really are repulsive creatures.

I just started looking up the different ways to order beers. Wow. Even if it’s based on the metric system, each country really did go and reinvent the wheel.

I’m doing a series of conversations/interviews with my parents’ generation to keep a voice record of their stories. As part of that, I’m doing transcripts that start with the transcript feature of Google’s Recorder. It can do some nifty things like assign speakers to individual voices. I have to clean up the transcripts some, but it’s far less laborious than dealing with a 15-20 minute conversation. I can fix up a transcript in maybe 5 minutes.

Thanks I Hate It?

There’s more than one Christian that’s noted that, including Christians on the right.