Tom Stearns @tomstearns@octodon.social

Given what just happened in France--all of it--I'm thinking it wsn't so much that "America had a grassroots revolution" last November as it was "America's entire election/political system got pwned."

@prismatic7 Do you mean your dissertation? If so, massive congrats!

@SerpentAPlumes Sometimes you celebrate a holiday without even knowing it exists.

@007 That was when they made their money from selling software instead of selling your data.

@Cocoron As an American living in TrumpLand: make very sure that Macron is exactly as bad as LePen. Trump seemed nearly as bad as Hillary Clinton a year ago, and Clinton is pretty awful. However, Trump is even more awful. I would have preferred the less-awful candidate

@upside I forgot it for years but then I married a Canadian and flew in and out of YYZ a few times.

@upside @churley79
Yup. YYZ is the code of the main airport in Toronto (Pearson international)

@upside @churley79
Your prize was obviously based on the album title (YYZ).
Fast trivia: What did that title refer to?

@upside It was hard to count correctly until you trimmed his claws. Might be more visible in this pic. One big, black dagger of a claw was tucked in the crevice between two others.

I miss that boy.

@upside Awesome! The cat paw, by the way, has seven toes and claws. SEVEN.

I don't drink alcohol, so now I have to go guzzle some diet Dr. Pepper while cruising the roads of my small town in my 20-year-old small Japanese car. I've got work to do... but that sounds like more fun.

@upside Now that I know the secret, I'm looking at your former posts. I'm guessing this is "in the summertime."

Wondering if I'm supposed to be able to see others' replies to the same status here on Mastodon or not. Maybe there were no other replies to this? Seems unlikely...

My (US) congressman says and does unnecessarily hard-right things, agreeing with Trump almost desperately, sometimes almost saying the dog-whistle GOP positions out loud. He is also low on the GOP totem pole.

Naturally.

Low-status members of social groups infer unwritten group norms, then bang their drum longer, harder, and faster than anyone else. They one-up each other in hyper-conformity. High-status members don't need to do this.

He looks like an ideologue but he's really just a climber.

@upside OK I'm stupid. I clicked the speaker icon and it worked. Thanks for hand-holding.

@upside MUNDANE WARRIOR MEAN MEAN STRIDE TODAY'S TOM SAWYER MEAN MEEEEEANNN PRIDE
(na na na na nana naaaa na na na nanana...)

@upside Unrelated: is there some kind of specific plugin I need to hear these clips? I'm not sure what format they're in or what streaming service or whatever; just that I can't play them on my machine.

@Ontploffing Thinking more about it in more detail, this problem (assuming I could easily scrape the relevant data) has potential solutions.

One that comes to mind is to create a simple cross-product or cross-sum for each bill of the # of GOP vs. Dem supporters of each bill, weighted by N. I visualize a 2-axis Cartesian space. If N is X and proportion of Republicans (right, natch) vs. Democrat (left) supporters is Y, the bot could choose only bills in some part of the upper right.

Just watched Tropic Thunder. I'm kind of shocked to say that I really liked it. In the genre of "movies about the absurdity and psychopathic cruelty of Hollywood," it's near the top of my list.

#movies

@CobaltVelvet Seriously, what's with Deep Dream and eyeballs?

@Ontploffing Hm. Good point. Then I should look at partisan bills... if I ever learn how to code a bot.