Wandering Adventure Party

On the other hand, I got to have some kind of peppery mutton thing from the Indian joint a few towns over and it was Excellent, but also very spicy.

(Yes, I keep slim jims on hand at all times.)

@squishymage42 (and then reform your local ballot access.)

@squishymage42 makes sense! Primary some local Dems!

@squishymage42 that's the whole point though, we shouldn't ever be in a situation where we have to hold our nose and vote for someone who will only make things a little worse instead of someone who will make things a lot worse.

Fixing them democrat primary will not ensure this. Replacing the democrats might.

@squishymage42 But it absolutely does matter who! Because vote blue no matter who gets you Joe Manchin.

The democratic party will not save us, we have to save ourselves.

Joe Biden was tougher on immigration than any president in recent memory other than Donald Trump. He supported the genocide in Gaza. He was dismissive and patronizing and too damn stubborn to follow through on a single campaign promise.

We have no reason to believe that Harris would have been any better than Biden, and lots of evidence to say that she would have been just as bad, or possibly worse, on important issues.

(This is not an endorsement of or an excuse for Donald Trump. It's an indictment of the mindset that refuses to treat politics as anything other than a game with teams to root for! If you come in here talking about how she would have been better than Trump you will get blocked, because the point isn't that she wouldn't have been better than Trump. Clearly she would have been! The point is that she could not possibly have won, and the Dem leadership knew that and ran her anyway.

It doesn't matter if Harris would have been better than Trump because Harris couldn't beat trump. What matters is that there are people who could have beaten Trump, but the democratic leadership were so high on their own fucking bullshit that we didn't even get a primary.

and "don't blame me, I voted for Harris" is exactly the wrong message to take away from the 2024 election. "Don't blame me, I'm okay with genocide", "Don't blame me, I'm okay with keeping people in overcrowded prisons that the courts of CA have ordered to be released, because if we release them we won't have enough slave labor to fight the wildfires that PG&E cause because no one in the democratic party is willing to force upon them any meaningful oversight."

(That's not hyperbole. Harris, as AG, refused to release people who the courts had ordered to be released, because once released they couldn't be used as firefighters!)

Centering your identity around having voted for a candidate who lost and who, in all likelihood would have also lost any fair primary if such a thing was ever allowed to happen, is to resign yourself to fait accompli. To publicly declare that things could not be better than they are.

What a waste.

If you're in a position where you're introducing yourself to a wider world, and leaving people to make decisions about if and how they want to interact with you (that is to say, using a social media network like The Fediverse), and the only information you give me about yourself is:

- I voted for Harris
- I support Ukraine (DUH!)
- LLAP

I'm left to make one of two choices:

1 - You aren't a real person! You're a bot, and not a very good one, who probably exists specifically to boost and provide legitimacy to propaganda.

or

2 - You're so completely brainwashed by the myth of American Exceptionalism that you legitimately can't imagine a world better than the one we live in.

If you're going to make politics the CENTER of your identity, and then choose a political stance as boring as "Don't blame me, I voted for the lady cop!" ... you're lost. You're a lost cause.

I have a new follower who's display name is "White dude voted for Harris" and I think perhaps I have not been loud enough about politics recently.

Hi White Dude who voted for Harris! I'm nearly certain you're a sockpuppet account (because your profile picture appears to be AI generated, and whooo buddy is your account ever just generic dem talking points and Yay Doctor Who is great.)

I don't mean to single you out as a point of ridicule but I feel like I have to much to say about this phenomenon (people who make milquetoast liberal politics their primary identity, not you in particular! Not that you'll see this, because I've already blocked you, because I suspect your account to be a sockpuppet.)

So I'm going to be talking about, in vague terms, US politics. Mostly, I'm actually going to be talking about this phenomenon where some folks make "TEAM BLUE" their whole fucking identity to the point that they genuinely set back any hope we have of bringing about better social change.

(In 2018, my wife would routinely get called in to work to tend to problems in the early evening when I expected that we would be going to dinner, and I would wander down to a much nicer local cafe to drink significantly better, more caffeinated drinks, and Post Through It.)

Some kind of Kerfuffle has occurred at my wife's place of business, and she has decided to go in on her off day to assist in dismantling the kerfuffle.

We were on our way to dinner.

She texted me a few minutes in to kerfuffle descalation to say "I dunno how long this is going to take, it's bad in here."

So now I'm sitting in that big shitty coffee chain, drinking the cheapest decaf drink on their menu and siphoning some AC and AC and ... AC (cooling, power, and wifi respectively) while I wait on her to tend to the kerfuffle.

So I'm going to be posting like it's 2018.

Many of the children's and middle grades novels in the public domain are not actually good for children.

This is largely due to shifting language, but shifting values also play a huge role.

What are some public domain children's stories that hold up for modern kids?

Here's a picture from like 6 hours earlier that explains away some of the mysterious sky fire. CWd to preserve the mystery for those who choose.

Did I ever share this photo?

That flame was 20ft tall.