CJ Mallard @duck57@mastodon.social

RT @adamelman@twitter.com: Not sure if I found this funny or terrifying #climatechange

petition to bring back rainbows in computer logos

rt if u agree, fav if u agree https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/1031794845109477377

Oh man, reading this thread about networking on Hacker News physically hurts. So many geeks saying things like "Getting ahead in life is about meeting people at random, not skills? That doesn't seem like a very good system.

1984: We can't talk here, they might have bugs to wiretap us.

2018: Bug, order me some pizza!

The alliance between the Christians and the right wing has always seemed to me like an unholy one.

It just doesn't seem credible to me that Jesus would vote conservative. Jesus was a radical progressive.

In America specifically, it also seems exceedingly unlikely that he would love guns and hate gay people. He would take one look at an American megachurch and proceed to disrupt the ceremony, because merchants have occupied God's temple.

New snakes invented by a neural net I trained on 1,000 snake species. Not sure how convincing these are though.
http://aiweirdness.com/post/178980378702/new-neural-net-snakes

I like how #Microsoft wanted to save space for users by removing four 'empty' directories, instead of focusing on making #Windows produce less junk.

@remotenemesis @ella_kane @thegibson I used to use an app for birdsite that would auto-delete all of my tweets older than X days.

I don't believe social media that moves as fast as this should be kept forever.

No one's going back 3 months into your toots/tweets/whatever unless they're looking for something to hurt you with.

@natecull it's more a "this party is a bunch of idiots, but I don't want the *other* party of idiots to have any political power, god they'd use it to {legalize abortion, allow climate change to happen unhindered, etc}. It means it's not *so bad* voting trump/obama into office because in a few years years he won't be able to accomplish much of anything due to being a lame duck.
The problem is the executive branch has been taking a lot more authority to itself lately and so it's mostly for show

@natecull Also worth noting gerrymandering - the House districts within a state are drawn by the state. So, while the whole state's votes count for the electoral college votes for President in most states, and for Senators...

...it is possible for the House to swing the opposite way from the Presidency and the Senate despite everyone voting straight-ticket, if the party in power in the state drew the lines to screw up the districts properly.

@natecull Because if you're a single-issue voter, and the Republican running for President and the Democrats running to represent your district align on that issue...

Also, note that the national parties may well not align with the state parties - for instance, a Republican from a strongly Democratic-leaning state may have a platform to the left of a Democrat from a strongly Republican-leaning state. That can promote split tickets...

@natecull So *THAT* specific thing is influenced by a transitional era in US politics, known as the Southern Strategy.

Basically, the Republican party figured out that it could win the southern racist vote, which was historically the domain of Democrats in the south, thanks to careful application of dog whistling.

So, I'm thinking the racists kept voting for the House and Senate the way they were before (southern Democrats), but flipped to Republican for the presidency.

@natecull

German General Officer: "The reason that the American Army does so well in war time, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis"

Soviet document: "One of the serious problems in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals nor do they feel any obligations to follow their doctrine"

Anonymous US Army officer: "If we don't know what we are doing, the enemy certainly can't anticipate our future actions"

@natecull the US did so well postwar because it wasn't bombed to shit like Europe.

@natecull i suspect it's more of a turnout issue than people actually flipping votes. you're more likely to actually get out and vote when you're still pissed about the last election

The thing that still weirds me the HECK out about American politics:

When did Americans start voting for one party for House/Senate, and the opposing party for President?

Cos no matter what your politics is, doing that's like saying 'I want candy and I want a beating, and I'm darn well gonna get BOTH'

Didn't start in the 2000s or even 1990s. Was it the 1950s, with Eisenhower? All the Democratic voters decided they wanted socialism but also hardline anti-Communism?

Still just boggles me.

The most pointless exercise in the world is to have an argument on the Internet. An even more pointless exercise is to have said argument and not get your point across, leaving your opponent arguing against a straw man.

@craigmaloney sorry, but for people who -- after their communities are getting killed by a corporate centralized social network operator -- are moving to a new shiny corporate centralized social network operator to create communities there, I have almost zero sympathy.

This is their own choice, and they deserve what's coming their way.

That's not to say that what corporate social media operators are doing is okay, obviously it is not.

@craigmaloney we should reach out to G+ folk and help them migrate to the open side of things.

They've been burnt by the corporate social media, they might be interested in trying something new.