Scott Madin @smadin@mastodon.social

I have no illusions that this is what will actually happen, but the Speaker's and Majority Leader's responses to any Republican demands for concessions and "unity" should, at _least_ until every Rep and Senator who objected to certifying the election or supported the Jan 6 mob resigns or is expelled, be "the United States government does not negotiate with terrorists."

are there a lot of new folks on masto lately or what, because it seems like there's a lot of toots on the local TL that people forgot to put behind a uspol tag

Happy Dolly Parton Day, fediverse.

so Pompeo—a fanatical, Rapture-believing Christian Dominionist, btw—is tweeting things about how "woke-ness and multiculturalism [aren't] who America is", and claiming they're "stoked by our enemies"—a classic move right out of the Hoover anti-civil-rights playbook, and very blatant to pull it the day after MLK day—and also big "America First!" banners.

gonna be a pretty rough 24 hours, and also a pretty rough next four years, I think.

do you ever just get kind of sad about the BeBox

Fresh bread!

well, this appears to be very good news: "Biden indicates plans to cancel Keystone XL pipeline permit on first day in office" https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/biden-keystone-xl-1.5877038

seems like there's more nazis on the local timeline than usual. can't say I'm a fan of that.

Nikki Haley posted a dire warning on twitter that "socialist Bernie Sanders will become the chairman of the Sen Budget Committee. He has vowed to use his position to enact his progressive agenda on healthcare, climate, infrastructure spending, & cutting defense spending."

first of all, obviously, don't threaten _me_ with a good time, but second, I think it's hilariously optimistic of Haley to believe after 30 years in Congress he'll finally start accomplishing something.

"but if he can't figure out the password in two more tries, he'll lose $220 million!" no he won't. he already doesn't have $220 million, just like I don't. he's not "losing" anything. an asset you can't touch or do anything with was never an asset in the first place. it never had any value in the first place. it wasn't real.

I don't think I'm ever going to stop being amused by the sheer absurdity of the "guy can't remember password to encrypted bitcoin wallet holding millions of dollars 'worth' of digital beanie babies that he paid $0.50 for and forgot about" stories that come around about every 6 to 18 months, and the breathless way the tech press treats them like stories of great loss when in fact they represent no loss at all.

one downside to doing development in a linux VM is the fairly long startup time. if I decide I'm done for the day and suspend the VM, then later think of something else that would be quick to add, I have to consider whether it's worth taking the time to restore its state now, vs how likely I am to forget what change I wanted to make by tomorrow morning

it's very satisfying to write a function, write a unit test, see the test fail, scrutinize the function, find and fix the error, and then see the test pass.

it always improves the day when a new Dessa joint drops https://dessa.bandcamp.com/track/rome

self-promo: this might be my worst idea yet. Introducing my new project, in which I take a months-old twitter joke far too literally, Shtory: social-media-style stories for the Unix shell.

I'm sorry.

https://smadin.net/2021/01/14/new-project-shtory/

well, guess I won't be shopping at Powell's anymore. it's gross as hell to pretend this is a "free speech" issue and they're somehow defending lofty principles, and it's double gross to imply that the demonstrations against carrying Ngo's book were likely to be violent.

Reminder: Andy Ngo is a right-wing provocateur who has provided kill lists to Atomwaffen. He is a threat to every community.

oh yeah, and:
• several of the organized fascists using the general chaos as cover were ex-military, were armed, and were carrying zipties
• they built a gallows outside that appears to have been meant to be functional, not just a prop
• they planted pipe bombs, seemingly to pull police attention away