The disability? No. The sentence it produced, given the context of the event that just happened? Yes.

That said, the meat of my last post was the criticism of the message. Beyond a chuckle at “lol, battle” I don’t really care that he misspoke. I do care that we’re being told to just sit pretty in the midst of things like the planet burning up and the Nazis coming back. He talks about us settling our differences of opinion with civility like the opinion being discussed is whether or not pineapple is good on pizza… we got bigger fish to fry. One of those fish already had its own world war; we fried it the first time with a fuckton of violence. If violence isn’t the way this time around, what’s the plan? Voting is good and well: do it! I definitely will. …but we’ve been voting, and the existential threats persist. He wants us to be nice and quiet. Okay… so give us a road map of how that’s going to actually work.

Gunman was a republican, so that tracks.

Unsure if drinking-the-Nazi-koolaid type of republic, or registered-R-just-to-fuck-with-their-primaries type of republican. Should find out soon.

“Take that, you thtupid Nathi!”

Nazi peon who took bullet intended for Nazi leader turns out to be a Nazi!

Who could have seen that coming?!

“But in America, we resolve our differences in the battle box!” -POTUS

Um… yeah, Joe, that’s sorta the problem right now.

Speech tl;dr: “My fellow Americans, cool your fuckin jets and play nice.”

Kinda weak imo. While yes, it’d be nice if people weren’t so dissatisfied with politics that they turn to violence, let’s maybe address some of the things that are making people unhappy instead of just telling them to remain passive in the face of existential threats to our rights, our nation, and our planet.

Not to knock Biden specifically - this is just the state of our politics. Please do still put the Biden in the ballot (NOT battle!) box, or it gets the Nazi again.

We can. But we won’t. Murican politics will be riding this death spiral all the way into its grave.

Even if he goes full and permanent vegetable, he’s still not Trump. Top priority is stopping Orange Hitler from taking control again, so please for the love of human rights, vote for whoever has the the best shot at beating him - if that’s Biden, cool. If it’s Harris, cool. If it’s a literal ham sandwich, fucking fine - all three are orders of magnitude more qualified to do the job then Trump.

The only world leader with footage of him playing piano with his penis on stage in front of a live audience.

This man is a fucking legend.

Dude I saw a faded-ass ‘Bush / Cheney’ sticker on the way home today. Cult is as cult does.

The LP definitely has potential for growth. I’d love to see them eventually take the GOP’s seat as one of the big two. All the social stuff would pass pretty much overnight cuz that’s a win for everyone; we’d just bash heads over where to (not) spend money and what (not) to regulate, but that wouldn’t be a bad thing - at least the two parties would each have a clear objective for voters to weigh, vs the GOP’s nonstop contrarian bullshit for the sole sake of contrarian bullshit. It’d also force the blue team to get their shit together and run some actual progressives instead of this race for second-worst we keep dragging our feet in. I can’t stand this loop of voting for someone because they’re not a Nazi. It’s necessary, cuz I don’t want the fucking Nazi, but is that really the highest we can set the damn bar?

My political wet dream is to look at a ballot and actually hesitate for a minute because all of the options on it are good options and trying to pick out the best one becomes a difficult task. That will never happen as long as it’s red vs blue. Yellow vs blue though… there’s potential.

Steelmanning

I didn’t know there was an actual word for it!

The abortion shitshow was actually the topic of that lesson because of how tribal each side has gotten. That was… idk, 15 years ago? Not much has changed lol. Initially we were just told to prepare a debate on it, so we ofc pulled heavily from whichever echo chamber we adhered to, and we had all our (very flawed) talking points ready to go. Then the prof dropped the ol’ switcheroo. Thoroughly broke highschool me’s brain - in hindsight it was pretty funny to be in the middle of a room full of people who thought we knew our shit, all suddenly realizing we don’t know squat.

That was a fucking good prof!

The LP… they sound alright on paper. The non-agression principle is solid. All the emphasis on a ‘free market’ sounds nice if you assume corporations elect for ethical practices when they’re not mandated (lol). I can talk em up in the scope of a lunch break; it’d be hard to keep the ball rolling much passed that though.

Probably. And when that time comes, I’ll make the same pitch for whichever not-a-Nazi is running against the actual Nazi. Should it be better? Fuck yeah! But if we don’t play along, we get actual Nazi. I suspect we’ll rinse-and-repeat until we’re extinct; but I’d prefer to spend that time with as few Nazis in power as possible.

I mean, you’re being sarcastic, but being able to give an elevator pitch for something you’re personally against is a great skill. I was a speech & debate nerd in high school, and that was definitely one of the more valuable lessons.

If nothing else, it helps to understand what ‘other side’ is thinking. We (self included) have a tendency to demonize others who don’t align with our values.

Abortion is one of the best examples of this. If you look at the other side exclusively through the lens of the other’s echo chamber, you have 1) misogynistic bigots who want to control women down to their organ function and punish them for failing to adhere to a religious standard that they don’t subscribe to, vs 2) women who recreationally murder babies and redirect responsibility for their promiscuous lifestyle onto the healthcare system.

I think this is why we never make any meaningful progress on that controversy: all of the mainstream arguments are shit arguments in terms of their ability to actually resonate with the people they’re directed at. You can probably guess where I stand on abortion based on my first post here, but I can 100% make a pitch for either.

Other topics are no exception. I fucking loathe the MAGA crowd, but calling them a Nazi isn’t going to change any minds. I don’t love the LP, but they’re significantly more benign than the GOP. The two have overlap, so fuck yeah I can work with that. I’d love for the LP to continue to grow and refine itself - best case scenario is the GOP shrinks to an obscure extremist group, while any shreds of sanity flock to the LP to make a much more productive rival to big blue. I don’t have to actually support the LP to want them to do well in that regard; if I can boost them at the expense of the GOP, win-win!

I’ve been making pitches for the libertarian party to my trumpanzee coworkers. It’s a similar flavor of bullshit as the turds the GOP is already feeding them, so they’re somewhat susceptible to it.

No chance in hell I’ll be able to convince them to vote Biden, so burning a would-be Trump vote on the spoiler effect is the next best thing.

I give it a one-star rating.

AOC is definitely a voice in politics I’ve come to respect. I can assume pretty confidently that her opinion is well founded and with the right intentions… if she thinks Biden is best option at this point, that tells me pretty conclusively that Biden is genuinely the best option at this point.

The debate shenanigans, the age, whatever: all of that is a fraction of a drop in the ocean compared to the shitstorm that would be Trump presidency. It doesn’t matter if any of us like Biden. Do you want a literal fascist running the country? If no, vote Biden. If yes, abstain / vote for literally anyone else.

Speaking to Ardin over Zoom in Stockholm…

That place does seem to have a certain effect on people.

I unironically kinda wish that would take off. The concept of a super simple bridge language is great.

I didn’t say it was a bad system or that we need to change it: I said I hate it.

Not really any that I’m aware of, but I’m a tech, so my insight is only surface level. Grain of salt.