@redenigma ...all in the name of "defending that right."

@StevenSavage There is a bigger-picture piece to this. Across the board, people need to recognise how they're being manipulated by shock-jock sensationalism.

The "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality runs everything from literal ambulance chasers to how politics are covered.

As long as the news is entertainment, the public cannot be served well by its news outlets.

A boycott would have some impact, but market forces will continue to operate until the market realises its addiction(s).

@feloneouscat That's easily countered with "A vote for Trump is a vote for Trump."

@feloneouscat I remember some of his other promises more clearly.

Like how globalisation was a huge threat to the country, and how he was going to return manufacturing to the US. (He didn't.)

He also declared that the US military was nearly out of ammunition (which is pure silliness), and he pledged to make sure that didn't happen.

He's a living Gish gallop. Everything he says is a different kind of untrue, but feeds and is fed by people's insecurity, so it *feels* true.

TFG has no capacity to trust and so is incapable of trustworthiness.

He demands loyalty, but is himself disloyal.

His schtick only works on the people eager to see him as a self-fulfilling prophecy...which has never actually paid off for them.

There is a lot that is politically actionable there. TFG is thriving on some kind of mystique. He is the martyr-bully, which makes him difficult to target.

Difficult, but far from impossible.

#politics

@ATXJane Apparently, people on the right want a strong, decisive leader, and if he makes any sense at all, that's a bonus.

So, if Biden's campaign started really going after TFG, like absolutely mercilessly, would his support among democrats weaken?

On one hand, we don't want gotcha politics to dominate. On the other hand, this is the game Trump has put in the spotlight, and he's winning even though he's not even particularly good at it. He's also vulnerable to it because he's such a buffoon.

Language (as a stand-in for all communication) operates in the tension between order and chaos.

It helps us make sense of things, which means that nothing is entirely nebulous, yet every time we think we have something defined perfectly, we discover more of its limitations.

A defining characteristic of a developed country is that it has predictable and trustworthy systems.

In North America, conservatives are actively destabilising legal and political systems. Destabilisation isn't their actual goal. Rather, they want the systems reshaped to their will.

Yet the volatility they are forcing will have repercussions that they ultimately do not want, and ultimately cannot control.

In this way, they are dangerously close to manifesting everything they are afraid of.

@corlin I have the same concern with the term "self-help," too.

This really struck me when I was standing in the middle of the "self-help" section of a large bookstore: the enormity of the infrastructure hidden by that individualist label!

I have a lot of patience for people who aren't familiar with technology, but they really need to slow down and read all the prompts and dialogue boxes.

People who are less comfortable with tech who just dash through steps without reading anything...I don't want to watch a video of my face watching a colleague do that just now.

I have officially reached I-have-to-regularly-trim-my-eyebrows-now years old.

There are a lot of people speaking with the authoritativeness of mental health professionals who are speaking from their trauma and not their informed, broad-based education.

Your mental health is not something to trust to influencers.

@kel (I just want you to know, I've been sharing this one with colleagues.)

@Loffreni That's so delightfully awkward!

If there was ever a prize for replacing people's huffiness with bafflement the quickest, I'm sure you'd win!

@NorthernInvader Coroner's report:

Death. By meetings.

@kel Yes! This is so illuminating!

@JolieSaboteuse Oh! Now I see!

So, like, each meeting exists in an circumferential polar pattern where every point is its back.

@JolieSaboteuse But, I mean, do meetings not have a front?