Jason Skiles

Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 19:29 UTC

We all thought it was pretty funny that the NYT was all salty about not getting enough interviews. Like they're so entitled and he's not giving them what they feel is their due, ha ha. In hindsight, were they were venting frustration about not being able to print what they knew, because no sources?

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 30, 2024 at 21:45 UTC

How much of that is he never had to because Chuck Schumer knows how to count votes and doesn't call votes that Manchin is going to wreck?

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 30, 2024 at 21:41 UTC

It's especially frustrating because she was right there in plain view on the ballot in 2020. Americans have ALREADY signed up for Harris replacing Biden in a pinch.

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 20:41 UTC

I remember wondering where Skylab was going to hit.

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 13:11 UTC

Has anyone, ever, just as a test before pushing all-in on metal coins, just done a small scale test where they buy a tiny amount and then sell it, just to get a sense of the transaction costs?

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 24, 2024 at 15:45 UTC

X was going to be a huge success, until Linda Y stabbed EM in the back!

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 24, 2024 at 15:05 UTC

I imagine kings felt the same way about the idea of their divinely ordained and therefore entirely just power being taken away and distributed among the unwashed masses. The divine right of billionaires is such a widely held belief that it almost seems strange to give it a name.

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 24, 2024 at 01:14 UTC

In 1990 or thereabouts a friend of mine who was a welfare fraud investigator told me the same thing. He thought it'd be cheaper to just give benefits to everyone who asked. The bureaucracy around eligibility and enforcement is, I guess, expensive. We spend that money anyway, mostly out of spite.

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 24, 2024 at 00:01 UTC

Not quite former coder just yet, but ... Type 3.

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 23, 2024 at 23:55 UTC

I have, and near as I can tell they aren't disputing the substance of the reported remarks. So I'm not sure why my distrust of the Washington Free Beacon is at all relevant.

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 23, 2024 at 23:43 UTC

I'm absolutely ready to believe that the photos of the Columbia remarks were doctored or faked or omit important context. Were they? Is that your claim?

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 23, 2024 at 23:42 UTC

And now we're back to tribalism. The LA city council leaks are okay because they (presumably) came from lefties, and the Columbia dean leaks aren't because they came from righties. There's no principle here. It's about what's useful, not about that's true.

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 23, 2024 at 23:29 UTC

See, now you're back to making reasonable arguments. I'm very much at home to "what they ssaid/wrote wasn't objectionable because X." What I objected to was "we don't need to pay attention to facts that were gathered by right-leaning people."

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 23, 2024 at 23:23 UTC

Gosh, I don't think they are, but if that's your claim, I'll hear you out. I do think the LA case illustrates the point I'm making here: that the people said what they said, and that the identity and agenda of the whistleblower doesn't change that.

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 23, 2024 at 23:20 UTC

I think the worst person I know occasionally makes a good point. And if it turns out that some deans at Columbia, in what they imagined to be private remarks, expressed dismissive or hostile views about students and staff complaining of antisemitism, I'd find it not particularly surprising.

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 23, 2024 at 23:09 UTC

I think we still don't know who recorded the la city council people, and I don't even care. Doesn't matter. They said what they said.

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 23, 2024 at 23:08 UTC

My point is: their remarks are defensible or they aren't. It's not about the messenger, and when you insist that it is, it suggests that you don't see a more favorable ground on which to dig in.

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 23, 2024 at 22:57 UTC

We had a big stink out here in LA not too long ago, when some city council people were recorded saying some vile, racist shit. There was a little bit of grumbling about how it wasn't fair to tape them and leak it, but that ultimately didn't matter much. Fact is, they said what they said.

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 23, 2024 at 22:47 UTC

I've heard many variations on "xo-and-so sucks, so I feel entitled to dismiss out of hand everything they say" and it seldom comes from people who are defending a strong position. Far more often, it's an attempt to slap a veneer of respectability on mere tribalism.

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 23, 2024 at 03:18 UTC

They're off to a good start. While they're lifting parts from a 1978 Buick Estate wagon, maybe get the windshield wipers and gas pedal too?

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 21, 2024 at 01:01 UTC

That struck me as plausible, really. I don't keep track of who's been featured in the most recent two minutes hate. Remember that time when, for about a month, every right-wing dipshit suddenly had strong opinions about Woodrow Wilson?

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 21, 2024 at 00:20 UTC

I bet the point is "Tariffs didn't cause the great depression so the ones I'm pitching are fine." Also: no way he wrote that. That's three complete sentences where each flows directly from the one before. The argument is dumb, but coherent. He doesn't do coherent.

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 20, 2024 at 17:31 UTC

The last couple visitors to our house have announced their arrival by texting me and waiting at the front door, where there's a working doorbell in plain view. Is this a thing now? Is ringing the doorbell now considered a rude and obsolete practice, like placing voice calls?

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 19, 2024 at 03:47 UTC

And it's wonderful.

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 19, 2024 at 03:46 UTC

Noita

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 19, 2024 at 03:23 UTC

From up here in the cheap seats I wonder: would any other circuit want such a fight, or be confident of winning, given the composition of the court that'd referree it?

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 18, 2024 at 14:00 UTC

Punching up and punching down are morally equivalent because, hey, it's punching either way.

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 18, 2024 at 00:53 UTC

This policy only applies when an appeal is pending?

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 18, 2024 at 00:44 UTC

Allude?

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 17, 2024 at 17:38 UTC

www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/n...

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 17, 2024 at 15:08 UTC

Oh wow. I didn't know they were putting cameras on school buses but yeah, that's a great idea. I'm disappointed to learn that we don't do that in California. I wish people here could be truly afraid of school buses too.

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 17, 2024 at 00:50 UTC

"Wait. Why am I losing this argument? This stuff seems so strong when I'm talking to other newbie libertarians."

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 16, 2024 at 16:17 UTC

Tell me you haven't read Nineteen Eighty-Four without saying you haven't...

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 16, 2024 at 15:24 UTC

Do I remember it wrong? I thought that verse ended with "...that side was made for you and me?"

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 13, 2024 at 13:09 UTC

Book Club

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 13, 2024 at 01:28 UTC

No, look closely at the fingers. This is AI.

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 12, 2024 at 16:22 UTC

My brain spent a few seconds wondering "wait. Is the chissle the funny hat? The little water sprinkler? The scarf with the tassels?"

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 12, 2024 at 03:27 UTC

I feel like the fans who hate 80% kind of have a point.

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 22:07 UTC

Wait. I never unsubscribe and I always filter. I think I got the idea that unsubscribe just encourages them, because it confirms that someone cares about the email address? Am I doing it wrong?

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Jason Skiles @jasonskiles.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 11, 2024 at 18:41 UTC

Counterpoint: I was on a Jaywalking segment in 2000, a bit he did with Al Michaels. They used the funnier bits and left off the very dumbest stuff I said. I may have been lucky in that my dumbest remarks weren't dumb in a funny way.

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