Dr. M.A. Davis

Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 01:11 UTC

I _knew_ your priors would be confirmed!

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:49 UTC

Stephens was willing to intervene personally when a Black man might be tortured to death in front of him by a death squad. not intervene very hard and not enough to actually save him, but still not enough for the Bilbo folks who wanted a True Believer (among other things.)

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:48 UTC

oh yeah, the Stephens vs. Bilbo primary is what I was thinking of. legitimate policy differences between the two, with one even clearly more racist than the other, but what really mattered was power.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:25 UTC

possibly! James Doohan was a contemporary and said that everyone who knew Leslie was glad he was finally doing what he wanted. (There's a story that he was asked during AIRPLANE "aren't you worried this will typecast you?" and he replied "I've been typecast the wrong way for twenty years!")

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:22 UTC

from what people who knew him said, the comedy was what he was actually like off-camera. (You may have heard of his famous fart machine.)

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:18 UTC

with the two political parties of "white conservatism" and "malevolent white populism."

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:12 UTC

but wait, you say - Warner had actually lost his 1978 primary and only gotten the nomination after his opponent's death - and then barely won. exactly! he's too weak to actually challenge the administration's conservative agenda. what's the worst that could happen?

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:06 UTC

(Reagan-Warner in 1980 as a sop to the party's liberal wing, and then Hinckley kills Reagan, there you go.)

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:04 UTC

I have given too much thought about timelines where Liz Taylor is the First Lady, let me tell you

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:00 UTC

he should have listened to Whitemarsh Seabrook. Actually no, Seabrook was a bad man. (Seabrook was the governor of SC in 1850 and insisted the state would not secede first because they'd hung themselves out to dry twenty years earlier w/Nullification - one reason why there was no war then.)

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 23:18 UTC

I prefer not to, thank you

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 22:25 UTC

look, the important thing is that I personally was right the whole time in whatever it was I believed, not the survival of American democracy. wait is that right? that's maybe not right.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 21:16 UTC

best take on that is Peter Sellers as Immortan Joe in Rod Serling's Christmas Carol update paid for by the UN. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbp1...

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 21:10 UTC

www.amazon.com/gp/video/det... for those of you who have Amazon Prime, this comes highly recommended.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 21:05 UTC

no, all of my west wing-related fanfic is about how wonderful Gary Cole's VP Joe Manchin character was.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 21:02 UTC

No, not really. It's just a universe where the designated survivor played by Harry Groener does in fact designatedly survive. Also I have personal reasons to think highly of the author. 😉

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 20:57 UTC

Aw man, even Sunak’s scoring on us now.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 20:55 UTC

My favorite West Wing fanfic is called “Ourselves and Immortality” - it reads like a universe where a new show runner came in at the end of season 1, most of the cast quit, and they pivoted to a show about apocalyptic disaster.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 20:47 UTC

Biden is one of the few Americans who was alive in that guy’s Presidency!

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 20:46 UTC

And for introductions, it’s all didactic literature. Baden-Powell, Lee, etc, are all trying to teach you something - what is that thing?

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 20:44 UTC

World literature is various detective and crime short stories and novels, plus some historic court docs, with the idea that resolving crime is a universal story. (With a very broad brush, for example, will be looking at parts of Daniel and Cicero.)

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 20:43 UTC

American literature gets Frederick Douglass, Zitkala-Sa, and Pat Frank, with the conceit that these are all about the end and what you do after that.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 20:41 UTC

Summing up Science Fiction with War of the Worlds, Earth Abides, and The Left Hand Of Darkness. With the idea that students will be familiar with “alien invasion” and “post-apocalypse” and “human goes to alien planet” as archetypal plots.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 14:48 UTC

“Under some Prime Ministers, this has made nuclear war almost impossible. Under others, much much much more likely”

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 14:00 UTC

Bloomberg would certainly have my vote versus any current Republican, but yeah that’s it.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 13:57 UTC

If I, an American, made him up, British people could reasonably say “ man, what decade of the last century do you think we’re living in here.”

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 13:57 UTC

Elsewhere, I commented that he seems like a politician from an insulting, ignorant parody of the United Kingdom.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 04:47 UTC

The Bozo the Clown problem, applied to sexual morality.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 04:39 UTC

He is Britain’s Trump. Not in terms of style but in seeming like an insulting, ignorant parody of the country he is from.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 04:18 UTC

I am ready for the future with the white performer as the ethnic best friend. Harry Connick Jr. did it - Billy Ray Cyrus did it. It's time.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 02:37 UTC

So if we're lucky, that's Patty Murray! If we're not it, it's either Chuck Grassley or the second most-senior Republican - Mitc McConnell.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 02:24 UTC

with the reforms, is it still the new Congress that does the counting?

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 02:21 UTC

a statistical blip in PA in '16, FL in '18, NC in '20, and WI in '22, and I think we've got it! Alas.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 02:16 UTC

William: "but why, father!?" Charles: "to make you strong, boy!"

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 02:04 UTC

as a middle-aged dad who has unironically exclaimed "yay!", it's good to see I'm not so different from this national leader.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 01:58 UTC

where has this face been

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 01:57 UTC

this is the most charming picture of Keir Starmer I've ever seen

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 01:55 UTC

the good news is, the bad things our system produces are not actually what a majority of people want. the bad news, the same.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 01:44 UTC

"but why would he do that?" <Charles points to his official painting and laughs maniacally>

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 23:34 UTC

maybe it's stupid nonsense - unfortunately stupid nonsense has a great deal of power in our society.

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 23:23 UTC

Biden not being healthy enough to campaign would be bad, because of his health hurting the campaign. Is it true that he's not healthy enough to campaign? Well - we'll see! (note that Biden campaigning may not be enough, because of how the environment is.)

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 22:33 UTC

so good!

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Dr. M.A. Davis @mikedavis.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 22:18 UTC

Castro comes to mind as the biggest loser, yeah.

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