A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequila.

—Mitch Ratcliffe

The thing is…

What happens at the Pentagon when the Chief Executive decides that we need to start actively ignoring something that the Pentagon itself declared to be a massive threat to national security?

Like, suppose that Trump ordered the Pentagon to set fire to the entire fleet of F-15s and send troops literally marching to their deaths off the lip of the Grand Canyon. Surely there’s eventually got to come a breaking point.

No, that’s Nick of Time, where Denzel Washington investigated a murder at the White House.

Oh Phil Spector, you magnificently-talented raving homicidal maniac! If only you had just produced incredible music instead of… the other thing you also did. Burn in hell, you visionary, you.

Oh God, I hope no one knows how to write an LLM script to write huge numbers of plausible-sounding reports sent from anonymous email accounts. It would be even worse if the reports were set up to send investigators into organizations that shouldn’t exist, like ICE.

Anecdota

I mean, if it did work he’d have a pretty strong motive to claim that it didn’t.

Get some real nihilists in there.

Adam Smith does pretty well. I’d say it’s Marxism, mushroom guides, and beekeeping that remain consistently at the top of the rankings. Then you’ve got whatever fiction is currently hot. For a while there it was Where the Crawdads Sing or Demon Copperhead. Sarah J. Maas is currently enjoying an extended streak of very strong sales. The Twilight series went through a bit of a low ebb for a while there but for some reason it’s been selling quite well again lately. Harry Potter used to be a rock solid seller, but one can see that J. K.'s attempts to alienate her fan base have been at least partially successful. It’s interesting to see the trends develop over time.

I work at a used book store. Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto is a great seller, one of the best selling titles we ever get in, in fact. As a result, we keep raising the resale price on the thing each time a new one comes in, and it keeps selling. I’ve never had to mark down a Communist Manifesto for sitting on the shelf for too long. It’s a textbook example of supply and demand in action… and I think that Karl would kind of hate that.

There’s actually a very good stage play about this exact subject.

I got some of these that clip on to my glasses for miniature painting, and they were very nice for being able to flip on and off as needed. Looks like these come in different magnification powers, which sounds handy, depending on one’s needs.

A: Fucking impressive, holy shit. Good on them for having a plan that day.

B: I thought that was a fucking battleaxe in the foreground for a moment there.

Drive through rural America and see how many underpopulated small towns there are. Shuttered businesses for lack of customers. Abandoned buildings. These places need people.

Because daddy famously loves McDonald’s and he’s hoping that if he shows sufficient brand loyalty that eventually daddy will love him.

The sheer amount of untreated generational trauma in this photo is astounding. I can only imagine how much less fucked up the world would be if more rich fathers could be bothered to actually raise and love their kids.

Mirrored:

No, I took it