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Posts Tagged ‘left-right myth’

What Americans have done to the venerable word “liberal” is a crime in and of itself.
–  “Meet the Tweets

Why is it so many pictures on the internet are taken by people who apparently don’t comprehend why a photo framed as a vertical rectangle is called “portrait” style?  –  “Tweets for Long Nights

I don’t actually mean to collect stray animals, but it does seem to happen more frequently than random chance would account for.
–  “Diary #699

People who interact with [chatbots] think they’re interacting with an ancestor of Commander Data or C3PO, when in actuality they’re merely accessing a program that’s roughly as aware of their existence as the software that runs modern slot machines is, often with similar psychological results.  –  “Mad Libs

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The left-right nonsense, once confined to politics, has in the past 30-someodd years penetrated all of US culture like cat spray.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-10-13T18:19:23.319Z

Any slang term is moribund when it is used to describe a number of different, sometimes unrelated or even contradictory, things. "Cringe" has now reached that point; proceed accordingly.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-10-19T17:52:18.693Z

I'm ready to listen to him; he can't be THAT much worse than what we have now.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-10-20T17:58:53.721Z

Until I got on social media, I would never have suspected that there were so many people in the US who never, ever, EVER need to transport cargo or disabled people, or travel more than 100 km from their homes.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-10-21T17:14:00.903Z

One of the more interesting aspects of this time period for me is that I get to see other people saying or agreeing with the kind of statements I've incessantly made for over 40 years, mostly to eye-rolling and dismissal.You bet I'm gonna say "I told you so".

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-10-22T07:37:13.312Z

Actually, if one considers the political conditions which allowed Trump to ascend to the throne and carry out his reign of madness, it is far more accurate to say Trump is working to finish the job Bin Laden started.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-10-23T17:49:38.750Z

I'm trying to get this to fit the meter of "My Little Buckaroo" and not succeeding.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-10-24T18:11:09.142Z

Oh please, please, PLEASE let it be so. It'll be much easier for the Invertebrate Party to agree to tear it down if it's structurally unsound.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-10-25T17:42:06.630Z

This weird 21st-century shit of Trick-or-Treating at random times on random days in October determined by mobs or politicians, instead of on Halloween night, was a sign of cultural decline. Too bad so few recognized that.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-10-27T17:19:11.215Z

I've decided to start blocking anyone who admits to using a chatbot to write, or obviously does so in the absence of omission. I have no interest in reading computer vomit.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-10-28T17:40:53.747Z

The Mechanical Turk redux.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-10-29T07:39:43.119Z

Ever since the "Department of Homeland Security" was created by Bush II, I have referred to it as the "Department of Fatherland Security". People used to claim I was exaggerating. I don't hear that accusation much any more.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-10-29T19:39:13.880Z

Once again, mainstream voices are starting to agree with what I've been saying since high school > 40 years ago. But knowing what it took to shake people out of their ovine complacency and childish "leader" fantasies, I take no real pleasure in having been right. Cassandra was not a happy person.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-10-31T18:23:18.074Z

Louisiana, will you please get Landry off his knees? Nobody wants to see their private activities.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-02T02:59:52.276Z

Anybody who's ever had young children knows what it looks like when they're actively engaged in pooping their diapers.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-02T18:03:11.334Z

The more often you call politicians "leaders", the more they will behave like Führers.Go back to calling them "public servants" and treat them like servants rather than nobles.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-03T18:19:14.325Z

Humans are the ONLY entities we know who can make ANY art, "great" or otherwise.Computer output is not art. Period. End of discussion.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-04T18:04:19.468Z

Democratic politicians are so brave about criticizing Republican politicians when the subject is dead.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-05T17:36:53.488Z

I'm afraid I'm committed to the ancient-forest-haunting gig for at least the next millennium, or until the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter exorcises me.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-06T08:25:21.562Z

Carl Sagan did not believe in an afterlife. But if he was wrong, I hope he haunts these people into madness.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-07T18:18:30.556Z

"Abducted". They ABDUCTED her from a daycare. "Took" is for inanimate objects, not people, and even then only if they have the owner's permission; otherwise the correct verb is "stole".RIGHT: "A goon took his lunch to work".WRONG: "A goon took a teacher's phone."WRONG: "Goons took a teacher."

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-08T19:06:43.666Z

Oh, well that makes it all better, then.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-09T08:26:07.790Z

You know, Democrats, y'all don't have to keep proving me right, really. I mean, I appreciate the thought, but I'm a big girl and can handle being proven wrong once in a while. Truthfully, it'd be kinda nice.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-10T18:22:33.566Z

Stop referring the characters in computer-generated videos as they were people. These videos are animations, even if they look real; those who appear in them are therefore cartoon characters, and should be described as such.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-11T17:44:21.958Z

Reporters: please stop using the word "shocking" to describe the actions of the Trump regime. Anybody who is still shocked by Trumpist behavior after 10 months of this is either hopelessly stupid or deeply in need of professional help.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-12T22:23:07.794Z

"Drug boat!" is the new "It's coming right for us!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTrM…

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-14T20:12:22.312Z

This buffoon is so fixated on winning vs losing, he actually thinks a medical test is like a school test. It's obvious in the way he refers to things like getting an "outstanding" result from an MRI.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-15T08:20:55.352Z

For the same reason she's advertising her IQ on her hat.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-16T17:41:53.127Z

 

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I never thought I’d be doing this blog for so long I’d start repeating myself, yet here we are.  –  “Countless Times

Though all things must pass, none are so ephemeral as those good times with good friends that, in retrospect, seem almost magical.  –
Day of the Dead 2022

All government is rooted in the idea that might makes right.  –
Guy Fawkes Day 2023

For over 200 years now, Americans have stood by while the executive branch increases its own power, then leaves the newly-expanded powers to anyone their ideological enemies manage to get into the White House.  –  “Guy Fawkes Day 2024

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Since I’ve already said plenty on this subject, it hardly seems necessary to say more about the danger of giving governments too much power, when that is currently being demonstrated clearly and irrefutably every single day.  So I’ll just share this image of a sign Grace had near her desk.

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The whole left-right, red-blue, all-or-nothing nonsense rots the brains of those who embrace it.  If you actually look at the percentages, so-called “red states” don’t actually have many more “red” voters than “blue states” do.  The idea of monolithic “red” or “blue” states is a fiction promoted by nitwits with childlike views of the world who long for easy, clear “white hat-black hat” narratives that simply don’t apply to mass politics.  I grew up in a so-called “red state”, lived for a while in an even “redder” one, and for ten years now have lived in a “blue state”.  And the balance of political commentary I heard from neighbors, casual conversation in public, etc hasn’t changed much over my lifetime.  What has changed is the amount of power given to dangerous, psychopathic crackpots, and the erosion of citizens’ protections from said crackpots.  This has been a bipartisan project all along; even the Constitutional crisis which started 24 years ago last month and finally came to a boil in January, was a contest between the GOP and Dems to see who could erode more civil liberties and scream “FOR THE CHIIIIIIIIIILDREN!!!” the loudest.  In the end, the GOP turned out to be the party that broke and completely succumbed to populist-flavored fascism, but that’s because it has long cultivated a more rigid belief-system which broke when the winds of change blew hard enough.  The Dems cultivated a more flexible catechism which did not snap in those winds, but instead has become so warped and weakened it isn’t good for anything.  Trumpism is the immediate danger, and needs our focus.  But don’t fall for lies that Democrats are noble saviors, else ending trumpery will be no more than leaping from one boiling pot to another.

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There’s usually some kind of boogeyman…that justifies the building of a very extreme…policing apparatus.  –  Matthew Guariglia

It’s not unusual these days for a news item to fall into more than one category, so I have to figure out which is best; in such cases I typically link recent examples of the other applicable categories, or at least include them among the tags.  But sometimes the article does such a good job of analyzing the connections between the various categories, I feel it’s better to simply call my readers’ attention to the article and urge y’all to read it in its entirety.  This Reason article from a week ago today is a good example:

…On issues such as library books, abortion, gender, and even food, the culture war is now feeding the police state.  This phenomenon started in the states, and none have pursued it with more intensity than Florida and Texas, where governors and legislatures have competed to show that they’re fighting the hardest against what they call “woke”…[but] now…using criminal law, mass surveillance, [snitch] lines, and the threat of police violence to wage the culture war…is [becoming]…a danger to every American who wants to live, work, and travel without being monitored and menaced by the state…

…the…Trump…[regime]’s campaign against universities on such issues as anti-Israel protests, transgender athletes, and critical race theory were all preceded by Florida, wh[ich]…PEN America…[has] dubbed…the “blueprint state” for the White House’s run of education-related executive orders…The sheer number of bills churned out over the past few years by Florida and Texas is notable, especially in light of how petty the targets can be—drag queens, librarians, whoever might be using a certain bathroom stall…Also notable [is] those laws’ dismal track record in court.  Federal judges, even those appointed by Trump…have repeatedly struck down culture-war bills…represent[ing] a boundless paternalism…indistinguishable from the…identitarian politics that [proponents of such laws claim to oppose, such as bans on]…cultivated meat…[one] Texas [politician ludicrously defended as]…”plain cowboy logic“…in the bizarre, zero-sum logic of politicians like DeSantis and [Nebraska Governor Jim] Pillen, the freedom to eat bacon harvested from a pig that was alive and sensate before it was slaughtered is contingent on consumers never being given a choice to try an alternative…

…What makes the creation of new criminal statutes especially worrisome is law enforcement’s sweeping power to search and investigate targets…[via] vast, nationwide databases of personal information…facial recognition, cellphone surveillance, license plate tracking, sophisticated social media monitoring, and more…the huge surveillance architecture and data-sharing networks being created now won’t go back in the box when the current…[regime] is over, nor will they consider whether their targets used to have the right kind of politics…

There’s much, much more, bridging tags including Eavesdropping, Guinea Pigs, I Spy, The Last Shall Be First, Panopticon, Pyrrhic Victory, Thou Shalt Not, Thought Control, Universal Criminality, The Vultures Descend, Welcome to the Future, and many others.  So go read it!

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October is more than just my native month; it is my native country, and the time in which I have always been most at peace and (paradoxically for a time associated with haunts, dying vegetation and the dying year) felt most alive.  –  “The October Country

An authoritarian government enacted by election is much worse than one produced by a coup, because while the latter can have little credible pretense of legitimacy, the former can represent itself as fully legitimate and claim the “right” to do whatever awfulness it wants because “the majority wills it”.  –
The Veneer of Legitimacy

It is not the job of libraries to enforce parental censorship choices; that is the job of parents.  –  “Garden of the Muses

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Sorry, partisans: both vaccines and french fries are good.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-08-12T16:41:51.013Z

A Maggie story that will surprise no one:When I was about 16 politicians imposed a curfew on minors in our parish (county). I had never been especially interested in going out late until then, but after the curfew was imposed I started going on 3 AM walks every Sunday just to flout it.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-08-14T17:50:46.184Z

A word crying out for more widespread usage.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-08-16T07:50:27.486Z

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-08-17T17:22:30.905Z

Someone whose name isn't Maggie McNeill FINALLY had the intellectual courage to use the word that best describes Trump. http://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/o…

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-08-18T16:51:49.659Z

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-08-20T03:52:04.139Z

What kind of servile bootlickery is Google pushing?In a liberal republic, "those in positions of authority" should get the LEAST respect and the MOST derogatory language. Lèse-majesté is for autocracies.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-08-21T03:25:32.476Z

You have to admit it's funny (in a short of frustrating way) when career politicians try to engage with Trump's deranged mouth farts as though they were statements by a rational person. It's like watching them argue with barnyard fowl.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-08-21T18:40:32.072Z

Europe has been shaped by crusades against reality for quite a few centuries now.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-08-23T17:57:13.545Z

Protip: it's better to set your apocalyptic "predictions" far enough in the future that you won't still be alive when the passage of time proves you to be an idiot.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-08-24T03:05:09.833Z

Martin is apparently laboring under the misapprehension that he is a train.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-08-25T07:37:24.002Z

"Don't give money to strangers you meet on the goddamned internet."Done.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-08-26T07:29:49.402Z

Yes, decaying things often change noticeably on a daily basis. reason.com/2025/08/27/t…

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-08-28T16:48:42.823Z

1) "Father Justin" is the name of a program, not a person.2) There is no such thing as "AI"; programs cannot think.3) In Catholic doctrine a program has no soul & cannot be ordained to the priesthood.4) Chatbots function by word association; their action is more like shitting than "suggesting".

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-08-29T17:09:20.519Z

I find it difficult to believe that this thing is an actual human being rather than a plastic mannequin animated by the Nestenes or some other parasitic alien species.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-08-30T03:35:04.593Z

One important but unappreciated sign of America's decline is that these audiences are contented with merely booing people their grandparents and great-grandparents would've pelted with rotting vegetables.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-08-30T17:22:38.679Z

The most outlandish thing I would do is to have a miniature railroad installed on my property, so I could ride around in my very own choo-choo. Everything else I'd buy is pretty sensible.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-09-01T03:57:52.756Z

The only positive thing this monster has accomplished is dealing the death-blow to Americans' idolization of his family.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-09-01T16:52:48.744Z

The mad emperor now claims anyone may justify wanton violence by pointing at the intended victim & barfing the words "drug boat". I'm sure digitally-altered audio will soon be produced in which the lunatic who shot that 11-year-old prankster will be clearly heard to say "drug boat!" before firing.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-09-03T18:01:32.308Z

Read this as, "I'm praying every day for God to deliver us from the scourge of cancer and send us a bountiful harvest.""AI" is a cult.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-09-04T17:41:19.853Z

People ask why I don't have ads on my blog.Yes, they'd bring in money. But I couldn't live with myself if I enabled this kind of shit.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-09-05T07:22:26.399Z

ALL bending of the knee is symbolic kneeling. That is the exact, specific meaning of the gesture: "I should be kneeling to you, but our practical circumstances require me to keep moving so I'll just acknowledge my subservience and then move on."

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-09-06T17:36:40.009Z

There is no "debate".Politicians want to control X.Sensible people explain why that's a bad idea.Politicians invent propaganda justifying their control.Critical mass of useful idiots believe politicians.Politicians gain control of X.Decades of damage, waste, and other consequences follow.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-09-07T17:16:34.136Z

You misspelled "Master".

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-09-08T17:31:11.121Z

It's almost like a lot of people don't know the difference between static load and dynamic load, nor really grasp what the phrase "potential energy" actually means.Physics is hard.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-09-09T07:25:29.051Z

Not REMOTELY panicked enough. When he retreats into his Führerbunker and won't come out, I'll say he's NEARLY panicked enough.When he cries like a baby on the way up the scaffold steps, THEN he'll be panicked enough.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-09-10T07:46:49.657Z

Private ownership of something may possibly result in it being controlled at some point by someone you dislike and oppose.Government ownership of that thing makes that a certainty.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-09-11T17:36:19.407Z

Teacher reply: "Politicians and bureaucrats are not role models."

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-09-12T17:25:04.514Z

My rule is to treat everyone with respect (like a person) up until the moment they start barking "orders" at me as though I were a dog. To behave as a cog in an authoritarian machine is to voluntarily surrender one's humanity to that machine, releasing me from the obligation to pretend otherwise.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-09-13T17:25:40.274Z

At this point, I'm glad as long as it ENDS. Stroke, assassination, committed as a lunatic, impeachment, war crimes tribunal, eaten by rats, being picked up by aliens, riding into Heaven in a flaming chariot, I don't care. He's the fucking Marvin K. Mooney of Washington.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-09-14T07:30:10.016Z

Zuckerberg's living on the other side of the looking glass. Here's what actual scientists on OUR side of the glass have to say: maggiemcneill.com/2025/09/06/i…

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-09-15T17:17:24.605Z

This proposal met with general applause, until an old mouse got up and said: “That is all very well, but who is to bell the Cat?”

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-09-16T17:29:33.849Z

No mortal is worthy of worship. For one man or woman to worship another degrades the worshiper and deludes the one who is worshiped.

Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-09-17T18:17:31.017Z

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Picket-fence queers…are beginning to notice that deliberately ignoring sex workers after they reached the Big Table…wasn’t such a good idea.
–  “Under the Table

Sex work…allows me to live my life with the minimum amount of interruption and distraction from what I actually want to do.  –  “The Best Option

Some [“news”] articles are so vague they wouldn’t even be newsworthy were the accused anyone more credible than a cop or preacher.  –  “If Men Were Angels (#1373)

Because laws pretended to control cops never include criminal penalties for violators, cops simply ignore them as they please without any consequences.  –  “I Spy (#1472)

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As I’ve written before, dark ages are defined by the unreliability of their records; if records are sporadic, contradictory, or questionable, historians cannot be sure what really happened in the period (hence “dark”).  One of the major factors in the dark age we’re entering now is computer-generated imagery and text spewed out at a rate that will soon rival or surpass actual information from this era, but another is 1984-esque rewriting of history by political regimes and their servant media.  The Trump regime is actively engaged in this practice, but even its opponents are attempting to sow confusion in service to their agenda, especially to mask their part in bringing the regime to power.

Case in point, this recent tweet attacking a Trump talking point, which quotes a Washington Post story whose headline intentionally attempts to mislead readers about the point’s origin.  “300,000 missing children” is indeed a “ginned-up figure”, but it isn’t from “the 2024 campaign”.  It’s from a shitty sociology paper from 2001 which was distorted and quoted endlessly by politicians and media, including the Post, for two decades to justify attacks on sex workers.  The entire US political establishment from Bush II to Obama to Trump to Biden was happy to use these imaginary “300,000 children” as cudgels to attack female independence, young people’s autonomy, and immigration; to justify swollen police budgets and increased surveillance and censorship; and as an all-purpose excuse for state violence on every level from the municipal to the international.  For 14 years, all any cop or politician had to do was vomit the phrase “sex trafficking”, accompanied by disgusting wanking fantasies, onto the upturned, open-mouthed faces of the moronic masses in order to get them to allow themselves to be violated and oppressed even further.  Both “sides” of the kindergarten “political spectrum” participated equally in this evil fantasy, until it began to mutate into “QAnon” and Trumpists won control of it.  Then and ONLY then did “progressives” and Democrats suddenly start calling this toxic narrative that they themselves built half of, a “right-wing conspiracy theory“.  And now they’re trying to fight a monster of their own creation, a monster which has spawned the ICE atrocities you now see and the swelling tide of internet censorship.  If you ever retweeted a stupid meme about 13-year-olds, donated to a “rescue” organization, watched panicmongering shows and movies about brave heroes “rescuing” vegetable-like “victims” from mustache-twirling “pimps”, or otherwise supported the panic, you are partly responsible for Trumpism.  Look at the pogroms against migrants, the demolition of the internet, the wreckage of the US scientific and medical establishment, and the warmongering and rampant insanity spewing forth from Washington daily, and think to yourself, “And I helped!”  Good job, America!

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