The goal is to remake the US into something else. A Christian Patriarchy + Oiligarchy with sham voting every four years. The biggest wild card in their plans is Trump, but as long as he gets to pretend he’s Putin 2.0 – which literally means being able to point his finger to see someone killed – he’ll be happy and easy to play.

Overall, there’s no limit to how fucked we are. There are no brakes and there’s no steering wheel.

Think militias deputized as enforcers.

Think protests put down by the military ordered to shoot to kill.

Think indoctrination of children and political/militaristic organizations for teens.

Think history books rewritten, science education dumbed down, evolution and global warming illegal to even mention.

Think marriage rights taken away.

Think voting rights taken away and voting laws rammed through to ensure Republicans win.

Think Republicans getting enough state legislatures both to call a Constitutional Convention and to ratify a slew of amendments to rework citizenship, enshrine Christianity into the constitution, and generally butcher the Bill of Rights.

Think “real Americans” going after and imprisoning and/or killing hundreds, thousands, millions of other Americans.

Think purity tests and identification papers, total surveillance, digital tracking of every word and action and movement.

Think of your street with a dead body in the middle of it and everyone afraid to go near it.

Think of being terrified for your own life if you accidentally hear someone say something against The Party.

Think of this very comment used as evidence to lock me up or have me killed.

There is nothing, nothing at all, standing in their way. Like in most one-party systems, the competition among the players will be to see how extreme they can get in order to prove themselves to their party, while the rest of us who vainly hope they’ll show restraint will pay the price.

I hope I’m wrong about most of the above. It may not get that bad. But, again, we’ve gone over the cliff and there’s nowhere but a helluva lot of straight down.

Freebird. It’s the audio equivalent of Hookworm.

Is that Santa Monica beach? North of the Pier?

Nice cat.

That’s an absolutely awful video. Loud, obnoxious, disingenuous and not even remotely as funny, informative, comprehensive, or clever as the idiot who made it thinks it is. It’s valueless content made to be ingested and served up by an algorithm.

“I said NO PICTURES, Frodo!”

They’re usually set up so one is a standard pointing device and the other is used for content scrolling. I also had one customer who wanted both as pointing devices, but the left one with DPI set for very fine movements.

SHH, IT’S OK, EVERYTHING’S FINE, YOU DON’T HAVE TO SHOUT, BUT YES, IT’S GOT AN F-ROW, YES. IS THAT SO VERY WRONG?

I was actually going to respond with the Discworld series in general, but Death’s dialogue there puts it in a nutshell. We’re not creatures of reason, but of narrative, fiction. I might not have come to that view if not for reading Terry Pratchett.

Of course!

I maintain a python-based generator here:

https://github.com/bullwinkle3000/dactyl-keyboard

It can be a PITA to get working to generate STL and STEP files with the cadquery engine. If you have issues, just reach out to me.

And I also have a fork of Vial-QMK here:

https://github.com/bullwinkle3000/vial-qmk

The specific setup for this build is this subdirectory:

https://github.com/bullwinkle3000/vial-qmk/tree/wylderbuilds/keyboards/handwired/wylderbuilds/trackball/6x7_full_dual_track

Oh, yeah, it is pricey. With all those bells and whistles, it’s around $675 prior to the 10% sale discount…

You hate it precisely because of how you described it. It’s a game where you often end up paying a price, where the reveal is more often a punishment, not a reward. You’ve sensibly learned to dread it.

His half of the game is that always gets is to see your reaction in the moment. If it’s something bad, he gets a big reaction out of you. It’s always a payout for him. Not for you.

Sorry about that, just did.