Bard spotting on Bluesky 24 February 2025

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

Here is my view, for what it may be worth

The national politics of the USA (up until November 5 2024) has been in tension between

The Forum (most non-political people and most Democratic pols subscribe to this model, some Republicans)

VS

The Circus (MAGA / Trumpism)

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

We have a tendency to apply criteria to our politicians to test whether they will be trustworthy.

However

USA national elections are not about how smart or capable your politicians are, anymore.

Now they're about the number of clowns (voters) in the clowncar (voting booth).

"Get Out The Vote"

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

And the "tests" we use were leveraged against our side's GOTV efforts.

If we get elections ever again, we can't ever not get out the vote.

As long as it's First Past The Post, & only 2 viable parties, we can't pin GOTV to "Is this candidate / opposition-to-neoNazis good enough"

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

Because we need The Forum. Government should be unexciting, absolute knurds doing absolute knurd stuff, power and authority delegated to them to get things done for our common welfare.

Because the circus is just going to be uncaged "tame" leopards eating people's faces

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

SHOW MORE

Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social):

Boycotts are taking hold. Protests are on the rise. Federal courts are hitting back. The Trump-Musk-Vance regime's popularity is plunging and DOGE is losing credibility. In these dark times, it's important to recognize that people are fighting back. Join them.

Mummified Yeti Hand (@jackacid.bsky.social):

Why is it that when James Carville says the exact same thing that you are saying, everybody starts dumping on him?

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

Carville has a history of flunking the Eunoia leg (and to an extent, the Arete) leg(s) of the Ethos triangle. He's married to a GOP strategy consultant, meaning he isn't able to hold out to us, the audience, that he has our best interests before his own.

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

He also — like many political consultants — flunks the Phronesis aspect, every time he makes a prediction based on his insider knowledge or a hunch. He is on record as having predicted the election for Harris/Walz b/c he didn't believe America would be "stupid enough" to elect Trump again

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

The underlying factors of the election are complex, however, modern American elections are not about being smart or stupid — they are about who gets out the vote. Have been for 50+ years. We can be as smart as anything, have extremely intelligent candidates and policies - we still have to GOTV.

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

There's more, but I'll rest there.

Chad Loder (@chadloder.bsky.social):

Richard Hanania, noted expert in Nazi symbology

Emissary Of Night | ليلى (@diplomatofnight.com):

The Free Press is now officially in favor of the Nazi salute!

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

Hanananaana here is trying to sanewash the evil by casting it as Oppositional Defiant Disorder. "They're rebels, they're just trolling you" nnnnnooopppeee

Angus Johnston (@angus.bsky.social):

I'm usually not a "why wasn't this account immediately nuked when I reported it?" guy, but the pretend ladies who want to be my girlfriend seem to typically evaporate really quickly, and this is an obviously dangerous scam account.

Private Account Desirer (@zbs.bsky.social):

I hope the weird unicode font isn't making it "invisible" to trust and safety

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

It would definitely make the content impervious to a content analysis expert system. But, there are other posts on the account entirely in Latin characters and emojis, and some just in Latin characters and an attached picture. So I reported those instead

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

One of the strengths of the Report & Block model is that if Safety judges the account to be part of a penetration test - an attempt to parametrise when and how they action accounts - they might leave it up until nuking it with a bunch of others all on one date, making the "research" worthless

Emissary Of Night | ليلى (@diplomatofnight.com):

Correct. The idea of a "right to exist" for a state is conveniently only applicable to Israel and is so amorphous a statement that it essentially means nothing at face value— in practice it's a deflection from the harder question of "does Israel have a right to unlimited racial rule over millions"?

Burn Jerusalem To the Ground and Salt the Ashes, MSW (@acabcalloway.bsky.social):

Tangentially, when you counter the "right to exist" stuff by pointing out that Israel is a state that exists right now with nukes and an army it uses to commit war crimes people glitch out as they f they just now realized it's not 1890.

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

Per International Law (for whatever that's worth), Palestine has a right to exist as a state at like, the 1969(?) borders, because in like … 1972(?) the UN decided to no longer recognise a Right By Conquest. And what Israel has done is Conquest.

Black Queer Anachron (@stolenvajra.bsky.social):

I'm not allowed to say anything more than this: the things I heard in the places I've been should not have been said, and this has been in the making at LEAST for 9 years based on information I have. The Eyes of Leviathan may not be competent, but they are malicious.

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

NSA. Leaked.

There is not a single Republican left with any sense of the rule of law or of how this is going to destroy the United States outright

Think the TLAs had difficulty recruiting before? Ha frickin' ha

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

I just point at The Nashville Statement.

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

Just to be clear, LGBTQ NSA employees are being targeted by Christian theocratic terrorists operating on former-Twitter through "leaked" chats they made on work machines, almost certainly yoinked by Elon Musk & a gaggle of young men who all seem to have ties to Kiwifarms & such

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

NSA. Leaked.

There is not a single Republican left with any sense of the rule of law or of how this is going to destroy the United States outright

Think the TLAs had difficulty recruiting before? Ha frickin' ha

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

Good luck recruiting intelligent people who all know, to the person, that the infosec of the org is vulnerable to being kneecapped for political witch hunts and to Kiwi fricking Farms

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

(Irrelevant gripe) the trailers / promos for Reacher Season 3 are using Kansas' Carry On Wayward Son and I'm still wearing a bracelet with a pentacle anti-possession ward on it GDI it was only 4 years ago they wrapped on Supernatural

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

The incredible power of song branding is that when the trailer faded in just a single verse I stopped what I was doing, focused on it, and immediately hypothesised "Darn they made Dean enormous in this reboot"

Danilo Piazzalunga (@danilopiazza.bsky.social):

I wonder if Reacher is going to shoot enemies with salt in this season.

Jon Phillips (@jowiph.bsky.social):

I bet he can

New York Times Pitchbot (@nytpitchbot.bsky.social):

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

Hananananania is proposing that they're Oppositionally Defiant Disordered, but that is just sanewashing of the evil

Jon Phillips (@jowiph.bsky.social):

I mean, he's pretty clearly just flailing to come up with some way to excuse all of his pals from his race science group chat going full nazi on main

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

Someone tipped me off to an account running a targeted harassment operation and in the middle of me gathering data about the extent of it, literally in under two minutes from the first report I'd filed, BlueSky T&S suspended the account

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

I'd wanted to take screenshots to illustrate textbook inauthentic engagement Q_Q

Stef "inclusion is a human right" Christensen (@wikisteff.bsky.social):

I take screen caps on the QT, then report, then block.

Sometimes Bluesky gets them first.

Was it a juicy one? I could maybe make a script to pull their Skyline before they go-go...

Stef "inclusion is a human right" Christensen (@wikisteff.bsky.social):

(maybe there is a backchannel we could go to for this?)

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

If I had ran a labeller and the account had been reported, I think I'd have content of posts cached.

However - someone else will try the same thing again, and I'll catch 'em then

Stef "inclusion is a human right" Christensen (@wikisteff.bsky.social):

I was just thinking this, Penny.

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

History is rife with SCOTUS jurists exploring a particular line of legal reasoning in oral arguments and even in previous decisions and then prestochangeo they come down against them in the final decision of the instant case. There are no stare decisis entrails to read anymore.

Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner.bsky.social):

This morning, SCOTUS heard arguments in an ongoing dispute over Texas's DNA testing procedures, but perhaps the most notable moment came when — in response to questions about that prosecutor's compliance — Justice Brett Kavanaugh detoured into U.S. v. Nixon in discussing a "recalcitrant defendant."

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

Like: Scalia was famous for pointedly drubbing the legal reasoning of Wickard v Filburn under the Commerce Clause, (a case allowing the US FedGov to regulate agriculture) — and then wrote the majority opinion in Gonzales v Raich, under the Commerce Clause, US FedGov regulating agriculture

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

America deserves Laïcité

Jonathan Shorman (@jonshorman.bsky.social):

NEW - Rep. Mark Alford tells fired KC federal workers 'God has a plan' at hostile town hall

Folks, I've been covering politics for a dozen years in Kansas and Missouri and this is probably the most intense, angry town hall I have ever seen

www.kansascity.com/news/politic...

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

The thing is that we've had court cases decide that these kinds of restrictions are unhealthy / deadly. People who will die if they can't get the nutrition they need from the foods they can tolerate

Keyah (bsky's meanest ndn) (@sapphicfilmnerd.bsky.social):

This is so fricking funny.

Ms. Penny Oaken, SkyWitch (@skywitches.net):

Deciding that the corn products an entire culture eats for breakfast every day is junk food, because American capitalism packaged and marketed it as snacks to WASPs

What a convenient way to say "starve"

/r/dallas is a discussion forum with 4 mods, down from 7 mods 5 years ago, and an unacceptable long running policy and practice that can be expressed as "Moderating here comes after job, commute, cooking, family, sleep, holidays, exercise, naps, and blowing our noses".