Random Thoughts

[Angrboda]

Computer model numbers are such a scam. I recently ordered a Radeon HD 8490 graphics card because I needed another card to replace the HD 7770 which I just realized is dead. I was curious how it compared, given that 8000 is greater than 7000. No, that's misleading. While the 8 indicates it is a newer generation card, the 4 and 90 indicate that it's a lower tier than a card with a 7 and a 70 in the remainder. Who'd a thought?

[Angrboda]

Watching a Vikings game from last year. Jordan Addison goes 65 yards for a touchdown. The announcers say that he went over 20 MPH during the run. That's unreal.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

It’s a wise crow that knows which way the camel points.

Boru

[Angrboda]

???

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Alan Ritchson really, REALLY needs to be cast as Batman.



Boru

[Fake Messiah]

This is actually the greatest year in history for bad movies because all of the Razzie Awards will go to the movie "Melania". It will win the worst picture, worst actress, worst couple, worst actor, worst director, worst costumes... you name it.

So Hollywood could really indulge itself in releasing their worst garbage this year because it will not be shamed with Razzies.

[Angrboda]

Trump also does not adhere to the style or affect of the fascist model: he doesn’t hold rallies, wear uniforms or make fiery speeches from balconies to flag-waving throngs. He hasn’t (entirely yet) overturned the constitution and dismantled democracy. He is an addled comic figure, a man whose very soul is bared in his angry outbursts on social media or in rambling speeches without self-awareness or self-consciousness. He talks about the war on Iran flanked by a gigantic Easter bunny, posts an image of himself as Jesus. He “always chickens out”. (A Wheeler from 1985’s dark fantasy Return to Oz: screeching, giggling, chasing, then wincing and withdrawing when its quarry strikes back.)

But isn’t this what evil is? A projection on to the world not of overbearing and large intent, but smallness and fear? The consequences of violence are secondary to the validation that comes from inflicting it. Trump’s constant self-aggrandisement, his grudges against political adversaries, the fury at being challenged by the press, the revenge he promises to wreak on the Iranian regime. All are ways to erase and avoid what is a permanent terror of humiliation and obsolescence. (Goya’s Saturn, wild-eyed, devours his son.)

It is in that very puniness that insatiable evil lies. In 1931, after Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party had surged in the polls, he was interviewed by the US reporter Dorothy Thompson for Cosmopolitan. “When I walked into Adolf Hitler’s salon in the Kaiserhof hotel,” Thompson recalled, “I was convinced that I was meeting the future dictator of Germany. In something like 50 seconds, I was quite sure he was not. It took just about that time to measure the startling insignificance of this man who has set the world agog.”

“Think of Benito Mussolini,” wrote the journalist Barbara Grizzuti Harrison in the LA Times, “jackbooted, lantern-jawed, squeakily bombastic, posturing from the little balcony of his office on Piazza Venezia in Rome – that remarkably dopey stiff-armed Fascist salute, the absurd oratory. Think of that funny man, that consummate buffoon”, and remember that “just because something is silly doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous”.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...g-ideology

[Angrboda]

Donald Trump is giving Americans a fair amount of reasons to drink these days — threatening to obliterate Iran, or flirting with a takeover of Greenland. But the president is, perhaps counterintuitively, also part of why people are laying off the booze. Trump's policies and rhetoric are killing America's buzz.

Americans are drinking less than they have in decades. While a long-term cultural shift toward moderation is very real, the immediate cyclical indicators — meaning the regular ebbs and flows — are all pointing down. And Trump is nudging them in that direction.

The amount of alcoholic beverages consumed across major markets declined by 2% in 2025, according to data from drinks data company IWSR. In the United States, volumes were down by 5%. Consumption of beer, wine, and spirits all fell. (The only bright spot: ready-to-drink cocktails, which are getting more popular.)

A lot of what's going on here isn't about Gen Z being teetotalers or American adults being spooked about alcohol causing cancer — it's about the economic and political environment. People are drinking less because of the ongoing affordability crisis. The Trump administration's aggressive immigration policies have had a chilling effect on Hispanics' consumption. All the tariff whiplash has been far from fun for the alcohol industry. Mounting uncertainty has consumers uneasy and, in turn, taking a break from the bar.

Marten Lodewijks, the president and managing director of IWSR, says the woes for the booze industry is an example of "death by a thousand cuts."

It just so happens that the president of the United States is the one holding the knife.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-ta...our-2026-4

[Angrboda]

Reading about the Louisiana shooting and reflecting upon another recent shooting, I'm struck by how the moral that if "I can't get what I need then nobody else will either" seems to underlie both events. I wish I could conclude that this maxim is an aberration, but I suspect it is deeply interwoven in our biological response to traitors, defectors, freeloaders, infidelity, and anytime that someone faces losses due to bad acts of another person or circumstance. It matters not whether the stresses that one is experiencing are the consequence of a bad act, as there are always plenty of slights, real or imagined, which one can draw upon when one is thinking emotionally.

[Angrboda]

At $500, it's a bit pricey just to watch videos and TV in the shower for 5 minutes, but if I were still donating plasma it would be a plausible splurge.