As our nation flirts with glorious Communism, this delightful little anecdote from Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" sticks in my mind. It's the communal factory where a committee evaluates individual abilities and needs; in surprising (🙄) consequence, people turn against each other.

Why do anti-2A people keep saying that they only had muskets when 2A was ratified, so 2A should only apply to muskets? Even if you accept that stupid logic, it's a fact that rifles were invented circa 1500 in Europe, and were made in Pennsylvania as early as 1710.

Random question: Why does Joe Flaherty, playing Raoul Liptschitz, the emcee at the USO dance event in Steven Spielberg's "1941", have a mouse on his shoulder? Grok has no answer, do you, @grok ? 🤔

I question the wisdom of this advice... 🙄

I never noticed before, but these cough drops have peppy little aphorisms on every wrapper. Wow! 😀

I regard the military execution of Hasan as a job to be done. It's closure we owe to the living, and a statement that we take such heinous acts seriously and respond accordingly. I found the concept of a public execution intriguing, but didn't have a strong initial reaction one way or the other. I hadn't intended to watch it myself, but upon hearing the smug condemnation from the pearl-clutching crowd, I feel a compulsion and obligation to make a point of tuning in while munching popcorn. This will express my disgust with whatever madness drives people who have stood silent in face of truly innocent victims to become vocal advocates for those who perpetrate horrors.

I saw DIGGER last night. Saw it totally cold, knowing nothing, drawn only by a vague sense of buzz that it might be on my wavelength. It's an amazing movie, utterly fascinating, thoroughly intense, brilliantly acted and directed, disturbing as all Hell. I wandered out in a daze. This is not a universal recommendation; in fact most people probably could do without it. I speak for myself alone, and for the occasional fellow traveler of another pseudointellectual horse's ass. I will say you've probably never seen anything like DIGGER, and maybe there's a good reason for that. But I do appreciate, among other things, that someone will take some risks. I applaud the risk-takers, although in this case they would have done better to risk less money, and thus stood a better chance to turn a profit on a film that had little assurance of going mainstream. That's all I have to say, because my advocacy is that films should be seen with as little foreknowledge as possible; I would only speak of details to a crowd that has either already watched a movie or is resolved to skip it. So that's my recommendation: If you're a pseudointellectual horse's ass like me: Consider!

With respect to the guy who climbed into the tiger enclosure and was killed, this footnote comes to mind.

When AI 🤖 went mad in WESTWORLD (1973): "We aren't dealing with ordinary machines here. These are highly complicated pieces of equipment. Almost as complicated as living organisms. In some cases, they have been designed by other computers. We don't know exactly how they work."

I'm seeing various posts cursing boomers for aspiring to tax younger people to keep their Social Security checks coming. Just to be clear, SS was created before boomers were born, and it's been a raw deal for EVERYBODY currently alive, young or old. @grok Calculate how much better off boomers would have been if, instead of paying their SS taxes and having their employers pay a matching "contribution", that money had been invested in personal retirement accounts. Is it fair to observe that the only real winners from the Social Security system were those who voted it into existence in the first place during FDR's New Deal, and received more than they could have achieved otherwise (and of course those people are now deceased)? This is not to dismiss the gripes of young people facing the tax, just to note that boomers didn't create this Ponzi scheme, and can we please focus on the most practical way to address this problem (maybe a means test will be part of it) rather than simply blaming retirees, some of whom have no other income?

Cybercab in Austin, used to go to 10, now goes to 11! 😀

Good to know. I was concerned on this point.

Indeed they are, but maybe I should hang back...

When Tesla gets around to offering Cybercab as a personal vehicle, states should be quick to pass laws mandating this is the ONLY vehicle allowed for all the accident-prone drivers who have been unwisely granted licenses to drive.

Turning off replies is what fragile authoritarians do. xitter.cf/HillaryClinton/status/…

Indeed! 🍾

It's Yom Kippur. I walk the 10,000 steps and try to take good care of this hardware that God has granted me the use of. Have I performed my tasks? Do I have further work in the world? Forgive my indulgent nonsense, but I am troubled by these questions.

We live in a world where Nick Shirley is immediately criminalized for, at serious personal risk, going into the field and reporting the facts on the ground; meanwhile CNN is screaming because they have to report an event by watching a video feed instead of being in the room.

This is weird. I saw THE ODYSSEY last night (been waiting for the crowds to thin out), and I've felt completely emotionally drained since. I can't explain it at this point, but it was a hugely powerful, deeply immersive experience. That's my testimony. I guess that's good.

These states are suing Trump so that citizen taxpayers can be forced to subsidize cheap illegal foreign labor for businesses. This is what passes for "progress". xitter.cf/nytimes/status/2099522…