Howard Tayler
He/Him, Husband to Sandra Tayler, Father of Four, Fully Vaxxed, #mecfs/#LongCovid, howardtayler.com, schlockmercenary.com, writingexcuses.com. This feed is 100% artisanal human me.
- This feels like a direct result of thirty years of TV police procedurals where the good guys break the rules to catch the bad guy. Cop shows have trained us to hold The Bill of Rights in disdain.
- It's probably more than thirty years, but I haven't been watching any pre-2005 TV recently. Off the top of my head? I've seen "can't wait for a warrant" bits in THE MENTALIST, FRINGE, ELEMENTARY, and CASTLE.
- Worse still, the plot consequences are almost always along the lines of "oh no, the evidence is inadmissable, the bad guy will get away." It's only VERY rarely "you violated the sanctity of a family home, you injured innocent people, you're undermining the rule of law."
- Of course there's the plot device of "you broke the rules, gimme your badge and your gun," but now the story becomes "rogue cop continues to break rules because they don't apply now that rogue cop is just a citizen." My soapbox: "you can entertain me and still model good behavior. Don't be lazy."
- It's been several generations. The furthest back and the most notable was William Brewster, who was on the Mayflower for, y'know, Mayflower reasons. There might be an indigenous American in the lineage somewhere, but my American ancestors are overwhelmingly colonial.
- I also have American *emigrants* in my lineage: Mormon pioneers, who left the United States, briefly, for the Republic of Mexico. Then the Mexican-American War ended, and the Salt Lake Valley became an American territory, and they were all Americans again.
- I tried watching GHOSTBUSTERS 2, but gave up. It was bad back in the day, and it aged poorly.
- So I'm cleansing my palate with KUNG FU HUSTLE. It's great. Always.
- This bit of GB2 dialog almost (but not quite) redeems the film: DANA: "It's late, I really ought to put him down." VENKMAN: "May I?" DANA: "Yeah, if you want to." VENKMAN: [points in baby's face] "You're short, your bellybutton sticks out too far, and you're a terrible burden on your poor mother."
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View full threadIn looking it up I learned that the baby was played by two different babies, twins, and their uncle was John Denver. More useless clutter for the attic that is my skull.
- Measles can literally erase lots of your other immunities, so if you get measles thanks to not being vaccinated, congratulations, you can proudly be freshly unvaccinated for everything else, too.
- ASIDE: There was this one time during a business meeting when one of the attendees literally boasted about how anti-vax made them healthy. We let it slide, but after the meeting the rest of the team circled back and unanimously decided that we would no longer be doing business with that individual.
- ADDENDUM TO ASIDE: Like MAGA, Anti-Vax is epistemologically similar to Flat Earth. It's an asymmetrical, counter-factual belief system that is incredibly easy to disprove with decades of peer-reviewed research. People cling to it because they like how it makes them feel. bsky.app/profile/howa...
- Well... they like how it makes them feel until they get sick. Then they pretend something ELSE got them sick, because they really hate how they feel but they don't want to give up the misplaced psychological comfort of pretending they know more than a million epidemiologists.
- MAGA is like Flat Earth. It's a stagnant, asymmetrical system that accepts tissue-thin anecdotes as evidence while rejecting hard data as conspiratorially biased. They cling to belief because it comforts them. Don't fight it with facts. Fight it by removing the comfort.
- If you'd like to watch an outstanding takedown of Flat Earth's "epistemology," here's SciManDan on YT. www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGRw...
- There are some great soundbites from @scimandan.bsky.social¹, but I think my favorite is toward the end. Flat Earth is dangerous, not because it's wrong about geography but because "it trains people to reject corrective feedback." — ¹ not an active Bloosk, but I linked it anyway.
- This is fascinating, but after reading about the OTHER side effects (including extreme delirium and trips to the hospital) I'm not at all tempted to seek out the shrooms in question. Especially since, in markets where they're sold, nobody buys them for the hallucinations. They cook them thoroughly.
- With most psychedelic drugs, you never know what you're going to get. But this mysterious mushroom from China - without fail - causes users to hallucinate tiny people: crawling up walls, popping out from under furniture and marching under doors. www.bbc.com/future/artic...
- REMINDER: If any of your electronics are biometrically secured, LEOs can, with no warrant, force you to unlock them. They cannot, however, force you to enter a PIN or a password, and (depending on jurisdiction and other stuff) they'll need a warrant to start hacking on that.
- The FBI was able to access Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson's Signal messages because she used Signal on her work laptop. The laptop accepted Touch ID for authentication, meaning the agents were allowed to require her to unlock it. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
- (SOURCE: I forget, but I've seen this exact advice from at least two YT lawyers. Search and ye shall find, I guess.)
- This was so easy and delightful. 1) Browse to Amazon. 2) Search "Melania" 3) Top non-sponsored result is a free e-book, MELANIA: DEVOURER OF MEN 4) Buy with one-click. Amazon gets no money, and the algorithm gets wonkleborked. 5) Maybe read the book? Dunno. Haven't looked at it.
