Matt Morain
mattmorain.bsky.social
Matt Morain
@mattmorain.bsky.social
120 followers 90 following 720 posts
Amateur woodworker. Professional wordworker. I like my coffee black, my dogs scruffy, and my commas Oxford. The world's preeminent scholar on what is, and what is not, The Fast and the Furious.
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Reposted by Matt Morain
I think a lot about the chance we had at the start of COVID to finally become a more compassionate, collectivist nation, and how profoundly we were failed not only by the sociopathic greed of the ruling class but by each other.

It doesn’t mean we won’t get there, but the lost opportunity haunts me.
Remember how just a few years ago during the worst of the pandemic when we saw how the govt can actually do big things and saw that our collective health & well-being are intertwined, and then corporations got mad that they lost a modicum of power and helped fund a backlash of amnesia and fascism?
A library is a public park but inside with books.
Change one letter, ruin a candy.

Mop Rocks.
Change one letter, ruin a candy.

Sugar Rabies
Change one letter, ruin a candy.

Milky WAP
Reposted by Matt Morain
I always get drawn back to Al Gore telling voters that he’d only raise taxes on the top 1% and then after the election a poll showed that something like 20% of voters thought they were in the top 1% and another 20% thought they would be in the next five years. Just a total tragic disconnect.
Maaaaan, this. So much this. Every time there's any kind of actual in-depth survey we find that the American people are *abysmally* ignorant about even the most basic political facts, but the pundit class just immediately forgets & proceeds with political analysis based on subtle policy differences.
Feels like so many of our convos are revolving about how voters respond to what politicians are doing, or what parties’ positions on issues are, without much actual empirical sense of what they actually know about those topics.
Reposted by Matt Morain
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works and let me know if you have any questions! 🤗
Upcoming posts include: thoughts on Madam Mim/Merlin romantasy slash fic, the precise height range for defining short kings, research into echoic memory and trauma savants, and how Ghost of Tsushima online co-op play can be incorporated into IFS parts therapy. Sign up if that sounds like your alley.
Yes hi hello I'm taking short-team leave from my job because of reasons and all the Substack (it's trash!) talk gives me a conveniently relevant window to tell you I'm starting a newsletter on Ghost. live-laugh-leave.ghost.io
Live Laugh Leave
What a broken brain looks like when it finally takes a break.
live-laugh-leave.ghost.io
I just wanted to watch the Canes game tonight while I cooked dinner but oops nope market blackout.
Yes hi hello I'm taking short-team leave from my job because of reasons and all the Substack (it's trash!) talk gives me a conveniently relevant window to tell you I'm starting a newsletter on Ghost. live-laugh-leave.ghost.io
Live Laugh Leave
What a broken brain looks like when it finally takes a break.
live-laugh-leave.ghost.io
The fact that there’s an all out sad and desperate push by billionaire-owned media to try and “Comey her emails” him at the 11th hour because of how popular and effective he is gives me so much joy.
Someone should reconfigure the Y2K bug but for wealth so that if your accounts get to $999,999,999 and you put 1 or more dollars in, the bug triggers a rollover and you go back to zero.
Reposted by Matt Morain
Wanna feel old? Try writing about the decade you were born in as if it were ancient history.

The first proper part of my series looks at the beginnings of cyberpunk and the short story that gave it its name.
Reposted by Matt Morain
Reposted by Matt Morain
I’ve played with LLMs a fair amount and noticed something that these studies that show using LLMs degrading intellectual performance may not be picking up: What if having pretty good critical thinking skills makes LLMs less appealing/satisfying to use in the first place?
"We need a graphic for the login timeout page. The copy's gonna read, 'You're busy. We've got your back,' so something that that says you only have so much time in the day, but don't make them look harried."

"What about someone skateboarding with a laptop in 1 hand and a coffee in the other?"
Adding “penis dowry” to my CAPTCHA list
A petition to change the word neurotypical to autisnt was rejected today when a panel of my thoughts couldn’t agree on the inclusion of an apostrophe, sources report.
Dragonlance.

Family vacations were always by car—once we drove the 40 minutes it took to reach a town with a mall we’d stop at a Waldenbooks, where my brother and I were allowed one purchase. We’d each get new Dragonlance books, read our own and then switch.

I sound like Grandpa Simpson.
See also: DND.
Every bit of this
one of the best parts of writing fiction is sitting down at a desk & making things up for a while & becoming deeply invested in what will happen to these people that didn’t exist a few hours earlier
Reposted by Matt Morain
If Sun-, Mon-, or Tues- the -day do be,

The game is on Peacock or perhaps N- and/or ABC;

If Wednesday has come round again,

'Tis wise to check ESPN;

Yet if it be long weekend time,

Search Disney's sports verticals, but first try searching Prime
Posting again as a public service (and because I can't freakin' remember either):
"Warfighter" is the preferred term for marketing to public sector/DoD contracts, and has been prevalent for close to 20 years. Not new, but still gross.
Reposted by Matt Morain
SNAP isn't about "people who don't work." It's about people who don't get paid enough to live.

Of the 40 or so million people who rely on food stamps:

* Two-thirds are children, seniors, or disabled

* Most working-age adults who receive SNAP are employed—but in jobs that pay poverty wages
Reposted by Matt Morain
Whenever people complain about the number of folks relying on food stamps, it is worth reminding them that SNAP is, by too large of a degree, a subsidy for corporations that refuse to pay a living wage and their political allies who reject public policy prescriptions to reduce income inequality.