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Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 12h

Yes, and parent-rearing is a good to society, as is not having parents be broke. Tax credits to parents for children is a pretty obvious positive to me, and parents certainly spend more on raising children than they get in tax breaks

Full disclosure: I have two kids, one of whom is still a minor.

Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 14h

🎵if I find myself on the losing side
You can lay me down knowing that I tried.🎵

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Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 14h

I don't especially want to die in any hill, but this cis man is glad to fight the fight for trans rights.

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Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 15h

You can easily draw a straight line from "welfare queen in a cadillac" to "they're eating the pets".

You can draw another from "the scariest ten words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm hear to help you" and the current dismantling of the civil service.

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Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 17h

My earliest political memory was the election of Ronald Reagan,and remember his mythical Cadillac-driving "welfare queen" was a racist dogwhistle.

We've seen more of them through the decades, but recently it's become blatant; they aren't even looking for plausible deniability anymore.

Joshua G. Schraiber @jgschraiber.bsky.social · 18h

It's insane how blatant and centered overt racism is in the administration. Just like not even hiding it!

Marcus Bösch @boesch.bsky.social · 1d

Memes serve as a tool of dark participation and are used purposefully “to disrupt, undermine, attack, resist or reappropriate discursive positions pertaining to public affairs narratives in the news” (Peters & Allan, 2021, pp. 2–3)

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Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 19h

Let's read the cards

Sometimes we make choices blindly without thinking and end up ... well, we end up here, with our house in shambles. There's tension, there's conflict, and there doesn't seem to be a way out

The way out is through, the way through is to accept endings, changes

#Tarot #TarotSky

Three cards from the Fountain tarot. From left to right

The Two of Swords
The Ten of Coins, reversed
Death

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Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 21h

Gonzo and it isn't even close.

I'd said before - me personal tragedy is that I want to be Gonzo, but in my heart I know I'm probably Fozzy Bear

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Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 1d

we need to retire the New York Times Pitchbot account; with the actual NY Times publishing crap like this they
ve moved beyond parody

Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 1d

FUCK Gavin Newsome.

I honestly didn't expect much more of him, but this still stings.

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Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 1d

This is something I've always respected about you, and like to think I'm mostly the same.

I might be more likely than you are to hold my tongue on something I think will either be taken the wrong way or earn me a backlash, but I'll never say something here I don't sincerely believe.

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Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 1d

The crazy thing is that years ago - before he had a strong reactionary majority - Roberts felt like a cautious judge who wanted to rule as narrowly as possible and was concerned about his place in history.

At some point that shifted. (or I was wrong all along)

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Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 1d

There was a time when I engaged in every miserable debate or discourse on the cursed bird site.

In the long run, it did not make me happier. (see also, today's daily tarot reading. Sometimes you need to stop fighting and let go)

Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 1d

Daily Walkoff ⚾️
Mets #403

"XBH By Year"
🟢🟡🟡🟢
🟢🟢🟢🟢🚀

dailywalkoff.com

Swapped two of them. I still (at least somewhat) know my #Mets

Daily Walkoff - A daily MLB trivia game

A new kind of MLB trivia game with 30 new puzzles each day, one for every MLB team. Can you solve them all?

dailywalkoff.com

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Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 1d

I'm certain there are people who use AI as a doctor who have died because they ignored or mistreated symptoms that should have been evaluated by profesisonals

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Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 1d

Somebody read something surreaslistic that he (I assume it's a he) didn't understand, so he took the lesson that "not understandable" is a potential path to writing success.

It isn't.

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Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 1d

The problem isn't the bass's coolness, it's my lack thereof. Musical instruments I can play (badly)

Ukulele
Banjo
Banjolele
Theremin

If that's too cool, it's possible to juggle ukuleles

Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 1d

This makes me think of JJ Abrams - a man who is excellent at seeing what resonates with audiences but terrible at understanding why.

People who watch good media without thinking of it fall into that trap, but people who watch bad media but like it fall harder into it.

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Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 1d

Let's read the cards

We've been scrapping and fighting more than we should, to little end. It's time now to see the futility and detach.

Beneath it all we do possess a measure of wisdom and emotional strength, but we'll not be engage it until we let go and surrender our egos.

#Tarot #TarotSky

Three cards from a Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck. From left to right:

The Five of Wands
The Hanged Man
The King of Cups

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Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 1d

It's pretty, but bass is too cool for me.

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Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 1d

Green is my favorite color, and I do like an occasional Dr Pepper

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Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 2d

That's tough. Way easier to find ones that didn't

Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 2d

This is what you'd plant for a dark masquerade. I adore it.

Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 2d

Part of it is sport-arguing which the rise of short-form video has made so much worse

I know a guy who appeared on the Whatever podcast. They argued about feminism for over FIVE FUCKING HOURS in order to create clips that they could post on TikTok or YouTube shorts about how each "owned" the other

Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 2d

Think of how much more value we can add to the economy if we work until we're dead.

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Leonard C Suskin (he/him) @czhorat.bsky.social · 2d

Oppenheimer

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