Matthew Chapman
@fawfulfan.bsky.social
7.3K followers 2.6K following 3.2K posts
Game programmer, reporter at @rawstory.com, author, elections nerd, devoted husband. Proudly on the spectrum. All opinions are my own.
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fawfulfan.bsky.social
True, George Santos *also* fabricated a ton of details about his personal life and that was the big scandal that made news, but that was not a crime in and of itself. It was just what prompted federal investigators to start looking into the irregularities in his campaign.
fawfulfan.bsky.social
LOL, George Santos is not in jail for "lying about where he went to college."

He's in jail for submitting fraudulent reports to the Federal Election Commission, stealing his campaign donors' credit card numbers, and illegally using his campaign funds for personal expenses.
atrupar.com
Trump on George Santos: "We have a young congressman that's right now in jail for lying about where he went to college and other things. It was frankly not good. It was pretty bad. But it was nothing compared to Blumenthal."
fawfulfan.bsky.social
By the way, the reason homicide is generally the gold standard for these comparisons, is that while robberies, rapes, assaults etc often go unreported, homicide pretty much always gets reported.

It's the one category of crime where you can be certain you have the "real" numbers.
fawfulfan.bsky.social
At no point in the last 20 years did Portland's homicide rate exceed 10 per 100,000 people. And 2023-2024 were the only years in that time frame it even exceeded 5 per 100,000. www.macrotrends.net/global-metri...

Portland is just not a high-crime city by any reasonable definition.
Portland OR Murder/Homicide Rate 1999-2018
Interactive chart of the Portland, Oregon murder rate (i.e. the number of homicides per 100,000 population) from 1999 to 2018.
www.macrotrends.net
fawfulfan.bsky.social
What makes this lie particularly crazy is that not only is homicide in Portland not very high to begin with, Portland has seen one of the largest drops in homicide of any large city in the whole country in 2025. Murders in the first six months were down 51% compared to last year.
atrupar.com
Harrigan defends Trump's deployment of troops to cities: "I don't think it's wrong for members of the administration to characterize places like Chicago & Portland as war zones when they're putting up stats up about 50 murders a weekend." (There have been 58 murders in Portland all year as of Oct 1)
Reposted by Matthew Chapman
annabower.bsky.social
Among other things, it remains extremely weird that the [checks notes] director of the FBI uses phrases like “ass clown factory” in public statements posted on his official account
FBI Director Kash Patel * ®
@FBIDirectorKash
X.com
BREAKING: MSNBC still an ass clown factory of disinformation. Same circus animals that slobbered all over perp walks of Stone, Navarro, Bannon...
MSNBC has no facts and no audience
In this @fbi, follow the chain of command or get relieved.
& Barb McQuade @ @BarbMcQuade • 15h
DOJ policy prohibits "perp walks," in which arrestees are paraded before the cameras.
fawfulfan.bsky.social
So my roofer from 16 MONTHS ago, thinks they can send me a bill for $12,200 today, out of nowhere, over a year after all payments and insurance claims were settled.

Yeah, I'm sorry, but that won't be happening, thanks.
fawfulfan.bsky.social
It's a great route, even if the cell service is awful along large parts of it.
fawfulfan.bsky.social
Spotted this morning: the Amtrak Texas Eagle train in San Marcos, on its way from Los Angeles to Chicago.
fawfulfan.bsky.social
Jar-Jar in my revision is pretty much completely unchanged.

He's a perfectly fine character and I've never understood the hate for him.
fawfulfan.bsky.social
That's something I considered doing too, but I think it actually diminishes the story a little. The whole point of seeing him as an 8-year-old is to see him unbroken, optimistic, and full of potential.

I did, however, age Padmé *down* a couple years in my rewrite.
fawfulfan.bsky.social
To be clear, I did end up changing a lot of things, but for the most part it ended up being the same story and same characters Lucas gave us. Just with certain events, political aspects, and character motivations tweaked or moved around to improve the stakes and pacing.
fawfulfan.bsky.social
I also went in feeling pretty sure I'd end up changing a lot about Anakin and Padmé's romance, but ultimately, I changed only minor things about it. For the most part, what Lucas did works.

A lot of the cringe dialogue was more intentional and plot-important than people realize.
fawfulfan.bsky.social
For example, I went in planning to give Darth Maul an arc with Obi-Wan across the trilogy, and make Dooku morally gray instead of a Sith, and it turns out there's no way to do those things without muddling themes and/or totally changing plot beats in Ep III that most people like.
fawfulfan.bsky.social
I recently took a crack at storyboarding how I'd rewrite the Star Wars prequels.

And that made me appreciate 1) these films are very underratedly well-written, and 2) a lot of things people commonly suggest should be changed, including stuff I'VE suggested before, are bad ideas.
fawfulfan.bsky.social
I feel like this is just a skill issue, and I just don't understand the meta for the Great League the way I do for the others.

Still, even when I go look up which mons are hot in the meta and build teams around them, I get my ass beat just the same.
fawfulfan.bsky.social
I hate the Great League in Pokémon GO. Like, I genuinely despise it.

In the Ultra League and Master League, I've built teams that can usually manage a 50%+ win rate. In the Great League, no matter what team I cobble together, I'm lucky if I manage 30%.