Atrios:

Repeating myself, but for all that was wrong with the journalism/commentary leading up to and during the Iraq war, there was some sense, or at least pretense, that war was a big deal, that civilian deaths were a big deal.

Now we just see whether the line is going up or down in response to various things.

The Iraq war had months of run-up, because Bush wanted to sell it to the American public. He wanted public approval. And, it was part of the 9/11 aftermath, so we were all paying attention. This gave it the appearance of a debate. It wasn't, of course - Bush was going to Iraq no matter what any critics might say. But there was at least the appearance. We could pretend we might influence what happened. And that debate carried on throughout the initial years of the war. Before we all got bored.

But Trump's Iran war was presented to us as a fait accompli. We all woke up one morning and learned the bastard had gone and done it. And there's nothing that can be done about any of it. We can't un-bomb them; we can't bring the dead back; we can't unfuck our international standing; and nobody can stop him from continuing this disaster (the biggest flaw in all of the US system of government). So, what is there to talk about? Nothing we say has any effect (Iraq taught us that lesson pretty well). We can all tell each other how stupid he is, for the 1,000,005th time. Cool, done. On with my day, I guess.

The sanctions were necessary to stop Iran funding the war, but the war made the sanctions too effective, so the sanctions had to be lifted to fund the war effort against the country that no longer needs sanctions because the oil revenues that sanctions were preventing are now required to prevent the economic damage caused by preventing those revenues, which is itself a consequence of the military campaign designed to make the sanctions unnecessary by making Iran the kind of country that doesn’t need sanctioning, which it would be, if the sanctions hadn’t been lifted to pay for making it that.
...

Friday’s press gaggle. Barely exaggerated: at 12:03 PM, President Trump told reporters he wanted a ceasefire with Iran. At 12:05 he declared victory. At 12:07 he announced he was sending Marines. At 12:08 he said no boots on the ground. At 12:11 he said he did not want a ceasefire. At 12:16 he declared victory again. At 12:17 he asked for a ceasefire. At 12:23 he told NATO they were cowards. At 12:29 he said Iran was begging for a ceasefire. At 12:31 he said everything was perfect. At 12:36 he said $500 oil was a good thing. At 12:37 he demanded Iran open Hormuz. At 12:39 he said Hormuz was never closed. At 12:41 he said the US was not at war with Iran. At 12:42 he declared victory in Iran.

By 3:43 PM he told CBS he doesn’t want a ceasefire. By 5:13 PM - 13 minutes after futures markets closed for the weekend, in a coincidence that should be studied in every securities fraud textbook - he posted on Truth Social that the US is “getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts”. The S&P reversed more than 1% in seconds. QQQ had already surged 1.1% in the 80 minutes before the announcement, with call options flowing in at a pace that suggests someone, somewhere, had an itinerary.

I've fallen into a YouTube "reaction video" rabbit hole. Specifically, I've fallen down the hole where young, attractive and charismatic people who claim to have certain musical expertise listen to / watch music videos and show us their reactions or criticisms. There's the "opera singer", the "classical composer", the "Gen-Z music producer", the "vocal coach", the "guitar teacher" etc.. They all have YT channels where they let us watch them experiencing songs and bands for the first time.

Now, 'reaction video' is a broad YT genre; people record themselves reacting to everything from fashion to sports to music to video games to other people's reaction videos. And they get lots of views. People love it.

But why do we love it?

Well, that's pretty simple. In the case of these music reactors, if you watch enough of them, you'll see the patterns: they almost always love the music; they offer some, but usually not a lot, of their insight based on their specific skill; they will always end up listening to the same set of songs. They have all done "More Than A Feeling", "Mister Blue Sky", "Roundabout", "Tom Sawyer", some classic Chicago, Janis Joplin, Steely Dan, etc.. They hit "classic rock" really hard. Some will venture into the 90s and even up to the 2020s. But they always come back to classic rock. The premise is that they've never heard these songs or even these bands before. And since they're usually younger people, it makes sense that they don't know all of that 50 year old music the way a 50+-year-old guy like me would. But they're not scraping the bottom of the old barrels looking for oddities, they follow subscriber recommendations. Which means they're doing the classics. Which we all already know.

And we get to watch them discover these songs that we know! And they almost always love them! And that makes us feel good about ourselves - listen to this great music we had when we were young! Validate my taste! And the comments reliably tell them "I remember when this came out. it was such a magical time! Music was so much better!" And they agree! Tell me how great I am! One reactor seems to always say something like "That's awesome! I wish today's music could be this carefree and bold!" Ah, the good old days.

And even though I'm aware that this is exactly how most of these channels work, I still watch them. I still pretend I'm in it for the little nuggets of analysis they sometimes drop. But what really makes me smile is when they say "Wow!" to a song that I already know and love.

Sucker.

Cool system.

1. The moment you visit a website or app with ad space, it asks an ad tech company to determine which ads to display for you.
2. This ad tech company packages all the information they can gather about you into a “bid request” and broadcasts it to thousands of potential advertisers.
3. The bid request may contain information like your unique advertising ID, your GPS coordinates, IP address, device details, inferred interests, demographic information, and the app or website you’re visiting. The information in bid requests is called “bidstream data” and typically includes identifiers that can be linked to real people.
4. Advertisers use the personal information in each bid request, along with data profiles they’ve built about you over time, to decide whether to bid on the ad space.
5. The highest bidder gets to display an ad for you, but advertisers (or the adtech companies that represent them) can collect your bidstream data regardless of whether or not they bid on the ad space.

You'll never guess what it's being used for.

Oct 9, 2001

There is something truly, fundamentally broken with any system that gives one person the authority to murder the leaders of another country.

Even beyond Trump's absolute incompetence, even in the hands of someone sane, the country should have to agree, somehow, that such action is justified before it happens. That such action can be taken on the whims of the President is just Fucking Stupid.

I know this is not how this rickety-ass system was designed, and consent should be given, but this isn't really how it is practiced, with no complaint by any of the parties involved. The whole mess is predicated on the idea that there's some kind of emergency that the President needs to respond to and so there's no time to consult Congress. But it's obviously not an emergency every time it happens. It's a total fucking farce.

Mrs and I have been doing a lot of jigsaw puzzles lately. It's a good use for the dining room table that we never sit at.

I went to buy her a couple of puzzles for her birthday earlier this month. I wanted to go to a local toy shop, but they were never open when I had the energy to leave the house. So, I tried Amazon. All of the designs there looked like AI slop, and all the brands seemed to be the gross ALLCAPFOOBUY4U and FUNFORTIMES fake brands. So I found a dedicated puzzle shop. This place has a bunch of filters you can use: piece count, size, subject, difficulty, etc - all the stuff you'd expect from a store that just sells jigsaw puzzles.

But they also have a filter for AI designs, so you can skip all of the slop. I did.

I also learned there are puzzle makers who advertise themselves as being 100% AI-free.

The backlash is here.

Even the Pope has thoughts about it.

She didn’t know it at the time, but it was the beginning of an ordeal that would see Karen handcuffed, shackled and sleeping on the floor of a locked cell, before being driven for 12 hours through the night to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centre. Karen was incarcerated for a total of six weeks – even though she had been travelling with a valid visa.
...
So why did ICE detain her, and keep her locked up for so long? A possible answer began to emerge over the weeks she was incarcerated. As Karen got to know the guards at the Northwest ICE Processing Center where she was held, she kept hearing the same thing from them: that ICE officers are paid a bonus every time they detain someone. “Individual ICE agents get money per head that they detain – the guards told me that,” Karen says.

And

Former Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers say there’s a reason so many innocent people have been arrested for DUI in Tennessee — internal quotas and pressure to make arrests.

Ashley Smith and Adam Potts, both former THP troopers, told WSMV4 Investigates that the repeated insistence to increase DUI arrests is inadvertently resulting in innocent people being charged with DUIs.

“This is corruption. We’re ruining people’s lives. We’re being forced to ruin people’s lives,” Smith said.

When asked if he had ever arrested a sober driver for DUI, Potts said, “Yes, sir. I’m sure I have.”