Castle Magus

So, in other words, CNN, what you're telling me here is that the UK Supreme Court is just about as fucked up stupid and broken and worthless as the US Supreme Court is now, and also that there are obviously just as many transphobic shitbags in the UK as there are anywhere else. Gotcha. Good to know. *weary sigh*

"Dear John Oliver, kindly go pound sand" (EDIT) Just replaced the link to the actual Christian Post website with an archive.is version of it, because I don't want to direct any more traffic to that piece of shit website. (/EDIT)

Saw that dumbfuckery show up in my Google News app, which was shat out in response to a recent episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, because Google wrongly believed I wanted to see worse-than-worthless dreck from a birdcage liner like The Christian Post. Needless to say, I very quickly corrected that mistaken assumption by Google. Also reported it for being "Misleading or sensational" and "Hateful or abusive" (wish now I'd also included the "Violent or repulsive" option), which was cathartic (as is this post here), though I seriously doubt Google will actually do anything about it.

(At least this Kaeley Harms has an appropriate last name, anyway, given that she absolutely "Harms" trans people, and intentionally so, by publishing hateful horseshit like that.)

I don't have a "joe rogan" tag... hmm... not sure if even this 1:18:01 episode of Some More News that is explicitly about Joe Rogan is enough for me to bother creating a "joe rogan" tag. I mean, sure I could just plop "joe rogan" down there in the tags list and then have a "joe rogan" tag for the future, in the unlikely off-chance that I ever mention him again, but he's absolutely not worth the effort of finding and back-tagging the very rare few posts from the past in which I may have mentioned the asshat. Eh... okay, I guess I'll throw a new "joe rogan" tag on this post, for what tiny bit that is worth (even just to me, let alone anyone else).

Also, disclaimer: I have never seen anything of Joe Rogan's show myself, other than a few short clips here and there over the years of him saying stupid shit.

Anyway, on with watching the video at 2x playback speed...

...

...all right, not even five minutes in, and there's some transphobia. Off to a good start.

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Side bar: "Walmart fires 6'4" cisgender woman threatened by man who thought she was trans"

Wow. So, basically, a man came into a women's bathroom at a Walmart to harass and threaten a cisgender woman, who worked at that Walmart, because he wrongly, stupidly thought she was transgender merely because she happened to be tall, and then the woman was fired from her job at that Walmart after she reported the incident. (Ostensibly because she rEpOrTeD iT tO tHe WrOnG tYpE oF mAnAgEr... what the actual fuck ...so, then, why was the manager she did report it to not also fired for not reporting it up the chain to the, supposedly, "correct" type of manager? Probably because said manager wasn't a tall woman who "looked trans.")

And, of course, this fucking happened in goddamned Florida. That tracks.

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And now, onto the COVID disinformation part of the show...

Ah, and there's the racism... hmm, turns out Joe Rogan apparently had very different views back in 2019 or whenever, compared to now...? Gee, I wonder why? Oh, right, it's because of the Trump stuff.

And here comes the Trump-specific stuff (though that's really been an undercurrent of the entire video all along)... Joe Rogan before: "The morons had a king." Joe Rogan now: "He's real." Also, it does indeed seem really weird that Joe Rogan, who apparently hates everything to do with Jeffrey Epstein, had Donald Trump, someone who really appears to have been a close, personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein, as a guest on his show, and apparently never once mentioned Jeffrey Epstein. Go figure.

Joe Rogan didn't like Tim Walz, because Tim Walz was, supposedly, "a liar." Therefore, all in for Trump I guess????? The guy who has spouted literally multiple tens of thousands of documented lies over the past decade????? Okay, Joe Rogan. Okay.

Elon Musk? A genius? The smartest person alive? Okay, Joe Rogan. Okay.

Trump is "an outsider" and "anti-establishment" in the same way that GamerGate was "actually about ethics in video game journalism." Joe Rogan, by supporting Trump, is also no longer "anti-establishment," because Trump, like it or not, is the fucking, goddamned "establishment" now. Thanks, in part, to Joe Rogan, specifically.

Ah, and there comes the anti-abortion sentiment and the homophobia, too. Keep 'em comin', Joe. They're all just beach ball issues with no actual substance or value, amirite? *eye roll*

I'm on the tail end of Gen X, having been born in 1979 (Google/Wikipedia says Gen X was from "1965 to 1980"), and believe you me, I have absolutely not undergone a "right-wing turn." Maybe I'm just an aberration, though. *shrug*

Oh, and we're even getting just a smidge of antisemitism up in here (along with some Nazi propaganda/Hitler apologia), too. The hits just keep on comin', Joe.

So, in conclusion, while Joe Rogan isn't the absolutely worst grifter/con-man/right wing dumbshit that Some More News has done a video about, he's also obviously not the greatest dude in the world, either. I don't know... maybe Joe Rogan could be one of the rare few Trumpanzees that potentially could be shamed into changing his ways by being called a hypocrite, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that. In any case, this video has not convinced me to suddenly start watching the 6000+ hours of The Joe Rogan Experience or whatever the fuck.

(They didn't manage to get through this video without at least some dumb skits involving Katy and Warmbo. Short as they were, they were still present. *sigh*)

"John Oliver discusses the first four weeks of Donald Trump's second term as president, the strategy behind some of the choices his administration has made and why it is indeed fuck time. You heard us: It's fuck time."

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"Who is that child?" John Oliver asks. The correct answer, which Mr. Oliver didn't state, is that the child is Elon Musk's very own little meat shield. It's one way in which Elon Musk also has a similarity to Greg Stillson, same as Trump. (EDIT) And I just learned today that the kid's so-called name is, and I shit you not, "X Æ A-Xii."[1] Poor damned kid. I don't give a shit if he's the son of ThE rIcHeSt MaN iN tHe WoRlD or whatever, he's still a poor damned kid. (/EDIT)

And yeah, that song is pretty great. (Alternative link.)

Anyway, in conclusion, to hell with Donald Trump (and Elon Musk) forever, as usual. (I fully agree with Mr. Oliver in that it really isn't the case that "we have to fuck Trump," and that's why I prefer to use "to hell with" instead of "fuck" in cases like these, nowadays. I still appreciate those who do (properly) use "fuck" in that way, though.)

(EDIT)

[1] - Apparently, his name was originally "X Æ A-12," but they had to rename him to "X Æ A-Xii," because having non-alphabetic characters in one's name is against the law in California. So... why was the "Æ" allowed to stay, then? Because there's technically no "Æ" character in the English alphabet, either. Go figure.

(/EDIT)

"Hi. Now that Trump is president... again... we're going to look at how he and his party are always focused on problems that aren't really problems (DEI, immigrants, and censorship) instead of problems that are (climate-enhanced wildfires, oligarchy, and actual censorship)."

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One of the comments under the video: "So is this sense of unreality what Germans circa 1933 felt?" I would say... maybe? Probably. The difference is that we should have goddamn known better, this time. Doubly so, given that we've already endured a hellish four years with Trump as the President of the United States of America before the current, likely way more hellish four years still to come of Trump as the President of the United States of America. It's not going to be great, and we're going to be trying to repair the damage caused by 2025-2029, for much, much longer than just those four years, like how we're still trying to repair the damage caused by 2017-2021 even now. Well, some of us are trying to repair the damage, anyway. Too many of us are actively, maliciously trying to cause the world to burn (both figuratively and literally).

So anyway, yeah, this is an almost hour long video pointing out all the finding out that's happening as a result of all the fucking around that happened in November 2024.

Anyway, in conclusion, to hell with Donald Trump forever, as usual.

(Beware: Warmbo is in the video. Not a lot, but still... a little bit of Warmbo goes a very, very long way.)

A post on John Scalzi's Whatever.

"You fucked around, US voters. Now you’re gonna find out.

"('I didn’t vote for him!' Well, thank you, neither did I. Got some bad news for you, though.)"

Pretty much, yeah. There's more to Mr. Scalzi's post than just that, but still... yeah...

Good on Costco.

All the other companies mentioned in this article that have abandoned DEI in the face of MAGAt bullying are sucky cowards, and the MAGAt bullies harassing them suck even more shit. To hell with all these clownshoes "conservative think tanks" ("conservative think" is an oxymoron if ever I heard one) trying to gaslight companies into believing that they're "illegally discriminating" against "white, Asian, male, or straight" people. How ludicrous.

"Hi. Well, we're doing this again.... I guess. So, let's ask the tough question: are Americans just plain stupid for electing Donald Trump?"

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The gist of the above video:

1. Voters in general = ignorant and gullible and inattentive and very checked out of politics on the whole (because politics, granted, is indeed very fucking banal and insane and enraging), but not necessarily full on stupid, and as such it almost, almost makes sense that more of them voted for the loud, obnoxious, brazen liar/con man/criminal who claims he very definitely has real, true, totally legitimate plans to Fix Everything™ instead of for the establishment bozos who appeared (to ignorant, gullible, inattentive, very checked out eyes) to have been, at best, keeping everything bad or, at worst, actively making everything worse, in large part because the loud, obnoxious, brazen liar/con man/criminal repeatedly, incessantly said they were.
2. Democrats (specifically Democratic politicians) = very definitely stupid, for myriad reasons.
3. Liberals (extended from Democrats and distinct from progressives [and mainly referring to vapid talking heads on the ol' boob tube and the not so ol' social media]) = apparently secretly racist, sexist, transphobic, MAGA-lite shitbags all along, who don't have a clue what they're talking about, because now they're apparently trying to blame "special interest groups" (like, you know, immigrants and trans people and Palestinians) instead of their namby pamby, wishy washy, milquetoast, "trying to please everybody but actually pleasing nobody" candidates (e.g. Biden and Harris, see point #2), even though said politicians didn't even really do all the "bad" stuff that the pundits are claiming cost them the election (e.g. "bad" stuff like "caring too much about" immigrants and trans people and Palestinians). Let's just say pants-on-head stupid and leave it at that, I guess.
4. Republicans (specifically, the vile, self-centered, hypocritical asshats who knew and continue to know that Trump is eminently terrible and have explicitly said so in the past, but who now pretend to adore the taste of Trumpian dingleberries) = vile, self-centered, hypocritical asshats who slurp the shit on Trump's ass hair either out of cowardly fear of reprisal, out of the hope that Trump can directly benefit them at the expense of everyone else, and/or out of petty, hateful revenge for racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, etc. very stupid reasons.
5. Some More News (both the creators and the fans of the show): could and should and need to do better.
6. In conclusion: We, all of us, even those who voted for Trump, are almost assuredly about to be properly super fucked by Trump and his incoming administration of utter clowns (with apologies to clowns for the unfair comparison), and we need to be prepared for the consequences of that, despite the fact that this is a thing that was easily predicted and long foreshadowed due to the very words that have come out of the face-anuses of Donald Trump and those who disingenuously support Donald Trump. We're all in this together, whether we like it or not.

"John Oliver discusses Donald Trump's reelection, what happens next, and why the whole thing is – arguably – Katy Perry's fault."

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Man, invoking Mister Rogers even for a little bit feels like one of those "break glass in case of emergency" moments. Which, I guess, this whole "Trump got reelected" thing definitely is. If I had to pick one human being who is the absolute polar opposite of anything and everything Mister Rogers, it would be Donald Jackass Trump.

And yeah, this episode is a wee bit behind the times, because Matt Gaetz for Attorney General wasn't even on that pestilential chart of potential Trump picks.

In conclusion, to Donald Trump and to every one who voted for Donald Trump, I just want to give you all a very hearty, "Fuck you quite a lot!"

A post on Wil Wheaton dot Net.

I get it it, but for me this isn't really a shock. It's a disappointment and it sucks encrusted putrescent slimy asshole, to be sure, but I pretty much called it around three months ago. My problem was that I actually let hope infect me again, given how much more energetic and happy Kamala Harris seemed to be. I was hoping to be proven wrong in my prediction... Alas, racism and sexism won the day yet again yesterday (because you can't not think that the fact that Harris is a female POC was a disproportionate consideration for far too many voters). Anyway, now we're stuck with Dumbfuck Trump again for the next four years (or until Vance takes over as POTUS, if and when that may be).

I'm not even remotely surprised that Trump won North Carolina, sad as it is. For every one Harris/Walz sign I saw in the wild around here (and I was a bit surprised that I saw any at all, to be honest), I saw dozens upon dozens of Trump signs and flags and big LED boards (too often, again, side-by-side with Christian themed signs/flags, especially those particularly asinine ones that throw "guns" into the mix, too).

I will say this much for North Carolina, though... we did somehow manage to keep a Democrat in as governor, with Josh Stein succeeding Roy Cooper. That kind of is a shock to me.

In any case, I'm not going to go hermit or anything here and stick my head in the sand for four years, but I'm not going to actively seek out Trump news, either. If I see it, I see it (and I'll probably rant about it, as per usual), but... it's kind of meh. Trump is Trump. We know who and what Trump is now. We've known for years. And yet, too many people still chose to vote for him anyway, despite all that. And now we all have to pay the price for such rampant dumbfuckery.

Anyway, if you've paid attention to my blog at all, you probably already know what I think the biggest problem with this country is and what needs to be done about it. Until and unless that is ever accomplished, Trumpism (and whatever the sequel to Trumpism turns out to be) will continue to survive and thrive.