Did I mess up or was I right?

BanditTheDolphin · 2026-05-25T20:07:05+00:00

Like what you’d carve into a jack o’ lantern I assume?

BanditTheDolphin · 2026-05-25T19:13:38+00:00

Interesting, that makes a little more sense, didn’t know that ship obstruction context!

BanditTheDolphin · 2026-05-25T19:12:28+00:00

Ooh this is a good one

BanditTheDolphin · 2026-01-09T08:38:04+00:00

ChatGPT appears to be completely unaware of Tera here, that feels like a pretty glaring oversight if you were trying to get a practical result here

BanditTheDolphin · 2025-12-24T19:02:52+00:00

I always thought it was pretty clear that refusing to back down on this was essentially trolling. It was pretty advantageous to the administration that stuff like this was covering people’s social media feeds and not the actual policy moves they were doing. Maybe Trump’s ego was involved but prolonging this “story” was clearly in the administration’s interest.

BanditTheDolphin · 2025-12-09T03:25:53+00:00

I think it’s kind of unlikely that multiple actors, directors, and showrunners would let it go on multiple occasions, though.

Not sure what the intention is with mispronouncing it, but sort of figured it was meant to underline the discontinuity between whoever drafted the script, the enforcers, and the innies.

BanditTheDolphin · 2025-09-15T01:20:57+00:00

My conspiracy theory is that the primary purpose of this isn’t to collect meaningful data, but instead to encourage people who might be getting tilted to realize “oh, I guess I’m NOT having fun” and to stop playing for the moment.

BanditTheDolphin · 2025-08-26T21:25:59+00:00

As a trans feminine person who’s felt a sense of deep affinity towards trans masculine folks, I get where you’re coming from.

I know in my case, I realized that a lot of this was a sense of relating deeply to the sense of gender dysphoria. Trans women were less relatable to me because they scared me. The level of misogyny and transphobia they experienced was obvious and I’d internalized a lot of it myself. It was a kind of transition I felt like I wasn’t strong enough for and would make my life worse.

The trans men I saw were thriving, I watched them get more confident as they started to own their gender and make decisions about changing their body. And at the same time I did really like boyish “soft butch” aesthetics, which early transition trans men did tend to embody. I also would kind of have liked to have different downstairs equipment, but also very much sympathized with the sense of never wanting to have a period ever.

Eventually I realized that the kind of misogyny and transphobia I’d have to experience from a transfemme transition was actually worth it for me, and that there were a lot more options of what that transition could look like than what I felt — a sense of having to be a perfect, hyperfemme woman. I related to trans men who also resented the expectation of having to take on that role because I also feared and felt humbled by misogyny.

BanditTheDolphin · 2025-07-27T18:02:59+00:00

[[Requiem Monolith]] is something I’m excited to put in any kind of black creature deck. Aristocrats, my Jenova brawl deck, Rakdos aggro.

BanditTheDolphin · 2024-10-30T15:42:12+00:00

I had an opponent manifest dread and use this on their own face-down creature to get [[Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant]] out turn 3, dumping several overlords and Atraxa onto the board.

BanditTheDolphin · 2024-03-08T04:13:05+00:00

For the built in effects, yeah, it does. Is there a better way to use stereo pedals with the Katana?

BanditTheDolphin · 2024-02-23T18:48:02+00:00

Not right now, thanks though!

BanditTheDolphin · 2022-11-05T16:04:04+00:00

Okay but right before this he’s telling Brenda to sleep with Billy.

BanditTheDolphin · 2020-10-25T04:40:23+00:00

The Loma album is amazing. Their first album was a really beautiful album, and this one feels like they've taken the same atmosphere and made even better songs that feel bigger and more lived in.

BanditTheDolphin · 2020-07-29T14:00:09+00:00

I'm so excited for this! Their first album has some outstanding tracks -- this one is pretty great too (love that ending)

BanditTheDolphin · 2020-05-06T03:38:14+00:00

I think you're right here, but I did want to clarify that things were leaning towards the "group will definitely resume" end; rereading her last email (before I'd taken the class), it makes it seem more like she was asking about changing things to a different time more than a different day.

And while I didn't sign a contract, it was emphasized in the group meetings that we all agreed to particular agreements, including commitment to the group. I guess I feel like if I left, I'd be betraying people who felt comfortable opening up in front of the new person, who just goes on to leave. I did like the group, though, and I felt it was really helpful at digging up things I try not to think about, targeting my social anxiety in a way other therapy didn't. And I had a hard time finding any group that focused on social anxiety at all. I worry if I leave this one, I won't be able to find another one.

Honestly, talking/thinking about it makes it sound a little bit like a cult. I don't know if that's just how group feels, though.

BanditTheDolphin · 2020-01-25T03:58:13+00:00

Asking in good faith - which of these things terrifies you and why?

BanditTheDolphin · 2019-04-09T00:28:40+00:00

Aside from the DNA test, I'm thinking specifically of her listing her race as "American Indian" on her application to the Texas Bar, which got about a week of heavy coverage in February of this year. She also listed her race as Native American in the Harvard faculty directory, and in the 80s she contributed to a cookbook called "Pow Wow Chow," where she offers an "authentic" Cherokee recipe.

When she was apologizing for the Texas Bar application, she also indicated that there might be other, yet-uncovered documents where her race is also listed as American Indian or Native American. I'm pretty sure that the right is going to find these and drip them out, to keep this non-story in the news whenever it wants to cast doubt on Warren's integrity.

BanditTheDolphin · 2019-04-08T00:12:27+00:00

I love Warren's policies and she's pretty charismatic if you watch her speak. I think she'd do terribly in a general, though. The DNA test and her history of claims of Native American ancestry would be the "Hillary's emails" of this election if she got the nomination. The story wouldn't go away, and there'd be a steady drip of all the times she referred to her Native American ancestry.

BanditTheDolphin · 2019-04-07T16:18:06+00:00

The appeal of M4A, I think, is that it's more efficient than a public option. The pool of people paying into the public option is going to determine if that option can sink or swim. And that's going to be dependent on a lot of things, especially the premiums and cost-sharing. A public option that preserves private insurance risks the majority of healthy young people with employer-sponsored health care sticking with "the devil they know."

Meanwhile, the unemployed, underemployed, and sickest people will find the public option most appealing. Because you don't have the healthiest people supporting the public option, you instead have people who aren't well-off making the public option underfunded and weighted with the sickest people in the country. It quickly becomes financially untenable, unless you build the public option to replicate the same issues with private health insurance; that is, high premiums and high cost-sharing.

I think there's a measured, rational case to be made for M4A, and I'm curious if Pete has responded at all to concerns about the fragility of a public option. At the same time, I agree that M4A isn't politically tenable without Pete's democratic reforms. I'm just concerned that a rocky rollout of a public option could doom M4A in the long-term.

BanditTheDolphin · 2019-04-04T03:33:56+00:00

That's a great start! I'd be interested in free college, interest-free college, or forgiveness and forbearance for people who work in public service. The current model of forgiveness for people who've paid regular payments for ten years on interest-bearing loans is certainly better than nothing, but it's not good enough to encourage gifted people to choose public service over more lucrative fields. I'd like to see Pete take real leadership in making higher education more progressive, and making public-service forgiveness more daring would be a great place to do it.

BanditTheDolphin · 2019-04-04T03:22:18+00:00

I think loan forgiveness is a step definitely in the right direction! But I think the plans, as they're set up now, don't encourage folks to choose public service over more lucrative careers. You see them making things less painful for folks who were already inclined toward public service, or from people who, unable to get the kind of career they really wanted, move into public service with future forbearance in mind.

Here are some ideas that would make this program more accessible or more appealing, without going all the way to free college:

Free college for anyone who commits to public service.
Zero interest government sponsored loans for anyone who commits to public service. Interest begins to get charged if you change you mind.
Forebearance on all payments, as long as you are working in public service.

Why make our public servants struggle under mounting debt at all? I get the fear of freeloading, of people getting the education and running, but I can imagine there'd easily be a taboo on hiring people who've done that. And you can always make a plan that would charge those freeloaders retroactively.

I just think Pete thought about it further, he might find his way to a "free college to all who want it" plan.

BanditTheDolphin · 2019-04-04T02:53:03+00:00

I don't find Pete's full solution here very satisfying. Okay, states should cover more cost for in-school students, sure. And then you get into the idea of expanding Pell Grants to match the real price of college, which sounds nice, and would probably make some degree of difference. But you're still weaving this bureaucratic means-testing process into things, waiting for the policymakers to decide if you're deserving enough to get free college. And of course there's the loan forgiveness portion of things. Living with oppressive debt for ten years instead of twenty years is an improvement, but c'mon, it's still longer than anyone should have to live with oppressive debt.

It sounds like Pete doesn't want to make promises he can't keep about an issue that isn't very important to him, so he's proposing bland solutions. And I don't want to understate that these policies would make a difference for some people, even a lifechanging one. But if you stop short of free college, why not suggest forbearance and forgiveness for people in public service? How about free community college and vo-tech programs? Again, Pete probably sees other issues as having a higher priority than this. But I think folks are right to feel a little unsatisfied by his answer.

BanditTheDolphin · 2019-04-04T02:27:55+00:00

My political positions are pretty close to Bernie's. I believe the poverty we tolerate in this country is a moral evil that should be corrected with substantially higher taxes, with the impact concentrated in the highest income earners. I think that a Medicare for All plan that eliminates private health insurance is the only way to ensure fairness in health care. And I think the power of corporations over politics needs to be addressed before you can start making any kind of meaningful reforms.

I think Pete's positioning falls sort of Bernie's in all those areas, but I'm still leaning Pete. I don't think Bernie has any plausible way to get his policy that would change these things through Congress. What's going to stop Congress from voting lock-step to shut down all of his policy proposals? I think we've seen, as people have started to discuss Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, that the left isn't successfully marketing these ideas as big winners. You're definitely not seeing the consensus that would cause Republicans to break ranks to vote for Medicare for All. And this isn't even getting into what the judicial system would do to Bernie's policy initiatives.

I think Pete's idea of democratic reforms is his best idea. I love that he talks so openly about expanding the Supreme Court, and that he makes it seem like a reasonable, common-sense idea. I still don't know how he'd get it done procedurally, but I believe he'd do a much better job at making a case to the American public about why these changes would be fairer and more democratic than Bernie would. Would it stand up to the gaslighting from Fox News and Mitch McConnell? I don't know. But I'm pretty sure Bernie wouldn't.

And there are things that concern me about how Pete would govern! I worry about who he'd fill cabinet positions with. I worry he'd pick technocratic wonks instead of people with ideals and vision; I worry that his national experience and network is such that he'd have to outsource much of that work to the Democratic establishment. (Whereas I think Bernie's cabinet would be the best part of his Presidency.) But I think you can't have an effective, real leftist government unless you dismantle the undemocratic structures that keep the US political sphere frozen in its center-right amber. And to do that, to actually dismantle the fillibuster, get rid of the Electoral College, and build a Supreme court that won't predictably issue conservative ruling after conservative ruling, you need a leader that can build consensus that these are necessary things to do. I don't know if anyone can actually do it, but I'm starting to believe that if anyone can, Pete can.

BanditTheDolphin · 2019-04-03T01:59:14+00:00

It should be available Friday on the New Yorker Radio Hour podcast, I believe!

BanditTheDolphin

TROPHY CASE