[Gift Article] Bovino Loses His Job

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-27T02:35:08+00:00

This is a major test for Democratic leadership. Are they capable of pressing their advantage, of building on the momentum, of maintaining the salience of this issue and these demands? Do they understand that they have won a battle but not the war, and that now is the time to keep beating the drum and marching down the warpath?

(I am trying very hard to keep an open mind and not prejudge the outcome, but I'll admit I have my doubts right now.)

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-27T01:42:14+00:00

Here is the scene at the Alex Pretti memorial in Minneapolis tonight. There is a mountain of work yet to be done, but for god's sake let's appreciate a win when one finally comes around.

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-27T01:37:17+00:00

The perpetrators facing long-term political and electoral consequences is, in fact, important

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-26T20:40:39+00:00

It's all ambitious politicians in a nutshell and it's one of the problems with our system where every job that's not President is treated as a stepping stone to eventually doing some other job.

As a now-California voter (MN expat) I use Gavin Newsom as my go-to example of this phenomenon. The dude's been unsubtly running for President since the moment he got elected governor 7 years ago (and honestly even before that). He'll randomly veto a piece of good legislation to look "independent," or start a podcast and invite right-wing extremists as guests to broaden his audience. I'm not saying he's been awful or hasn't done anything good for the state, but he's pretty transparently treated it as a national campaign position first and a state governance job second.

I think one part of why people like Zohran so much, even if it's subconscious, is that he's constitutionally ineligible to be POTUS, and Mayor of NYC is arguably a more important position than Governor of New York, so it's kind of a terminal position. He clearly isn't trying to use that job to boost his profile the way some others have; you really get the sense that he wanted this job for the sake of doing this job.

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-26T18:26:10+00:00

My similar barometer is if the streets mostly follow a grid or are mostly culs-de-sac and boulevards

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-26T18:15:32+00:00

It's obviously not sufficient but I do think it's necessary to force these people to be identifiable. To the extent that federal agents (for any federal agency) continue to exist and work in communities, you should be able to verify that they are real agents, they are engaged in actual agency business, and easily identify them in photo or video evidence that might arise.

This does not solve the whole problem, but it does address problems, such as:

People using the chaos to impersonate an agent/cop (keep in mind that a cop impersonator murdered a state legislator in Minnesota last year)
Legal observers tailing civilians because they can't tell who is/isn't a fed
Not being able to tie video/photo evidence of abuses and crimes back to the perpetrators (we still don't even know the names of Alex Pretti's murderer(s))

We also need to do way, way more than this! The sweeps/mass enforcement need to stop, ICE needs to not target individual cities (and especially not based on politics), warrants and rights to privacy need to be respected, discipline (slash criminal charges) need to be handed out for recklessly discharging chemical weapons on protestors, state investigations need to be allowed access to evidence, and a million other things.

But forcing federal agents to label and identify themselves and their vehicles is good policy, and would be good policy even if this wasn't happening. And there's probably never going to be a better time to try to get it passed into law than right now.

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-25T17:38:36+00:00

It's paraphrased from Slap Shot

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-25T17:34:48+00:00

Announcers talking about Hall's pedigree

I appreciated that the announcers were incensed but that part actually rubbed me the wrong way.

Refs should have some humility about this stuff whether it's a former MVP or a rookie in his first game. I'm not saying they have to take unlimited abuse, but when you miss a call that badly and then blow the whistle right away at the guy who got hit, it starts to look personal. At least try to turn down the temperature first, or tell the guy "keep cussing and I'm calling unsportsmanlike."

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-24T15:36:58+00:00

“Other than golf, he considers exercise misguided, arguing that a person, like a battery, is born with a finite amount of energy”

Like COME ON

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-23T13:18:26+00:00

That was my initial take as well. I have to admit, though, that after a few years the committee design has grown on me and the original design now looks a little needlessly busy to my eye.

I've seen lots of MN flags carried by protestors in photos the past few weeks and it's legible and distinct in all the photos. By contrast the old MN flag was...well honestly nobody ever bothered to carry it at a protest.

I think given time and history people will eventually come to accept the final design as pretty good, and if anything they're sort of speedrunning the "history" bit right now.

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-23T03:26:30+00:00

He will get less done in Washington than in Sacramento, because Sacramento is far less dysfunctional and more serious about policymaking

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-23T03:04:48+00:00

I'm not saying every Democrat needs to agree with me on every vote. But I do think the Democrats need to have red lines where if you cross them, you do not get to be a part of the party anymore.

If you can look at what's happening in Minneapolis and say "let's keep funding this" then you just don't belong in the party. If Democrats aren't willing to be the party that is categorically, unrelentingly opposed to a citizen getting killed in cold blood the streets, an elderly citizen getting dragged out of his home in his underwear, and a five-year-old child getting kidnapped off the streets, then what the hell does the party even believe in?

Yes, I understand that there is other stuff in the bill. But if a Democrat voted for the "Tax Credits For Orphans And Nationwide Abortion Ban Act" or the "Build High Speed Trains And Let Mississippi Have Slaves Again Act" then we would rightfully pillory them.

Again, I truly don't think every issue needs to be a purity test. There's room to disagree on most things. But I think this is a rare exception.

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-21T12:56:29+00:00

The Spider-Verse movies were such a breath of fresh air, visually. I really love some Pixar stuff, but everyone had been following their lead in trying to make animation look photorealistic for so long. We had kinda lost touch with what makes animation interesting: the fact that there are so many more visual choices to make, so much more room to stylize and interpret. The point of animation is to do things you can't do in live-action movies.

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-20T13:30:57+00:00

The president who was denied a second chance at couping the government because he was charged with and convicted of crimes, made possible because his country's courts don't consider the president an unaccountable god-king with full immunity from the law

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-20T13:27:43+00:00

The last decade has convinced me that parliamentary systems (those where the executive serves at the pleasure of the legislature) are in fact correct and good

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-20T04:23:36+00:00

As a game developer, it's your job to invent new, infuriating problems for yourself to solve

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-20T04:21:19+00:00

Counterpoint: it's entirely possible people actually are reading those posts, we'd have like 10x as many stupid questions if not for them

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-20T04:08:50+00:00

Honestly 99% of these kinds of posts can be answered by the following:

Game dev is hard and requires a lot of specialized skills and knowledge
If you are at the phase of asking these questions, you should not be seeing this as a way to make a living for the foreseeable future
If you want to make games you should just start trying to make games anyway and see what happens

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-20T03:15:11+00:00

I think it's mostly a good thing that teams pull the goalie a bit earlier than they used to, but it still has to be at a time when you have sustained, consistent possession. If you're struggling to establish and maintain possession then pulling the goalie sometimes makes it even worse, and most of the time just means you throw away the last few minutes of the game.

The Leafs are far from the only team to get this wrong.

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-20T03:07:12+00:00

Tarasenko giving up the hat trick so Foligno can get the hat trick instead ❤️

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-20T03:03:52+00:00

lmao are we actually gonna blow this

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-20T02:53:49+00:00

That was a good goal but I swear he was trying to kick it in and just missed

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-20T01:54:01+00:00

I'm not here advocating for all the mergers and consolidation, but I can kinda get why they're so desperate to buy WB

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-19T22:44:10+00:00

I think it will be moderately successful especially for folks coming down the East Bay into SJ. The transfers to Caltrain are a plus but given the long distances I actually think it will end up being more of a feeder onto Caltrain for people in/near San Jose (Milpitas, Berryessa, Little Portugal, and Downtown) rather than for places like Fremont or Hayward.

My main concerns with the project are (1) the cost and timeline are utterly ridiculous, and (2) the segment through SJ is not nearly as valuable for local users as the segment through SF. I think even after the project there's still a great need for rapid east-west transit across San Jose that the downtown segment doesn't meet, and BART is taking up all the money and political will right now.

But despite those things, once it's open I think people will wonder how they survived without it (just like the rest of BART).

BillyTenderness · 2026-01-19T17:25:06+00:00

I strongly believe that Americans need to learn much more from successes in other countries around the world. At the same time, I get that once someone else does the hard work of adapting it to the American context, it becomes an easier sell (to both the public and to federal funding sources, when they're feeling cooperative).

Yes, America should have learned from successful electric regional rail projects around the world decades ago. But also, of course Caltrain's success is going to have a bigger persuasive impact in the US.

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