People always imagine this as "I will pay you $100 to kick the puppy" and of course they would never.

But what actually happens is that you have a long-term donor. You rely on their help (they're paying for you to be able to hire a nice college intern who's really smart and has been fun to have on the project). They never tell you what to do so you see them as more of a friend than anything else. It's perfectly normal to get some lunch with friends and talk. You're stuck on some problems and they have some good connections that help you out. That might even be worth more than $100k, but it's not money at all so it's OK that they're helping you like this. They also talk you up, which is like free advertising except you didn't ask for it so that also doesn't count. Anyway, at some of the lunches they're telling you about what's going on with them and there's some problems they're dealing with that you could help with. They don't ask for help, of course, because they know you're independent. But being independent means it's OK for you to do what you want. Even help a friend out who didn't ask for help so they're not influencing you...

In the novel Snow Crash, the residents of the white-supremacist micro-state franchises visit other places because they have no non-whites to attack at home.

If that settles the tariff negotiations

I agree that if there was a magic "fix this shit for good" button but you had to crawl around and call Trump "sir" a lot that would be worth it. But what's actually going to happen is that he'll hear a loud noise and forget who any of these people are and he'll be like, "two million percent tariff on the uk!!"

If by any chance, one’s identity is reviled, their entire behaviour history would be out in the wild.

So close to a sweet meter. What do you think of

"If, by some chance, one's handle's reviled / their foul history would be out in the wild."

? It's not perfect. Probably just a little more work-shopping.

Not really that weird? Basically every organization does this or is immediately unsuccessful. The only exception is companies under a government that's stable enough to carry water for them.

This doesn't mean that the organizations are a net benefit.

In what way, exactly, does her vote as a US senator count more than another US senator's vote?

Feel free to use simple language if you feel I need it.

"Why would anyone in Europe care?"

I think the point of it would be to signal to Trump that Europe is his vassal. Trump says it's sad that this guy is dead, therefore Europe is sad. Doesn't really matter who it is or what's up. You're just following the pledge of fealty.

So, I think it's good that the EU decided they're sovereign for now. This sort of thing is always an ongoing project.

The people cheering are just honoring Charlie's legacy.

To be fair: it's all the Republicans casting the deciding vote. She doesn't have any special powers that makes her vote count more than the rest. The difference is that she's occasionally not-shitty and so she gets a lot of attention as a maybe.

Like: Rick Scott also cast these deciding votes, but everyone already expected that he'd be a shit so he doesn't get any flak for it.

This is a confusing meme, because in the skit the parrot is dead when bought. It had been nailed to its perch to make it look alive and the seller told a series of funny lies. The bulk of the joke is how unreliable the pet shop clerk is.

In contrast, Twitter was obviously in bad shape (that's why Musk was making a buy offer in the first place), the board was not interested in selling until he made a wildly over-value offer, and Musk immediately tried to back out of the sale and had to be forced to comply with the deal he'd made.

She's bad for supporting him in the first place. But once you're in the concentration camp I feel like it's tougher to expect people to have a spine. Kinda like in 1984. Maybe if she begs Trump to kill her kids, she'll be spared.

Thanks for sharing!

Commentary on your writing: I was a bit surprised by the writing style of your article at first. Then I realized: Kazeta is an art-piece and you are writing a "the arts" article on it. I think that this was the correct choice for the topic, but I found it hard to appreciate because coming from a link in the "Linux Gaming" community I was expecting a gaming or tech article instead. That would have had stats like how fast games load from "off" to "playing", some example builds and prices for making an ideal Kazeta, a review of how hard it was to make your own SD, etc.

I think the mental space I'd put this in is like a Rolling Stone interview where you're writing lyrically about Alkazar and his work while weaving in paragraph quotes from him.