MudMan

I rip enough physical media to tell you that post-compression 14GB is not far from average for a 4K movie. I guarantee that Netflix isn’t storing those any bigger than that. Hard drives don’t grow on trees, you know?

It’s still good to know where the top end of optical storage is, even at an academic level, even if these end up not being widely used or being used for specific applications at smaller capacities. We’ll see where or if they resurface next, but I’m pretty sure we’re not gonna get femtosecond lasers built into our laptops anytime soon.

I haven’t faceplanted, but I have punched myself in the headset repeatedly. Turns out looking at things up close is not advisable when your face happens to have an invisible box strapped to it.

The game has changed because Republicans will stick with the coup party. That’s my whole point.

If your political rival is willing to violently disrupt the process when they lose you’re not having a fair and free election, and “valid criticism” becomes a distant second priority to… you know, going back to a situation where you get to have a democracy with fair and free elections.

That’s the shift the Stewart approach refuses to acknowledge. And when I say “stubbornly naive” I mean that acting under the fiction that the rules are followed and things will behave how they’re supposed to can be an inspiring, powerful thing. It can shame those who would flip-flop or gloss over procedure or principle to stick to the norms and conventions that keep society afloat.

But there’s no shaming Trump and no shaming the trumpists. And if you’re still hoping to inspire them into reasonableness when the death cult of the rapist orange fascist is actively telling you… what is it this week? That he will fund a completely unaccountable Gestapo? Well, you’re being idealist right into democracy’s collapse.

And to be clear, I’m not worried about your vote. I’m worried about the vote of the people who haven’t gotten the memo, or are in the process of sliding down the spiral of fascism but aren’t there yet. And I’m sure worried about the Rashida Tlaibs and the Berniebros and the leftists who will gladly butcher anything short of ideological purity and stay at home because “nobody has earned their trust”.

If you or Stewart think voting for Biden exempts you from being part of that issue… well, it doesn’t. It doesn’t under normal circumstances, arguably, but right now we’re very far from that point. It’s not like this hasn’t happened before. That’s why I keep going back to “but her emails”. Was it valid criticism? Yes. Did it kill thousands of people during the pandemic? Also yes.

Is the tradeoff worth it? What will the “it’s reasonable to ask if Biden is too old” body count be?

Yeah, I keep hearing the “you don’t get how big it is” thing, too.

I get how big it is.

European agriculture workers just reversed EU-wide policy as recently as last week by blocking major roads throughout the continent with tractors. They didn’t even agree with each other (half those guys are pissed at the other guys for being too competitive), and the regulations they opposed were climate protection regulations, among other more reasonable things, so this isn’t necessarily a feel-good story.

But they won.

They didn’t even have to try that hard, honestly. Besides mild traffic jams and some tense standoffs with police it was all pretty mild. And yet politicians across the entire continent, over multiple countries, were terrified of the optics of working class people protesting in loose coordination, especially with right wing parties trying to co-opt their anger.

I get how big it is. The size is not the reason.

Yeah, ok.

I don’t want to speak for the OP, but… I’m guessing that’s what they’re saying.

I mean, this issue is not on the ballot elsewhere. Even conservatives who are actively trying to dismantle public health care won’t dare suggest that they want less public health care. At most they’ll tell you they found ways to invest more and then turn around and give that money to private managers. You certainly broke through the propaganda. I don’t think I’ve spoken to an American anywhere who has made a case for the current health care system. Polls suggest this issue, among other “aren’t Americans weird” stuff are wildly impopular with the actual population.

But I also constantly hear from Americans that it’s impossible to turn it around, that candidates who support these common sense moves are unelectable and that there is nothing they could ever do about it.

That part is what I don’t get. I mean, I’m familiar with elections not going my way, it happens to everybody, but holy crap. There’s a reason why this is not on the ballot elsewhere. You wouldn’t need an election to figure this out. Even in countries with the bare minimum of democratic guarantees and no money you would have the mother of all endless riots under these circumstances.

Me, personally, I’m not so much judgemental of the American public as I am baffled at their defeatism and conformism.

To be clear, I think being part of the problem isn’t the same as being malicious, hostile or stupid. I think being stubbornly naive about the system working the way it’s supposed to has its uses. It’s a powerful tool to get the corrupt to shy away from breaking the rules if enough people assume the rules will be followed.

But I also think we punched through that wall like a bunker buster dropping from orbit years ago and a lot of the US is a toad that has been simmered to being full-on al dente by this point. Well meaning people hoping to get through this as if it’s… you know, an actual democratic election are part of the problem despite themselves.

Honestly? The real feeling I get from this is being scared for the future. I do know that there are powerful forces seeing a business opportunity in that status quo that can be exported. And you can see the impetus towards eroding the safety nets here following marching orders from the far right, anarchocapitalist mothership all throughout the world. In some of the countries I’ve lived in there is already a push towards this model, just moderated by the existence of some sort of universal health care. Sure, even the bare minimum of public service care takes a TON of the edge off. Those ER bills are what some of my friends in those places paid for, say, having major surgery or good care while having a baby… but it’s a slippery slope.

Best guess, the left of the democrats in the primaries, for a start.

It’s not that you lack politicians who agree with the changes that are needed, it’s that they are seen as less electable than the guy who did tons of fraud and at least one confirmed rape, somehow. I don’t know that Americans are “bad people”, but the fact that these common sense positions aren’t the default, centrist view across both major parties is baffling.

It’s a clumsy way to put it, but it’s not wrong that the lack of universal consensus around these things in the US is confusing and unreasonable.

Stewart wasn’t retired, mind you. He’s had a show for the past two years. He only recently got cancelled for speaking of subjects Apple didn’t like.

Also, please don’t rehash our conversation. It’s still written up there. The only possible purpose of that exercise is to put together a straw man. I remember what I said.

You could have skipped to the last line, which is where we disagree and where I think democrats and their larger sphere of influence are repeating a catastrophic mistake.

He’s a campaign staffer. You’re a campaign staffer. Everybody is a campaign staffer until such time as the opposing force isn’t a fascist cult of personality.

If you don’t see that, you’re part of the problem. If Stewart is back to pretending that he can “restore sanity” by acting as if the other side had legitimate concerns that should be heard, he’s part of the problem. That’s not the game we’re playing anymore. If you didn’t realize the rules had changed when Trump won the first time, surely you must have noticed after January 6th, or when the poll numbers of the, again, actual rapist refused to climb down.

So no, his honest statements aren’t irrelevant. They’re a drop in a pond of, once again, information warfare. The wilful blind spots and bothsideism may be naivete or disingenuous misinformation, but my entire point is at this stage it doesn’t mater. They don’t belong. We’re past those. You either play the game we’re all playing or you’re playing for the other guys.

Yes. I don’t care about his mind.

He can speak his mind at home. He’s been doing that for years.

Can we at least agree that Stewart’s mind has many things in it, and choosing to turn a specific one into a TV show is a conscious decision? I’m not gonna convince you that we should be treating this entire election as an act of information warfare at all times, that much is clear, but man, for the sake of a shared reality, at least let me shake off the blindfold where framing is a random event and the most notorious political voice in a generation lacks any sort of influence.

If Jon Stewart doesn’t shape the political viewpoint of at least some liberals, then what the hell is he doing on TV? He can’t possibly be “injecting sanity into the discussion” and also be a completely harmless, neutral event in the political conversation.

Trump is just as old. Ask a Republican, a conservative pundit or a vaguely conservative voter and Trump is the peak of the human form, strong as an oak and in full posession of superhuman intellectual prowess.

You want to complain that a candidate is old? That’s the one you are supposed to be focusing on.

For the record, Sanders didn’t criticise Clinton. His followers did. Ruthlessly. Constantly. With this exact playbook. He tried to stop them and we all realized in horror he couldn’t. The berniebros didn’t lose the 2016 election, because they didn’t really influence much either way, but they sure as hell didn’t help.

Dragged out by whom?

Because we all watched and nobody did anything meaningful. The trumpies didn’t even win the last election and were willing to overrun the Capitol to complain about it being stolen. At some point all the violent fantasies have to either trigger some action or get realistic.

For now with “everybody shut up about Biden’s age and go vote when the time comes” I’d be just fine. Because, in case we forget in all the fervor, that stuff would also not have been a problem had Cinton won.

It’s intentional from the Republicans, and that’s fair.

It’s the amount of slack and the “just asking questions” and the “it’s reasonable criticism” from the centre and the far left that is the problem. Trump is running after having judges confirm that he raped a woman, committed fraud and tried to commit a coup, and the entire party and their base rallies around him against all evidence.

Biden is old and Clinton was moderately technically clumsy and the dem base is out there going “huh, maybe you make some fine points, actual fascists”.

It is infuriating. It’d be funny if it weren’t terrifying.

It’s not a problem of disinformation. Campaigns have been weaponizing image since TV entered the conversation, and have weaponized narratives since day one. None of the things Stewart or this article say are false.

Stewart chooses what to talk about. Focus is message. If you focus on Biden being old as opposed to, say, Trump being an actual rapist, you’re choosing how the narratives are selected and framed. And if you think you’re dodging that by also talking about Trump being old then you’re either being naive or disingenuous.

He’s not “speaking his mind”, he’s making an insanely hyped comeback to the limelight specifically targeted towards the liberals who became politicized watching him act as an arbiter of common sense on-screen during the 2000s.

And he went “but her emails”.

I’m not worried about the people watching the Daily Show.

I’m worried about people reading the article above reminding them that even Stewart thinks Biden is too old.

Is that what he said? It doesn’t matter, it’s something you can say out loud now. And repeat endlessly in campaign rallies and propaganda disguised as news.

I think I may be more frustrated by this pretense of normality than by activism of any political sign. What are reasonable criticisms for? What goal could they possibly achieve? What action can the political class take to address them that is even remotely viable in the next eight months?

More to the point, what do people think is happening right now? Do they think this is business as usual, the populace making up their minds about the future of the country (planet!) based on policy proposals? We left that behind a while ago. At least the trumpist weirdos have a sense of urgency. This beige normcore approach to politics seems baffling to me, and I was disappointed to see Stewart jump right back into it with both feet after the sense of dejected futility he left behind during his last Daily Show run. At least John Oliver (and even Stewart’s own Apple TV show) had the honestly of highlighting very specific things that need practical, attainable fixes urgently.

That’s why she should have stepped down much sooner. Had she done it on the first year of Obama it wouldn’t have been feasible to delay for that long. And yet you heard the mildest possible suggestion that this was the case before she died and barely anything at all after.

So why go so hard with Biden when the other guy isn’t even four years younger and was already in a questionable mental state before he ran?

Because her emails.

You know what pisses me off the most? When all is said and done and democracy is a vague memory among the cave-dwellers, we’ll all have to admit that the stupid combover and the orange spray actually worked. Dumb orangutan guy managed to hold the fiction that he’s not decrepit by spray painting himself and shouting past his brainfarts, and it’s actually gonna get him the election, with the cooperation of tons of well meaning “just asking valid questions”.

Well, they can be concerned all they want, but ultimately things work how they work. So no, that scenario is complete fiction and there is no valid equivalence between a Supreme Court Justice and a President in terms of succession.

It’s not about if, it’s about when.

People had three years to convince Biden that he shouldn’t run. They didn’t. Now you get Biden, and until he’s elected again criticism equals promoting the Trump campaign.

I mean, Stewart isn’t a complete idiot, he did make a case for both candidates being too old, which is a smarter counter than most of the Democratic campaign, let alone the Dem left, is using to push back. You’re not gonna successfully deny Biden is old, but you can convince people that Trump is also, maaaaybe.

But that doesn’t change the fact that any statement right now is a campaign statement. People think they can ignore politics for years and then act all surprised when they’re told to postpone “valid criticism”. Nah. The one thing Stewart said that I agree with wholeheartedly is that this is life now. Forever. And in this life you don’t mess with your candidate’s campaign even a little bit until after the votes are counted.

Yeah, I’m confused about this take. RBG should have stepped down because by not doing it she created the opportunity for Trump to tilt the majorities in the Supreme Court. Notably, nobody had the balls to criticise her for it, even after she died and made that exact thing happen.

If Biden dies in office Trump doesn’t get to pick the vice president. And somehow he still gets constant crap despite the other guy being just as old.

We’re doing “but her emails” again. I thought we weren’t gonna do “but her emails” again.

Yeah, well, welcome to why you don’t talk shit about your candidate during a campaign. Your nuanced point is going to get flattened down to “even his allies are criticising him”. Weirdly, this exact quote dismantles his entire monologue there.

The best joke in that entire thing was Klepper accusing him of bothsiderism and asking whether he had saved democracy yet. Because it was poignant. Lampshading it is funny, but it doesn’t change the outcome.

Well, second best joke, the best was Ronnie Chieng going to town on potato skins, but that’s neither here not there.