Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org

"#Norwegians are #Cylons. It all makes sense now." #nocontextforyou

Another day, another "cancel culture is ruining America" argument.

"It used to be that people would listen to one another, and refute ideas point by point. The other person would listen, and make counter arguments or, possibly, see the point the person was making."

"Yes, I remember that golden age too: it was called high school debate class. Then I graduated and found out how the real world works."

Fast times at 1600 Pennsylvania.

Some answers just write themselves.

https://www.quora.com/What-name-do-you-put-on-an-Army-s-uniform/answer/Daniel-Dvorkin-3

I think about this a lot, as my own #online record grows ever longer.

The #internet is full of ghosts of *myself*, and friends—some still in my life, most not, an alarming number who can never be again—caught at points of our lives when we were utterly different people. Hell, sometimes spambots still comment on my #LiveJournal posts, and I have to go see what they said, which brings the memories flooding back. Decades of #Usenet and #Slashdot floating around in the ether.

And yeah, it gets exponentially weirder when it's *everybody* who's left similar traces—which is probably close to half the world's population by now, if it hasn't already passed that point. I've been online for forty years or so, continuously for about thirty. Another such span of time, and a solid majority of people on the planet will have most or all of their lives self-documented in a detail that has never before been possible in human history.

My fiancée is a social #historian, focusing on a little over a century ago. There's lots of material, but never enough. So much is irretrievably lost. Her counterparts a century hence will have the opposite probem.

Probably a good thing those teenage #BBS posts are lost forever. Er, I think: maybe they're still on a stack of cassette tapes in someone's basement. If so, I hope they stay in their graves.

I particularly love the birdlike head tilt. #dinosaur #dromaeosaur #raptor #feathers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS71VeptuEc

"Space Shuttle Door Gunner Syndrome is a chronic disease. Your inner ears just never work right after coming back to Earth from an extended tour. Don’t get me wrong: I know I have it easier than some of the other NASASOC guys like the SSRJs (Space Shuttle Rescue Jumpers) who had to freefall from orbit, or the SSEODs who almost all suffer from hydrazine exposure. But damn, it’s annoying.

"Anyway, yeah, the VA takes care of us like everyone else. 'Balance problems again?' they’ll say, and then send me over to the zero-g clinic for an hour or so. There’s no cure, but it keeps things under control."

... I should probably go back to bed.

A bit late to the party, but this is something I want to say.

One inevitable reaction to #ScottAdams' downfall has been a lot of people saying "#Dilbert was always crap anyway." Maybe some of them are even telling the truth, as they see it. But I bet a lot of them aren't.

My skepticism is based on long experience: it's truly remarkable how *every single time* a celebrity turns out to be a horrible person, suddenly they never had a fan base at all. How they became celebrities in the first place must be one of those great unsolved mysteries. Nobody ever watched Mel Gibson, nobody ever read JK Rowling ... you get the idea.

Dilbert was once a sharp, funny look at office life in a particular time and place and circumstance. If you were a tech worker in the '90s, you instantly recognized the characters and situations. The Pointy-Haired Boss, in particular, crystallized a concept everyone knew but didn't quite have a name for. Adams could have gone the Watterson or Larson route, retired from cartooning and from public life around the turn of the century, and left a sterling legacy.

Voiceover: he did not, in fact, retire.

As his fortune grew and he got further away from the world he was lampooning, the quality of the strip declined. The characters became a collection of tics, the jokes were recycled over and over, and Dilbert himself became a kind of superhero—no longer deflecting corporate inanity in an almost-believable way, but challenging it head-on and *winning*. That's not satire. That's embarrassing auctorial wish-fulfillment. Pure Gary Stu.

This is a common problem with long-running comic strips whose humor depends on the characters being in a particular situation. ("Sitcomics," perhaps?) Beetle Bailey was once a biting lampoon of military life. Andy Capp was once a whistling-past-the-graveyard depiction of poverty in a dying industrial town. Mort Walker and Reg Smythe lived in the same worlds as their characters ... and then they didn't. No one should criticize them for enjoying their success, but it came with a price.

Neither Walker nor Smythe, as far as I know, went completely off the rails as human beings.

Had Adams kept his mouth shut, Dilbert would have kept running forever, becoming even more clichéd and unfunny, the same jokes recycled until they passed even out of catchphrase territory, yet another of those odd ghosts haunting the decaying mansion of newsprint, until the mansion itself crumbled to dust. Goth as fuck, really, when you think about it—a description I suspect Adams would angrily reject, which brings me a certain amount of glee.

Really, there's no excuse for it taking this long. Adams has been running his mouth for years, getting more repulsive all the while. *Even if* his work had maintained its original quality—which I think is flat-out impossible; see above—he should still have been far too radioactive to appear in any paper aimed at a general audience. His sexism and racism and MAGAtry no doubt play very well in certain quarters, but those quarters are home to vermin. No mass media outlet should cater to them, and those that do richly deserve to fail.

Also he drove his stepson to suicide, then tried to turn the tragedy into part of his industry. So there's that.

I do not for a minute believe his current shtick is "dementia," or "satire," or any of the other excuses his die-hard fans are making. (That's almost as common as "I never liked ___ even a little bit," when idols show their feet of clay.) It's all him. This is who he is now, and who he chose to be.

But I do hope it's not who he *always* was, I really do. And if I'm wrong, if he's been a monster his whole life and just used to be better at hiding it ... I'm not going to pretend I knew. That's all.

Seen in the wild: "Rep.-elect Jennifer McClellan's (D-VA) victory in the special election for Virginia's 4th congressional district is a historic moment not only because it's the first time a Black woman has won a congressional race in #Virginia. It's also a historic moment because it's the first time anyone named #McClellan has ever won anything in Virginia."

One year.

A three-day operation. Short, glorious victory. Our boys will crush those decadent, corrupt, effeminate, *Westernized* [hiss! spit!] Ukrainians like the scum they are, then bring them back into the fold of Mother Russia once they realize the error of their ways. Why, we're not invading anyone! We're *liberating* them from their (((oppressors))) is what we're doing. Soon we will again be one people under one T/s/a/r/ President, as God intended.

Didn't quite work out that way, did it, Vladdie baby?

If #Russia won the war today (voiceover: Russia did not, in fact, win the war) then still Ukraine's magnificent fight would stand for all time as a monument to the human need for freedom. Zelenskyy's government has made its share of mistakes, sure. Every government does. They're *Ukrainian* mistakes, made by a Ukrainian government that assumed office through free and fair election, and accountable to the Ukrainian people. No one else—most especially not the Grand Duke of Moscow.

Every principle I swore to defend on behalf of the United States of #America ... is being put into practice in #Ukraine, right now. Had I had to do the same, against much the same enemy, there's a really good chance none of us would be here right now. We have the opportunity to uphold those principles *and* make that worst of all possible worlds less likely.

No, Ukraine is not morally pure. I guess no combatant in any war has been, ever. But the morality they do show, and monstrosity they face, make this the clearest conflict of good vs. evil in my lifetime.

And while we can and should be grateful that it's not our cities being turned to rubble, our fields ground under tank treads, **our children stolen**—we have those who would cheerfully do the same here at home, and pledge their allegiance to the invader half a world away. You know who and what they are.

Decent people would always prefer not to fight at all. We have to keep fighting those who are not decent, on all fronts. Ukraine shows we can fight and *win*.

For the last year, and the year to come, and however long it takes. Слава Україні.

I'm pretty sure some of the endless series I get Facebook ads for are already written by #AI. Even if they're not, the ad copy sure reads like it.

On a post by @SandyDiersing, I suggested the prompt, "#ChatGPT, write me a post-apocalypse urban fantasy about a reincarnated wizard Navy SEAL barbarian in the style of Clive Cussler." And then having said it, I had to know what would happen ...

> The world had ended, but not in the way anyone had expected. The Great Cataclysm had not come in the form of nuclear war, climate disaster, or a zombie apocalypse, but instead, it was the result of an arcane experiment gone wrong.

> The wizard known as Nathan had been the one responsible for the catastrophe, his quest for power leading him to tamper with forces beyond his control. The resulting explosion had destroyed entire cities and wiped out most of humanity, leaving behind a barren wasteland where magic had replaced technology as the dominant force.

> But Nathan's story did not end there. Somehow, he had survived the blast, his body ripped apart and scattered across the desolate landscape. However, his soul remained intact, and it was drawn to a new host, one that would allow him to continue his quest for power in a world that had been forever changed.

> The new host was a Navy SEAL named Jack, a skilled warrior who had survived the cataclysm through sheer force of will. But he was not the same man anymore, as Nathan's soul had fused with his, granting him access to the wizard's powers and knowledge.

> Jack was now a reincarnated wizard Navy SEAL barbarian, a force to be reckoned with in the new world. He roamed the wasteland, using his magic and combat skills to survive and protect those who needed his help.

> One day, Jack came across a small town that was being terrorized by a group of bandits. The town's people were desperate for help, and Jack knew he couldn't turn a blind eye to their plight.

> He set out to confront the bandits, his wizard powers enabling him to move through the shadows undetected. He struck from the shadows, his sword and magic cutting down the bandits with ease.

> But one of the bandits was different. He was a mage, a former student of Nathan's who had survived the Cataclysm by hiding in a bunker. He had come to the town to claim the powerful artifact that he knew was hidden there, and he was not about to let Jack stand in his way.

> The two wizards clashed in a fierce battle, their magic tearing apart the town around them. But in the end, it was Jack who emerged victorious, his Navy SEAL training and barbarian instincts giving him the edge over his opponent.

> As he stood among the ruins of the town, Jack knew that his quest was far from over. There were more like the mage out there, seeking power and control in a world that was ripe for the taking.

> But Jack was not afraid. He was a reincarnated wizard Navy SEAL barbarian, and he was ready for whatever the wasteland had in store for him.

Yep. I wasn't wrong.

Thanks a lot, CANADA.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a43010514/super-pig-invasion/

I spend a lot of time talking about how dismayed I am at how many of my fellow #veterans have fallen for the #propaganda of the enemies of the #Constitution we swore to defend. No doubt I'll continue to whine. This guy is doing something about it.

We need more of this. Lots, lots more.

Our #oath has no expiration date.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/nazi-hunter-fascism-antifa-veteran-1234672732/

Today's "I may be small, but my family will do great things!" not-quite-a-#dinosaur.

#Dromomeron wasn't as tiny as the pen implies (unless that's a really big pen!) but it wasn't large either: about a meter long, of which half was tail, and the whole thing lightly built. You could pick it up and cuddle it, and you know you'd want to.

Probably not on the dinosaurian lineage, but close—one of a number of #avemetatarsalians living in the mid-to-late #Triassic, 220-210 million years ago (mya). Biodiversity had barely recovered from the end-Permian "Great Dying" 250 mya when the climate threw another curveball in the form of the #Carnian #Pluvial Episode 234-232 mya, a Great Flood that makes "of Biblical proportions" seem kind of cute by comparison. The early Triassic biota had looked more like that of the late #Permian, only vastly sparser: it was later in the period, after the rains washed the remnants away, that dinosaurs and their close relatives began their rise.

Into this relatively empty world came Dromomeron and many other avemetatarsalians, all trying to fill open niches along with the crocodilians to round out the archosaur family tree. Only the dinosaurs and pterosaurs succeeded in the long term, but many others had a good run: the Dromomeron genus contains three named species and there were probably more.

Like all the rest, it wasn't a "failure" or a "dead end," except in the sense that everything is a dead end eventually. See it now not as bones frozen in rock, but a thriving animal, warm and active and alive. We can only hope to leave such a legacy.

(Art by Gabriel Ugueto. If you don’t know his work, you should.)

Some answers just write themselves.

https://www.quora.com/I-know-an-academic-who-is-an-Associate-Professor-but-he-calls-himself-Professor-X-and-was-called-out-by-somebody-saying-associate-not-yet-full-Does-it-mean-associate-professors-have-not-reached-the-top-of-the-1/answer/Daniel-Dvorkin-3