NUTE GUNRAY, a VERY SUCCESSFUL viceroy, is being treated WORSE than almost anybody in the HISTORY of the Republic. The failing Coruscant media won't tell you this because they HATE the Trade Federation -- always have!

They call Naboo an "invasion." WRONG! It was a TRADE DISPUTE. Perfectly legal. Naboo had been ripping off the Trade Federation for YEARS with horrible tariffs, horrible deals, some of the WORST deals anybody has ever seen. Everybody knew it!

Finally Nute says, ENOUGH. We want FAIR TRADE. And what does Cryin' Queen Amidala do? Runs straight to the Senate! Very weak. Couldn't negotiate. Didn't even try! Too busy with the ridiculous outfits and all that makeup, perhaps. Nobody knows what's going on there!

And what did the Senate do? They sent two RADICAL JEDI. Supposedly "negotiators." They show up with LIGHTSABERS. Some negotiation! If Nute Gunray showed up at the Chancellor's office with a lightsaber, believe me, we'd never hear the end of it. It would be the BIGGEST STORY on Coruscant. They'd lock him up for a thousand years! But the Jedi do it and the FAKE HOLONEWS calls them "peacekeepers." Give me a break!

Then the CORRUPT ESTABLISHMENT starts screaming about "battle droids." Excuse me, SECURITY PERSONNEL! Completely legal. Very professional. Roger Roger. Some of the finest security personnel anywhere! Much better than the Gungans, by the way. Not even close! Have you seen these Gungans? TOTAL DISASTER.

And now they're blaming Nute because a nine-year-old child somehow gets into a military spacecraft, flies into a Trade Federation command ship, and BLOWS IT UP? Where were this child's parents? Nobody asks! The Radical Jedi are taking little children into WAR ZONES now and somehow NUTE GUNRAY is the criminal? Very sick people!

And where was Chancellor Valorum during all of this? NOWHERE. Completely useless. Weak Chancellor, terrible leadership. Everybody knew it. The Jedi were running around doing whatever they wanted, Queen Amidala was making a scene in the Senate, and Valorum couldn't get anything done.

Nute Gunray wanted one thing: FAIR TRADE. Instead they arrested him, humiliated him, dragged him through the courts, and now the CORRUPT REPUBLIC ESTABLISHMENT wants to destroy a very successful Viceroy because he had the courage to stand up to them.

They're not really after Nute, they're after FAIR TRADE. Nute is just standing in the way! People are seeing what's happening. Believe me.

TOTAL WITCH HUNT!

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I'm reading the book "Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language". I just hit the chapter on the author's own experiences as a content creator, and how calculated tuning a post to maximize popularity can be - from back in the day (posting early in the morning when the algorithm Reddit then used would disadvantage staler posts) to now in today's shortform video landscape (crafting to employ emotionally engaging words at every turn)

Some of these creators just treat it as a game to win popularity or sometimes a form of gambling, where their efforts on one end have a chance of turning into actual dollars. It's disheartening though to people who would prefer ideas get traction based on their own merit.

And of course, the same techniques can be used in service of an agenda, political or otherwise. I mean it's TRULY disconcerting how Trump reposts memes by the score on a nightly basis. Someone out there - multiple someones - are extremely aware of this, and are certainly using those kind of sordid gaming the system techniques to plant a bug in his ear. Like, I know some of it is just trolling to "own the libs", but having "the algorithm" and the attention economy so at the heart of the guidance of the country doesn't seem like such a wise way to be.

Had one of those half asleep ideas that seems semi-brilliant at the time but then wither in daylight: in this case it was thinking about how Star Wars has a big part of its pre-sequels lore dismissed as "Star Wars Legends" (along with some actual "What-If" comics branded "Infinities").

Given how much bank Marvel has been making on Multiverse stuff, maybe all the Legends and Infinities stuff can become a singular parallel universe story. (Throw in the universe of the comic "The Star Wars", that put the Lucas' very first conceptual drafts onto the page.) That would be kinda fun.

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you that music has boundaries. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

I found the second sentence of this quote (dated 9/9/'49) and used it as a .sig quote for a while, then years later noticed it was my dad's birthday. But I hadn't seen the longer quote before.

You know, the odd thing about being old is that you see something–something especially good or rotten or funny, and you think, 'Oh I must show this to so-and-so, it's just his sort of thing.' And what's odd is–there are so many gaps in the circle now–that so-and-so is gone.

    Clear blue bay at sunset
And I am stoned and placid--
    Free of grief. almost.

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Article II. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

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Anthony Burgess once argued that English English, American English and all the other varieties of Anglophonics have become rational and pragmatic (closure-oriented), but Irish English remains ludic and esthetic (open-oriented). The rest of us speak dry prose; the Irish speak playful poetry.

While I see some truth in that formulation, I would prefer to describe all-other-English as belonging to what Neurolinguistic therapist Dr. Richard Bandler calls the meta-model (statements we can logically judge as true or false), and Irish English as belonging to the Milton-model (statements not containable in true-false logic but capable of seducing us into sudden new perceptions).

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Whosoever speaks in any tongue gives birth to blessings and curses, & if the uncanny Egyptians made Thoth the father of both language and magick, the canny Greeks made Hermes the god of both language and fraud.

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I don't think anybody ever really matures. Adults are just children who owe money.

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The universe may be not only stranger than we think, but stranger than we can think.

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There was a young lady from Sidney
Who liked it right up to her kidney
A man from Quebec
Shoved it up to her neck
He had a big one, didn't he?

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Nothing is known. Everything is imagined.

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if youth only knew, if age only could

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Wilson's 22nd Law: "Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only look in one encyclopedia."

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The universe contains a maybe.

Usual "new to me music playlist" with an emphasis on where I ran into. I ran into a bunch of stuff in SF but saved it more for this month.

4 star:
* Dancing In the Moonlight (Toploader)
love the percussion in this version from Lynette's playlist
* Make Her Say (Kid Cudi)
* The Magic Number (De La Soul)
from the movie Spider-Man No Way Home

3 star:
* Five Years (David Bowie)
Crazily ironically Meta used this song that is supposed to be a Feel Good ad about AI, even though it's about the end of the world happening in 5 years...
* I Think We're Alone Now (Annie DiRusso)
I'm surprised there aren't many spartan versions of this song, like something closer to what a teen might sing on their own, they're all so glossy.
* I Can (Nas)
A google pixel ad use this hip hop song w/ a bit of fur elise.
* You Really Got Me (Van Halen)
One of Lynette's nephews was at a band camp and they explicitly covered the Van Halen cover.
* Better Man (Little Big Town)
from Lynette's newphew's playlist

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RIP Gloria Steinem