Month: November 2022

Will The 2022 Midterms Cause A Second American Civil War?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I keep saying, I think most of the reason America has civil war on the brain is for people on the Right, it is, in abstract terms, the worst thing they can possibly think of to happen because of dem dar libtards. They have no idea what they really mean by “civil war,” other than some vague notion should one happen, that they will, at last, be able to murder liberals in cold blood for political reasons without any expectation of criminal accountability.

But I hate abstract concepts like some nebulous “civil war” and so I want to break the abstract down into something more concrete.

First, I just don’t see MAGA getting so upset if they should lose the 2022 midterms that they start running around, killing liberals with their AR-15s that they seem to want to fuck so bad. There might be some pretty big protests, maybe a few Brooks Brothers Riots here and there and maybe even an insurrection….but not “civil war” in the way that Barbara F. Walter might suggest could happen.

I still believe, at the moment, that if there is a “civil war” in the United States, it will happen because, just like the first civil war, states begin to secede from the Union — a National Divorce, if you will.

As such, there are two ways that the 2022 midterms might cause a civil war. One would be that Republicans freak out when they lose and Trump gets it in his mind that he’s had enough — he begins to rant that Red States need to secede and establish something akin to Trumplandia. Meanwhile, the OTHER way the 2022 midterms might cause a civil war would be that Republicans gain control of Congress, Trump becomes Speaker of the House and in the process of impeaching both Biden and Harris, Trump dangles the idea of Red States seceding over the heads of the Senate.

But, as always, I’m obviously greatly overestimated Trump’s cognative abilities. Trump is both lazy and stupid to the point that even the most basic autocratic plays — like him becoming Speaker — may be out of his tiny little mind’s grasp. If he does it, it will be without much forethought.

I think he has being president again so much at the forefront of his mind these days that he can’t process being Speaker instead.

If we don’t have a civil war in 2023 because of the results of the 2022 midterms, we’re probably safe until, well, 2024 – 2025 when Blues will be forced to make an existential choice: bend a knee to fascist MAGA autocracy, or serve Reds papers on a National Divorce.

At the moment, I think we’re just going to slide peacefully into autocracy and that will be that.

Stephen Colbert As Lightning Rod

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

In yet another sign that the United States is not only a failed state, but a political powder keg, we find ourselves in the curious situation where Stephen Colbert of all people is a lightning rod for MAGA Republicans. They say he’s not funny, which is demonstrably not true.

But the fact that Colbert has joined Dr. Tony Fauci as the whipping boy of the Right is both weird an ominous. The fact that given the choice of the astonishingly horrible Gutfeld! and Colbert the Right would rather watch Gutfeld! is a very dark sign for the future of the country.

The situation with Colbert is yet another sign that the country is tearing itself apart — the country can not continue to be dominated by a crazed minority of MAGA cocksuckers. There is going to come a point when either Blues bend a knee to MAGA-themed fascism or they are pushed out of the Union by Reds. The question at this point is simply a matter of specifics and logistics.

The country is so partisan and MAGA is so consumed by various Big Lies that as far as I can tell the U.S. Military is the only major American institution that hasn’t been destroyed by the forces of division. This is the case to the point that there is a small chance that instead of autocracy or civil war, the U.S. may be governed by some sort of military junta in a last ditch effort to prevent us from killing each other for political reasons.

But, as I keep saying, while my gut tells me Something Big is going to happen between now and, say, spring 2025…I just can’t game out what is it. It’s things like what’s going on with Colbert that are pings from a very, very dark and troubled future. If a nation like the U.S. can’t even agree on what to laugh at, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Advertising & My Theoretical ‘Twitter Killer’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The intriguing thing about this proposed Twitter Killer is its base unit is the full page Post. The Post would exist in the context of a robust threading feature inside of Groups.

If you establish that, then some pretty cool advertising possibilities flow from it. You could provide advertisers targeted, full page multimedia ads where consumers could buy a product without having to jump to a different Website. Like Apple gets a 30% cut of all of its online transactions, you could demand a tidty chunk of whatever revenue that came out of people buying a widget from an ad Post.

And, remember, one man’s spam is another man’s delight. So, really, the main problem is how you slip in the ad in a seamless way. I think the way you do it is as people are going from Post to Post in a thread, they get a very, very specific ad relative to whatever is being discussed in the Thread that the User is browsing.

The Posts imputed into the service would be sliced and diced in a number of different ways, with a number of different ways to access them, so as long as the ad was really targeted, I don’t think people would might having a huge ad served to them.

But, as I keep saying, all of this is hypothetical and theoretical. It’s fun to think about while I’m not working on my first novel.

What The Fuck Is Wrong With The United States?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

American politics at the moment is a shit show and has been for some time. It’s completely fucking bonkers. And, what’s worse, it’s all happening in broad daylight. We see the lights of an oncoming train, we’re on the tracks and we’re just standing there, waiting to get hit.

I keep saying we’re beyond the Event Horizon for autocracy, civil war or military junta and every day I’m reminded of how right I am. MAGA Republicans now openly embrace some pretty basic elements of fascism and they’re screaming at the top of their lungs that they only believe in democracy if they win.

The idea that if Trump is indicted then he becomes a martyr for the cause, forcing Republicans to cling to him even tighter is seriously fucked up. I suppose we can at least be thankful that Trump is such a lazy idiot that there’s every reason to believe his innate laziness and incompetence may at least delay our final decent into fascism.

But there is the counter argument that Trump, unto himself, could force the United States into civil war. It could be that his historical purpose is not to be a transitional figure on our march to fascist autocracy, but the person who just by being a malignant digus causes the country to collapse.

As I keep saying, I just don’t think we’re going to have a civil war. The reason why the country seems to have civil war on the brain is the far fucking Right is made up of a bunch of fucking crybabies who take any perceived slight as the some sort of tyrannical oppression of what they hold dear.

Tectonic forces are at work here, things that are just difficult for one person to process. We’re all living through a massive historical event and as it’s happening to us, it has no value or narrative on a personal basis. As such, it won’t be until it’s all over with and we look back at what just happened that we’ll be able to understand how the fuck it all ended up happening.

Let me again stress — I do not pretend to be able to predict the future. I have no idea what is going to happen. I’m always wrong. Always. But I’m growing more and more alarmed that Something Bad is going to happen to the United States between now and, say, spring 2025.

The country is tearing itself apart in a pretty conspicuous manner there are two main issues that I just can’t game out at the moment. One is, like I mentioned, is it possible that Trump, unto himself, could start a civil war? And the other is, am I right to have such a low opinion of Blues ability to serve National Divorce papers on Reds if Trump — or whomever — demands Blues bend a knee to MAGA fascism?

I think that we’ll be a lot closer to knowing what is going to happen next after the midterms. That is when we’re going to lurch towards our fate one way or another, depending on the outcome of the vote. If Republicans win Congress, then things are going to get lit pretty quick. Meanwhile, of Blues somehow managed to keep Congress, then, well, the possibility of MAGA political violence will increase significantly.

All of this is part of how fucking bonkers America is right now. Something Big is on the horizon, but the question is: what?

Reds Are Pushing Blues Out Of The Union

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I get how Reds think that Blues are smug and condescending. Ok, I get it. But what I don’t get is why Reds continue to feel so oppressed and disenfranchised when it’s self-evident that MAGA is politically ascendant.

MAGA is ascendant to the point that at some time between now and January 2025, Blues are going to face the existential choice of bending a knee to MAGA-themed autocracy or not. If they don’t then their only choice will be to serve papers on a National Divorce and to initiate a Second American Civil War.

At the moment, I don’t think we’re going to have a 2ACW because, well, lulz, Blues just don’t have it in them. Even though they’re a majority of Americans, they are too divided, too busy bitching and moaning about trigger warnings, micro aggressions, and how many genders can dance on the head of a pin to address the cold hard facts

America is careening towards autocracy and unless Blues are willing to leave the Union to keep their freedoms, then, well, lulz. MAGA Republicans are inevitably going to gain power and when they do, that’s it. We will be an autocracy with the only question being if we are going to settle somewhere around Hungary and Turkey or Russia and Nazi Germany.

We may all be antifa one day.

At the moment, I just don’t know. It’s too difficult to game out the exact nature of our coming autocracy. But I do know that at a minimum 1 million wealthy liberals will leave the country starting in late 2024 when it becomes clear that Blues are simply going to give up.

Let me be clear — I can’t predict the future. And plenty of things could happen to negate all my hysterical predictions. I got 2020 – 2021 wrong (for the most part) because I not only totally overestimated Trump, but there was a pandemic. Something similar could happen.

But if you just look at macro trends, the United States is pretty much fucked. Republicans are fascists and Blues are simply too divided and ineffectual to do anything about it. I continue to be amazed by the Republicans I know who simply can not stop conflating the growing hard power of MAGA Republicans with the very soft power of Blues.

So, essentially, Reds want to end American democracy because Blues make them feel bad. As such, this makes Reds want to “own” the libs to the point that they’re willing to burn the whole country to the ground to prove their point.

There are no easy answers in a country that seems to only expect them.

Some Of The More Nuanced Issues With My Proposed ‘Twitter Killer’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I continue to roll idea of a theoretical “Twitter Killer” around in my mind, there are a few more nuanced issues that I struggle with. One is, if the base unit of your service is the Post, how do you present that in your Feed feature? At the moment, I think you would serve just an excerpt of the Post that has been updated in your Feed.

But if you also work on the assumption that you would have a collaborative inline editing of a Post, how do you show that in your Feed?

This is a good question.

I think one way would be that you would only show in your Feed only when a new Post was spawned. Meanwhile, you would get a more nuanced Notification of inline editing updates in your Control Panel.

Another issue is — on mobile, how to do you present Posts in the Feed? Specifically, if there’s too much going on, the font size would have to be pretty small. So, that’s something you would have to finesse some.

These are obviously more nuanced problems, but if you were going to make this service a reality, they would have to be addressed.

Discovery & My Proposed ‘Twitter Killer’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

In my imagination, the Discovery feature of my proposed Twitter Killer would allow you to find any Public Group that might have been created by another User. I vacillate between letting everyone create Public Groups and letting only Verified Users create Groups.

But I think letting everyone create a Public Group is probably the way to go because that way everyone feels equal, even though in reality they aren’t — especially when it comes to who can post in a Public Group.

Back to Discovery, though.

When you searched for a Keyword or Phrase, you would find a multitude of Groups devoted to the subject in question, with varying degrees of popularity. I suppose you might have Sponsored Groups or Leader Board Groups that are featured in some way.

There is a lot you could do with the Group concept because it’s so flexible and powerful. There might be some clutter if everyone is creating a Group in an ad hoc manner with little or no regard for how to properly name one so people understood what the heck they were about.

But that would also be some of the appeal of this element of the service. And, remember, each Group would be associated with the account of a User, so that would really help narrow down how interested someone might be in the Public Group.

There are a lot of ways the Public Group concept could go wrong, of course, but I’m really enjoying thinking up different use cases and trying to bounce up and down on this platform concept to see where I can find and fix weaknesses.

Making My Proposed ‘Twitter Killer’ Scalable

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I find myself thinking up a lot of different ways to make my fanciful “Twitter Killer” based on updated Usenet UX design more scalable. One solution I just came up with is using Google Docs-like collaboration when any particular user in-line edits a Post.

But this obviously raises the question of — when does someone get to spawn a new Post within a threaded discussion?

If you don’t allow that to happen, then each Thread would have just one Post that was completely torn apart by various people. Here is my solution — not only would you limit who could contribute to a Group’s Thread, but you also limit who can spawn a new Post within that Thread.

So, you would have a situation where, say, a New York Times reporter writes a 500 word post that is quickly inline edited by a few dozen people, all using different colors so as to not to cause confusion. But some Users would have the ability to spawn a new Post within the Thread or Subthread.

This newly spawned Post might have some conditions, like it can’t just be the old Post, you would have to use subset of the content from the original Post in your new Post in the Thread or Subthread.

Something like that. Something manageable.

And you might get a Notification in your Control Panel when someone you followed either edited a Post or spawned a new Post. Or maybe you could follow individual Threads in a Group to monitor that sort of thing as well. There are a lot of different ways you might go.

An Interesting Feature Proposal For My ‘Twitter Killer’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It just occurred to me how to fix a problem with my proposed Twitter Killer based on updated Usenet UX — instead of reposting each post when you post it in a group, you might allow people to inline edit through collaboration like you find with Google Docs.

This would allow the service to scale a lot easier and also reduce the risk of a zillion posts that were just people re-posting with the words “I agree” somewhere on the Post. This really fixes a huge issue with the service. My natural inclination is to make things way more complicated and nuanced than necessary, so maybe there would have to be a reason why you posted a new Post in a Thread instead of using the collaboration feature.

Maybe, essentially, you would have to “opt-in” to spawning a new Post in a Thread. The default would be just inline editing via a collaboration feature. Though, remember, you wouldn’t be able to edit someone else’s edits to a post. That’s the only way to prevent shenanigans.

How I Imagine Winning The Lottery Would Go Down

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

First, I’m not going to win the lottery. I don’t live in the right state. I can’t think of any instance where someone from Virginia won a huge sum of money on either Powerball or Mega Millions. So, that’s a lulz.

And that’s over and above the basic statistics that indicate that even if someone from Virginia wins the ~$1 billion Powerball, it’s not going to be me. But all that hasn’t stopped me from dwelling on what I imagine would be the lead up to me winning.

I think the first sign I might get that something was about to happen would be I couldn’t sleep. I would stay up all night for some strange reason. Then, any number of weird, unexpected things would happen to me in quick succession in the hours leading up to the event.

Then…BAM…life changed.

If I won the lottery, I would change the world with all that money. I would quickly become — for better or worse — one of the best known people in America, if not the world. It’s my nature.