Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

@Leucrotta Shit, hit us up in a month when it's clearer which way this is all gonna go, and I'll send you a box from Brocado's. I really do think you deserve something nice for popping your Twitter jail cherry. It's a rite of passage innit. <3

Just don't point at a circus and tell me it's a conquering army. Armies march in straight lines and have a leader. This is a gaggle of armed clowns, and while a bunch of bumbling costumed jackasses with guns is undeniably very dangerous, I think you radically overestimate the sustainability of such a mob.

I reserve the right to revise my opinion. Who knows what kind of monster might rise up and turn these people into something effectual. But in the immortal words of Gaz Membrane, "They're so bad at it."

I expect their impact will be a lot like ISIS and Al-Qaeda... which will be convenient as hell, because it gives us a really good narrative platform to condemn them from. This is a BIG TACTICAL MISTAKE on their part IMHO.

There will be an occasional attack. People will actually get hurt. It will be tragic and needless and infuriating. They will remain UTTERLY impervious to any suggestion that their hypocrisy has driven them to become terrorists themselves. They might even a be a persistent force in uspol for a while.

But if there's one thing I've learned over and over and over again from being a strategy gamer: there's a REAL BIG FUCKING DIFFERENCE between "able to harass an opponent effectively in a skirmish," "able to conquer actual territory," "able to HOLD that territory," and "able to govern that territory effectively."

We already KNOW they can't do the last one. Honestly? How the fuck can you people even pull doom out of this, when the Republicans are AT EACH OTHER'S THROATS over this already?! What the fuck is it with radical leftists being determined to pull defeat from the jaws of victory?

@Leucrotta My feelings towards this are roughly those of the Mafiosi in Goodfellas when Henry Hill took the fall for selling bootleg cigarettes.

You done good, kid. You made your bones. It ain't so bad, you'll be out in a couple days. I'll buy ya a cannoli.

@troodon I'm glad you can do that, because I can offer only a dungeonful of angry zebra kobolds armed with itching-powder grenades and rolled-up centrist newspapers right now. :)

Everybody's just blankly speculating on this and running off in whatever direction provides the best narrative and it really feels like everybody on my feeds is determined to experience this more like a movie than a real thing goverened by real laws of real causality.

Fuck it. I just got a raise. And I don't believe this "coup" will succeed in the slightest. (Dammit, just look for half a second at how successful their *legal* challenges were. And then look at the average Trump fanatic's physical build, military expeirience [read: "Call of Duty"/"I like guns a lot"], and willingness to endure even trivial hardships. Listen to how hard they're WHINING about even the faintest, gentlest tap on the nose from the cops. Look at how fast the GOP is turning on each other -- EXACTLY like the troll farms on Livejournal, EXACTLY as I called it in 2016.

And I am VERY VERY VERY willing to make money off Masto's biases.

So I'm willing to place a multi-hundred dollar wager on this. To wit, that four years from now there will not have been any meaningful removal of power from the DNC by paramilitary force.

Any takers? I would love to take your Doom Money.

And I'm dumb too. But good god, I try to restrain myself a little from pretending that I somehow know how everything is going to turn out, and letting that judgment be based entirely on my emotions. I work my ass off to debunk myself. And sometimes it does really feel like, as often as I do fail, few people on either side even motherfucking TRY.

My cynicism about my fellow leftists' ability to process facts and information any more sensibly or cautiously than rightwingers was already as low as I thought it could go.

So I don't even have to stop doomscrolling. I can just simply blow this shit off. Because I just don't trust my allies to know what the fuck is actually going on anymore.

Especially not after seeing people scream "COUP! COUP! IT'S STARTED! WE'RE ALL DOOMED!" the other day over the unseated Senator... without bothering to get the little detail right that it was a STATE senator.

Up your game to "consistently gets basic facts correct" and *maybe* then I'll believe we're fucked. But you gotta get past TWENTY YEARS of everything from "we will never see gas below $4/gal ever again" to "they're DEFINITELY going to assassinate Barry before he gets out of office" to "I have it from a 100% reliable source that Bush is going to invade Iran in a few days," all real assertions from leftist friends of mine, all of which proved to be 100% bullshit.

Just so mad at everybody in general right now. Not saying we're NOT fucked. Just saying if I come to believe we're fucked, the source for it that finally convinces me is absolutely, categorically not coming off of Queer Leftist Twitter under any circumstances whatsoever.

Never, ever, ever again. I've been failed one too many times by the same kind of magical thinking, logic that takes place purely in the symbolic realm, judging people's entire character purely by the demographic (not even ideological! accidents of birth! fuck you!) groups they do and don't belong to, and conspiracy-style rationalization of emotionally powerful narratives into very very shaky "facts." It embarrasses the shit out my every time I see one of us do this. I'm fucking DONE.

Sorry not sorry. Still love you all individually. Collectively, I'm coming around to the opinion that the leftist fediverse is dumber than an amoeba. This still puts them above the American right, who are dumber than soot.

Oh my god, Artie just SCHOOLED Sugarfoot. They were both on different "floors" of a box we set up with an amusing little trap door system and our little supervillain figured out how to exploit this to her tactical advantage to bap Sugarfoot repeatedly without (immediate) repercussions.

However, in true cartoon villain style, Artie did NOT figure out an adequate means of escape first and is now being chased back into the cat room. XD XD XD

@typhlosion There's a lot of it about. *hug*

Tell ya what. If you REALLY wanna feel better, I can post some pics of MY household.

It... it ain't pretty. Even before the cats invaded, it wasn't pretty.

I just deliberately and joyfully used Gamergate/Trump style denial-and-deflection tactics to "win" an argument with a COVID denier (read: "Deliberately frustrate their ability to have a real discussion").

The whole shebang. Dishonest Debate Tactics 101. Links to half-hour Youtube videos of ambiguous content. Delaying tactics for assertions I KNEW I could not substantiate. "Just asking questions" when pinned.

And I can't even pretend I'm not proud of myself. This is some powerful mojo. I will try to use it only for good, i.e., only against people I think are kinda evil, and only when a civil, rational debate is clearly not being offered.

I can't pretend it's not super fun. I can totally see why they do it. It's MADDENING to the other side, like fistfighting a Stay-Puft marshmallow man.

OK, after seeing a long and impassioned "Woke" defense of some objectively pretty godawful people (you don't need details, trust me it wouldn't make anybody happier)...

AND watching someone here on Masto have a big self-indulging Doomsaying session over a political thing that the facts do NOT support being doomful...

I definitely have severe Internet poisoning.

If you see me again before tomorrow and it's not just me stopping in to burble about our cats, make me leave. -__-

It won't make me hate humanity and its culture any less, but at least I won't have to be immersed in it for a while.

@mawr I was puzzling why you used the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria flag emoji... and then I looked them up. Holy crap. I want to believe too. Shit, I want to send them money and presents.

(And that's not just because I was in love with a mooncat for 15 years...)

@Austin_Dern God, you're making me miss the Mystic Krewe of the Silver Ball's pinball church down here. Another post-COVID pleasure on the waiting list... We gotta at LEAST get you photos of the interior.

"International Colouring Contest" by Stereolab is a love song

Just bid farewell to Peg and Artie with "Bye, scaly sweetheart! Bye, fuzzy sweetheart!"

My life is so blessed. It'll all come crashing down someday one way or the other, especially 'cause cats only live a decade or two, but... in the meantime, it's more than I really expected or deserved.

I wouldn't say these cats saved my life, but they certainly staff the emotional maintenance bureau that the dragon founded. <3

@Austin_Dern @typhlosion Haha, true, but it's SUCH a fundamental part of my formative family vacation memories...

@001zlnv OK, Cosmic Hero Kermit is TOTALLY on point, you sold me...

@xinjinmeng Apparently Joanna Russ compared Emphyrio to a Bertold Brecht play and I think now I have to find a copy...

@001zlnv As for Kermit, that's gotta be a hard no simply because Fallout Equestria is bad enough and I am NOT fucking ready for Fallout Muppets. :p