Senator's Selects 2024/10/16
Senator's Selects 2024/10/16
100th Issue Spectacular! Wait, no, don't get your hopes up
From the Desk of…
Anyone looking for details on the Sample Meowlot can find them here in last week’s post. I’ll probably keep linking it in posts until the election is over, if we should ever be so lucky.
100 issues… wow. I tried to review my dashboard to pull out some of my more popular stories, but the funny thing about growth metrics is that the more subscribers there are, the worse my open rates gets. I’m bigger and less popular than ever! I also discovered that I used to do way more interstitial writing between segments, and somehow those sections got sanded out of the template. Funny how things change over time. You know, I think it was Heraclitus who said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.” If it wasn’t Heraclitus, well, it was somebody.
Since finalizing the Meowlot, I’ve been nose to the grindstone on, uh, well, work… and video games. One news item that I’ll put on your radar is Dan Osborn. I’ve been saying for months to keep an eye on him, but for folks who don’t know and don’t click links, he’s a former union president and strike leader running as an independent against a popular Republican incumbent senator in Nebraska, and he’s… winning? That’s what polling seems to indicate, now. I’ll always only believe it when I see it, but he’s running as a right-to-repair populist farmer type, and that seems to be letting him dodge the culture war issues the National Republican Senatorial Committee was likely expecting to plague Generic Democrat. If elected, he’ll probably end up somewhere between Angus King and Sherrod Brown, based on his stated platform, pro-worker promises but not progressive pledges. Stay tuned.
Speaking of Sherrod… following Colin Allred’s cue in Texas, Sherrod, who has been assailed by a Senate Leadership Fund advertisement claiming he “voted multiple times to allow transgender biological males to participate in girls’ sports,” has released an ad saying, in short, “nuh-uh.” Now, while I don’t think that anyone is expecting him to embrace the issue with open arms, folks have taken umbrage with both candidates for elevating and normalizing the framing laid out by the opposition. Brown’s ad ends in a WKYC fact check of the Moreno ad, but in doing so, it repeats the “transgender biological males” line, successfully Othering them in the political realm. The ad also aligns Brown with Governor Mike DeWine, which I find personally distasteful. Still, it may not matter much what I think. The most recent Baldwin Wallace Ohio Pulse poll had 60% of Ohioans saying that Brown does a Fair, Good, or Excellent job at representing their views (compare that to JD Vance’s 50.5!). And… in the same poll, 59.7% said they Strongly Oppose “allowing transgender athletes to play on the team that matches their gender identity,” with another 13.7% saying they Somewhat Oppose the idea. You see similar numbers about public bathroom usage: 54.3% Strongly Oppose, 12.0% Somewhat Oppose. Even diving into the crosstabs to look only at Democrats, sports gets 37% Strongly Oppose and 15.1% Somewhat Oppose, and bathrooms gets 32.1% Strongly Oppose and 9.9% Somewhat Oppose. That’s why the Republicans are making it into a wedge issue. It’s working. It’s working for today, just like all their wedge issues have worked in their days. Some day… and that day will come… it’s not going to work anymore. Brown’s not talking to me with this ad; he’s talking to the 73.4% of Ohioans who hear something about his potential to support transgender athletes and furrow their brow. We’ll be the ones to unfurrow it in the end, not him.
For what it’s worth, no similar questions were asked in their 2018 version. There, Sherrod was given a 47.1% Favorable response, with 22.7% saying they hadn’t heard enough about him yet. Compare that to now, where only 7.1% of people polled weren’t confident enough to form an opinion. Broadly, Ohio likes him. Remains to be seen if we’ll vote for him though.
The Brain Dump
bob of dook
"voici ton signe" - Guillaume Engvall
lol just remembered candlejack that used be such a hu
why in god's name would hot chicken takeover switch to bread and butter pickles
for me, it's macroplastics or nothing [opens a brick of Velveeta]
At the Movies
Hmm… I should go to the theater this weekend. Feels like it has been a minute (more than seven days).
The Sixth Sense (1999), dir. M. Night Shyamalan ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ❤️
Listen, no one can really knock the movie, even if some of Shyamalan's quirks are visible at the seams (a kid's mom in Philly doesn't know what Chuck E. Cheese is? is the implication that ALL people with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorders are actually just a bit psychic?). It's solid, and both Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment deliver pretty iconic performances.
Surprised they haven't tried to push a Doctor Sleep-style sequel into production. Kid grows up and becomes a ghost cop or something. M. Night, call me.
Re-Animator (1985), dir. Stuart Gordon ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ❤️
it rocks that the one dude has, like, mild psychic powers that are never expanded on or even present in every cut of the film. i've said it before but more films should just reveal a character is psychic. doesn't matter which.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021), dir. Johannes Roberts ⭐
watching this actively removed joy from my life and made me wonder if i actually even like the video games anymore. it's not even that it's bad; it's just... it takes half the movie's runtime to progress narratively beyond the opening cinematics of the first two games. it's like watching a YouTube video of someone else going through the Haunted Mansion. hell, i probably would've had more fun watching a YouTube video of someone playing Umbrella Chronicles. what are they doing to Lisa Trevor man. she doesn't deserve this. i don't deserve this. come on folks. what are we doing here. as a society. just try to make one good movie. please god. let me do it even. where is barry burton. what is the goddamned point of any of this if hollywood won't even do me the decency of letting me watch barry burton in the movie. why are they doing this to annette birkin. oh my god. the effects are so bad. syfy cheap. i'm going to bed. frig this.
One Picture
For real though. Get it done.
In closing,
It’s important to get people the help they need. Sometimes, it’s obvious when people need help. Sometimes, it isn’t. If you’re in need, and people are offering you help, take it. Just know that, while people can help lift you up and get you started, the rest of the journey is yours. You know, I think it was Morpheus who said, “I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it.” Well, if it wasn’t Morpheus, it was somebody. You need to be honest with yourself about where you need help and be ready to deal with challenges. Take things one step at a time. This all sounds harsher than I’d like, but in the past two weeks, I’ve seen people fall apart publicly in ways I never expected, and I’ve watched people swat away helping hands only to tell me about feeling unsupported.
Until next time, help somebody out if you can, or get helped if you need.