It's obnoxious when shows that ostensibly take themselves seriously present their MC as though they're supposed to actually know their business and what they're doing, and then the rest of the story promptly ignores that informed background and hands them the absolute biggest #IdiotBall (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall) it can at every turn.

It feels like one person wrote the backgrounds & basic setup, and then someone else wrote the rest of the story.

#BadStorytelling

@sparseMatrix

Every #GQP #idiotball has a grain of truth to it. Should Hillary have run a private email server? Of course not.

Should we have done a better job withdrawing from Afghanistan? Of course.

Should Hunter Biden been more careful to avoid the appearance of wrongdoing? Um, yeah. And maybe he might be guilty of some of it. I don't really know.

What I do know is that we're fighting a war against global dictatorship, and the ongoing crimes of the autocrats and oligarchs are on a planetary, existential level.

If we waited for perfect leadership, we'd have no leaders. And we have to understand both the stakes and the game we're playing. No one's wearing a perfectly Cloroxed white hat.

Gavin Newsom shouldn't have gone to the French Laundry during Covid, but he's still a damn good governor of California.

You were warned for most of the past year that the 118th Congress would kick off a flurry of fake investigations. Instead of holding strong, I'm seeing a ton of democrats and liberals fretting and clutching pearls about the #Biden classified documents #nothingburger

It's "Hillary's emails," all over again.

I thought we were supposed to be the "smart party." But I'm not seeing it. Too many of you are playing #idiotball with the #gqp

Their false equivalence and #whataboutism is doing exactly what it's designed to do.

The GQP already hates Biden as much as it's possible to hate anyone. So all of these fake investigations are aimed squarely at LIBERALS. And too many of you are taking the bait. Of course #cnn isn't helping, but you also knew about that.

I'm seeing people claim that Biden is "wounded," or "screwed."

Fucking really?

Yesterday someone on my Zuck feed posted the question about "who should run instead of Biden in 2024."

AYFKM????

Could people maybe not be so damn obvious in advertising their absolute gullibiilty and instant capitulation to that absolute GQP bullshit show we've all seen a hundred times before?

Smarten up!

@Wildethingy

Correct. Don't pick up the #idiotball

@sean

Big thanks to Staff Sgt. Pantaloons.

This #idiotball idea fits what I felt uneasy about, but had no name for, back when good people would repost-repost-repost bad things on the Facebook, helping the bad things spread.

"Eek, shouldn't you be handling this inside one of those biohazard glove boxes? Be careful with hostile propaganda!"

Apparently we have to talk about the Republican "gas stove" #IdiotBall

This is the sudden outbreak of right wing pearl clutching and chest beating "You can prah mah gas stove from mah cold dead fangers."

No one's taking anyone's gas stoves away. Which is what makes this an idiotball.

Here's what's really going on. There are two issues with #gasstoves. One of them isn't about gas stoves at all. It's about methane.

Methane, or natural gas, is used for cooking, comfort heating, water heating, power generation, and making plastics, among other things. CH4 is the chemical formula. Meaning that this molecule has multiple 120° angular molecular bonds. Which causes it to resonate intensely in the atmosphere, trapping heat. The primary greenhouse gas CO2 has a single angular bond. Which means that methane is much more powerful at trapping heat than CO2. It turns out about 20-80 times more powerful, depending on time frame. Fortunately methane degrades over a period of a few decades. Unfortunately, during that time it creates intense atmospheric heating.

Production of methane creates massive leakage, as much as 10%. So in order to tackle climate change, methane production must slow and eventually stop.

That means that over time, gas ranges must be phased out along with every other gas appliance and power plant. That's going to take a while. But since buildings last many decades, we need to start now.

On to the second part of this equation, gas stoves themselves. Let's get something really straight here--I need people to really understand this. Because even among liberals, there's still way too much wailing and gnashing of teeth about gas stoves.

****All #combustion produces harmful byproducts.****

The same reason why it's bad for you to smoke cigarettes, is the reason why wood fires are harmful, is the same reason why you don't want to breathe diesel exhaust, or leave your car running in the garage, and the same damn reason why you really don't want methane burning inside your house.

I don't know why this is so difficult. CH4 combined with oxygen creates CO2, or in the case of incomplete burning CO which is carbon monoxide, which is a poison. But oxygen isn't the only thing in the air. 80% of the atmosphere is nitrogen, which at high temperatures can form nitrogen oxides.

I know everyone loves cooking over a flame. But while you're doing that, it's also creating basically something equivalent to car exhaust fumes indoors. An exhaust fan can help, but not everyone has them, and they don't always work. I once lived in a rented home that had the exhaust fan ducting into the cupboard above the stove. Because builders are lazy and people are stupid.

The primary concern about gas stoves might be for asthmatics and sensitive people. But no matter who you are, having high levels of CO2 and CO and NOX in your home is not good.

The fact that we've had gas appliances for a century doesn't matter. People act as if because we did a bad thing for a long time we should keep doing that bad thing.

Wrong.

Gas stoves are going to have to go away. But if you have one now, and you really want to cook with gas so badly that you're willing to keep poisoning yourself, you'll probably be able to keep it for decades.

And that's what makes this an idiotball.

Any regulations would impact new construction only, obviously. Can you imagine the government trying to confiscate literally millions of gas stoves from millions of homes and commercial businesses? Not going to happen.

Now that we've got the idiotball out of the way, let me talk about electric stoves. They are much much better than they used to be. Especially if you have an induction range. Heat control is precise, and fast. I have one. I had to learn how to use it, but the learning curve was not steep.

Whatever the learning curve might be, it's far less of a change than, for example switching from a gasoline car to an electric car. A minor inconvenience at best. And this is what Republicans are experts at: making a mountain out of a molehill.

Remember how they always talk about manly men being manly and not letting anything bother them? And then they pull this absolutely ridiculous snowflakery. As if any of them were actually cooking in the first place? No these wankers make their wives cook. Unless it's barbecue. Oh, and by the way, barbecues will all eventually need to be #electric too.

But that's a whole other story...

Fray spaychin lahk nobahdy's ever fray spayched before.

#idiotball

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/arkansas-gov-sarah-huckabee-sanders-bans-term-latinx-first-day-office-rcna65351

Rule #1 of counterdisinfo: DON'T PICK UP THE IDIOT BALL.

That means, when the #GQP is rolling out one of their endless disgusting psyop nothingburgers, don't amplify it in the process of critiquing it.

Don't fall for the false equivalency. If you hear yourself saying: "Well, yeah we really should find out why Biden had those classified documents." Or "You know we really should, at long last, get control of our borders, this can't continue."

What you're doing is validating shit that has nothing to do with reality. It's ALL red herrings.

Not even the most batshit republicans are remotely concerned about the contents of their #idiotballs.

(Because they're all pure power plays.)

They're designed to confuse and deflect.

Learn about how this #bothsidesing, #whataboutism, #redherring #idiotball shit works, or remain a useful idiot for #fascism

This is a stellar example of how to tackle an #idiotball, without picking it up. Notice the original idiotball psyop is *not even mentioned.*

#joohnchoe is not on #mastodon so far as I know. But he's been highly instrumental in the #nafo counterdisinfo op, and he publishes a lot of great content.

This one's about the #gqp tactic known as #idiotball

Hint: Don't pick up the idiot ball. Don't repost and amplify their idiotic shit. Say as little about their specific idiotball campaign as possible, while discrediting it thoroughly and exposing their networks and tactics.

Okay i keep btchn about this but #Cyberpunk2077 is NOT a masterpiece. The CITY is a masterpiece, evrything else is Bethesda class (AI and writing). And that's from someone who's been playing 1900 hours of Fallout 4.

Heck the most important point in the plot is so badly written it's best described as the #Idiotball trope turned to 9 out of 10.

Still a fun game, but imagine the city with Assassins Creed gameplay and Obsidian writing?

(This game NEEDS 3rd person mode)

#Cyberpunk #Gaming #Rant