I figured there are interesting people out there who don't really blog often, but who might post something online a few times ever year and whom I'd like to stay updated on. So I started trying to collect some of these relatively inactive personal feeds.
It's not ass noisy as following blogs or social media, which is what I like about it. The only drawback is of course that so few people maintain an RSS feed.
Tech firms and lawmakers still want more specifics on how this is all supposed to work. But if things go as planned, the success of the program would be a major win for the White House, which has been eager to display American technological and industrial might.
So, if it goes according to plan and is a success, it would be a major political victory for the White House/Biden in terms of their eagerness to "display American technological and industrial might".
It's something they want to do, and which if this goes as planned, they will manage to do it. Hence, in politics, a "win". This is different from passing normative judgment as to whether or not it's a good thing: It's a win in the same sense destroying the Supreme Court was a "win" for the previous White House.
I used to dislike Taylor Swift along with all other contemporary pop stars. Maybe even a little bit more, because she had the audacity to call herself Country: Spitting in the face of personal heroes like Kristofferson, Nelson, and Cash.
Then I stopped being an edgy teenager, Swift released Shake it Off, and I had to recognize it was a fun song to dance to. In an ironic kind of way of course, but nevertheless.
And then, in 2015, Ryan Adams released his cover album of Swift's 1989, playing every single song on the album in a folksy way. I dug it. And with it, I had to appreciate that Taylor Swift is one hell of a songwriter: I loved the songs, I just don't love the sound of pop music all that much. That's personal taste, not everything I dislike is bad.
Then Ryan Adams fell from grace with metoo, so fuck him. At least it triggered Father John Misty to publish (and later remove) his legendary covers of Swift in the style of the Velvet Underground.
Fast forward to 2020, and Taylor Swift dabbles with music I can actually enjoy listening to with her album folklore. Pretty cool. I actually got my expectations up for her next album, evermore, low-key hoping that it would be musically inspired by the Battle of Evermore. Sadly I was wrong, but again, it's a matter of personal preferences.
What matters more is the fact that she's reinventing herself from album to album - she's successful in one formula, and she just ditches it and moves on to something different. And every time she does it, she seems to be even more successful than the last time. Her growth as an artist is astonishing.
Finally, she's just cool. Fuck the labels - she'll just casually re-records her entire discography in order to take back control of her songs. She's caught up in all kinds of stupid celebrity drama, but it tends to be the rest of the industry falling over like toddlers trying to drag her into shit for PR while she acts like the only adult in the room. She also scores points for casually hanging out with Billy Bragg and encouraging people to vote and shit.
I mean, whoever reads the article would also see that they did a similar piece on Trump, listing both positive and negative achievements of his presidency.
I think it's a cool format. The media cycle tends to blow one single story out of proportions while neglecting anything else that happens, this is (imo) a good way to review some of what's been happening the last four years.
Not "they", but Paul McLeary, the Politico defence reporter. Each point on the list is essentially an opinion piece by one of their journalists.
And it's not necessarily saying it's a good thing: It's a thing you might have missed. You could also question whether "the U.S. is producing more oil than anytime in history" is supposed to be a good thing.
Furthermore, as to McLeary's point: Some - such as anyone in the region except the Chinese - might argue it's important that the influence of China in the South China Sea is balanced out by other powerful players. It's not about going to war with China, it's about the continued independence of Taiwan and other fairly fragile balances in the region. It doesn't take a moron to see that the situation is complex.
Worth mentioning that Vivaldi is basically the spiritual successor of Opera, and it's doing pretty well at that. It's still Chromium based though, so unless you really miss Opera for the functionality you're better off with Firefox.
Still, rather Vivaldi than Opera, Chrome, or Edge.
Even so, it would still only add up to 46% of the total population. By this logic, 108.7% of the country would have to be Democrat.
I guess it works if the votes are counted the way the Republicans claim they are.
All they want is to destroy the planet and carry out their genocides in peace. Is that really too much to ask?
At least this lady is self aware. She knows her strength isn't her legal skills, and she knows she won't be young forever. So for her taking on a big case and being exposed as incompetent for the whole world might be worth it - it's unlikely she had much of a legal career to destroy anyway.
She has also inflicted more damage on Trump than any of his opponents have. I respect that.
Also his idea of "good" is someone who doesn't contradict him. He wants to run the case his way, and no reasonably intelligent lawyer will ever agree to that as it will make them look like idiots and the case is a sure loss.
This might be assuming there's no such thing as natural law. I guess some might argue there is a natural law, but breaking it doesn't amount to a crime. In either case it's somewhat contested in moral and legal philosophy circles.
I think the key here is that it's a feed managed by the user. There's not enough commercial potential in that. As a tech company, you want to be the one curating the feed, and you want the user to believe you're doing it in their best interest so they don't notice how you're making money by subtly feeding them ads.
RSS is simply too good for the contemporary internet.