Recorded music from radio to cassette

1 reporting in 👨‍🦳

Was travelling with some friends in Istanbul. They were pretty inexperienced abroad, so I figured out public transit there, told them what tickets to buy, and we all walked to the ticket machine. There was a big line/crowd, and a guy up front was taking cash and giving people tickets, which he got by scanning a card at the machine. I went first hoping to show my friends what to do - bought my ticket for like €5 or so and ignored the scammer. They all gave the scammer guy like €20 for him to scan his pass and buy them a €5 ticket. Their reasons were “he seemed official” and “I knew it was a scam, but I figured it was just easier to go along with it”.

I did fall for a taxi scam in Peru though and ended up staying at a hotel run by some mafia types. They were cool, though, so it turned out OK - just cost me a little extra money for an interesting story.

And what ghoul will he pick to replace himself? Not optimistic.

He deserves it, but he is staying alive by sheer force of patriotism and duty. I don’t think he knows how or wants to retire. Not while things are still so fucked up

The headline is disingenuously framed. He isn’t saying he’s gearing up for a presidential bid. He’s saying he’ll throw his weight in to build up support for the party. Idk that that’ll do any good, but it isn’t a bad thing for him to do necessarily.

He’s an established guy who a lot of moderates and libs have historically liked. Plus, I guarantee he knows a lot of big money donors who he might be able to convince to put their money toward a more progressive candidate - that could be useful if he was willing to support a more progressive direction & agenda. Now will he do that or just insist on more of the same bullshit that ran the party into the ground…? Seems like he might not exactly have his finger on the dying pulse of american democracy, so to speak

One thing the lawyer on Opening Arguments (US conlaw/current events podcast, progressive-liberal perspective) says often that rings really true to me is that “Fascism requires lawyers”, and lots of lawyers, to become established. We saw it in Germany and Italy as well - and in other fascist-lite regimes. You need people who know the law and know how to challenge and change those laws in order to take power. Usually, that means selling out & perverting the rule of law in destructive ways.

Science is proof that 99.9% people who think that, if there was a knowledge-based magic system irl, then they’d learn it and be a mage are in denial.

We legit have magic that you just have to learn & then can do all sorts of cool stuff, be it chemistry or computer science, and people pretty routinely do not give a shit about learning it themselves.