Not my circus, not my monkeys

Former USN ET, 20+ years in IT, nerding since the VIC-20 with cassette storage. Married with two cats and a Corgi of Chaos.

[Byl Holte @SirBylHolte]

My aunt is Patti LaBelle.

She's not a great singer because she's black.

She's a great singer because she's Patti LaBelle.

Same way Dolly Parton isn't a great singer because she's white.

She's a great singer because she's Dolly Parton.

Greatness isn't determined by skin color.

It's determined by talent, discipline, and what a person can actually do.

Reducing someone's achievements to their race doesn't honor them.

It diminishes them.

And that's EXACTLY what happens when you reduce iconic characters to the color of their skin - instead of who they were created to be.

That's the problem with race-swapping, and why I'll NEVER stop condemning it.

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

You kids can’t possibly imagine what WIRED Magazine used to be.

[The Popcast Brothers @PopcastGuys]

PETITION NEARS 100,000! CBR article helping us push the fight. Keep up the pressure on @AmazonMGMStudio! #SaveStargate with Martin Gero
https://t.co/d1M5bGQeJG

[Michael Shanks @MichaelShanks]

“Dedicated Fanbase”

[Nina Infinity @Nina7Infinity]

#savestargate

[Sandra Broome(Ksandra58) @SandraBroome11]

#SaveStargate

[Gunther Eagleman™ @GuntherEagleman]

“Never apologize for being Patriotic… Fck’em”

- Toby Keith

[DataRepublican (small r) @DataRepublican]

Hello Representative Salazar,

You probably don't even know this... but he word "dignity" in your bill's title carries decades of political science literature behind it.

Dignity shifted from something that originates within the individual to something engineered from above by institutions. When the UN, NGOs, and multilateral bodies invoke dignity, they mean the replacement of organic, inherited civic bonds with managed, contractual ones administered by a professional class. That is the tradition your bill's language is drawing from, whether you intend it or not.

On the substance: the DIGNITY Act is amnesty. Symbolic barriers to permanent residency do not change that the bill provides a path to legal status for tens of millions of people who entered the country unlawfully. Others have dissected the policy details thoroughly, so I won't repeat their work here.

But I want to press a different question. Why the insistence that this isn't amnesty? The most straightforward explanation is that you know your constituents oppose it. They voted for enforcement, in the most demographically diverse Republican coalition in modern history. That coalition didn't ask for managed integration. It asked for sovereignty.

The Founding Fathers built a republic from the bottom up, starting with human nature as it actually is: rooted in specific communities. The rules-based international order builds from the top down, starting with an abstract ideal and engineering populations to match it. Your bill, whatever its intentions, belongs to the second tradition, the one that is non-American. It assumes that cohesion can be manufactured through NGO programs... public schools, civic integration, managed assimilation... rather than protected through enforcement of the boundaries that a self-governing people chose to establish.

That is not a conservative position. It is not a republican position in any meaningful sense.

And your constituents can see it.

We see you.

You are a fraud, Representative Salazar.

[The🐰FOO @PolitiBunny]

For shits and giggles, I decided to see just how hard it would be to replace my birth certificate, Social Security card, AND my marriage license, since Democrats think women are too stupid to figure it out.

Here's how it went:

1. Birth certificate: Contacted the health department of the county where I was born. They OVERNIGHTED a certified copy to me the next day - total cost, $14.

2. SS Card: Contacted Social Security on their site. They asked if I was sure I needed the card, since I 'won't likely be asked for it.' I went ahead and got it - took five business days to arrive - total cost, $0.

3. Marriage License: Went to the 'vital docs' site of the county where we were hitched. Filled everything out online, arrived in three days - total cost, $5.

It cost less than $20 to obtain all three certified/legal documents, and it took less than five business days to receive them. Note: if I had lived where I was born or married, it would have been a day. Tops.

Anyone telling you this is too hard or unfair is lying and hiding the real reason they want to stop Voter ID.

I know you guys knew that already... lol

[Not my circus, not my monkeys @VelociGoose]

@jondelarroz I am so disappointed.

[Sassafrass84 @Sassafrass_84]

It's crazy how I have a king-size bed, and my husband can sleep well with tons of space, and I'm pushed to the very edge of the bed because 4 dachshunds decided that they have to sleep only on my side. Next to me. Boxing me in. A literal dog pile. I feel like I need a bigger bed.

First world problems.

[Politi_Rican 🇵🇷 𝕏 🇺🇸 @TheRicanMemes]

Marco on his way to retrieve the alien files 😂

[InfantryDort @infantrydort]

Mr. Secretary, I don't know if this is real or not. Or if it is real, if it's codified or not.

But I, and others, have a VERY serious problem with this if true. Especially given recent events.

Nickel and diming warriors when bad faith fraudsters can fleece us for billions with "Learing Centers" seems wildly hypocritical. It's difficult (in my mind) to justify a financial benefit to people who hate this country at the expense of those who bled for it.

I hope this is not true. If it is, I hope you rescind it. Because this is insanely unpopular. There are better ways to limit disability fraud than this.

"Actual functional impairment as medicated" is like judging the depth of a wound by how well the bandage hides it.

Sir, this ain't the play. Passionately, I tell you, this ain't the play.

[Not my circus, not my monkeys @VelociGoose]

@Apogee_Ent

[Gin_4_the_Win @Gin_4_the_Win]

Thank you for your attention to this matter. @NFL

[BJDichter - HonkingForFreedom.com @BJdichter]

Best cat video ever?

[Jaynit @jaynitx]

>be Palmer Luckey
>born 1992, Long Beach, California
>homeschooled by mom, dad's a car salesman
>build railguns, Tesla coils, lasers in the garage as a teenager
>electrocute yourself, burn a gray spot into your own vision cleaning a laser
>no regrets
>start college courses at 14
>build a six-monitor gaming rig worth tens of thousands of dollars
>collect 43 VR headsets by the time you're 18
>largest private collection in the world

2009:
>found ModRetro Forums at 17
>turn old game consoles into portable units for fun
>work part-time at USC's Mixed Reality Lab designing VR for veterans with PTSD

2012:
>build the Oculus Rift prototype in your parents' garage at 19
>drop out of college
>John Carmack (Doom creator) demos your headset at E3
>Gabe Newell endorses it
>launch Kickstarter asking for $250K
>raise $2.4 million

2014:
>Mark Zuckerberg shows up
>Facebook acquires Oculus for $2 billion
>you're 21 years old
>Forbes estimates your net worth at $700 million
>described as "the face of virtual reality"

2016:
>donate $10K to a pro-Trump group
>post anti-Hillary memes on Reddit under a pseudonym
>get exposed
>game developers boycott Oculus
>Facebook pressures you to publicly endorse Gary Johnson instead
>refuse

2017:
>get fired from your own company
>Zuckerberg won't say why
>negotiate $100 million+ payout for wrongful termination
>immediately found Anduril Industries
>name it after Aragorn's sword from Lord of the Rings
>partner with Peter Thiel
>start building autonomous weapons and AI defense systems

2020-2024:
>win $1 billion contract with U.S. Special Operations Command
>drones deployed to Ukraine
>revenue doubles to $1 billion
>take over Microsoft's $22 billion military headset contract
>Pentagon can't stop writing you checks

2022:
>build a VR headset that literally kills you if you die in-game
>inspired by Sword Art Online
>three explosive charges aimed at your forehead
>call it "office art"
>"it won't be the last"

2025:
>Anduril valued at $30.5 billion
>announce plans to build Arsenal-1
>5 million square foot weapons factory in Ohio
>autonomous fighter jets, missiles, torpedoes
>China sanctions you personally
>net worth hits $3.5 billion
>pay yourself $100K salary
>still wearing Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops to Pentagon meetings
>own a submarine, helicopters, and a PT boat
>keep one of the world's largest video game collections underground
>married a woman who sews historically accurate Tudor costumes
>won first place at Texas Renaissance Festival dressed as Henry VIII
>Sword Art Online author drew your wedding gift

from garage tinkerer to youngest self-made billionaire to America's most important defense contractor

all while looking like he's headed to a beach party

[Simon's Cat 🐾 @SimonsCat]

When the zoomies hit!

[Whale Psychiatrist ™️ @k_ovfefe2]

When you find out you're the President of Venezuela now

[Gin_4_the_Win @Gin_4_the_Win]

The neighbors apparently know how to throw a New Year's party ...