This is a column where letters from readers are responded to by the author (and sometimes guest help). Ms. Stoya is the column’s author, and she writes responses to the letters that get sent in.

Might still be creative writing, but not by Ms. Stoya.

Reddit doesn’t even like Reddit.

My new big fear is not that the democrats will fumble this, it’s that they will not anticipate that republicans are trying to make it so election officials (read: election deniers) can refuse to certify the election. If neither candidate gets to 270 votes, the Republican controlled house picks the president.

My wife shared this with me yesterday, but I didn’t see it:

Somebunny is gonna learn those things aren’t windows-based today!

I’m so disappointed this didn’t go to trial.

Trial would have meant discovery, and public disclosure of findings, along with potentially more discovery and/or charges if the trial process reveals anything more to look into.

I wonder what secret they have that’s worth a quarter of a billion dollars.
(High confidence they will try to appeal in one of the Trump judge districts. The verdict might get lowered to $1 or something dumb.)

The ruling happens after the act. Who knows what justices we’ll have by then.

I’m all about ACAB.

But here’s my understanding of it:
U.S. Marshalls (not local PD) were sent to apprehend a man that had weapons when he shouldn’t have. They had not yet reached his house, because he was in his front yard when they approached.
The man opened fire on them from the front yard, and they shot and killed him. They were fired on by someone in the house.
They called for backup, and retreated while the house occupants barricaded themselves. 3 hours later, unable to resolve the situation, they used armored vehicles and ended the standoff without killing additional people.

I guess I don’t think these officers did anything bad in this situation, even though they represent a horrible system.

We need the name of those officers and the contact information for every relevant ethics/review/legal committee that can fuck up their lives.

And the Democratic Party needs to pull its head out of its ass and embrace its base, rather than smugly scheme in ways that are ruining lives.

I have no problem with Biden’s job as president. In fact, I got into a big argument with someone a few weeks ago because they keep parroting anti-Biden propaganda from astroturfed pro-Palestine social media groups.
Biden has been doing a great job for the most part, on a number of fronts.

But I’m sort of bittersweet on that, because the harder I look, the more I see the illusion of choice, and an intentional effort to barely keep up with the will of the people.

2016, Bernie vs Clinton. He had the votes, but the party pulled some superdelegate shenanigans to give it to Clinton. And with the same confidence of someone who had just been handed a layup in the primary, she managed to smugly fumble the presidency by a tiny margin.
Post 2020 - Democrats had a majority, and instead of doing things the populous wanted, they wrung their hands about two candidates the Democratic Party had helped elect - Sinema and Manchin - and whether or not they were going to block bills.
The other day I did a deep dive into Elissa Slotkin - a candidate so unlikeable she had to move to a much more certain democratic district when districts were redrawn. When the senate seat came up, the Democratic Party cut deals with more liberal candidates who are vastly more likable, to get them to not run in the primary. So now Michigan is going to wind up with an unwanted centrist that used to be an ‘analyst’ for the CIA during the Iraq war. She’s going to pretend to be a democrat while being the same sort of heel the Sinema or Manchin was.

That’s just the people. In their post 2020-majority they could have done so much legislatively that they didn’t even bother considering - like campaign finance reform or expanding the courts, or even changing the rules around judicial nominees to prevent future shenanigans, but that would impact their bottom line or their ability to inspire panic at election-time. They could have strengthened the ACA, but that hurts some of the corporations that donate to them. Or do things to help people so that their rights wouldn’t be at risk - like codifying Roe, instead of allowing it to continue to be a wedge issue that destroys lives, but gets people to vote.

The Democratic (and Republican) Party is playing us all.
I’m not disaffected with Biden. I’m disaffected with a political party that nakedly fucks around to preserve the status quo, rather than embracing their base and winning with an encouraged and engaged populous. They lack the mandate to lead because they only desire to govern. (In contrast to the Republicans which lack the mandate to lead, are unable to govern, and only desire power and to abuse the government for personal gain.)

So go ahead, give me the downvotes.
This wouldn’t be an issue if we had ranked choice and a coalition government instead of this ‘winner take all’ nonsense that just incentivizes entrenchment rather than inspiration. But, you know, that doesn’t help the businesses that are political parties, so they ain’t gonna vote on it.

I learned recently that in engineering there’s a saying that anyone can build a bridge that will stand, but only an engineer can build a bridge that barely stands.

Which seems dark, but bridges are built on budgets while adhering to aesthetic, material, and site/traffic (on, under, and sometimes over) requirements.

And besides, that ship was between 210 to 257 million pounds, traveling at whatever speed it was going. I’m not a physicist, but I recon that’s enough force to knock down a bridge. (As evidenced.)

They will use every scrap of data you haven’t explicitly told them not to use, and they will make it so that the method to disable these ‘features’ is little known, difficult to understand/access, and automatically re-enabled every release cycle. When they are sued, they will point to announcements like this and the one or two paragraphs in their huge EULA to discourage, dismiss, and slow down lawsuits.