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The same Billablog you know and tolerate from other social media platforms.

Also @Billablog because confused.

Mastodon.socialhttps://mastodon.social/@Billablog

Ok. I'm a teacher. So let me break this down for you into very very simple ideas and numbers.

Let's say you run a sandwich shop. You sell $10 sandwiches. It's a very good sandwich shop. You sell a lot of sandwiches. In fact, I buy a sandwich from you every single day. In a week, I have spent $70 buying sandwiches from you.

Now let's say I am selling my car. You, the owner of the sandwich shop, need a car. I decide to sell you my car for the very very reasonable price of $700.

So here's the situation at the end of a week. You have sold me $70 worth of goods. I have received $70 worth of sandwiches. In return, I have sold you $700 worth of goods, and you have received $700 worth of car.

Any reasonable, rational person would look at that situation and say "that's a fair exchange". Both parties paid an amount of money equal to the value of the goods they now own.

But Trump is not a rational person. What he has decided this means is that you have somehow cheated me out of $630, because $700-$70=$630. Does this make sense? Fuck no. If anything, I got the better part of that deal. I now have $630, plus a belly full of sandwiches.

But it gets even worse. Then, because Trump's a-brain is filled with maggots, he further declares that since $630 divided by $700 is .9, that MUST mean you, the owner of the sandwich shop, have been imposing 90% "sandwich shop tariffs" on me the whole time. Does THIS make a lick of sense either? Also fuck no.

But wait, you're going to love this. Trump's "solution" to this is to decree that going forward, all sandwiches you sell me will be marked up a "reciprocal' 90%, making the total cost for a sandwich $19 instead of $10. He says this will be good for sandwich sales. Does THIS make any goddamn sense either? Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick no it fucking does not.

This entire idea is complete horseshit for what I hope you can now see are a whole raft of very very obvious reasons. Among them:

1. There never was a "sandwich shop tariff" to reciprocate
2. There is no rational reason for you to buy a car from me ever again
3. This will not make sandwiches cheaper
4. That's not how numbers work
5. That's not how any of this works

Now replace the car seller with America, and the sandwich shop with an island inhabited only by penguins. I wish I was joking.

Let me just remind you, it's AUGUST. More than three months before normal bushfire season. Don't tell me the climate isn't changing or that human activity hasn't caused it.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-23/australia-bushfire-forecast-high-alert-spring/102741650
Large parts of Australia put on high alert for significant bushfires in spring

Fire and weather forecast agencies have put large parts of Australia on high alert this spring with hot, dry conditions set to combine with a hefty amount of fuel.

ABC News
Well, look who's suddenly concerned about the state of America's jails! I wonder why!

The latest chapter in my ongoing complicated relationship with tours by The Bad Mancunian:

1991 - First he postpones a day, then for a week, then for a month, then he cancels.

2002 - My date cancels on me

2012 - I was already booked to be out of the country

2015 - He only played Sydney. Did I trust him enough to go to the expense of travelling? Hell no!

2016 - Finally, after 25 years of disappointments, I actually get to see Morrissey.

2023 - Fuck that guy!

https://www.abc.net.au/doublej/music-reads/music-news/40-years-of-morrissey-2023-australian-tour-dates-tickets-shows/102698882

Morrissey returning to Australia in December for '40 Years of Morrissey' tour - Double J

The Smiths frontman and solo artist will bring career-spanning shows to Australia later this year.

Double J

Quite aside from her personality, psychology, and indeed theology, I think the reason SinƩad was such a mindfuck for so many was that she refused to be boxed in.

She was equally at home with rappers and traditional folkies. She was the link between Clannad and The Clash. She was a powerful songwriter, and also a great interpretive singer who made every cover (not just the big hit) her own. She was the go-to when everyone from Matt Johnson to Peter Gabriel to Bono needed a powerful woman's voice. And I don't mean a woman with a powerful voice, I mean the voice of a powerful woman.

Oh, SinƩad! This one hits home!

I’m not going to sugarcoat anything – she never did – she could be a hot mess, but in the most fucking righteous way. I’m sure she would cringe at the idea of being remembered as that young Irish lady who did the beautiful cover of the Prince song. I call it the curse of the unrepresentative single.

When SinƩad got her first record contract, the company had a meeting about how her hair should be styled. She came in the next day with it shaved off and that settled it. She never lost that sense of rebellion and would never let herself be used.

Be at peace.

There are a million good reasons to hate Tories but that Simon Pegg rant that was going viral is the worst.

So you didn't like maths. Fine. Some people did and invented the means for you to whinge on the internet.

His bad experience with learning maths (or not learning it) is more likely to do with poor teaching and lack of school funding than any fault of the subject itself.

And Pegg is buying into the false narrative that it must be one thing or the other. What about the arts? They're important too. I am so sick of this false dichotomy of humanities vs sciences. One isn't complete without the other.

Happy Christmas Mastodonners!

Interviewer: can I get your references?

Me: *sighing* probably not; nobody else does

I keep seeing that ā€œfirst they came for the journalistsā€ sign, and it pisses me off so much, because when they came for muslims, immigrants, and trans people, mainstream journalists normalized it and reported it as ā€œboth sidesā€. Somehow it didn’t count for them until it was happening to them personally, which is *exactly* what the fucking poem was warning against in the first place.