Critical Rationalist

@noncynic

Tech lawyer in practice for 40+ years. Pilot. Author. Veteran. Philosophy of Science fan: Karl Popper. Religion is irrational and dangerous. Crypto is worse than tulipmania. Political power based on lies (GOP, Russia, etc.) must be stopped.

650 Folgt1.511 Follower3.061 Posts

Bluesky

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir noncynic.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Jul 9

Wannabe Nazi brownshirts, but to cowardly to show their faces like their forerunners from the 1930s:

Photo of a group of Nazi "brownshirts" from the 1930s.

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Jul 6

Damn, for a moment there I got excited.

Photo of trump arch from a Bluesky post, immediately followed by another post (actually unrelated) describing how Ukrainian drones successfully destroyed . . . [cut off remaining text]

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Jul 6

Maybe do a little basic research before posting? This took me about 10 seconds to pull up. Note the sourcing.

Results of simple AI-prompted DuckDuckGo search regarding number of participants in NO KINGS protests. The largest was on March 28, 2026, with eight to nine million people participating. (Including me.)

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Jul 5

Remember Ken Chesebro, the (now convicted felon) lawyer behind the Florida 'fake electors' scheme? He managed to get reinstated to the bar. acis.flcourts.gov/portal/court...

From the case summary: He pled guilty on October 20, 2023, to one felony count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents. The conviction has since been fully discharged under Georgia’s First Offender Act. Given these facts, the Florida Supreme Court lifted a previous felony suspension order, issued a public reprimand, and directed Chesebro to attend The Florida Bar’s Ethics School.

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Jul 2

Not that this will do any good, but . . .

Open memo to J.D. Vance from a fellow Ohioan
Trump will be gone soon.

When that happens, you could continue the path of hate, bigotry, misogyny, corruption, incompetence, and antagonistic division, and be the second-most-reviled president in history.

OR … you could put the nation on a path of reconciliation and become the most beloved president in modern times:

Acknowledge what you saw firsthand: Trump was a brazenly corrupt felon and despicably cruel bigot who collaborated with Putin to sabotage our government and Western alliances.
Fire the incompetent Trump cronies and chaos agents, including every single agency head. Staff the government with competent, honest public servants again.
Repair the damage inflicted on federal agencies and the military.
Apologize to America, to our allies, and to the world.
Exert benevolence. You are no longer beholden to the oligarchs. YOU are president, not them. Don’t let them call the shots. Instead, as you say in your book, “actually offer something of substance to working- and middle-class Americans.” Progressive taxation. Health care for all. Generous funding for education, infrastructure, and research. Nutrition assistance.
You could actually do this!
(Also: Usha could be a first lady to be proud of for a change.)

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Jul 2

Excerpt from U.S. v. Schmidt (U.S. district court in Pennsylvania):
As this Court previously has intimated, “the presumption of regularity that has been previously extended to the government that it could be taken at its word—with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes—no longer holds.”

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Jul 2

Here are screenshots of a letter I wrote to a CS organization in response to a solicitation for money.

Letter to Christian Science organization explaining why parents who inflict their loony religious beliefs on their kids are not only fools, but criminals.

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Jul 1

Separated at birth?

Ned Ryerson, the annoying insurance salesman from "Groundhog Day."

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Jun 15

Spielberg had him nailed back in 1985.

Still shot from "Back to the Future 2" showing "Biff's Pleasure Palace." Spielberg based the Biff Tannen character on Trump.

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Apr 9

Overarmed cops with their military toys confronting protesters is a recipe for disaster. I was tear gassed at Ohio State during the Vietnam protests.f Some things never change.

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Mar 19

Trump has about the same level of sophistication as Aunt Edna and Uncle Henry playing "Risk" on Sunday afternoons in the 1970s.

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Mar 4

Two things: (1) what's trending includes your specialty. (2) my post of a few days ago.

"trending" in Bluesky includes "horror writing."

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Feb 8

Lots of dogs in this dogmatic administration.

Kristi Noem and her dog that she killed for no reason

J.D. Vance with his rent-a-dog (campaign's unsuccessful effort to make Vance seem likeable)

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Feb 4

Wonderful parody of your inaugural issue back in 1971!

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Feb 4

NOT a direct quote, but a sort of mild paraphrase. Here's the direct quote. It's much more devastating! monthlyreview.org/articles/why...

Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Jan 3

This is all recycled Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and Dick Cheney BS. Only this time no 9/11 to serve as a pretense. It's all about the oil. And big oil playing to Trump's vanity. From Foreign Policy Focus, Aug. 23, 2005:

“[O]rders were put in place by L. Paul Bremer III, then the U.S. administrator of Iraq, that were designed to ‘transition [Iraq] from a…centrally planned economy to a market economy’ virtually overnight and by U.S. fiat. . . .

A central component of the Bush economic agenda is foreign corporate access to, and privatization of, Iraq’s once state-run economy. . . . Oil is, of course, at the heart of the agenda. In 2004, U.S.-appointed interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi submitted guidelines . . . suggesting that the ‘Iraqi government disengage from running the oil sector…and that the [Iraq National Oil Company] be partly privatized in the future’ and opened to international foreign investment . . . . (U.S oil imports from Iraq increased by more than 86% between 2003 and 2004 alone.)”

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Jan 3

The Enabling Act of 1933 (Ermächtigungsgesetz) was the legal basis for Hitler's dictatorial powers. Here's a word-for-word translation; I just changed the German legal references to refer to U.S. law. The German parliament meekly went along. Yes, history is repeating itself.

Text of the German Enabling Act, which gave Hitler dictatorial powers, translated into English with German legal references replaced with U.S. ones

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Dec 13

Ohio; Ditto! My chunks are in a ziploc bag somewhere in my basement, and include a piece of the pipe that topped the wall. I found out later that the pipe is almost pure asbestos. From an earlier trip (1971) I managed to grab a piece of the barbed wire from the original wall at Potsdamer Platz:

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Dec 9

Kushner is the nepo equivalent of this guy, but with billions in dirty money...

Photo of "Neil Kellerman," the obnoxious son of the resort owner (Dirty Dancing).

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Nov 13

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Oct 31

“With a narrowness, a prejudice, a blindness which in retrospect seem inconceivable . . . , [the German Right] hammered away at the foundations of the Republic until, in an alliance with Hitler, they brought it down. ... [T]he Third Reich was inaugurated in peacetime. . . . The Germans imposed the Nazi tyranny on themselves.

“Many of them, perhaps a majority, did not quite realize it at that noon hour of January 30, 1933, when President Hindenburg, acting in a perfectly constitutional manner, entrusted the chancellorship to Adolf Hitler.

“But they were soon to learn.”

- William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Oct 24

This is what Hitler was planning to build in Berlin. Note the "tiny" Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate at the lower right. Megalomania and dictatorship always go hand in hand.

Hitler's planned Berlin dome (Speer's architectural model).

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Oct 18

Hand-lettered sign: defend our constitution

Hand-lettered sign: I'M MISSING THE OSU GAME FOR THIS

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Oct 18

Ok, here's from Columbus OH today. About 5x bigger than the last one.

Panoramic photo of No Kings rally, Columbus OH, Oct 18, 2025

Hand-lettered sign: REMEMBER KENT STATE. NO NATIONAL GUARD

Hand-lettered sign: IMAGINE HATING IMMIGRANTS MORE THAN PEDOPHILES

Hand-lettered sign: I'M HERE FOR MY KIDS

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Oct 15

Is there a thread somewhere I'm missing? FYI:

Photo of American Airlines 727 in "Astro Jet" retro livery

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Oct 8

Some things never change.

Boss Tweed "As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?"
From Harper's Weekly, Oct. 7, 1871.

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Oct 5

That photo could have been taken in Russia or Belarus. Where masked secret police crush dissent. Pic below (Minsk, Belarus) could have been taken here. Dictator Lukashenko lost the 2000 election bigly, but held onto power by using the military and brute force.

Belarus in 2000, dictator Lukashenko lost the election but deploys troops to hold onto power.

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Oct 4

Uh-huh. Sure. His mouth spews poison every time he opens it.

Pic of "Reflux Man" villain from The Incredibles 2

Critical Rationalist@noncynic· Oct 3