Re: lawless SCOTUS decisions, maybe you're thinking of the TPM post on "civic sedevacantism" that ends:
"I'm saying that we must disengage from the idea that this is what the law is. It's not. These are fraudulent decisions."
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/toward-a-theory-of-civic-sede-vacantism
Re: the problem of how to deal with things like the weakening of protections around pollution, it seems like there are three answers:
(1) move to a Blue state, where the state itself will pass and enforce regulations
(2) move to another country
(3) to another, better-run planet
I realize that for many people, these steps are not possible, which is why I include #3 (which, notwithstanding Kums (a)Lone) is impossible for every human, and won't be changing ever.
Like, how would I know if some toxin leaches into the water table? and10 years from now, the whole community gets cancer?
I guess the short answer is, you wouldn't. Trust in the federal government and American public is rightly breaking down quite a bit. The specific things to worry about will vary a lot based on where you live. Your worries and a lot more seem reasonable based on what I know about Texas. In California I'd worry about things like droughts and wildfires due to mismanagement of federal resources (the Army Corps of Engineers already released a bunch of water in reservoirs they shouldn't have, right?). Here in DC I'd worry less about that stuff - we aren't prone to those kinds of natural disasters, and Republicans and their lobbyists don't want the water in their own offices getting screwed up - and more about general breakdown of local government, with a slight chance of rampaging MAGAs.
Every day I'm thankful that my parents, sister, and her family live in Vermont. They're in probably one of the safest places in the country, and it's a day's drive for us to get there. If some disaster hits, we can't plan to get there on short notice, as discussed in the "Go bag" thread, but if we have a few weeks' notice and/or shelter in place through some initial crisis, we could pack our lives into the car to go join them. It would suck, but not as much as a lot of things that could happen. Sorry to be callous to the ~300 million Americans who don't have such a good escape plan.
Yeah, I mean the end of science research in America would really hit close to home in a way that nothing that happened last term did.
I'm genuinely shocked at how different this term is from the first one. I was really wrong in expecting it to just be more of the same. I'm not sure how much of that is prep-work done by Project 2025, how much is Trump having loyalists instead of regular Republicans, how much is Republicans being fully on-board with Trump, and how much is Musk. These Canada tariffs are just so insane it's hard for me to even come up with a theory about what's going on in this administration.
1: YES! Thank you, that's exactly what I was reading.
(Thank god it turned out to be something respectable and not like "A Quack's Guide to Soccer Moms in the Age of Trump and also Fashion" or some shit.)
On the plus side, this means I can keep pooping on Ohio.
Poop away, young stallion, poop like the wind.
The hidden downside to dismantling all the agencies that were created to keep us safe.
(1) move to a Blue state, where the state itself will pass and enforce regulations
And you are referring to the decision in "CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA v. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY," no?
1: These are fraudulent decisions."
"Thank you again. Thank you again. Won't forget."
(And I do wonder in what context DJT thanked him before. Probably at the inauguration?)
Via Alexandra Petri on Bluesky:
Jewelry for our time: "The Sisyphus necklace" (miniature of him pushing a rock) "A reminder that you can overcome anything."
I'm feeling a bit dejected and also guilty. I'm about as secure as someone of my SES can be. I don't work for the feds, I'm an old white male, I will retire probably in about 5 years with enough to retire on, and if there are toxins in the water it will only affect the last fraction of my lifespan so something else will probably get me. Younger people I'm connected to (mostly in the wildlife field) are getting hit with real consequences already: job offers retracted, fired at 11.5 months into a 12 month probationary period, can't travel because of the dumb $1 limit on all fed credit cards. Obviously whole agencies and programs being shut down is affecting so many good people. I feel pretty ineffective at doing anything to stop what's going on. I don't even talk to people about it, because half of us realize and despise what's going on and the other half (let's be honest, 2/3 in this red state) are obviously good with it. I spend a lot of time walking out to the blueberry patch and garden to watch them grow.
11: "One must imagine yourself happy."
Last week a whole bunch of leaders decided that their country needs nuclear weapons, probably correctly. Most of these countries are inclined to keep defense expenditures down so they can keep shit out of their rivers and have a health care system that serves most of their people. This probably translates into a smaller number of nuclear weapons and a more vulnerable deterrent. Which means that in a crisis, and a crisis always comes sooner or later, they will be faced with a much smaller "use it or lose it" window than U.S. and Russian leaders have had in the past. Which means global warming might finally be solved.
LB's mention of Spinrad's short stories got me to read his The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde. One of the stories had this little timely nugget:
In a unanimous decision today, the Supreme Court declared The Constitution unconstitutional. "There is no provision whatsoever in The Constitution for The Constitution." the court decision pointed out.
I rewatched A Man For All Seasons for the first time since I was a young teenager a couple of days ago and damn if that didn't all too uncomfortably capture what it feels like to live under a lawless tyrant while clutching desperately and futilely at the last remnants of the law in order save yourself.
I'm sure it worked out fine for whoever that is.
He got his head chopped off, Moby
Went to my heavenly reward and have interceded on occasion since. Make of that what you will.
22 Wrong Lord High Chancellor Thomas
When the king cuts your head with a big fucking scythe, that a More, eh.
Will nobody rid me of whatever troublesome developer fucked up the clipboard in Office?
Will no one rid us of this troublesome [redacted]
Kings and annoying priests; England is so easy to get mixed up.
Speaking of courts and judges, there have been increased threats against judges given inflammatory rhetoric from Musk (and some Republican senators etc.).
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/judges-face-rise-threats-musk-blasts-them-over-rulings-2025-03-05/
Here is the measure response from White House spokesman Harrison Fields*:
"The White House condemns any threats to really any public officials, despite our feelings that a lot of these people are leftist, crazy judges that aren't following the Constitution," Fields said. "Just because these people are leftist, crazy, unconstitutional people doesn't mean they deserve to be harmed. That's not how you engage with disputes in this country."
*Seems to have been a Byron Donalds press person and then Heritage Foundation.
Speaking of not coping well, I finally created a bluesky account. But not with a username anyone would recognize, I don't follow anyone, and I don't post. I just wanted to be able to see posts from people whose accounts are set to only visible to logged in users.
Yeah, well Medicaid cuts will undermine blue states.
4: Yeah, my employer gets like 900 million in NIH funding. We recently had layoffs in clinical operations. We stand to losd hundreds of millions. I don't see how that's not crippling to the indtitution. I think that would suck for me personally even though I'm in a blue state. I don't think anywhere is safe.
Safe to assume that the entire point of turning off the water main is that Trump can then selectively turn them back on individual spigots as blue state governors agree to submit to whatever concession and humiliating ritual occurred to him that morning.
9: Well, I did specify two more options of escalating severity, specifically for when the less-severe ones fail.
The way I look at it, if SF (and CA) decide that they're going to abide by lawless Federal directives that harm their populations, that's a sign that it's time to leave.
Turns out getting methed up Nazis to run your government is going about as well the second time as it went the first time.
On...maybe a more serious note? I actually know more people who lived in the Third Reich than voted for Trump. One thing I've learned from them was that was life was normal until it wasn't. Or, life was normal and stayed mostly that way, as long as you didn't mind food shortages or forced conscription or ask questions about where your neighbors went or openly and publicly dislike Hitler. One thing that scares me is that our complacency and failure of imagination will let us drift to a point where any normal level of resistance is no longer possible. If this plays out the way Nazism did, none of us are safe, at all.
Today I walked around in the rain putting up flyers for an anti-Trump rally downtown on Saturday, March 9. When I got home I found out that Saturday is actually March 8.
If you go back out tonight with a sharpie no one will notice.
Yeah, the font is a little off, but I'm planning a sharpie tour tomorrow.
||
Axes, mud, and naked lovers notwithstanding, Saint-Denis had been at the heart of Frankish kingship for centuries|>
When the king cuts your head with a big fucking scythe, that a More, eh.
When you're making the point that your time's out of joint, say "o mores!"
When you're feeling dismay at the youth of today, that's "o mores!"
Disrespecting the old - they won't do what they're told! - that's "o mores!"
In these horrible times, let your thoughts out in rhymes, say "o mores!"
I just got back from my sharpie tour and the majority of flyers I had posted to telephone poles did not make it through the downpour we had last night. That's my bad for printing them on the same lightweight paper I use for printing zines. Next time I'll use thicker paper with some gloss to it, and thumbtacks instead of staples.
16 is spot on, except for the optimism, which is precluded by the same inadequate stockpile size alluded to.
I'm sure we'll get a nuclear winter sized set of explosions after the chain starts with the smaller arsenals.
But your first (correct!) premise is that the giant world-ending US deterrent no longer extends to involvement in regional conflicts.
We had problems with responsibility anyway.
Speaking of nuclear war, I just learned that the Enola Gay was named after the pilot's mom. I kind of hope it was named before he knew they were going to flatten a whole city with a single bomb dropped from it.
I guess because it was carrying Little Boy?
Maybe his mom really hated the city of Hiroshima.
He knew. It was a specialized unit, they trained for months.
||
in exchange for the hand of the emperor's five-year-old daughter and an enormous lion.|>
I mean, you don't sign a dynastic marriage if you don't get a lion. Negotiating 101.
I am not sure 16 makes any sense. I don't know what country is meant to have started a new nuclear bomb programme, and the dynamic discussed is about first- vs second-strike rather than numbers. You could have an arsenal based on liquid fuelled rockets that need hours of prep and can't be held over for long, or jet bombers that need to scramble and get away from their bases, and it would still be wildly destabilizing however big it was. We know that because that's basically the US and the Soviet Union in 1962, and wasn't that a hoot?
A smaller arsenal is less survivable, making a second strike less credible, thus incentivising first strikes.
Countries: ROK, ROC, Japan, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Baltics, Finland, Sweden, Turkey, Canada, Mexico.
16.1 is just Moby's guess, no one has actually come out and openly said they're starting a nuclear weapons programme. It's a plausible guess, mind.
A smaller arsenal is less survivable ceteris paribus but as you point out they generally aren't paribus. The UK has a tiny nuclear arsenal but it's extremely survivable and second-strike credible, so not destabilising.
I kind of hope it was named before he knew they were going to flatten a whole city with a single bomb dropped from it.
Yes, because all the other B-29s in the Pacific Theatre were only being used to drop fluttering showers of candyfloss fairy butterflies.
38 has made me reread the First Address to the Senate for the first time in about 30 years and, gosh, that was an unsettling dose of extreme relevance.
If, as 53 suggests, the Baltic states decide to go nuclear, they could find themselves in the unique position of having a strategic nuclear deterrent delivered by gun. (It's only 150km from Narva to St Petersburg. You can just do that with a rocket-assisted 155mm shell, as built by... Nammo, who are just over the water in Finland.)
More qualitative survivability costs more money. Moby is, as usual, correct and succint.
Well hooray for global warming finally being solved
57: no he isn't, as that isn't a point he made. also tell me about this Mexican bomb programme.
59: he sort of did; he said "Most of these countries are inclined to keep defense expenditures down so they can keep shit out of their rivers and have a health care system that serves most of their people. This probably translates into a smaller number of nuclear weapons and a more vulnerable deterrent."
And it is true that spending less money on a deterrent means that it will be more vulnerable - either because it will have fewer weapons, or because each weapon will be more vulnerable.
But I can see why that could be misread as "this probably translates into a smaller number of nuclear weapons WHICH IN TURN MEANS a more vulnerable deterrent" because that's how I misread it at first.
Hilariously, if AP is to be trusted, photos of the Enola Gay have been flagged for removal by the newly sensitive DOD because, well, have a guess. https://apnews.com/article/dei-purge-images-pentagon-diversity-women-black-8efcfaec909954f4a24bad0d49c78074
It was only named a few hours before the Hiroshima mission, when Tibbetts, the commander of the group involved, decided he was going to command the mission personally. The former aircraft commander flew as co-pilot and reportedly hated the fact that his ship had been commandeered and given a name he hadn't picked. As far as I can tell, it hadn't previously been named anything at all, it was just Aircraft 91.
The photography aircraft that accompanied it on the mission was called Necessary Evil which seems a) a bit on the nose and b) very Iain M. Banks.
Uh, um, uh, um
https://bsky.app/profile/shashj.bsky.social/post/3ljrwuejcf22f
"Ebola Gay" seems like it would be a great drag name.
So cool.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/154022/iceberg-grinds-to-a-stop-off-south-georgia-island
Cooler still!
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147664/iceberg-closes-in-on-south-georgia
I might have noticed that if the world hadn't been ending the first time.
For the NATO countries of Central Europe, Trump has shown that the American umbrella is unreliable. Are the UK and French deterrents more reliable?
Russia has reintroduced wars of conquest into European relations. Is an atomic deterrent the only alternative to subjugation by the Kremlin? Or relying on Moscow not to pursue further conquest? Ukraine's experience is potentially instructive.
Finland has one of the world's most efficient nuclear industries. Sweden has recently re-started uranium mining. Ukraine is gaining world-class experience in drones, and in delivering them to targets in Russia. Poland has a GDP 50% larger than Sweden's. The whole package is 1940s technology.
ENOLX TYVM
NASA is the one agency Musk, at least, won't be going after.
72: I doubt that.
NASA basically does three things: it awards and manages contracts for the design, construction and operation of very expensive bits of aerospace hardware; it distributes and monitors research grants to various institutions (including paying Caltech to manage the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for it); and it maintains a lot of highly specialised buildings and things.
I'm not even sure what privatising that would look like. I guess you could sell off Kennedy Space Centre and so on, but that's only 15% of the budget. As long as the US continues to want to do civilian stuff in space, it will need an agency that looks like NASA, to manage all the contracts with the private sector companies and universities that actually do the stuff. There's no actual or potential revenue stream for NASA except government money, it isn't like those lunatics who talk about privatising USPS or the interstate highways.
And, of course, one of the companies getting those aerospace hardware contracts is SpaceX!
As seen on Bluesky:
1990s culture wars: We're cancelling the Enola Gay exhibit bc veterans and historians can't agree whether we should celebrate its role in ending WWII or critically assess the decision to use nuclear weapons
2020s culture wars: We're cancelling the Enola Gay bc "gay" is a no-no word
74 was my first reaction, but thinking it through the earth science parts of NASA (and the USG civilian space effort generally, including NOAA and whatever else) do a lot of stuff that's of tremendous commercial value (like, as we see here, iceberg early warning). Trying to privatize that might make kleptocratic sense (while obviously being a catastrophically bad idea on the merits).
75: but how much of that is already contracted out, though? Is all that earth science actually done by people wearing NASA badges who get NASA salaries, or is it done by people working for some company or university, with funding for NASA?
77: I think the relevant question is not who does the analysis, but who owns and controls the satellites (and to some extent the copyrights on archived data). Whether at that point you're privatizing NASA or privatizing space science I don't much care.
Spaceborne earth science. Whatever.
And here I'm eating liquid eggs like the bombs are already falling and food is short.
Anyway, I didn't feel like trying to remember and list everything about nuclear deterrence to write 16, so I kept it at a high level of generality. But yes, there are many ways to secure a 2nd strike deterrent.
Moby too modest. Right, succint.
Well it looks like Poland is going for nukes
84: wait, what? I mean, not a surprise really, but what?
https://bsky.app/profile/shashj.bsky.social/post/3ljscagogzs2y
I think it's like an all options are on the table and we're looking at this one in particular very strongly type statement
Poland is going for nukes. What they say doesn't matter.
AIMHMHB, their application to join NATO basically went "We will not under any circumstances tolerate the risk of another Russian occupation. We will prevent this happening in one of two ways: by joining NATO, or by deploying an independent nuclear deterrent. Your choice."
Countries: ROK, ROC, Japan, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Baltics, Finland, Sweden, Turkey, Canada, Mexico.
Iran would be the country missing from this list. But apparently Trump just wrote to them asking for a nuclear weapons deal.
Which, my god. We already had a nuclear deal with Iran and that dumb motherfucker blew it up.
The Stand Up For Science people look young enough to burn down a Tesla dealership. But they don't sound like that's the plan.
As for Mexico, a Latin American deterrent makes a certain amount of sense when the United States is looking to annex the Panama canal.
92: People in the middle-of-the road formerly rural farming town next to me did burn 6 Tesla chargers. (Also at one point they had the biggest gun market in the country with multiple dealers, which was a shock to many there).
https://www.wcvb.com/article/tesla-supercharger-fire-littleton-investigation/64018767
90: because NATO does not really exist any more.
New terminology:
no homo sapiens
no homo but definitely erectus
Ecce no homo
Multiple federal agencies are exploring the idea of adopting SpaceX's Starlink for internet access -- and at least one agency, the General Services Administration (GSA), has done so at the request of Musk's staff, according to someone who worked at the GSA last month and is familiar with its network operations
Brawndo Starlink has what plants government agencies crave.
450 people showed up to our downtown protest today. That's a huge turnout for here - like 2% of the city's population.
100: Arrests at a New York Tesla dealership. Doesn't sound like that was a small protest.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tesla-violence-protest-elon-musk/
Frivolous comment. Wikipedia has an article for Nixon's enemies list, which I enjoyed scrolling as someone who wasn't born until near the end of the Carter administration and missed it all. I'm just curious: how many multiples of 220 would give you a ballpark figure for the number of names on Trump's hypothetical enemies list? But of course, people and organizations jump on and off the list all the time; how stable are the "constant flux" and "permanent" percentages of the list, in your opinions?
Please also feel free to share the length and other dimensions of your own enemies lists.
Good for Gene Hackman making that list. Now I feel even worse about how he died.
There's a house down the street from where my parents live that's been flying various kinds of Trump flags since before the insurrection. I think on insurrection day it was a Gadsden flag unless it was some MAGA symbolism I didn't get. (It was the right color for Gadsden.) Ever since the RNC last year, they've had Trump/Vance up. They also fly a US flag next to their other flag.
This week the Trump flag is gone and they're only flying the US flag.
Chinese investors privately take stakes in Elon Musk's companies
Asset managers pool investors' funds into a Cayman Islands-registered entity, which invests the money in US-based funds managed by western private equity firms, which are already existing investors in Musk's ventures. The presence of the Chinese funds is not visible in public records of the holdings.(The actual sums invested are small. But still.)
Romania shows how it's done.
https://www.ft.com/content/dad829ce-3988-430b-b009-88a727a4d28d
Romanian">https://www.ft.com/content/414d9140-05e1-4f80-83de-4d7421134f57blockquote>Romanian authorities have not implicated Georgescu in the alleged plot being prepared by the Vlad the Impaler Command group.This timeline, so dumb.
https://www.ft.com/content/414d9140-05e1-4f80-83de-4d7421134f57
Romanian authorities have not implicated Georgescu in the alleged plot being prepared by the Vlad the Impaler Command group.This markup language, so dumb.
I'm just curious: how many multiples of 220 would give you a ballpark figure for the number of names on Trump's hypothetical enemies list?
I honestly think that the list "living people whose name Trump knows, who are not family members, but who are not on his enemies list" might be shorter. A lot of the people who support him are probably on his enemies list. That's the point; they're defeated enemies.
The interesting thing with Trump would be the churn; constant additions and deletions. They'd have to have a staffer permanently tasked with maintaining it, or else check it into version control software.
Deletions?? You think that a major issue with keeping the list current would be the rate at which Trump is forgiving his enemies?
Not so much forgiving them as either forgetting them, or deciding he likes them now. I mean, how many times has he changed his mind about Mexico now?
https://ritholtz.com/2025/03/tesla-backlash/
"In other words, the government may be losing control of the public, and that's never a good sign. Trump's approval ratings are dismal. And when people feel powerless...some take action. And just like with UnitedHealthcare, their behavior is endorsed by the general public and chaos rules.
You can't paint someone else's car. You can't shoot bullets into a car dealership. But that's what people are doing. [...] We've skipped right past the nonviolent protests of the sixties to the activities of the Weathermen."
"Trump's approval ratings are dismal. And when people feel powerless...some take action. And just like with UnitedHealthcare, their behavior is endorsed by the general public "
This article's author is poorly informed. Trump's approval rating is 46% favourable/50% unfavourable/ 4% don't know. Luigi Mangioni is on 21% favourable/ 43% unfavourable / 37% don't know. There's no honest way to describe that as "dismal" for Trump and "endorsed by the general public" for Mangioni.
I also very much appreciate the way in which he thinks painting someone's car is not "nonviolent".
I guess he's never had an Earl Scheib job
The arrest and apparent disappearance of a green card holder for speech crimes is a serious red line that's just been crossed.
Trump's approval rating is 46% favourable
Which is indeed very low for this point in a presidency.
Only one lower was Trump's first term.
In the light of the last fifteen years of international affairs, perhaps we should redefine "red line" as "a pre-designated state of affairs or event, moving beyond which results in no consequences whatsoever."
We've skipped right past the nonviolent protests of the sixties to the activities of the Weathermen.
I don't think that's right. I think you've been nonviolently resisting Republican coups for 25 years, and they keep on coming back for more.
Meanwhile, somebody who murdered a stranger on camera has disapproval ratings below 50%. "Endorsed by the general public" is hyperbole, sure. However, audiences also cheer when he gets mentioned on late-night TV. The mood is very weird right now.
123: agreed. Who is this person who thinks there haven't been massive non-violent protests against Trump?
answer: he is an elderly boomer music critic.
115: The Trump administration has been busy making it clear, even more so than the first time around, that the rule of law does not apply. Somehow they expect that Wilhoit's Observation will continue to hold. I tend to think that if the rule of law is too conspicuously non-universal, then it will apply a lot less in general.
Would-be oligarchs and tyrants need to learn that laws, courts, elections and additional processes in which they may sometimes lose are in fact the compromise. There are other ways to regulate public life. In five days we will mark the anniversry of a famous example.
(Good Lord, I clicked through and discovered that this Ritholz character heads an investment company. My dude, you are sitting on top of so many layers of public forbearance that your first prayer every morning should be one of gratitude for a functioning and well-regulated liberal administrative state.)
124: What share of adult Americans know someone whose life was cut short or who suffered needlessly because insurance companies wanted to make more money? As high as 90%?
The wonder is not that people cheer when Luigi gets mentioned, the wonder is that more people haven't taken up his approach.
Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un insurance executive pour encourager les autres.
At least US officials are comporting themselves with dignity:
Noem had stopped into the Haskell Free Library & Opera House - a public building standing directly on the border between the United States and Canada.
A line of black tape on the floor of a reading room of the Haskell Free Library and Opera House marks the spot where Derby, Vermont ends and Stanstead, Quebec, begins.
Noem reportedly hopped back and fourth across the line, repeating with a smile: 'USA number one' before crossing the line into Canada and saying, 'The 51st state.'
gratitude for a functioning and well-regulated liberal administrative state
Fwiw, the post is by a co-blogger (I'm not much familiar with either one), but my reading is that they are aghast specifically at the dismantling of the liberal administrative state.
An enterprising Canadian should have arrested Noem on one of her brief visits for entering Canada without proper ID, and/or blocked her from entering on the basis of subversion. I note that the Canadian government can now block the entry of any registered Republican under Section 34.1(f), https://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/i-2.5/section-34.html
A permanent resident or a foreign national is inadmissible on security grounds for
(a) engaging in an act of espionage that is against Canada or that is contrary to Canada's interests;
(b) engaging in or instigating the subversion by force of any government;
(b.1) engaging in an act of subversion against a democratic government, institution or process as they are understood in Canada;
(c) engaging in terrorism;
(d) being a danger to the security of Canada;
(e) engaging in acts of violence that would or might endanger the lives or safety of persons in Canada; or
(f) being a member of an organization that there are reasonable grounds to believe engages, has engaged or will engage in acts referred to in paragraph (a), (b), (b.1) or (c).
131: Ah, ok. I did not do much more than scan the layout of the page.
I read the quoted bit as being appalled that direct action was being taken, and particularly as if there had not already been years and years of peaceful protests against Trump's agenda and approach to using power.
I didn't read that article, but Rithholz' analysis is generally pretty good. He thought the Iraq war was a huge blunder in real time.
131 gets it right.
I don't think the kind of destruction of property represented by spray paint or keying cars is violent exactly, but I did hear people criticize it yesterday. I certainly wouldn't do it myself, but I can't actually go out of my way to condemn it.
Via Bluesky
Hearing that NASAs entire office of technology, policy and strategy and office of the chief scientist was RIFd (reduction in force) this morning.
Source is an astronomier at Johns Hopkins
Yeah, the tl/dr is "what did they expect was going to happen", not "this is wrong".
Its the playing with fire that concerns me. Molotov cocktails and torching Tesla chargers. Three yachts were burned the other day.
I get that its all in good fun, but fire tends to get out of hand and hurt people.