It's probably a bad idea to test what happens if you try to make a jury choose between executing Mangione or letting him go.

I mean, it's a great question. I have no idea how it will turn out.

It would be very poetic if the earthquake dropping that bridge in Mandalay proved decisive, but almost certainly it won't. (Not least because there's another bridge; but, aftershocks.)

No way a Manhattan jury gives Luigi the death penalty; I don't think a guilty verdict would be a slam dunk on even a lesser charge. So I assume Bondi's "death penalty" statement means that Feds are charging some Federal crime (terroristic activity?) and going for a change of venue to somewhere they can finagle a judge who will exclude both potentially sympathetic to Luigi jurors and any evidence regarding possible bad medical insurance practices. Alito at this moment is probably trying to figure out how to be the one.

Though Luigi's defense might welcome a change of venue to New Jersey since the new Federal attorney there is a moron. I'd bet on no worse than a hung jury and probably an acquittal if they let her run the government's case against Luigi.

3: can you expand on that a bit? Decisive in the civil war?

I'm pretty sure that in New Jersey it's legal to shoot people if they were an asshole to you.

Gonna be hard to find a jury for the Mangione case: https://www.instagram.com/sarahcpr/reel/DDdTbblgHAZ/

They'll just get old people who have Medicare and their days free.

Perhaps you didn't watch the video all the way through.

Somewhere it was noted that a death-penalty-qualified jury is by design made up of people who are okay with the idea that some people need killing, which is particularly interesting in this case.

Separately, this morning I read This Is Why My Texas Town Lost Trust in Public Health (gift link) on paper, and it seemed like pure culture-war rehash of mid-pandemic crap about masks and schools. I did not feel like it made me one iota more sympathetic. Is it as worthless as I think?

Probably. I'm not going to read it, just in case.

11: Ugggh, that's one of those essays in which it's impossible to tell whether or not it's written in good faith.

By late spring 2020, we'd discovered one of Covid's few mercies: Children weren't commonly succumbing to the disease. I started publicly calling for them to return to school in person that summer. Outside of my local community, where most people seemed to agree with me, the backlash was swift and cruel. Like many other dissenters, I was accused of denying science and lacking concern for humanity. From my view, it seemed as if our public health agencies and the people who unquestionably followed their every edict showed little concern for children's best interests.

In retrospect (a) calling for a return to in-person school wasn't a crazy idea, (b) I believe that someone could quickly become incredulous and appalled at the backlash towards the idea. On the other hand (c) Spring 2020 is awfully early to be staking out a strong position; there wasn't a lot of evidence to go on, (d) I don't know anything about her but I feel like a fair number of people making the argument, "I was in favor of in-person school early, and the government refused to listen for no good reason" want to argue about school in a vacuum (on which point they have solid arguments) without engaging with the broader question of the actual harms of the pandemic and broader attempts at mitigation. What I want to say is, "there were no decisions which didn't ignore the legitimate concerns of some group of people. You can't just say, "why did they choose to make my life worse?" without seeing it in the context of a situation in which any decision was going to make someone's life worse."

"Someone called me an asshole in 2020, so I've decided to work for the spread of cancer."

"Someone called me an asshole in 2020, so I'm just asking questions while other people cut the following programs from the CDC"

HIV prevention? Gone.
Asthma and air quality team? Gone.
Environmental hazard response? Gone.
Gun violence prevention? Gutted.
Communications? Gutted.
Worker safety? Gone.
Reproductive health? Gone.
Birth defects? Gone.
Disability health? Gone.
TB prevention? Gone.
Blood disorder programs? Gone.
National survey on drug use and mental health? Gone.
Lead poisoning prevention? Gone.
Water safety? Gone.
Tobacco control division? Gone.

Guess which one of those by job depends on.

10 this. Also: lol

Actually, don't. But it's on there.

I have a medical idea. You know how King Charles has that thing where his fingers are inflated? I bet that makes it hard to do things which require dexterity. But Charles is also very fond of tradition. So, why not bring back the Groom of the Stool?

11, 13: Rightwing assholes who were, in realtime, minimizing the impact of Covid now want to score points by saying: Hey, we were right that kids could go back to school with relatively little risk.

The giveaway here is that the item is framed to justify medical skepticism as a result of incorrect guidance from medical folks, but then praises Trump appointees Jay Bhattacharya (NIH head) and Marty Makary (FDA commissioner). Both were Covid bullshitters -- opposing vaccine mandates, for instance.

Fucking bullshit, man. Everything. What the fuck?!?

13:

I have a sign on my wall (all artsy and pretty) that says "Safety 3rd". When someone asks me what is second, my answer is convenience. I have also heard 'glory' as a good answer for second. But I actually do mean it. Yeah, I'd load up the kids in the car until one has no seatbelt if it saves me or someone a second trip.

So, one of my least favorite dynamics is when someone uses safety as reason for something that inconveniences me. Sometimes, piled on top of that, there is some sanctimonious reference to the goodness of the person being saved the additional risk. I deeply and viciously resented my OBGYN for that. No deli meats because of the tiny incremental risk TO THE BAYBEEEEEE? You are fucking kidding me; I give no fucks about that level of additional risk. But the implication is that if I am not willing to go to any levels of inconvenience, I do not care about the wellbeing of MY BAYBEEEEEE. (Ironic that my two first did actually die (and separately that the OBGYNs were right about nearly everything), but that was independent of my risk tolerance and behavior.)

Anyway, I was moderately inconvenienced by keeping my kid home and I am still battling the effects of the school closure on his screentime. Fine. It was the pro-social thing to do and I wasn't the expert to assign relative levels of risk. But the additional sanctimonious part on top of that, the implication that I do not care about ABUEELLLA at home because I wanted to weigh risk vs safety? That was nearly as annoying as an OBGYN. I am not surprised that it pissed people off and still does.

That's a very real point, but one that I don't trust myself to make because of all the drunk driving.

Opening schools early just struck me as a straighforwardly dumb idea because the alternative to online class wasn't "everything is normal now" is was "the speed of the spread of the disease is rapidly increased". When the schools finally did open fully (after months of a hybrid schedule), there was a massive wave in my community, kicking off teacher shortage because so many were out sick. So the kids got to go back to school for the sake of sitting in a gymnasium doing study hall all day.

She lost me with:

We question whether health agencies are nonpartisan, value-neutral science-driven and financially independent of Big Pharma.

Of course, it's not value neutral.

I'm more conservative (careful) on covid than the median person here. I wanted to keep bars and restaurants closed to open the schools, amp up ventilation and filtration more than was done and require masks in schools.

Covid was less risky for kids, but kids w/ no heslth issues did die (musc-c), so it was worth vaccination. But also, they could transmit to their vulnerable relatives.

Of course, that's a value judgment.

22: What's first? Does everyone (except me) know that?

I'm self-conscious of sounding like the asshat Texan in 11, but 24 does not match my experience, to the point where I'm wondering what co-variables coincided with re-opening the schools.

I have a number of K-12 teacher friends, and Jammies himself was in his first full year of teaching. They were all forced back in person, starting mid-September 2020. They were all terrified and it was a miserable experience! But there were not Covid outbreaks among the teachers.

To its credit, the school board finagled vaccines for the teachers at the end of January 2021, at which point I breathed a big sigh of relief. What I remember is the following September, 2021, everyone was constantly out with Covid and there were mass amounts of kids in the gymnasium. But that was post-vaccine and mid-mask wars, which is a different thing.

26: Wait, this is Megan, so it's FUN, right?

All we know for sure is couches come into the mix somewhere.

Isaac Chotiner claims another victim (whom he previously interviewed in 2016 and 2020). This one is almost unsatisfying because the guy makes absolutely no sense, but if you want to see a Southern Baptist theologian squirm, there it is.

In retrospect, I think Sweden had the right approach. The goal is to have people under 60 all get covid gradually over the course of several months, while protecting the elderly as much as possible. The first month of strict closures made sense, because otherwise you get these nightmare scenarios like we saw in Wuhan and Bergamo everywhere, but then once the fall rolls around you should just have school with some mild precautions and you go online exactly when too many teachers have covid.

(Well, actually the right approach is challenge testing vaccines to get them approved by summer of 2020. Trials had already started in April 2020, most of the delay was just that you can't get data on efficacy when covid spread is super low.)

27: Ours had had a hybrid half-week in class, half-week on zoom format starting in October. I think they went full time in December and my recollection is that my kid brought it home and infected the family immediately, and that was around the start of the delta wave.

11-15: Before I even tried to read the article, I was impressed by how negative NickS's opinion was, and how strong it was regardless of direction. No offense, sometimes I'm like this myself, but you often seem open-minded to a fault. Having skimmed it, I agree overall.

This paragraph seems particularly dense with bullshit.

(1) It was a pandemic, and information evolved over time. (2) Mistakes were unavoidable. (3) Now, it's much more common to hear public health experts say that they think schools were closed too long. (4) But where was the humility at the time? (5) Why hasn't there been a large-scale federal effort to study how well masks worked, (6) or whether closing schools would be the right choice to make next time? (7) In conservative communities like mine, there's little trust that the same Covid playbook wouldn't be used again, in spite of the costs.

1 and 2 are empty platitudes. 3 is a bold-faced lie, or at least, I'm as sure of that as I can be without picking apart the credentials of any "expert" making that claim. Public health experts don't take it upon themselves to say that public health measures have gone too far. Economists might, or the bureaucrats that both public health experts and economists report to, and of course they'll opine about measures being effective or not, but given that a measure is effective, it's their job to recommend it, even if it's inconvenient or expensive. As for 4, humility? COVID-19 has been the 5th-worst pandemic in human history. (Source, with the acknowledgement that the size of the population has changed and some pandemics have bigger ranges than others.) I don't want humility from the people trying to mitigate the harm; maximal effort was justified. As for 5, there were many studies. Ignoring them is a deliberate choice. As for 6, I don't know what a study like that would even look like, given that it depends on details that vary from one disease to another. And conservative communities like yours sabotaged the playbook mentioned in 7 every step of the way, so asking their opinion would be like asking an arsonist's opinion on the fire department's hiring practices.

27: Not knowing almost anything about Jammie's school or your city, my suspicion is that you/they benefited from the curve-flattening measures this lady is complaining about. There were only moderate problems in medium-sized cities in the 2020-2021 academic year because everything had been locked down six months earlier, which this lady is now pooh-poohing.

31 has two different approaches we could have taken as a society with the benefit of hindsight, but (a) I'm not sure there was any point when foresight would have told us the same thing, (b) half-measures at either of them might have been worse than what actually happened, and (c) both would have required a more robust welfare state than America has.

Since when do conservatives care about having public schools be open anyway?

The more hours our public schools are open, the more time our children are spending reading gay books at the school library.

I feel like a lot of lefty discourse on covid does the typical American thing of pretending other countries don't exist. Most of Europe opened schools faster than we did! It was fine! They did do other things to limit spread, and we could have copied more of those, but it's not some total unknowable mystery what would have happened if we opened schools faster.

What's totally insane about point (7) is that Donald Trump was president! Why did you all fucking vote for him again if you think his approach to covid was so awful?

31: Japan did pretty well without lockdowns. Finlland, Denmark and Norway all did better than Sweden according to this paper., so i'd be inclined to follow their examples first.

https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/34/4/737/7675929

37: this Point I agree with 100%. Well 95%, because there was some Covid management in 2021. And some people resented any masking.

36: Our population also has more comorbidities and more people without healthcare coverage.

Maybe we should have all died of Covid because after today none of us will have savings to retire on anyway

27: Not knowing almost anything about Jammie's school or your city, my suspicion is that you/they benefited from the curve-flattening measures this lady is complaining about. There were only moderate problems in medium-sized cities in the 2020-2021 academic year because everything had been locked down six months earlier, which this lady is now pooh-poohing.

Entirely agree with this. Also I didn't read the link, because it sounded aggravating.

Can't wait for the markets to open tomorrow. Stonks! 📉📉📉📉

I did sell $10k in stonks today. Will use it to pay off some student loans which somehow went from like 2% to 7% while we weren't paying attention.

I didn't sell stonks. We have 23 eggs though.

The 37% tariff on Reunion seems a bit high.

They know what they did.

Since this is a kitchen sink thread, I've been wishing for some way to hold people accountable and make them cautious. I've been wishing there was a way to make Elon/cabinet members personally liable for damages incurred by firing federal staff. Assuming the state holds and judges follow laws, and then that the administration cares, eventually federal workers will have some claims for improper firing. I've been wishing that the billionaires who make us all dance at their whim would have to pay those personally.

The seagulls of Heard & McDonald also know what they did.

AWB isn't here, but I will echo her in noting how incredible it is that the SBC now acts like an ecumenical council of the Catholic Church, setting doctrines & excommunicating members, contra the fiercely independent tradition of Baptism before the late 20th century.

You said, "President Trump is a huge embarrassment, and it's an embarrassment to evangelical Christianity..."

"But, at the same time, I unapologetically supported him..."

50: They got the idea from the group in Twilight.

Omg the way they calculated the tariffs is asking AI and it came up with a method it even said is stupid, divide trade deficit by total trade with that country and that's the "tariff" they're putting on us and Trump's "reciprocal tariffs" are set to half that because he says he's being a nice guy. That's, like, failing intro economics stupid.

Two words: Butlerian Jihad.

You people just don't appreciate mercantilism.

I bought a handle of Crown Royal and a fifth of Jameson (of which I already had a fifth). I decided not to stock up enough for a whole trade war, but to buy some supplies.

I forgot about the ban on plastic bags and that the liquor store doesn't have paper bags that will fit a handle. I felt really conspicuous walking down the street.

I don't mind bourbon, but I'm not about to drink it at Trump's insistence.

I felt really conspicuous walking down the street.

Nah, its Liberation Day. People understand.

So is this going to kick off a new golden age of smuggling? Or a new clay age of everything being repealed in short order?

More importantly, you flew your colors high.

Or swung them low, I guess.

There's so much bad faith in retrospective discussions of Covid that I just feel despair. If anyone learns from our experience and does better in a future pandemic they will almost certainly be people who were born after the last one. I just hope there isn't another novel virus like this in our (collective) lifetimes.

Swung them high, even, if you started chugging on the way.

In the meantime, I'm going to appreciate the blessedness of our current moment: we no longer have a senile old man as president, our business leaders and social betters are no longer subject to the cruel indignities of the most anti-business federal government in history, and tomorrow, tomorrow, we finally will be free.

Seceded Sudans stay sychronized.
https://www.crisisgroup.org/ne/node/25506

My current lunchtime reading is Saul David, "The Indian Mutiny" and wow, getting some very strong parallels here. This was a massively destructive upheaval against a government based on ludicrous rumours, you say? Led by members of a historically privileged caste who were terrified that they might soon have to work alongside - or even under! - people who they considered inferior by birth?
Smallpox vaccination programmes were extremely unpopular in India and I am waiting for that to come into the story as well.

Isaac Chotiner claims another victim (whom he previously interviewed in 2016 and 2020).

Much can be explained about the current US political situation when you realise that Isaac Chotiner is generally regarded as a cogent, well-informed and aggressive interviewer.

Here's one example of Chotiner being a bad, unprepared interviewer who doesn't bother with follow up questions.
Q: One of my concerns about this Administration is the joy they seem to take in cruelty toward immigrants. Do you feel that at all? Does that concern you?

This is a Good Question. "Hey, Mohler, you are both a devout Christian and a Trump supporter. But taking joy in cruelty isn't very Christian. And Trump does this. This is a contradiction in your beliefs. Thoughts?"

Mohler comes back with this: "It would concern me. That is not what I'm seeing. And I have been in parts of the country where this is of daily concern. I have not seen a lack of concern."

This is a Good Answer - it rejects the premise of the question.

The obvious rejoinder is for Chotiner to say "Well, you may not have seen it but it is happening, and here is an example."

But he... doesn't do that, because Isaac Chotiner is not a good interviewer. He should have an example right there ready to go. Instead he says "here's a description of cruelty towards immigrants." Which is non-responsive, and leaves Mohler an open goal to say "well, sure, but that isn't a cause for joy for anyone in the administration. Sometimes governments just have to do harsh things. It's an unpleasant and regrettable necessity."

60: I don't need a car for 4 or 5 years, but I seriously wondered whether I should try to buy a car in Canada, park it somewhere, get my mother-in- law to drive it a little bit and then import it after a year.

Is there anything I should try to bring back from Canada next time I go.

What I found super annoying on twitter before the election was a variant of this from people I would describe as upper-middle class, not rich or even wealthy. "I'm a wealthy, older white woman and a doctor with good healthcare. I have resources and privilege. I'll be fine either way. I'm voting for Kamala, because I care about other people who will be hurt and our climate."

Like, I get that it's way worse to be a poor, block person with no health insurance in Texas, but I wish people had the sense that Trump's plans were going to fuck over everybody who is not already a billionaire. NIH funded scientists and biotech venture capitalists too. People need to have the realization that nobody can afford to be apolitical.

Is there anything I should try to bring back from Canada next time I go.

Crown Royal. And Royal Crown as a mixer so you can make a Crown Royal Royal Crown.

What I found super annoying on twitter before the election was a variant of this from people I would describe as upper-middle class, not rich or even wealthy. "I'm a wealthy, older white woman and a doctor with good healthcare. I have resources and privilege. I'll be fine either way. I'm voting for Kamala, because I care about other people who will be hurt and our climate."

You were super annoyed by encountering people who did the right thing for virtuous and altruistic reasons, because they did not realise that doing the right thing would also benefit them personally?

Super annoyed?

Is there anything I should try to bring back from Canada next time I go.

A Viceroy?

Smuggling cigarettes into America?

You'll need those cigarettes to trade for extra sawdust bread when we're in the camps

72: maybe only mildly annoyed. annoyed that I don't think they grasped the full extent of the damage and therefore were poor communicators to those less altruistic. It came across as limousine liberal.

"You don't use a sledgehammer to kill a mosquito that perches on your scrotum," Akpobari said.

69: I thought this was a weak bit of Chotiner (and therefore above-average for American journalists).

My biggest beef is that he essentially endorses the premise that some signfiicant number of the deported Venezuelans have been accused of a crime, which as best as i can reckon, hasn't happened. (They have, en masse, been accused of being gang members -- demonstrably falsely in some cases -- but that's not a crime.)

Like Congress could vote to take away tariff power from the President. Should we be calling for that?

Yes. But only to make them feel bad. The Republicans control it.

78: This says it all, really:
Isaac Chotiner claims another victim (whom he previously interviewed in 2016 and 2020).

Clearly being exposed to the searing pitiless spotlight of Isaac Chotiner's forensic brain was such a soul-shattering experience for Mohler that he was quite happy to do it again, twice.

Like Congress could vote to take away tariff power from the President. Should we be calling for that?

They're doing it! https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/02/republicans-democrats-canada-tariffs

Several Republican senators joined Democrats to pass a resolution that would block Donald Trump's tariffs on Canada, a rare rebuke of the president's trade policy just hours after he announced plans for sweeping import taxes on some of the country's largest trading partners.

In a 51-48 vote, four Republicans - Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and both Kentucky senators, the former majority leader Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul - defied Trump's pressure campaign and supported the measure. Democrats used a procedural maneuver to force a vote on the resolution, which would terminate the national emergency on fentanyl Trump is using to justify tariffs on Canada.

Go and watch A Working Man if, and only if, you are writing a dissertation on how not to copy John Wick.

John Wick was a great movie. I didn't watch the sequels though. Kind of violent and hard to watch.

I think the S&P 500 is dying.

In the spirit of a Kitchen Sink thread, I just finished reading Abundance, and it's really disappointing. It isn't bad, or wrong, it's just awfully thin, and feels lazy. I would definitely recommend Electrify, or Dan Davies recent writing as way more substantive and, arguably, one good thing about Abundance is that it may have a halo effect and increase the audience for other books on the topic.

That said, it isn't a bad read, and if anyone else has read it, I'd be curious to talk about it.

There's so much bad faith in retrospective discussions of Covid that I just feel despair.

That's why my reaction to the article in 11 was so negative. I think there is a lot of room for useful retrospective discussions and we aren't getting much of that. I was very much a covid-precaution maximalist (and still wear a mask in many settings), and I've been convinced that (a) the response that I would have liked wasn't really possible, (b) that I had reason to support my positions but, in retrospect, I think they were a manifestation of a desire for certainty -- at least as much as possible, and (c) that the social cohesion to coordinate some agreement is probably more important than the exact agreement itself.

(Well, actually the right approach is challenge testing vaccines to get them approved by summer of 2020. Trials had already started in April 2020, most of the delay was just that you can't get data on efficacy when covid spread is super low.)

That would have been a good decision at the time and, as it happened, the retrospective calculation is a little but trickier. I remember how exciting the vaccine results looked in 2021 and then the Delta-wave completely changed the situation. Having vaccines a few months earlier would have definitely helped people in the original wave, but would it have provided more material for the vaccine skeptics (who, as it is, are arguing that there was insufficient testing).

I remember Hot Vax Summer. Except for me the benefit was that when my mom died, we were all able to assemble easily and we could have the regular funeral mass that she wanted.

85: I suppose I should switch my future 403b contributions to a foreign index fund.

A respiratory virus vaccine is desirable, but I kind of get why people don't think it's necessary, since it reduces disease severity and you don't as an individual know whether it prevented transmission. More,s suggest that it does, but it's not perfect. But with 95% plus measles vaccination rates you can prevent virtually all Measles disease. So easy and so great, because there is *nothing good* about getting measles. Nobody over 70 would disagree.

RFK jr is over 70.

A propos of 70.last: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/not-even-wealth-saving-americans-dying-rates-seen-poorest-europeans-rcna198929

That could also go in the other thread.

90: He is sui generis. Nobody without a worm infection, or who hasn't taken anabolic steroids, or who hadn't been paid money to be anti vax who is over 70 is also on Team Measles.

Apparently even if passed by both houses, a Congressional national emergency veto is something the President can just veto, which really defeats the purpose of the National Emergencies Act. Not the way the law originally worked, but it got rewritten after the Court in INS v Chadha (1983) said legislative resolutions vetoing executive actions were unconstitutional. (Not sure why the latter carried over to the former, because what Chadha struck down was a single house's ability to veto by resolution the suspension of a deportation, much more administrative/executive in character.)

94: That kind of makes sense, but we should have passed legislation during the lame duck period removing the presidential power over tariffs because of this possibility.

Happyend, OTOH, is interesting and charming and the plausible banal kind of dystopian.

The "Premise" section is great, as writing.

John Wick 2 is phenomenal. Twice as good as the first on every axis. Still regret missing that in theater. After that it's downhill, unfortunately.

Maybe I'll give 2 a look then.

81: Not sure what your beef is with Chotiner overall. (We agree that this interview was disappointing.) But part of his work that's most impressive is that people willingly walk into a buzzsaw with him. I can't say that I read him religiously, but this strikes me as an off day for him.

95: I think it made sense to strike down that particular "veto" where one house could order someone deported, but emergency declarations strike at the heart of democratic governance - they're states of exception. I think Congress should have left the NEA alone and waited to see if SCOTUS thought anything should be done about it individually, rather than comprehensively neuter it in a class with every legislative veto on the books.

Trump just issued an executive order saying that the Treasury would no longer disburse or accept paper checks. We owe a small amount on our Federal taxes, and my plan was to get a bank draft, because I don't want Musk to have my account information.

Shit. I fucked up my taxes and need to send a small check to correct.

103: Looks like we have 6 months.

Thanks.

86: There's so much bad faith in retrospective discussions of Covid that I just feel despair.

The part that I feel gets completely elided in retrospectives (and was almost completely glossed over at the time) was the extent to which Republicans and RW media were on a (not at all subtle) mission after Biden came in to shoot any kind of reasoned approach up the ass. And much of the mainstream media ignored their manifestly bad faith motives and sort of joined in (Can you say David "bloviating suckhole" Leonhardt*? Sure you can.) I still find it completely unbelievable that during a massive public health crisis one of the parties and all RW media basically went on a full out campaign to torpedo any reasoned public health response and it would hardly get mentioned in articles. It was--and is--one of the biggest political stories of the 21st century, and does get semi-covered of course (see every 2024 election take), but there is almost never a an acknowledgment that everything that happened after 2021 (in the US, I'm sure there are various other similar patterns in other countries) had powerful forces aligned to try to make it fail. And in that context, a lot of hard, "no win" choices had to be made; and I suspect there was significant degradation in the face of the fuckery.

Anyways it irks the hell out of me to this day, and the retrospectives just rub it in.

*Speaking of the L-man and retrospectives, he recently had a totally fucked up discussion of the lab leak theory in the times recently which included one of the most spectacularly wrongheaded applications of Occam's Razor ever.

Also funny. Legit LOL funny in numerous scenes. I wish I had seen it with a bigger audience.

Happyend, that is. Not the suicide of the United States.

Just the little death then

107 to 109.

But for reals, Barry, I think this one is right up your alley.

I suppose I should switch my future 403b contributions to a foreign index fund.

I moved a chunk of my portfolio into a European index. I figure they had a slow recovery out of covid, but are now poised for a run of deficit-fueled defense spending, which ought to be good for their stonks.

I watched all the John Wick movies because I wanted to embrace the casual, upbeat violence that is the most distinctive feature of American culture the first three were just there on some streaming service and later I felt like I might as well watch the fourth for completeness. I don't think any of them are particularly worth watching if you didn't feel like watching another one after the first but as always, tastes vary.

My instincts confirmed: so far today, a "total" stock index ETF (meaning US) is down 4.3%, while an "international" index (no US) is down only 1.6%.

I am curious about how he warmed up to the new dog.

Apparently, Fox News has removed the stock ticker from the screen.

Looks like Laura Loomer remains not without influence.

More in the kitchen sink; this is concerning -- https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/04/not-great-bob

I actually would be just a little bit surprised to see [Trump move the US towards war with Iran]. Trump 45 escalated US participation (and lethality towards civilians) in wars that the US was already engaged in, but he did seem trigger shy about starting major new conflicts. Blowing up Soleimani is one thing; hitting Iran with B-2 strikes is entirely another. But I certainly wouldn't be shocked to see us go over the top kinetic against Iran in the next couple of weeks. Even if the intention is just coercive diplomacy, it's possible that Trump will find himself backed into a corner if the Iranians don't comply. When you've decided to blow up the world economy, why not blow up some Iranians as well?

My hospital has a shitty 403b on with high fees from Fidelity and they charge you. Lot extra if you do nothing other than a Vanguard Target fund. They'll have to figure out how to pay for the cash balance plan portion.

My hospital has a shitty 403b on with high fees from Fidelity and they charge you. Lot extra if you do nothing other than a Vanguard Target fund. They'll have to figure out how to pay for the cash balance plan portion.

Does anyone know if there's a place to order British WWII motivational posters.

I'd like to put up "Keep Calm and Carry on" and maybe "Freedom is in Peril. Defend it with all your might."

A Vanguard target fund is a pretty good choice though, for most people.

Most of my retirement is in Vanguard target funds, the majority still, but then I got moved to Schwab and they charge a deliberately high fee on Vanguard to steer us into their competitors.

I'm not touching my retirement account until it's forcefully expropriated in a way that, bizarrely, requires me to e-sign the PDF authorizing the transfer.

(It's a Vanguard fund and not doing anything during Covid turned out to be the right decision up until we re-elected a madman and his mad men.)

My Vanguard target fund has still gained 63% over the past 5 years.

124: I'm not going to sell anything, but my IRA which has a corporate bond fund and some wellington funds has performed much better.

Given this conversation about COVID, I will say the 5 minute excerpt of David Wallace-Wells on the Know Your Enemy Podcast almost perfectly matches my position: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-the-pandemic-changed-everything-w-david-wallace/id1462703434?i=1000701567976

121: https://www.iwmprints.org.uk/collections/posters-second-world-war

This one seems especially appropriate: https://www.iwmprints.org.uk/collections/posters-home-front/products/pod445914

PS the Robot Brains and Counting Sand Affairs Desk is currently established in the Westin Bayview, San Diego, so if anyone would like to do a snap meetup tonight or lunchtime tomorrow, holler at your boy.

Those in 128 are so goddamn cute. I love them all.

Is the top right supposed to be saying how smart their mum is for being able to seduce all the military guys?

128: Thank you.

128. I don't like the potato boasting about how good he tastes in soup. Cartoon foods pleading to be eaten always make me sad.

What if you trained a parrot to say "eat me"?

Or "Fuck me gently with a chainsaw" in Winona Ryder's voice.

We should be asking more from birds.

128: Hmm, I can't find the one about Zionist snitches informing on their neighbors to usher in fascism. Perhaps they're sold out.

That wouldn't make a very good poster.

Speaking of Zionism, I think I knocked on Bari Weiss's relatives door while campaigning for Harris. No one was home. Or if home, they didn't answer the door.

I had a few moments of "the fuck?" when looking at the names in Minivan.

137: Depends on which side of WWII you were on.

NMM to president Yoon.

This explains the tariffs on uninhabited islands - people putting "Norfolk Island" as point of origin by mistake instead of "Norfolk, UK" or "Norfolk VA".
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/apr/04/revealed-how-trump-tariffs-slugged-norfolk-island-and-uninhabited-heard-and-mcdonald-islands

Is the top right supposed to be saying how smart their mum is for being able to seduce all the military guys?

See also this one

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/22549

On a serious note, it is really obvious, looking at these posters in bulk, how many of them are funny. Not all of them, true. A lot of them are very serious about saving food or joining the forces or whatever. And they're all very definitely government propaganda messages - that's the point. But a good third of them are ludicrous things like the two ladies chatting on the bus with Goering sitting stolidly in the seat immediately behind them, or the "Off The Ration Exhibition at Regent Park Zoo" with a worried-looking kangaroo (many drawn by people who were professional cartoonists).

That's simply not the case for propaganda from the other side. AIMHMHB, fascists can't be funny. Or, I guess, maybe they could be in theory, but they aren't. You could probably conceive of a funny anti-semitic sitcom, but none ever get made. Hitler didn't make jokes - the closest he got was mockery.

Same with Stalinist propaganda - there are some "JOIN THE PARTISANS" posters, but nothing humorous. You could definitely imagine cartoons about the evacuation of war industries to the Urals, for example, but there just aren't any.

Same, interestingly, with Arab newspaper cartoons - there's a real contrast with, say, Israeli cartoons from the 1960s constantly portraying Abba Eban as having just got out of bed while a small and highly energetic King Hussain of Jordan zooms around him like a terrier.

You should have left a bag of flaming dog poop on her stoop, Moby

I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact we were at a fork in the road in November. One path was the status quo, with things probably getting incrementally better as supply chains stabilized and Harris continuing/expanding on some of Biden's better policies. The second path was to be ruled by delusional fascist morons who've Dunning-Krugered every aspect of the state and permanently destroyed America's reputation as an even remotely serious country. We, as a country, looked at how relatively good we had it and decided to saw our country's nuts off with a rusty saw. This is Brexit x100. I'm committed to Democracy but you can't have a functioning Democracy without a certain level of knowledge, awareness, and civic responsibility on the part of voters. I'm at a loss of what to say. 35% of Americans are irredeemable authoritarian morons.

144: Is this just a myth or was it ever a thing people really did? I can't really see how it would work. My instinctive reaction to finding something small ablaze on my doorstep would not be to stamp it out. If it was in my actual house, sure, but my doorstep is made of sandstone, which is considerably less flammable than my shoes, or indeed my feet.

My neighborhood has been pretty good about cleaning up their dog shit lately, so it would have been hard to find some.

I think the only longterm hope is the deFoxification of America. We can start by hanging Rupert Murdoch from a lamppost, next to Trump and Steven Miller, pour encourager les autres.

145.last - this is the Crazification Factor, more or less. Trump got the votes of 31.8% of eligible voters. I think it's a good working assumption that you'll always get 5% of the population supporting or agreeing with anything, however weird, improbable or hateful. Ban all cars except for blue ones? 5% of Americans say yes. Reintroduce slavery? 5% favourable. Compulsory haircuts for senators? All judges must wear roller skates? Ban geese? I bet those would get 5%.

And there's the Crazification Factor on top of that, another 27% of Americans who are just crazy - their minds don't work in any rational way we would recognise.

Don't forget that there is a very large number of Americans who have something, in the broadest sense, wrong with their heads. 17% have had a traumatic brain injury. 23% are diagnosed with some form of mental illness every year. Lifetime prevalence of diagnosed mental illness in the US is 46.4%. And that's diagnosed.

Now, of course, a large majority of these people have, or have had, a mental illness - depression, or bipolar disorder, or anxiety or whatever - but they're not completely and dangerously detached from reality. But 46.4% is still a very large pool to draw from.

Reintroduce slavery? 5% favourable.

That's way too optimistic.

I don't want to ban geese, but I do want them trained to shit with some restraint.

Polling on the issue has been sparse recently, but it looks like Moby is right. Economist/YouGov poll in January 2016:

Do you approve or disapprove of the executive order which freed all slaves in the states that were in rebellion against the federal government?
Approve strongly 53%
Approve somewhat 17%
Disapprove somewhat 8%
Disapprove strongly 5%
Not sure 17%

That's the all-respondents number. Apparently "disapprove somewhat" or "disapprove strongly" was slightly higher, 19% among Trump supporters.

I suppose there could be people who said "disapprove strongly because it left slaves in the loyalist states as slaves"?

I don't want to ban geese, but I do want them trained to shit with some restraint.

See? Crazy.

I don't want to ban geese, but I do want them trained to shit with some restraint.

Perhaps you could train them to shit on Bari Weiss's relatives' doorstep.

So apparently another 3% of stocks' value was riding on "He'll walk back the tariffs in 24 hours, right?"

Oof. Yes, apparently so.

145: It's horrifying that we did this, and it says a lot of bad things about our country, but I genuinely believe that at least 20% of any country is pretty crazy. We have a higher percentage, I'm sure. What I don't get are the people who swung from Biden to Trump after Trump tried to overthrow the election.

I wonder if Fox is not still not showing the usually ever present stock ticker again today?

Fox illustrating 148 is right every day.

Trump's coalition, out of total voters:
- MAGA cultists who relish the sawing off of our country's nuts off with a rusty saw.
- low information/price of eggs/finds having a black woman boss kind of a turn-off, who don't really know that the nuts or rusty saw exist
- high information "protect my money" assholes who knew about the nuts and rusty saw and did not give a shit, because their only priority is to protect their money. (To the point where they couldn't conceive that the black lady might actually better protect their money.)

But also, 148. Until we get our media closer tethered to reality and sanity, we're hosed.

155: Oh it's more than 3%, those 24 hours aren't done yet!

I genuinely believe that at least 20% of any country is pretty crazy.

There is actually more variation, country to country, than you might expect! Portugal, Iran and Lebanon have the highest levels of mental illness once you adjust for age (older populations will have more dementia, it's rare for children to be diagnosed before age 14, etc). The range is from, very roughly, 10-20% for actual diagnosed mental illnesses per year. The US has about 18%, age-adjusted.

At any rate, most of the tariffs don't start until April 9, and lots of people are betting they'll go away by then, even if they don't go away within 24 hours.

The theory that Trump can't possibly be this stupid has not aged well.

Wonder how many of those mentally ill Iranians are diagnosed as gay.

I agree with everyone about Fox News, because that's really the answer. Not because that strain didn't always exist in America, but now it's a major-party platform, and it's not a belief system suited to being in power; it's *essentially* fringe and paranoid, and if it becomes the mainstream, it can only cut its own balls off.

Portugal is a surprising entry on that list.

164: Related.

162: I don't use the word crazy to mean diagnosable mental illness. I mean something more like, extreme fringe views. There are people with mental illness who are so severely depressed that they can't work and know full well that they depend on Medicare or Medicaid for healthcare, psychiatry and medications. Trump is a narcissist and probably meets DSM criteria for that, but I get annoyed when people talk about him a (and RFK Jr.) as mentally ill, because it's so unfair to a lot of people with mental illness who are perfectly lovely. Even impaired people with profound schizophrenia and psychosis can be caring people.

165: Is it really Fox News now? I don't think Fox itself is that influential anymore. Most cable news watchers are older. Fox News crowd is mostly over 60.

Percentage of diagnosed mental illness doesn't seem like it would necessarily correspond at all to percent that are crazy in the way that is relevant to this. Diagnosed mental illness would probably be correlated with access to psychiatric care. Also depression is the most common diagnosed mental illness, isn't It? Depressed people usually aren't that out of touch with reality.

Now that Trump is destroying the economy I'm curious to see if his loyalists will pivot to the position that material goods are unimportant and that poverty will lead us to virtue and true greatness.

I'm depressed because I'm in touch with reality. I would like a heaping of delusion, maybe paired with day drinking.

171

That's what the Nazis did. Strong people don't need butter.

I shot the tariff. But forgot about the import duty.

171: They already all but rolled that one out a month ago when people started realizing that oh, shit, this might be happening:

"Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream," Bessent said during a speech to the Economic Club of New York. "The American Dream is rooted in the concept that any citizen can achieve prosperity, upward mobility, and economic security. For too long, the designers of multilateral trade deals have lost sight of this."

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/06/treasury-secretary-bessent-says-the-american-dream-is-not-about-access-to-cheap-goods.html

174 is great.

145: I've been watching a guy on YouTube whose whole thing is reducing wealth inequality. I liked one of his explanations, that went, roughly:

Life sucks and is getting worse for most people because of wealth inequality (and also climate change, although the YouTube guy doesn't mention it). The current system is owned by the wealthy and will continue to generate increasing wealth inequality.

There are only two parties: "business as usual" and "blame the foreigners". Neither party can deliver what people want (life getting easier) because neither party is meaningfully working on reducing wealth inequality. So every four years, the two parties will just alternate.

I think Biden did as good a job as could be done with "business as usual" and it wasn't enough. I also think our previous mayor did as good a job working the system to reduce homelessness as could be done, and it wasn't enough to please people. More and more I think that no one who works within the system (Obama, for example) can get us to where we need to be to avoid dystopia. I am real done with the "current system, but with all the improvements we can make!!" (like Biden's attempts at student loan dismissal). I'm happy Trump is breaking the current system. I want him to break it so bad that we must do something different after the war to get him out of office.

Not because that strain didn't always exist in America, but now it's a major-party platform, and it's not a belief system suited to being in power; it's *essentially* fringe and paranoid, and if it becomes the mainstream, it can only cut its own balls off.

This is true, but the example of the Jacksonian Democrats shows that it can nevertheless remain a major party in a two-party system, with occasional periods in power, for a surprisingly long time (~30 years in that case).

The Jacksonians were on the other side on tariffs specifically, but destroying the Bank was equally crazy in a different way. And the paranoia, authoritarianism, and racism were all there in the exact same way.

The system did change eventually, of course, but the way it happened is not very cheering.

I'm happy Trump is breaking the current system. I want him to break it so bad that we must do something different after the war to get him out of office.

I trust that you aren't saying that lightly, but what makes you think that's a route towards something better? I am not optimistic.

I'm not optimistic either.

169: Is it really Fox News now? I don't think Fox itself is that influential anymore. Most cable news watchers are older. Fox News crowd is mostly over 60.

Agree, that there is a much broader array of RW media but I do think Fox still plays a key role in several ways.

1) I think they are still generally serving as the spin leaders for messaging discipline and also still seem to be the preferred platform for Admin folks pushing the message. Although I do think that they get pulled into line when they make small attempts to be reasonable in the face of massively unreasonable moves by the Trumpoids. Two instances come to mind, the T position on the election after the 2020 election and J6. In both cases they mostly started down the road of "it sucks but he lost" and "this was really bad*" but soon came back to T's position (it took a bit longer for J6). And in both cases I think it was a very important signal when they got on board with the loons--in part because of 2) and 3) below,

2) They are the station of choice for "normie" Rs (i.e, not full on MAGA, but still possessed of enough greed/stupidity/nastiness/ignorance to vote for Trump). In my swing state neck of the woods I'd say that Fox is the choice for something on the order of 50% of non-sports bar places that feel the need to have a tv on at all (my old gym, various diners, bars, common areas at my old workplace**).

3) They are treated with a wholly unwarranted measure of respect by the rest of the MSM. This is the one that *really* chaps my ass. A lot of analysis out there about why there is a collapse in trust of MSM, but very little focuses on what I think is a significant factor; Fox News has been shooting their "competitors" in MSM up their ass in all sorts of ways (some legit, but most scurrilous and full of half-truths and lies), while those competitors have generally treated Fox with kid gloves. (See my rant in 106 about how Fox's full on attack on 2021+ Covid measures were barely even mentioned.)

*They did an initial try at "antifa" did it, but backed off for a while when that was so obviously untrue. But that crept back in eventually.

**Generally at least 2 TVs and Fox on one and CNN on another. I made a brief attempt to change this before 2004 election, but got zero traction.

181, 182: Sometime I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.

I did recently see Donnie Darko again in a theater. It still entertains me. (Original cut >> director's cut IMHO.)

177: I prefer my contradictions un-heightened.

In general, I think 177 is inaccurate in a way that implcitly feeds Trumpism. (In addition to explicitly rooting for those enlarged contradictions.)

There are only two parties: "business as usual" and "blame the foreigners".

Most of the egregious failings of the Democrats could be solved by electing more Democrats. Add two votes to cover for the failings of Manchin and Sinema, and good things happen. Subtract a few votes and Obamacare doesn't happen.

The fact that only 90% of Democrats are quite good has enabled cynics who want to say that it doesn't really matter who gets elected. Or that it's affirmatively good to have Trump because a bettter Democratic Party will ultimately rule the rubble. That's a mistake.

167: The U.S. global order is like a trampoline with a bowling ball in the middle

Oh man, this explains so much.

I think the basic problem is capitalism only functions when capitalists are afraid of a communist revolution. The period of basically functioning capitalism starts right around the Russian revolution and ends a little bit after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Before that and after that you have oligarchs.

Of course the fundamental problem is that communism is even worse, what you want is *somewhere else* to have communism, so that your leaders are afraid of it.

Count me in with 181/182, sadly.

There's a guy at the gym with a shirt reading "Lift Heavy, Eat the Rich." And it must be true because his chest press was twice mine.

What if every year we randomly selected a billionaire to be publicly guillotined? That would, uh, incentivize at least some of them to distribute wealth downward, and no Russian serfs would have to suffer.

Communism, like Christianity in the original version of the saying (Chesterton? ) has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.

That would, uh, incentivize at least some of them to distribute wealth downward

In the sense that the people with the power to undo that policy are presumably less wealthy (at least at first), I suppose.

177: "I agree with every word of your statement, and I won't give you a penny," said Richardson Dilworth, a distinguished investment banker and philanthropist. Why not? "Because it won't do any good. What the US needs is a great catastrophe." My instant response: "Mr. Dilworth, I come from a country that had a great catastrophe. That's why I think it's better to act beforehand."

(Paraphrased from my book, Five Germanys I Have Known, p. 453)

191 my pinned tweet for the last 6 years
https://x.com/barryfreednyc/status/1088470418074288129?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ

I proposed all kinds of actions all along the way but they were all too drastic and would have led to people judging democrats or something. So now we are here. We are clearly going to do this the hard way.

Obama should have taken McConnell's refusal to hold a hearing as default confirmation and seated Garland and told McConnell to fuck himself.
Obama should have used Russian interference as a reason to hold a 2016 do-over, with an interim seatholder so it didn't look like self-dealing.
Of course, all prosecutions should have happened swiftly and resoundingly.
Biden should have used presidential (and defacto since he's all old) immunity, when granted by the Supreme Court to assassinate/imprison Trump and his confederates.
Merchan should have sent Trump to prison for two years.

All of those are less drastic than what we face now, and any of them would put us in a much better position now. But they would have given the appearance of impropriety or something, so now we are here.

So now we are here. We are clearly going to do this the hard way.

I think we all agree with that, but it was surprising that you said you were happy about it.

any of them would put us in a much better position now

I don't agree with that. I think we would all draw the line differently but, for example, I very strongly think the country would be worse off if Biden had Trump assassinated.

Obviously, Biden would have done it with his own hands if he decided that it was better to have it done.

We were also headed for disaster before, with climate change, people's misery, species extinction, increasing wealth inequality. It is just that it was slower and we've gotten used to it.

This is a far shittier way to break capitalism and not how I would have done it, but yeah, this is apparently what we want, so let's do it.

Do we think Trump can ruin the world economy to such an extent that it will lower carbon emissions?

The silver lining in the (mushroom) cloud.

197: When enough people look for messianic/dictatorial solutions they 1.) get them 2.) regret them.

But yeah, now that we've defined our terms, I get where you're coming from. If we're equating basic respect for democracy as being "business as usual," then yeah, no question, the Dems are guilty.

I dunno. Merrick Garland was a grievous error by Biden, but even with that, I think it's a different world if Trump hadn't drawn Aileen Cannon as judge in Florida. Trump is a historical accident for a lot of reasons.

Just to be clear, assassinating the leaders of violent extremist political movements with, you know, drone strikes or whatever is always stupid and counterproductive because it just creates martyrs and encourages revenge attacks and someone else more extreme steps up EXCEPT IN THIS ONE CASE where it would all be super peachy keen and they would welcome us as liberators and it would be democracy whiskey sexy forever?

Thinking about it a little more, I would note that all of the suggestions in 197 involve someone in a position of power asserting their own authority to override the way the system would function by default.

There is definitely a place for that; I'm not going to make the claim that we should just accept the default functioning of the system. But, if the problems that you're interested in solving are, "climate change, people's misery, species extinction, increasing wealth inequality" I don't think you get there without doing a lot of system and institution building. Those are not problems that are amenable to being solved by fiat decision making.

That isn't intended as an unqualified defense of the status quo, but I just don't see how to arrive at a solution to those problem (and we'll find out whether there is a solution) that doesn't involve several iterations of "current system, but with all the improvements we can make!!"

Wow. NC court finds that 60,000 votes in judge race not legal and will be tossed unless errors in registrations etc. are fixed by voters. Most were registered and voted for years but there were errors/missing info on their registrations. Will be appealed to NC Supremes.

As always, your readings are very generous NickS.

I just don't see how to arrive at a solution to those problem (and we'll find out whether there is a solution) that doesn't involve several iterations of "current system, but with all the improvements we can make!!"

I think we've left that approach anyway, so I'm hoping for undeniably broken by the bad guys, somehow wrest power away from them, make new system that isn't just the old system but a little better.

Or maybe not. Maybe we'll just linger in undeniably broken. But I'm not sad about the end of the old economy nor U.S. Constitutional governance. Those things got us here and are headed wrong even at best.

I am sad that we broke the post-war order.

I do think that we can't go back to the status quo ante. If it's going to get better, it will only be if we citizens work hard at that and don't rely on the current crop of Democratic politicians to do everything.

That means giving to the ACLU and pushing for better government that's simpler to deal with, working on changing the media environment etc.

What's the difference between a chickpea and a garbanzo bean?

Chickpeas and good garbanzos are the same thing.

Trump has never had a garbanzo bean on his face.

someone in a position of power asserting their own authority to override the way the system would function by default.

That was their responsibility and they failed at it.

Now stupid fucks are using power in stupid ways and it turns out that using power works just fine.

211: I see what you did.

I stole that from the internet.

Still on the internet. You just relocated it.

Joyriding.

Are there.other democratic countries where significantly less than 30% of the electorate is not crazy/dumb?

Are there.other democratic countries where significantly less than 30% of the electorate is not crazy/dumb?

I think it's a different world if Trump hadn't drawn Aileen Cannon as judge in Florida. Trump is a historical accident for a lot of reasons.

It's also possible that he wouldn't have won without the assassination attempt. Even though it felt like that got buried in the new cycle by the DNC, Nate Silver noted, "The first attempt was closely correlated with an increase in favorability ratings for Trump."

Now stupid fucks are using power in stupid ways and it turns out that using power works just fine.

I don't think I agree with that either; I don't think it has worked just fine. Yes, they have been able to change things, mostly for the worse and are deeply scary. But, at the same time, Trump seems way more willing than most politicians to attempt to pursue his goals by naked use of power and how has that worked out -- relative to his own goals. The impression that I get is that most Trump supporters (and Trump himself) feel like he was mostly ineffective at achieving his aims in his first term. He's clearly trying harder in the second term, but it's not clear how well that will work*. Heck, it seems like hardly a sign of the success of raw power grabs that Trump has more or less explicitly disclaimed two significant successes of his first term (federal support for the COVID vaccine development** and the First Step Act for criminal justice reform. ). He has enriched himself (and Jared), but that's not strong evidence that the power of the presidency is a way to achieve significant policy goals when unsupported by institutional allies.

* consider, for example, this article that CharleyCarp posted a couple weeks ago: https://verdict.justia.com/2025/03/18/guantanamo-and-the-performative-president

** I appreciate the Kevin Drum argued that OWS was overrated but, nevertheless, Trump does not claim it as a success.

219.**: And I think one of the main architects of it just hot shitcanned by RFK Jr.

I read that as Occupy Wall Street and was very confused.

218. AfD got 21% of the vote in the recent German elections.

Just to be clear, assassinating the leaders of violent extremist political movements with, you know, drone strikes or whatever is always stupid and counterproductive

It depends on what you are trying to produce. Likud is achieving steady progress toward its goals, and the demise of Israel because of its assassinations has been, um, exaggerated.

Who was it here who said LotR is their scripture? We're at that intersecton in Moria: The way down is wide, but the air is bad; the way straight ahead is narrow and twisty; the way up is steep, but it's hight time we started climbing.

Will Modi risk redrawing India's electoral map?

Well, everybody go to your Hands Off demonstration today.

https://www.axios.com/2025/04/03/hands-off-protest-trump-musk-april-5

291: Do we think Trump can ruin the world economy to such an extent that it will lower carbon emissions?

Curtis "We're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age" LeMay was actually a climate visionary.

However, on February 4, 2025, Brig. General William Sserunkuma, the 3rd Division Infantry Commander, led the team of soldiers and Police combatants in heaping garbage before setting it on fire. He said the move was a sign that the forces belonged to the people of Uganda.

"Here, where bodies are buried, it's difficult to identify them because they're wrapped up," Maliyetu said. "It's impossible to identify a loved one. We're disappointed, and we're going home."

I went to the Oakland protest, but it looked kind of small and the busses downtown looked really full. So, I went downtown. This thing is huge.

They are leaning to much into speeches and not enough yelling.

At least half the people here can't hear the speakers anyway.

I was sort of counting on finding a hot dog cart.

Heading over to NM state house soon. Our place out here is just a few blocks away. Not selected for that reason but here we are. Snow this AM; curious about the crowd size.

Conor Lamb is better at this than anyone so far.

Herding the sheep, as it were.

Rousing lions.

235: Yeah, if you listen to his post-J6 speech in the House, his was one of the best. He sort of grew on me over time. Wish he was our Senator.

I left to get a sandwich and more we're marching.

the weekly protests outside the tesla on van ness have been super helpful in managing my rage & anxiety but alas not enough to bring down overall stress & now i've got a super duper painful shingles flare up. this shit sucks & would be even worse if i hadn't been vaccinated so get your vaccine folks! & i am sending supportive vibes & thanks to all who are out there today.

Someone brought a pony.

Right now NYT webpage has "7 Americans Weigh In on Trump's Sweeping Tariffs" but literally can find nothing on the protests.

WaPo a bit better w/some coverage, but lead protest story subhed is "Democrats are struggling to match the massive "resistance" movement that sprang up in Trump's first term -- and battling cynicism among their own voters." I think pubbed before they started. Next hed is about DC protest being larger than expected.

Underpowered sound here. Looks like trying to fix. Being outside a round building not helping. Crowd subtends about 160 degrees of arc in my estimation. Also out to the road in front.

Biggest cheers so far for mentions of Cory Booker.

We were expecting/hoping for 1000 people and got 1500. In the rain. Could be a record, if such records were kept.

NYT now up with small article.

Ayanna Pressley was fantastic. Head of Mass ACLU also really good.

Steady snow. Constant honking horns making it hard to hear.

A couple hundred here in Berlin, though I turned up close to an hour after starting time.

Democrats Abroad were co-organizers in Frankfurt and were signing people up, according to a friend who was there.

Last speaker--congressional rep Teresa Leger Fernandez--was a firecracker. Enthusiastic, succinct, and on point.

Great weather and good turnout here. I couldn't hear the speakers from where I was standing (on a downslope from the central area) but had a good time people watching.

Just learned she defeated Valerie Plame in D primary in her first run in 2020.

US protests are also leading the news on pop radio here, with mentions that there were protests in Berlin at the embassy (where I was) and at the Tesla showroom (which was probably more fun).

My friend is proposing this for red states:

I favor a different organizational strategy than protests. Lefties in Red states need to join the Republican Party en masse. And then they should keep voting for the lesser evil until the Trumpists are marginalized, and the lesser evil is not evil.

I'm kind of nauseated by the premise, but it seems far more achievable than anything I can come up with.

I've had a frustrating few days for mostly unrelated reasons, which is probably contribuiting to my attitude, but I'm feeling extremely negative about the rampant, stubborn, unapologetic ableism in the (local) protesting left. What a bunch of bullshit. Whoever amongst you is into organizing, please start thinking about accessibility and including that information when you create posts/fliers/etc about events.

The best campaign I've ever seen for accessibility was Fetterman's. Fuck him, but his people were very good.

I haven't seen a lot of campaigns either.

Best as in most effectively waged?

I mean best for being accessible, at least best for being accessible in a way that gets noticed by a not disabled guy who tends to post here if he gets board while volunteering.

I've more or less accepted the fact that very few, if any, events in Montana will ever be accessible (to me) unless I am involved from the beginning in planning the event. (For any and every type of event, including family weddings and funerals).

What is increasingly irritating/enraging to me, however, is that not only will no one make their own arrangements for accessibility in general, they also refuse, no matter how many times they are asked, to simply POST ACCESSIBILITY INFORMATION.

Most recently, I commented on an organizing post to say "could people please include accessibilty information on event posts? For example, there will or won't be ASL interpreters, the event is or isn't wheelchair accessible, etc". I immediately got a cascade of mostly supportive responses, one of which asked for information about interpreters, which I provided in the thread.

On a different thread, about a different event, a few days ago, I repeated the request. This time I got a series of "What kind of access do you need?" and "Has anyone responded to you?" and, from an organizer, "This is the same event we messaged about last week" (no, it isn't), and "I asked you to email me info about sign language translators* and you didnt'" (you didn't, but I provided that anyway, and also this is easily accessible public information on a google).

Zero of the posts since then, and zero fliers or other material, have included any mention of whether or not any event is accessible. This is the 500th conversation I've had with various people about the exact same topic. NONE of them have had any traction. People simply will not include "accessiblity" as something they are willing to think about when organizing anything.

I get that it sucks to start paying attention to something you hadn't been, especially if you aren't doing a great job of dealing with it. It also sucks to be excluded from literally every event in the community because no one is willing to make any adjustments to how they conceptualize "people".What a shitty state this is.

259 "accessible" hahaha

I've seen a lot of really good campaigns but none of them get any attention from anyone who isn't already looped in on whatever social media they happen for. Sometimes eventually things leak through to the general public (no one except Elon says the R word any more) but mostly not.

I have Many Thoughts about this topic but I'm too angsty to discuss it at the moment.

Here's my favorite video on the subject
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzRQOfVvVh4

260 the star was supposed to go to a comment that no matter how many examples to the contrary are provided, hearing people refuse to call ASL interpreters "interpreters" and will only refer to them as "signers" or translators" which I also find irritating but in a less fundamentally upsetting way.

There an ASL interpreter at the last protest I went to before today. There was probably one today, but I wasn't close enough to see the stage.

There was also a pony. Which I did see because it wasn't on the stage.

People are running tv commercials to get you to move to Ohio.

People in Montana are much shittier about disabilities and access than anywhere else I have lived.

There are probably more ponies though?

This was a very small pony. It was used to justify a sign about "horse shit."

I've thought about doing 254, and almost did so in the last primary because there was a contested governors race with a relatively clear lesser evil. The greater evil ended up winning by 18%. You really do need a lot of people doing this at once to matter.

The tradeoff is you lose any say whatsoever in city elections. And there the margins have been like a couple dozen so it feels like that vote matters more.

I suppose some of the registered Democrats here who voted for Trump are really Republicans who wanted a meaningful vote in a local election.

There's a guy named Knueffel and every time I hear the name, I think of Knuffle Bunny.

Why 'interpreter' rather than 'translator'? AIUI ASL is actually a different language, no?

https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-can-be-sued-kenya-over-posts-related-ethiopia-violence-court-rules-2025-04-04/

264: And a pony!

"hearing people refuse to call ASL interpreters "interpreters" and will only refer to them as "signers" or translators" which I also find irritating but in a less fundamentally upsetting way."

People get this wrong all the time with all sorts of languages, to the point where my office has a box on the booking form saying basically "translators take a document and go away and turn it into another document. Interpreters stand there and say what you're saying in another language. Please make sure you ask for the right one."

269: common here too.

Weathering with You is overwrought, but very pretty to look at.

Unlike most anime, it's rancid with real logos rather than bowdlerized ones. I didn't sit through the credits to see if consideration was paid. (Which isn't a knock: it's set in Tokyo, there have to be logos everywhere.)

I'm afraid I am going to have to inflict bit of NYT-specific media criticism this morning.

Their news "judgment" is on rampant display in its full oligarchic glory today. Top story is from London correspondent: "Trump's Tariffs Will Wound Free Trade, but the Blow May Not Be Fatal." Illustrated with a defiant Trump fist raised-pose at the White House---you know despite his playing golf in Florida this weekend.

A number of other mostly political articles, and then you get midway down to a story on the protests with no pictures on the home page (but big protests are so notoriously non-photogenic of course).
"Mass Protests Across the Country Show Resistance to Trump
Demonstrators packed the streets in cities and towns to rail against government cutbacks, financial turmoil and what they viewed as attacks on democracy." [emphasis added]
Looking at the "Today's Paper" section, it apparently ran on page A18. But understandable I guess since it was not that big of a a thing in NYC itself... oh wait...

Never change MFers, never change.

Of course there is prior form for this minimal coverage of large protests, see especially the runup to Iraq.

That's not entirely true - they covered the Tea Party protests pretty well.

Trump's Tariffs Will Wound Free Trade, but the Blow May Not Be Fatal." I really could not believe that. Crazy-making.

We can still smuggle cigarettes into Canada and liquor back out, right?

Or penguin pelts.

Well the big impact of going to Saturday's protest for me is that I'm seriously contemplating getting involved with organizing again with the people I have been on the outs with for the last 12 years. It's not exactly the only game in town but it is the one that would be most accessible to me.

St. Paul was pretty decent. Perhaps not the biggest demo I've been to at the capitol, but certainly top 5. Unfortunately, it coincided with some major roadwork on I-94, so traffic got screwed up all over the city. There were people leaving already when we got there almost an hour late and people still arriving when we left after an hour. Lotsa people even older than me were there, which was kinda nice to see, but I worry that there might not be enough youth and energy to keep the pressure up. Which should hardly be a surprise to anyone, given the way the soft left has comported itself recently.

I had a very good ham sandwich at the protest. I had to step away for a bit when there was no hot dog cart.

281: It was from a London correspondent, and I think the hook was that it might not blow up everything between other countries as has happened in prior trade wars. Something like that.

I will not that the protest story quickly fell of the web page this afternoon.

Was it the same London correspondent who keeps writing pieces about how the British have just discovered Thai food?

254 sounds really sensible and I'm a bit surprised that it doesn't happen more often. Thinking about it, there might be one disadvantage: AIUI you can't register as a Republican and a Democrat simultaneously. So if all the sensible Democrats register as Republicans and start voting in primaries for non-insane Republicans, the selection of Democratic candidates will be left to purity idiots who just want to send a message about how awful Jewish capitalism is, and the end result of that will be that the non-insane Republican will be going up against a completely unelectable Democrat, and will win.

Is Josh Marshall losing his mind amid the onslaught, as well?

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/notes-on-civil-societys-quasi-war-with-a-renegade-president

I wanted this post to make some sense of the war on science and the much needed response to it. But it really wandered off into a secondary history reference that he wouldn't explain and that was the point, Ha!

Damn, we need him.

289: No, it makes sense. Marshall is saying that the scientific community and its friends should, instead of spending their energies trying to protect their own stuff (budgets, basically) try to attack Trump's stuff (in this case, the great indifferent mass of voters).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine%E2%80%93Sasanian_War_of_602%E2%80%93628#Byzantine_resurgence

But he appears to simultaneously* be trying to use the obscure historical reference as an example of *not* talking in language people understand (unlike say some well-known historical analogy like Crossing the Rubicon**). We need an explanation in our language to understand his point--just ss researchers and unis need to translate the grant/stipend/etc language.

So I think an attempt at some rhetorical razzle-dazzle that barely comes off (or maybe not st all). Murder your darlings.

*His "operates on several levels"

**Or more correctly maybe, all misunderstand in the sane way.

291.2 Comity.
Although it is in fact a great reference. I think the depth of crisis, the desperation, and the all-or-nothing extremity of the Romans' response are appropriate to invoke.

How are they using 'Cross the Rubicon' as a reference? I personally felt that the Rubicon was crossed when Trump was inaugurated after having attempted an insurrection. Was there some other specific thing that's analogous?

Crossing the Jeep Wrangler Rubicon can be done by parking like an asshole.

I worry that tpmjosh's writing and thinking have become too diffuse by far. So the post is saying give up the direct battle to maintain grants for science - already lost, he says - and get the disease-focused organizations like Komen & American Diabetes Association to fight the fight?

Seems like a false dichotomy and a false analogy to abandoning Constantinople during the siege. If researchers arent' battling for their funds there won't be much of serious science left if & when the public battle is won.

It has been a long time since I was last at my desk looking forward with horrified fascination to the opening of the US markets... http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_9214.html

You know, some people, very sick people, they say to me, Dr Weir, your ship killed its entire crew. Well, today she has a new crew, just the best crew, really a beautiful crew. And we have such sights to show you. You'll get tired of all the sights. This big strong guy comes up to me, tears in his eyes, and says Dr Weir, there are too many sights, and I said to him, where we're going you won't need eyes to see.

293: He did not mention crossing yhe Rubicon, thst was just me giving a historical analogy that most people know as opposed to the relatively unknown one that Marshall used.

Yeah, kinda weird post from JMM. The (unbanned!) analogy is awfully obscure, even for his well-educated readership.

Heh, the averages went positive for a bit based on some possibility of postponements but now back down. Forgetting any specific policy of the moment, is the massive uncertainty priced in? Or are the money guys still thinking there is hope for their dream of de-reged but otherwise generally sane (from their perspective) econ policies? I think they are still clinging to the latter.

To me the uncertainty (on nearly every front) and vengeful is the overarching story and the tariffs just one (albeit significant) sideshow.

Margaret Sullivan (the only good public editor the Times ever had, and even she was not really up to it) with a rundown of generally muted coverage of the protests.

https://margaretsullivan.substack.com/p/big-protests-but-not-big-news?utm_medium=ios

I suppose I should put a new kitchen sink thread up on the front page?

I don't think it's weird or indicates problems on his part. It wouldn't survive in a fully edited opinion column, but it fits a blog post. It's like 7 sentences on that analogy and 2 of them are summarizing the takeaway for unfamiliar readers. The gauchest part is the humblebrag that's it's super obscure, you probably haven't heard of it. A brief indulgence.

is the massive uncertainty priced in

I'll say no, because there is no bottom, and it isn't just tariffs. Trump bragging about putting a kill switch in the F-35 should be the death knell for American arms exports. Gutting the FDA puts global pharma into chaos because even though the EMEA is respected, the FDA is still the global gold standard. Attacking the NIH so relentlessly drains the pipeline that products ten years from now depend on.

The whole policy background makes a mockery of the idea of planning certainty, by design. That's no way to run a railroad, much less the world's biggest economy in the 21st century.

I don't know that there is a way to price in that much uncertainty.

303: I don't think it indicates problems. If you write as much as Josh does, you're bound to miss from time to time.

I mean, unless you're an Unfogged commenter. Our every utterance is purest rhetorical gold.

The post does end abruptly, before actually outlining the recommendations it implies.

He said it was just his brainstorm. Not bad for a brainstorm. The historical analogy might be ok if he fleshed it out a bit.

305: Like dogs crapping rhetorical marijuana.

An eclectic web dispensary.

Nice.

308: Palm civets and coffeee.