Hm, almost as if people are "predestined" to either be part of an "elect" or not.

The US Government, through the National Science Foundation, does in fact have effective control of the South Pole, so this is actually a possible thing to do.

OMG, guys, Jeffries is well aware that this is already illegal! This, like all of his other demands (and Schumer's) is a messaging thing to draw attention to all the illegal shit they're doing. The GOP is extremely unlikely to agree to these or any other demands, and DHS is certain to ignore them.

Some people even seem to be treating the very existence of a deal as a loss for the Dems, which is telling. Like there are people posting headlines about Schumer announcing a deal with no details about what's in it and expressing their discontent.

I didn't realize Alaska had phased out *all* their Q400s, although I had noticed that all my recent non-737 flights have been on Embraers. Good to know.

It's funny how many of the people who were complaining earlier today that the Democrats' demands were insufficient are now claiming the Dems backed down by making a deal that incorporates those demands.

A large crowd rallies at the Alaska State Capitol in Juneau in protest of ICE, murders of Minneapolis residents Alex Pretti, Renee Good and others in ICE custody, and calling for an end to ICE operations + immigration crackdown

Moderately hot take on generative AI: Its use is ethically acceptable only in cases where plagiarism is already acceptable (there are some!), but in almost all of those cases using AI involves more work for less benefit than regular plagiarism so there's not actually any advantage to using it.

Finished part 2 of the Hospitallers article, which includes a brief mention of the period in the seventeenth century when they controlled several Caribbean islands. I had known about this at one point but had forgotten.

The Hospitallers' main rivals, the Templars, were famously discredited and abolished after the Crusading era ended and the Hospitallers generally ended up with their assets, some of which they retain to this day. Resiliency!

It's funny that Franklin, despite being the oldest Founding Father, would clearly be the one who would best fit in if he somehow showed up today.

I'm reading a long article from 1938 about the medical work of the Knights Hospitallers. It's really interesting; over several hundred years they were very much in the forefront of developing ideas about both hospital administration and what we would now call nonprofit management.

Remember when Chris Christie did this exact same thing? How'd that work out for him?

At a bar in Silver City and one of the other guys at the bar broke his glass. Bartender said “mazel tov!”

It’s like they’re going out of their way to kill the most sympathetic people imaginable.

The mockery is well deserved, but the rule of legislative procedure here is “you need a majority to vote against him” and that majority doesn’t exist (in Congress!) regardless of what Democrats do.

Nice little structural ambiguity for the #linguistics feed

This basic pattern has been well known for a while but it's interesting to see it quantified.

When I worked for the State of Alaska I had a co-worker who had this map hung up in his office.

Apparently two of the hotels I've stayed at in Nome have since burned down (Polaris and Nugget). The Aurora Inn is still there and is definitely the best choice if you're headed out that way.

The interesting thing here is really how small the margins are on the Republican side.

Seems fitting that Twitter has devolved into the John Birch Society dunking on Elmo.

This has turned out to be a surprisingly competitive game.

I disagree. Americans are not paying any attention to statements like this, but Europeans are. Democrats need to be calibrating their message here to the people who are actually listening and actually care, which does not include anyone in the Trump administration.

"Cuts both ways like a Bowie knife" is an analogy that I think could be used more.

Hilarious that he would ask this of Ganz of all people.

Getting a lot of traction on this one, which I think is a sign I should do more archaeology threads.

The vast majority of Americans across the political spectrum don't really think of non-Americans as real people. For them events outside the US exist purely as a backdrop for disputes within it.

Some time in the next few weeks, I’m expecting certain people to learn about the existence of Saint Pierre & Miquelon.

The idea that swing voters have consistent principles that they apply the same way each time is the biggest fallacy about swing voters.

Finally, for the Southwest, here's a quick thread on the Patayan of western Arizona and adjacent parts of Nevada and California. These on the brown sites on this map. www.google.com/maps/d/edit?...

Oh man, this Bears game.

Next, I'll do a couple of short threads about the "peripheral" Southwestern archaeological cultures. First up, the Fremont. Here's a map. Fremont sites are in green, Ancestral Puebloan sites in orange, Archaic sites in gray. www.google.com/maps/d/edit?...

Another thread about Southwestern archaeological site patterns, this time focused on the "interstitial" cultures: the Sinagua and the Salado. www.google.com/maps/d/edit?...

neolithic guys get pissed if you tell them their cultures are organized by the type of pots and jewelry they made. "we called ourselves the blood hunters" "we conquered villages far beyond this horizon" sorry bud you're the western linear pottery culture now

“Oh no! The dumbass teenagers we recruited to our fake school by promising not to enforce sexual harassment laws immediately started sexually harassing each other! How could this have happened?!”

Since the Nobel Prize is in the news rn, here is one of my favorite historical stories. It's about the Nobel Prize and it's ALSO about resisting the fucking Nazis, so it's a perfect time to re-up!

Ha. Oh Fairbanks.

Great thread about why Social Security is not actually doomed, which is a surprisingly common belief among people my age and younger.

The Gay American Novel. You know the one.

Okay, another thread on public archaeological site locations, here talking about the Southwest. I'm going to do a series of these on various regions of interest. Here's a regional map: www.google.com/maps/d/edit?...

Okay, here's a thread with some general comments on the distribution of sites based on this map. Focusing on the contiguous US. Here's a zoomed-in screenshot:

Okay, here's the initial version of the public archaeological sites map. Currently just US (including territories) but I'll add more countries over time. I'll do a series of threads pointing out some noteworthy regional patterns. General notes in this thread. www.google.com/maps/d/edit?...

And then Paul is even worse! James is good stuff but basically just Judaism that gets mostly ignored by later Christianity.

Before reading the NT (after reading the OT/HB) I did briefly wonder if doing so would make me more sympathetic to Christianity. Turns out, no! Jesus is a huge dick in the Gospels, especially to his disciples. Which is fascinating, but not at all sympathetic.

I actually think it's fine for people to not be familiar with scriptural references from religions they don't belong to.

We're like three weeks away from mandatory asbestos in new construction. A little surprised he hasn't ordered it yet actually.

Okay, here's the initial version of the public archaeological sites map. Currently just US (including territories) but I'll add more countries over time. I'll do a series of threads pointing out some noteworthy regional patterns. General notes in this thread. www.google.com/maps/d/edit?...

As I was saying, she's a serious candidate and this is a real race.

Positive-negative ratings: Mary Peltola Positive 46.1% Negative 40.9% No opinion 11.7% Never heard 1.3% Dan Sullivan Positive 39.2% Negative 50.6% No opinion 9.9% Never heard 0.3% Race: Mary Peltola 48.0% Dan Sullivan 46.4% Undecided 5.6%