We bought Article II of the United Nations Charter with the blood of a hundred million human beings, and less than a century later, it's being sold for nothing by people who don't even understand what they're doing.

i think this is what drives me nuts. people talk about how, say, the UN was founded by "starry eyed idealists" who didn't understand "reality." the truth is that the UN was founded by those who had just fought and *won* the bloodiest war in human history.

Oh, well, that clears that up

This, more or less, is the full encapsulation of social media: Person A says something they wish was true. Person B points out that it’s not. Person A gets mad at Person B for ruining the vibe and calls them some largely gross epithet in the Chapo dialect.

I think the biggest problem with AI is that it has been the subject of a marketing campaign to promote it way beyond its actual merits. The obvious solution is to make AI compete in the market on an even playing field and assess it with clearer eyes. Harassing strangers who use AI is just psychotic.

People are sometimes surprised to learn that Adam Smith - often considered the father of capitalism - was very critical of landlords. What surprised me more was realizing just how hard it was to find a mainstream economist who actually liked landlords.

Proposed compromise: rename *part* of Penn Station and Dulles Airport after Trump. For example, a bathroom.

So, the USAF obviously named the F-47 after Trump because they understood that this was a surefire way to convince him to give them $3 billion. They also tried to hedge their bets and say "uh, we also named it after the P-47, our famous WWII fighter" which is bullshit.

Love when things line up

"Masked fascist stormtroopers attacked my city, kidnapped my neighbors and executed people in cold blood. I knew the time for peaceful protest was over, so I did the one thing I knew would surely send them running: I punched Will Stancil."

it's fascinating how we haven't been able to move past these dynamics

Disco Elysium ass headline

I think in cases like this a (legit!) concern with the UK's libel laws can dovetail with a cultural preference for indirect comments. For example, here's a wartime quote from Arthur Harris about an aircraft manufacturer he wasn't happy with.

People call tear gas a "chemical weapon" or a "riot control agent," and arguably it's both those things. I would say *functionally* it's like a magic wand that lets you punch an entire crowd of people in the face at the same time - even if you aren't any good at punching people. So OFC ICE likes it.

My hot take on billionaires is that they are a largely unavoidable byproduct of a market economy where individuals can start private ventures, in much the same way as eating a delicious burrito occasionally produces a bout of explosive diarrhea. They are the economic equivalent of indigestion.

I guess that explains a few things

There needs to be a reaction image of a Mossad agent being like "did you know that you can shoot brown people *dramatic pause* with your gun?" while a US police officer wearing reading glasses furiously takes notes.

This looks like they made a movie out of the 1 second AI video clips from pop-history bot accounts that keep showing up on your Facebook feed no matter how many times you hit "not interested"

If you take a political science course, you will be told at some point that politics is the "art of compromise" You may not be told that a compromise is a "thing that everyone says they want but that nobody actually wants." I think that's relevant to a lot of the discourse on here.

god bless none of this is true for the vast, vast majority of Chinese workers.

A very simple rule of thumb that applies to the 19th century French Army: if a particular French infantry doctrine seems dumb, backwards or otherwise confusing *yet* seems to have somehow worked, the secret ingredient is "artillery." The enemy cannot repel your bayonet charge if they are dead.

There is a certain point where stupidity and incompetence loop back around into being basically magic, and I think that point comes when you manage to start an international incident in *Minneapolis*

A major downside to Canada buying the Gripen that nobody seems to talk about is that SAAB designed it around an American engine. The US could therefore block the sale under ITAR. But if the US ambassador is going to talk shit like this, we should probably make the Americans go through the trouble.

It has been brought to my attention that Library and Archives Canada has a Creekranian dictionary from 1954. In case you read that and thought you were having a stroke, it's basically a dictionary of vernacular terms used by First Nations and Eastern Europeans employed by Canadian National Railways.

Minnesotans have all "studied the playbook."

Are US libs going to get the *Second* amendment in the national divorce now too?

PR in Canada looks like Germany. PR in the U.S. looks like India fucked the Netherlands.

There's a profile purporting to belong to former Google AI designer Tony Aubé that I'm roughly 90% sure is fake. The real Tony's profile directory does not list a Bluesky account, and the profile on Bluesky is the only one where his name is spelled without an accent aigu. www.tonyaube.com/find-me

"Environmental Insurrectionist" is a great example of how the right can only learn new words when they're being used to accuse them of crimes and then they only learn their meaning well enough to turn the accusation on their enemies

Stancil here like "please consult this graph"

Will Stancil fighting the good fight.

Sharp points from @polphilpod.bsky.social on the basic error that centrists made in overreacting to meaning of Trump 2024 win. Dovetails w/my argument that folks didn't appreciate the latent solidarity with immigrants felt by many ordinary people (see below) www.liberalcurrents.com/liberalism-d...

I think Democrats should claim that they're going to make immigration tougher, and then simply describe a better version of system when asked about it. Polling consistently shows that the public wants to get tougher, and also that their version of tougher is *weaker than the actual system now.*

Photo by Pierre Lavie. Yes this is me. And I threw my Leica. It landed on the bass plate with hardly a scratch. Another Photographer grabbed it along with my phone and I was able to track him later. I was held face down tear gas deployed right in front of me and pepper sprayed directly into the eye.

We had years and years of right wingers saying the left hated Canada because they talked about racism and the environment but when push comes to shove they’re on the knees licking the mud of the boots of whichever foreign fascist tries to shake down the country first

I'm just imagining the charge sheet if the average infanteer slipped and yeeted a loaded mag into a crowd of civilians. You'd be bumming beer money off your buddies for months and probably get a new call sign at minimum.

I'm like 80% sure this is what the Trump administration actually believes.

I think some of the reluctance of mainstream politicians to say "abolish ICE" comes down to a hangover from "abolish the police." But these are different! "The police" is a collective noun for a lot of different organizations all over the place. ICE is just one organization.

Look, guys, I'm sure Trump has seen this graphic before, and equally sure Iran has a whole bunch of uninhabited mountains where nobody would much mind an extra crater or two

Every ICE agent I’ve seen has been a doughy insecure mess who needs to cosplay soldier to feel strong. If that’s what you think is “physically confident” or “masculine,” woo boy do we have some issues.

There's got to be a word for a fallacy where someone assumes a rule or a norm that sounds humanitarian must be entirely divorced from pragmatic logic. The Trump administration is obviously a common offender, but it's not the only one.

Pope Leo in State of the World address: “War is back in vogue and a zeal for war is spreading.  The principle established after the Second World War, which prohibited nations from using force to violate the borders of others, has been completely undermined.” www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

"So Matt, tell me why you want to recreate the hidden continent of Doggerland?" "For... Uh... Tax purposes"

gotta be some use for this at some point

I told them to reject the notion cops don’t have time to think, that they simply must act. I say ‘if I tell you I’m gonna punch you in 90 seconds, you could go make a sandwich & still have time to figure out what to do.’ Well, you’ve got 90 seconds as you’re driving to the call..so use it wisely

Frankly, even if we lived in a parallel universe where ICE was a universally well-meaning organization, you still wouldn't want them on the streets because the modal agent is too dumb to be trusted with a pen knife.

I hear some farms are short on poorly paid fruit pickers. So that's an idea.