Happy Hour

Get happy

Do We Think The State Department Is Filled With People Who Love Nonrich Arabs

Think this answers itself.

Another Sternly Worded Letter

 

Oh No Elmo

Americans can have a bit of a starry-eyed view of the EU regulatory authorities, but they are much more likely than US ones (generally) to actually do something.

EU launches probe into Elon Musk's X platform

X, formerly Twitter, is suspected of having failed to counter illegal content and disinformation, an EU commissioner said about the infringement proceedings. The EU seeks to tackle big tech firms under new regulations.

Lunch Thread

Shop while you eat! (Ad, I get a commission).

Will That Be Fun

Too many of our rich weirdos genuinely want the world to end, so they can win the game by being the last man standing.

Will the post-apocalypse be fun? Will you be enjoying yourself?

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is building a sprawling, $100 million compound in Hawaii—complete with plans for a huge underground bunker. A WIRED investigation reveals the true scale of the project—and its impact on the local community.

I suspect mere survival won't be as easy as these weirdos imagine, but more than that, their video game servers will stop working.

Woke Pope

Meloni's going to go to war against the Vatican.

ROME -- Pope formally approves same-sex blessings, says people shouldn’t be subject to 'exhaustive moral analysis' to get them.

"Dog-Whistling"

I don't think that term means what Chris Christie thinks it means.

Reminds me that "dog-whistling" once meant secret codes that only racists hear. Now it's more used as "things everybody but political journalists and supposedly respectable Republican politicians can hear."

Morning

Again

Sunday Night

Rock on.

Sunday Evening

Monday's coming

Ivy League Daily

We are several years into the centering of a tiny minority of a tiny minority of university students (usually conservatives at a subset of Ivy League schools, but at the moment The Right Kind Of Jew, as decided by the NYT editors, at a subset of Ivy League schools), and I just have to ask: what the fuck is wrong with all of these grown ass adults obsessed with this stuff? 

Al Bundy obsessed with The Big Game is a lot more healthy than these people.

Ignoring The Stink

There's a lot of discussion about whether people are giving Biden enough credit for THE ECONOMY and fair enough but there are other things going on at the moment.

The next step will be to tell people they shouldn't care about the things they care about.

Specifics aside, voters are wrong about lots of things, people care about lots of things they "shouldn't," and yelling at them about either is not effective campaigning.

Political professionals telling voters  they shouldn't care about things that they are constantly told they should care about [because they dominate news coverage for months] only happens because they have the "wrong" opinions about such matters.

I really don't think you can get mad at voters for objecting to the Jared Kushner Middle East Peace Plan and the Stephen Miller Immigration Reform Plan.

Protagonists

A very obvious example of the Times determining who the protagonists are. It's one kind of Jew (at HARVARD), not the other kind of Jew.

Which Jewish students did they interview? Which Jewish students did they not interview?  Right there in the text. Amazing stuff.

Also, students protesting very politely (including, quite likely, some Jewish students who don't count) is portrayed as hostile antisemitism.

That's before we get to the obvious lack of coverage of what it must be like to be a Muslim student on campus at the moment.

Yah sucks to feel alone and estranged when you are 20, so alone the major newspapers keep putting your concerns in print 

Morning

Sunday funday.

Saturday Evening

Enjoy

What If Covid II

If "Covid II" showed up tomorrow - a similar epidemic on a similar timeline with no vaccine initially - how would the Biden administration and state governments react?

Elite opinion about Covid seems to fall somewhere close to "all measures from closures to WFH to mandatory masking were wrong" and I suspect the reaction would not be good!

Afternoon Thread

Flashback.

To the Editor:

A woman I had dinner with the other night said to me that the atmosphere in this country since the Persian Gulf war is like that at a party in a beautiful home, with everybody being polite and bubbly. And there is this stink coming from somewhere, getting worse all the time, and nobody wants to be the first to mention it. KURT VONNEGUT New York, March 27, 1991

"AI"

One thing we value computers for is precision. You know, the spreadsheet spits out the right calculation and if it doesn't it's probably because I programmed it wrong. I really don't understand the perceived value of sassy chatbots that lie to you.

This Is The End

Rudy's jury was like, ok, cool, let's end him.

Giuliani attorney Joseph Sibley told jurors there's no question that Freeman and Moss were harmed and that they're "good people," but he added that the “punishment must match the crime.” He said Giuliani never promoted racism or violence and that the millions of dollars Freeman and Moss are seeking would be the “civil equivalent of the death penalty.”

“It would be the end of Mr. Giuliani,” Sibley added.