8,337 karma · joined January 1, 2023
What's really stupid is not being allowed to get on the flight at all.
Like: she's not labelled as a "terrorist", so just let her on the flight as she's not likely to make the plane explode, and let the customs folks take her as a one-off to be dealt with on home soil. Why is it necessary to be pre-approved to even get on the flight?
Reverse the taxes of Trump and Bush to start. Then perhaps reverse the tax cuts of Reagan.
A major plank of the GOP's game plan has long been cutting taxes and then complain about too much spending:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
Another plank has been voter suppression:
It's not that they "didn't mind", but many probably were happy that he was those things:
> If you’re a racist, you found your guy. If you’re a misogynist, you found your guy. If money is your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart is armored shut, you found your guy. If you mock the disabled, you found your guy. If intelligence makes you insecure, you found your guy. If you’re a sexual predator, you found your guy. If you trade in humiliation and conspiracy and filth, you found your guy.
> If you’ve never done a single hour of emotional inventory, you found your guy. If you cheat, stiff contractors, bankrupt your obligations, and call it savvy, you found your guy. If you lie as easily as you breathe, you found your guy. If cruelty feels like strength, you found your guy. If white grievance is your comfort food, you found your guy. If your ego is a black hole no title can fill, you found your guy. If warmongering fuels your ego, you found your guy, If empathy feels like weakness and dominance feels like oxygen, you found your guy.
> If he’d only carried one or two of these pathologies, he might have been dismissed as just another loud, damaged man. But he carried a buffet of them. That was the appeal. Millions could locate themselves somewhere in the wreckage. They didn’t have to agree with all of it. They just had to recognize a piece of themselves in it.
> It was never really about him. It was about the validation. The absolution. The permission. He didn’t invent the resentment; he amplified it. He didn’t create the cruelty; he normalized it. He gave millions the intoxicating relief of hearing their ugliest impulses echoed back at rally volume.
[…]
* Michael Jochum, Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition
This is like saying to a cop that's pulled you over for speeding "I pay for your salary".
Yes, you do. But so do a bunch of other people do as well. And someone has to decide how to balance the needs of the many, which is where management / governance comes it: and said management has decided that the resources will be spent, or not spent, on certain things.
> OSI approved Yes
* https://www.xquartz.org/releases/bare/XQuartz-2.8.6.html
Previously 2.8.5 was out in 2023:
* https://www.xquartz.org/releases/bare/XQuartz-2.8.5.html
There's a XQuartz 2.8.7 beta as well (xorg-server 26.1 rebase):
The "article" is the transcript of a radio segment/story (the audio clip at the top).
There's nothing "these days" about the idea: that's how all debt should be looked at. How much in interest will it cost you, and are the benefits you get worth that cost?
Borrowing money at 2-4% to build water/sewers infrastructure so your population does not die, and thus allows for better economic growth, can pay for the borrowed money easily. Or roads, bridges, rail, schools, scientific research, etc.
If you're borrowing money because you have low revenues due to tax cuts (especially in top tax brackets), then perhaps your ROI won't be as good.
* https://www.cato.org/commentary/sadly-fiscal-restraint-no-lo...
When you've lost the Cato Institute…
More recently in 2025, "The petrodollar, not GOP fiscal restraint, is what sustains our unsustainable debt":
* https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/5465671-republican-fisca...
Not that I believe the folks at the top at the GOP really cared about it, ever, going back to (at least) Reagan; it was mostly an excuse to cut taxes on the wealth and cut social programs:
* https://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/magazi...
Something being mandated by Congress is no protection at times:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Inter...
(Or the Constitution for that matter it seems.)
Schengen and the Euro were hardly minor:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_opt-outs_from_E...
There were only four (now three) countries in the EU that got any opt-outs at all, and the UK the most opted-out items (4):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opt-outs_in_the_European_Union
> However, 58-61% think the UK should have to participate in all major EU policies if it rejoined, like Schengen and the Euro
> If it were only willing to rejoin with its old opt-outs, support for the UK rejoining falls to 36% in France and 39% in Germany
* https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/55023-ten-years-after-the-...
Support for reversing Brexit / rejoining the EU is a bit mixed:
> While 55% of Britons say they support the UK rejoining the EU, this falls to just 35% if the UK had to rejoin without its prior opt-outs, with 43% opposed
* https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54925-what-do-britons-thin...
The UK had a pretty unique setup previously, and I'm not sure if the EU would really go along with it again.
The Stand-up Maths channel just did a video on this, "Can Count Binface win?":
> "Can Count Binface actually win this election? In a word: yes. In more words: probably not… but we'll get to that later."
See perhaps this article on the various style guides of various US federal courts:
* https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/the_fonts_of_the_us_feder...
Or various other articles:
* "On Fonts: Why Lawyers Should Switch To Century Schoolbook": https://www.ncbarblog.com/on-fonts-why-lawyers-should-switch...
* "Typography for Lawyers": https://typographyforlawyers.com
But to take an extreme example: at least at first glance, how would treat a SCOTUS decision written in Times New Roman versus one written in Comic Sans?
* https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/12/state-department-ret...
* Via: https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/full_text_of_marco_rubio_...
Gruber's commentary:
> Rubio’s memo makes the argument — correctly — that aesthetics matter, and that the argument that Calibri was in any way more accessible than Times New Roman was bogus. Rubio’s memo does not lash out against accessibility as a concern or goal. He simply makes the argument that Blinken’s order mandating Calibri in the name of accessibility was an empty gesture. Purely performative, at the cost of aesthetics.
[…]
> 2024 was a Biden year, not a Trump year, so there’s no reason to think the remediation numbers were counted differently. The change to Calibri was the worst kind of accessibility effort: one that was founded on nothing more than feel-good performance. It was a change everyone could see and notice, but one that had no practical benefit whatsoever. Good on Rubio for rescinding a bad decision, and even better for doing so with a fair and informative explanation.^2
Gruber is no fan of the Trump administrator generally, but he thinks in this case it seems that they/Rubio got it right.
He also recently had a post on the various style guides of various US federal courts:
* https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/the_fonts_of_the_us_feder...
I understand that thinking (see also 'would you play Russian roulette with those odds?'), but the "(>)1:1" comments hides the underlying distribution, which I think colours how people think about the (alleged) pervasiveness of firearms in the US.
As another example of perception versus reality, most people probably don't think of Canada as 'gun country', but we're in the top ten per capita (probably because of the history/culture of hunting up here):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...
And if you're going to teach people about odds and statistics, perhaps it will help people understand that guns tend to make people's homes less safe:
* https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2013/03/guns-in-homes-a...
Except that majority of households (58%) do not have a firearm:
* https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/24/key-facts...
and when it comes to individuals, it is the majority (70%) that do not own one. The numbers are 'skewed' by a few individuals that own a lot of them. Statistically you'd be more correct to assume the person in the car does not have one (unless, perhaps, they're a white guy):
* https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-dem...
"Communicating": https://xkcd.com/1860/
People have been DIYing swimming pools for decades with the help of… books:
* https://www.amazon.com/COMPLETE-GUIDE-SWIMMING-CONSTRUCTION-...
Where do you think ChatGPT got its information from?
This was tried in the past:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xLxM-TzBPY
* https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/the-tungsten-market-is-warnin...
* https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tungsten-market-is...
Parts of the US are literally on fire.
* https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/map/#d:24hrs;@-100...
From 2017, "Sinclair Broadcast Group: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)":
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc
"John Oliver: Sinclair Broadcasting brings 'troubling' rightwing bias to local news":
* https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jul/03/john-ol...
"John Oliver: How Sinclair Broadcast Group 'Brainwashes' Local News":
* https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/john-ol...
Manhattan (or any downtown business district) has lots of office towers with little asphalt, and many (small) businesses that make their living from office workers. Perhaps you are biased towards car-centric design thinking?
Toronto (for one) has condo towers next to (or not far from) business towers so many folks can walk, cycle, or take transit as their commute. And this is not a new concept:
E.g.,:
* https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-5-14-americas-growt...
Why does there have to be an actual exchange?
“For my friends everything, for my enemies the law.” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Óscar_R._Benavides#Later_life
PSA: the si, as well as the pp, parameter is a form of tracking. If possible, consider trimming them after a copy-paste.