TheVat

Yeah, if you're a dedicated career public servant who accidentally sent unclassified info and then owned up to it, under the bus you go; if you're the Secy of Defense texting secret war plans, any criticism is a "witch hunt." FYDT

The Smithsonian is Independently run, not a federal agency, but that doesn't seem to be stopping the barbarians at its gates. From today's Post... The “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” order directs Vice President JD Vance to eliminate what he finds “improper” from the Smithsonian Institution, including its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo. The White House fact sheet describing the order said it will focus on removing “anti-American ideology.” The institution, the official keeper of the American story, has operated independently as a public-private partnership created by an act of Congress in 1846. The order is an unprecedented act to edit an institution that has been expanding over many decades to include a wider, richer and more diverse telling of the nation’s history.

What evidence is that? Karma is built on a couple premises - one, that we reincarnate, and two, that the universe has some means of recording all our actions, assessing their causal impact and calibrating our future life experiences in accordance with them to impart justice and moral growth. If you have evidence of this, I'm prepared to be gobsmacked.

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If TP and minions are smart enough to bring that off, then are they smart enough to understand that constantly banging the drum about election integrity and reducing voter fraud will then make it seem like they are incompetent in their efforts to "fix" our voting system. (and it could bring down a bunch of angry oligarchs on the TP admin, given how many of them lavish 100s of millions of dollars on those elections - whatever their political agenda, those folks don't like to see their investments go for nothing - they may want the incumbent in a particular race, but that doesn't mean they will want all present officeholders frozen in place) Also, if TP could somehow shut down the 2026 midterms, it would leave his party stuck with razor-thin majorities and the possibility of bipartisan coalitions that could torpedo Project 2025. This latter possiblity is already rearing its head in the House.

HBB, could you please give our tired eyes a rest and use punctuation and upper case, to avoid the unreadable mess of one continuous run-on sentence?

For sure, there's malice aplenty in the whole MAGA movement - I did not mean to imply otherwise. More saying that great incompetence can somewhat blunt the edge of malicious intent. People who can't pour piss out of a boot when the instructions are printed on the soles are a little less scary than your standard fascist. If what I'm seeing is feigned, then this MAGA brigade are the finest actors of their generation.

Thanks. I speak some German and understand the meaning of Goldberg. Was just joking on the similar sounds, one of them descriptive of the Sesame Street character depicted in iNow's posted meme. Was not suggesting that Goldberg means gold bird. Arnold Pretty Mountain was a groundbreaking composer who was forced to flee the Nazis. 🙂

Prof at Yale who studies fascism is leaving the US to work in Canada. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/26/yale-professor-fascism-canada I imagine we'll be seeing more of this kind of brain drain, in the wake of capitulations to the TP admin like that at Columbia.

Vein, is my guess. American politics has become mostly manufactured outrage and playing to the peanut gallery AFAICT. Hanlon's razor ("never attribute to malice that which may be explained by stupidity or incompetence...").

Guffaw! (Goldberg ~ gold bird)

Have heard a plethora of theories on the low fertility rate in the Roman ruling families, from lead pipes (overstated, I suspect) to extremely hot Roman baths reducing sperm counts. I've wondered if it was just the males spending too much time with concubines and vino, pretty much out of ammo by the time they got home.

Had several responses, all covered by able-bodied members already, so will just say I experienced an eerie flashback on TP's "Russia, if you're listening...." speech. Europeans, don't give up on us yet. Bernie, an 83 year old with more wit, smarts, and fire in the belly than anyone in the TP admin, is starting to rally Americans on his Fight Oligarchy tour...or at least rouse them from their slumbers. Anyway, riding a thin line between laughing and weeping at the sheer stupidity of it all, especially that Waltz fat-fingered Goldberg a Signal invite to the chat - which tips it towards laughing. While having your lapDoge keeping claiming to being the great watchdog of transparency and accountability. All very Orwellian. As @MigL said, I keep wanting to wake up.

Mindbendingly corrupt. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/25/doge-musk-spacex-starlink-contracts

Whenever someone ridicules or pokes fun at a religion, be it an artist showing Christ in a jar of piss, a Salman Rushdie novel, a Danish cartoonist mocking Mohammed, or a Monty Python bit about Catholics and sacred sperm, it is always people who were completely free to ignore it who go on a rampage to deprive the artist of their free speech rights. And forget that the symmetry of freedom of expression is that if you don't like a work of art that exercises that freedom you also have the same freedom to criticize it, call it garbage, etc.

Droll and satirical? There's a fine line between today's satire of TP and the next day's news. Really, I would say all TP satire is like a dog chasing a car, and the dog can never quite catch the car, as it wildly goes over curbs and yards and gardens and down storm culverts and through chicken coops and nursing homes and so on.

Adding to the question of the sentience of the TP admin, as in how would they handle the Mirror Test, they have been warning recently they will investigate unauthorized leaks to journalists, citing reporting in a number of publications. This is quite the self-own for them.

(rimshot) Apparently so. Well, that kind of ruins my use of 47 to reference him. I was trying not to give him more keystrokes than necessary or acknowledge his humanity, so...back to the drawing board. ETA: they could name the new fighter after Elon Musk. Call it....the F-elon.

There are toxins that can leach from plastic which would not be filtered. And submicron nanoparticles do come off plastic, which at that size may get through filters. Finally, open ponds can also get windborne particulates and also coming down in rain - a recent study in Colorado croplands found microplastic both in fields and also being absorbed into plant tissues. These were not from some ground source where it was flowing into the fields - they were deposited from the air. So I would say that you combining both physical filters and also chemical detoxing is a good idea, but you may want to look into how your filters handle submicron particles.

El Douche (who I generally prefer not to mention by his name anymore) is the 47th potus, and I often refer to him as 47, to stress his transitory nature. I am relieved to know that the 47 suffix for the jet fighter is just coincidental in that respect. Also, seems fitting a member named Mig would show some knowledge of jet fighters. 🙂 With 41 million population, that would be (if my calc is correct) 56 electoral votes. If they use the WTA system used in 48 states now, that would be some serious clout. Unlikely, but yes, fun to imagine.

The recalled products can contain Pseudomonas species bacteria, including Pseudomonas oleovorans, an environmental organism found widely in soil and water. People with weakened immune systems or external medical devices who are exposed to the bacteria face a risk of serious infection... Immunocompromised folk tend not to roll around in the dirt while they have a break in their skin. The danger is presumably them putting on an article of clothing that recently came from the washer and retained live bacteria. Very low probability but, as with many such threats, a weakened immune system can experience as lethal something most of us wouldn't be affected by. Corporations have an interest in avoiding the reputational harm (and punitive damages awarded by courts) that comes from customers suffering death or serious illness from their products. Many recalls are like this, where a recall is conducted in order to forestall a low probability harm.

Who told you that? Gravel is water-permeable, easily spread, and tends to stay in place. Plastic is a shedder of nanoparticles - oil companies are trying to downplay this because they know plastic products will be their main profit source when the planets vehicle fleet is all EVs. Green minded people are avoiding plastic. Recycling plastic is promoted by the oil companies because it "greenwashes" the toxic brew of leachates and microparticles that a robust plastic economy creates. It's all petroleum wolves in sheep's clothing. Other folks are saying nice things about recycling, and it would all be lovely if plastic was not a uniquely persistent material. Tiny bits of it will stick around, getting into our water and food and tissues for thousands of years. https://oceanliteracy.unesco.org/plastic-pollution-ocean/

And the termites aren't what? Forming a labor union?

All the angles are deducible from the basic geometry of a triangle, if you start with B angle.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/03/columbia-academic-freedom/682088/?gift=43H6YzEv1tnFbOn4MRsWYvzeCXmbxeZaOYTzbcGazb0&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share (free link) Expresses better than I can how profound is the threat to America's universities. (am traveling this week, so screen time is ltd.)