On this day in 1906, Mount Vesuvius erupted. Again.
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to the front page.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
From Variety: Texting, Weed and Sing-Alongs: Four Radical Ideas for Bringing New Audiences to Movie Theaters
While I tend to agree that weed would make a movie better (at least it did back in 1992), I’m not sure how the ingestion would work. Edibles, from what I have heard, take a while to kick in and you can’t really titrate the experience like you can with a joint. If it is smoking that they’re going to be doing, the movie houses will have to get one of their rooms rebranded as a Cigar Bar (or just have a courtyard, I guess).
If my memory is accurate, it’s also the case where the most pleasant buzz to watch a movie would be categorized as “comfortable”. And, by “comfortable”, I mean “shouldn’t drive”. So you’re going to need a DD.
Which, I suppose, the movie theaters could push for… “bring a friend”, I guess. But being the guy who isn’t stoned with one (or more) stoned dudes is… well, maybe they could set it up and give a free ticket to the DD. Or a free soft drink.
As for cellphone-friendly viewings… ugh. There are a couple dozen reasons that I don’t go to the theater that often and cellphones are among them. But if there’s a cellphone showing, maybe it can be in a theater next to a non-surfing showing.
Of course, most of the responses to the tweet of this article were of the form “maybe make good movies?” but, as I look at the landscape, I see that Minecraft broke $150 million over the weekend and so that’s probably not on the table either.Report
“he says he would come more often if he could buy and smoke pot at the theater. “How fun would that be?” he says. “They have a bar here so that people can relax and enjoy a drink.””
You’d quite literally have to have a different building… pot invading public spaces is already creating a backlash… you’d nuke non-pot screenings anywhere and any time in your theater. Plus, there’s a pretty big lack of awareness comparing (or not comparing) the externalities of Pot vs. Alcohol.
It’s a content saturation problem… there are too many alternatives to films. And films as a medium don’t offer that much of an upgrade over 4k viewing.
If there’s a ‘new thing’ it will be something along the lines of immersive theaters like you get in a 90second ride at Disney Hollywood.Report
If the critical concern is ability to smoke weed during the film it is now easier than ever to do it in your own home, where even an early release streaming rental is cheaper than a trip to the theater.
Also (and to your other point) if we’re at a place where we’re just tolerating the odor in public, well the parking lot is right there. Why would anyone invest in setting up a special accommodation? As best as I can tell there is very little, if any, policing around public consumption regardless of what the law says. I get whiffs occasionally just driving my kids to school at 7:30 in the morning on a weekday.Report
When we got tickets to A Working Man, the theater was mostly sold out. The only rows that had two seats next to each other (with a bro seat on either side) were the front rom and the back row.
We got tickets for the back row.
The other night, I watched Nosferatu on my broski’s 85″ television in his basement that we were sitting about 8-10 feet away from.
The field of vision real estate taken up by the screens was comparable. And, during Nosferatu, we could pause.Report
Yea I would say very few movies benefit much from the big screen anymore, not with home set ups being so high quality amd affordable. Especially post covid that’s what the theaters are up against.
Interestingly Nosferatu might be one where I’d argue it’s worth the price of admission, given that half of the appeal is the atmospherics. My wife and I saw it at one of the places where you have a waiter and I didn’t regret the decision. Could just be the concept having a special place for us. When we were still dating we saw a screening of the silent film at the American Film Institute with a live orchestra in the pit doing the music (on Halloween no less). It was really cool. I also saw the Witch which was Robert Eggers’ first big movie in the theater and thought it benefitted a lot from the level of immersion. Conversely a few months ago my toddler mashed a bunch of buttons on the remote and ended up renting the early release of Anora for like $25. Since we had it we watched it but I don’t think my appraisal would have been any different if I’d seen it in a theater.Report
One of the reviews of Nosferatu I read opened with the John Waters quote “I believe if you come out of a movie and the first thing you say is, ‘The cinematography was beautiful,’ it’s a bad movie.”
Well, during Nosferatu, my bud and I wouldn’t shut up about the cinematography. Oooh! Look at that shot! Wow! Look at *THAT* one!
He also did the sound system up with multiple speakers in the basement and the soundbar up front and… wowsers. I’m not sure how much better it would have been to see it in a theater. I know that it’s smaller than the difference between a normal screen and IMAX used to be.
Theaters had best figure out *SOMETHING* because, lemme tell ya, watching something (anything) on the basement television has a lot less mental/emotional overhead than what is required to put on shoes and get in the car and drive to the place and talk to at least one stranger.
And that’s without getting into the difference in the price of chicken fingers at both places.Report
Yea I agree. Either that or film makers need to re-orient how they’re making and budgeting films. I came across this post on substack that I found interesting:
https://www.jeffrauseo.com/p/where-is-hollywoods-money-going-inflated-movie-budgets?
It may be that the entire ROI model needs to be reconsidered to keep both studios and theaters afloat.Report
InMD: It may be that the entire ROI model needs to be reconsidered to keep both studios and theaters afloat.
Hollywood has “special” accounting to keep down how much they’re going to “share” with various people/groups. They both include things they probably shouldn’t (increasing the cost to make the movie) and exclude income streams.
So some of these “unprofitable” movies will in fact make money for the studio, just not other interested groups.
And I can’t reply to posts at this level so if we continue we should move it down to the bottom.Report
Maybe this is the reason sound editors are refusing to do a 2.1 mix, because they know that “can actually hear the dialogue” is the last reason for anyone to go see a movie in a theater…Report
I agree- I think the movie theater model is deep into the death spiral now. The masses aren’t turning up which is jacking up the ticket prices which is making going to the theater even less appealing. Theaters were descending pre-covid but Covid just accelerated the process a lot.Report
Probably so. Of course I say this with the knowledge that I am very likely going to capitulate to my older son’s requests to go see the Minecraft movie when he is on spring break. This leads me to believe that something will always be around just not anything close to what we’ve been used to.Report
I don’t know, I have doubts. This is the whole legacy media system writ large. The distribution pipe this is all going through is rotting through- not rotted through yet but not being renewed. It’s all running on theaters that were established on economic theories that no longer apply. I suspect/fear the whole thing is just going to vanish in time. At least in journalism the new things (social media mostly) still depends on the legacy zombie journalism media for stuff to steal so some degree of money pumping into Reuters and actual news gathering has to somehow occur. I am not sure the streaming model needs theaters at all. Movie making will just shift to making movies for streamers on TV rather than theaters.Report
This is the way. While what I can do in my basement isn’t QUITE as good as what the movie theater can do, it’s pretty damn close, and as you point out, you can occupy basically the entire field of view.Report
I have an 80″ tv in my own basement and I sit about 5 feet away from it.
I have seen maybe three movies on it. Countless video games, though.
If you would have told 8-year-old me this, I would have boggled. “Wow! Are the Star Wars sequels out?!?!?”
“Oh, yeah. Six of them. Three sequels, three prequels.”
“Do you watch Star Wars movies in your basement?”
“No.”Report
This probably explains at least some of my outdated thinking. I’m operating with a 13 or 14 year old 54″ flat screen which still works so well I can’t rationally justify replacing it, no matter how tempted I am every time I see all the shiny new ones in Costco.Report
86 inches. $800 dollars.
That’s less than ten bucks an inch!!!Report
We have deadlines for Trump to bring back that guy he illegally sent to a Central American prison in a few minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80UzAKNadow&list=TLPQMDcwNDIwMjU25agnSH1wrwReport
Which SCOTUS now appears to have paused. Along with a whole bunch of other things.Report
That’s the way the media has represented it. Here is a deeper dive from a lawyer who is deeply opposed to Trump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXXsAiKYDIM
He titled the video, “Supreme Court – ALL 9 JUSTICES – Tell Trump, No More Deportations Without Due Process!”Report
This is a month old, but I just stumbled upon it this morning:
https://sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-agents-of-history.html
Relevant for the sizeable OT contingent clinging to the “If white people had been able to express their race-realist views in the classroom/workplace, none of this would have happened” theory of the (re-)rise of Trump.Report
Well you do have to admit that being openly racist and misogynistic seems to be a thing for these folks.Report
Part of the problem is that the Conservative Party is (usually) the Stupid Party.
There’s a point at which “moral agency” kicks in and it’s above a certain line and sufficiently stupid people are below it… and, in a group, you tend to get even stupider.Report
I think of it more as that the republicans are the “child” party and the democrats are the “adolescent” party. There aren’t enough adults around to make up their own party but their influence with the kids on either side waxes and wanes. Unfortunately right now it seems to be in a wane cycle on both sides.Report
I don’t think it’s useful to dumb down “racism” to the point where “everyone is racist”.
I also think it’s a naked power grab to claim “opposing Team Blue is racist”.
We’ve had constant cries of “wolf” to the point where no one pays attention. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Did this play a role in Trump’s 2nd rise? Maybe… but “Racism” is such a small part of Trump that I’d call it a non-factor in his unfitness.Report
Trump threatens more tariffs on China: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/04/07/business/trump-tariffs-stock-marketReport
Treasury Secretary Bessant believes that former federal workers will become the basis of a new class of factory workers:
https://x.com/JHWeissmann/status/1909273929333592170?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1909273929333592170%7Ctwgr%5E55851815251aaa4e614bd786b0858509e632d6f7%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com%2F2025%2F04%2Ffired-cancer-researchers-will-labor-in-the-new-factories-that-rise-from-the-soil-near-des-moines-as-100-manufacturing-flowers-bloomReport
That seems… highly unlikely.Report
I mean even in math terms it’s knee slappingly idiotic.Report
I did not post this for it to be taken seriously.Report
Buncha people in their 50s and 60s, a few years from what would have been a decent pension after decades of work, deciding, you know what, why not work doing repetitive, body-destroying labor for a fraction of what they were previously paid, getting their pay docked if they screw up one piece of a widget out of many thousands in a day, with no paid time off and no real ability to form a union because labor laws have been gutted. Seems likely.Report
Or even thirty or forty somethings that never did hard physical labor in their life.Report
Yeah, no.
1) They aren’t cut out for the work, even if it’s a union job. Swing shift? Right. Mandatory OT and every other Sunday working? Nah.
2) Every guy on the line I knew that talked to me said “you don’t want to do this job for the rest of your life. Stay in school.
3) Many guys on the line had a side gig. You needed something given all the layoffs.Report
I am reminded of some social accounts that pop up from time to time glamorizing subsistence farming. There is nothing glamorous about subsistence farming. Essentially all of human history is an effort to get to do things other than subsistence farming.
So too with the factory job. It might be better than subsistence farming, but not all that much. The glamorizing of this, based I think on fiction and some sort of romantic notion that this kind of work is noble and public-spirited, is sort of missing the entire point: whether it’s noble or public-spirited, working that sort of job would SUCK. Hollywood imbues the factory worker with nobility because he SUFFERS to provide for his family.Report
Noble and public spirited is giving them too much credit.
They have a base that lionizes things like factory work and coal mining because it is “tough” and “manly” work done by real, tough men (TM). This is a base that doesn’t want retraining to careers that they think code as feminine like being a nurse or home health aideReport
Eigen’s got a good thread.
He talks about a couple of the headlines at the WaPo: “Trump calls tariff plans ‘a very beautiful thing'” and “As the markets dropped, the president putted”.
He points out that it’s easy to imagine the editor thinking “that’ll show him” as this was posted.
He also points out that after several decades of this sort of thing, “from an evolutionary game theoretical standpoint it’s also selecting for an opposition that is just completely indifferent to ambient social pressure”.
And… yeah. That’s one thing that seems to be borne out by looking at the demographics of the voters of 2024. This is what happens when people start being sufficiently indifferent to ambient social pressure.Report
America was engineered to select against ambient social pressure since the day the 1st Amendment was ratified.Report
If I had any money, I might invest it in Ubisoft. It broke under the 10-Euros barrier and there is going to be a stockholder revolt. It’s fallen to a 12 year low and Tencent is going to push a hardcore back-to-basics gameplan for the company.
Or, of course, it could tailspin and we should panic because we’re all going to die.
(The above is not investment advice.)Report
The conservatives on the Supreme Court go for ‘complete and abject rejection of reality’ as a way to deal with things:
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/supreme-court-trump-alien-enemies-act-judge-boasberg-rcna199052
They are openly asserting that of course ‘the detainees are entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal’, while their decision removes the only thing stopping the only order from being removed without challenge.
They’re basically just trying to pretend ‘Yes, the Trump administration has to follow the constitution, and OF COURSE we would stop them from failing to do so, if challenged, but until that point we’re not going to let the lower court restrict their behavior’
Or, to quote them: “This case presents fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security-related operations in this country — the President, through Article II, or the Judiciary, through TROs”
SENDING PEOPLE TO A FOREIGN PRISON IS NOT TIME-SENSITIVE, YOU FASCIST APOLOGISTS. NO ONE IS SAYING THEY CANNOT BE DETAINED, JUST THAT THEY CANNOT BE SHIPPED TO A PLACE THAT THE US GOVERNMENT IS LITERALLY CURRENTLY ARGUING IN COURT IT CANNOT RECOVER PEOPLE FROM IF SENT THERE BY ACCIDENT.
It’s honestly amazing. I would point out they are burning their crediblity on this, but that would require pretending they had any to start with.Report
Seriously, imagine saying this with a straight face: The majority also said detainees under the act “must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act. The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.” The majority emphasized that it wasn’t ruling on the government’s interpretation of the act itself.
In other words, what is happening is not legal, the government must allow people to seek habeas relief before removal, but we’re going to remove the TRO currently stopping the government from continuing its actions of removing people without habeas relief. But they better not do that anymore!
What the utter hell are the conservatives on the court smoking? How is this even slightly supposed to be credible?Report
They’re giving Trump a chance to back down so they don’t need to rule against him. The Supremes dislike injecting themselves into open politics.
It was a small child who pointed out that the Emperor had no clothes. Everyone else was waiting for someone else to point that out.Report
The Supremes love injecting themselves into our politics when they know the administraiton will follow their decision even if they grumble. When the administration won’t follow or it is Republican, they demure.Report
I misspoke. The Supremes dislike creating Constitutional crisis.Report
Right, because the President isn’t currently doing that now?Report
You know, these phrases it much better than I can:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/04/today-on-the-shadow-docket-assisting-trumps-arbitrary-deportations-to-slave-prisonsReport
Wall Street deluded itself about Trump: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/opinion/trump-stock-market-wall-street.html
“People in finance, said Berezin, are more likely to be punished for being too cautious and pessimistic than for being too hopeful and aggressive. Last year, for instance, a famed strategist named Marko Kolanovic left JPMorgan Chase abruptly when his gloomy predictions about 2023 and 2024 turned out to be wrong, or least premature. Mike Wilson, also known for his bearishness, stepped down from his post as chair of Morgan Stanley’s Global Investment Committee, though he stayed with the company. “You don’t get fired for being bullish, but you do get fired for being bearish on Wall Street,” said Berezin…..
Some investors also felt a cultural affinity with the new administration that further clouded their judgment. When wokeness was ascendant, plenty of people in tech and finance quietly seethed at being guilt-tripped and forced to feign concern about social justice. “When the opportunity came to jettison all that, they were happy to do it,” said Berezin. “And Trump enabled them to do it.”Report
US Applicant week at the University of British Columbia:
From April 14-18, select UBC graduate programs at UBC Vancouver will re-open their applications for US citizens to be considered for September 2025 or January 2026 entry – they are ready to provide quick admissions decisions for these applicants. If you are a prospective graduate student from the United States considering Canada for graduate school – now is the time.Report
The rightist media sphere decides that Trump’s tariffs will make you more manly:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Fox-250427.jpgReport
Being a Jew often seems like being a frog in Aesop’s fable about the forg and the scorpion where we keep on helping and getting stung after we helped. What’s worse is that a lot of Jews don’t seem to realize this despite this happening for centuries if not millennia out of their desire to be good kids.Report
Dude, why are you posting comments here instead of working on making more Jews? We’re running out!Report
In “Karen Bass is a garbage human being” news, this is amazing if true (and I assume Yglesias isn’t just making stuff up, but the article is paywalled).Report
TL;DR: Bass signs an executive order making it easier to build “100% affordable” (i.e. price-controlled to a level affordable to households at 80% of AMI) housing, but provides no funding. Without all the red tape, this is actually profitable, even with the price controls, so builders go nuts. Then Bass starts adding additional regulations to shut it down.Report
Given that the majority of these new buildings turn out to be “apartment complexes built out to the lot lines behind the original dumpy two-bed-one-bath ranch house in a way that’s very clearly an exploitation of regulatory loopholes”, I think Bass’s move makes sense.Report
Leavett confirms that the White House is looking for ways to deport American citizens to El Salvador’s gulag. This is extremely unconstitutional. It is well established that American citizens may not be punished by exile. Naturally, this isn’t going to stop Trump from doing what he wants to do. That the Trump administration is announcing this flagrantly illegal policy openly should basically alert everybody with a half a brain cell to the danger we are in.
https://bsky.app/profile/onestpress.bsky.social/post/3lmd2n77ko22gReport
World ending watch: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/341f67658dddec60977630a73fe1f938908a4d8b20262117db4ef2d04f75ca44.jpg
“Nobody knew…the people I correctly pointed out were crazy turned out to have accurately predicted what was going to happen, which just shows how insane they really were!”-Richard HananiaReport
Huh, the Free Beacon got their hands on the 2022 report that says that seven U.S. servicemembers contracted COVID-19-like symptoms in Wuhan in October 2019.
They’ve got a link to the report itself.
This seems to be evidence that the virus was circulating prior to December 2019. Huh.Report
Ah yes, the famously biasfree Free Beacon.Report
It’s worth pointing out how insane this article is, because it postulates this somehow _confirms_ the lab-leak theory.
When in fact it does the opposite, because a huge chunk of the lab leak theory is that a researcher in the Wuhan Institute of Virology because sick with something that might have been Covid (although it was tested and appears not, but let’s ignore that) in _November_ 2019.
Work the timeline with me here:
The incubation period for covid is 2-3 days, and we can postulate a few more days before it becomes bad enough that someone is going to the hospital for what would appear to be a cold. So let’s say a week. And let’s pick the first possible interpretation of ‘November’ and go with November 1st. That means the first possible date they could have it and be infecting people is October 24th or so.
So, if that researcher who got sick is Patient Zero…those seven service member, all of who had left the country by October 27th, would all have to be infected by that researcher, right? Literally all of them? Because there’s no time for someone else to have been infected and passed it on.
What, is the premise that this researcher somehow _participated_ in these war games? That seems very unlikely and something someone would have mentioned.
Even if you try to fit one additional infection in there, it still seems incredibly unlikely. Basically, this is postulating that of the first ten or so people infected by Covid, 70% somehow happened to be visiting US soldiers! That can’t make sense. (Barring additional conspiracies, but you have now officially left ‘lab leak’.)
And this is on top of the idea that the researcher got sick November 1st, which…probably isn’t true. Like, that’s a pretty silly assumption to have allowed to start with.
No, if you have the virus around enough to infect _seven American service members_, people who presumably did not have free reign of the city and would be with the US military, then it seems extremely likely that Covid was pretty widespread by that point.
Which is in fact what a lot of people actually think, that China covered up the infection for a month or so. Which honestly doesn’t sound implausible, and I think that theory, unlike a lot of conspiracy theories, could easily be true, although it as it’s almost impossible to tell the difference between ‘did not know’ and ‘willfully ignored’, we’ll never know.
But the virus starting that early completely destroys one of the main premises of the lab leak theory, because that sick researcher is way too late to be the cause of anything.Report
If you don’t like the article, don’t read the article. It is no skin off of my nose.
Just read the Report. There’s a link to that too.Report
I read the report. It would be difficult to conclude from it that COVID existed pre-December from it, given these quotes and the reports own conclusion:
and
It sounds like 7 members of the U.S. military who attended the games in Wuhan had COVID-like symptoms, which are, as we all know now, very consistent with other respiratory viruses, including the flu and the common cold (which would include various other coronaviruses and rhinoviruses). These 7 wouldn’t have stood out, given that a bunch other servicemembers all over the world also had colds, if there hadn’t been a global pandemic that originated in Wuhan (likely from racoon dogs, the cute little buggers, the latest research suggests).Report
Relatedly, man, conspiracy theorizers are so keen on finding evidence of a conspiracy that they’ll latch onto literally anything. Though Slade already said that better than I.Report
Yeah, it makes sense that the government would try to keep this hidden, given all of the people looking for evidence of a conspiracy.Report
Keep what hidden? And did they try? Have you ever seen a report like this before for any sort of event?
You’ve made a bunch of assumptions about what happened with the report, what the report secretly means, etc., and drawn your conclusion from those assumptions. It’s like the Ontological Argument of Conspiracies: if you can conceive it, then it happened.Report
They were required by law to release the report in 2022. The report, for some reason, was not released until this year.
“Did they try?”
Perhaps they were inept. Perhaps they forgot. Perhaps the person who was supposed to do it was a Trumpist who refused to get the shot and then died of Covid.
“Have you ever seen a report like this before for any sort of event?”
No, I have not. Perhaps those other reports were supposed to have been released but weren’t for one reason or another.
I have not made any assumptions about the report, just the whole “this was supposed to have been released but wasn’t” assumption.
I don’t have a conclusion yet, but I am looking forward for the day that new evidence comes out that doesn’t inspire “you’re just looking for evidence that confirms your biases!” defenses.
Maybe an intelligence agency will come out and say “our intelligence indicated the marketplace but our report was squashed”.
Then you can see who points out that intelligence agencies are not scientific agencies.Report
The article you posted, by a yellow rag, says they were required by law to release the report, but it references a law that says no such thing (the quote in the article is “publicly available on an internet website in a searchable format,” but their link to the law actually takes you to the same report, and the part of the law that has that quote is actually about other reports related to Wuhan and the DOD (I’ve included the entire section of the law below). In other words, you don’t know that they were required by law to publish it, and the yellow rag you linked to doesn’t seem to know either.
It seems more than likely that the report came out, it was a big ol’ nothing burger (because that’s what it is), and they just sent it on the Congress along with a bunch of other stuff without thinking about it further.
The other feature of the conspiracy theorist is laziness: he or she is willing to accept, without question, the mere conjecture and outright misinformation of any publication that says anything that confirms their conspiratorial suspicions, but he or she is unwilling to do even basic checking of the facts and assumptions presented in said publications, despite the fact that it takes mere minutes to do such fact checking most of the time.
Report
So maybe this report wasn’t required to be released to the public.
I can see why it wasn’t, then.
Being a nothingburger.Report
What’s great here is your logic:
Syllogism 1:
If a report is required by law to be released, it is important.
This report was required by law to be released.
Therefore, this report was important.
Syllogism 2:
If a report was not required to be released, but is important, it should be released.
This report was not required to be released, but isimportant (per syllogism 1).
Therefore this report should have been released even though it was not required by law to be so.
If you read the report, or even just the sections I quoted above, you’ll see that it says nothing that could possibly lead anyone to conclude that U.S. military personnel contracted COVID at the World Military Games in Wuhan in 2019 without a great deal more evidence. It mostly just looks like about the number of people you’d expect got colds. It just so happens that they got colds a couple months before a worldwide pandemic with cold-like symptoms originated in the place they were. It’s weak even as circumstantial evidence goes, if you take 2 seconds to think about it. But you’re thinking like a conspiracy theorist, so 2 seconds is more than you have to spare.
So in addition to reconfirming the laziness of conspiracy theory thinking, we have another common feature: draw a conclusion from false information, and when the information is shown to be false, continue to the maintain the conclusion as though it had been proven anyway.Report
Ah, I remember the “Covid is just a bad cold” argument. It’s always nice to see it again.
As for whether the report is “important”, well, that’s not a term we’ve seen defined quite yet. I might use the term “evidence that covid was at the games in question” but, if pressed, I’d have to admit that it was not proof.Report
Aha, straw-manning, another common conspiracy-theorist tactic.
No, I’m not saying COVID is just a bad cold. I’m saying its symptoms heavily overlap with other respiratory viruses, including the flu and the various types of viruses that get classified under the common cold. And the majority of people who get COVID, especially healthy people like, say, athletes in the military, experience only the cold-like symptoms. However, COVID is not just a bad cold, because in its more severe form, it is much worse than either the cold or the flu (or at least was worse than the flu, before widespread immunity and vaccination; I haven’t seen the latest mortality rate numbers for COVID, but I suspect they’ve dropped down closer to the flu). And that’s before we start talking about long COVID and its various manifestations.
My point is all we know is that 7 Americans who participated in the World Military Games in 2019 had COVID-like symptoms, and that this 7 is not an unusual number for that time in the military, even compared to units that sent no one to the World Military Games. So those 7 people tell us nothing, for better or worse. You’ll have to look elsewhere for clues, I’m afraid.Report
I’m not the one who introduced the term “cold” to the conversation.
You remember that, right?Report
I’m not the one who introduced the term “cold” to the conversation.
Sigh. Alright, man, onto the next conversation, where maybe you’ll decide to be a productive participant, or maybe you’ll do this sort of sh*t. See you there.Report
The report said “COVID-19-like symptoms could have been caused by other respiratory infections”.
And so we’re merely in a place where we don’t know, we just know that these guys came back with symptoms that could have been lots of things and it was pre-outbreak so, of course!, they didn’t test for it.
The only notable thing about the report at all is that it wasn’t released until just recently.
I do wish we got more into what the specific symptoms were… that way we could differentiate between something that causes lack of taste for a while versus, say, the common cold.Report
I have some sympathy for this theory because it passes a number of smell tests.
Covid’s home town has that lab, which researches something that might be Covid.
China takes “face” seriously so if it did something embarrassing and stupid it would behave the way it has and lie about it. They lie and/or suppress a ton of other normal data.
The US for diplomatic reasons might reasonably not want to poke China about this since we have other priorities and it doesn’t really matter.
So the margin of error (fog of war?) is very large.
Having said that, we don’t have evidence Covid is man made and explaining that lack through China being a bad actor is somewhat anti-scientific… but we should also keep in mind that China really is a bad actor.Report
We have plenty of evidence. What we don’t have is a smoking gun piece of evidence or “proof”.
You can usually see that with the dance where someone asks for evidence and then, when it’s provided, they say “that’s not conclusive!” or “that’s not *PROOF*!”Report
I realize that, post-February 2020, we’re all virologists and epidemiologists now, but man, I really suggest reading some of the actual research by virologists and epidemiologists. I even linked a Nature write-up of a recent (published in February) study on the origins of the virus above. It’s a good place to start.Report
I’m guessing (since I can’t get through the paywall) that they’re talking about further analysis of the same data discussed in this BBC report.
And, yeah. I gotta admit: That’s pretty good evidence.
That said, I don’t see it as sufficient to squash discussions of alternatives. Nor would I have in 2021.Report
Oh man, by all means, keep talking about alternatives. The problem isn’t that you’re talking about alternatives on a podunk website in 2025: it’s that scientists keep saying there’s a very real impact on research because people in power keep insisting that they, the scientists, focus on the alternatives.
I mean, I know in your mind, the conspiracy is more than likely, it’s almost certain, and therefore what’s actually being suppressed is the conspiracy, but seriously, scientists have been saying for years now that the pressure they’re getting is very much from the opposite direction.Report
Eh, in my mind, there is not definitive proof either way.
But nor was there when one of the options was prevented from being talked about.Report
JayBird: the dance where someone asks for evidence and then, when it’s provided, they say “that’s not conclusive!” or “that’s not *PROOF*!”
Unfortunately for the conspiracy people, at the moment we don’t have “proof”, much less “conclusive proof”.
What we have is unfalsifiable guesswork along with China being stupidly sensitive about having bad news.
Let me quote wiki here: Most scientists are skeptical of the possibility of a laboratory origin, citing a lack of any supporting evidence for a lab leak and the abundant evidence supporting zoonosis. Though some scientists agree a lab leak should be examined as part of ongoing investigations, politicization remains a concern. In July 2022, two papers published in Science described novel epidemiological and genetic evidence that suggested the pandemic likely began at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market and did not come from a laboratory.
So we’re probably never going to know with 100% surety unless China really did do it and kept records we’ll find eventually. However the longer something like that doesn’t show up, the more convinced we should be that this was Mother Nature.
If this were a Murder case then we probably have enough to put Mother Nature in jail but we’d occasionally lose that trial. China would always be let go by law enforcement without a trial.Report
Doubly so, if one of the judges in charge of the case rules that alternative evidence is inadmissable.Report
Yeah, the thing I was pointing out is that the idea that Covid was active in Wuhan in October (Which actually, as a conspiracy theory, is not too unbelievable.) completely undermined one of the big claims about a lab leak, in that a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology got sick _after that_, which is, itself, claimed to be the lab leak.
Ad yet this article seems to think it _helps_ that theory. Because that’s how conspiracy theories work. Anything that they can even vaguely paint as supportive is listed, even when it’s directly contradicting other parts of the theory.
It’s like how 9/11 Truthers will seize on the fact that the leaseholder of the WTC, Larry Silverstein, got an insurance policy a few months in advance that ‘covered terrorism’. When in reality almost no insurance excluded terrorism at the time, and also the tower _had been the site of a previous terrorist attack_ (Which also was covered!), so, duh, probably should make sure any new insurance covers that…although taht would be easy because you’d have to deliberately find a policy that didn’t. Also, he got that insurance two months before because _that is when he was required to insure the place because he had just become the leaseholder_. But this ‘He got insurance right before that covered it!’ allows conspiracy theorists to claim he was warned or knew about the attack.
Hey, weird idea: If the government came to me and said ‘The thing you literally just signed a lease on and are now legally required to buy insurance for…might want to make sure that insurance covers terrorism’, I’d be WTF are you talking about?! Do you know something? And I certainly wouldn’t stay quiet when a terrorist attack happened two months later!
He lost a boatload of money there. He did manage to sue under the grounds it was two incidents instead of one so the damage-per-incident cap should be twice (Which feels like clever lawyering, but I can’t object.) and got like 1.3 the damage cap, but he did not make out well on that entire thing at all. (Not that I feel sorry for billionaires, but objective it was pretty bad for him.) Trying to bring him into the conspiracy significantly weakens it, but conspiracy theorists do not actually care about logic.Report
“Those conspiracy theorists are crazy! Besides, this is evidence for *MY* position!”Report
“That is one magic loogie.”Report
Go anti-woke, go broke:
https://www.vox.com/on-the-right-newsletter/407623/trump-tariff-culture-war-hanania-khan-fergusonReport
If you trust anything that Beauchamp says, I’ve got a bridge between Gaza and the West Bank to sell you.Report
You…think he’s lying about the people he directly quoted and usually linked to the quotes of int he article?Report
I don’t know that he’s lying. I’m sure that he believes everything he’s saying, just as he believed that there was a bridge between Gaza and the West Bank.
Please do not take my saying you shouldn’t trust him as me saying that he is not earnest.
I’m sure he’s earnest as hell.Report
In a break from all the serious topics this thing with the wife of Weezer’s bassist is wild.Report
We’re gonna need a link for that.Report
https://apnews.com/article/jillian-lauren-shriner-weezer-scott-1e3a0a27298d29bd37635349ae4e5b9eReport
That’s definitely more like drummer-wife shit.Report
My question is why she was out in her yard with a gun. If it’s that her reaction to a bunch of riff raff running through the neighborhood was to strap up and go out to face them I have to respect it. Don’t get me wrong. It’s totally crazy and the wrong way to respond to that situation… but if thats what happened? What a woman!Report
Beverly Hills, that’s where I wanna be, livin’ in Beverly Hills.Report
Over at Substack, Thom Hartmann points out that ordering the DoJ to investigate truth tellers is at the very least unconstitutional. Not that it seems to matter much anymore.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartmann/p/is-this-the-moment-american-democracy-345?r=v677&utm_medium=iosReport
Yep. Trump is unfit for office. The unfortunate reality is a lot of things which are illegal for the President have no enforcement mechanism.
If we’re very lucky he’ll go down as the 2nd worst President we’ve seen. If we’re unlucky then he’ll be number 1.Report
Who likes conspiracy theories?
CIA files reveal search for Hitler in South America 10 years after his suicide as Argentina prepares to release classified docs on Nazi fugitives
You know, if Argentina releases those documents as retaliation for the tariffs, we may have found the absolute funniest outcome to all of this.Report
Who likes conspiracy theories?
Bored, decadents.Report
I knew about this document, but it’s very interesting to hear that there might be more.Report
https://deanblundell.substack.com/p/trump-is-now-mandating-his-cabinetloyalist
Trump makes his cabinet wear pins with his face on themReport
Someone created a masterpiece using Yakko’s World song.
Report
Financial institutions redacting reports under pressure from Trump administration:
https://bsky.app/profile/michellev.bsky.social/post/3lmhvttag6c25Report
We now have a very brief description from Secretary of State Rubio of what purportedly makes Mahmoud Khalil deportable:
I am writing to inform you that upon notification from the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations (DHS/ICE/HSI) on March 7, 2025, I have determined that [REDACTED] and Mahmoud Khalil (DOB:01-JAN-1995;
POB: Algeria), both U.S. Lawful Permanent Residents (LPR), are deportable aliens under INA section 237(a)(4)(C). I understand that ICE now intends to initiate removal charges against them, based on assurances from DHS/ICE/HSI.
(SBU) Under INA section 237(a)(4)(C)(i), an alien is deportable from the United States if the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe that the alien’s presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States. Under INA section 237(a)(4)(C)(ii), for cases in which the basis for this determination is the alien’s past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations that are otherwise lawful, the Secretary of State must personally determine that the alien’s presence or activities would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest.
(SBU) Pursuant to these authorities, I have determined that the activities and presence of these aliens in United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest. These determinations are based on information provided by the DHS/ICE/HSI regarding the participation and roles of [REDACTED] And Khalil in antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States. My determination for [REDACTED] is also based on [REDACTED] citations for unlawful activity during these protests. The public actions and continued presence of [REDACTED] and Khalil in the United States undermine U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States. Consistent with E.O. 14150, America First Policy Directive to the Secretary of State, the foreign policy of the United States champions core American interests and American citizens and condoning anti-Semitic conduct and disruptive protests in the United States would severely undermine that significant foreign policy objective.
https://apnews.com/article/mahmoud-khalil-columbia-university-trump-c60738368171289ae43177660def8d34
You read that right: Khalil’s “past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations that are otherwise lawful,” “have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest,” because they “undermine U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States.”
Which I interpret to mean Khalil has been critical of the Netanyahu government in Israel and is expected to be critical of it again in the future. Future-thought-crime. Activity which is concededly lawful is now deportable.
I call upon our free speech absolutists to join me in objecting to this.Report
Burt: Which I interpret to mean Khalil has been critical of the Netanyahu government in Israel and is expected to be critical of it again in the future.
…participation and roles of [REDACTED] And Khalil in antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States. My determination for [REDACTED] is also based on [REDACTED] citations for unlawful activity during these protests.
That is more than simply being critical of Israel’s gov. The gov is trying to deport him because “fighting antisemitism” is a foreign policy objective? Since when is that a thing? And notice he’s not claiming that what Khalil is doing will hurt our relationship with Israel.
When does this end up in front of an Immigration Judge?Report
Luckily, it appears this one _will_ in up in front of a judge. Who will likely slap it down.
Judges have actually questioned the constitutionality of this part of immigration law, on two separate grounds. The first is the obvious ‘The government is not supposed to make laws restricting freedom of speech’, but there’s actually a more important objection!
Specifically, that law is literally unknowable, you cannot know what behavior is disallowed under it, and thus it cannot be valid law. This is, hilariously, a level _above_ the first amendment, above constitutionality. You can’t pass laws that do not clearly explain what people cannot do, that people cannot read and understand what behavior is barred.
US foreign policy is not only gigantic, it’s _not entirely public_. And it’s not specifically ‘US foreign policy’ anyway, it’s ‘potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United State’. You can be deported under it because some other country objected to something you did in a way that caused foreign policy implications for the US.
In other words, this law appears to requires an immigrant to somehow _determine the entire foreign policy of the entire planet_. How on earth is anyone supposed to know how every random country in the world is going to react to everything they say? Hell, even if they did try to research that, again, foreign policy is not a list of regulations people can follow.
Moreover, that itself has strange first amendment implications, as now other countries can punish people in the US for their speech by using US law. All Russia, for example, has to do is say ‘We do not like what that immigrant in the US said about Putin, thus we are less likely to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine’, and that allows the US government to somehow punish that immigrant by deporting them? What?
The US government can’t punish people for their speech because the US government doesn’t like it, so the idea that US government can punish people for their speech because _other countries_ do not like that speech is just flatly absurd.
The only reason this law is still on the books is that literally no one has ever been deported under _just_ it. It’s been included on reasons before, but never by itself, and I’m not sure the _speech_ part (The part that requires the Sec of State to personally sign off on it.) ever has been used.Report
BTW, am I misremembering, or did an immigrant do something that resembled Na.zi salute twice at the presidential inauguration? The president of Belarus said about that, and I quote, ‘They cannot say anything to justify it. This is an open Na.zi salute, the Americans and Mr. Musk have simply taken this too far.’
That feels like it might actually qualify as ‘adverse foreign policy consequences’, having the American people in general being accused of openly be Na.zis by a foreign leader! Clearly that gesture has damaged how Belarus sees us! Even if this ‘Mr. Musk’ did it _completely accidentally_ (I dunno, someone should check if he does this sort of stuff all the time), it still had adverse foreign policy consequences.
Although I’m not sure if those consequences would qualify as ‘serious’. But it’s certainly more serious than some antisemitic said by random protestors at a protest.
Did anything ever happen with that Mr. Musk guy?
*check notes*
Oh, he’s apparently a citizen now. I guess the US government can’t do anything about him.Report
Wait, wait, I stand corrected, the president thinks we can deport citizens now.
Although I’m not sure if they’d be deportable under _this_ law, or if laws are even things that might still exist in any manner or we just operate by the whim of the president.Report
DavidTC: You can’t pass laws that do not clearly explain what people cannot do, that people cannot read and understand what behavior is barred.
Khalil led an organization which did things that are normally illegal. We’re only attempting to give that a pass because he claimed it was a “protest”.
At best his “protest” was a complaint about how another gov conducts itself in a war it didn’t start. Most likely his “protest” also included harassment of Jews because they’re Jews which is also illegal.
I agree that immigrants have the right to free speech and if that’s what we’re deporting him over we shouldn’t. However pretending Khalil wasn’t also crossing lines is not useful.
There is a good chance that the courts will prevent Khalil from being deported over his speech but will allow him to be deported over his other activities.Report
Do you know how we determine that people do illegal activities in this country?
We charge them with crimes and convict them of those crimes.
He has not even been charged with any crimes. At all.Report
Very true, that’s why I said “normally illegal”. That University didn’t want to support Jews against protesters.
The Protesters shut down buildings to the point where the cops (repeatedly) have to get involved, there were multiple arrests, Protesters said on tape “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and threaten Jews to their faces, and the U wanted to pretend was purely a 1st AM issue.
Different legal bodies can have different opinions on whether or not threatening Jews is a crime. The Feds think it is and Khalil should face some sort of justice (deportation being the easiest and quickest). The U disagreed, which is why the U lost a lot of federal funding.Report
This situation reminds me of the whole “U leaders don’t deal with sex offenders” problem. The complicating factor is the U President doesn’t want to deal with the issue so they ignore it and pretend there isn’t a problem.
There are actual laws and rules which could be enforced, but U Presidents don’t get their jobs because they’re strong leaders with a history of making unpleasant decisions.Report
Um, no. Literally none of what other people do is relevant to if a specific person committed a crime.
And, again, there is no ‘justice’ here. He is not accused of a crime. Stop defending some sort of hypothetical criminal charges. You do get that this government is overtly fascist, right? They are literally deporting other people to foreign torture camps right now without a trial. They are revoking the visa of a woman they _admit_ merely wrote an entirely reasonable op-ed, and had absolutely nothing do with any protests and said nothing antisemitic, under this exact provision.
You might want to ask yourself: Wait, the fascist government clearly wants to go after foreigners and people protesting Palestine, is entirely possible this situation is a ‘Things Germans were told about Jews leading up to fascism and have I been lied to‘ setup, that some of the things you ‘know’ here might be broad generalizations about isolated incidents that are used to further a political agency of outright evil against a specific group, like foreigners.
I think I’ll write an article about that, something like ‘Hey, now that it’s clear the right has been leading us to overt fascism for years, maybe people want to re-evaluate some of the stuff that media has been saying about certain outgroups during that time’.Report
DavidTC: He is not accused of a crime.
This is like saying that MSU sex predator doctor wasn’t accused of any crimes. It was true, but only because the Administration wasn’t doing their job.
We have serious accusations of serious crimes, but the U doesn’t want to go there so we don’t.
Unless you’re claiming that harassing/threatening Jews for being Jews and shutting down the U aren’t crimes. Or maybe that he’s not involved when his own organization under his leadership does those things.Report
“You can’t pass laws that do not clearly explain what people cannot do, that people cannot read and understand what behavior is barred.”
hey remember all those times I’d quote Nancy Pelosi saying “we have to pass the law to find out what’s in it” and you would get really upset and post a whole bunch of words about That’s Just How Laws Work And If You Thought Differently You’re Either Stupid Or Dumb?
“[T]hat itself has strange first amendment implications, as now other countries can punish people in the US for their speech by using US law. ”
people have been asking for this for years. now they’re getting it.Report
The ACA does not define a lot of stuff. It leaves a huge chunk of the rules that insurance companies have to follow to the executive branch. Exactly like this law does with foreign policy, also set by the executive. You really hit the nail on the head there.
However, rules that government has about health insurance and how not to beat the law are published the government itself. These are called ‘regulations’. It’s a whole giant metaphorical book (Really it’s online) that lays out, in _excruciating_ detail, exactly what health insurance companies had to do to comply with the ACA. These regulations are something that executive agencies do, a system create a created by a set of laws that do a lot of things, but the important thing I should mention is that they take years to change, have notification and enactment periods, etc, etc, etc. There’s never a surprise.
Now, let’s go back to what we were talking about, which was the foreign policy of the US. It’s hard to notice this, but there isn’t a giant book of that. In fact, not only is some of it secret, some of it is literally classified. A good chunk of that is considered, constitutionally, outside of anyone’s control besides the president…the courts probably cannot even _demand_ to know it.
And, thus, people cannot be ordered to follow it. The courts are not going to accept ‘You must attempt to subvert US foreign policy goals, a thing that exists mostly inside the president’s head, and in a bunch of secret places, and even when formally stated, is not actually specific enough for any individual to understand what actions they are allowed to do’ as law that anyone is allowed to be held to, unlike ‘You must not break these Federal regulations that were enacted and publish pursuant to a law telling the executive to make these regulations’, which it will enforce.
And also that’s not even what the law say, even if that does seem to be what the Trump administration is arguing. The law seems to allow deportation if you have have a foreign policy impact at all, which is wildly broader.
Also, and I feel this bears mentioning: The President had an advisor do a Na.zi salute at the inauguration. It actually isn’t clear that one of the US’s foreign policy goals _is_ still to reduce antisemitism. I say that mostly as joke pointing out the hypocrisy, but to be honest, this is why this does not make any sense and isn’t something that would be allowed by a court. US Foreign policy exists entirely within, and at the whim of, Trump’s brain. Other people cannot know it except as he states is. Which he usually does by communicating with the State Department in ways that are not particularly visible to the public.
Oh, good, it’s the fun trick of ‘Making random insinuations that the other side does this but not actually stating what they are because it turns out the claims are incredibly weak’.Report
LeeEsq pointed out a while ago that this was going to be there path to removal and it has been around forever but rarely, if ever used, the standard for proving this is essentially because the Secretary of State says so according to LeeEsq.
There is going to need to be some major law overhauling when this is all doneReport
There is an obscure and not really used that much provision in the INA that allows the deportation for people deemed foreign policy scandals. The standard is, the Secretary of State says so.
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/eoir/legacy/2014/07/25/3400.pdfReport
The Supreme Court upholds the order to return deportee sent to El Salvador, now we might get the Justice Roberts made his decision, now let him enforce it moment: https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-upholds-order-facilitate-return-deportee-sent-el-salvador-error-2025-04-10/Report
I fret that this part of the order…
“The rest of the District Court’s order remains in effect but requires clarification on remand. The order properly requires the Government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador. The intended scope of the term “effectuate” in the District Court’s order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the District Court’s authority. The District Court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs. For its part, the Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.”
…will lead to more litigation up and down the appellate ladder before the Government will actually do anything to comply with an order. “Oh noes! The District Court exceeded its authority and has failed to show due deference to the Executive Branch! Please give us an administrative stay!” “Stay granted. Expedited briefing schedule herein, decision in three weeks.” “Oh noes! The new order after the second remand is vague and unclear! We don’t know how to follow the court’s order! Please give us an administrative stay!” “Stay granted, Expedited briefing schedule herein, decision in three weeks.” “Oh noes! The new order fails to properly defer to us again! Here’s a declaration from Secretary Rubio saying we are intruding on his conduct of foreign affairs but not saying why! We need an administrative stay again!” Etc. etc. etc. while this poor guy, presumed innocent of any crime and whose criminal record is free of any blemish, is getting beat up every day in the Salvadoran gulag.
The whole order can be read here:
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25894464/24a949-order.pdfReport
Agreed. They could just be trying to kick the can down the road to avoid the Constitutional Crisis they know is coming. District Courts and Courts of Appeal have ordered deportees returned before and the Government has complied even if it drags its feet. Even after the Supreme Court potentially handed the Trump admin a win on TRO’s regarding the Alien Enemies Act, two district courts, including a Trump appointed Judge, ruled against the admin on Alien Enemies Act related litigation.
Still, it is not a total defeat for the opposition to Trump.
The bleak reading of the decision is that the Supreme Court is getting ready to neuter the judiciary and render Marbury v. Madison irrelevant.Report
In uncut optimism, the media is reporting this as a defeat for the Trump admin and that they have to do something to get him back. They were also unanimous on due process. That is not nothing.
Of course Dear Leader’s Press Secretary is telling everyone that Habeas Corpus is not Due ProcessReport
It is a defeat for Trump. I think everyone needs to temper their expectations about what the courts are able to do. Even a less conservative SCOTUS isn’t going to order Trump to send in the marines to bring this guy back. My count is that 7 of 9 care enough about the institution on some level as to understand that a holding the executive branch can’t comply with might turn out to be as bad as one they expressly refuse to follow.Report
We’re paying that government a ton of money to house those people ergo we have a lot of leverage. Worse, their gov has no reason to refuse to send him back.
Highly likely that just asking for him to be sent back would do the trick.
If that’s not working then the big question should be “why” and I don’t see any non-seriously-corrupt reasons on the table.Report
Everyone understands the Trump administration could just ask and get him back.
The question is what happens when they claim they cannot.Report
Yes, that.
Trump-as-a-businessman has repeatedly shown that he doesn’t care about court orders or business agreements, just how they’re enforced. So if there is no way to enforce something then the agreement or order doesn’t exist.Report
That’s kind of missing my point. The Supreme Court told them to bring him back. I would think all reasonable people agree that’s the right remedy. What they aren’t going to do is try to lay some smack down that proscribes further political maneuvering and litigation. That’s not something that happens normally and its not something anyone has any reason to expect.Report
In which Trump and the Plutocrats admit to insider trading and market manipulation on the record: https://x.com/ArtCandee/status/1910074164272386414?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1910074164272386414%7Ctwgr%5E2f3b5dd9db641ec2849ef5f139a7e4e8bbd45f45%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D14995520https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D149955t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20252F042Fsupreme-court-holds-that-the-district-court-can-order-the-return-of-kilmar-armando-abrego-garcia-to-a-pointt_e%3DSupreme20Court20holds20that20the20District20Court20can20order20the20return20of20Kilmar20Armando20Abrego20Garcia2C20to20a20pointt_d%3DSupreme20Court20holds20that20the20District20Court20can20order20the20return20of20Kilmar20Armando20Abrego20Garcia2C20to20a20pointt_t%3DSupreme20Court20holds20that20the20District20Court20can20order20the20return20of20Kilmar20Armando20Abrego20Garcia2C20to20a20points_o%3Ddescversion%3D89d0561b868ad63ec2711e992e8dc338Report
There’s a thread up on the sidebar about this!Report
RFK Jr delivers a slur filled speech about the Deep State to a shocke HHS staff. Talks about needing to take measures to deal with people with development delays but uses the R word.
https://www.rawstory.com/kennedy-fda/Report
The “R word” is an example of the Euphemism treadmill where we decide on a polite euphemism (or medical/scientific word) which is then used in a negative way for long enough that it’s also replaced. That one was the official gov definition until 2013, so presumably it was polite and acceptable when he was working with them in his much younger days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmillReport
I’m not sure about that. I’m older than RFK, Jr., and I remember when I was in 8th grade and homerooms 106 and 107, where, perhaps not coincidentally, the kids bussed in from the south side that year all ended up, were known as the “retard rooms.” This was not meant politely.Report
I asked Google’s AI the history of that word/medical-phrase.
…gained prominence in the mid-20th century as a replacement for earlier, more offensive terms like [snip] to describe intellectual disability.
Faict, the term was instantly used offensively. Then it was replaced with [snip] which itself instantly became offensive. But “mid-20th” lines up with his age which is 72.Report
My Ethics professor freshman year (so, 1991-1992) was approximately one jillion years old and he explained to us that the term that was used during his childhood/adolescence was “morons”.
And we’ve reached the point where “moron” is a term that the one wacky morning DJ calls the other wacky morning DJ when they’re arguing about sports or something.
It’s not even a particularly venomous insult anymore.Report
If it were still scientifically accurate, then maybe it would be. Or maybe we’ve become more accepting of that class.
These words were used as insults because they denoted membership of that class. That creates verbal landmines if you’re trying to talk accurately about the class itself and/or your interactions with it.Report
Welp. I guess he has now had his due process.
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/11/nx-s1-5361208/mahmoud-khalil-deported-judge-rubio-antisemitism-immigration-court?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20250411&utm_term=10083208&utm_campaign=breaking-news&utm_id=30913392&orgid=305&utm_att1=Report
And he has more available but this was expected.Report
That was just the immigration judge saying it wasn’t her job to question the determination.
That always was going to be the outcome there.
There’s another court case, apparently, challenging the law itself. Which is the correct thing to challenge.Report
There is no benefit to trying to cozy up to Trump and Co., example one trillion:
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy tried to cozy up to Trump over Trump’s hatred of congestion pricing. Now he is being investigated by Trump’s Attorney for the District of New Jersey regarding immigration: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/nyregion/trump-justice-department-habba-immigration.htmlReport