On this day in 1862, Mexico repelled the French forces of Napoleon III at the Battle of Puebla. Please drink responsibly.
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.
In this week’s “We’re All Going To Die” news, I was at friends’ for Game Night on Saturday and we were close enough to the teenager’s computer setup to hear him playing Fortnite with his broskis and, at one point, he was yelling “Chicken Jockey!”
I remember having to explain “All Your Base” to my mom. She didn’t get it. I finally just said “it’s an internet joke”, and she still didn’t it but at least she got why I got it.
also Leeroy Jenkins is 20 years old now.
******
Someone on Tumblr suggested, and I agree, that you could kill on TikTok just by recruiting a few reasonably-attractive kids and having them do Monty Python’s Flying Circus material. Don’t even update anything, just straight off the page, no reference or credit to the original at all.
(which goes neatly with my idea that someone needs to just start doing old Cosby material with zero credit or attribution, daring people to call them out and put themselves in the position of defending Bill Cosby…)
I think the Cosbey show thing would work for a short time but then Casey-Werner and/or Paramounts’ lawyers would quietly get in contact with TikTok and your account would be deleted in short order with very little public commentary on the matter.
There is currently an internet rumor that DOGE is trying to get into the Library of Congress (Which is run by the legislative branch, not executive) and the Capitol Police (Also run by the legislative) is stopping them.
This is after Trump fired the head of the Library of Congress, which he apparently has the power to do, and supposedly appointed an acting director, which I am not clear he can do.
it is unclear what is actually happening at this point, but we’ll see if Congress allows the executive to run roughshod over something _they_ own.
Oh, here’s a article about it:
https://www.mediaite.com/news/trumps-attempted-library-of-congress-takeover-thwarted-as-two-of-his-appointees-were-escorted-off-the-premises-cbs-news/
(might want to check your sources on that one)
(i know, i know, it’s too juicy to wait, it’s too moist flaky tasty-shortbread smooth-mouthfeel delicious to wait, it just feels so good to be First)
A Holocaust denying podcaster has turned anti-Semitism into crypto. Making matters more worrisome, left and right anti-Semites seem to be finding common ground. A kid name Mo Khan who put up a “F*ck the Jews” sign at one of David Portnoy’s bars after ordering bottle service got $10,000 from them. The right and the left can’t make any positive arguments on why Jews should support them, only negative ones.
Why in the world would Mo Khan have needed $10,000 just for putting up an offensive sign after ordering bottle service?
The right and the left can’t make any positive arguments…
The Right wants to support Israel to prepare the way for Jesus coming back. IMHO this is a foolish reason but they’re committed to it. In theory at that point Jews (and everyone else) will convert or die, but you should agree to disagree until after he actually shows up.
The Right is also forcing Colleges to deal with antisemitism. That’s a rare good thing that Trump is doing even if he’s being crass about it.
The right has plenty of anti-Semitism of it’s own that it hides up. They force universities to deal with a particular type of anti-Semitism. The problem with left anti-Semitism for the Democratic Party and mainstream liberals is that most of it comes from forces outside the Democratic Party.
The right has plenty of anti-Semitism of it’s own that it hides up. They force universities to deal with a particular type of anti-Semitism.
I’m going to need more detail on this?
I’m not sure that the right has a whole lot of ability to force universities to do stuff? (And, if so, it’s only manifested in the last year or so due to Trump/Trumpism and that particular manifestation leans far more “pro-Israel” than “anti”.)
The right has plenty of anti-Semitism of it’s own that it hides up.
It has small hate groups which identify as Right. What does it have at an institutional level?
The problem with left anti-Semitism for the Democratic Party and mainstream liberals is that most of it comes from forces outside the Democratic Party.
We are currently trying to remove anti-Semitism from college policies and administration. How did “outside forces” create that? My strong impression is the Left faction which views the world as “white oppressors vs black victims” has decided Jews are white and therefore should be thrown under the bus in the Palestinian conflict(s).
Fleeing from war, political oppression, and starvation in Ukraine, Sudan, and other parts of the world? No thanks, don’t come here.
Are you the former runners of brutally oppressive and racist regime and really upset that you are no longer in power? Please come, thanks:
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/05/12/us/trump-news
It should be noted that Trusk had the U.S. government pay to fly the Afrikaaners here. You can take the boy out of Apartheid but you can’t take the Apartheid out of the boy.
(“boy” is a racist term for black men.)
In this case I am referring to Elon but thanks for trolling.
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre
I’m not entirely sure that you want to mix the whole “antisemitism” thing with the “antiapartheid” thing.
Like, that is not proverbial chocolate that you want to get in your proverbial peanut butter.
I am an Afrikaner. I, and most Afrikaners, think this enire refugee thing is redicilous and embarassing. Worse; it is deeply hurting my relationship with my fellow countrymen.
https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/elizabeth-holmes-partner-brazen-business-20321733.php
Theranos 2.0 from the Baby Daddy of the fraudster that brought us Theranos 1.0
The New York Times will have us know that the Qatar’s illegal and unconstitutional bribe of a 400 million dollar plane to Trump, “strains the bounds of propriety.”
We will be killed by people who think it is untoward and gauche to be direct and pointed.
I forgot the link from my point yesterdeay:
https://forward.com/news/718429/mo-khan-stew-peters-crypto-jproof/
This is an interesting one. I do wonder about how cost effective fixing these are though.
https://farmingdale-observer.com/2025/05/10/a-german-experiment-proved-that-simple-concrete-spheres-make-fantastic-batteries-now-california-plans-to-submerge-a-9-meter-diameter-sphere-in-the-ocean-and-is-already-planning-versions-of-30-meters
Also it says “excess electricity” is involved in pumping the spheres down, which suggests that we could just build a battery farm and get the same benefit without involving the ocean at all.
Batteries require scarce minerals which make building anything at the needed scale a problem.
I’d suggest they need similar minerals (and to the same degree) as the electric turbines these spheres are supposed to have in them.
And, honestly…you don’t really get a lot of energy from flowing water unless you have “literally the Colorado River” kind of volume.
If someone wants to do wild things with ocean-based energy generation, I’d like to see them try OTEC at scale…
Gotta agree with the duck here. Also, any time you’re working with anything that involves the ocean you’re talking about an undertaking that will have massive corrosion/wear/weather problems even under the best of circumstances. Salt water is extremely unkind to most materials.
Seems like water turbines do not need much lithium or cobalt.
Turbines need steel, zinc, iron, and copper for the main structure and wiring. Rare earth elements are also needed for the magnets in turbine generators.
There are lots of generators/motors at conventional hydro power plants and pumped hydro storage systems that predate rare earth magnets. Weight is not an issue for them, so cheaper magnets are fine.
Interestingly, wind turbine companies are rapidly shifting away from rare earth magnets to electromagnets. Those are even lighter (and cheaper!) for a given field strength. Non-permanent magnets are a problem if you have to do a grid-wide black start — see, eg, Spain/Portugal recently. I suspect that a battery installation big enough to jump start enough turbines to bring an entire farm back online has gotten quite cheap.
In 2024, an additional 38 GWh of grid-scale battery storage was deployed in the US. Almost all of that was lithium-ion. The biggest battery manufacturers look ready to start switching to sodium-ion for grid applications: it’s safer, cheaper, uses less scarce materials, operates well over a wider temperature range, and the modest weight penalty doesn’t matter.
No Veronica, there is no Santa, much less two. But the GOP sure does love to stack the deck anyway.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartmann/p/americas-long-coup-how-the-gop-rigged-812?r=v677&utm_medium=ios
David Hogg fans should know that HE HAS RELEASED A STATEMENT: “Today, the DNC took its first steps to remove me from my position as Vice Chair At-Large.”
If you haven’t seen David Hogg on Bill Maher recently, you should check it out. He points out that the Dems have lost young men because “What I think happened last election is younger men—they would rather vote for somebody who they don’t completely agree with, they don’t feel judged by, than somebody who they do agree with, that they feel like they have to walk on eggshells around constantly because they’re going to be judged or ostracized or excommunicated.”
He concludes: “Young people should be able to focus on what young people should be focused on, which is how to get laid and how to go and have fun.”
We may be witnessing a turnaround in real time!
Assuming, of course, he isn’t removed from the Vice-Chair position.
Credit where it’s due, I think he handled that quite well. Might be too little too late for him but no harm in a force for figuring this stuff out within the larger coalition.
Part of the challenge for Hogg personally might be that… well he’s kind of a weener. He’s also glued to one of those cultural issues that polls in ways that I think one has to conclude are kind of misleading and anyway aren’t a priority.
However if he wants to start saying what has often been unsayable, maybe start making doing so contagious, I’m all for it.
My take on the whole take on young people wanting to get laid thing is that this is one hell of a departure away from #MeToo and, as one hell of a departures go, they probably needed a better spokesperson. One who was less of a weenie.
Like, imagine if Joe Rogan said such a thing. It might mean something.
As it is, Hogg is a walking “Why ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ is Problematic” essay and he comes across with that sort of energy.
That said… a correction is needed and handling it less than perfectly is probably the only option and, as such, well… we’re stuck between the weenie and the waiting for someone good to say it. The weenie is not obviously the wrong option.
Now, with *THAT* said, this is a completely different message than “we’re going to light fires under the Dems in safe seats by primarying the useless ones!”
If the DNC chair fired Hogg for saying “We need to reach out to young people without sounding like those PMRC Schoolmarms”, I’d find that to be the funniest thing that has happened this week.
However, the DNC chair seems to be firing him for running ahead with the whole primarying safe dems thing *BUT* using the whole “we elected a white dude instead of following our diversity goals” rule which, somehow, manages to take a reasonable position (“you don’t get to threaten safe dems in safe seats as the DNC vice-chair”) into an unreasonable one and, somehow, also turning it into the funniest thing that has happened this week.
Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, and Andrew Cuomo (and their victims) don’t count as “young people wanting to get laid,” which has next to nothing to do with #MeToo.
It’s certainly not an endorsement of Moira Donegan’s playbook.
Was Al Franken considered a victory?
To be perfectly honest, I think that he represents a fairly important victory for #MeToo but I have argued against people who see it as an excess. Something to the effect of “We shouldn’t be leaning on #MeToo if all it does is result in people like Al Franken, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Jeffrey Epstein, and Andrew Cuomo either going to jail or getting their charges dropped or having to resign or whatever weird thing happened with Bill Cosby that still isn’t exactly clear.”
Remember The Crappy Media Men’s list? Moira Donegan paid out a six-figure settlement over that thing.
In any case, Hogg’s statement strikes me as being, at least!, a pivot away from the #MeToo actual energy of 8 short years ago (while allowing that the theoretical energy that anybody would defend was a needed corrective for the time).
What did the Crappy Media Men’s list have to do with young people wanting (presumably mutually) to get laid? Were they youngsters trying to obtain the willing sexual favors of their peers? Or dirty old men with power?
The same thing that #MeToo had to do with it.
In theory, it wasn’t sex-negative but abuse negative and fought *VERY* hard against abuses large and small up to and including those of Al Franken.
In practice, it resulted in Al Franken resigning and all sorts of weird cultural eddies. I mean, you’ve witnessed the last decade or so, right?
We’ve seem to come a long way from trying to get justice for Jackie Coakley.
Eh. I think David Hogg should have stayed but that in the end this is kind of gossip for the very online political hobbyist and probably does not matter at all for Democratic prospects in November 2026.
Plus JB likes to be an agent provocateur who thinks Dems are always screwing up
Even a blind squirrel is right twice a day.
And, to be perfectly honest, removing Hogg from his seat not because “you can’t sabotage Dems in good standing from your position of Vice-Chair, no matter how Righteously Angry you are… do it yourself, not as a DNC official” but because “you’re male” is one of the things that does, in fact, matter for the Democrats in November 2026 (and 2028, and 2030, and so on).
There’s a very particular reason that the Democrats have a lower approval rating than Trump and the stuff like this is why.
Tossing him at this point would be the second stupidest thing the DNC has done in the last year.
Which means it’ll happen before the day is out.
*****
Kid doesn’t realize that the Democrat Party is all about machine politics (always has been) and he’s trying to kick back against that, and he’ll get burned, because you don’t go around doing things that make the bosses think they’ll miss out on their Goodies.
That used to be true, but the machine is sputtering pretty hard in the era of social media. Especially with Democratic Party approval numbers south of 40%, a promising Dem politician nowadays will probably have better personal success if they visibly buck the establishment and trumpet it on the socials rather than toeing the line.
He’s claimed his job as DNC Vice-Chair is to primary sitting Democrats based on [something].
The definition of that [something] changes every conversation.
Good news/Bad news. The bad news first: David Hogg’s election to the position of Vice-Chair is a step closer to being overturned.
The good news: It’s not related to his arguments that we should primary useless Democrats in safe seats. It’s because he’s male.
The DNC is run by f*cking idiots. This is why no one believes Democrats about anything. If Trump was such a threat they wouldn’t be focused on kindergarten rules designed to protect the self esteem of losers.
“It’s not related to his arguments that we should primary useless Democrats in safe seats. It’s because he’s male.”
It’s amusing how women’s concerns are just Karen-racist-TERF whining that should be ignored right up until we need to bounce a white dude who doesn’t want to Get With The Program.
Any given special-interest group has concerns that are serious and legitimate and, unfortunately, sometimes they have concerns that are unserious and stupid.
I don’t know which of these Ms. Free’s are but if I wanted to pick a worse time to have a 61-year-old woman get rid of a 25-year-old firebrand, I’m not sure I could do a better job than when the 25-year-old firebrand was complaining about calcified power at the top.
AND I’M NOT EVEN SAYING DAVID HOGG WAS GOOD!!!
There are only a handful of reasons to know who a DNC vice-chair is and they are:
1. They do an exceptional job. Seriously out of this world.
2. They effed up so badly that it’s fodder for late-night comedy show opening monologues.
3. They’re publicity hounds that are more interested in going into self-promotion than in promoting the Democrats.
Two of those are bad!
BUT GETTING RID OF HIM BY PULLING A #2 IS BAD TOO!!! YOU’RE FIXING A MISTAKE BY MAKING A BIGGER MISTAKE!!! AAAAAAAAA
The mistake was hiring him. He’s doing things which are NOT compatible with his current job/role nor even compatible with his current organization.
This seems to be a deliberate move on his part. His explanation on what he’s doing and why changes with every conversation. He’s a firebrand, not because he believes in anything but because he wants to start fires.
This is self promotion at the expense of everyone else and I seriously doubt he’s actually interested in young/old issues (or even issues in general) even if he’s framing it that way this week.
He got into this by promoting gun control above all else, but that issue has apparently been dropped. Then he did anti-old-age, but his written explanation on what he was doing and why dropped that.
He simply wants power and attention and is throwing a big stunt to try to skip up several rungs of power.
Firing him is a forced move, he’s going to burn stuff down until he’s happy with his current level of power and that’s never going to happen.
I think Jay is right about this though. If you’re going to get rid of him do it for that reason, not to elevate some mediocrity via my turn-ism.
Alawites and Christians are being massacred in Syria by Islamists. This is why Israeli Jews aren’t up for completely dismantling Israel and replacing it with a one state solution:
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/P-10-2025-001051_EN.html
Pretty sure these are the same Islamists we were told were “inclusive” and “should be given a chance” just last month.
They are. One of the frustrating things about the I/P conflict conversations is the tendency of Pro-Palestinian Westerners to just see the conflict in ethnic terms and ignore the religious angle. They can’t get beyond the White vs. Color framing.
This analysis might make sense if it wasn’t the left that had been warning about these U.S.-backed Islamists in Syria for years.
Like it should be blindingly obvious to people that there is a big issue in Islam’s adopting to modernity. Every Muslim majority country has big issues in how the wrong type of Muslims and non-Muslims are treated even if it doesn’t go to the levels of massacres. It should also be really clear to others why many Israeli and Non-Israeli Jews, no matter what type of Jew they are, aren’t exactly into letting their guard down when they see what is happening to non-Muslims through out the rest of the Middle East and North Africa.
Syria is complex but my impression is the US backed groups aren’t in charge.
The big group that did win used to be an ISIS offshoot. There are 7+ armed groups there and it’s very possible that we’ll see a new civil war start now that the previous civil war is over.
HTS was not an ISIS offshoot. The predecessor groups at times worked in a faction with ISIS, but before that had at times been in open, violent conflict with ISIL (as it was known at the time). They were aligned with al-Qaeda in Iraq (which was more of a franchise than an offshoot of the al-Qaeda we all think of, but still ideologically aligned), which was deeply critical of the formation and activities of ISIL from the start. But tye Al-Nusra Front-al Qaeda relationship was also a tense, and HTS was formed in large part because of a multi-group desire to be independent of al-Qaeda.
Anyway, yeah, Syria is complex, but the history of these groups is pretty well documented.
Fair point. I did a more detailed read on them and they’ve been for and against ISIS (etc). A good summation is “it’s complicated”.
The admin that takes anti-Semitism seriously (allegedly) just made a raging anti-Semite a refugee to the United States: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/an-afrikaner-refugee-south-africa-has-thoughts-about-jews-antisemitism-trump/comments
In one case, Kleinhaus advocated for physical assault on an American citizen. Retweeting a story about a guy who had been given a citation for his part in a road-rage incident with another driver, Kleinhaus wrote, “He needs a beating urgently!” (Kleinhaus was upset because the other driver involved in the incident was driving a Tesla.)
But most importantly, Kleinhaus has also posted about Jews and Israel in the kind of way that might get someone who wasn’t a white South African deported—calling Jews “untrustworthy” and “dangerous.”
In April 2023, Kleinhaus responded to video of Christians scuffling with Israeli police on the way to the Church of the Nativity by saying Jews are naturally “untrustworthy.”
On October 7, 2023, Kleinhaus responded to the initial news of the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel by posting a link to an Al Jazeera video, taken a few days earlier, of Orthodox Israelis spitting on Christians.
Five days after the October 7th attack, Kleinhaus posted a link to another video, hosted by a Facebook account called “Israel Is a Terrorist State,” that showed clashes between Christians and Israeli police. Kleinhaus wrote: “Jews attacking Christians!”
In a LinkedIn message to The Bulwark, Kleinhaus confirmed that this is his X account. Kleinhaus, who has resettled in Buffalo, said he was too busy filling out paperwork today to comment further. We also reached out to the State Department about this story but have not yet heard back; we will update the web version if we receive a comment.
…just made a raging anti-Semite a refugee to the United States
By that Logic we can “prove” that Biden is a member of a M13 or whatever that gang is.
Wait, are people with sufficiently offensive views not allowed to be refugees now?
This is a tool that I’m pretty sure that Trump and his ilk have been waiting for.
I’m sure that they’d say “thank you”, if they knew you gift-wrapped it for them.
And look at your examples! Holy cow! Yeah, this would be amazing in the hands of someone sufficiently thin-skinned.
Do you have any sense of decency? Or are you just a contrarian degenerate?
What are the freakin’ rules, Saul? If murder is insufficient reason to deport an illegal immigrant, but saying that Jews aren’t trustworthy is a reason to deny refugee status, I am unclear on the freakin’ rules!
What are the rules we’re using?
Because if you’re trying to push some variant of “tragedy is when I cut my finger, comedy is when you fall down and open sewer and die”, let me just say that:
You’re goddamn right that I am a contrarian degenerate.
So you have an admin that claims it is all about fighting anti-Semitism and expelling people it holds to be anti-Semitic because they can be embarrassments or whatever and then they go and admit a lot of people who are really sad that Apartheid ended and they know have to give Black people equal rights. Plus one of them is an outright anti-Semite of the most vile tropes of anti-Semitism.
Is defending this really a hill you want to die on? Is there no sense of decency that makes a contrarian argument a bridge too far? Or are your neurons totally wired to middle-school class clown who owns the libz/contrarians uber allies?
Plus one of them is an outright anti-Semite of the most vile tropes of anti-Semitism.
I find it difficult to believe that the examples that you, yourself, gave to me are the “most vile tropes of anti-Semitism”.
From what I’ve seen of anti-Semitism, they’re somewhere in the middle of “prejudiced”.
Maybe I’ve seen more than you have.
Which, lemme tell ya, would surprise me… but it’s certainly in the realm of possibility.
The Protesters call for genocide, threaten random Jews, support terrorism, and occasionally shut down the college. That guy in the link occasionally makes social media posts where he says he doesn’t trust Jews.
So yes, the “protesters” are crossing lines he isn’t and engage in behavior well past “protest”. That wouldn’t require the Feds to do anything if the college administration weren’t determined to shield them from law enforcement and allow them to continue because Jews don’t count.
For the record, I think that every side sucks and are using Jews as props. Saul is focusing more on the Right anti-Semites because he thinks they are a bigger danger and the Right is greater danger. The Left also has many anti-Semites that they refuse to do anything about because that would start a big civil war on the Left.
The basic problem with most of the liberal-left and Jews is that they basically can’t see Jews as anything but white people with different holidays rather than a distinct minority group with a culture and religion of our own. They know just enough about our own history to ask for help for their cause but when it comes to things like minority rights and multiculturalism or understanding why Jews might want a place of our own, they just can’t get it. They know what minorities and oppressed people look like and it isn’t like the Jews.
I am a big believer in “the normal rules apply”. There is no “Jewish” exception when it comes to threatening random people, calling for genocide, supporting terrorism, and so on.
That also means Israel is expected to go to war over things we’d go to war over. And that after you’re in a war, war time ethics apply.
“Ethnic Whites” is a term that was popular in the 70s.
It referred to Italians, Irish, so on. Distinct minority groups with a culture and religion of their own. (I mean, if your baseline is “WASP”, that is.)
WASPs aren’t really a thing anymore.
Welcome to the club.
WASPs aren’t really a thing anymore.
Welcome to the club.
You might want to check with some more “ethnic whites.”
They’re not a thing out here on this side of the Mississippi.
Are you, CJ, still not “really” white yet back there in the tri-state area?
I remember someone saying “Wilkes-Barre is so white that the Italians and the Poles still had beef in like 2003”, so that’s a distinct possibility…
And how does that play out in practice?
We can’t get into the good Rod and Gun Club?
Don’t be so sure. Your ability to speak with some authority on the subject is open to question.
Which is why I’m asking.
When I say “they aren’t really a thing”, I, of course, acknowledge that Episcopalians with nicknames like “Chaz” still exist.
I’m talking about as a cultural driving force.
But I’ll ask again: Are you, CJ, still not “really” white yet back there in the tri-state area?
Your curiosity about my personal life is noted, but I am not inclined to satisfy it. I suggest you talk to local “white ethnics” –presumably you know some — though they are not as thick on the ground in your neck of the woods as in the tri-state area.
Do you mind if I interpret that as being an answer in the ballpark of “it’s not that big of a deal anymore, certainly nowhere near as big a deal as the stories I heard in the 70s”?
Because that’s how I’m interpreting it.
This is one of those “Y’all will argue about literally anything” moments.
Are WASPs a big deal down where you are?
No, but I gather it is in, like upstate New York, Binghamton, that sort of thing.
It’s like cannibalism. It’s always the savages in the next tribe over.
My partner is Italian (like, has the passport and everything), but grew up in south central Connecticut, where everyone is either Irish or Italian (with a smattering of Polish… basically everyone’s Catholic), and there’s definitely an “ethnic white people” vibe about the place that differs from, say, here, or back where I’m from in Middle Tennessee. For one, the food is very different, but also just way more Catholic, culturally more than religiously.
Tangentially related: I have a theory that Italian food is better in places with smaller Italian-American populations, because Italian-Americans have been here for decades, or more than a century (my great grandparents all came to the U.S. in the late 1910s and early 1920s), and have developed their own cuisine(s), Italian-American food. It’s good, but if you want food that looks like what you’ll get in most of Italy today, you have to go where Italian Americans don’t dominate the Italian food scene. Anyway, long story short, if you want good Italian food, not Italian-American food, don’t go to south central Connecticut.
Nice to have actual information instead of handwaving.
Why should I mind if you want to make something up? It isn’t, for the time being, at least, the post-Reconstruction south either. If that makes you feel better.
It has to do with the whole “let’s say that I assume that CJ doesn’t want to lie… and let’s say that I assume that CJ doesn’t want to agree with me… what positions might he take to maintain both of those?” and the one you’ve got is one that does that.
I’m trying to imagine mindsets that make your stated position likely.
My “stated position” is that you ought to check with real white ethnics before indulging in whitesplaining. The rest is you.
Are you one?
Did the vowel at the end tip you off?
Are you, CJ, still not “really” white yet back there in the tri-state area?
Enlighten me as to why this would be any business of yours.
Because your advice to me was to get this information from you directly.
I’m sorry, I assumed that you had a wide and diverse enough group of friends and acquaintances that you could find white ethnics of your own to talk to. I wouldn’t suggest approaching a stranger on the internet with impertinent personal questions.
The ones I have here mostly agree with me.
That’s why I think that if your experience is significantly different to the point where you assume that I must not have spoken to any, that the information needs to come from you.
What you think of as your needs and my obligations don’t match up.
So you gave me an “ought” but you don’t have an “ought” to address the “ought” that you dropped in my lap?
Why, yes. Suggesting what you ought to do doesn’t create an obligation on my part to help you do it.
I’m not suggesting you have an obligation to help me check with real white ethnics. Merely suggesting that your failure to provide information after telling me that I should find out from real ones tells me that your advice doesn’t achieve usefulness.
But thank you for your advice anyway insofar as it continues to fail to falsify my hypothesis.
Adding to Saul’s link, multiple Trump officials linked to anti-Semitic extremists:
https://www.npr.org/2025/05/14/nx-s1-5387299/trump-white-house-antisemitism
This doesn’t change the fact that I think Jews are being used as a prop by the left and the right. Nobody is making a positive case for Jewish support, only a negative one.
In today’s “merely anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic” incident, Jewish woman brutally assaulted in Copenhagen, called a Jewish whore as people chant Free Palestine at her:
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-845981
Why Trump Has Turned Against Israel
The biggest threat to Israel’s support from the US has never been various objections or debates about the occupation. It’s that the government starts treating them like any other country. Israel’s cause is an obsession of certain parts of the permanent foreign policy bureaucracy. It has no real popular constituency. Hell it isn’t even a nice place to visit.
Trump’s relationships to Israel is just an example of how a lot of his policy is a sort of monkey paw’s version of leftist policy desires. Many leftists wanted the United States to be a lot less close to Israel for years or decades but they didn’t imagine it would be because the American President is easily bribable and the gulf monarchies are willing to pay.
Haaretz talked this morning about how Rubio “says U.S. troubled by Gaza humanitarian situation” to Netanyahu. A couple hours later, it talked about how Trump’s meeting with Syria’s new leader shows that Israel has lost clout.
If leftists are looking for stuff to say “see? It’s okay to vote your conscience instead of voting for Kamala”, Haaretz is giving it to them.
Now let’s see if this means anything.
U.S. troubled by Gaza humanitarian situation
How much aid did we give Japan and Germany during WW2?
It’s a war. The normal ethical rules of war mean Israel shouldn’t be sending fuel, funds, and food to Hamas. What Israel should be doing is letting the civilians flee the war zone and get aid in other places.
Ethnic Cleansing was the best play a few months ago, sure. Too many people are looking at their watches now, with much more modern and enlightened definitions of “fairness” than we had back in the days of the atom.
Unfortunately, those definitions either assume Hamas won’t behave like Hamas or they have special carve outs for Jews.
Under normal rules fought be normal countries, one side doesn’t need to supply it’s enemies. We didn’t put in special ethics for Jews nor should we.
“What Israel should be doing is letting the civilians flee the war zone and get aid in other places.”
It’s not Israel stopping Palestinians get into Egypt.
The it’s war logic hasn’t applied since World War II. Humanity, especially in the democracies, is suppose to be too civilized for that for now. This is especially true in conflicts that attract the interest of the international caring community/chattering classes. For a variety of reasons, the I/P conflict attracts a lot of outside interest and partisans on both sides. Turning the I/P conflict into a proxy war for a variety of other conflicts hasn’t done much to bring the I/P conflict to a resolution but it is what it is.
it’s war logic hasn’t applied since World War II.
Russia v Ukraine (or Russia v anyone).
ISIS v anyone.
Various other Middle East Wars.
Various African wars.
Israel stands out as the exception in terms of our expectations.
None of the wars you invoked involve developed democracies. Israel is a develop democracy and is held to developed democracies standards. That means people expect them not to go full out.
That means people expect them not to go full out.
They’re using the USA as the example on how things should work.
The USA has a lot more resources and a lot less on the line. We fight optional wars far away from our own cities. Sometimes we give up and leave rather than make a bigger body count.
None of that has anything to do with Israel. WW2 is a much better comparison.
More importantly, Israel isn’t going full out (especially by WW2 standards). Afaict, Israel is trying to follow the actual rules of war, however Hamas isn’t.
Hamas not following the rules SHOULD mean Israel gets a pass on issues created by Hamas’ various crimes.
For example Hamas using ambulances as troop carriers means Israel gets a pass on killing people in ambulances if it suspects that they’re a troop carrier.
Yeah, it should but that doesn’t mean it will. Everybody with half a brain cell realizes that the Palestinians can’t militarily defeat Israel and that the world isn’t going to swoop in and save them. The Palestinians and their so called allies can’t comprehend a negotiated settlement with Israel because that would mean giving up the Sacred Right of Return.
Post-WWII or even liberal-left theories about how these things should work basically have no idea what to do when groups refuse to be realistic and keep insisting on complete victory because under their understanding of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, their group possesses all justice and the other group is completely wrong. The I/P conflict is one example of this. Universal principles clashing hard against implementation in messy reality.
Where the theory doesn’t work you should change the theory, not insist that facts don’t matter.
Here’s a fun exercise: Look at what actually happened in the last year and a half and, take as a starting assumption, that what happened was actually the plan.
If the goal was to get the Israelis to publicly (globally!) burn as much good will and moral authority as possible, was this accomplished?
If the goal was to ethnically cleanse Gaza, was this accomplished?
Now, of course!, there is no master plan and everything is a random walk and we don’t know anything.
But instead of saying “if the goal was to destroy Israel, the goal failed!”, we say “let’s look at what happened and assume that it was intended, more or less, to happen that way”, do we pick up anything at all?
Because I remember Scott Adams talking about the whole idea of Israel burning its moral capital and… yeah. It seems to be doing that.
Eurovision hosts seemed to have a freak out when it looked like Israel was going to win. If you are very online, Israel might look like the most hated country world in the West. For the not very online, many people still like it. Pro-Palestinian activists are always surprised when it turns out that lots of people disagree with them on Israel.
I, personally, wish that we had arenas where we could say stuff like “leave the politics at the door… we’re just here to have a good time and play a game/listen to music/watch some cars blow up” but, it was pointed out to me, *EVERYTHING* is political.
The desire to just sit and watch some cars blow up is indicative of great privilege.
You are dealing with a social species. That makes nearly everything political.
Yeah. I’m kinda surprised they let Israel even participate.
It’s hard to read what Trump’s policy towards Israel is. Obviously, the Arab Gulf Kingdoms can bribe Trump a lot more than Israel can. Trump’s administration also closed the Palestine Office of the State Department and he isn’t exactly putting pressure on Israel to do anything.
The Gulf Kingdoms’ leadership hate Hamas (i.e. the Muslim brotherhood) and correctly view it as a proxy for Iran. Their people don’t like the war and Israel, but they don’t write checks big enough to matter.
We should expect much anti-Israel rhetoric from the Gulf States but no actual action, including bribes to go easy on Hamas.
Mexican influencer murdered by gunshot on livestream. There are times where I think that barbarianism is a lot more common than us civilized folks think and that the belief the world was getting better in a liberalish sort of way was more of an illusion than anything else:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg4rn0z1r6o?fbclid=IwY2xjawKTaaVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFOeUJZS3RCcGZYNW00cXFNAR61-Q7RYDet9cW_drkbprMIIYmO2hoISbECMAjbvKdN_JaNpWOOFZ4CqvH7YA_aem_9pmTL-eJVr9ICn0_-4sswQ
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem proposes Citizenship:The Reality TV Show
https://www.thedailybeast.com/kristi-noem-wants-migrants-to-compete-for-citizenship-on-hunger-games-style-reality-show/
First, presumably the things that are normally illegal or banned are still illegal or banned so no, unlike in the Hunger Games they won’t be killing each other.
2nd, humanizing immigrants would be a good thing. Game show logic suggests half of the contestants will be very attractive and so on.
So this could be either a good thing or a bad thing depending on who is running it.
Some mornings you just have to laugh at whose face the leopards are currently eating.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/kid-rocks-restaurant-closes-to-avoid-trumps-ice-raids/?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwKUFZpleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHrOSy9oJFC8KH9N4zz6rePF_1cPH4xjR_Ti6414eek-56tETtzgX2Vpjsi7O_aem_xYMMsOrTKw8OTo-M-FxvKg
In video game news, Ubisoft Ubisoft stock price fell after it announced that it would be using its cash on hand to fund the various titles it is working on.
From the article: “We expected Assassin’s Creed Shadows to turn around Ubisoft’s financial performance in 2026 after recent weakness. The firm’s outlook makes this seem unlikely,” Morningstar analysts said.
We don’t have Ubisoft’s numbers. All we have are Playstation sales numbers and Steam sales numbers. That means that we don’t have XBox numbers and we don’t have PC-non-Steam numbers.
But the numbers we do have aren’t great.
The stock price fell about 20%.
A ship has just hit the Brooklyn Bridge.
Please drink responsibly.