Open Mic for the week of 3/24/25
On this day in 1832, Joseph Smith was tarred and feathered in Hiram, Ohio.
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.
Axios has a fun article talking about the importance of figuring out why Dems lost in 2024.
The article states: Why it matters: It’s hard to win if you don’t know why you lost
One of the problems with 2016 is that this problem was avoided entirely by confidently pointing out that Clinton didn’t lose the election so therefore they don’t need to change anything and this was followed by Trump losing in 2020.
But now, in 2024…
Well, here are the top 10 theories:
1. It’s all Joe Biden’s fault.
2. It’s all Kamala Harris’ fault.
3. Podcasts and social media.
4. “Too woke.”
5. Elitist words.
6. Elitist policies.
7. Testosterone.
8. Inflation, inflation, inflation.
9. The border.
10. Trump is one-of-a-kind.
I’d probably argue that you can pick your favorite three out of there and say “this is why” and just point to those three (any of them!).
But the main thing that worries me are the ones that can easily preface a “therefore, the Democrats don’t need to change”.
It was all Biden’s fault. Therefore the Democrats don’t need to change.
It was Harris. 100%. Therefore the Democrats don’t need to change.
Democrats didn’t embrace podcasts. Therefore the Democrats don’t need to change policies, they just need a Joe Rogan.
Why does this matter?, you may ask. Well, I’d say that it’s hard to win if you don’t know why you lost.Report
I’d say 1,2,8 & 10 were the big problems.
RE: No need to change
Team Blue had an openly unfit leader who no one dared point out wore no clothes. Then they replaced him with a women whose big abilities were her race and her gender, and who over two election cycles got zero delegates to secure the nod.
I’m thinking there’s room for improvement in there somewhere.
1) Don’t pick a VP unless they can head the ticket.
2) If the top guy is unfit, have him actually step down. Harris the President would have been Presidential and wouldn’t have been able to run both against and for Joe.
3) Replace your guy earlier.Report
Team Blue waited until the last second to notice their guy was unable to talk and then replaced him with someone who managed to get zero delegate votes over two election cycles.
They/we shouldn’t be picking a VP based on their group membership but rather on their ability to head the ticket.
If you’re going to replace your guy, do it earlier.
If you’re going to replace your guy, actually replace him. A President Harris would have looked a lot more Presidential and would have removed the conflict of running both for and against Biden. She could have showed herself righting the ship and taking charge.
Of course that assumes she actually had that ability which is unclear.Report
In 2023, I listened to a discussion/interview with a well-known American philosopher and a couple philosophers outside of the U.S., mostly about his most recent book (which has little to do with politics, and nothing to do with American partisan politics), but they ended with talk of movies and then current American politics, and they all, the American philosopher and his non-American interlocutors, agreed that Biden was in serious cognitive decline and the Democrats should be holding a primary to find another candidate.
Point being, it was obvious even to random (admittedly leftist, so not big fans of Biden or the Dems) philosophers in other countries, so it must have been obvious to the people in the White House and the Dem national leadership. In a just world, nobody who worked in that administration or in the national party would ever work in politics again. Alas…Report
In defense of the Democrats in power at the time: it’s 2023 and coming up on the most important election of our lifetimes and they didn’t want to just walk up to Donald Trump and hand him the biggest W they possibly could.Report
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_health_concerns_about_Joe_Biden
Shortly after the debate in June, “Biden declined to undergo a cognitive exam”. Presumably he knew he couldn’t pass it.
In Feb 2024, the special counsel said his memory “appeared to have significant limitations”.
My impression is his staff knew, but if he was replaced odds were they would be too. “The Biden administration has also been criticized for allegedly gaslighting or harassing journalists who asked questions about Biden’s health or age”Report
Do I have comments in mod? I’d swear I replied to this.Report
You had two that auto-trashed. I fished them out.Report
I’d go with #10. We’ve had 3 DJT election cycles now, and there’s not an obvious successor. The guy is such an outlier, it’s hard to figure him into regular political science.
I’d probably throw in #8, as well. The 2020s are going to be an odd decade, historically.Report
This reminds me of something I’ve been wondering: What comes after Trump?
After Trump’s first term, in which he was largely a bungling and ineffective president, my big worry was that what would come next would be a more competent far right candidate, like say DeSantis or Vance, and they would much more effectively implement a far right agenda. I’ve since come to realize that, at least to this point, all of the other far right candidates the Republican Party has put forward, particularly Vance and DeSantis, have the charisma of a rotting tree stump. This is important, because it’s really difficult to implement a far right agenda with the charisma of a tree stump. You really need a charismatic strongman to be that authoritarian.
And of course, now I know the real threat was a Trump administration populated entirely by far right true believers and Trump sycophants, all of whom had 4 years to coach up Trump and plan their strategy, with Musk thrown in as an extra wild card. But what comes after Trump after this term? I mean, a lot of damage will have been done, but how does the MAGA movement, and the Republican Party it’s completely taken over, maintain this without a cult of personality to lead it?
Obviously there are other relevant questions, like what happens to a Democratic Party that’s shown itself to be utterly worthless in the face of everything that’s happening, and that currently has favorability ratings in the low 30s? Is there still a Constitutional order in 4 years? To what extent will state Republicans have so thoroughly undermined the integrity of elections that Dems can’t win elections in Red States anyway? Etc. But mostly I just wonder, who takes over from Trump, and how unpopular will that person have to be, as they inevitably will be unpopular, for this shi*t to fall apart?Report
We’ll watch “Trumpism requires Trump to work” evolve into “Trumpism doesn’t work at all, not even with Trump” and the question that I have is whether Vance is skilled enough to evolve that into “That Wasn’t Real Trumpism”.
Vance’s charisma is not tree stump quality. It’s better than that.
I don’t know that it’s populist, mind… but he’s got four years to learn.Report
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/?gift=kPTlqn0J1iP9IBZcsdI5IVJpB2t9BYyxpzU4sooa69M&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Jeffrey Goldberg accidentally included in group chat on bombing YemenReport
Came here to post that I never get invited to the cool group chats. Good for Jeffrey.Report
Do we have any Signal users? How easy is it to add someone to a group chat?Report
I’m a Teams user, myself. I have to go up to the “view and add participants” button, scroll down to “add people”, click on “add people”, type the first part of the guy’s name in the chat, then scroll down and find the guy and add him and *THEN* he’s in the group chat.
I’m wondering if Signal is something around as onerous or if you’ll accidentally do it by typing with all of your fingers one key to the left or right.Report
And then you realized you had two people that names started with Jeff and you added the wrong one….Report
Then you try to quickly hit recall, but someone has already looked at it…Report
Of all the random Jeff’s in the world… they got the Editor in Chief of the Atlantic Jeff.
Talk about bad luck.Report
Michael Waltz.Report
The guy from Inglorious Basterds was in there too?
Man, talk about bad OpSec.
Edit to add: On the plus side, can we all not stand back an appreciate how far we’ve come from an insecure home email server to using state of the art dual encryption?Report
Huh. He’s on Twitter.
Hasn’t tweeted since yesterday.
Probably busy.Report
Heh I believe it is actually Christoph Waltz (Austrians require lots of extra words and t’s) who drinks a glass of milk while the gestapo ransacks your farm house.Report
So a couple of months ago, I was talking about how the January 6th people had incredibly bad opsec, and there is a fundamental difference between the left and the right.
The left has good opsec because the authorities are always after them, attempting to infiltrate them, to incite them to violence so they can crash down, attempting to come up with reasons to arrest them at protests.
Whereas the right is _almost_ always on the side of the authorities, so literally doesn’t bother with the slightest amount of opsec. And that blew up in their face on January 6th when the authorities decided ‘assaulting the police and attempting to kill Congress’ had passed whatever invisible line their protests were normally allowed to get away with.
I…um… Didn’t realize this lack of opsec applied to quite this level.
There is a standard warning that people on the left generally give to people organizing against the administration to ‘always assume that there is a Fed in the chat.’ Blue Sky is having a field day flipping that backwardsReport
Getting opsec about the President’s followers to prevent them from doing the President’s will seems a little risky politically and normally unnecessary.
Law enforcement didn’t realize they were going to have to deal with the President enflaming things as opposed to telling everyone to go home.Report
While amusing I think this is just what happens when you staff your admistration with whatever is worse than backbenchers (nosebleeders?) and media personalities who have never been accountable for anything of significance. Don’t let Fox News fool you, the people on that chat are better understood as JV dilettantes with very low IQs. They aren’t taking cues from the great unwashed involved in 1/6.Report
To be fair to David’s original point, I expect the Tesla firebombers really have their shit together.Report
It kinda depends who it is. I said something similiar when Brian Thompson was killed, that if someone on the actual left did this, good luck. But if they did, we’d never know anyway.
Then he was tracked down, and it turns out he wasn’t. So…at least that doesn’t invalidate my point.
I haven’t seen any reports on how competently this was done, although I have very little respect for people who use fire. I guess it could hypothetically be save to burn _cars_, which are in theory in a parking lot, but you can destroy Teslas just by throwing paint on them.Report
The talk about not wanting to “bail out Europe again” was a pretty big clue they were dilettantes.Report
Not bad luck, pure stupidity. While I can see it happening (and done it at work one or two times). It is still on that person to find and fix before sending (just like it was on me).
This is even worse because of what it was over.Report
It takes two steps: first, you have to send an invitation to someone, and second, when creating a group, you have to put their name in. If you have people in your contacts with very similar names, it’s probably pretty easy to include the wrong person in both steps if you’re not paying attention to what you’re doing. Which, I mean, it’s been a while since I last created a national security chat, but I’m pretty sure that if I’d be a bit more careful about adding people than they seem to have been.
A fun possibility is that the initial invite to Goldberg was intentional, because dude was using his personal Signal account and he was just adding a lot of media contacts, but then he used his personal Signal account to talk about national security sh*t.Report
Okay, that’s good to know. When I’m in your group chat and you add a third party, is there a ding and a little message at the bottom that says “Joe Schmoe has been added to the chat?”
It does that for Teams.Report
I think it puts a message in the chat, though it’s been a while since I added someone to a chat, something similar to what Teams says when you add someone.
(oops, screwed up my email address I think.)Report
Today’s Senate Intel Committee hearing revealed the Mid East envoy in the chat was in Moscow as it was happening.Report
Happy Nowruz everybody. I was at my second Nowruz celebration with my partner last night. Yesterday was a Zoroastrian Nowruz. It’s pretty interesting comparing and contrasting how one small insular ethnoreligious group deals with things compared to your small ethnoreligious group, especially when they occupy the same socio-economic niche:
1. The Zoroastrian approach to politics and society seems to be keep out and keep your head down. This is the complete opposite of the Jewish approach. Whether we are Ashkenazi or Mizrahi, left or right, Zionist or anti-Zionist, Jews dod not keep out and keep our heads down. Our approach is more like “just because we might be 1% or less of the population, doesn’t give you a right to boss us around. Fish you.”
2. Zoroastrians seem to have no need to update or modernize their religion while the modernizers, traditionalists, and everything in-between was fighting over the religion since the early 19th century.Report
Ahura Mazda seems like a pretty wise guy.
How was the food?Report
Delicious.Report
Luke 20:25 is always sound advice.Report
As the supreme deity of the Zoroastrians, he’s a good bit more than “a pretty wise guy.” If you believe in him at all.Report
A wise lord?Report
There are modernist Zoroastrians, though they are a minority within a very small religious group anyway, so you’re unlikely to meet them. There are also restorationists, who reject “recent” (as in, over the last millennium) changes to the original, pure Zoroastrianism of the Gathas, but they’re also a small(ish) minority within a very small religious group. I think most Zoroastrians are somewhere in between the two, though the only Zoroastrian I’ve ever known personally is a Parsi, which is a group known for their conservatism, though they’re not restorationists.Report
Mike Waltz is married. The woman to whom he is married has a sister. This sister is married to Scott Stapp, lead singer of Creed.
Edit: Never mind. They got divorced last year.Report
Every party has a pooper! 😉Report
A 26 year old leftist influencer/TikTok presenter named Kat Abughazeh is attempting to primary Democratic politician Jan Schakowsky in the 9th District of Illinois. The Illinois 9th District is a very Jewish District, it contains Skokie, and has been represented by a Jew in Congress since 1948 with a brief two year exception in the early 1960s when their representative, Sidney R. Yates, attempted to run for the Senate. Ms. Abughazeh is Palestinian on her fathers side, was part of uncommitted, and has rallied against AIPAC on social media:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4e35adc4d1f152e258c0f8c8d1a8ed40c86b35e9e08f7302659f5de70c5ecb2e.jpg
I have no idea why she considers herself to be a good match for this district. I am getting a lot of Jamal Bowman vibes from her.Report
Her resume includes a lot of work for Media Matters.Report
I’m confused about why you think she’s a poor representative of a district that, while it does have a sizeable Jewish population, is still overwhelmingly non-Jewish, and more than 40% non-white.
Looks like it’s ~10% Jewish, though the statistics I found are a bit outdated.Report
Because her opinions on Israel are very different from the opinions of many of the residents of the district on Israel. Jamal Bowman got into trouble by using the term Zionist in very weird ways, embracing 10/7 conspiracy theories, and saying that Jewish majority neighborhoods are bad in a Jewish majority district. Same thing.Report
Because her opinions on Israel are very different from the opinions of many of the residents of the district on Israel.
It’s a very Democratic district, with a relatively large Jewish population, who still make up a minority of the district (~10%). Assuming that the non-Jewish population of the district looks like the Democratic Party nationally, and that every Jewish person in the district voted Democrat (a ridiculous assumption, but this is just to make sure we’ve got a conservative estimate), then with 68% of the district voting for Harris, take away the 75-80k Jewish voters (obviously, some of them can’t even vote, but again, we’re being conservative), then with Dems nationally sympathizing with Palestinians over Israelis at about 3:1, we’d still have a majority of Dem voters sympathizing with Palestinians over Israelis. When you throw in Republicans, who sympathize with Israelis at about 8:1, this is still less than 50% of the total electorate, but it’s pretty close. Considering that there are probably at least some Jewish residents who are either anti-Zionist or are pro-Israel but oppose the genocide, I bet it’s probably right about 50:50. I’m not sure it’s at all unreasonable for her to run, but then, that’s why we have elections, right?Report
Jan Schakowsky is 80 years old and has had very few primary challengers in the last quarter century. Besides, no House district belongs to anyone or any group. Kat probably won’t win, but good for her for throwing her hat in the ring.Report
This.Report
Fun fact: one of her primary challengers was none other than current IL guv J.B. Pritzker.Report
I agree with the age thing but there are better primary challengers out there or maybe not. Diane Feinstein’s last primary challenger got caught doing racisms against African-Americans, Jews, and even Armenians in a hot mike moment after Feinstein was elected.Report
If there’s something there, I’m sure Schakowsky’s people can dig it up. Right now all we have is a willingness to run and some online statements indicating a less than enthusiastic support of American aid to Israel.Report
I provided a link of her rallying against AIPAC on social media.Report
As someone who’d ban ALL campaign contributions, this is not a disqualifier for me. Plus, I don’t live in that district. The voters will decide.Report
Almost enough to make me vote for a Democrat, if I lived in her district.Report
Agreed.Report
I think every Democratic incumbent should face a primary challenge. If for no other reason than to serve as a “shot across the bow” and remind them that their constituents want someone who is going to fight for them. The ones that have the voters’ favor will retain their seats.
The deadweight should be jettisoned.Report
Primary challenges drive the Left further to the Left and the Right further to the Right.Report
There should be at least some strategy to the district choice.Report
Nope. I don’t agree with Loomis about much but I do agree with him that Dems in R+X districts should not be primaried and should be encouraged to stay in office forever.
IN D+double digits X districts, though, I would not be at all opposed to regular primarying going on.Report
Jonathan Chait has an article in the Atlantic (reprinted here at AOL): Why the COVID Reckoning Is So One-Sided
From the middle:
He also points out that conservatives got a lot of stuff wrong too.Report
Everyone just freaked out. There was no real analysis, it was all “something must be done, won’t somebody think of the children!”
My gym masked for 2 weeks and folks trained with dummy’s. After that, the owner said “I don’t care if you don’t wear a mask.” Know what? People didn’t get sick because if they felt bad they stayed home.Report
As usual he’s right.Report
I’m sure that he is confused as to why support for his obviously correct article is so one-sided.Report
Err, no, this is Chait- he has no confusion at all about why the right does the various things it does.Report
Heh, I see what you’re doing; it’s funnier to play Chait saying this straight.Report
Ganz covers the Atlantic debacle well: https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/the-worst-and-the-dimmest
“My high-level takeaway is “what you see is what you get. These guys might look like idiots, and talk like idiots, but don’t let that fool you: they really are idiots. I suppose there is a small possibility that this was some kind of “op” — an intentional leak to Goldberg and the Atlantic — but to what end? It makes them look amateurish and bad at their jobs. To a president obsessed with image, this is even more important than the actual national security implications. ….We can finally put to rest all the hypotheticals and theories about Trump’s governance: There’s no 4D chess going on here; the administration is very reactive and tactical; they are not prone to complicated or detailed considerations. They barely even deliberate at all: they do what Trump wants and rationalize it ex post facto.”
The idiocy is somehow a superpower for them because they just turn into full-speed ahead bulldozersReport
Trump signs another sweeping executive order against lawyer who were somehow associated with something against him. This time Jenner Block: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/25/us/politics/trump-executive-order-law-firm-jenner-block.html
Let’s see if they fight or bend then kneeReport
In actual good news, the Supreme Court declines to hear a case asking it to overturn Sullivan and invalidate anti-SLAPP statutes: https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-turns-away-casino-mogul-wynns-bid-challenge-ny-times-v-sullivan-2025-03-24/Report
Young Democrat Harry Sisson has reportedly been dropped by Palette Management following what might be the most Gen Z sex scandal to have ever happened.Report
A sex scandal without sex. Or even meeting anyone. Or even promising to meet someone and/or date them.
Those women think a group of men should be chasing them but instead they all collectively were chasing the same guy.Report
The question: “Are they victims?” has a strange and terrible logic.
If the answer is “yes, those women are victims”, then we’ve got ourselves an old-fashioned scandal.
If the answer is “being dumb and posting pictures of your butt in yoga pants to a guy who is also getting pictures of other chicks’ butts in yoga pants does not a victim make”, you’ve got yourselves a new-fashioned scandal.
These chicks need to listen to Beyonce and tell Harry: “No pictures of this cake unless you put a ring on this hand, honey.”
Dongs are abundant and low value.Report
The answer is most certainly “…does not a victim make”.
They’re contacting other men. He’s contacting other women. This is not a scandal.Report
On the other blog somebody described Gen Z as having an overwhelming desire to be good kids. This would certainly explain their strange prudishness. I heard that many of them don’t even like sex in fiction that isn’t explicitly pornographic.Report
There was a really funny tweet awhile ago about being out of touch with celebrity culture. This is me reading that article.Report
I went upstairs to tell Maribou about this and opened with “Do you know who Harry Sisson is?” and she got really apprehensive when I started talking about the Gen Z Sex Scandal because, well, it’s a potential minefield, right? Maybe he abused someone. Maybe he hurt someone.
Halfway through my explanation, she started googling and asking “Why in the hell is the Hindustan Times talking about this?” and the realization that “OH HE’S AN INFLUENCER!” and I started telling her some of the pickup lines that Harry used and telling her that I was going to start incorporating them into my repertoire and she told me that she thought I was kidding or exaggerating for effect because as a Geriatric Millennial, she has a *COMPLETELY* different definition of “sex scandal” and while it has room for yoga pants and selfies, it doesn’t rely solely on them.
Anyway, I’m glad I got married back in the 90’s. I feel like I got on the last chopper out of ‘nam.Report
I’ve seen youtube videos on the behavior of men/women on these dating apps.
He’s an extremely high status male who is young, handsome, (rich?), and not married/in-a-relationship. There is far more demand for that than supply.
Those women are used to dealing with the opposite imbalance and are horrified to find out they’re the electronic equiv of groupies.Report
Here it is on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BrandNewSentence/comments/15hcc4x/curtains_for_zoosha_ksmog_and_batboy_caught/
The account on Twitter has been nuked.Report
Reading that article, I have no idea how gay people are involved in this. Normal people, and I include straight people in that, have conversations about and general understandings of their level of a relationship.
This is not a new thing they need to start doing. Hell, the article talks about Sisson _literally explaining_ things to them. This is just some subset of women who willfully ignored it.
And I actually have a theory here: I suspect it’s because he’s an influencer, and that they have a obvious parasocial relationship in _addition_ to talking to him personally.
We’ve long had a problem with people thinking parasocial relationships are real and the people on the other side are in love or good friends with them, despite the celebrity not actually knowing their names. This is the same thing, except the celebrity does know the person’s name and like to talk to them..but that person still has hallucinated a huge aspect of their relationship.
Some sort of blending, in their head, of the stuff he puts out publicly, blended with their conversations, to make them imagine he’s spending _way_ more time with them then he is.
It’s like they’ve discovering the guy who says he won’t commit but has been living in their house and spending almost every waking hour talking with them…has been doing that with several other women. I think that would, reasonable, upset a lot of people, even with clearly explained relationship rules.
Except they just hallucinated the ‘he’s living in my house and spending every waking hour with me’ because they’re watching his tiktok a lot, and in reality they’re just chatting like thirty minutes a day.Report
GenX Republican influencers on Twitter have responses that fall into three (general) buckets.
1. “Hahahahahahahahahahahaha” (deep breath) “Hahahahahahahahahahaha”
2. “You did nothing wrong, my man. Don’t let the bastards grind you down!”
3. “I thought Harry was gay.”
Anyway, #3 is how the gay thing got introduced.Report
Harry gay?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxrWuE5qC5cReport
Looks like the only connection is that the author is gay and is comparing how straight dating has become more like gay dating- whether women acknowledge that or not.Report
Or that.Report
Just that. From the article at the end of the first paragraph where he shifted to talking about the gay angle. “Gay men didn’t start acting straighter; straight people started acting like us.”Report
As much as I hate to ruin gay America’s romanticized view of heterosexual dating I have to inform you that it was full of hook ups, friends with benefit situations, failures to commit, two timing, and various players and player hating of the most sordid variety, even before gay marriage was legal. Don’t ask me how I know.Report
It wasn’t all innocent glances at the soda fountain or dances at the sock hop.Report
In our defense, we didn’t have yoga pants yet let alone the ability to take pictures of our butts in them and transmit them over miles within seconds.Report
Thank God for that.
There was this party I had at my house senior year when my parents were out of town when those cheap little disposable cameras were all the rage. Of course my folks left a camera of their own laying around and some sort of intermingling seems to have occurred. Oh the looks I got when that film was developed.Report
According to my brother, teens having a party when the parents are out of town is something that doesn’t seem to occur to teenagers in Asian countries. He keeps hearing stories through his wife’s friends where some sort of mild to medium level naughtiness would be the end point if an American told it and there is never that. When the teens say that they are going to study in the library with friends, that is what happens.Report
I would have friends over for a party! There would be 3 or 4 of us and we’d eat ramen and ice cream and watch a movie on the VCR. Then everybody would go home by 9PM!
To be honest, I don’t see what the big deal was.Report
You guys are so cute.Report
We drank at the teen parties in my school. Some pot. For some reason, we were very quiet about who was fishing who.Report
You were in high school in the 1980s. There wasn’t much if any ramen in the United States at the time.Report
This would have been 90 or 91 and, I assure you, packs of Top Ramen were somewhere around a dime.Report
Hahah! I had no such delusions but this author is probably only in his fishing 20’s or early 30’s.Report
David: Except they just hallucinated the ‘he’s living in my house and spending every waking hour with me’
+1. That’s insightful.Report
Yeah good point, basically a very mild version of the delusions John Warnock Hinckley Jr. entertained in the 80’s.Report
I assume this happened often enough on the early internet (like BBS’s with a private message function, AOL Instant Messages, or whatever the direct messages were called on CompuServe), but the difference was that back then, the ratio of men to women on the internet was like 3 or 4 to 1, so every woman would have been getting these messages from like 10 guys at once.Report
We’d have to figure out the equivalent to Harry Sisson back in the AOL days.
Ashton Kutcher? Lemme google.
Okay. Okay. Okay… The best thing I can say is that it’s not particularly Gen Z.Report
AIM after dark.Report
Well, and also, without vast social media networks none of the drama around this kind of stuff would ever have a vector to escape your immediate social circle.
“This is Peter Jennings with ABC- you won’t believe what Brady, age 23, of Duckhump Ohio was doing to Laura, Becca, Stacy AND Karen all at once on a local BBS. More at 11.”Report
The Jeffrey Goldberg/Atlantic/Leak thing: Everybody involved in the group chat said “it wasn’t classified stuff!” and the Atlantic said “you sure about that?” and everybody said “yeah!” and so Goldberg published the group chat and…
Hoo boy. Specific equipment, times *BEFORE THE FACT*, techniques, and a tidbit that indicated that we were getting updates on the ground.
This ain’t even in the ballpark of “maybe they deliberately leaked it to see how gullible Goldberg was”.Report
Front page post up on this topic for discussion nowReport
Quelle surprise.Report
The Atlantic story keeps on getting worse and worse for the Trump team.Report
The worst part- I doubt there’ll be significant electoral (and obviously no official, or legal) consequences for this clusterfish- except maybe for The Atlantic.Report
It’s bad. The Dems handwaving away of Hilary’s private server is the only arrow the other side will need in its quiver to brush this one aside. Judging by r/Conservative, that’s already the mindset.Report
“Afghanistan’s withdrawal was worse than this. Therefore…”
It should be noted that Afghanistan’s withdrawal wasn’t Biden’s fault and I’m not trying to imply that it was.Report
Hillary was investigated by two House Select Committee headed by Republicans and by the IG at State in Trump’s first term. She was not found to have done anything other then exercise poor judgement.
No matter what Twitter-pates republicans think, the left was correct to shrug.Report
Perception is reality in this case. It’s easy to equate the 2 cases. If one side wants to point a finger at the other, it better have clean hands.
If the Dem’s held the Hill right now, you’d better believe there’d be hearing. Alas!Report
I am inclined to agree. The utter lack of caring by the administration is traction and the GOP on the Hill is the tell. They will make this a feature not a bug and move on.Report
This is just a demonstration of the well understood fact that there are two types of people: 1) important people who can get away with doing stuff and 2) everyone else who’d be in a world of legal trouble or worse. And everyone in 1 are populated by politicians and other well connected folk.Report
If America was a parliamentary republic, we would be at snap elections at this point.Report
You say that like it’d be a good thing. Far as I can tell it’s only Trump’s political opponents who are upset with him and we just had elections. If the system allows/requires elections every 5 months then the gov is so unstable that there will be serious problems.
We had an election and decided to let the clowns rule for a while. Elections have consequences. I don’t like it, but the rules say this is what happens.Report
Parliamentary systems don’t require election so quickly, they just allow them as a safety measure.Report
Also Trump and the Muskrats would be, presumably, walking and talking a lot softer if they knew that excessive clowning would get them snap elections.Report
Last thing on Snow White for a while. The kid of one of the producers blames Zegler.
To be perfectly honest, he has a point but there is plenty of room to make lots of points. Sure, Zegler was vaguely offputting in some of her interviews but how many people even know about those?
Hell, the movie has some vaguely of-the-moment politics in it but that’s something that people who see it walk out of the movie scratching their heads over, not something before the fact.
The problem, if I had to guess, was that the trailers sucked and the dwarves were more likely to make you say “you’re kidding, right?” instead of “holy cow, this looks awesome”. The trailers were just enough to get people to say “maybe I’ll read a review first…” and the official critic reviews are at 42% on Rotten Tomatoes (which means there’s a good chance that the movie reviewer in your local paper gave it a poor grade) and Letterboxd has it at 2.2.
The trailer made people hesitate, the reviews told them that they were right to do so.
Now, with that said, is it possible to put lipstick on a pig? Yes! Disney used to be good at that! And the lipstick process does involves stuff like not being offputting in carpet interviews and not posting “Free Palestine” to your social media in such a way that is as likely to get people to say “that’s not a message to her millions of fans, that’s a message to two or three very specific people in front of her millions of fans” as to get them to say “from the river to the sea! But I won’t see a movie with Gal Gadot in it because she was in the Israeli Military!”
We’re in the “finger-pointing and recriminations” part of the post-release now. Not the “it didn’t do that bad, all things considered” part.Report
Drinker’s first 2 minutes of his review sums it up well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzk0yH9Achw&ab_channel=TheCriticalDrinkerReport
I always wonder when celebrities do this type of stuff is whether it is out of true belief, a hope that it will make them popular, or a combination. I mean there is no reason to doubt that Ziegler might really believe what she put on social media about Israel or Gal Gadot but at the same time, the phrasing just seems really calculated.Report
I’m guessing you didn’t grow up in the synagogue but were fairly secular?
I ask because, as someone who grew up fairly evangelical, that particular move is visible from a million miles away.
But, of course, you can’t *SAY* “they don’t even care about Palestine” because… hey. That’s a deeply cutting thing to imply.Report
I mean define secular. I went to Hebrew school until I graduated from high school, my family belonged to a synagogue, we did Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Chanukkah, and Pesach. We lit the Shabbat candles, etc.Report
Well, lemme tell ya, the whole “cutting remark hiding behind superficial affirmation of membership in good standing” thing is something that the Babtists are pretty good at.
I’d have suspected that it was universal.Report
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I am completely not sure about how much the Pro-Palestine faction in the West really cares about the Palestinians so much as they care about hurting Israel/Jews. Their strategy seems so utterly boneheaded at times and so intensely focused at doing useless actions like spraying painting “F-world Israel” on public property or dedicated to re-litigating Zionism or making patently ridiculous demands that they don’t seem to care about Palestinians that much.Report
When we select for people who are thinking emotionally and not dealing with the real world, we’re dealing with people who aren’t dealing with the real world.
So if you have convinced yourself that Hamas are the good guys, then them torturing (and otherwise being heinous to) their own citizens isn’t a thing. It doesn’t happen.Report
What she said, in 5-word tweet, has long been a cancellable offense in this country, and can now get you deported if you’re not a citizen (how long before it can get you detained even if you are?). I am sure she knew their could be a cost. To argue that she didn’t mean it, then, requires a bit more than, “I can recognize it when I see it, based on how I was raised.”Report
has long been a cancellable offense in this country
Only in a handful of higher-status industries.
To argue that she didn’t mean it, then, requires a bit more than, “I can recognize it when I see it, based on how I was raised.”
It’s less of a “she didn’t mean it” as much as a “she was giving a different message *ENTIRELY*, one that had nothing to do with the surface level of her comment which was entirely tangential to what she was actually saying.”
The surface level of what she was saying does get a great deal of defense from fellow believers, though.
I mean, do you honestly have no idea what I’m talking about? Do you really think “I know exactly what you’re talking about and why you’re seeing this the way you are but, seriously, this is different from the thing both you and I know exists” wouldn’t be a more comfortable play?Report
You don’t think she believes Palestine should be free?
And I’m pretty sure show biz is a high-status industry.Report
I’m sure that her thoughts on Palestine are fleeting.
I mean, do you honestly have no idea what I’m talking about? Do you really think “I know exactly what you’re talking about and why you’re seeing this the way you are but, seriously, this is different from the thing both you and I know exists” wouldn’t be a more comfortable play?Report
I mean, I’m sure she’s not sitting around worrying about Gaza 24/7, but other than you just know it when you see it, why do you think she doesn’t sincerely believe that Gaza should be free? Because she’s a celebrity? Because she’s young? I’m confused. Personally, I know nothing about her, and I don’t think I’ve seen her in a movie (I’ll catch Snow White when it hits Disney Plus), but what I see here is a person saying something that could affect her career prospects, and obviously this particular movie’s success, and I respect that.Report
I’m sure that she agrees with the statement “Gaza should be free” and her thoughts on the region amount to little more than that.
Does she sincerely think that Gaza should be free? I think that she sincerely agrees with the statement “Gaza should be free”.
I’d compare to California High Speed Rail. “Does she believe that California should have High Speed Rail?”
I think that she sincerely agrees with the statement “California should have High Speed Rail”.
Because she’s a celebrity? Because she’s young? I’m confused.
Because I’ve seen her various carpet interviews. Have you seen them?
This may be something as simple as I have more information than you do.
Oh, you’re not going to see it in the theater? Bummer.
I was still hoping to hear from someone who saw it in the theater.
Back to my question: I mean, do you honestly have no idea what I’m talking about? Do you really think “I know exactly what you’re talking about and why you’re seeing this the way you are but, seriously, this is different from the thing both you and I know exists” wouldn’t be a more comfortable play?Report
My opportunities to see movies in theaters are limited. I probably won’t see 5 movies in the theater this year.
And no, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Like I said, I know very little about her, as a person or as a performer. Maybe you do have information I don’t have. It would probably be easier if you just said what you’re talking about.Report
I have said what I’m talking about. I won’t shut up about it!
It’s the people who keep pivoting away to other topics that don’t want to talk about it!Report
The closest I can find is here:
Well, lemme tell ya, the whole “cutting remark hiding behind superficial affirmation of membership in good standing” thing is something that the Babtists are pretty good at.
Is she saying she’s a young progressive liberal by saying this, and not actually saying, “Free Palestine?”
I gather you’re saying she’s signaling, as the libertarians used to say. What I’d like to know is a) what you think she’s signaling, and b.) why you think that.Report
Okay, good. My question was whether you were familiar with the phenomenon.
I mean, I know you are. You grew up in the church too.
But, sure. We can pretend.
“What I think she is signaling” is “screw you”, both to the producer and to her co-star Gal Gadot.
I think that because I’m familiar with the phenomenon. (Also the whole “but all she said was ‘free palestine’!” game. Which I assume you are also familiar with but we can pretend that we came down with the last drop of rain, if you want.)Report
I suspect just about everyone is, when doing political speech in a public forum, is “signaling” to some extent, but I see no reason to think she’s “signaling” any more than, say, people who post here.
For example, why is she saying “screw you” to Gal Gadot? Is it because she’s Israeli? If so, why doesn’t Zegler like that she’s Israeli? Or is saying “screw you” to Gadot part of the signaling?Report
Because Gal Gadot was insufficiently supportive of Zegler in the days that followed the disastrous red carpet interview that kicked more or less everything off.
Gal Gadot, as awful an actress as she is, knows which side her bread is buttered on and so, when she talks about the movie, she talks about her kids and her daughter making an “evil queen” joke and the joys of seeing a movie with her children and something that she hopes all families will enjoy.
“Is it because she’s Israeli?”
No… well, kind of. It’s because she was insufficiently supportive and the best way to strike back is to make a statement like “Free Palestine” that says “screw you” to Gal Gadot without even *MENTIONING* Gal Gadot.
People who know, will know.
If so, why doesn’t Zegler like that she’s Israeli?
Zegler doesn’t *CARE* that she’s Israeli.
The fact that she’s Israeli provides surface area where the attack may be made.
Nothing more than that.
Or is saying “screw you” to Gadot part of the signaling?
It’s the point. Well, Gadot and the producer.
You’ve never encountered something like this? Never seen it in your five-plus decades on God’s green earth? Never saw it in the church? Never saw it in the socialist reading circles? You’ve never even once seen a game like this one?
I find that preposterous to the point where I’m going to need you to lie to my face about it before I drop it… and I assume you have too much self-respect to lie. So my expectation is something like a pivot to an attack or a hard change of the subject in order to avoid saying “of freaking course I know what the goddamn game is but that doesn’t make Palestine a cause not worth supporting!”
Huh. Maybe that’d be the best play. “This is about *PALESTINE*. Not some privileged theater kid! How dare you! This is a *GENOCIDE*!”Report
I did not know there was a beef with Gadot. Where did it come from?
I have seen people being passive aggressive, of course.Report
There’s nothing but speculation on the point but the static seems to date back to stuff like the Variety red carpet interview where Zegler mocked the original.
I suspect that Gal Gadot was tasked with mentoring Zegler and explaining that part of the job of being a movie star is buttering up the rubes to make them buy a ticket.
I know for a fact that one of the producers flew out to talk to Zegler and explain how the industry works to her (that’s the comment that kicked all this stuff off).
In more recent months, Zegler has made dismissive comments about her co-star and Disney did what they could to keep them away from each other in public (such as Zegler calling Gadot a “professional pageant queen” in an instagram post following their appearance at the Oscars).Report
I’ve seen Zegler’s red carpet interview and it’s more cringy-woke and dissing-the-original than is normally shown.
To be fair, faict “cringy-woke” was the Disney line at the time. For example none of the finalists for the part of Snow White were White.
I’ve also seen Zegler openly admit that she’s a narcissist (that’s since my last post).
Wiki claims that Zegler has supported Palestine since 2021 and that predates her involvement in Snow White by a few months.
That high level producer flying out to talk to Zegler happened. That’s amazing when you think about it, apparently a phone call or lesser person wouldn’t do (or more likely, didn’t work). It’s like the CEO flying over to talk to you about your bad behavior.
Narcissists really don’t like being told they’re wrong, they don’t change their behavior, and they don’t accept responsibility for their behavior.
I expect Miss Zegler will find it harder to get employment in these expensive shows. Whoever hires her needs to expect her to create lots of personal drama to overshadow the film.Report
I’ve heard someone say that the only problem is that Snow White is a post-George Floyd movie in a post-post-George Floyd world and so OF COURSE it’ll bomb.
But Disney’s flops used to mean stuff like “Million Dollar Duck” (which cost a buck and a half).Report
I don’t see even the slightest connection to George Floyd. All reviews say the movie is a trainwreck.
The only hint of a reprieve is Zegler’s singing.Report
You must be new around here.Report
LeeEsq: there is no reason to doubt that Zegler might really believe what she put on social media about Israel or Gal Gadot
Zegler has been accused of being a narcissist and apparently has admitted the same. My ex was too.
Using flame bait to focus attention on herself would be in character. Even (and especially) at the expense of the primary project. People are supposed to be paying attention to her and not her fellow lead actress or even the movie itself.
So she might only believe in “free Palestine” when it’s going to create problems and attention. She certainly is not going to listen to other views, either on what’s going on in Palestine or even how stunningly inappropriate it is to bring this up on the set or in interviews.
And if she feels she’s not the center of attention on her next project she’ll find a different way to be toxic.Report
Trump withdraws Elsie Stefanik’s nomination to be UN rep because Republicans are apparently worried about losing the special election in FL-6 on Tuesday. FL-6 is an R+14 districtReport
Sometimes you have to enjoy the small, sweet moments in life.Report
I’m not expecting it to happen but winning an R+14 district would be something! If we win FL-1 (R+19)….wow!!!Report
To be clear the little pleasure in this case is Stefanik’s discomfiture; expecting a seat out of those districts isn’t something you celebrate unless it’s in hand.Report
Greenland would rather the Vances’ not comeReport
Why is Greenland any different from anywhere else?Report
Greenland is one of those places that Trump wants for his real estate empire.Report
Anti-Hamas protest in Gaza:
https://www.memri.org/tv/beit-lahia-north-gaza-protest-anti-hamas-release-hostages-stop-warReport
https://x.com/Billbrowder/status/1905340984801853675?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1905340984801853675%7Ctwgr%5E468dc0156d986419bf349a50cc60e4b621710c13%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D14954220https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D149542t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20252F032Fthe-scourge-of-lesbian-penguinst_e%3DThe20Scourge20of20Lesbian20Penguinst_d%3DThe20Scourge20of20Lesbian20Penguins20-20Lawyers2C20Guns202620Moneyt_t%3DThe20Scourge20of20Lesbian20Penguinss_o%3Ddescversion%3De0c4832edb67a23a7ccc1138f7876e1c
ICE detains Russian dissident who obtained work at Harvard at Logan Airport, potentially preparing to send him back to Russia to face imprisonment and death.Report
Her.Report
ApologiesReport
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00938-y
Nature polled 1600 American scientists and 75 percent are looking to leave the U.S.
Good job everyone but I guess this is a small price to pay if it means no more woke Snow WhiteReport
*shrug* you were the ones who said that if we didn’t uncritically and unquestioningly celebrate Woke Snow White then we were racist jerks. How’d that work out for you?Report
This has got to be a mis-threaded reply, but it’s absolutely hilarious as currently threaded.Report
Right? Racistly? (Though I’m not quite sure what racism has directly to do with a country actively working against scientific research.)Report
Me either. To be fair to him, Saul mentioned Snow White, but man, talk about an obsession.Report
Who are you talking to? Did anyone here vote for Donald Trump?Report
As Turing Tests go, I’d say that this passes mine.Report
You know how, periodically, there’s a situation in California that results in house insurance companies leaving the state?
Well, it looks like they’re working on a way to make health insurance leave the state: Proposed California ballot initiative ‘Luigi Mangione Act’ would make it harder for insurers to deny medical careReport
And we managed to really alienate Canada. What kind of country manages to alienate Canada?Report
One full of and run by f*cking idiots.Report
https://www.app.com/story/news/nation/2025/03/28/donald-trump-elon-musk-leaving-doge-may-2025-report/82704950007/
Musk may be leaving DOGE in May. I guess the next step is going to be to try and reverse the damageReport
Is that before or after he tries to migrate Social Security off its legacy systems and onto newer ones in the course of a couple months?
https://www.wired.com/story/doge-rebuild-social-security-administration-cobol-benefits/Report