State of the Discussion

I agree with the business stuff but not necessarily the pro-life stuff. The social reactionaries are definitely getting more bold with different policy preferences they have like anti-DEI, transphobia, etc.

Also the Democratic Party has done this as well. The police reform faction is definitely not in control anymore. Law and order Democrats trounced them easily and the national party is going along. So at least the police reform/defund the police faction has been told that they are losers.

Just because the global right only agrees on no "Open Borders" doesn't mean that they aren't communicating or cooperating with each other. I'd also argue that there is plenty of stuff that they agree on besides even if it doesn't rhyme completely.

Also, at least after it became the center of the Muslim World before 1000 CE, the Middle East, trade with which made the Vikings and Venice great powers, while shaping Eastern Europe (including Russia), and intellectual exchange with which made the great European advancements in philosophy and science of the late Middle Ages possible.

I don't want to do too much projecting of intelligence but it seems to me that the GOP's slight edge comes from apparent willingness to make trade offs and even take hard lines with their constituencies. The big business wing has gotten a big middle finger on immigration and tariffs. A quieter but still firm 'shut up' seems to have gone out to the pro-life movement. Which doesnt mean they aren't still very off-putting and alienating. There's a reason they're in charge only by a thin margin. We have yet to see the Democrats do anything quite like it, in the sense of picking some sides for the sake of getting/holding power.

My recollection of the survey is that we talked 'fall' of Rome as prologue, spent 5 minutes on Byzantium and Clovis, then Einhard acting as the center of gravity for basically everything else from that (sub) period. A lot of reason to to question whether this is really a distinct era but I'm also not sure there's an obvious alternative approach at the 100 level. Gotta go to the 200 and beyond for the rest.

Far as I can tell, the cease fire technically ended a while ago. Ergo Hamas has stopped handing back hostages and Israel and Hamas were supposed to negotiate what comes next.

They disagree fundamentally on pretty core issues (like whether Hamas will continue to exist and engage in terrorism) so resuming the war is almost expected.

There are official policies and de facto policies. Chances are way lower that Trump is president if from the beginning Biden had approached the border the way he did in the last 8ish months of the administration. It's also the common thread in every important European country from UKIP to National Rally to AfD to Brothers of Italy.

When I was getting my history BA the distinction they made was low medieval (approximately 410-1066 i.e. Alaric to William) versus high medieval (approximately 1066-1400). The low medieval period is characterized by breakdown of central authority in the early years followed by slow re-establishment of governments based around vassalage and the church. I don't see anything happening now as a parallel.

The basic problem is that the global right is cooperating internationally in ways that that global left is not. This is both at the formal state level with Vladimir Putin being very close to people like Trump, Netanyahu, Modi, and others and at the informal level. The various rightist online communities talk and help each other. The global liberal and left side of politics is filled with people that make each other retch and aren't talking or cooperating on a formal or informal level.

At the other blog we had long talks about the past few days on what the actual data shows from Harris' loss and what it means for the Democratic Party. There was naturally a lot of heat rather than light but contemporary liberalism and leftism might be an electoral loser. People seem to like center left policies but not the aesthetics of liberalism or center leftism. It's too feminine, bougie, namby pamby, etc. We might be looking at a Poland like situation where the best counter to the Far Right is a sane Center Right party.

Tull has come out with three albums in the last three years!!!

The Zealot Gene in 2022, RökFlöte in 2023, and Curious Ruminant came out TWO WEEKS AGO.

Huh.

If we could allow for "conspiracy theories" to also cover stuff like "the authorities covering stuff up, obfuscating the truth, and opposing the story of what actually happened coming to light by pushing forward narratives that were not accurate", then we'd find ourselves awash in conspiracies.

Better to narrow it down to the point where it only covers stuff like "covid wasn't a deliberate biological weapon released to harm America, it came from a wet market".

Everybody always thinks that their pet conspiracies are like MKULTRA or Operation Mockingbird but most of them are like the conspiracy theory that says that Covid came from a lab.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article for the New Zealand Skeptics society where I argued that the Kennedy assassination conspiracies, along with the moon hoax conspiracy and the UFO conspiracy helped lay much of the intellectual groundwork for QAnon.

One of Leonard Cohen's last poems was titled "What is Coming".

what is coming
ten million people
in the street
cannot stop
what is coming
the American Armed Forces
cannot control
the President
of the United States
and his counselors
cannot conceive
initiate
command
or direct
everything
you do
or refrain from doing
will bring us
to the same place
the place we don't know

your anger against the war
your horror of death
your calm strategies
your bold plans
to rearrange
the middle east
to overthrow the dollar
to establish
the 4th Reich
to live forever
to silence the Jews
to order the cosmos
to tidy up your life
to improve religion
they count for nothing
you have no understanding
of the consequences
of what you do
oh and one more thing
you aren't going to like
what comes after
America

Germany revised its website on travel to the U.S. in light of recent detentions of German Citizens with valid visas. ComicCon is advising people not to travel here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/1jf6zpp/pentagon_press_secretary_john_ullyot_said_the/

Good job everyone!!!

Isn't there a meme about this?

In my teens: The radio is playing my jams!

In my twenties: The bar is playing my jams!

In my thirties*: The grocery store is playing my jams!

*Or after, as the case my be.

As a general-ish thing, a lot of “conservatives” believe in some sort of “married women are not separate entities from their husbands; the married couple is a single item, represented by the husband, and the wife acting separately from the husband is an exception that needs to be specifically documented.”

So it makes some sort of sense -for them- that there has to be a process for married women registering to vote on her own, as opposed to as part of a couple.

Remember, there’s no one so crazy that will do something that it doesn’t make sense to them.