State of the Discussion

On the Pollyanna side it's good to see that a bare majority of the Supreme Court can be counted on to do the absolute bare constitutional minimum vis a vis Trump and the Muskrats.

On the realist side- holy fish did you read the deranged gabbling from the dissent? Alito basically did just rip the mask off and cackle "you fools, forget textualism and originalism, it was all just a feint, it was just will to power all along mwhahahaha!"

And, also, holy fish a bare minimum of the Supreme court justices required to uphold the law stepped up in the very barest minimal way.

Well, the part where you say "“heresy,” however interesting to outsiders, is a matter of internal club rules and has no purchase on non- members" seems to be true for you personally but it doesn't seem to be true for others.

Which is how we got here in the first place.

A long time ago I read a novel, which title I can't recall, where through some plausible circumstance Germany seizes U.S. military installations, including the nukes stored there. Probably not something we want to see happen in real life.

Saul: Am I supposed to argue with [Tate]
in good faith

I wouldn't. Tate does/says controversial things for the point of attracting attention.

Having said that, normally I assume good faith as a matter of policy.

People thrive on certainty, which the current administration is not providing to our ostensible allies. If Europe doesn't see the U.S. as a bulwark against Russia, I have to believe they'll make the coherent choice to become their own bloc, acting in their own interest.

Eh, I'd say that "the statements you're making are false" isn't hall monitoring.

But, hey. Opinions are like house pets. Everybody has one.

"Not everybody has a house pet."
"Oh, hall monitoring me are you?"

your panda bear contrarian can’t give a straight yes or no answer on whether I have to deal with a Leo Frank denier or other anti-Semites in good faith or if I can just dismiss them.

My argument is that you can do whatever you want and you don't have to do anything.

However, there are tradeoffs and if you don't like the tradeoff, *THAT IS NOT MY FAULT*.

And cornering me to say "oh, there aren't tradeoffs!" WILL NOT MAKE THE TRADEOFFS DISAPPEAR.

You don't seem to understand that the people who believe that Leo Frank was innocent are the people who are the Leo Frank Truthers and until you hammer that down flat you're not going to understand why you're the one who has to lift the burden.

It sucks.

I fall into maybe a middle ground. I'm pretty cynical about Europe's ability to ever act as a coherent bloc without a somewhat firm hand from the US. I also think it's useful to have Europe as a friend, military ally, and partner in commerce.

What they do need is a conventional military deterrent capable of self defense with only token US contributions. We had two friendly Democratic administrations fail to make that case (to say nothing of Europeans, maybe cynically, failing to hear it) and now round two of MAGA that sort of understands the broader contours of the problem but is incapable of approaching it in a remotely constructive way.

You don't have to engage with Jay at all Saul, no one is making you do so- least of all me! I also certainly don't require you find him cute or abhorrent or itchy- you do you. As for my own tone and mood I'd describe it as more grimly resigned than blase.

Eh, as much as it pains my anglophile self to admit it, France is a big enough player to be "Leader of the Free World (In Europe)" if they wanted the job. France has the institutional and military know how to do it to but I don't know that they have the economy. Germany has the economy but I don't know that they have the institutional or military know how. In theory they could work together on it along with the rest of Europe. Awfully lousy that the US will be outside looking in on that, no way that's not gonna bite us in the future (/sarc).

I can't speak for "young men", so this comment from "an old guy" who’s been married and divorced.
I've dated women who were so full of drama the juice was not worth the squeeze. I have listened to them complain about their kids and their exes and all their problems, yet they don't care about my problems. They just want to complain to someone. I have no interest in listening to someone complain all the time. I've met women who were LONG past safely having children but wanted to do it anyway, have surrogacy, etc. but they couldn't afford to do it alone--others did it alone and wondered why they couldn't find a guy to marry. Sorry, I'll pass on the instant family. What part of "doesn't have kids and doesn't want them" in my profile was unclear? I was on a “once in a lifetime vacation” with my then girlfriend, whose first though every morning and her last thought every night, was to post pictures of our trip on Facebook, and read the comments the next morning. Meanwhile I’m sitting outside watching zebras and giraffes wander by while I drink my coffee.

Most women I've met have no understanding of real "hardship". Example: I dated women who've had REAL problems. She was married and her husband went back to the old country and abandoned her here. She went back to get a divorce. If anyone found out she was "committing adultery" dating me while married, she'd would have been stoned to death. I've personally sat at the dinner table listening to two women talk about their and their family's experiences in 1) Russia between the communist revolution to WW2 and 2) the Iranian revolution.

The AfD is too on the march in Germany for Merz to take the role. France is basically the only country that has the requirements to be the leader of the Free world. That is a liberal society and government, a wealthy developed economy, a well educated citizenry, and an armed forces with nukes.

Well, part of the original lore is that I created the original "Mindless Diversions" sub-blog back in February 2011 in an attempt to create a zone where we didn't discuss politics or religion (new atheism was still a thing) and could just talk about cool stuff. Video games, movies, television, toys, nostalgia, sports, poker, and whatnot.

Right after that, I saw the movie Rango in the theater. There was a scene where Rango gets thrown from his owner's car to the side of the road and the song playing is Ave Maria:

It's just a few seconds of the song, but the song got stuck in my head. So I googled and googled and found a version from Bobby McFerrin that was absolutely amazing. He explained that he was told to learn to sing Bach Preludes as part of his exercises and he sang the Bach Prelude while the audience sang Ave Maria and I thought it was the most amazing version of the song I'd yet heard and I wanted to share it with everybody.

By 2013, I had given up the Wednesday music posts to Glyph and so didn't want to step on his toes by putting up merely a music post so, instead of ending the post with "So... what are you listening to?", I ended it with "So... what are you giving up for Lent?"

And then, in 2014, I discovered a version of the song sung by one of the last castratos and I immediately made the joke to myself "well, I'm not giving *THOSE* up for Lent" and, at that point, the yearly Lent post became one talking about Lent proper, rather than merely alluding to it.

And now it's 11 years later.

Dude it's bad! And it's so easy to find yourself spending hours every night, mentally stressed, all from doing literally nothing. It's also easy to absent mindedly fall into. At least smoking used to have a kind of social component to it.

Unfortunately, the whole "this meeting could have been an email" criticism has evolved into partisan usefulness.

I saw it given against Biden's speeches by Biden's opposition during Biden's term (with the notable exception of 2024 where Biden's opposition was saying stuff like "I want to see if he'll wander off halfway through the speech!").

I want to say that the criticism had the most bite when the speeches were the most boring. If it's a boring speech, why not replace it with an email?

But when the speech is, effectively, a pro wrestling promo? Hell, those are *RATINGS GOLD*! Trump's speech's numbers were up 14% from Biden last year! (Though he didn't hit the numbers he achieved during his first term... his lowest rated speech in 2020 got better numbers.)

What's the solution? Well... I have no idea. If the wrestling promos give the content that mumbling through a list of bullet points doesn't, we're going to get wrestling promos.

Well, capybara is hard to source.

But yes, that's why Lady Marchmaine has a meta-rule that no Lenten obligation can burden another member of the family unduly.

Half my side of the family is Greek Orthodox, so we hear no end of the hardships imposed by their mostly vegan lent; except the reality of Orthodox lent is mostly observed in it's exception to practicing it's mostly vegan lent.

I wanted to embed "Love and Anger" but they have that one turned off, for some reason. I went for what I am guessing was the 2nd biggest song off of that album (based off of the number of covers of the song that I've heard... Maxwell, Sons of Serendip, Ella Henderson... no other song on the album even comes close).