Fwiw, this was front page under the fold in today’s Sunday edition of the East Bay Times. I was pretty happy with the coverage.

Also, the above-the-fold story was about a 14 year old Gazan who was recovering well from 9 months of burn treatments in the US.

As a rationalist and a scientist, I’m skeptical; but also I must admit that the theory isn’t falsifiable, so I can’t disprove it.

Do what you think you need to do, Brazilians.

I’ve never heard that before! It’s interesting.

I think it depends a ton on environmental conditions. Could combustion on planets with different gravity and pressure take place at different scales?

What’re your recs? I used to sometimes check out the BBC but at some point they paywalled it. I like the Guardian, but I’d be glad for more suggestions.

I meant to say that Al Jazeera’s bais leans against the US, which is useful for getting alternative takes.

I thought it was implied in my comment that I was saying that it’s biased in more or less the other direction, but I realize I should’ve written that out.

I wasn’t really sure, so I went looking to Al Jazeera:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/8/why-have-us-iran-strikes-resumed-and-what-does-it-mean-for-peace-talks

According to their reporting, all sides have exercised some violence throughout the ceasefire, but the most recent clash was primarily initiated by ships traveling in an area that Iran had labeled a no-go zone. The ships refused to comply with orders to change course, so Iran shot at them.

In the future if you have questions about what’s going on in the Middle East and are looking for a version that isn’t heavily biased towards US propaganda, Al Jazeera is a pretty reliable source.

I agree, although I don’t think the solution is to just demand that they have to be there for every vote, even when they’re incapable of doing so. I think they should have second-in-commandd, like a vice president or lieutenant governor.

Sometimes folks get sick. Sometimes they have to travel. Sometimes they die in office! We should just recognize that and allow them to appoint a surrogate to do these things when they can’t.

Oh he dead

Joking aside, I think he’s alive, but probably is no longer capable of walking or taking coherently. But that’s fine, senators didn’t need to be able to do any of that stuff to serve their corporate functions. My senator was Diane Feinstien: she was basically a vegetable for something like her last two it three years in office.

Wha happen

Well then your doubt is misplaced!

You know what most people love? Receiving oral the way they like it! It’s not a hard sell.

The bigger challenge is that a lot of people don’t know their own bodies or what they like well. But communication is really the key, along with guided experimentation.

Yeah!

I had to keep faith for a long time that if I didn’t block smackyroon I’d get a good meme eventually, but here we are.

Where do you work? How hard is it to find a new job? How likely are they to fire you if you stand up to them?

The best case scenario would be that you and the entire staff stand up to HR and say that you were all led to believe this was permitted policy, and that if they’re going to declare retroactively that it isn’t, you all want a compensation raise because you considered this a job benefit.

Obviously you shouldn’t do this, though, unless you feel like you’ve got a strong position and you’re not afraid to find a new job.

If you’re looking for the safest option, I’d go with lie and deny: deny having eaten what you ate. Deny having confessed. Deny that you even work there if you have to.

Don’t bother throwing your coworkers under the bus. This is very unlikely to change HR’s reaction. They will punish you the same either way, they just might punish others too. There’s no benefit to you, so either stand up and fight or deny deny deny and promise you’ll be good.

What are they photos of? Who took them? This seems relevant.

They’re also different enough that people will disagree on taste.

The worldbuilding of the expanse is head and shoulders better than Firefly. But Firefly’s strength was characters: the writing and acting made the crew so loveable. I like the crew of the Roc, but I never felt the same level of connection to them.

I wouldn’t bother pitting then against each other. They’re very different, but if you like Firefly, you should check out The Expanse.

Personally, though, I recommend the books. I watched the first few episodes of the show first and was underwhelmed, but then checked out the books and was hooked right away.

First: It’s not like ice are going to walk up to white girls with blue hair and be like, ‘No voting for you, liberal.’ They don’t need to assess anyone to guess how they’re going to vote: the plan is to just reduce overall turnout at voting sites in places with a lot of Democratic voters.

The way I expect this to go is for Maga folks to drive into big cities and station themselves outside voting sites in poor, non-white neighborhoods and pretend they’re ‘looking out for non citizens who might try to vote’. The goal is to create hassles and long lines so that people who have limited time decide to leave instead of wait.

If you are able to arrive early and don’t mind waiting you’ll be fine. But a better response is to contact your county and volunteer as an election worker. If you do, you can help enforce distance requirements for observers, make sure there are no bottlenecks, make sure there is seating available, keep the line moving in good spirits, etc.

If you just make voting smooth and efficient as a volunteer, they lose.

I find this whole thing pretty fucking hilarious, because it’s great to see fascists stab each other in the back.

Trump isn’t totally wrong here: the filibuster should be converted into a talking filibuster. Obviously, he wants that for reasons opposite to my own, but we’re still in agreement on this narrow point.

What makes it extra funny is that the filibuster is already on a deathwatch. The writing is on the wall that voters in both parties are sick of this pro wrestling performative senate theater where they pretend not to be able to pass laws. It’s very possibly going to be retired by Democrats in 2028. So trying to preserve it is hilariously foolish for a Republican.

I hope that it’s retired by Democrats, and I’m grateful that Thune is betraying Trump in this fashion.

Friends is pretty good. I haven’t seen Seinfeld in a while and don’t know how it holds up, but I remember liking it when I watched it.

I don’t think he expected or planned it, but this massive security failure does demonstrate my point.

After the attacks, it was uniformly agreed that he was now politically dead. There was no coming back from a fuck up that massive.

Yet here he stands. He turned Oct. 7 from the biggest political liability imaginable into a tremendous opportunity.

Never assume he’s finished.