Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, March 7, 2025
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98 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
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BlueSky.
https://open.spotify.com/track/1NH2Iyw0KFAbIwBY3YBrvu?si=xKSx7fGiQzmVwalqbGb2yw&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A1zTEa80qgVvECO5YLYGreJ
Time to begin again again again.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov tells a daily news briefing: “The EU is now actively discussing its militarisation and specifically developing its defence sector. This is a process we’re watching closely because the EU presents Russia as the main adversary
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cg70jylp32gt?post=asset%3A42a4bea8-5f5c-46cd-8203-491ceef07e22#post
after the las couple of weeks, I am wondering if I should consider moving back to South America. The escalation in rhetoric/plans between Europe (which I fully understand and expected after the US change in policy) and Russia, and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, feels like we’re one call away before war erupts all around here.
It’s not a great feeling at the moment.
@Beth
I hope your new start will bring you some peace even if at the beginning it’s hard to be far away from home.
Another taxpayer-funded Space X rocket blew up.
They’re getting good at it.
Making Measles Great Again.
Unvaccinated New Mexico adult tests positive for measles after death
We have all heard a lot of notice around Medicaid, SS, and other programs, but not so much about Obamacare. Where is Trump these days on the program he came a whisker hair from gutting?
I know a lot of people have issues with George Will but….
This is American greatness only if you have a MAGA-nifying glass
War heroes, military firsts among 26,000 images flagged in DEI purge
“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?”
This Is How The Military Wants AI To Help Control America’s Nuclear Arsenal
It’s the second “Rapid disassembly” in a row for Muskrat’s Space X . Which is kind of fitting seeing it’s exactly what he is trying to do to the country.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/spacex-loses-starship-rocket-test-flight-prior-explosion-rcna194923
Elon Musk tells Republicans he isn’t to blame for mass firings of federal workers
Of course he’s not responsible. That woman who was on vacation in Mexico runs DOGE. Right?
I worry that JJ may be put in a position where he cannot continue this blog. I hope ST et al have considered ways to keep OTB alive. At very least a contact list to inform us of a new location.
Before MAGA came of age it was against both the Federal Rules of (Civil and Criminal) procedure and the Code of Professional Responsibility for a lawyer to mislead (lie, lie by omission, etc.) a tribunal. No finer example than Musk sending his incels into government computers and conducting mass firings and then, when the action is challenged, the DOJ sends lawyers into court to ludicrously claim Musk isn’t running DOGE, even though Trump is bragging about Musk’s work every day. Where are the contempt of court citations? Where are the complaints to the DC Bar? Maybe seeing some Justice Department lawyers sitting in jail would breathe new life into the rapidly fading Rule of Law.
Other than WTF, how will Susan Collins respond?
Social Security now requires Maine parents to visit an agency office to register newborns
@Min:
Thanks. I do feel like a certain amount of weight is off me. Also, getting here and having to deal with the fact that this is now my home really has bashed into my head what an absolute scam the U.S. is. For example, my phone package cost me over $300 for 2 phone lines and three data lines. Here, I can get 3 phone lines for roughly $117 add in home internet and maybe another data line and I’ll still be under $200. Back in Chicago that would cost me roughly $500. Maybe the grocery stores don’t have the absurd selection available in Chicago, but how much of that goes straight into the landfill?
Another example, I went to a large fancy mall outside of Chicago during the Christmas season. It was always a vibrant upscale mall that I went to a lot when I was younger. Last Christmas it was not only dead, it felt like it was dying. For the last two days I’ve had to go to a mall here (Stratford Westside) and it felt alive and was PACKED. People buying stuff, people eating, laughing, playing table tennis, just living. That’s gone in Chicago. I almost cried.
It really feels like we’ve been anesthetized into isolation. Everything is brutally extractive. Every single dollar must be delivered directly to the top and then they have to lie about it. It’s terrible there and that’s unacceptable. I forget where I heard it, but we’ve basically been turned into serfs having to rent everything.
It sucks.
@Scott: Is this some kind of petty punishment from Trump to Gov. Mills?
That’s going to be a fun process. Maine is a huge state and with only 8 under-funded and under-staffed offices, I’m willing to bet this becomes a cluster of epic proportions.
@Beth:
Northbrook? Northbrook and Woodfield were the two biggies in the NW suburbs when I lived there.
@Scott:
FTFY
@Jen:
Woodfield! I used to spend a lot of time there when I was like 18-21ish because they had a Vans store with a half pipe in it that you could use for cheap. That mall was great back then.
I even had an idea a couple of months ago, like October-ish, to get a couple of girlfriends, take some edibles and wander around trying stuff on. It was time for a clothing refresh anyway. Being an 80’s kid I figured that’d be fun since I hadn’t been to a mall in years. When I went during Christmas I knew that wouldn’t work because it was hauntingly dead.
@Jen: I think of my interactions with SS offices. I avoid in person like the plague; however, I had an issue that I had to deal with in person. Because the call line people really can do anything except the basics which can do online anyway. So I waited in line, waited for hours to see an agent who was unable to fix it. Had to make an appointment two months in the future to resolve the issue in about 5 minutes. Awful.
Then I think back to the 90s when my kids were born. I was active duty. The kids were born at Wilford Hall on Lackland AFB. SS numbers were taken care of. If all those airmen had to take off to stand in line to get numbers, there would be a lot of griping.
@Min: ironic, and not in a good way, that precisely the thing that Putin claimed as the reason for invading Ukraine (well, one of the anyway) was that NATO was a military threat to Russia, and now due to his manipulation of US politics NATO (or what will become of it in the EU) will be a military threat to Russia
@Min:
Very much hoping that’s not the case and peace prevails, but I think European leaders are right to move quickly just in case. Poland certainly seems to know better than to just sit on its hands.
Just woke up here on the West coast. Are we tariffing today? Are the tariffs on, off, delayed, discarded, or doubled? Does Trump use his gut instincts or a coin flip to decide America’s policies? However the decision is made, I am sure that many think it’s the best decision ever, and most others just keep their mouths shut.
@Slugger: We know the old saw about tariffs supporting the development of in-country competition. Who would invest in setting up a lemonade stand under this tariff strategy?
We got about 6 inches of heavy, wet snow yesterday, and another 12 overnight. Wyoming is CLOSED. 😉
@Argon: After reading the article, the Donald and Elon are playing good cop – bad cop. How very network tv of them. So much of what these weirdos do or say seems to be based on a movie or television show they saw as a child.
I listen to The Town podcast, and this morning it was a deep dive into Nielsen and how they collect data on TV/Streaming watching. And I had a question: what good is all this data? Are studios and production companies improving their hit and miss ratio? Are shows better? Or more profitable? How about the parent companies?
One of the biggest phenoms in TV recently is the Taylor Sheridan empire. His shows have become so successful that Amazon Prime Video has been encouraged to follow suit with more White-guy-with-gun shows. (Reacher, etc…). Now, did Sheridan create his extended universe based on data? Nope. He’s a writer with a vision and he created something new and very marketable. Amazon which has all the data is still struggling with video. Apple with also all the data has yet to create a real hit. Netflix, which also has all the data, gave Prince Harry and his Plus One $100,000,000 to ‘create.’ Have they created? No, of course not, they aren’t creatives they’re parasites.
I could have told Paramount a decade ago that they needed to lean into male programming. I could have even told them that since everyone agreed cowboys were all done, it was time to go for some cowboy. And I certainly could have told them that Harry and Meghan had, if anything, negative value. IOW, the data evidently did not help either Paramount or Netflix what was quite obvious to a casual observer.
Which leads me to the larger question: business has spent billions on acquiring data. Billions. The amount of data private industry has on consumers is Gibraltar compared to an anthill. So. . . so what? Is there any objective evidence that this staggering pile of money hasn’t just been wasted?
Neither Netflix nor Apple nor Amazon nor Google algorithms have ever suggested a single thing that I watched or consumed. If anything, the opposite, I have to keep purging my YouTube history to stop it narrowing my view. Pop-up ads? Nope. In-show ads? Nope. And I’m not some shut-in old fart who doesn’t consume. Oh, I consume.
So, can anyone point to realistic figures showing that all this data has resulted in profit commensurate with the cost?
@Michael Reynolds:
The cost is the profit.
@Slugger:
IMO, if the rapist can’t have tariffs, then at least he can have chaos. You know how business loves uncertainty, because they never plan ahead for more than a split second.
@Beth:
The latest reports about the deaths of Gene Hackman and his wife are they were likely dead for several days before they were found.
I wonder if no one at all visited or called them during that time. Isolation indeed.
Seems Maine’s governor standing up to Trump helped his admin pick where to pilot another policy to cut off birthright citizenship. (At least that’s how I read this)
Feds cancel Maine parents’ ability to register newborns for Social Security numbers at hospital
Sure, it’ll be a massive inconvenience to everyone with a newborn, but at least it may dissuade that handful of non-citizen parents from claiming that which rightfully belongs to their children.
No doubt Senator Collins will bring her magical bag of “very concerned” dust to sprinkle on this before she flits away.
EDIT: fixed link above
@Michael Reynolds:
You know you can have Youtube display only your subscriptions, no recommendations or general feed, right?
@Kathy:
Holy shit.
@Kathy:
Yeah, but then I’m excluding the random. I like the random, I don’t like machines trying to guess for me. They’re never right. The net effect for me of all these algorithms is to narrow my view, to box me in.
@Kathy: @Beth:
I read somewhere that Hackman’s latest pacemaker “event” was over a week before he was found dead. Possibly 9 days. I would think someone would monitor these things.
@Slugger: ” Are the tariffs on, off, delayed, discarded, or doubled? ”
Yes.
@Michael Reynolds:
You could visit without logging in, preferably using a VPN set to a random location, after purging cookies and erasing browsing history, using an incognito window to boot. That might prove somewhat random.
Seems like too much trouble for casual entertainment.
Maybe just type random words or phrases in the search box and see what the algorithm come up with.
@Michael Reynolds:
Based on my viewing of the first (and last for me) episode of the continuation of the SUITS universe, SUITS: LA, I would say Hollywood still has not found the book that contains the ingredients to a guaranteed hit, or even a show that is sure to become a modest hit.
As noted in this blog on multiple occasions, I have a brother in law who works in “Hollywood,” and I am a big TV viewer, so I of course am rooting for shows to succeed in entertaining me, not to mention it impacts my Sister’s family’s livelihood when shows on Apple, etc., are pretty much failures right out of the gate.
I was going to say that shows like Mythic Quest and Severance are doing well for Apple, but in the past couple years I learned that Apple TV+ shows have some of the lowest numbers when it comes to audience viewers streaming these shows. This means that regardless of how much noise people make on the internet talking about Ted Lasso, Severance, and a handful of other series that make it sound like they are mega-hit shows, they are not.
Big numbers of folks who subscribe to APPLE TV+ may be watching these shows but it turns out a whole lot of folks are not subscribed to ATV+, so a hit show on Apple’s platform would not even be noticed on platforms like Netflix.
That being said, Hollywood will never turn to me to learn how to make a better show, as I admit to contributing to the dumbing down of Hollywood by really enjoying shows like Syfy Channels The Ark (renewed for Season 3, yay!), a show that most people would consider junk and wonder how it got on the air and not holding a candle to other sci fi shows like Star Trek, or Babylon 5, but there you go.
Human nature being what it is, I am not immune from being drawn to mediocre TV and oftentimes even really enjoying said swill.
@Scott: Now apparently the right wing goof squads are now blaming “malicious compliance” for the DEI excesses. Typical Trumpian response: never take responsibility for one’s own actions and behaviors.
@Kathy:
Reports about Hackman being dead for a week or more were first seen by me a week or more ago. Hackman had a pacemaker. Pacemaker patients have home monitors that report to the company that services them. Meditronic, I think, but I don’t have personal knowledge of this. Before his body was found, it was 7 or 9 days since his pacemaker monitor had registered anything.
@Beth: John Edwards was the wrong messenger for the two Americas speech all those years ago, but the message itself wasn’t wrong, and things haven’t improved.
And the malls here in Portland, Oregon, are ghost towns. And downtown isn’t any better. Fortunately, I’m old, blue collar, and don’t need to buy anything, but it is a touch disconcerting.
@Jax:
The question is, will any non-Wyomingans notice?
My Mishap book has a scene in it where the sitting President is told by a influential supporter that a challenger may be pushed as an alternative at the upcoming GOP primaries. The Governor of Wyoming, a woman. The President says something like ‘How many people not living in Wyoming and living more than 200 miles from Cheyenne even know who she is?’
@Slugger:
All of the above.
@Kathy: When I was asked by the program coordinator about why I wanted to volunteer as a classroom aid, I said it was because I am capable of not leaving my apartment for weeks at a time and could see how dysfunctional that quality is.
@inhumans99:
With me its 50-50 if I still with some show that’s bad. I watched Picard all the way through. The reboot of Hawaii-Five I quit 15 minutes into season 3 aka when a helicopter with a huge magnet picked up a moving armored van and then dropped it in the ocean and noone inside was killed.
I’d rather watch some 1960’s or 70’s show that I either never watched or haven’t seen in 40-50 years. The only television made since 2000 that I have watched has all been awful.
@Kathy:
I agree. That’s why I don’t use YouTube.
@inhumans99: I’m not likely to live to see it, but significant numbers of high-income earners have surprises coming to their entertainment options as their income drops by 40, 50, 60% or more when they retire. Few pension plans are going to provide even $100k a year over the 20- to 25-year average.
@Scott:
This might be a drinking game up in Bangor, Augusta, or Bar Harbor:
Every time she says that she ‘is very concerned ‘ – there’s another round, on the House.
@al Ameda:
The house might run dry very soon.
@Scott: BTW, Texas Health and Human Services has issued today’s update:
198 Cases over 9 counties
23 have been hospitalized
1 Death
New Mexico:
30 cases, 1 county, 1 death
I have been watching MHz Choice, a streamer for a lot of subtitled European TV, especially Nordic noirs. Just finished Babylon Berlin, the first 3 seasons were set in 1929, the fourth in 1931. There will be a fifth last season later this year.
It also has the original Danish/Swedish The Bridge, 4 seasons, which I really liked. Also The Killing, lots of other good stuff.
As for Nielsens, advertisers want to know who is watching.
@Bill Jempty: Mostly just the non-locals stranded on I-80 will notice. Lots of delayed truck deliveries, I would imagine.
@inhumans99:
Oh, I watch plenty of crap TV, and avoid some highly-regarded shows like, White Lotus, which I find insufferable.
But the point is I don’t think data, even many orders of magnitude above earlier levels of data, have had any real world effect. Not on quality, not on cost, not on success rate. Data is about the past – what has already happened. It is not capable of predicting the future. And it will never be capable of predicting the future, because humans are humans, and shit happens.
But I don’t see that all the trillions of databits paid for by big bidness have changed anything at all for the better in other industries. Not even if ‘better’ is taken to mean, ‘profitable.’ I think it’s sound and fury signifying almost nothing. A gigantic bubble. Hundreds of billions of dollars sunk into an unprofitable effort.
Look at it in the macrocosm. Humans have infinitely more data available to them in their daily lives. So, are things better? No, they’re much worse. People actually know less than they did before the internet and social media and the creation of vast databases. People are actually dumber and less well-informed, and that extends to CEOs.
Here’s a Hollywood example. Some bright spark at Disney looks at the data and says in an excited, high-pitched voice, ‘women are underrepresented in Marvel and Lucas Film audiences. Therefore they are where we go for growth. Yay, we’ve cracked it!’
And now Marvel and Lucas Film are flat on their asses having failed in an absolutely predictable way. Not predictable from data, predictable by any moderately bright human. There is no substitute for human creativity or human judgment. Disney could have saved themselves billions had they simply talked to an average 16 year-old girl.
Whoa! Powerful Speeches From Trans Dems Flip 29 Republicans, Anti-Trans Bills Die In Montana.
I have some pretty strong connections with Montana. Family members and friends live there, or have lived there. I’ve spent time there. Montana is not the South – it has that Western libertarianism or pragmatism – if you ain’t making a problem, we ain’t gonna make it a problem.
It is such a relief to see folks who get that. It is also aligned with discussions I’ve had with friends and family.
And if you read carefully, a lot of this success flows from the willingness to be out of the closet. To be engaged and visible for people, so they have a living reference, rather than wild, lurid and defamatory tales.
This is why I am “out” as the parent of a trans woman. The reality of her situation is so, so very different than the vile defamations of the President. In my experience, lies are loud and fast, and the truth is quiet and slow, but the truth has more staying power.
@Michael Reynolds:
Neil son is, first and foremost, a means of setting advertising rates.
If one probe topples, that’s bad. If the second probe does, maybe there’s a design issue.
At least stop giving them names of Greek heroes and Gods. try McConnel or Vance or Hegthes. So when you read a headline like “McConnel lunar probe declared dead after it topples,” you think “yeah, makes sense.”
@Kathy:
Hegseth says: “I’ll drink to that.”
@CSK:
And to everything else.
@Kathy:
I would be willing to bet that no one visited. “Hey, Gene, you’re a little quiet, everything ok?”
@Beth:
Our new neighborhood is like something out of the 1950s in the movies – monthly food truck nights, July 4th parade, Christmas parade, a HUGE block party in late summer, a big Christmas shindig collecting Toys for Tots every December. I have never seen anything like this in my nearly 60 years on this earth, and I hate the idea that I might have to give up this neighborhood, sell this house and move overseas – retreating into foreign isolation – just because of one selfish, orange man.
That said, I’m jealous of your ability to get into Great Britain. They got rid of the investor’s visa a few years back, and I have never won a Nobel Prize or an Oscar, nor do I have family to re-unify across the pond.
I’ll end up in Spain or Mexico City or perhaps Malta where you can buy an EU passport for 750k Euros.
@just nutha:
He had one family in each America. No one else could bring that perspective.
@Scott: I expect it will be rolled out nationally, since it’s a way to try to create an effective end to birthright citizenship.
Either arrest and deport undocumented parents when they show up, or get the parents to not show up at all, creating a class of undocumented citizens, who can randomly be deported to wherever.
@Beth:
This is why board games have been getting increasingly popular among some groups of Americans. Geek culture has a whole lot of board gamers. And a lot -of the games are great.
(Settlers of Catan is inexplicably popular — you can tell in two turns who will win, but that game just drags on forever)
@Gustopher: I take it you mean that board gaming encourages people to gather together to play the games? Not that board-gaming is counter in some way to “brutally extractive”.
Yeah, atomization is totally a thing. I have this sense that it’s rent that’s to blame. It’s hard to gather together just to hang out with people. Where can you do it at any scale?
@Michael Reynolds:
Michael,
Then I can never see you playing computer Strat-0-Matic baseball,
I will bore everyone by telling how I play these games. The computer version of SOM allows you to play games from any season you purchase. Using the actual lineups and schedules* played those seasons. The computer game will automatically conduct actual player transactions as the season progresses.
Every player has a card and you roll dice to get the results. You could let the computer roll the dice, but what’s the point or fun in that. You can let the computer manage the teams too or do that yourself. I set the computer to manage both teams but make game decisions when I want to or override ones by the computer if I disagree.
The computer makes guesses for me in a game. As I said, Michael, you’d probably not like it.
@Gustopher:
If we’d had such a game when I was growing up*, I’d have loved it because there’d be no need to play to the end per your description. Most board games I recall playing (except trivia games) went from mild fun to tedium to “F**k it!” over the course of a couple of hours at most.
Trivia games were faster, but I almost always won. Really, about 75% of all questions were what I call common knowledge.
If we include things like backgammon, chess, and checkers, these tended to end in fights over the rules.
*It might have existed in the 70s for all I know, but I don’t recall having heard about it then. Or since then until today.
A glimpse of the future in the Bizarro World we now live in. Thrust into unemployment, axed federal workers face relatives who celebrate their firing.
Shitty people with shitty values (and don’t expect any of that Robert Frost “home is where when you show up they have to let you in” bullshit either!).
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
That’s well beyond shitty.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I’ve reconsidered. Shitty people with shitty values doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface..
ETA: “Basket of deplorables” was an understatement. Shithole country isn’t adequate to describe these people and the nation they’re trying to build.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
James brought up the Russian Revolution in the other thread. That reminded me of Stalin’s terror and purges. Those accused of being enemies of the people, who invariably wound up shot or in the gulags, mainly fell in two camps:
1) It’s a misunderstanding. I’m sure it will all be sorted out.
2) If the party needs me to stay in the gulag or be shot, then so be it. Long live Stalin!
I wonder how many of the second camp will emerge in Fascist America.
@CSK: And I hadn’t read your post yet when I revised my own comment.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: When my brothers lose their jobs because of the effects of tariffs or RFKJr declaring that asbestos is the “dark meat of Vitamin A” I’m going to celebrate. (one works in HVAC supply chain, the other in air quality monitoring for asbestos removal)
HVAC brother voted Trump because of the sanctity of women’s sports that he never ever has watched, and asbestos brother voted for the biggest clown show.
One thing I noticed in JJ’s thread about political violence is that Proud Boy Shithead has FAFO on his shirt, and FAFO seems to be the siren call on the left as well.
I hope we just speed run all this finding out, ponder the wreckage, and then start figuring out where we go from there. I’m old(ish), I ain’t got time for this shit. Americans wanted to touch the hot stove, they should just hang onto that hot burner for dear life. Maybe even lick it.
Hey, without all those pesky park rangers, at least bison petting season is going to be great.
Gene Hackman died 7 days after his wife, Betsy Arakawa, did.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/officials-share-update-mystery-deaths-gene-hackman-wife-rcna195281
@CSK:
It strikes me as odd that people who are well off economically wouldn’t have someone to help with an Alzheimer’s patient. It’s also strange his pacemaker recorded activity, but no one monitored it or noticed when it stopped.
I feel like I’m reading reports coming from Bizarro World, only lacking in malice.
@CSK: Is the implication that he died after wandering in the house for a week with his wife dead in the bathroom?
@Fortune: That’s what I gathered from the articles I’ve read. I feel terrible about that poor dog that died locked in the kennel.
@Min:
@LongtimeListener:
@Erik:
In addition to Tusk, see Merz both on defence and on ending the “debt brake”
The Germans are generally, stolid and slow to move.
But when they do move, they tend to be deadly serious about it.
Also Macron: France now prepared to deploy air-launched nuclear-warhead cruise missiles in Germany.
Poland states willingness to participate in French continental nuclear deterrent force.
Sweden to deploy Gripen fighters and support ground crew to bases in Poland.
EU Commision presents a a proposal that could mobilize up to 800 billion euros for defence investment.
Italian navy planning new build of nuclear powered warships.
To quote Khan Noonien Singh: “You should have let me sleep.”
@Kathy:
I’m surprised they didn’t have live-in help, given Hackman’s condition.
@Fortune:
I don’t think that’s the implication; it’s the reality. Hackman had Alzheimer’s. He might well have forgotten she was living in the house with him. Alzheimer’s sufferers don’t even recognize their own spouses, people to whom they’ve been married for decades.
@Beth:
Welcome to Britain!
Hope you manage to settle in OK, and can cope with our sometimes spiky nature.
Also, let’s hope WW3 holds off until you get dwelling sorted, at least.
@Gustopher: You be you, dude. I’ve bad blood with some of my extended family and had some with my mom while she was still alive, but I’ve always tried to live by the adage “as much as it lies within you to do so, live at peace with [those around you].”
@CSK: I’m wondering how she got hanta virus. (With how he didn’t as the follow-up question.)
ETA: “Alzheimer’s sufferers don’t even recognize their own spouses, people to whom they’ve been married for decades.”
Exactly! One of the things that used to frustrate my mom when I would come from Korea for visits was that my dad remembered who I was right away and that I was currently living in Korea.
(“You’re still in Korea?” and “How do you like living there/what do you do there?” was the total depth of the conversation, but it still niggled at her because I and my brother were apparently the only people who triggered recognition.)
@just nutha:
Exposure to rodent feces probably. Hantavirus is rare, and generally limited to Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado. It’s fatal in 5-15% of cases.
@CSK:
Exactly. Besides, he was 95. I’d be surprised at anyone who reaches that milestone and doesn’t require some help in their daily lives.
@JohnSF:
Well, I at least solved the problem of the bank account. Tiny victory I guess. The heating in this flat is just a lost cause. I also had something called “Pot Noodles: Doner Kebab”. In the immortal words of the great American poet, Charles Barkley, “turrible”.
On the plus side, Jammie Dodgers and my nervous system doesn’t feel like it’s on fire. I think this will be manageable once I find an actual place to live and some friends. I’m loud and I’m fun so that shouldn’t be a problem.
@CSK: Thanks. I knew it was rare-ish but know little else.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I really hope those shitty people celebrating this starve to death. Fuck them.
@Beth: I’ve had “pot noodles” and I’ve had “doner kebab” (you get in from stands in Itaewon district in Seoul), but I’ve 1) never had “pot noodles: doner kebab” and 2) can’t imagine any circumstances where I would. I have to imagine that there’s an interesting story to be had–or at least, hope for one.
ETA: And thank you for the kind thoughts on behalf of the government people who lost their jobs. I KNEW someone would find something that suitably expressed my dismay at reading that item.
@Beth:
Probably not the optimal choice, lol.
Chickeny pot noodles are OK if desperate.
Doner kebabs are just fine.
A cross-over of the two? I think not.
@JohnSF:
I wonder whether France might share nuclear expertise with other EU countries.
I think not. That hasn’t been the norm for sovereign nations. Even the UK didn’t get much from the US, past what the British scientists at Los Alamos learned during the Manhattan Project. Nevertheless, desperate times and all that.
On the other hand, EU countries without nukes could pool their talent and resources to develop them.
And if I were France, I’d be thinking about delivery means for North America. Just in case.
@Beth: I remember asking the secretary at the educational establishment I was attending which bank she recommended, since I knew I couldn’t continue to use my Japanese bank account. She sighed, then said in disgruntled terms: “well, they’re all equally poisonous…”
@Kathy:
Norms can change. There’s a mechanism in place: EURATOM.
France already has a delivery means capable of striking North America:
M51 SLBM; range (estimated) 8,000–10,000 km; 6 MIRV 100kt yield thermonuclear warheads per missile with estimated circular error probability on target of 150 metres.
16 missiles per sub.
It’s oft forgotten that both Italy and Sweden had nuclear weapons programmes in the 1950’s.
The UK and France certainly have good reasons for a co-operation project:
France has domestic tritium production, and a fully home-grown warhead, orbital bus and missile capability.
UK has a useful plutonium stockpile, plus its own “Holbrook” generation of thermonuclear warheads and guidance systems.
(And inside info on the Trident, which of course we would never dream of misusing. My word, no. Surely not.)
@JohnSF:
What I imagine they’d be used for wouldn’t be misuse. As things are going, Europe will be the leader of the (smaller) free world.
@Kathy:
Pity there’s this little problem to our east right now.
If we could just do a deal with China to sort that, that would leave a million European troops free for “exercises” in Canada and Greenland. 😉
@just nutha: I wish no ill fortune upon them, but god damn am I going to celebrate and rub it in when it happens.
Maybe it will be a learning experience for them.
@Kathy:
That was a cause for a bit of grumpiness, even mild tetchiness, in the UK after 1945.
As the UK had presented the US with all our TUBE ALLOYS project data, got a promise from FDR on full sharing, thenn got cut off at the knees with the McMahon Act
Moral of the story:
Never trust the word of a US President over Congress.
Or, as we have learnt since, vice versa.
Or more simply: the US is not reliable.
Hence the UK independent nuclear weapons programme.
(Though, tbf, UK/US nuke co-operation did resume, somewhat, under Eisenhower and Kennedy)
US domestic politics tend to override any international commitments.
Unless the country concerned has massive leverage in Washington (waves at Israel)
The UK has since 1945 tried to ignore that; whereas France generally did not.
Well: more fools us.
Turns out De Gaulle was right, after all.
It’s so much fun to watch Republicans rip up the social contract they thought they’d perfected — we’ll execute empire overseas as long as you shut up and work for low wages here because we’ll provide low cost goods you can buy with your low wages.
And this 51st state stuff with Canada won’t go back in the bag any time soon — The Northern Territories aren’t getting conquered, so stop trying. All the “governor” references towards the Canada PM would be jarring if Republicans hadn’t already made themselves a living joke.
Incidentally, if anyone cares to wade into the swamps of X-twitter, it is currently full of MAGA celebrating the Russian killing of Ukrainian civilians in air strikes as teaching those ungrateful people to stop disrespecting Trump, sign over the mineral rights, and capitulate.
X: bringing people together.
Latest from Tusk
@JohnSF:
It doesn’t help matters that you have POS like Scott Ritter shilling for Moscow.
—
Have you seen this reporting from NYT?
I just saw it, so I’m about to search for his claim about the treaty. Usually, these out of pocket legal claims Trump makes have some history among the FedSoc/RW crowd.
Have you any thoughts on the subject?