James Joyner is a Professor of Security Studies. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.
Interesting how many times the reviewer says Xiaomi are not a car company, considering how favorably impressed he is with the car.
But the real point is if China can make cars of high quality and sell them at a lower price than western competitors, and assuming there’s no dumping or other tricks to gobble up market share and then enshittify the whole lineup, then indeed “we” are cooked.
Tariffs can protect the domestic automakers, no question. They will not protect exports to third countries in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
People who describe themselves as “Christian” annoy me profoundly. Exactly what does that mean? Are they Episcopalian, Lutheran, Methodist, Roman Catholic? What? With which denomination do they affiliate?
And I’m not terribly fond of the smugness with which “Christians” announce far and wide that they’re Christians.
@Kurtz: I appreciate you asking. I am kinda on hold and just trying to not dwell. There’s an old Todd Rundgren song that’s on a loop in my head. It’s called Sometimes I Don’t Know What to Feel.
“I got to keep on keeping on, there’s nothing else I can do”
Lady, are you sure your voting habits have not contributed to the deaths of other women to the point that your contribution to society is net negative? Does the business that you run contribute that much to society? Is their any amount of contribution to society from your business that could make up for the unnecessary deaths caused by your conservatism, not just limited to abortion laws, but denying health care to a significant portion of the population, and programs that form a safety net like SNAP?
“Politics and religion have no place in healthcare.”
Mirror, lady. Mirror. It’s not just for applying foundation. Mirror! After that, go read the quotes in red from The Bible, pay close attention to just the words, and ask yourself how many stones you cast in the past to rationalize your votes or do you really think you’re without sin? Ask WWJD considering the specific target of the Pharisees in that parable.
And most of all, think about the implication of some of what you’re saying. You’re a positive contributor to society, so other women may deserve this, but you don’t? You seem to think of yourself as a non-sinner; more than willing to throw rocks your whole life.
I mean, someone like that spends their whole life judging others, something her ‘lord and savior’ says not to do directly multiple times.
It’s pathetic that so many nonbelievers and those outright hostile to religion as a concept seem to have a better grasp of the fundamentals of her religion than she does.
What a crock of shit she is peddling.
And somehow, in spite of my frustration, I still feel bad for this woman because she had to endure that trauma. I understand why women can’t or don’t. But even as a non-believer, I can get behind some of what Jesus said.
I relate this designation to the Calvinist doctrine of predestination (which I regard as high-grade, unadulterated BS).
Simply put, if God, whoever They are, has determined you’re saved, whatever that means, in a free and unchangeable manner, then you can do whatever the effing hell you want, and not even God Themselves can alter it. After all, didn’t God knew you’d do this, and imparted Their grace on you anyway?
The big flaw in this theory is that it grants those not saved, whatever that means, the same freedom. If your actions don’t matter as to your ultimate fate, why bother with ethics or morality? Why not, say, hurry the elect along to heaven right now?
Maybe, too, is the notion of salvation, whatever that is, by faith alone, where works, good or bad, don’t matter at all. That you can be the world’s biggest philanthropist, subsisting on bread and water, wearing sackcloth and ashes only, and using all your money, time and effort to help others, but are atheist, or Jewish, or Muslim, or Buddhist, or animist, or etc., and so you are not saved. Whereas the very fervent preacher who makes billions off scamming their congregants and flies in private jets to the next town over, and has golden fixtures in his shower, and sleeps with a different person every day, but prays and makes a big shows of praying and says Jesus every third word, is saved.
Here’s another installment of NYTs series on defense policy. Weirdly, they seem to feel obligated to throw a few bones to Trump, he’s shaking up the bureaucracy, while decrying his destruction of decades of bi-partisan consensus and alienating our allies.
Here’s another NYT story that shows where the world is headed. The Chinese have overtaken us on fusion research and are forging ahead with massive investment. If I had HS or college age kids I’d urge them to study Mandarin. While we need a strong military and alliance structure to back it up, our policy should be to find a cooperative modus operandi with China, not a fight.
@CSK: I assume the various Christian denominations exist because He is running some sort of experiment. Of course, in His omniscience, He already knows the answer, which means He is a complete fucking asshole.
All of the Omniscient variations of Christianity (or any largely monotheistic religion, really) are morally bankrupt. It requires a god that is at the very least ok with the suffering on Earth, since there are always miracles in the past. He could fix things, and He used to, but then He stopped.
Unless His chosen people aren’t people at all, but measles or something.
All hail RFKJr, Patron Saint of Measles.
(At least with polytheism, you could argue that divine intervention is dependent on divine office politics, and that makes the inherent inconsistencies seem understandable)
@Kathy: I like the Universal Unitarian approach where God knows who is saved because everyone is saved. Everyone. No belief required. Nothing about sinners going to hell for eternity. Infinite Mercy and Infinite Love.
You would think this would result in UU Orgies and murder sprees and what not, since nothing matters, but somehow UU people tend to just be smug rather than evil or fun.
I assume the layer of smugness drives away the genuinely evil people. UU folks can be a bit much.
When I was shopping for a house years ago, I considered one with a covered porch across from a church, and thought it would really be nice to sit on my covered porch, drinking coffee with bourbon and watching the True Believers get rained on. Turned out it was an Interfaith Universal Whatever church, and at that point, why bother watching them get rained on? The whole house was like that — things that seemed great, but then just kind of weren’t.
I assume the various Christian denominations exist because He is running some sort of experiment.
Maybe They want to know how far from Judaism the Christians will stray 😛
He is a complete fucking asshole.
No argument there.
You would think this would result in UU Orgies and murder sprees and what not, since nothing matters, but somehow UU people tend to just be smug rather than evil or fun.
There’s still the matter of what secular authorities can do to you, and what your spouse can get out of you in a divorce if you indulge in orgies.
But more than crime or murder, or even doing drugs, I consider things like bigotry and modern Republican policies to favor the rich, which seem to go against the essence of Jesus’ teachings.
I have not used Kindle so I don’t know how a Kindle bookmark appeared on a device screen.
In the past I have been known to fold over the corner of a page on a traditionally bound book as a bookmark.
When I was a sophomore at Danville (IL) High School the father of a friend of mine had a book binding operation in his basement. He had a contract with the local school district to rebind worn textbooks. He paid his son and me to go through every textbook, one page at a time and unfold any page corners with our fingers before the book edges were trimmed and new book covers attached. In those days WLS in Chicago was the top rock and roll station about 130 miles north of Danville and the 50,000 watt AM signal came in like gangbusters during the day.
I remember hearing the Stevie Wonder hit Fingertips several times a day. I think he was about 12 years old.
@CSK:
Most of the most genuinely “Christian” people I’ve encountered tend not to be particualrly demonstarive about it.
And also, not generally very sectarian either.
(Though several have, it must be said, expressed doubts about the more “out there” variants of US Southern Baptist fundamentalists.)
@Kathy:
It’s interesting how various strands of Christianity shifted from early “community of salvation” to Augustinian predestination, then to medieaval “works and grace and intercession”, to post-Calvinist predestinationism vs Catholic “redemption via the Catholic Church” etc.
One amusing topic, if you want to annoy a Catholic:
Christ must die to save humanity from damnation through Original Sin, and no other path to salvation was possible.
Yet Catholic doctrine also insists Mary was of “immaculate conception” and thus without sin.
So why not just have immaculate conception for everyone, and bypass the whole incarnation and crucifixion business?
@Gustopher:
The “Problem of Evil” is an issue theologians have been grappling with for a long time.
The general view is that the deity concerned simply takes a generally “hands off” stance to the created universe, and the free actions of its denizens.
But remains capable of specific intervention when that is within the bounds of general internal freedom.
And that if there are ever miracles, they are therefore for a specific purpose.
A bit iffy, imho, but there you go.
Though paganism also doesn’t really solve the “asshole deity” issue either, assuming active “gods”.
The thing seems to be human conceptions of gods only gradually assumed the concept of them being “moral” or “just”, as opposed to simply powerful and invested in particular customs.
Though an intersting thought experiment is: assume you have the power to create a universe and the ability to interact with it subsequently.
Are you then obliged to intervene , to answer the requests of sentient beings in such a universe, to prevent all “bad” outcomes, and to compel them to behave according to your view of the “greater good”?
Well, it’s hard to make up fiction when it has to conform to actual reality. Had God decided to give everyone an immaculate conception, reality would contradict Them.
I have a far simpler view: People have free will, and there are no forces external to humanity that can affect their fundamental decisions or moral views. Force internal to humanity are limited, and subject to the same free will and moral views.
@JohnSF: the Bible — the original, the sequel, and the spinoffs — is chock full of miracles. You can’t go anywhere without someone curing a leper or raising the dead or smiting Job for funsies.
At some point, if we are to believe the Bible, God must have just given up and washed his hands of the whole thing because we aren’t getting miracles anymore.
If you graph miracles over time, that curve is headed down. And if you do it as per-capita miracles, it’s really cratered.
Maybe He’s just bitter about His son getting crucified.
Or maybe the devil who lost the bet on Job said “double or nothing on the entire world?” and every instance of cancer is a miracle.
Polytheism adds different gods with different agendas and allows for a lot more pettiness. Pretty much all Greek myth is about petty gods fucking with humans either figuratively or literally, and then getting mad at each other about it. Definitely puts the “why was there no miracle this Thursday?” in a different light.
@Kathy: Effective Altruism was a sex cult with modest hopes of also making the world a better place, and committing financial fraud. I see no reason UU can’t go down a similar path.
Maybe it’s just that UU is an all ages thing, and EA had a lot of feeder groups for “young (hot, sexy, thin, naive) philanthropists”?
(Note: I have no objection to sex cults that are also trying to make sure that families in such-and-such country have access to clean drinking water, and the financial crimes were really pretty mild)
(Note2: my coworker that got really into EA has been out of jail for a while. I wonder how she liked jail. I recall her once saying (before ever learning about EA) that she was straight, but if she was in jail all bets would be off… it’s really not surprising she got into the sex cult part of EA.)
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
My only problem is Epicurus lived in the 4th century BCE, and conceptions of gods were different at the time*.
The Judeo-Christian tradition made their god too powerful to be realistic. And, really, it’s more the Christian part of that tradition. The original Jehovah was an odd duck for the times (abstract, jack of all trades, etc.), but was also more similar to the pagan gods: limited, capricious, and with a low opinion of humanity (see how he treats his favorite, Job).
And where was Captain Marvel all the time Thanos was killing half the life in the universe?
Captain Danvers is neither all powerful nor all knowing. The question is why Nick Fury didn’t call her until the Blip.
*Euthyphro’s Dilemma seems more appropriate for that time:
“Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?”
There are people protesting a restaurant on my corner because they serve foie gras.
I’m really impressed that they have got their heads so far up their asses that they can see no greater problems in the world. Or even in a three block radius. It must be nice to be that biopic and dumb.
“You must, you must, you must understand,
The blood, the blood, the blood is on your hands”
“Ducks want to live free,
Just like you or me”
“Humane foie gras is a lie! Sucks do not want to die!” Etc.
If it turns out to be a disgruntled employee organizing this because they couldn’t get such-and-such day off, I will be impressed.
I don’t think anyone has commented on the mass shooting at Bondi yesterday.
I had actually considered going to Bondi that morning, but ultimately the pastries at Rollers Bakehouse proved the stronger pull, so I spent the day at Manly instead.
An odd thing to consider that pastries may have saved my life.
I believe OTB commentor Ken_L is an Aussie resident, but not sure where he lives.
Let me qualify “near” as they might have collided with it, or come close to, had they not spotted it visually. The tanker was flying without a transponder, which renders it invisible to civilian aviation radars (they really interrogate transponders rather than detect aircraft directly).
I understand the need for military aircraft to hide, misguided as the ops in the Caribbean are, but then they should stay away from known commercial routes, and have an AWACS overseeing things to keep traffic away from them.
It’s hard to make that out, given the all black features.
You may notice she’s not wearing a collar. None of our dogs did, except when going out. Also, I found it funny her favorite chew toy was a dog 🙂 You can see it in the second set of photos where she’s on the bed.
These people. I simply cannot abide by people who lack the imagination to understand a point unless it happens specifically to them.
Video review of a Chinese EV (17 minutes).
Interesting how many times the reviewer says Xiaomi are not a car company, considering how favorably impressed he is with the car.
But the real point is if China can make cars of high quality and sell them at a lower price than western competitors, and assuming there’s no dumping or other tricks to gobble up market share and then enshittify the whole lineup, then indeed “we” are cooked.
Tariffs can protect the domestic automakers, no question. They will not protect exports to third countries in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
It’s been reported someone paid gang members to intimidate voters in recent Honduran elections.
https://theintercept.com/2025/12/09/asfura-honduras-election-trump-ms-13/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The+Intercept+Newsletter&fbclid=IwY2xjawOoE55leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEe8ab3f3A_Sx0LA3wjM63RGYW0yvDhzQWVgNB5aie9ziORPhv7mopymCMJN4w_aem_H8fQt2EqeFyTJ8nJmnGDpQ
@becca:
Intimidated by MS-13. Ya know, the foreign terrorist organization, designated as such by the Trump admin. Does that mean anything?
How you holding up, Becca?
@Jen:
People who describe themselves as “Christian” annoy me profoundly. Exactly what does that mean? Are they Episcopalian, Lutheran, Methodist, Roman Catholic? What? With which denomination do they affiliate?
And I’m not terribly fond of the smugness with which “Christians” announce far and wide that they’re Christians.
@Kurtz: I appreciate you asking. I am kinda on hold and just trying to not dwell. There’s an old Todd Rundgren song that’s on a loop in my head. It’s called Sometimes I Don’t Know What to Feel.
“I got to keep on keeping on, there’s nothing else I can do”
@Jen:
But “she’s contributing positively to society.”
Lady, are you sure your voting habits have not contributed to the deaths of other women to the point that your contribution to society is net negative? Does the business that you run contribute that much to society? Is their any amount of contribution to society from your business that could make up for the unnecessary deaths caused by your conservatism, not just limited to abortion laws, but denying health care to a significant portion of the population, and programs that form a safety net like SNAP?
“Politics and religion have no place in healthcare.”
Mirror, lady. Mirror. It’s not just for applying foundation. Mirror! After that, go read the quotes in red from The Bible, pay close attention to just the words, and ask yourself how many stones you cast in the past to rationalize your votes or do you really think you’re without sin? Ask WWJD considering the specific target of the Pharisees in that parable.
And most of all, think about the implication of some of what you’re saying. You’re a positive contributor to society, so other women may deserve this, but you don’t? You seem to think of yourself as a non-sinner; more than willing to throw rocks your whole life.
I mean, someone like that spends their whole life judging others, something her ‘lord and savior’ says not to do directly multiple times.
It’s pathetic that so many nonbelievers and those outright hostile to religion as a concept seem to have a better grasp of the fundamentals of her religion than she does.
What a crock of shit she is peddling.
And somehow, in spite of my frustration, I still feel bad for this woman because she had to endure that trauma. I understand why women can’t or don’t. But even as a non-believer, I can get behind some of what Jesus said.
@Jen:
@Kurtz:
It’s the COVID Schadenfreude all over again.
@CSK:
I relate this designation to the Calvinist doctrine of predestination (which I regard as high-grade, unadulterated BS).
Simply put, if God, whoever They are, has determined you’re saved, whatever that means, in a free and unchangeable manner, then you can do whatever the effing hell you want, and not even God Themselves can alter it. After all, didn’t God knew you’d do this, and imparted Their grace on you anyway?
The big flaw in this theory is that it grants those not saved, whatever that means, the same freedom. If your actions don’t matter as to your ultimate fate, why bother with ethics or morality? Why not, say, hurry the elect along to heaven right now?
Maybe, too, is the notion of salvation, whatever that is, by faith alone, where works, good or bad, don’t matter at all. That you can be the world’s biggest philanthropist, subsisting on bread and water, wearing sackcloth and ashes only, and using all your money, time and effort to help others, but are atheist, or Jewish, or Muslim, or Buddhist, or animist, or etc., and so you are not saved. Whereas the very fervent preacher who makes billions off scamming their congregants and flies in private jets to the next town over, and has golden fixtures in his shower, and sleeps with a different person every day, but prays and makes a big shows of praying and says Jesus every third word, is saved.
TL;DR: moral licensing writ large.
Here’s another installment of NYTs series on defense policy. Weirdly, they seem to feel obligated to throw a few bones to Trump, he’s shaking up the bureaucracy, while decrying his destruction of decades of bi-partisan consensus and alienating our allies.
Here’s another NYT story that shows where the world is headed. The Chinese have overtaken us on fusion research and are forging ahead with massive investment. If I had HS or college age kids I’d urge them to study Mandarin. While we need a strong military and alliance structure to back it up, our policy should be to find a cooperative modus operandi with China, not a fight.
Example 324971 of when a update is a downgrade.
When Amazon did their latest software update to kindle 11th edition paperwhite, they removed the ability of doing bookmarks.
Reading without bookmarks is like trying to drink alcohol without any liquor
@CSK: I assume the various Christian denominations exist because He is running some sort of experiment. Of course, in His omniscience, He already knows the answer, which means He is a complete fucking asshole.
All of the Omniscient variations of Christianity (or any largely monotheistic religion, really) are morally bankrupt. It requires a god that is at the very least ok with the suffering on Earth, since there are always miracles in the past. He could fix things, and He used to, but then He stopped.
Unless His chosen people aren’t people at all, but measles or something.
All hail RFKJr, Patron Saint of Measles.
(At least with polytheism, you could argue that divine intervention is dependent on divine office politics, and that makes the inherent inconsistencies seem understandable)
@Kathy: I like the Universal Unitarian approach where God knows who is saved because everyone is saved. Everyone. No belief required. Nothing about sinners going to hell for eternity. Infinite Mercy and Infinite Love.
You would think this would result in UU Orgies and murder sprees and what not, since nothing matters, but somehow UU people tend to just be smug rather than evil or fun.
I assume the layer of smugness drives away the genuinely evil people. UU folks can be a bit much.
When I was shopping for a house years ago, I considered one with a covered porch across from a church, and thought it would really be nice to sit on my covered porch, drinking coffee with bourbon and watching the True Believers get rained on. Turned out it was an Interfaith Universal Whatever church, and at that point, why bother watching them get rained on? The whole house was like that — things that seemed great, but then just kind of weren’t.
@Gustopher:
Maybe They want to know how far from Judaism the Christians will stray 😛
No argument there.
There’s still the matter of what secular authorities can do to you, and what your spouse can get out of you in a divorce if you indulge in orgies.
But more than crime or murder, or even doing drugs, I consider things like bigotry and modern Republican policies to favor the rich, which seem to go against the essence of Jesus’ teachings.
bookmarks
I have not used Kindle so I don’t know how a Kindle bookmark appeared on a device screen.
In the past I have been known to fold over the corner of a page on a traditionally bound book as a bookmark.
When I was a sophomore at Danville (IL) High School the father of a friend of mine had a book binding operation in his basement. He had a contract with the local school district to rebind worn textbooks. He paid his son and me to go through every textbook, one page at a time and unfold any page corners with our fingers before the book edges were trimmed and new book covers attached. In those days WLS in Chicago was the top rock and roll station about 130 miles north of Danville and the 50,000 watt AM signal came in like gangbusters during the day.
I remember hearing the Stevie Wonder hit Fingertips several times a day. I think he was about 12 years old.
@CSK:
Most of the most genuinely “Christian” people I’ve encountered tend not to be particualrly demonstarive about it.
And also, not generally very sectarian either.
(Though several have, it must be said, expressed doubts about the more “out there” variants of US Southern Baptist fundamentalists.)
@Kathy:
It’s interesting how various strands of Christianity shifted from early “community of salvation” to Augustinian predestination, then to medieaval “works and grace and intercession”, to post-Calvinist predestinationism vs Catholic “redemption via the Catholic Church” etc.
One amusing topic, if you want to annoy a Catholic:
Christ must die to save humanity from damnation through Original Sin, and no other path to salvation was possible.
Yet Catholic doctrine also insists Mary was of “immaculate conception” and thus without sin.
So why not just have immaculate conception for everyone, and bypass the whole incarnation and crucifixion business?
I don’t have more to say about Emm, but I’ve some very bad photos (the newest ones are c. 2006 with the cell phones of that time…)
@Kathy:
Europe is also considering limiting Chinese EV imports
@Gustopher:
The “Problem of Evil” is an issue theologians have been grappling with for a long time.
The general view is that the deity concerned simply takes a generally “hands off” stance to the created universe, and the free actions of its denizens.
But remains capable of specific intervention when that is within the bounds of general internal freedom.
And that if there are ever miracles, they are therefore for a specific purpose.
A bit iffy, imho, but there you go.
Though paganism also doesn’t really solve the “asshole deity” issue either, assuming active “gods”.
The thing seems to be human conceptions of gods only gradually assumed the concept of them being “moral” or “just”, as opposed to simply powerful and invested in particular customs.
Though an intersting thought experiment is: assume you have the power to create a universe and the ability to interact with it subsequently.
Are you then obliged to intervene , to answer the requests of sentient beings in such a universe, to prevent all “bad” outcomes, and to compel them to behave according to your view of the “greater good”?
@Kathy: I’ve felt Christianity needs a Trickster God, ala Loki or Coyote.
@JohnSF: Can God create a stone too heavy for God to lift? Can God create a universe too large and complex for God to understand in detail?
And where was Captain Marvel all the time Thanos was killing half the life in the universe?
@JohnSF:
Well, it’s hard to make up fiction when it has to conform to actual reality. Had God decided to give everyone an immaculate conception, reality would contradict Them.
@JohnSF:
I have a far simpler view: People have free will, and there are no forces external to humanity that can affect their fundamental decisions or moral views. Force internal to humanity are limited, and subject to the same free will and moral views.
@JohnSF: the Bible — the original, the sequel, and the spinoffs — is chock full of miracles. You can’t go anywhere without someone curing a leper or raising the dead or smiting Job for funsies.
At some point, if we are to believe the Bible, God must have just given up and washed his hands of the whole thing because we aren’t getting miracles anymore.
If you graph miracles over time, that curve is headed down. And if you do it as per-capita miracles, it’s really cratered.
Maybe He’s just bitter about His son getting crucified.
Or maybe the devil who lost the bet on Job said “double or nothing on the entire world?” and every instance of cancer is a miracle.
Polytheism adds different gods with different agendas and allows for a lot more pettiness. Pretty much all Greek myth is about petty gods fucking with humans either figuratively or literally, and then getting mad at each other about it. Definitely puts the “why was there no miracle this Thursday?” in a different light.
@Kathy: Effective Altruism was a sex cult with modest hopes of also making the world a better place, and committing financial fraud. I see no reason UU can’t go down a similar path.
Maybe it’s just that UU is an all ages thing, and EA had a lot of feeder groups for “young (hot, sexy, thin, naive) philanthropists”?
(Note: I have no objection to sex cults that are also trying to make sure that families in such-and-such country have access to clean drinking water, and the financial crimes were really pretty mild)
(Note2: my coworker that got really into EA has been out of jail for a while. I wonder how she liked jail. I recall her once saying (before ever learning about EA) that she was straight, but if she was in jail all bets would be off… it’s really not surprising she got into the sex cult part of EA.)
@gVOR10:
This quote is attributed to Epicurus:
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
My only problem is Epicurus lived in the 4th century BCE, and conceptions of gods were different at the time*.
The Judeo-Christian tradition made their god too powerful to be realistic. And, really, it’s more the Christian part of that tradition. The original Jehovah was an odd duck for the times (abstract, jack of all trades, etc.), but was also more similar to the pagan gods: limited, capricious, and with a low opinion of humanity (see how he treats his favorite, Job).
Captain Danvers is neither all powerful nor all knowing. The question is why Nick Fury didn’t call her until the Blip.
*Euthyphro’s Dilemma seems more appropriate for that time:
“Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?”
@Kathy:
Emm was a cutie.
There are people protesting a restaurant on my corner because they serve foie gras.
I’m really impressed that they have got their heads so far up their asses that they can see no greater problems in the world. Or even in a three block radius. It must be nice to be that biopic and dumb.
“You must, you must, you must understand,
The blood, the blood, the blood is on your hands”
“Ducks want to live free,
Just like you or me”
“Humane foie gras is a lie! Sucks do not want to die!” Etc.
If it turns out to be a disgruntled employee organizing this because they couldn’t get such-and-such day off, I will be impressed.
I don’t think anyone has commented on the mass shooting at Bondi yesterday.
I had actually considered going to Bondi that morning, but ultimately the pastries at Rollers Bakehouse proved the stronger pull, so I spent the day at Manly instead.
An odd thing to consider that pastries may have saved my life.
I believe OTB commentor Ken_L is an Aussie resident, but not sure where he lives.
Hopefully this will be picked up in the mainstream news: JetBlue flight from Curacao to JFK has a near mid-air collision with a US Air Force tanker flying unsafely
Let me qualify “near” as they might have collided with it, or come close to, had they not spotted it visually. The tanker was flying without a transponder, which renders it invisible to civilian aviation radars (they really interrogate transponders rather than detect aircraft directly).
I understand the need for military aircraft to hide, misguided as the ops in the Caribbean are, but then they should stay away from known commercial routes, and have an AWACS overseeing things to keep traffic away from them.
@CSK:
It’s hard to make that out, given the all black features.
You may notice she’s not wearing a collar. None of our dogs did, except when going out. Also, I found it funny her favorite chew toy was a dog 🙂 You can see it in the second set of photos where she’s on the bed.