Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, August 28, 2025
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20 comments
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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).
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BlueSky.
August 28, 1955
Today in American History.
70 years after Emmett Till’s murder, Mississippi museum acquires gun used to kill him
https://www.wusf.org/2025-08-28/70-years-after-emmett-tills-murder-mississippi-museum-acquires-gun-used-to-kill-him
“There was just no way I could describe what was in that box. No way. And I just wanted the world to see.” Mamie Till. Emmet Till’s mother.
TRIGGER WARNING!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till#/media/File:Emmett_Till_parents_at_funeral.jpg
I saw this yesterday..
https://reason.com/2025/08/27/inside-jeffrey-epsteins-spy-industry-connections/
Interesting, looks like the emails are authentic. Epstein is a really sloppy writer, and comes off as a narcissistic conman trying too hard to impress.
There is something seriously sick within our geopolitical system when a depraved fraud like Epstein can so obviously infiltrate it
@becca: Money, not competence, opens a LOT of doors.
I’m seeing Republicans criticizing Trump for taking an equity stake in Intel and other companies. How long will it last? I expect everyone here is familiar with the Friedman unit of six months. I want to coin a new unit, the “McConnell”. A McConnell is 38 days, the time from the J6 riot, which McConnell initially condemned, to his vote on Feb 13 to acquit Trump of impeachment for it. I expect Republican disapproval of these equity deals to last about a McConnell.
A bit of good news, Swastikar sales are down 40% in Europe.
Better yet, this comes amid rising EV sales.
TL;DR: it’s raining soup, and the chief nazi has a fork.
Damn.
My DVD of “Double Indemnity” (1933) has crashed.
When the speed limit in California was 45MPH.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=double+indemnity+movie&ia=videos&iax=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DZKdcYnlkhx8
Now that the horse has skedaddled…
https://futurism.com/openai-scanning-conversations-police
Shit.
The utter f*cking meltdown at CDC is a problem.
Putting an unqualified hack in charge of the nation’s health appears to have not been a good idea. I do wonder how Senator Cassidy sleeps at night.
@becca:
I wonder if my elaborate, and eventually succesfull, attempt to get ChatGPT to write a tale about the marauding radioactive fascist werewolves of Chernobyl has got me on some sort of list somewhere?
I doubt it, on the whole.
But my rather idiosyncratic sense of humour has landed me in trouble before.
lol
@Jen:
Probably on top of a pile of money.
@Kathy:
Imteresting that hybrid sales are up.
I just lately has to replace my car
(farewell little hooligan Ibiza *sobs*)
And went for a “mild hybrid” Mazda 3 on the basis that it was the best combination of fuel economy, reliability, etc affordable for outright purchase used but under warranty.
Teslas used reliabilty sucks sand, compared to Mazda.
The only electric cars in my price range all had “issues”.
Unfortunately, the electric MINI in particualr was too pricey, and a bit iffy on range.
As electric cars are going to sell generally on the basis of price, reliabilty, and range, Tesla are losing their former key selling points.
Chinese cars are cheaper, European ones have better quality and “perception”, while Ford split the difference.
And that before you get on to the Musky image issues.
@Jen:
Sure, it’s a problem for you, but that’s a really selfish way of thinking about it. This is great news for pathogens of all kinds.
No one ever thinks about what’s best for pathogens.
In response to the recall of radioactive shrimp, someone has created this lovely song.
https://www.reddit.com/r/crappymusic/s/35BMPd3qgR
Who would realize that “Radioactive shrimp from Wal-Mart” scans the same as “Video killed the radio star”?
Obviously someone did, but that’s either genius or they’ve had “video killed the radio star” stuck in their head since some day in the 1980s. I hope they’re a genius, because otherwise… off.
I’m just glad our food safety infrastructure hasn’t collapsed so much yet that we wouldn’t know about radioactive shrimp. For the song, if not for the public health.
@Gustopher:
Black Death calls in:
“Look, if it wasn’t for me, there would not have been a labour shortage that undermined feudalism! C’mon guys, credit where it’s due, eh? Okay, a third of the population dead, but eggs, omelettes, m’kay, y’know? Always look on the bright side of Black Death, amirite? “
There are images circulating online of what is alleged to be the Minneapolis shooter’s gun, which has lots of exciting things written on it. A manifesto of memes.
https://bsky.app/profile/mikesenters.bsky.social/post/3lxfvc6shx22y
If accurate, I think I have to acknowledge that including Koyaanisqatsi is a stroke of absurdist genius. The word means “life out of balance”, but is best known for being the title of a non-narrative film with music by Philip Glass — it’s just shots of factory lines making twinkies and stuff.
I hope this leads our growing police state to investigate every person who has ever watched it on one of the streaming services. Not because these are bad people (except for me, I’m a bad person, but not violent or anything), but because it would be an insane use of our police state’s time and money. I would like our emerging police state to be completely bogged down in garbage and utterly ineffective. (I know they will be using AI to try to filter the garbage, but that just means someone needs to use AI to generate the garbage — in an arms race between creating chaos and trying to create order from chaos, chaos has an advantage)
And maybe dig through the film looking for secret messages that are a call to violence. There’s no characters, and no dialog, and no captions, and no plot — if there is any text it is simply incidental (exit signs, billboards, etc).
Note: approving of “Koyaanisqatsi” written on the gun should not be inferred to be approval of shooting children.
Anyway, Koyaanisqatsi — great film. And if this leads the deeply disturbed, heavily armed community and wildly dangerous community to discover it… eh, probably no harm done.
@Jen: Recalling the sort of terror that we saw coming from Lisa Murkowski right after she was strongarmed into voting for BBB, I would expect it to be some kind of threat or extortion that got his vote.
Probably a threat to turn off funds to his state in some very significant way. Completely illegal of course, but that ship sailed with DOGE. The Supreme Court isn’t going to do anything – until Trump leaves office for good, at which point they will have a sudden change of heart while claiming they thought that all along.
Mind you, this is all speculation. Trump would use both threats and payoffs. But the point of all the DOGE stuff was so that he could get the ability to turn off payments into his hands, and not guarded by some bureaucrat. Start with killing some favorite conservative target to lock them in.
@JohnSF:
I do not buy cars sensibly, I will admit. I buy status. Once I got my license back after making my legal issues go away (With money! Yay money!) I bought a new Mercedes S. My last few cars: Audi A6, Toyota RAV, Volvo electric SUV I forget the number, Mercedes E Class cabriolet, and again but different color, and a BMW X3. After 5 years with my most recent Merc I had put 6,000 miles on it, had to finally admit it was useless, sold it. Now I’m down to just the X3.
I’ve never had a sports car jones, thankfully. And I seem to have finally outgrown my status anxiety. (Age 71 is when you really start to mature). If the Germans could just do electronics I’d say the X3 is a perfect vehicle, but they really don’t do computer. Engine, transmission, everything but anything touchscreen related, at which, BMW sucks..
@Michael Reynolds:
I rather like my new (well, used new) Mazda 3.
Even if it’s not as fast and nimble as the Ibiza FR was.
I’ve always had a bit of a sports jones: comes from growing up with family in the car biz, perhaps.
For that reason, got to drive quite a few slightly crazy cars.
MG V8, Triumph TR8, Rover SD1 V8, Metro 6R4, lol.
And always had a liking for small cars with angry engines.
My first being a Fiat Strada 130
Uttterly hilarious.
While I was getting the Mazda buffed up, I got an MX-5 2.0 RF as a “courtesy car” for three days.
Lovely drive (bye bye, Mr BMW, lol); but not really practical luggage wise. 🙂
One thing about the Mazda 3 is that it does NOT have a touchscreen; I tried a VW Golf as a possible alternative, and that screen was horrid.
Mazda is more physical dials, and all the better for it, imho.
@Jen:
Senator (Dr.) Cassidy knew better but he caved in too, as did Sen Joni Ernst when it came to Hegseth.
I’m not naive, I have no doubt that had Republican senators managed to deny confirmation for any (most) of these unqualified misanthropes – RFK Jr, Hegseth, Gabbard, Patel, et al – that Trump would have come forward with objectively worse people.
@Gustopher: I saw Koyaanisqatsi in the theater, back in the Stone Age.
I enjoyed it, though I didn’t feel I needed to repeat it. I was already familiar with Philip Glass and how he made music, so there was that.
The funny thing is that I remember Glass as being akin to modern categories like trance or ambient, and then I listen to it, and it doesn’t land on me at all like that, in spite of the similarities.