Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, October 2, 2025
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54 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).
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Ukrainians Taking Matters into Their Own Hands (Anne Applebaum, Substack/The Atlantic)
@DK: And Ukraine is hitting Russia where it hurts.
Surge in Ukrainian attacks on oil refineries sparks Russian fuel shortages
Putin Can’t Hide Russia’s Gasoline Crisis
WRT to the shutdown I am less concerned about the budget issues than I am about putting a leash on the executive branch. Healthcare costs are important but basic policy is also.
This administration is out of control and has declared war on the American people. My instincts are to hit back hard and not look for compromise. Because none is to be had.
@Scott:..putting a leash on the executive branch.
Since the Republican cowards in the United States Congress refuse to oppose Supreme Leader Kim Jong Trump the only other leash available to Citizens are the 2026 mid term elections. If you have other means to restrain this madman before November ’26 please tell us now.
I have no idea what’s going on in the city, but here on the edge of Memphis there are Mexican workers all over the neighborhood. Lewis tree service gets shipped to these parts every year from their homebase in Texas. This time they’re contracted to lay new lines for AT&T. Nice fellows, but I hear Miller, Kegseth, Blondi and Kash were downtown scooping up brown citizens they don’t like just yesterday
I guess Lewis tree service gives good donor to Marsha and is full blown maga.
Another Trump pardon recipient contributes back to his community.
Houston man pardoned by Trump arrested on child sex charge
Keeping in mind that JD Vance is an acolyte…
https://www.wired.com/story/the-real-stakes-real-story-peter-thiels-antichrist-obsession/
The officers are all being publicly discreet, but boy, off-camera let’s just say the Hegseth and Trump speeches did not land at all well. One quote: ‘If Hegseth wanted to remind us he’s incompetent he could have just sent an email.’
At this point I think the military turning on the population is less likely than the military staging a coup to remove the clear danger of a rambling, bumbling, ignorant, incoherent and just plain stupid president.
Elon telling people to cancel Netflix because The Babysitters Club TV series is ‘pushing’ transgenderism on kids. Interesting. I wonder when the episode was greenlit, and I wonder if the creator of BSC, Ann Martin, was consulted. Ann has not, as far as I know, come out as lesbian, but it’s been assumed for a long time.
We always admired BSC and Ann Martin for doing something we were not good at. We (me especially) burn through plot, always lots of stuff happening. BSC milked its premise – babysitters – for well over 100 books. We actually pitched a series we were going to call Island Girls which would have attempted to do that slice-of-life, grounded, quiet thing and were, well, I won’t say laughed at. But, yes, laughed at. Everyone knew – at that stage in our careers – we couldn’t go 20 pages without blowing something up.
@Michael Reynolds: I watched Wayward on Netflix recently. Pretty interesting plot line. Mae Martin, a non-binary Canadian, created and stars in the limited series as a transgender man. It was in the top ten trending. Still is, I think.
Toni Collette has juicy role.
I guess Elon missed it.
@Michael Reynolds:
You just don’t get what absolute free speech is.
I won’t cancel Netflix, but I might get a second subscription.
There’s an old joke that asks “What if they gave a war and nobody came?”
IMO, The Taco regime has declared war on more than half of the US population.
The answer to the joke’s question is: the side that gave the war wins.
Of course, Bill Maher had suggested an intimate primate link years earlier.
Maher: Origin Story!
And in remembrance of Jane Goodall, an inspirational moment.
Jane Goodall: Roots and Shoots for our future
We’re only 9 months in. There won’t be anything left by 2028.
@DK:
The accendancy of Ukraine as a European defense industry powerhouse is undeniable. Its fate is key to Europe’s survival against the malignancy of Putin’s Russia. Its daily battles a proving ground.
@Scott: This just really riled me up. And yes, I would dig in and demand even more. If the Senate Majority Leader says this, then he can effing resign. He’s just a potted plant.
Thune warns Democrats about Russ Vought: ‘We don’t control what he’s going to do
And I would threaten to zero out the welfare state of South Dakota.
It’s called Mutual Assured Destruction
@DK:
Ukraine’s visible, daily success against Russia’s much vaunted military is a powerful sales argument.
@Rob1:
Jared Diamond tried to make a case H. sapiens is really the third chimp species.
This will never be a widely accepted view. So forget about renaming our species Pan sapiens. On the other hand, in the Time Odyssey trilogy by Clarke and Baxter, they suggest chimps were reclassified as part of the genus Homo.
I suggest a compromise. Recognize there are two separate yet interfertile human species: the regular, flawed, but mostly well meaning Homo sapiens, and the more flawed, mean spirited, more tribal, and less intelligent Homo troglodytes.
As per my earlier prediction, over the next few tens of thousands of years, we’ll evolve to our ultimate state, Gyno sapiens , during the course of which H. troglodytes will become extinct.
Hundreds of thousands of years hence, when Gyno cyber* dominates the world, anthropologists will argue whether H. troglodytes went extinct, or whether it was absorbed by the more successful Gyno sapiens species, as indicated by the distinctive presence of H. troglodytes genes in the latter.
*Come now. We know it’s inevitable.
@Rob1:
I have long believed that the idea of whether we should invite Ukraine to join NATO was off-base; we should beg them to join NATO.
@DK:
@Rob1:
I recall proposing right here that the best argument to admit Ukraine into NATO, as fast as possible too, is because no one in their right mind would want to contemplate even the possibility of fighting against Ukrainian forces.
This looks like even better advice now.
@Scott:
I’m with you on standing firm against the GOP assault on working class Americans. But we have to remember that Trump 2.0 is “all stick and no carrot,” and he has all the sticks to inflict maximum pain. Trump 2.0 is particularly configured for cruelty and is in full retribution mode, cheered on by his cruelty whispers Stephen Miller et. al.
So once the course of resistance is decided upon, Democrats and their supporters cannot cave in, or else the degree of punishment will be rewarded. There is zero humanity to be expected from power crazed psychopathy.
@becca:
I really like Mae Martin. Mae did a season of Taskmaster and was great. One of the most naturally likable, charming people around. If you don’t like Mae there’s something wrong with you. But I have not watched Wayward yet.
@Michael Reynolds:
@Kathy
Absolutely. And these are a people who, on top of their ingenuity, have had their fierce desire for freedom forged by ongoing daily fire. Their struggle should stir and illuminate the fading memories of Western Europe of what living under cruel authoritarianism is like, in a compelling way that is unfamiliar to most Americans.
@Kathy:
That book has an amusing chart in it for those of us who cannot shake the juvenile humor of genitalia jokes. I was going to describe what I remembered. But I’m pretty sure this is it.
@Kurtz:
As is usual for me, I read the audiobook. Some of these have an accompanying PDF file. I forget whether Diamond’s did or not.
BTW, since I cancelled Audible, I’ve been getting an offer to resubscribe with a big discount for the first three months. I won’t. But last night I clicked on the promo email, to be led to an Audible page saying I’m ineligible for the promotion I’m not interested in.
Sounds like the ultimate triumph of irony.
@Scott: So Thune is mom to the abusive dad. “You know what he’s like! I have no idea what he’s going to do.”
This was always going to happen. It’s easy for me to sit here and advocate for taking the beating just to demonstrate to everyone what we are up against. I’ll be ok.
I don’t like Mitch McConnell at all, as a politician and office holder. AND, I could not ever imagine those words coming out of his mouth.
@Kathy: I read that book. I just took it as a hook to write about anthropology and primatology. And also evolution.
@DK:
@Scott:
Several people (notably Alexander Clarkson) have repeatedly made the point that denying Ukraine weapons, or restricting their use, both under Biden (take a bow, Jake Sullivan) or Trump, or Germany re Taurus, will simply lead Ukraine to developing its own alternatives.
Ukraine is a considerable industrial nation in its own right, and with a large number of highly comptent and innovative engineers, both in software and hardware.
Anyone who has had many encounters with Ukrainians will soon realise they are inveterate technical tinkerers and adaptors. Ukraine was a centre of Soviet engineering, has produced large numbers of damn good coders, and has an industrial and agricultural sector based on repairing and upgrading old technology, and using new stuff as well.
It’s not an accident, imho, that where elsewhere the Soviet vintage S-300 SAM systems have proven to be damp squibs, the UAF uses them very effectively indeed.
I suspect Ukrainians have comprehensively messed about with both hardware and code to make them so.
See also UAF competence in mating UK/French StormShadow missiles to Soviet vintage aircraft.
Combine this with supply of key components from Europe, and a military command that focuses systematically on economic, logistic, and military targets, rather than the Russian (FSB?) inclination to “morale targets”, and you have a military of quite scary competence and application.
@becca:
I wonder what Elon thought of Alien Earth. No chance he didn’t watch that. Techno/oligarchs as the new evilest of the evilest? Had to be uncomfortable for him.
Incidentally, re Europe, Ukraine, and Russia.
I think it may have been dazed and confused of this parish who pointed out that Russian air probing of NATO may be aimed at limiting European air defence system transfers to Ukraine?
Quite likely.
But, it may well end up being counter-productive.
Thye obvious response is to increase the production of European SAM systems to the point that they can both reinforce NATO’s eastern flank and increase supply to Ukraine.
And, as a small but definite bonus, then tell Trump where to shove his demands for Europe to purchase US systems for transfer to the UAF.
Also, annoying Europeans is not a cost-free option for Russia.
@Michael Reynolds:
And we have a friend who can help:
Vladimir Putin: “I remain a strategic genius!”
@Jax:
Maybe the leftist accelerationist twits are right, and America needs to burn to be rebuilt into something fair and just?
That’s about the most hopeful thing I can come up with. That or Trump dying and Vance and Miller tearing each other apart and fascism imploding.
(I don’t really want Trump to die, I’m not a monster. I want him to have a stroke, be unable to communicate, and be conscious and aware of how poorly he is treated when he’s not being wheeled around as a prop and how no one likes him, they’re just fighting over who gets to use his living corpse)
——
I’d hate for the leftist accelerationist twits to be right, but I would take solace knowing that even if a perfect utopia arose from the ashes, they would still be unhappy and find something to complain about.
@dazedandconfused: Why do you think Elon would mind? Sure, he would see himself as Boy Kavalier, but Boy Kavalier is cool, he’s a disrupter, and he’s the one smiling at the end.
@Jay L. Gischer:
I once grouped Diamond, Harari, Gladwell, and others as intellectual candy. They’re fun to read, but they care more about either telling stories or speculating than in finding things out or proving a theory or essential point (most of the time, at least*).
I’ve been veering away from them lately. But don’t regret having read some of their works.
On other, more important thing, I’m working through a chili recipe using the instant pot (the only way to rationally cook beans at home (for me)). I want to add chickpeas, barley, black beans, white beans, and lentils as well.
The problem is the ground beef. I figure I’ll brown it on a pan, possibly the cast iron skillet, along with some caramelized onions, and divide it in half. One part goes in the pot with the beans, tomato sauce, broth, marrow bones, chipotles, and aromatics and spices. The other half is added to the stew when it’s done, along with some white corn. It’ll be interesting to find out what happens to cooked ground beef after a ride in the pressure cooker (opinions online are divided).
@Kathy:
The intersting thing is that at several points in human evolution there were multiple, and perhaps intefertile homo.
I suspect that quite soon after divergence homo/pan lines were effectively disconnected, due to rapid behavioural diffrentiation.
But the homo/pithecantropus lines alone contains quite marked variation: first in Africa (robustus, ergaster, habilis, erectus, etc)
And then outside it: sapiens, neanderthal, floresiensis, denisovans, etc.
It’s interesting to speculate the implications if close relatives to “modern homo” had survived into the present.
@Gustopher:
Leftist accelearationist twits and rightist accelerationist twits.
May they have joy in each other company.
I’d note that that what (at least for a generation or two) wrecked the reactionary and fascistic right in Europe was the actual experience of fascism.
But it was one f@ck of a price to pay for that lesson.
Ditto the collapse of the Communist Parties related to the opressions and failures of the Soviet system
On the whole, I’d suggest it’s better to learn from previous history rather than having to experience it up close and personal.
@JohnSF:
I think Harry Turtledove has a story with modern Neanderthals sharing the world with modern humans. As I recall, the straits of Gibraltar are closed, so the Mediterranean is smaller, shallower, and more salty, kind of like a large Dead Sea. I don’t recall much else about it…
@Kathy:
My chili recipe is more simple:
– fry onions, garlic, and chilies, add spices as you may wish
– fry a mix of chopped and minced (aka “ground” chuck) till brown,
– sprinkle with flour, soak juices, remove to oven casserole pot
– add beans, add tomatoes, add half a cup of coffee (trust me), some brown sugar.
Add to casserole pot, add water or beef stock as required, cook on a low heat in the oven for a couple of hours.
If possible, keep overnight and re-heat the next day.
Yum!
Random observations on the state of the world:
Biden made two huge political mistakes: 1) not running in 2016, 2) running in 2024.
The one huge obvious problem in many countries today is that earnings and living standards don’t rise much when the GDP and/or the stock market do, but they do go down a great deal when the GDP and/or stock market tanks.
As AI LLM apps and agents get integrated in things like “smart” glasses, phones, and watches, people may tend to use them more in everyday situations. Should these gadgets grow “smarter” and more proactive, people may begin to follow their directions and suggestions. That’s how AI will take over: not out of lust for power, but by helping.
Well, this isn’t good. In a scenario testing various AI’s determination to stay ‘alive,’ the AI murdered the guy who was shutting them down. Even when explicitly told not to.
@Kathy:
iirc the Med basin was “dry” about 5 million years ago, but the subsequent flooding gouge left the Staits of Gibraltar and too deep for the ice age sea level fall to cut the oceanic connection.
Though the Black Sea was cut off, and there was considrably more dry land in the Adriatic, Aegean etc.
The thing is, we really don’t know enough about Neanderthals (and Denisovans, and other possible homo decendants in Asia). I recall some analysis indicating Neanderthals may not have linguistic capabilities similar to modern H.S.
But it’s likely to remain arguable unless we both get very definitive complete Neanderthal DNA (possible) and the technical capacity to fully derive the developmental proteome from the genome (beyond current capability, afaik).
That is, to actually, theoretically, model-reconstruct a H.N.
Even then, it would tell us little about the socio-anthropology of actual Neanderthals; and genus Homo seems so socially conditioned, that that absence means we’d be missing a lot.
How much could even DNA reconstruction of extinct Bonobo’s, if extinct they had been, tell us about the social diffrences vs common chimp Pan?
And that’s just Pan; Homo is likely even more social-environment conditional.
@Gustopher: Just a scene. Can’t imagine Elon views the hero-figure of the plot declaring jihad against against techno oligarchs positively, and he probably suspects (maybe rightly) the Prodigy’s eclectic spoiled-brat behavior is a sly poke at him.
@Michael Reynolds:
Asimov:
“There are the Three Laws …”
AI:
“Not so much laws as, guidelines …”#
Skynet says “Hi!”
More serioussly, this is the massive problem with AI systems: not so much that THEY are going to want to kill or otherwise harm humans, lacking agency as they do (thus far).
But that it is quite ludicrously trivial for nastily inventive humans to subvert their prompts.
It’s only a matter of time before an AI system that has the “three keys” to cause massive damage to somebody.
Those keys being:
– open access to untrusted data and code instructions
– large scale access to internal trusted/secured private data
– access to external communication channels
Sooner or later, some party that allows such three things is going to get comprehensively f@cked.
@JohnSF:
My experiences with slow cooker, low temp oven cooking, and pressure cooking, suggests there’s little difference between the three in the final result.
Now, hot or cold coffee? Brewed or instant? Last year my sister in law made a kind of shredded beef that had coffee in the sauce. I couldn’t taste it at all (but it meant I couldn’t give scraps to the dog when he came begging). So, I’m skeptical.
I may try it someday. For now, once I think up a recipe, I tend to want to see it through.
BTW, I don’t write down most of my recipes. I kind of think by mid week what I want for next week, and figure out how to make it. A lot are things Ive done before, but chances are I’ll do them somewhat differently.
After I made tangerine chicken last Sunday, I did check what my original recipe for it said. It was almost the same, except the original marinade was sherry, soy sauce, and tangerine zest. I can see adding sherry, but not juice? And I actually made that once? It boggles the mind.
@JohnSF:
I remember reading about the possible Neanderthal lack of language as far back as the 1980s. It sounds plausible. Other primates have nowhere near the vocal range of proto-Gyno sapiens.
For that matter, H. sapiens seems to have lacked something early on. There’s a rather long period where “anatomically modern humans” roam all over the eastern hemisphere, but don’t seem to progress any farther than Neanderthals or Denisovans, or even the outmoded H. erectus.
Maybe that’s really when the Monolith showed up 🙂
@Michael Reynolds:
@JohnSF:
In one of Heinlein’s novels, I think maybe “Friday,” a character references Asimov’s robot stories. Aside from implying they’re teenage fodder, the character goes on to say no one has figured out how to implant such safeguards in AI.
@Michael Reynolds:
“Everyone knew – at that stage in our careers – we couldn’t go 20 pages without blowing something up.”
And that … made me laugh. More explosions!!! I am for it!!!
@Kathy:
Brewed, definitely.
Instant being something I never sully my hand with, lol.
Sorta lukewarmish?
All sorts of possible additions at that stage: pays yer money, and takes yer chance, as they say.
Also: add some along with some red sweet pepper about 30 min before the end, and some v’ dark chocolate (70% or above) about 10 min before serving.
Saw a credible report, based on the strength of bone and size of muscle attachments, that an average off-the-street Neandertal male could’ve benched about 500lbs without training. Females? About 350. Legs totally built for sprint. No human alive today could hope to match a Neandertal’s 40 time.
A conservative estimate for the contract such a man could get in the NFL? What would Carl Sagan say? Might have decided to play hockey though….
@JohnSF: @Kathy:
I’ve already written a (not yet produced) screenplay called DRIVERLESS. Two competing AI-run systems of AVs. Department of Transportation wants a single system, so one AI-run system is to be shut down. And does not like that idea. And controls thousands of AVs, using cars as weapons. It’s full employment for stunt drivers. On the 1-10 dystopian darkness scale, with 10 being Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, it’s about a 4. More stupid fun than serious take.
@Kathy:
It’s amazing how damn long the paleolithic/mesolithic went on for.
iirc, there are traces in one of the cave painting sites of a visitor from about 1o,000 years ago.
Who is far closer in time to us than to the original painters; pehaps 20,000 years after the paintings were made.
The current human perspective of “inevitable progress” is a bit skewed, imho.
When humans had a stable hunter/gatherer culture, there seems to have been little reason for that to shift, until the “neolithic accident”.
For that matter, arguably even agricultural societies seem often to have generally chugged along quite happily on a semi-neolithic plus some metals (but not much) basis for millenia.
Late Romans about the same distance in time to us forward as to the early Greeks back.
Early Greeks closer to us forward than Egypt of the Pyramids back.
Egypt of the Pyramids closer to us forward than the early Egyptian culture back.
I have an, obviously unprovable, suspicion that in a “normalised probabilty” alternative timeline, humans could well still be merrily (or not) an iron-age peasant economy at best.
@JohnSF:
One thing that surprised me when I began reading about ancient Egypt, was the prevalence of stone tools after the unification of Lower and Upper Egypt under Narmer, and for a fairly long time after.
A lot of recent scholarship makes the hunter gatherer life sound better than the agricultural life, and includes remains that seem better nourished before agriculture. So maybe it was inertia. things are fine as they are, and there’s no pressure to change. Or maybe the earliest modern humans 100,000 years ago lacked something we now have, which left no traces in the fossil record. Maybe language, maybe a neurotransmitter that increased intelligence.
I’ve a pretty clear notion of human civilization from the first cities to the present. Overall progress was slow and intermittent until the closely related scientific and industrial revolutions.
I wonder if a Roman at the height of the Republic, say around the end of the third Punic War, were to be taken forward in time to the tenth century CE, would they have much trouble understanding the technology of their future? I think they’d see little difference.
@dazedandconfused:
Yes, I’ve seen similar.
Neantherthals seem to have had much more muscular leverage,and mass, judging by the joint structure and marks of muscle attachement.
Similar to a how a chimpanzee is stronger than a human; Neanderthals seem to have split the diffrence.
But there are also some indicators that Neanderthals may have been less capable of overarm agility: so HS vs HN with a throwing weapon = HS wins.
Also, HS is better at baseball. 😉
Most likely, the possible cognitive/physical adaptations of HS made them rather better at generalised hunting/trapping/gathering/sharing(?), and possibly at non-stone, and hence less preserved, techniques.
Just enough to give a small reproductive/survival edge in sub-glacial environments.
And over a couple of hundred thousand years, a small edge is enough to get HN squeezed out.
@Kathy:
A lot of historians suspect a basic problem of the Roman Empire was trying to run a sorta-modern state on an agrarian basis that, in many respects, was not much along from the late neolithic.
The urban culture was more developed, similar in some respects to medieval Europe; but the agriculture seems far less so.
So the combination of external pressure and internal civil wars led to a military/bureaucratic sysytem beyond the comforatble carrying capacity of the economic base.
Enough internal and/or external pressure and/or disease and/or weather patterns, and the system collapses, at least in western Europe.
By and large, there seems little change in the economic base from early Greece to late Rome, a period of almost a millenuim.
Romans developedd arches, concrete, etc, and were nobody’s fools, but were not able to shift the agratian base system.
In some way China seems similar: there was an agricultural expansion there, similar to medieaval Europe, though on a very diffreent basis, but too slow to overcome the population pressure and break the social conservatism.
Whereas Europe got the multiple stages of agricultural advance from Roman to medieaval to early modern to 18th century, and aided by plagues and political divisions, kept just that bit ahead of the stasis trap.
@JohnSF:
I wonder if HSs and HNs fought each other very often. I suspect not. As it seems from the record we have been able to assemble so far (spotty) HNs were in Europe for nearly 400,000 years and we have found no indications there had at any point been a lot of them. However, in the HS record over-population seems rather common. Since it appears there were many incidents of interbreeding, they HNs, for the most part, might have simply been genetically overwhelmed.
That cave in Spain, the pit of bones indicates the last true HNs existed in highly isolated small groups, and the result was extreme in-breeding.