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Election Day Forum
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15 responses to “Election Day Forum”
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Trump, Hegseth underwater on approval from military members, veterans: Poll
President Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth are underwater in their approval ratings with veterans and military members, according to a poll conducted by Common Defense.
In a survey of 731 active-duty service members, veterans and military families, 67 percent of respondents said they believe military decisions under Trump are being made for political gain. About 50 percent said they disapprove of Trump and Hegseth.
“Right now, nearly 8-in-10 veterans and military families say they’re being left behind, and active-duty troops are telling us that politicization is pushing them toward the exit. That’s not a talking point; it’s a readiness crisis,” said Jose Vasquez, U.S. Army veteran and executive director of Common Defense.
Fifty-three percent of respondents said they want to separate from the military sooner because of politicization, while 45 percent said policy changes or uncertainty under Trump made them want to exit sooner.
This is not good.
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Hardly surprising that some US service personnel think “I did not sign up to follow the orders of a bunch of self-serving scoff-law idiots into possible wars with Canada, or in Greenland, or half-assed futility in the Gulf.”
Never mind the possible deployments to back up ICE, or protect the Arc de Trumph in Washington
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So, I made bean and chicken stew with some of the stock I had frozen weeks ago. Guess what happened with the minced garlic?
Yup. I forgot to add it to the pot to sauté with the onions and bell peppers before deglazing with white wine…
It was right there next to the pot, too.
Anyway, I again added it raw to the mix, plus stock, beans, and chicken. Then set the pot to pressure cook. This time the garlic did cook through. But why do I keep forgetting it?
All I can think of is that lately I’ve been using garlic powder and dry garlic flakes in most recipes, so I don’t remember when I have fresh garlic. I can say the first time I used garlic flakes I tossed them in the pot to sauté as if it were fresh garlic. So maybe it’s just habit.
BTW, stock made in the pressure cooker tends to semi-solidify, like diluted jello. At least mine does. I suppose it means I’m extracting as much as can be extracted from the bones, or there’s something about rotisserie chicken skin. We’ll see next time.
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I also tried a variation of the lightyear sandwiches. That’s an open face grilled cheese sandwich with grilled turkey slices and sauteed onions on top. I usually also add mustard and ketchup or a creamy chipotle sauce.
This time it was just ketchup plus a fried egg on top. I don’t think mustard goes well with egg.
the result was good, though a bit messy to eat. Also, one slice of bread with toppings isn’t quite enough, but two are too much…
There’s also the issue that the runny yolk won’t cover the whole sandwich. With huevos rancheros it mixes with the salsa to encompass most of the dish, but there’s no salsa on the sandwich.
So, It’s worth doing now and then, but not as a regular thing. The usual lightyear sandwich works better.
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There was some discussion here lately about the US right, including the “religious” right assuming an “anti-empathy” stance.
John Harris in the Guardian has some thoughts on this topic that might be worth consideration.I have a, possibly uncharitable, personal hypothesis that this development in “right evangelical” circles (as opposed to solipsistic tech-bros) owes a lot to the confluence of radical popular protestantist concepts of “demonstrated grace”, the rise of Old Testament inflected Biblical literalism, and above all, race.
If the theological heritage of a large constituency of believers (especially in the South) is heavily affected by over two centuries of having, to avoid a personal crisis in following conventional communal belief systems, in resolute denial of empathy with the enslaved or their descendants, then empathy is likely to be at discount in the congregations so affected.
Meanwhile, the pseudo-libertarian tech-bro right is just a normal mix of the stupidity of the smart, lack of historical perspective, and short-sightedly opportunistic arrogance.
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An echo of the fear slave holders have of their slaves, which always exists to some degree, but never so much as it does with a slave population that is enslaved under the belief they aren’t really human. See “Birth Of A Nation”, the most popular film in the US for decades.
“It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (from his 1958 book Stride Towards Freedom)
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A private jet going from Texas to the Bahamas crashed in Florida last weekend. There’s been precious little info on the news, and even in the aviation blogs.
One still from a video posted online, with the plane right about to hit the ground, noise pointed sharply down, seems to show a missing horizontal stabilizer.
It might be artifact from the video. But even if it is missing in the shot, we don’t know what happened to it or when.
So, we’ll know when the investigation is done.
It’s going to be hard. At the speed it crashed, the plane disintegrated on impact. It even left a crater on a road. the parts will be scattered and mixed. The black boxes might be damaged beyond any ability to extract their data (not very likely, but it’s possible).
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NTSB’s prelim report per the best aviation crash blogger (IMO)
Seems they tried to skirt an area of thunder cells with as little deviation from the flight plan as possible and wound up in one. That it broke up in flight after doing so is not a shock.
Btw, the recorded pilot transmissions, do not listen. Horrific, I regret doing that.
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Replying to @CSK:
I’m uncomfortable even listening to reenactments of pilot coms in accidents in shows like Air Crash Investigation.
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the company claims there’s no way to search without AI, so schools that don’t turn AI features on cannot use search.
In a comment to the New York Times, Chris Phillips, Google’s vice-president for education, said that there is no Google Search without AI.
“Search and AI are deeply integrated,” said Phillips. A school-wide ban on AI would mean that students “will not have access to search, and they’ll see a message from their school that indicates it’s not available”
Bullshit. there are ways to search without seeing the AI summary, other than ignoring it. Like typing -noai after the query, or clicking on the WEB tab on the results.
What NYC schools should do is use another search engine (there are many others). I’m sure Qwant, DuckDuckGo, and others would be glad to be in the home page of millions of student’s browsers in one of the most diverse cities in the world.
TBH I find the summaries useful sometimes. If it’s nothing important, like a game score. If it is important, I may read the summary, but then I’ll check the linked sources. More than once what the summary claimed wasn’t what was on the link.
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