It spread because of one or two early studies with falsified data.

Personally, I wish this stuff were more lethal with prolonged usage. I think two people have died, but maybe people would think twice about believing social media if the risk were greater. And if they didn’t, well, it’s probably good for the survival of the species.

$50 million per day for 500 people is absolute insanity

$180 billion is what they claim

Least surprising news ever.

My ex once told me the story about how Leto tried to seduce her when she was 15 and he was 30. She went to see Thirty Seconds to Mars (his band) and had a backstage pass. She was just a fan. He got really weird and handsy and she got really uncomfortable and made an excuse to get out of there. Needless to say, she wasn’t a fan after that, and when she got older and processed it with an adult brain, he basically disgusted her on sight. Since then I’ve had the same reaction to him for the last 20 years.

She was very pretty (and still is), but she definitely looked underage at the time.

Well we lost $11 billion dollars, ruined HBO as a brand, all of our terrible DC movies aren’t making money, we lost the rights to the NBA, and even considered selling off our brand mascots. So I guess Zaslav gets his full bonus for a job well done

In other words, why don’t we fix literally everything about this country instead of looking at guns?

Machine gun sales are illegal at the federal level except for guns manufactured before Reagan’s second term, and they must comply with the 1934 NFA. That law was originally put in place because mobsters were having gang fights with tommy guns in the streets. Evading the law is evading the law.

Look man, I like going to the range, and home defense is fine. But saying we should do nothing on guns specifically and just give up is nuts. Firearms are the single leading cause of death for children and teens in this country: homicide, suicide, accident.

Here’s one thing you didn’t list: properly funding the ATF and FBI to go after FFL dealers who illegally sell guns to criminals and then claim they were stolen. Those guns are one of the biggest sources of street crime, and I’m sure they wind up in sales to Mexican cartels too, since they’re all supplied by America.

Guns are a problem. They’re not the only problem, but they’re still a problem.

I had covid for the first time this winter and it took three months to fully recover. I experienced every possible symptom, including having such a high fever the first night that I slept under four wool blankets with multiple layers of thick sweaters and other clothing and the thermostat at 85°F / 30°C. I was still so cold I was shaking.

The next day I spent about six hours sitting upright with my eyes closed and just focused on physically inhaling and exhaling air into and out of my lungs so I wouldn’t suffocate. Six hours.

I have high pain tolerance, since pain killers of any kind don’t work well on me for genetic reasons, but over the next days and weeks I pulled the muscles in my torso so badly from violent coughing that I would involuntarily cry out when getting up or lying down. They gave me an x-ray to confirm I didn’t crack any ribs. It took months for the cough to go away and my muscles to heal completely.

I’m regularly vaccinated against both covid and flu, but I got sick before the two-week period for immune system ramp-up was done. I’m sure it would have been even worse without the shot.

I’m physically fit and in my early 40s. I run and lift weights. I wasn’t sure if I would survive those first two days.

When I read this it occurred to me once again that there’s nothing really in it for groups like this to want to crush Gaza. I wanted to take a moment to finally reflect on it.

The easy answer is AIPAC or real estate or some other opportunity for personal gain. I think that’s part of an answer for some of them, but I don’t think it’s even the largest part of the answer.

Another possibility is anti-terrorism. Hamas is certainly a terrorist organization and has committed horrific atrocities. But I feel like Republicans have always used terrorism as an excuse, not a primary driver.

Palestinians are brown. Is it simple racism? There are lots of brown people involved in conflicts we don’t get involved in, though.

For some evangelicals, or those with lots of evangelical supporters, supporting Israel to bring about the end times and the second coming of Christ is probably a small piece of the answer. But I don’t even really think most evangelicals think about supporting Israel from that perspective, but more from an emotional perspective. They simply equate Israel with the Holy Land.

Of course it’s mostly leftists who are protesting in support of Palestinians. Is it as simple as wanting to hurt leftists? Maybe domestically, but would they execute on this plan with such urgency and persistence?

These all seem like pieces.

Then I zoomed out a bit and thought about the ideological conflict. Israel, a far-right government, is willing and evidently able to crush an enemy population (I think it’s fair at this point to say Israel considers all of Gaza their enemy), destroy all infrastructure, and then starve every single person to death. The very definition of genocide. And they can do so completely and with impunity. No one can tell them what to do.

And I realized that while the other factors contribute to their support, Republicans support this primarily because this is Israel doing whatever it wants and crushing its enemies into dust. Republicans love it. They love the strength, they love the control, they love the cruelty, they love hating an Other, and they love simple solutions to complex problems. How many times have I heard a Republican say the US should turn the entire Middle East into glass? Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out.

And they would love to be able to do the same thing within the US.

The Trump administration seems pretty confident these won’t be used against them personally.

https://youtube.com/shorts/ekYplstlikU

We have a set of ironclad rules: laws. But they can’t be enforced when a majority of the institutions charged with enforcing them are intent on subverting them instead.

The only way you could make this work is by making, say, the Department of Justice a separate and co-equal branch of the government, with its leader nominated and voted on by federal judges, completely detached from the normal political process. And that would require amending the Constitution.

In the future of the 1994 movie Timecop, there’s a White Supremacist Party that wins 5% of the vote in the election. They were right but for a zero.

Also the villain is a tech billionaire who gets into politics and wants to buy the election.

Along with “the court has no jurisdiction because personnel appeals must go through official channels in Congress” despite not going through Congress to enact any of this in the first place.

And appeals court judges have bristled at the Trump administration’s view of due process, most notably in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native whom the administration expelled to his home country in March.

Such flaccid writing. He was not just “expelled to his home country.” He was sent to a maximum security prison for terrorists and murderers despite having never been charged or convicted of any crime, where he has been (at least up until the last time anytime has ever seen him) kept in solitary confinement.

It wasn’t a mistake! He misspelled it intentially

US Attorney Alina Habba:

“He has willingly chosen to disregard the law,” she said on X. “That will not stand in this state. He has been taken into custody. NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW.”

Racist Traitor Heritage Month doesn’t have quite the same ring

I mean, the stated intent is to eliminate the agency. So why would anyone there assist you in eliminating their jobs?

The worst sequel to Speed

Sorry to say, but you’d better get those bootstraps ready

I had a stroke (really, a multi-stroke trauma event). I spent many days in the hospital under close supervision. Unlike Fetterman, I listened to my doctors, took an extended leave of absence from work, slept almost the entire time so my brain could heal in those critical days and weeks, took my medication, and went to physical therapy.

Fetterman reportedly didn’t do any of that.

I recovered fully. Fetterman clearly did not. In his current state, he should step down for the sake of everyone, especially himself. The stress of his job is about the worst possible thing he could do to himself.