An American/German in Berlin. Berkeley alum (Go Bears!). Erstwhile Texan. Credo: “There are other forces at work than those of evil. And that is an encouraging thought.”
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Berlin's soggy cool summer put the damper (so to speak) on visits (and thus revenue) to the city's public pools. Last week it was announced that therefore, several pools would stay open past the end of the summer school holidays on Sunday (alas not my Insulaner, though). www.rbb24.de/panorama/bei...
It's amazing how often they got away with it.
Wordle 1,540 3/6 ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
WaPo's slide from leading national newspaper and paragon of journalism to Pravda-like shills mouthing the government line of the day is something to behold (or rather not behold, I for one already cancelled my subscription).
I think (hope) their obvious targeting of this one guy out of sheer vengeance and malice is part of the reason Trump is now underwater in polling on immigration, once his biggest strength. Abrego Garcia has become a symbol of the irrational, vendetta-like cruelty of the whole administration.
Was back in the US last year and forgot how bad it was. Friend of mine's daughter suddenly got really sick and was briefly hospitalized (she is OK now) and they had just gotten a $15,000 bill from the hospital (she and her husband both work full time and have "platinum" plans that cover their kids).
Yes the "quotes" abound--the kid who both trapped in an alternate dimension yet still in his bedroom and communicates with his mom via electricity is straight-up Poltergeist (and the movie the mom bought tickets for). Stand By Me in there too. Halfway through S2 and it still holds up for me though.
Happy Heavenly Birthday to mom, who would have been 84 years old today.
"Mr. Trump, who regained control of the White House on promises of faster growth and lower prices, has established policies that are having precisely the opposite effect." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/u...
Queen Bee without hints in just 10 minutes! www.nytimes.com/badges/games...
Flashback for September 6, 2025 28 points 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Play here: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Connections Puzzle #818 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟪🟪🟪 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟦🟦🟦🟦
I am the last person to watch Stranger Things and it is absolutely addictive. Started last week and am already halfway through season (er, book) 2.
Production design is A+, right down to the orange plastic see-through popcorn popper with the little tray at the top the butter would melt in. We had one of of those. And all the board games people would keep next to the TV in the den like Boggle.
I am looking for a combo pizza buffet and video arcade with hopefully a chocolate pudding dispenser and free soda refills. That was my teenage heaven.
So I started watching Stranger Things (yes, as with Downton Abbey, I am usually last to the pop culture party) and it reminds me so much of my 80s childhood--minus the hellish demon monsters of course--I wish Berlin had a pizza buffet and video game arcade so I can get my Galaga back on.
Somebody worked late to find the most unflattering photo of Merz available... www.dw.com/en/germans-d...
Well done, Trump voters, well done indeed. "It’s the first negative employment month since December 2020, and it ends the second-longest period of employment expansion on record for the United States, BLS data shows." www.cnn.com/webview/busi...
I truly can't stand how so many in the US media will treat every EO as a command from the Supreme Leader as if the Constitution didn't exist. THAT is his power. If Trump signed an EO that claimed to abolish the Bill of Rights, NYT, WaPo, and Politico would say, "Trump abolishes the Bill of Rights."
And right at the top of the pile would be Elon Musk, who would now basically be in the business of "war contracts".
I am so late to the pop cultural party I have only just started watching Stranger Things. Just saw the first episode of Season Two, and that Devo Whip It track over the arcade scenes was some heavy San Junipero-level teenage nostalgia.
Half my family voted Trump and it is impossible to discuss any policy issue with them because they are completely uninformed. They don't watch Fox News either, they don't watch any news whatsoever. They are in a cultural milieu where all their neighbors and coworkers vote Republican, so they do too.
It is amazing how this administration gets away with such a staggering level of obvious deceit and duplicity. When I read that what carried Trump over the top last year was low-frequency/low-information voters, I thought it was the only theory of the case that makes sense. Most people are tuned out.
A major part of Trump's power is that he will do attempt to do something flatly illegal via executive order, and the media will report he actually has done it. If he signed an EO to turn the moon into green cheese, the NYT headline would be "Trump to turn the moon into green cheese in latest order."
s/b "attempting to change", the President can't change the name of a Cabinet-level department or the title of its secretary without consent of Congress. He only has this "power" if people go along with it. Just tired of all this "Trump did this" via EO, when it should be that he is TRYING to do it.
They can call the Department of Fap if they want to, you can only change the name of an executive department and the title of the relevant Cabinet official via an Act of Congress that would be subject to the filibuster.
Leaves are changing
Hoo boy. Takes some guts here, as the Court could overturn her decision on appeal out of mere pique (or at least have many folks believe that they did exactly that).
![This Court understands, of course, that the Supreme Court, like the district courts, is trying to resolve these issues quickly, often on an emergency basis, and that the issues are complex and evolving. See Trump v. CASA, Inc., 145 S. Ct. 2540, 2567 (2025) (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (“In justiciable cases, this Court, not the district courts or courts of appeals, will often still be the ultimate decisionmaker as to the interim legal status of major new federal statutes and executive actions.”). Given this, however, the Court respectfully submits that it is unhelpful and unnecessary to criticize district courts for “defy[ing]” the Supreme Court when they are working to find the right answer in a rapidly evolving doctrinal landscape, where they must grapple with both existing precedent and interim guidance from the Supreme Court that appears to set that precedent aside without much explanation or consensus.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ndxd4h47nhylsdfke4x4arlk/bafkreigiuyx37tbctyk4ppamaexiz37rz4ubdihzln2awpkatvtgpgfydu@jpeg "Click to view full size")
I saw the problem with the need to have to fill in the blanks (which starts to mean assuming simple partisan bias), but hadn't thought that for the district judges these curt SCOTUS dismissals suggests they somehow hadn't been doing their job. This does not seem to be sustainable in the long term.
(There is also the argument that given their court loss on the Alien Enemies Act, they are trying to bolster their case that Tren de Aragua really is some kind of military invasion force under the control of the Venezuelan government. What a crazy upside-down world we live in now.)
Yeah, I think too what is lost here is that if you suspect a boat is smuggling drugs in international waters, you impound it, you don't have the military blow it and the passengers to smithereens. Esp given this admin has a track record of persecuting people for things it turned out they didn't do.
I am lucky and live on as calm a side street as is possible in the big bad city. We get far more cyclists than cars (it helps that we are more or less a Sackgasse due to the continuous construction at the end of the street that has gone on for well over a year now). Speed demons look elsewhere.
Living in San Francisco, we got brochures like this from the county regularly once a year. For pretty obvious reasons though. Though in Germany, I dunno. A Russian cyberattack takes out the grid for a few days or something like that, the options all sound pretty spooky. I would still be surprised.
And, as it continued with a policy a court had already found to be against the law, seems like the consequences are all on them. I don't know how solid the fundamental argument is, "Well we've already been doing this for so long, and now we're dug in and we'd look like fools if the policy stopped."
"A ruling against the administration could hurt its diplomatic standing, but that is because foreign governments may have been the victims of a policy initiative that was illegal all along. If Trump officials end up embarrassed, they will have earned it themselves." www.politico.com/news/magazin...
Good for him.
The water taxi is a cool idea (London and New York have already done this) though apparently the legal maze here is harder to navigate. And things will get slightly better next year when the S-Bahn construction fencing walling the plaza off from the harborfront comes down. But yeah, it's bleak.
It's high noon at Berlin's Old Texas Town & Cowboy Club. Their lease was revoked effective September 1, but they didn't leave, haven't taken any of the structures down, and plan to open this Saturday for visitors. The landlord threatens legal action. It's showdown time. www.rbb24.de/panorama/bei...
Instead of the bustling inner city urban spectacle that greeted visitors to Berlin alighting from the main termini a century ago, today you are greeted with a dreary concrete plaza with more litter and graffiti than shade, and surrounded by construction fencing. And the riverfront is a wasted asset.
Yes, primarily meant as an overseas combat reserve force, but often used domestically to support civilian emergency services. Not at all what Trump is trying to present as a sort of domestic national police force under White House control. That's explicitly what the judge in the LA case struck down.
I worked in Europa City for over a year, and the aesthetics around Berlin Hauptbahnhof really are a downer. Constant construction, ugly lifeless tower blocks, having to dodge all the touts. Nobody wants to linger around there, such a disappointing front door to the city. www.rbb24.de/panorama/bei...
In normal practice, yes, though strictly speaking they are an armed military reserve force, and I don't think about the THW in that way. They were intended as a supplement to the active armed forces in wartime, and do in fact deploy in combat situations. But mostly it is civil assistance projects.
You don't prevent domestic crime by having guys in military armor walk up and down the street. What an utterly bizarre theory. It is just more Big Tough Guy Television for rightwing media, and many Guardsmen are sick of being used as political props in this way. www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...
I grew up on the Texas Gulf Coast and the most common reason for the governor to deploy Guardsmen was before and after hurricanes, to help communities build up supplies, put up sandbags, and help with the cleanup after, guard damaged stores where the glass had blown out etc. Helping hands basically.
They can (and have been) called in to quell violent street unrest, looting etc, by show of armed force, but against civil crimes like theft and murder they aren't equipped to resolve anything. It is not at all how crime prevention works (to say nothing of Congress taking away most of the DC budget).
He doesn't want to invoke the Insurrection Act because the courts will throw it out. And yesterday saying he might "send them in" to New Orleans--they are already there. The Louisiana National Guard is based there and the governor can call them up whenever he wants, he doesn't have to ask the Feds.
Yeah, reservists. No training in civilian law enforcement, and many resent being used as props like this. Trump wants folks to believe they are a national police force and he is the chief, which is nonsense. DC is the exception, he can declare a 30-day emergency (ends next week), but that's it.
Connections Puzzle #816 🟪🟪🟪🟩 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟨🟨🟨🟨
We all knew he was fine, it was more of a preview party really
On top of which the Guard are already IN New Orleans. Jackson Barracks, Louisiana National Guard headquarters, is in the Lower Ninth Ward. Landry doesn't need the White House to put them out on the streets of the city. Another bizarre statement by Trump, guess they are frazzled by the Breyer ruling.
Ordering the military to buzz the event to drown out the speakers is a huge tell
"safety monitors" is I guess what "drivers" are called in Tesla-speak
Still the finest news source: “Ma’am, I am a veteran, a father of two adult children, and I hold a master’s degree in business from Washington University,” said an indignant Strickland, who reportedly crossed his arms and winced slightly at the young cashier’s question. theonion.com/no-area-53-y...
The Nazis did in fact purposely send in soldiers to big cities like Hamburg in order to provoke resistance that would give them their "national emergency" fig leaf to arrest political opponents and seize control of city and state governments. It is all the same playbook.
In Poland however, all media, including Polish-language newspapers, were overseen and produced by Goebbels' propaganda ministry. The Polish-language occupation newspapers and magazines were called the "Reptile Press." The Polish Underground managed to produce and circulate bulletins and even books.
This was in sharp distinction to how the Germans treated the media in Western countries, that were largely allowed to continue as before, albeit under a military censorship regime. But Dutch, Danish, French, and even Czech publishers continued under their occupation and remained the main media diet.
Occupied Poland was the only part of Nazi-occupied Europe where the Germans didn't allow any non-German media outlets of any kind. In fact, it is the only time in Polish history that an occupying power, whether Russian, Austrian, or previous German ones, did not allow a Polish-owned press at all.
It isn't just us oldsters! "No one would have thought that the way to lure young people back to old-school media was the puzzle at the back of the paper. Maybe Gen Z, the so-called ‘internet generation’, are craving something a little bit more analog after all." www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture...
A gorgeous day to tackle some grim reading.
I have no idea what this article is referring to. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/u...
Well, that and the standard CCP historiography of the Sino-Japanese War was that the U.S. wasn't actually trying to help China win, but rather was attempting to prop up the Kuomintang government against the Communists, thereby undermining (per the narrative) the larger effort to evict the Japanese.
Barbara Tuchman's "Stillwell and the American Experience in China" is still a great read about how efforts by the US to prop up the Nationalist KMT government during the war ended up helping the Communists discredit and defeat it afterwards, win the Chinese Civil War, and establish the PRC in 1949.
As China celebrates the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Japan in 1945, the "Who lost China?" debate in US foreign policy seems to be largely forgotten--the belief that the US could have somehow propped up an unpopular government as an outside power was a fantasy that was sadly repeated in Vietnam.
Growth in Berlin's suburban "Bacon Belt" continues: the 1936 Olympic Village continues to be renovated and will see over 300 new apartments built, alas though mostly at prices out of reach of locals, and clearly targeted toward urban commuters. www.rbb24.de/wirtschaft/b...
Yeah, a nothingburger just to give him air time. Though my goodness, the Oval really looks like the government palace of a Central Asian dictator now. Do people make that many changes to an office they only expect to work in for a few years, and add a ballroom? I don't think he thinks he's leaving.
Though worth noting that Magyar and his former spouse were both very prominent in Orbán's party. While getting rid of Orbán is a needed first step towards reversing Hungary's backsliding, it would not be a progressive bed of roses. Though--great last name for a Hungarian politician and media star.
![Péter Magyar (Hungarian: [ˈpeːtɛr ˈmɒɟɒr]; born 16 March 1981) is a Hungarian lawyer and politician who was elected member of the European Parliament in 2024. Since 2024, he has been a member of and also the incumbent president of Tisza (Respect and Freedom) Party, Hungary's largest opposition party. As such, he is widely expected and considered to be Viktor Orbán's main rival and challenger in the 2026 parliamentary elections. A former member of Hungary's governing party Fidesz, and ex-husband to former justice minister Judit Varga, Magyar gained nationwide attention in February 2024 when he publicly announced his resignation from all government-related positions after expressing deep dissatisfaction with how Fidesz was governing the country. On 15 March 2024, he announced his desire to form a new political platform for citizens dissatisfied with both the government and the establishment opposition. He took over the formerly unknown Respect and Freedom (Tisztelet és Szabadság, TISZA) Party, becoming the most promiment opposition leader and ran in the 2024 European Parliamentary elections. His party came second behind Fidesz, gaining nearly 30%, the highest number and percentage of votes by any non-Fidesz party since 2006. He is a self-identified critical pro-European and a conservative liberal.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ndxd4h47nhylsdfke4x4arlk/bafkreiaoszcayieimbmidrdvqanwqqhl7gwy4nieoeo25ryc4qscgwfbvm@jpeg "Click to view full size")
Yikes! Almost didn't make it happen today. Wordle 1,537 6/6 ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜ 🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟩⬜⬜🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Taking a catnap
In the absence of any news to the contrary, I assume the White House press conference involves Trump slowly and shakily taking off some glasses, ordering everyone out of the room except Keitel, Krebs, and Jodl, before reminding them that Steiner's counterattack was ein Befehl.
Love this scene...
RIP Graham Greene 1952-2025. I think the importance of his performance in Dances With Wolves and the character was underrated. He is the essential bridge character between Dunbar and the tribe, and all his lines were in Lakota. That is a tough challenge to pull off. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/m...
I mean, "announcing" an office move which was actually the original plan (and which has been a moribund issue for months now) is akin to going on national TV to say that West Wing toilets were going back to he-man 4-ply tp instead of that wimpy libtard 2-ply garbage.
If the fly is already *in* the buttermilk, it is there to stay, and there is little point in trying to shoo it, as I once tried to explain to my fourth-grade music appreciation teacher.
Katsas and Rao, no surprise.
moving space command from a blue state (Colorado) to a red one (Alabama), what a surprise. Definitely just to show he's not pulling a Bernie.
Oooohhh...let's hope it is more in the spirit of the first one than the rather stale sequel. Of course they could not have predicted having an obvious Elon Musk-type character in the center of it would go south so quickly.
Update: nothing remotely exciting. Space Command headquarters will be relocated from Colorado (a blue state) to Alabama (a red state). Probably they are doing it as an Oval Office live tv presser to tamp down the health rumors.
(though I guess much more likely is sending troops to Chicago to try to provoke a confrontation, despite today's court ruling that the L.A. deployment was illegal)
If today's White House "special announcement" involving the Department of Defense turns out the U.S. is invading Venezuela, I want to be on record that the Whos and I called it right away.
Yes, the list is endless and exceeds my character count. What is interesting about the animal words is they nearly always still mean the same thing in both languages (with the obvious exception of deer/Tier) whereas lots of Old English words shifted their meaning: starve/sterben beam/Baum bone/Bein
68 Publishers “was far and away the most important of the émigré publishing houses” said Derek Sayer, an expert on Czech literature. “It kept Czech literature alive.” And, Mr. Sayer recalled, Mr. Skvorecky “was very insistent” that “she was the one who kept it going.” www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/b...
If any vocabulary set in English has stayed closest to its Germanic roots, even preserving fossilized plurals, it is animal names: goose Gans (like us vs. uns) geese Gänse gander Ganter gosling Gössel sheep Schaf fish Fisch mouse Maus mice Mäuse elk Elch
The Bridgewater Associates founder told the Financial Times that “gaps in wealth”, “gaps in values” and a collapse in trust were driving “more extreme” policies in the US. www.ft.com/content/b86b...
Perk up your day with the tale of a man and his paddleboarding goose. "What does your wife think about this relationship? - "She's gotten over it." www.rbb24.de/panorama/bei...
What I learned from the dentist about biting off more than I can chew www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...
When Nancy Pelosi became the US representative for San Francisco, I was still in high school (and I'm no spring chicken). If she runs again nearly in her 90s, the city will have a ghoulish corpse in Congress, as we did during Dianne Feinstein's last days. Go with dignity.
I beg Democratic voters in the US to stop electing chronically ill people in advanced age. Three of them died just months into the new Congress, making it far easier for the GOP to advance horrific legislation with the slimmest of majorities. I don't want to be age-ist, but please think, people...
The worst idea ever. Even here in Germany I taught in a school that had parents, students, and teachers together in a chat app and it was blowing up constantly all day long, rendering it useless for any practical information exchange. I taught six full classes, meaning 180 kids and 360 parents. Fun.
I grew up in Texas in the Houston region, and as a '70s kid this was very common, but known by a horrific term that some people from that era may remember: "n----- knocking." Which only further proves this prank had been around in the South for a very long time, people's grandparents called it that.
(The Nazis turned fare evasion from a misdemeanor into a felony with potential jail time and a criminal record. Amazingly, this paragraph *still* exists today in the civil law register, and is still prosecuted, against the wishes of prison wardens themselves, due to the high costs of incarceration.)
Believe it or not, in Germany you can still be jailed for riding transit without a ticket, due to a 90-year-old "law" criminalizing fare evasion passed by the Nazis on September 1, 1935. The longest sentence under the law was ten months in Plötzensee. www.rbb24.de/panorama/bei...
JD will be pro-Kremlin in overdrive. Already is. Trump is damaged goods.
And the train conductor says Take a break, driver 8 Driver 8, take a break We can reach our destination (But we're still a ways away, but it's still a ways away)
And the Israeli electorate may well be much more fundamentally far right than one might think. The 90s aliyah brought in lots of ex-Soviet new citizens, who became the nucleus of the modern far-right parties, on top of the existing religious right. Almost a fifth of the country are Russian speakers.
Putin gave him a ricin handshake when they were alone together in The Beast.
Haha we might be able to get this little party started again--it turns out the golf course photos that were released last Saturday were actually taken the Saturday before, and the weekend tweets have shown a surprisingly correct use of punctuation and grammar. Longest Trump Show hiatus in ten years.
Ah OK got it...would it be interesting to know what sites were meant to be depicted from the actual 1945 Berlin (other than the CGI Reich Chancellery, which was the obvious one). The one I did recognize was the location of the bunker breakout via the Mohrenstr U-Bahn and then to Stadtmitte.
Seems trivial compared to the massive loss of life when Katrina hit 20 years ago last week, but another casualty of the storm damage was Amtrak service from New Orleans eastward to Florida. Rail service was finally partially restored as far as Mobile just a few weeks ago. www.al.com/galleries/BS...
