Rich parents with sense are going to send their kids to schools that mandate vaccination. Public school kids aren't going to get that option.
Magazine editor. Rugby old boy. Bike rider. Book geek. Bear. Proud resident of America’s Zion. Opinions my own.
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Rich parents with sense are going to send their kids to schools that mandate vaccination. Public school kids aren't going to get that option.
We already knew they wanted kids to die in school shootings. They apparently also want them to die of the measles.
Schmitt? What origin is that? That’s hardly a good Anglo-Saxon name. One of those Ellis Island arrivistes I’d guess. Been here five minutes.
DeSantis and his quack surgeon general intend to eliminate all vaccine mandates for students to attend school. This empty political pandering will kill children and endanger all of us as unvaccinated people increasingly expose other residents and tourists to disease.
They bombed without warning a non-threatening small boat, which is insane and a violation of international law even if it was carrying contraband which we have no way of knowing, and then gleefully shared it as a snuff video.
We have twice as many people on the planet as the day I was born. Four times as many as the day my grandfather was born. We’ve quadrupled human population in three generations. These people are insane racists. Since most of that growth wasn’t white, they just want a race-based baby arms race.
If the U.S. military isn't going to release details on the justification for killing 11 civilians in a civilian boat who weren't posing a threat to anyone, then we have to conclude the "justification" is: the U.S. military is willing to kill civilians to give Trump social media content.
I played rugby with trans folks *20 years ago* and no one gave the slightest shit about it.
Also one of the biggest family of donors to nonprofits in the country.
oh this is straightforward white nationalist agitprop
Lethal force against a civilian vessel in international waters is a war crime if not in self-defense. If not in self-defense, only non-lethal actions, such as warning shots or disabling fire, are allowed. "Not yielding to pursuers" or "suspected of carrying drugs" doesn't carry a death sentence.
This is a snuff film posted by a morally deranged convicted criminal.
This is a snuff film posted by a morally deranged convicted criminal.
We will never know if they are telling the truth about the cargo. We will never know who we really murdered. What we do know is that we murdered a bunch of people based on the word of the convicted criminal and liar Donald Trump and his proto-fascist Secretary of Defense. 2/2
Today, the United States destroyed a boat in the Caribbean. The administration claims that it was carrying drugs, but instead of interdicting it, arresting those involved, and carrying out an investigation of its cargo and its origins, they blew it up, killing eleven. 1/2
don’t love shooting a missile at a boat that appears to be just chugging along harming nobody (and, if it contained drugs, could’ve easily been interdicted). really don’t love posting satellite snuff footage of it on social media.
Send a bear to kill some kids who mocked my baldness, that’s what!
These pix are from right around the time I left the LDS church, so I find them to delightfully capture a long-dead vibe from my past.
The god of the Bible: love immigrants, don’t ever charge interest, bacon is disgusting. Also, here’s some rules for when you sell your daughter into slavery…
Pritzker: "He has no idea what's he's talking about. There is no emergency that warrants deployment of troops. He is insulting the people of Chicago by calling our home a hellhole, and anyone that takes his word at face value is insulting Chicagoans too."
Pritzker on Trump's plan for Chicago: "Unidentifiable agents in unmarked vehicles with masks are planning to raid Latino communities and say they're targeting violent criminals."
Americans who didn’t think it would matter who won. Americans who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a Black woman. Americans who believed Trump didn’t *mean* it. I marvel at this almost daily.
That Pritzker press conference was... surreal, and I think marks a significant moment of escalation in the constitutional omni-crisis. This was the governor of a state saying plainly the Union itself is being torn apart and his state is being militarily invaded by an authoritarian regime.
Do not trust any statements coming out of this administration.
I know, I know, but: The president of the US saying, literally, "we're going in" in reference to sending the military to an American city for no reason beyond terrorizing the local population should be the most immediately impeachable shit imaginable
The Last Sane Politician
Studies repeatedly show that most people age out of "hardcore" crime by their late 30s and 40s. And nobody is "born to be" a criminal. Even Trump, who is a hardcore criminal who has not aged out of his illicit behavoir, was not born like this. I blame his parents.
This country is desperate for a cheaters-never-prosper political movement to tackle dishonesty, spam, corruption and bullshit.
Japan is one of the most densely populated large countries on earth. But then again I’m talking to a moron who just compared national population density *to cities*. So bye
Comparing national population density with that of a city is absolutely absurd. Cities are places people live. Countries are everything. It’s ridiculous to even have to point this out.
You think that most Japanese people want their nation to be more crowded? Yeah, I’d love to see the data on that.
Japan shot past that point about a century ago, and is in no danger of returning to it.
You’re making the ultimate statement of faith: growth is always good and necessary. It’s neither, to live well. We do a lot of damage by assuming that everywhere needs to grow all the time. Japan will be a wealthy and successful nation in 50 years, in a hundred, even without 20th century pop growth.
And not to make this specific to Japan, but I think a lot of Japanese folks would love to spend less time at the office and more time doing the things that bring them a sense of accomplishment.
Given the choice between “more money” (it’s really about buying power) and a country that’s environmentally healthy, where you can afford a home and what you need, where public services are less taxed, the subway is less crowded, more free time, and your kids don’t need to compete every second?
He’s just a hype guy. Hype guys are a known type! They can sometimes even serve a real function in a startup business. But you don’t let them run things long term, and you don’t take what they say seriously.
Having a sustainable economy with a good quality of life should be the goal. Not outdoing the nation-state Joneses.
Japan with a 1970 population, or a 1950 population, doesn’t mean Japan with a 1950 economy, but it does mean less of the stressors that can cause so much of the malaise of modern life. Being obsessed with growth is exhausting.
Assuming that Japan will be better with more people is also fundamentally wrong. Many of the things we hate about the quality of our lives right now are caused or exacerbated by overpopulation. People don’t want more traffic, less space, more pollution, stressed nature areas, more competition.
Richer by what metric? Substituting national GDP growth for quality of life is the prime error of growth obsessives. No people don’t want a larger salary-they want to be able to pay for a good quality of life with what they make, which means, often, more free time, strong community sense, health…
Why would you? Growth for growth’s sake, as the cliche says, is the rationale of cancer. Japan doesn’t need more people to be a successful country. It doesn’t have a birth rate problem.
Btw, I’ll be in some of Japan’s “depopulated areas” next month. They are truly lovely.
The idea that this country needs more people is mad.
Or to put it visually.
By “depopulation issues”, you mean countryside, not a sprawling suburb everywhere? Japan has almost nine times the pop density of the US. Only three countries with more than 100 million people are denser-Bangladesh, India and the Philippines. It’s one of the most densely populated places on earth.
Also, Japan is an extremely crowded country with serious environmental challenges due to its explosive 20th century population growth. Just throwing that out there!
That’s a single generation challenge, and the idea to the problem of two much past growth being more growth is unconvincing. Yeah, they’re gonna have to spend more on their pension funds. It’s a good problem to have, long term, that people live well and long. Japan will be manage it fine.
And I was joking about robots. See: smiling emoji
The idea that Japan is “poor” is exactly the falsity here. It’s a very wealthy country with a very good quality of life. The cult of growth hates the idea that that’s enough for a nation to be. By no measure is Japan poor, and providing a good life for a slightly smaller population is fine.
Also, robots! :)
Yeah, stagnant growth with a stagnant population isn’t really an issue when you’re one of the wealthiest nations in history. The “dependency ratio” is a real problem that needs solutions, albeit one that is entirely the result of Japan’s runaway population growth in the postwar era!
The best entrepreneur-friendly market economies in the world have excellent social safety nets. Also the most family-friendly. My friends in the Netherlands with kids have it so, so much easier.
It’s not insane at all, because having a stable or slightly declining population is perfectly fine. Japan is a lovely and thriving place, and what does it matter if they go back to the population they had in 1970?
One thing that's really reassuring about SCOTUS is how their actual, real, serious, genuine position on ethics is "we are not bound by any mortal law nor any code or creed, this is our world, you merely live in it."
This entire conversation about birth rates is insane. There are twice as many humans on the planet as the day I was born, and *four times* as many as the day my grandfather was born. We’ve quadrupled in three generations. The idea that we aren’t making enough people is perverse.
Seems bad that the gulf between the reality you can go outside and see and experience yourself, and the one the political press describes, is widening very rapidly
Holy crap, NYT let Charles Munger Jr. write an op-ed opposing the California redistricting without disclosing that he's FUNDING the opposition to the California redistricting. I have 4 mailers he paid for in my house right now and that's just the beginning. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/o...
I mean, Japan?
BREAKING: Judge Breyer rules that President Trump's deployment of the military to Los Angeles violated the Posse Comitatus Act, says Trump is using military as a "national police force with the president as its chief." Injunction granted. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
The shine! That plasticine shine you get on so many Italian fabrics, it always reads cheap to me. Good fabric should look and feel like nature, like something that your great-grandfather would instantly comprehend. Italian fabrics look like sports kit. Good clothes should look like an inheritance.
In a society that lavishly rewards lies, hype, and bullshit, it’s pretty hard to expect people not to surf the wave of disinformation. I don’t say this to say we should abandon rational skepticism, but to point out that it’s really hard work, and we live inside machines made to make it even harder.
Log lady was always antiTrump
You mean confess?
There’s never been an American president who hates America like Donald Trump hates America.
Mark of the beast
"Pat, why do you carry that ridiculous 600mm lens on long hikes?" Buddy, I can see mountains reflected in the eyes of a trailside pika.
On the subject of whether we are under authoritarianism, I heard Ezra Klein say something like, "authoritarianism is here, it's just unevenly distributed". That's kind of true, but misses the point that, short of very extreme totalitarian cases, this is *always* true of authoritarianism.
remember folks, we cant have gun restrictions because if we do the federal government will occupy our streets, imprison people without due process, ship dissidents to foreign gulags and things of that nature
What they are doing to the health services that protect us is criminal.
Civilization awaits us!
Then just tell them to go fuck themselves.
He died in prison, right?
Their point is the same that Der Sturmer would make by splashing “Jewish crime” across the front page any time a Jew was caught breaking the law. The point is ramping up hysteria to justify collective punishment, to make the volk think that the chosen sacrificial victims of fascism deserve it.
Tim Walz, satrap of the lower Midwest…
When you run into some anti-immigrant numskull, ask them what percentage of the population the country should be allowed to grow every year through immigration, 5%, 2%, or 1%? When they choose 1%, you can then thank them for tripling legal immigration to America.
It was at Knott’s Berry Farm, which is funny all by itself.
My 19th century adobe house in Santa Fe had two foot thick walls and no air conditioning. It stayed cool most of the day in summer, and was super easy to heat in winter.
Well given what tariffs are doing to the prices of many popular adult beverages, we all might have to go dry.
We’re gonna find out!
What’s old is new again.
I’m going to Japan in a few weeks. I’m gonna pack my return suitcase with Japanese denim and whiskey like a Soviet diplomat.
My belated birthday present in sitting on my best friend’s desk in the Netherlands, waiting to be shipped, and he has no way to send it to me.
After all the fancy constitutional arguments & faux historical glosses, this is the practical endpoint of the unitary executive theory. Because when presidential power is effectively unchecked, the only thing preventing it from devolving into authoritarianism is the decency of the officeholder.
This is Nuremberg laws shit.
Well, we are headed back to the 1930’s 😂😂😂
Not allowed back into the US? Darn, I might have to stay in Japan…
He should be able to interview, say, Dolly Parton as a reward for his sin eating.
As a girthy man, my bulk sometimes has its benefits.
Well I usually make at least five denim outfit changes a day. Only savages would wear temple denim to the yakitori bar!
idk, I’ve traveled alone around the world including in “scary” places since I was a kid, and I really can find nothing but raw, cruel contempt in my heart for little baby 6’2 white man MAGAs who piddle like cockapoos at the mere idea of using public transportation
But I really do travel everywhere with 50 pairs of jeans!
If Obama or Biden had said this, it would be rightfully understood as them arrogating dictatorial authority to themselves, it would be the only thing anyone in the media or opposition would talk about for a year, and it would probably end their presidency. For Trump, it’s literally just Tuesday.
You gotta know a guy.
It goes without saying, but this is against everything this country was founded on
This is absolutely insane, that in the American republic any politician can talk like this and not be immediately removed from office.
The former owner of the Miss Teen USA beauty pageant has thoughts about treating kids as adults.
this stuff is such a disgrace. a free citizen of a free country should be ashamed to engage in it.
Hahahahaha. Sigh.
I’m going to Japan in a month and I’m gonna make so much money smuggling back denim like a Soviet diplomat.