Open Thread

What’s on your mind?

Comments

[not guilty]

Since Donald Trump in 2015 adopted the catchphrase "Make America Great Again," he has been cagy about actually identifying what period of American "greatness" he would like for us to emulate today.

A thought exercise for MAGA supporters -- help your cult leader out here. What period in American history do you wish to see the United States return to? Would it be the depression era of the 1930s? (Only Americans would call a depression "Great.") Would it be the World War II era and its immediate aftermath during the 1940s? The Cold War, Red Scare and Jim Crow of the 1950s? The tumult of the 1960s with assassinations, Vietnam involvement and riots? The inflation of the 1970s? The libertine 1980s, when women began making major strides toward equality? Bill Clinton's 1990s?

What about it, folks?

[Dr. Ed 2]

The Coolidge Administration.

[Mr. Bumble]

Well, from this and your other posts it seems as if it never was, in your opinion.
Would you settle for good enough?

[Commenter_XY]

America's greatest days lie ahead of us, not behind us, NG.

[Nelson]

I agree completely.

MAGA is a temporary pause in our unbroken streak of global dominance. Since WWII we have been the most powerful and influential country in the world. Sometimes there is a potentially viable challenger, like the USSR in the Cold War and China now, but we have never surrendered the top spot in 80 years.

Our power largely derives from our leadership and ideals in supporting freedom and democracy. While we are presently embracing tyrants and abandoning democracies, that isn’t who we are. We will go back to what made us great soon and will re-establish ourselves as a nation that supports and nurtures freedom.

Our greatness has never gone away, but in another 3 years we will restart our forward progress. Our future is bright.

[hobie]

Trump 2024: This is a garbage nation
Trump 2024: America is a failed country
Also Trump: We won't let any immigrant in that doesn't sufficiently love America
Liberty University: Trump's policies shows that he loves America

[Frank Drackman]

I hate people who say "Folks"
I'll bet the Guards at Buchenwald probably used that word,

"Hey Folks! don't worry about that smell of bitter Almonds, just a new disinfectant so you don't get the Typhus, keep in line!!!"

Frank

[hobie]

You know, Frankie. I was thinking about you yesterday and your 'I am Charlie Kirk' shtick. You completely missed the Charlie Hebdo rallying cry: "Je suis Charlie!"

[Poxigah146]

For me, the 1950s. White Protestant men were proudly in control, and while others could co-exist, they didn't believe they had the right to supplant the majority culture.

You point to Jim Crow as a bad thing. But the past 60 years of "civil rights" has demonstrated that blacks, as a group, cannot responsibly handle the rights that they were granted. In terms of illegitimacy, crime and other socioeconomic indicators, blacks were better off then, just like South African blacks were better off under apartheid.

[Malika la Maize]

Over half of black households were in poverty in 1959, it’s around half that now. Your crime claim is also hogwash.

https://scholarworks.umb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1219&context=trotter_review

[Poxigah146]

That reduction is BS, as it's based on social welfare programs and government "employment." None of that is organic.

And the crime claim is not hogwash.

[Malika la Maize]

Even if your claim in this reply about the nature of the poverty reduction were true it still proves your claim about socioeconomic conditions to be false.

And, yes, your other claim was hogwash as the male homicide rate for blacks in 1950 was about what it was in 1980, it’s all there in the link.

[Poxigah146]

No, it doesn't, as handing people free money doesn't mean they're not suddenly poor.

That's the rate of being victims, not perpetrators, you moron.

[Frank Drackman]

Went by the Lorraine Hotel in downtown Memphis the other day, felt really bad for MLK Jr, having to stay in that Shithole (the Lorraine and Memphis both qualify)
Oh, and getting murdered (Oh the Irony, shot in a Shithole from a Shithouse (OK, the Restroom of a Boarding House)

Frank

[Riva]

The undoing of as much as possible of the grossly corrupt, unconstitutional, racist, irresponsible, freedom and economy destroying policies of past democrat administrations and congresses.

[Kazinski]

They were all great, and its great now.

Did I mention that a European is 6 times as likely to die from insufficient heat or air conditioning in their home as an American is by gun violence?

That explains why we are still great.

[not guilty]

"They were all great, and its great now."

IOW, like Sarah Palin when Katie Couric asked her what newspapers she reads, you glibly reply "All of them" because you have no clue.

De jure segregation was great?? The assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King were great?? The Vietnam War was great??

Give me a break!

[Mr. Bumble]

You are such a sorry, miserable fuckwit (H/T SRG2).
Just what are you doing to make the world (and America) a better, if not great, place.

[Nelson]

For myself, I built a successful business and retired in my 40s to volunteer full time at a Labrador Retriever rescue. And I have opposed Donald Trump since the beginning. Those are all things that make the world (and America) a slightly better place.

How about you? What have you done, Bumble?

[Kazinski]

Sure it was great, not perfect but great.

Of course I grew up here, so maybe I take ot fore granted a little bit, but I have lived overseas so I know better. My late father in law, who was Japanese came over in the mid 50s, he thought the US was great, he loved it here, and he lived in the South.

My Wife is an immigrant she thinks the US is great right now, so does her mother.

[Mr. Bumble]

"My Wife is an immigrant she thinks the US is great right now, so does her mother."
...as do the millions of people of all colors trying to get into the country by any means possible.

[Commenter_XY]

NG, I am compelled to respond to you again.

In all of recorded human history, there is no other country that has done as much, sacrificed as much, given as much for the betterment and improvement of humanity than the United States of America. It is not even close. If you disagree, please name another country that can match what we have done, currently do, will do in the future.

NG...We build walls to keep people out, b/c there are so many millions (billions?) who would like to come and stay in America. What we have here is almost magical. You can do, or be, almost anything; our beliefs, our culture, and our country make that possible. Only your imagination limits you.

Are there very regrettable instances of American history? Yes. And we have learned from them. Will there be more regrettable instances? Yes. And we will learn from them also.

All in all, there is no other place on this planet I would rather be*.

*Ok, in my case, Israel is an alternative. There is nothing more than I would like than to live in a small apartment overlooking the Western Wall, and to pray there daily. Then golf after morning minyan. 🙂

[not guilty]

XY, the MAGA rhetoric was and is not an appeal to patriotism, but instead represents an attempt to sow discord and capitalize on dissatisfaction with the then-extant state of affairs.

And you and your fellow MAGAts swallowed it hook line and stinker.

[Commenter_XY]

Still waiting for you to name that other country, NG.

[not guilty]

XY, do you fancy that nations' greatness is a zero sum game?

[Michael P]

Your answer reveals you as a pathetically bitter, angry man who cannot recognize the good in the world, much less the great.

But all your other comments have done the same, so ... no news is good news?

[DDHarriman]

Hi everyone, this is not guilty's mom. He's had a bad tummy ache and has been a little grumpy. He's a good boy.

[hobie]

Two words: Roman Empire

[Poxigah146]

I don't see a philosophical problem with de jure segregation. Humans were meant to stick to their own kind.

[David Nieporent]

Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Kazinski — Rampant cultists' mis-conflations do not signify greatness. This nation would be infinitesimally better if you instead limited yourself to valid comparisons, for instance European gun experience vs. U.S. gun experience.

Or even took notice that a large portion of the U.S. features a relatively subtropical climate in the South, with an equable semi-Mediterranean climate along the west coast, but not inland.

A comparable portion of Europe features a sub-arctic climate. England and Ireland are habitable because of the Gulf Stream. London, England lies at 55 degrees north latitude; far colder Boston. MA lies at 42 degrees north. Note how many major inhabited places in Europe feature both continental climates, and latitudes far north of London.

For comparison, take a look at the climate typical at 55 degrees south latitude, at Cape Horn. None of the major European cities west of Russia features a climate comparable to Cape Horn—all because of Gulf Stream influence. And Cape Horn, is, famously, subject to marine influence, so relatively equable for its latitude.

Note how many major inhabited places in Europe feature both continental climates, and latitudes far north of London. Farther east, Moscow and St. Petersburg demonstrate every winter the relevance of the distinction between continental climates and climates under marine influence.

There is no validity for comparisons made on the basis of stupidly chosen climate irrelevancies. Comparisons reliant on bunk, are junk. You are a specialist in junk comparisons, and resourceful to find so many, and so various, ways to deliver junk. Your deliberate effort to do that is obvious. Why not try to do better instead?

[Kazinski]

Well how about US deaths from inadequate heating and AC, at less than 50,000 compared to European deats at more than 400,000?

Apples to Apples, and definitely related to a greater standard of living.

[SRG2]

Apples to Apples

No. Europe isn't a country.

[Kazinski]

The EU wants to be the United States of Europe, without those pesky elections.

[Malika la Maize]

So it’s apple compared to wants-to-be-an-apple?

[Sarcastr0]

Shows how much you know about the EU. It's setup is nothing like the US.

It's setup more like the Articles of Confederation.

This is what happens when your source of info is people shitposting about Europe on Twitter.

[Krayt]

Power mongers continuously struggle to expand their power. A foothold of a new federal government has been created. EU states were warned this may grow. Let's see what happens. Eat your Wheaties!

In about 150 years, the US federal government turned the states into quaint, anachronistic atavisms. It seems like the EU is ahead of this pace. To come: massive spending at the EU level, and those with power there train the populations to run to them first, think of them first, when wanting problem solving.

[Sarcastr0]

Power mongers continuously struggle to expand their power. A foothold of a new federal government has been created

Chaff.
You should deal with the EU that exists, not some political worldview-based projection outta your ass.

As to the states in the US system, you act like the Civil War Amendments were a massive step backwards.

Kind of puts the lie to America was always great, if you set yourself against the last 170 years, including emancipation, Civil Rights, womens' suffrage.

There are some here who seem to have a distinct worldview. You don't. You just seem to be against all the things, while trying to wear the mantle of more patriotic than thou.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Krayt may be a bird of another feather, but he's still a parrot, and right at home wielding the Trump/MAGA parrot and stick policy cudgel.

[Brett Bellmore]

There's a point to this comparison.

Opponents of gun ownership will tell you that gun deaths are a solved problem, that you just need to take guns away from people and they'll go away, that America could have as few gun deaths as Europe. (Well, as few as Europe has except during it's periodic bloody wars, anyway, when it makes up the difference and then some.)

Well, heating and air conditioning are solved problems, too. So what excuse does Europe have for all those temperature related deaths? It's not like they've got a constitutional amendment prohibiting HVAC. It's not like dying of cold doesn't count as dying, somehow.

And at least most people dying in America of guns either wanted to die, or are criminals killing other criminals, which is something of a silver lining. I don't think temperature related deaths in Europe target primarily criminals and the suicidal.

What's the deal? Europe has a poverty problem. A grinding, so poor you can't afford to avoid dying of the cold, poverty problem.

Poverty, too, is a solved problem. It's just one where governments don't LIKE the solution, because it's the government equivalent of diet and exercise: Don't be corrupt, and get out of the way of private enterprise. What fun is that for a government? Even our own government has been giving up on it!

Anyway, bottom line is, Europe needs to pay less attention to the mote in the US's eye, and more to the many beams in its own.

[Commenter_XY]

Opponents of gun ownership will tell you that gun deaths are a solved problem, that you just need to take guns away from people and they'll go away...

How is that working out in Australia today?

[jb]

One mass shooting per 29 years? Pretty well, I'd say.

You guys consistently don't understand the difference between anecdotes and data.

[Sarcastr0]

True capitalism has never been tried!

Brett’s sounding more and more like a tankie these days.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, capitalism has been tried, and largely rejected by governing classes, because it provides too few opportunities for graft.

[Poxigah146]

Some of the gun deaths are a solvable problems, at least the ones that are the most poignant in people's memories.

Nearly all of the random mass shootings have been conducted by people who would have been forcibly institutionalized decades ago. The left doesn't want to return to that, because "muh rights," so we just have to tolerate periodic instances of shooters, people pushing people in front of subway trains, and so forth.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Do not forget what Machiavelli said -- great societies only evolve in temperate climates -- one where there is a winter that needs to be prepared for, but also a summer warm enough for people to make headway in doing so.

People living in a warm climate without a winter to prepare for will never be motivated to advance, while those subsisting in a cold one will never be able to advance.

[David Nieporent]

Machiavelli did not in fact say that, or anything even like that. (He did make some observations about the effects of climate on society, but not the ones that Dr. Ed dimly remembers from a Cliff's Notes he once glanced at.)

[hobie]

I prefer the seventies. Greatest music ever. Cars were crap. And even in Texas my water fountains were 100% neegro-free.

[Kazinski]

50's had the greatest music ever, hard bop. Coltrane, Davis, Thelonious, Garland, Rollins, Parker, Blakey....

[Riva]

The troll is right about the music if nothing else. Maybe a little about some cars. The 70s music was the best. The 90s music should be tried and summarily executed.

[Riva]

Democrat segregation still continued into the 70s? I didn’t know that.

[Frank Drackman]

It continues today, my Ali-bama Pubic High-Screw-el that was 50% Black in 1980 is 98% Black today (the other 2% are Illegal Alien Housekeeping staff)

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

The music of the early/mid 80s was better than that of the 70s.
The culture of the early/mid 60s was better than that of the 50s.

Do not forget that, for most people, "the '60s" didn't start until the race riots in the Summer of 1967 -- much of America remained sane until the Summer of 1971 or so.

It was the colleges closing after Kent State in 1970 (and having to go pick up their kids) that changed things for Middle America, and then the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo that ended the Post War Prosperity. (We should have made a "wheat for oil" deal with the Soviets, agreed to GIVE them surplus wheat in exchange for letting us take back what were OUR oil wells in the middle east.)

The Feminazi era was really in the mid/late '70s -- they were just enjoying the fruits of their victories in the '80s.

[Sarcastr0]

We are great because of a particular way Europe is worse than us?

I’m also surprised that someone who says they elected Trump to ‘burn it all down’ is a big fan of what he’s trying to destroy.

[DDHarriman]

The deep state isn't America. Of course you think it is

[Kazinski]

Because other than us, Europe has the greatest standard of living in the history of the world, and other than us Europe has had more freedom than any other place in the world.

Then we started surpassing them before we were even a country, Americans were larger, and healthier, more inventive, freer, more egalitarian, and both provided more opportunity, and were more willing to seize the opportunity.

And when I say burn it all down, what I mean is get rid of the crap holding us back, the bureaucratic state.

[Sarcastr0]

How many die from not having good air conditioning and heating seems a really specific metric to me.
To be fair, same is true for gun violence. If either of those show up as an argument for why your country is great, you're missing the forest for the trees.

we started surpassing them before we were even a country
Early America were pissants, running on genocide and slavery. You're playing a game of ipse dixit and cherry picking for some weird competition that makes no sense and is dumb and bad.

when I say burn it all down, what I mean is get rid of the crap holding us back
LOL, yes only do good things and burn down the bad things. If you need to edit your position down to meaningless pablum, it may not be coherent in the first place.

You can't paper over the tension between America has always been the bestest and we need to destroy the civic institutions that drove the American century, from immigration to science to foreign aid to relying on independent expertise not a populist dictator.

I knew you were bad at critical thinking, but I didn't take you for a simpleton.

[Kazinski]

400,000 preventable deaths a year because the Europeans .think competition is gross and want to spit a cap on their standard of living isn't just an arbitrary measurement.

[Sarcastr0]

The cause is not actually about climate change policy.

You should look into it.

Europe's aversion to air conditioning is a lot more about dumb individual choice via weird cultural stuff than you seem to understand.

But you're also way overplaying your hand into some massive anti-Europe national chauvinism that is quite cringey.

[Brett Bellmore]

2025 Electricity Cost of Electricity by Country 2025

Top 100 Countries by Real Disposable Income per Capita, 2025

So, USA: 18 cents per kWh. Per capita real disposable income: $62,800.

Germany: 40 cents per kWh. Per capita real disposable income: $48,000.

Or, better than Germany, (Which I picked because I've been there.) let's look at Italy, the worst country in Europe for temperature related deaths (How DO they manage to be so much worse than Sweden, with such a nice climate????): 42 cents per KWH, $34,800 per capita real disposable income.

Nothing complicated: They can't afford it.

[Sarcastr0]

Seems like you decided on the answer and then looked for evidence to support that answer.

Have you checked just researching the question?

[Malika la Maize]

“They were all great, and it’s great now.”

Then like most things the man says, his slogan is goofy.

[OpinionsVary]

Could you prove sources for both numbers? I want to see if the methods used are directly comparable. For example, death certificates vs excess death. I also want to know what is included in the 'Europe' bucket. Is it just the EU? Just developed Europe? Does it include Ukrainian, western Russia?

[Brett Bellmore]

I see that wordfence is acting up again.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-temperature-gasparrini

[Kazinski]

Try this one.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/temp-deaths-zhao

[OpinionsVary]

So North America at 7% of deaths, vs 9.7% for Western Europe and 10% for Eastern Europe. That's certainly an area where the US has an advantage (likely a mix of climate, better home infrastructure and more personal money to spend on personal temperature control) but it's hardly the near x10 times difference you were talking about up thread.

[Riva]

In general, it seems people are more likely to die from Islamic terror both in Europe and everywhere else in the West thanks to the open borders policies of the contemptuous western leadership.

[jb]

Did I mention that a European is 6 times as likely to die from insufficient heat or air conditioning in their home as an American is by gun violence?

You've been mentioning it a lot, but I wonder if you're at all curious about why. Here's an interesting article on the topic that summarizes a bunch of the relevant research and isn't trying to score political points: https://www.climatecentral.org/news/cold-weather-more-deadly-19026

A few things to note about this:

1) Having a low temperature-related morbidity rate is maybe not the flex you think it is. Countries with lower rates than the US include Brazil and Thailand. And the continent with the lowest rate overall is South America.

2) An obvious explanation for #1 is that most of these deaths come from cold temperatures, and from "moderately cold" temperatures in particular. So places that have warmer, more consistent temperatures are going to see fewer temperature-related deaths. Unless you're controlling for temperature patterns, comparisons across countries and regions is not very meaningful.

3) It probably is true that the US has better housing stock overall than Europe, especially when it comes to protection against extreme heat (air conditioning) and moderate cold (insulation and central heat), largely because there's many more old buildings in Europe. But Canada has overall lower temperature-related death rates than the US, and it has considerably more exposure to cold temperatures than the US so the US is lagging behind our most obvious peer here despite having considerably higher GDP and income per capita.

[Dr. Ed 2]

It's been 11 hours since a "man" shot 11 Brown students, killing 2, critically injuring 7, and putting both the school and hospital on lockdown.

This is not a typical "active shooter" situation.

The police have a perimiter that they are emptying out but I doubt the perp is still in it, unless the person they have video of is another decoy.

[ThePublius]

They have a suspect in custody.

[Riva]

What could possibly have been the motivation? I guess we’ll never know.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Man in his 30s -- student loans now having to be repaid again -- were one to speculate, one possibly would be a disgruntled graduate realizing that he was sold a bill of goods which he now can't afford to pay for. And that's without a racial aspect to it, which would further exacerbate things.

They found him in the Comfort Inn in Coventry RI, a town that is 28 miles away from Providence by roads. He was there either because he had lost his house to the bank, or because he doesn't live local, Coventry is not even contiguous to Providence (where Brown is) so one does have to wonder how they found him.

And this is presuming that this wasn't terrorism. This *is* the first day of Hanaukkah, which isn't a high holiday but few know that.

And this could be a veteran -- there's some discipline involved in murdering people and then being organized enough to disappear for as long as he apparently did.

[David Nieporent]

Dr. Ed sincerely believes that every thought notion that comes into his head is worth sharing.

We've got (1) disgruntled grad student with student loans; (2) a racial aspect; (3) homeless, or maybe just not local; (4) terrorism based on it being the first day of Chanukah [editor's note: it isn't]; and (5) veteran based on the fact that the guy ran away after shooting.

All with no facts of any sort.

[Nelson]

“No facts of any sort” is synonymous with Dr. Ed.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Out of morbid curiosity, I un-muted David NoMind.

1: How does he get "grad student" out of "disgruntled graduate"?
2: Today, 12-14-2025, is *not* the first day of Hanaukkah?
3: There *isn't* a Comfort Inn in Coventry RI? Has anyone told corporate?
4: The police are lying about arresting someone there?
5: He wasn't in a motel?
6: He didn't get out of Providence after the murders?

Notwithstanding NoMind's anal fixation with janitors, I have five college degrees and a bleepload of fairly responsible experience, including top level on the evening of Sept 11, 2001 so yea, I do have a basis to speculate from. But do the Choice Hotel folk know that there isn't a Comfort Inn in Coventry?

[David Nieporent]

1. Dr. Ed is correct that I misread his "disgruntled graduate" as "disgruntled graduate student." It's completely made up either way, but I mischaracterized which completely made up thing he said. Mea culpa.

2. The first night of Chanukah is on December 14; the first day of Chanukah is on December 15. (For the avoidance of doubt: it was not Chanukah in Sydney when the attack took place.)

3, 4, and 5. There may well be. What does that have to do with what you said or what I said? The point is that you took the fact that a person of interest was arrested there and came up with a bunch of flights of fancy of what it meant.

6. If that's the shooter, then obviously he did. Which is not relevant to your claim that he's a veteran.

[Commenter_XY]

Media bias? Which one failed to mention Hanukah?

CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/14/australia-police-responding-after-gunshots-reported-at-bondi-beach.html

TOI: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/reports-of-multiple-injured-in-shooting-at-hanukkah-event-for-families-at-sydneys-bondi-beach/

Arutz Sheva: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/419273

[Mr. Bumble]

Wish you guys could decide on a spelling, but no matter how you spell it I hope it's a happy one for you and your family.

[Commenter_XY]

My Menorah will be brightly lit this evening, and visible to the street.

[Davedave]

חֲנֻכָּה

The spelling is fixed, it's people transliterating it into English who can't make up their minds. Certain types do seem to pick the most alienising transliterations possible...

[Frank Drackman]

"You Guys"???
OK, guess it's better than "Hook Noses" or "Christ Killers"
Speaking of JC,
He was one of "You Guys"
and I'll put up Adam Sandlers "Hanukkah Song" against that lame ass "Grandma got Runover by a Reindeer" any day but Saturday (see what I did there? it's supposed to be "Any day but Sunday" but I Hebrew-ized it)
I do admit, I like that
"I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" song, Taylor Swift should totally do the 256th cover of it.
Or maybe Arianna Grande??

Frank

[Mr. Bumble]

Sorry if I offended the better half of you, Drank but the wish was sincere.
Now do "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" for Qualika.

[Frank Drackman]

I remember "Yucko the Clown" doing an Adult Version on Howard Stern BWHSWF (Back when Howard Stern was Funny)

[Dr. Ed 2]

It's a legitimate issue when you are translating between languages with dissimilar alphabets. Anyone remember Peking, China? Or the changed spelling of a certain now-deceased Libyan dictator?

My personal favorite was the woman who told me that *my* (landlord's) "dishes" had fallen off the wall. Mandarin is a contextual language where words modify the meaning of adjacent words.

As I understand it, dish that is used for food and porcelain wall tile is the same word -- it's the same thing, glazed clay item -- and the distinction comes from what would be adjacent to it. Hence "dish."

English is problematic as well -- for a fun time, explain how we can wind our clocks while the wind blows.

If English is your first language, you won't notice that those two words are spelled the same way....

[OpinionsVary]

"Ten killed in Australia Bondi Beach shooting on Jewish holiday, two in custody"
vs
"Reports of multiple casualties in shooting at Hanukkah event for families at Sydney’s Bondi Beach"

Only the Times of Israel mentions the word Hanukkah but CNBC has "jewish holiday". They presumably worry that, unlike Israel, their readers might not know what Hanukkah is.

Or are you saying the titles have changed? Quite possible but we'd also need a proper timeline of those changes to assess whether the original title was legitimate when published. I think we probably knew about the mass shooting before the Jewish angle emerged.

[Dr. Ed 2]

But when did this happen, local time?

Doesn't Hanukkah start at sunrise on Dec 14th -- local time?
So if this happened on SATURDAY, Dec 13th (local time) then it would be a PRE Hanukkah celebration and then are they a day ahead of us or a day behind us?

Far safer to say "Jewish Holiday" because you're safe -- and would the story really be any different if they'd done this on Purim instead?
The story is schmucks murdering Jews on a Jewish holiday -- does it really matter *which* holiday?

And do Jewish holidays start at sunrise or at the sunset of the prior day? This is like expecting people to know the significance of the color of the fabric the Protestant minister wears and which season corresponds to each color.....

[David Nieporent]

Doesn't Hanukkah start at sunrise on Dec 14th -- local time?

No. Not even close. This has been yet another episode of Simple Answers to Stupid Questions. Chanukah — like all Jewish holidays — starts at sunset, not sunrise.

So in Sydney this year it started at what is about 4 am NY time today.

And do Jewish holidays start at sunrise or at the sunset of the prior day? This is like expecting people to know the significance of the color of the fabric the Protestant minister wears and which season corresponds to each color.....

I like how Dr. Ed believes that the things he thinks he knows (but is always wrong about) are esoteric facts that he needs to explain to people — did you know that "wind" and "wind" are spelled the same?!?! — but that the things he doesn't know are so obscure that nobody could possibly know them.

[Magister]

Doesn't Hanukkah start at sunrise on Dec 14th -- local time?

I'm fairly sure that Jewish holidays start at sunset. Christmas parties happen throughout December, so the exact dates of Hanukkah don't seem relevant.

[Sarcastr0]

The specific phrasing of the headline is not the thing to be mad at.

You're raging at gnats.

[Don Nico]

CNN did mention hannukah.

[Riva]

Did they note motive unknown again?

[jb]

I wonder how many of the MAGAs here are going to take note of the fact that the guy who disarmed one of the shooters was named Ahmed al Ahmed.

[Riva]

I wonder how many sick fucks here will use this islamic terrorist attack to engage in political invectives?

[Bob from Ohio]

"named Ahmed al Ahmed"

Edward Crabtree is the hero

[David Nieporent]

Is that as true as the other things you post?

[jb]

Ah, I see. They're going to react by pretending it wasn't a Muslim dude.

I know this has got to hurt, but you've been lied to yet again.

https://x.com/BillAckman/status/2000237075761959149

https://www.foxnews.com/world/australian-bystander-disarms-mass-shooter-australia-hanukkah-attack

[Kazinski]

The tanker siezed earlier in the week was sanctioned in 2022 by the Biden Administration, and is owned by a a Russian Oligarch.

"Tanker was sanctioned by Treasury 3 years ago
The Skipper was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2022 for its alleged role in an oil smuggling network that helped fund the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group backed by Iran.

The ship — known as Adisa in 2022 — is among the vessels controlled by sanctioned Russian oil magnate Viktor Artemov, the Treasury said in a statement. At the time, the Treasury said Artemov transported Iranian oil using an expansive network of ships that were often registered in obscure ways with the intention of skirting U.S. restrictions on Iranian petroleum exports.

The tanker is controlled by Nigeria-based management company Thomarose Global Ventures LTD and owned by a firm linked to Artemov, according to publicly available data."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-we-know-oil-tanker-the-skipper-seized-us-near-venezuela/

We should be seizing more but here are 7 more sanctioned tankees we have seized in the last 10 years

Key Known Cases (from Grok)
2020: Cargo from four tankers (Bella, Bering, Pandi, Luna) carrying Iranian oil to Venezuela

2021: Cargo from two tankers (Arina and Nostos) of Iranian origin.

2023: Nearly 1 million barrels from the tanker Suez Rajan (formerly involved in smuggling Iranian oil).

2024: Cargo from the tanker Abyss (over 500,000 barrels of Iranian fuel oil).

[Stephen Lathrop]

Good. A pattern of tankers carrying Iranian oil to Newcastle Venezuela smacks of sanctions avoidance. Let's hear your praise of the Biden Administration for its response.

[Kazinski]

I commend it, I'm.glad they continued the policy Trump started in 2020, and is now continuing again.

[Dr. Ed 2]

No Stephen, you're missing two things:

1: Venezuelan crude is sour -- has some of the highest sulfur levels in the world. Sulfur (like lead) screws up catalytic converters -- regular refineries can't deal with it.

2: Venezuela has no refineries -- they used the CITGO one in Texas which was specially built for their crude.

(over 500,000 barrels of Iranian fuel oil).

FUEL oil -- that's refined, distillate. Probably #2 (Diesel) or #1 (kerosene).

The other possibility is Venezuela has cobbled together a refinery and is using the Iranian oil to dilute the sulfur in its own crude.

[Absaroka]

"Venezuela has no refineries"

Paraguaná refinery: "The Paraguana Refinery Complex is still the largest refinery in the Western Hemisphere"

[Dr. Ed 2]

I was wrong -- I will admit it.
My dad was in the oil industry and I know what he told me.

[hobie]

Has to be possibly the most evil tanker on earth.

[John F. Carr]

But the offense that led to its seizure was transporting oil in support of terrorism. We think. The supporting affidavit was redacted in its entirety.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

News from October:

A judge on Tuesday ordered a senior U.S. Border Patrol official to meet her each evening to discuss the government’s immigration crackdown in the Chicago area, an extraordinary step following weeks of street confrontations, tear gas volleys and complaints of excessive force.

There was some pushback, which was appalled at this invasion of executive power. A federal judge, by requiring (for the time being) daily check-ins because of evidence of wrongdoing (including lying to the court), was trying to run the immigration dept!

An appeals court overruled her order as overbroad. She followed up with a careful discussion of the stakes:

to painstakingly detail how agents, over and over again, falsely asserted in court and in official reports that they had been confronted with unrelenting, coordinated, and life-threatening violence every time they attempted to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort

https://news.wttw.com/2025/11/24/border-patrol-chief-greg-bovino-federal-agents-repeatedly-lied-about-what-they-did

[The matter is still pending, from what I can tell.]

Now, SCOTUS has shown disdain for lower court fact-finding in its shadow docket orders, but this does help explain the stakes.

A further example of how current policies do not just target "illegals" or even documented immigrants, but also citizens:

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/12/kavanaugh-katch-22s

[Commenter_XY]

You cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs.

Illegal aliens will be deported, by the millions. That isn't stopping.

[SRG2]

You cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs.
Says every dictatorship.

What's the acceptable ratio of legal residents harmed to illegals deported? Or don't you care because almost the only legal residents harmed are brown, and you're an honorary white?

[Don Nico]

Also say every chef.

[David Nieporent]

You cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs.
Says every dictatorship.

As Orwell responded when Western defenders of Stalin’s regime told him that, “Yes, but where’s the omelet?”

[hobie]

At least the J6 militia has found gainful employment post-incarceration

(is there anyone MAGA-adjacent that hasn't been - or isn't on their way - to prison?)

[DDHarriman]

If the Democrats win EVERY person MAGA adjacent will be on their way to prison. They tell us so everyday

[hobie]

Crime must be punished, DD. Wouldn't you agree?

[Michael P]

Joe Biden disagrees. He thinks people need to be preemptively pardoned for a decade's worth of crimes at a time.

And Iryna Zarutska is unavailable to comment on the wisdom of punishing people for their crimes (versus releasing them back into society).

[hobie]

Nothing gets Michael's favorite Confederate monuments re-raised faster than some black on white action.

[John 4]

Being a hillbilly dumbfuck is, sadly, not illegal. You’ll be fine.

[Kazinski]

Donald Trump.

[Riva]

I take it from your comment that you, and probably other (most?) democrats, would go right back to the nation poisoning political lawfare if you regained power.

[hobie]

Bro, come 2029, you hayseeds are going to look fondly at the bullshit you've been calling lawfare.

[Frank Drackman]

You're probably right, by Trump's 3rd Term we'll have run out of all the easy targets(for Prosecution, not Shooting)

[John F. Carr]

The plaintiffs in the Chicago case are dropping their lawsuit. See docket 295 at https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71559589/chicago-headline-club-v-noem/?page=2.

2. Recently, however, the situation that precipitated the relief sought in this litigation has changed in a material way. Specifically, it appears that Operation Midway Blitz, has ended. The roughly 200-225 DHS agents led by Defendant Bovino who traveled from Los Angeles to the Chicagoland area are no longer operating in the Northern District of Illinois.
3. Moreover, since Defendant Bovino and his agents left the Northern District, Plaintiffs’ counsel has not received a single report of unconstitutional behavior that necessitated this case since November 8, 2025.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

The comedian/actress Milana Vayntrub, perhaps most familiar as "Lily" in AT&T commercials, has a new approach to philanthropy:

"Using the male gaze to fight the blaze."

https://onlyphilanthropy.com/

The "tasteful but risque" approach to raising money has been used in unisex ways; for instance, men have provided cheesecake calendars.

There is a connection to my last comment. Her family first came to this country as refugees from what is now Ukraine.

[Riva]

She is rather well endowed although apparently a repulsive human being.

[Krayt]

I also hear primping for the male gaze aids one's Hollywood career, even as one is trained to disdain it. Now get them lips plumped!

[Bob from Ohio]

She complained for years about being harassed and now voluntarily exposes herself to more.

Actresses and actors are strange.

[DDHarriman]

What do you think is going on with the Brown shooter cover up?

A tranny or moslem shooter is what Coulters Law is suggesting.

[Brett Bellmore]

I think it's too early for conclusions. There are so many possible explanations it's absurd.

Very few of them make the school administration look good, of course...

[hobie]

MAGA's assault on higher education never ends.

MAGA Bystander: "Charlie Kirk warned us about this. Them women in there trying to get a secondary education were just asking for it."

[ThePublius]

Are you going for the prize for the most deranged comment in this thread? It's not related to anything in the post you're replying to, and it's a gratuitous swipe at Trump supporters and Charlie Kirk.

How jerky can you get?

[hobie]

Oh I can get much jerkier, bro. Mornings are typically my 'silly time'.

[ThePublius]

They have a suspect in custody.

[Frank Drackman]

Let me guess, he's "Brown"
how Ironic (ht A. Morisette) a "Brown" murdering people at "Brown"
I'm guessing
"Moe-hammed-Abdul-Jabarr-Jamal-Ruhollah-Khomeni-Bin-Laden-Sadat"
Probably here on an H1B Visa (those Arabs are so skilled with the Arabic numerals) should have waited and got on Man-Damn-he's staff.

Frank

[hobie]

MAGA's war on Brown people is getting a bit too literal, Frankie.

[Don Nico]

let"s wait until a name is released

[Frank Drackman]

Right, his name's Hyman Lazarus Rosenbaum

[Dr. Ed 2]

Don -- it was just announced that they don't intend to release any details so as to not jeopardize their ability to prosecute or some such BS.

I am wondering why the secrecy -- AND how they found him (at O3-something AM) all the way out in Coventry. The head of the Boston FBI office was down there -- is that routine?

[bloocow2]

The death toll from the Bondi shooting has risen to 12.

Wtf is wrong with people who would do something like this. What does it achieve?

[hobie]

Were any of the victims carrying drugs?

[bloocow2]

No, not this time. The police did massacre a housing tenement the other day, but they said people were dealing drugs in there so it was fine.

[Frank Drackman]

I know you're former Penn State Defensive Coordinator Jerry Sandusky so despicability is to be expected, but that's bad even by your despicable standards.

[Don Nico]

What kind of craven asshole are you, WITH THAT QUESTION?

[Michael P]

He's just looking for excuses to murder Jews. Sadly typical.

[Sarcastr0]

Nothing shows othering like using a group as an empty instrument of partisan attack.

[Michael P]

Nothing shows that you can only bite ankles like your incessant vague shrieking, untethered to the rest of the discussion.

Maybe you should spend some comments criticizing people like hobie instead of stalking me and Brett. Or grow up to the point that you don't reflexively see Jews as "an empty instrument".

[Sarcastr0]

Hobie isn't my cup of tea, but he's no Drackman. And it's worth the cringe for the hilarity of MAGA shitposters trying to go woke to go after his posts for being so unpolitically correct. Really shows who is so up their own ass they can't see their own inconsistency.

He was also not looking for excuses to murder Jews. You're just looking for excuses to use Jews as an angle of attack.

[hobie]

You know who these hayseeds should strive to be more like? MAGA hero Tucker Carlson. Here's what he posted yesterday:

"People like Ted Cruz are not interested in debating theology. They're interested in shutting down any conversation on what's in America's interest, making it a theological conversation. And why are they interested in doing that? Because the last justification for supporting Israel above all other countries has evaporated. And what is that? It's the claim that Israel is a uniquely moral nation.

And that's why Christianity and also Old Testament Judaism is so often invoked. People of the book, people of God, no one would contest that. But what does that have to do with what Benjamin Netanyahu is doing in 2025? Of course it has nothing to do with it at all. The unique decency of Israel is the reason they are our only real ally. And the problem is that what's happened in Gaza over the last two years has shown that not only is that not true, it's very close to the opposite of the truth.

Now, a lot of us have spent a lot of time doing our best to ignore what's happening in Gaza on the grounds that it's kind of not our fight. Yes, there are weapons, yes, we're paying for all of it, yes, we're giving them cover at the United Nations, yes, they're really kind of doing this in our name. Bibi is running around the world saying “I've got Trump in my pocket, I can do whatever I want, Trump will defend me.” He's told a lot of people that “I control the United States Congress, I control the White House, I control the U.S.” He's said that on tape. If you haven't seen it, look it up. But a lot of us have thought, “Look, got enough problems, don't want to get into it.”

But if you ever do look into what's happened in Gaza since October 7th, it's shocking. Now it's not the only atrocity on the planet. The Israeli government is not the only bad government. Tons of bad governments. I covered the Liberian Civil War in ’06. There are a lot of bad governments, okay? But among so-called civilized governments, no one has behaved like the Israeli government has behaved in Gaza in a very long time, 80 years at least. It's almost unbelievable. Tens of thousands of children killed by a country with the most precise military technology in the world, a country that somehow got explosive pagers into the pockets of Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon. These are people who are, again, world renowned, famous for their skill and their precision. Look at the bombing attack during the 12-day war on Tehran. It was precise. They didn't take out downtown Tehran. They took out IRGC leaders. They took out specific people and they knew exactly where they were.

So the idea that they've killed tens of thousands, tens of thousands of women and children, noncombatants, accidentally, is a lie. No, they murdered them. They murdered them. It's just a fact."

[Michael P]

"Were any of the victims carrying drugs?" is obviously looking for an excuse for their murders, denialist.

[Malika la Maize]

Of course Mikie Q concludes this because he’s a-ok with summarily executing (alleged) drug dealers.

It was clear he was making an (admittedly crude at best) comparison to MAGAs backing that.

[Michael P]

Your mindreading is as awful as ever, and your accusations are as much confessions as ever.

Even if someone actually held the straw-man position of "a-ok with summarily executing (alleged) drug dealers", that's not the same as executing people who are carrying drugs.

You shouldn't be so quick to (even figuratively) fellate the antisemitic hallucinating haters of the world.

[Malika la Maize]

The he in the second sentence being hobie.

[Malika la Maize]

In a comment about one in which he mindreads antisemitism in hobie Mikie Q charges…mind reading by others! Self-awareness, how does it work?

Carrying is a synonym for trafficking.

In reference to Jewish victims of a shooting hobie said were they carrying drugs. Mikie Q concluded “he must be trying to justify the victims’ murder.” That mindread only makes sense if you have as a premise that those carrying drugs deserve murder.

[David Nieporent]

Even if someone actually held the straw-man position of "a-ok with summarily executing (alleged) drug dealers", that's not the same as executing people who are carrying drugs.

Strawman? WTF you think Trump has been doing, to loud and enthusiastic cheers from MAGA, in the Caribbean?

[Sarcastr0]

See here is the rub - hobie's bit makes my middle aged self wince.

But it engenders this outrage from the MAGA shitposting contingent that applies so much to themselves it's hilarious and amazing.

Shades of Newsome's cringey Trump impression that had MAGA crying about bombastic rhetoric till they realized and shut up.

It may not be my cup of tea, but damn if it isn't effective like nothing else at getting some on here to reveal how little they believe in their usual posting.

[Michael P]

And David Nieporent also jumps in to defend setting pathetically low standards to kill Jews.

The Trump admin is destroying boats that smuggle large quantities of drugs. If those boats stopped for normal customs inspections, they wouldn't have to worry about being blown up -- but they run instead. It's a sad commentary on the left that the left needs an explanation of the moral difference between drug smugglers evading arrest on the high seas and hypothetical low-level drug possession at a Hanukkah celebration.

[David Nieporent]

The Trump admin is destroying boats that smuggle large quantities of drugs. If those boats stopped for normal customs inspections, they wouldn't have to worry about being blown up -- but they run instead.

I mean, this is just a fucking lie to defend premeditated murder. These are just unprovoked attacks ordered by Trump on small vessels suspected of being involved in drug smuggling. The murders are being committed on the high seas. There's no "large quantities" of anything, no n"customs inspections" involved, no warnings, no "running" or "evading arrest." You are a degenerate asshole.

Plus a dishonest jackass because you claimed that the exact fucking position you hold was a strawman.

[Michael P]

You're getting awfully angry over my observation that you are in hobie's camp about finding shallow excuses to kill Jews at a holy-day festival. Your whataboutism is weak tea, based on your denialism rather than evidence, and is only meant to distract from your support for hobie's analogy.

A hit dog yelps, as someone here says.

[David Nieporent]

I do get angry when people defend murder with outright lies, yes. (Let's be clear: Trump, Hegseth, and everyone in the chain of command deserves to be executed. And to forestall the dishonest trolls, I am not talking about assassination; I am talking about them being arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in a court of law.)

This has nothing do with Jews, who you of course couldn't care less about except as a rhetorical weapon against "the left."

[Bob from Ohio]

"Trump, Hegseth, and everyone in the chain of command deserves to be executed."

Ha ha. Some libertarian you are!

[David Nieporent]

"Were any of the victims carrying drugs?" is obviously looking for an excuse for their murders, denialist.

Are you retarded? It was not "obviously" anything like that; it was "obviously" implying that the people who defend Trump's murder spree because his victims supposedly had drugs are hypocrites.

[Bob from Ohio]

"he's no Drackman"
Of course not, Frank is funny.

You just have no sense of humor.

Bringing up Frank to defend hobie is on brand. No enemies to the left whataboutism..

[Sarcastr0]

Checking my telepathy, I have determiners that claiming to like Drackman is just more vice signaling.

[hobie]

If we're going to be crass about the lives of people bobbing around in the ocean, then lets go the whole nine yards with it. Or is the shooter just another Young Republican member?

Basically what I am saying is that it is fairly revolting how you MAGA cheer murder in one hemisphere, yet can be horrified by it in another. Now tell me again who the craven assholes are?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Hobie -- Exodus 22.2

[Dr. Ed 2]

"Wtf is wrong with people who would do something like this. What does it achieve?"

Do not make the mistake of believing that non-Western cultures hold Western (small "l") liberal values.

NB: Israel is a Western culture -- a Jewish one, but it still holds Western Enlightenment values. It's enemies don't.

[Estragon]

Values? They can’t seem to decide whether raping prisoners is bad or not. Is that one of our shared values, in your estimation?

[Malika la Maize]

David Sacks, President Trump's influential adviser on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, is on the defensive over government paperwork that critics say grant him "carte blanche" to shape U.S. policy while retaining hundreds of investments in the tech world…

The debate over Sacks' investments comes just as he helped shape a controversial executive order instructing the Justice Department to challenge state AI laws deemed "onerous" to the industry — something that's faced resistance from both parties and members of the MAGA movement who distrust the tech elite.

The controversy centers on routine government paperwork known as ethics waivers that special government employees, like Sacks, often receive.

The documents are intended to justify the public interest rationale for the White House to hire a former industry insider and disclose investments related to the sector over which the official will be crafting policy.

Sacks did divest from some tech holdings like Amazon, Meta, and Musk's xAI, but public documents show that he and his firm, Craft Ventures, maintain more than 400 investments in tech firms with ties to AI.

https://www.npr.org/2025/12/12/nx-s1-5631823/david-sacks-ai-advisor-investment-conflicts

[hobie]

Nothing a few pardons won't fix.

[Zarniwoop]

Just tell Trump that “Sachs was treated very unfairly by Biden”, and a pardon is in the bag!

[hobie]

Following the awarding of its Peace Prize, the Justice Department said it was ending its bribery investigation of FIFA.

In unrelated news, Venezuela said it would be announcing the winner of its 'Most Radical Dude in the World' award next Thursday.

And in un-unrelated news, Ronald McDonald - spokesperson for a conglomerate still reeling from a scandal involving the illegal importation of 50 metric tons of Charlie Kirk swimwear - has announced that there is still one unclaimed golden Big Mac wrapper somewhere in the D.C. metroplex. The lucky wrapper holder will get a coveted tour of the fabled McNugget factory.

[Brett Bellmore]

Remember the other day, when I said that solar power price estimates incorporated an assumption that frequent brownouts were acceptable, and we'd just have to get used to the grid not being reliable?

Energy Predictions 2025

"Already we are seeing adoption of behind the meter batteries such as the Tesla Powerwall for individual consumers who can justify the expense relative to the hassle of utility power cuts. In a world where every consumer can choose the size of their battery, it doesn’t make sense to spend 10x the money trying to keep the distribution grid at 99.9% production. Less developed markets are pointing the way –"

A lot of rationalization about individual consumers choosing the size of their batteries to compensate, but that's the bottom line: He arrives at solar being cheap by assuming that people will just adapt to the power grid being much less reliable than it used to be.

[Sarcastr0]

Your static assumption as to tech, and insistence on analyzing only a single source at a time are outcome oriented choices.

Congrats on your GIGO analysis.

[Brett Bellmore]

All I was doing here was demonstrating that a fairly tech savy guy, who is big in the 'renewable energy' field, was explicitly assuming lowered utility reliability in his cost estimates of solar.

I made no assumptions about tech at all. I simply point out that in order for solar to be actually as reliable as nuclear or coal, you need a significant amount of storage, and massive overbuild. That's not based on tech assumptions, that's based on the existence of "weather".

And solar advocates have responded to that by simply assuming that solar doesn't HAVE to be as reliable as coal or nuclear, because people will adapt to regular brownouts. Thus excusing their use of apples vs oranges price comparisons.

[Sarcastr0]

You assume solar as the sole source. You assume no gains in efficiency of the power conversion.
And of course the beauty of fundamental research is its full of unknown unknowns. You assume those always as well.

And smartgrids. And modularity. Ignore all of that.

All that so you can shit on solar.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, Sarcastr0, in making an A B comparison, you compare A to B, not A to A+B. That's pretty basic. Solar doesn't get to rely on coal in calculating the cost of solar, and then you say, "Solar is cheaper than coal, let's get rid of coal!"

You have to look at EVERYTHING necessary to get rid of coal. Not tacitly assume it's still around after you've gotten rid of it, or that people will just magically not mind getting used to regular brownouts.

Gains in the efficiency of solar will not, of course, obliviate the need for either over-building or storage. They'll just reduce the square meters of panels you need to over-build, having no impact at all on the over-all point.

Now, everything I'm saying here applies to terrestrial solar power, and if we go to SPS's, then solar suddenly becomes as reliable and available as conventional power.

I'm not fundamentally opposed to solar power, you see, I just hate faked cost comparisons that rely on not requiring solar to provide the same reliability as conventional power.

[Sarcastr0]

Maybe consider that an A B comparison is useless in this context.
You yourself say: "You have to look at EVERYTHING necessary to get rid of coal" and then don't look at everything.

As though that bit of self-contradiction wasn't enough, you haul in this strawman:
then you say, "Solar is cheaper than coal, let's get rid of coal!"
Strawmanning like this is how we know you're not serious.

Gains in the efficiency of solar will not, of course, obliviate the need for either over-building or storage
Or will it?
https://www.optica.org/History/Biographies/bios/Shanhui_Fan
"He was the first to demonstrate that the coldness of space, relative to earth, can be a major energy source for mankind. His work has opened a new direction in renewable energy research by highlighting the potential for harvesting the coldness of universe."

Your failure of imagination doesn't change that this is an engineering problem, not a physics one.

I'm not fundamentally opposed to solar power, you see, I just hate faked cost comparisons
Don't excuse your own janky analysis because of some other janky analysis you saw once.

[Michael P]

WTF? Coldness is a *lack* of thermal energy, not a source of it. We've had thermoelectric generators for a long time, although dumping heat into space is challenging because there's not much mass to take advantage of -- so some Ph.D. student showing that we might be able to squeeze a few watts from that sounds very ivory tower-ish. But what connection do you think that has to do with the rest of this discussion?

Also: When someone criticizes costs, it's implicitly a criticism of engineering trade-offs.

[Sarcastr0]

some Ph.D. student
You're playing the ignorant dipshit to the hilt, eh? I'm sure Dr. Fan will be glad to hear your criticism of his research as ivory tower-ish.

When someone criticizes costs, it's implicitly a criticism of engineering trade-offs
Engineering R&D: A thing that exists, and which you don't seem to understand.

[Michael P]

Once you deploy solar, the equipment power conversion efficiency goes down with age, not up. The argument over cost is about what one can buy today, not about what one might be able to buy some time in the future.

Similarly, assuming that solar will become more usable because we make changes elsewhere in the system ("smartgrids") means the cost numbers that were trollishly presented yesterday are incomplete -- they omit significant costs to make the system equivalently reliable and usable as legacy generation systems.

[Sarcastr0]

The argument over cost is about what one can buy today

Who is talking about going all in on solar today, versus what the fruits of R&D will be?

Click through to Brett's link - it's a predictive outlook, not a frozen snapshot analysis.

[Michael P]

https://zerotracker.net/analysis/in-the-pipeline lists countries that are trying to get rid of fossil fuels and other non-"green" sources -- although as you concede, those countries are long on hope and promises and short on solutions.

On the other hand, this is the depth of analysis that kind of group offers:

Regionally, Africa has the highest percentage of company fossil fuel phase-out targets (50%, or 5 of 10 companies), with a strong showing from Europe (27%, or 88 of 328). North America lags significantly behind with only 9% (31 of 327) of companies in the sample having any kind of phase-out commitment.

Clearly, the US is doing worse than Africa because our denominator is so much bigger than Africa's.

[Sarcastr0]

This post appears to be picking a metric on purpose to be dumb, declaring it is dumb, and declaring victory.

Hope you had fun with that circle you made.

[Michael P]

It "appears" that way because you can't read, think or understand, much less make a cogent argument that points to specific things you disagree with.

I at least point out dumb claims by actual solar advocates. You make up positions, call them dumb, and declare victory (for example: "declaring R&D in renewables not worthwhile is dumb"). You are a shining example of Malicia's "every accusation is a confession", if not the inspiration for it.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Solar would be more efficient in Africa -- sun more direct.

[Michael P]

Your choice to pick at random, ultimately relevant nits would be an outcome oriented choice ... if you were able to make a cogent argument on this kind of topic, which you have never done. Instead, you're doing your best.

[Sarcastr0]

My argument is that Brett’s analysis is bad.

Simple as.

Sorry if you got confused.

[Michael P]

That's your unbacked assertion, not an argument. (Just like yesterday.) My point was that you can't actually back it up.

Sorry that you're too stupid to understand.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, you're biting ankles. Trying to hang but don't know what you're talking about.

Brett's wrong, but he's at least got some chops in the area.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"you're biting ankles."

Says the guy who spends most of his keystrokes biting Brett's ankles.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, man. BrettLaw has me on the ropes.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Can't get enough of those ankles..,

[Michael P]

Yawn. You still bring no argument to the table, just more frivolous assertions.

I look forward to seeing what you follow up with after "coldness as a major energy source".

[Sarcastr0]

My baseline argument is that declaring R&D in renewables not worthwhile is dumb.
I provided an example of some good fundamental research in the area.
You came back declaring radiative cooling was basically thermoelectric generation, but worse.

You're a fool.

[Michael P]

The discussion on this yesterday and today is not about the value of R&D in renewables. It's about the present cost of solar and the fact that people (like hobie yesterday) push dishonest accounting in their advocacy for it. As Brett summarized in his very first comment here: "He arrives at solar being cheap by assuming that people will just adapt to the power grid being much less reliable than it used to be." (and compensate by putting custom-sized batteries on their side of their electricity meter, among other mechanisms)

Also, radiative cooling isn't a source for useful energy. You should refrain from accusing people of being fools when you don't know the difference between such different things. Also from using so damn many straw men: I don't think anyone here has "declar[ed] R&D in renewables not worthwhile".

[Sarcastr0]

I guess you didn't click on Brett's link.

It's pretty legit analysis!
Here's a taste of his intro:
"We’re in the middle of a period of rapid transition. Much will be much clearer in retrospect. This is how I think it will shake out."

I hope this helps you understand what the topic under discussion is.

[Michael P]

You don't have an actual point here, just more of your usual bile and concluding with nothing more than quoting someone else's introduction. "This is how I think it will shake out" is, in fact, not "pretty legit analysis".

[Bwaaah]

For Sarc, the program is the solution. Good intentions are sufficient at his level. It's the "ankle biters'" jobs to do that engineering thing (even though he and they don't know how to accomplish that). He has faith in "science." (Try to unpack that one.) He knows good engineering words, though. He's like DJT that way. It's his job to pepper everybody with subsidies so he can take credit for any success despite his lousy bets and general disinterest in the problem at a real level. By gosh, he intends to have others solve the problem.

He is The Man.

[Sarcastr0]

Good lord, man.

It's not an extreme position to say 'we should develop renewable energy technology.'

The extreme position is 'it is not worthwhile to spend any resources developing renewables.'

[ThePublius]

See that? Anything you disagree with is "an extreme position."

So-called renewables have their place, as in remote areas, boats on moorings, that kind of thing. But as general electrical grid supply they are a waste of time and money.

[Michael P]

It's not even that. He makes up positions and attributes them to others so he can signal his disagreeableness.

[Sarcastr0]

I relied on the link Brett posted. You didn't read it, and so are mad.

[ThePublius]

Typical, you attack and insult the OP and offer nothing of your own.

[Bwaaah]

What do you say when you have nothing to say? Oh, wait. He does have something to say.

Insults.

(Like me, when talking about him.)

[Don Nico]

congrats on your typical knee-jerk reaction, just because Brett said something.

[ThePublius]

Yes, Solar And Wind Really Do Increase Electricity Prices -- And For Inherently Physical Reasons

"In my last column I discussed an apparent paradox: why, if solar panels and wind turbines are so cheap, do they appear to be making electricity so expensive?

One big reason seems to be their inherently unreliable nature, which requires expensive additions to the electrical grid in the form of natural gas plants, hydro-electric dams, batteries, or some other form of stand-by power."

[Malika la Maize]

Related?

With the rise of artificial intelligence, the United States is trying to satisfy an unquenchable thirst for new sources of electricity.

Part of the answer may be deep underneath our feet, according to scientists, entrepreneurs and politicians from both parties, who want to harness the endless supply of heat generated below the surface of the Earth.

While Congressional Republicans accelerated the phasing out of wind and solar tax credits in their spending bill this summer, incentives for geothermal projects remained.

“I am bullish on the future of geothermal,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Nevada Democratic Rep. Susie Lee at a Congressional hearing in May. Wright, who ran a fracking company and invested in geothermal before he joined the Trump administration, said faster permitting was essential.

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2025/12/11/hot-rocks-renewable-energy

[hobie]

Dear AI, have renewables caused some electricity to be free in some parts of Texas?

"Yes, renewable energy (wind and solar) in Texas has driven wholesale electricity prices to zero, and even negative, at times due to massive oversupply on sunny/windy days, meaning power was essentially free for suppliers to take, which eventually lowers consumer bills; however, this abundance also highlights the need for storage to manage intermittency, as seen when renewables failed during cold snaps, causing grid instability, though the 2021 blackouts were primarily failures of gas/thermal plants, not just wind. "

It's been amusing seeing Abbott, on the one hand, blame renewables as a Dem Tranny Antisemitic Hoax, yet, on the other hand, quietly keep amassing wind and solar.

[ThePublius]

And yet, the price to consumers has risen, and continues to rise. Why is that? Might want to check your premises.

"Texas electricity prices have generally trended upwards, rising from around 12 cents/kWh in the early 2010s to the mid-to-high teens (e.g., 15-16 cents/kWh) in the mid-2020s, with significant annual variations due to inflation and grid factors, though often remaining below the national average, but with recent reports showing potential bill increases coming in 2026."

[hobie]

I guess the myriad middlemen power providers in Texas (there's, like, hundreds to choose from) are taking free electricity and making a killing for themselves.

[Michael P]

You guess a lot of wrong, retarded things.

[hobie]

It's like the AI said, Michael, the 'suppliers' (middlemen) are taking free electricity from the gov...but apparently charging customers for it

[Michael P]

Overhead costs and the difference between wholesale and retail costs must be foreign ideas to you.

You should stop outsourcing your thinking to AI. It only shows us that you have no idea what you are talking about, and no ability to realize when the AI says something that doesn't help your point.

[Poxigah146]

Solar and wind is great as a supplement. As they produce more, you can run the fossil fuel plants at lower capacity, saving oil and gas. But you still need the capacity of those oil and gas plants, for when solar and wind aren't enough.

[Frank Drackman]

"Honey, I'd like to watch Television, is the wind blowing/sun shining???"
Quite possibly won the 2016 for "45/47"
Of course Hillary Rodman not cam-paining in PA, MI, WI probably helped. (actually it didn't, whole reason they kept her out of those States was her numbers went down the more advertising they did, they thought they'd win with just the normal DemoKKKrat method (cheating))

Frank

[ThePublius]

"Solar and wind is great as a supplement. As they produce more, you can run the fossil fuel plants at lower capacity, saving oil and gas. But you still need the capacity of those oil and gas plants, for when solar and wind aren't enough."

I will bet dollars to doughnuts that if you do the math over the useful life of the solar, wind, and gas powerplants, and then consider the environmental impact of each, including mining of necessary materials, real estate usage, and disposal or (attempted) recycling of decommissioned components, you will find it is far more economical and ecologically sound to just use the gas powerplants, and forgo the wind and solar.

With gas powerplants you don't need any supplements.

Better yet, go nuke.

[jb]

With gas powerplants you don't need any supplements.

Yes, gas powerplants just magically appear from heaven with no resources of any kind required to produce them. /s

But it's good to see that you're finally understanding how externalities work and why environmentalists have been calling for pricing them in for decades.

[Poxigah146]

The same leftists who oppose using fossil fuels also oppose nuclear power, because they've let scared women dictate policy.

[jb]

A lot of rationalization about individual consumers choosing the size of their batteries to compensate, but that's the bottom line: He arrives at solar being cheap by assuming that people will just adapt to the power grid being much less reliable than it used to be.

Maybe that's fine, though, if the overall cost is lower?

It's obviously true that the grid and power planning overall need to (and already are) adapt to renewable sources. What is obviously not true is that this somehow makes renewables worthless, despite the fact that MAGAs tend to use this as some sort of case closed argument. Long term, it seems like a blend of renewables and nuclear is probably the right approach. Thinking about how to make that transition seems like a much more productive use of brainpower and resources than trying to prop up red states' coal industries.

[Brett Bellmore]

If the overall cost was lower, they could just use the same batteries to achieve the reliability, and have a fair head to head comparison. Instead of degrading grid reliability, and offloading on customers the cost of making up for it.

"Long term, it seems like a blend of renewables and nuclear is probably the right approach."

I agree, I'm just complaining about rigged numbers designed to drive the transition to 'renewable' energy faster than is economically sensible.

[Sarcastr0]

I agree, I'm just complaining about rigged numbers

You are the one that set up the A/B comparison thesis, and then found it lacking!

Add in that you often talk about the *benefits* of global warming, your embrace of the general consensus of our energy mix seems at odds with the arguments you make.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, I'm the one who pointed out it's not a real A-B comparison if B doesn't have to provide what A provides.

[Absaroka]

"Maybe that's fine, though, if the overall cost is lower?"

Just to put some numbers on it, The average U.S. household consumes about 10,500 kilowatthours (kWh) of electricity per year, or 28.7 kWh per day.

As it happens I just upgraded our cabin batteries. That costs $843 for 5.12 kWh, so $4720 per household.

There's good and bad news about that:

Good news: there are situations where usage and production are correlated - on a hot summer afternoon in Phoenix you probably want lots of electrons for AC, and the sun is probably delivering a lot of electrons.

Bad news: there are situations where usage and production are not correlated. At the cabin a good winter storm can mean negligible electrons for days (high latitude so short days, few photons because clouds, depending on installation snow on panels, ...). That's not a problem at the cabin because we have wood heat and gas for cooking, but if you are trying to run a heat pump or electric oven or dryer or water heater ... no bueno.

Some parenthetical remarks ... there doesn't seem to be great data about depth of discharge and battery life yet. Older lead acid batteries died very prematurely if you drew anywhere near full capacity. Some folks are saying LiPo batteries can take 100% discharge over and over for a decade, some people say not. But regardless, batteries are a consumable.

In addition to batteries, you need an inverter, panels/controller if you want to farm photons, wiring, etc. Household scale models of those are expensive and sometimes fail.

Your $4720 (plus wiring, inverter, ...) will cover one day of average use. If the day the grid goes out is not a median use day for you (extra cold or hod, cooking T-day dinner, laundry day, guests taking showers), sux to be you. Even if you have an average day ... what about tomorrow if it's still calm and cloudy? If you want the grid to fill your batteries you're back to fossil fuel/nukes/lots more renewable+transmission lines.

There are folks who live quasi-suburban lifestyles off grid on solar/wind. But 'quasi' usually means wood heat at least as a backup, a clothesline, propane cooking and hot water, and tightening the energy belt from time to time. Plus a diesel generator :-). It's not just the current unlimited watts all the time lifestyle 99% of us are used to.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"He arrives at solar being cheap by assuming that people will just adapt to the power grid being much less reliable than it used to be."

That's fine, as long as you factor in the cost of the adaptations.

[Bwaaah]

"Factors" don't matter. WE'RE GOING SOLAR.

Stupid isn't a dead end. It's a never-ending through road with a bend up ahead that obscures the view, and another one, and another one.

"COME ON GUYS! IT'S THIS WAY!!!"

[Sarcastr0]

It's a never-ending through road with a bend up ahead that obscures the view, and another one, and another one.

When you're so 'gotta attack' that you come out against basic science.

My dude, science isn't a road; there is no roadmap to discovery. That doesn't mean it's useless and you should give up.

[Malika la Maize]

Clerks working for family court Judge Amy Pellman were reviewing routine surrogacy petitions when they spotted an unusual pattern: the same name, again and again.

A Chinese billionaire was seeking parental rights to at least four unborn children, and the court’s additional research showed that he had already fathered or was in the process of fathering at least eight more—all through surrogates.

When Pellman called Xu Bo in for a confidential hearing in the summer of 2023, he never entered the courtroom, according to people who attended the hearing. The maker of fantasy videogames lived in China and appeared via video, speaking through an interpreter. He said he hoped to have 20 or so U.S.-born children through surrogacy—boys, because they’re superior to girls—to one day take over his business.

Several of his kids were being raised by nannies in nearby Irvine as they awaited paperwork to travel to China. He hadn’t yet met them, he told the judge, because work had been busy.

Pellman was alarmed, according to the people who attended the hearing. Surrogacy was a tool to help people build families, but what Xu was describing didn’t seem like parenting, the people said.

The judge denied his request for parentage—normally quickly approved for the intended parents of a baby born through surrogacy, experts say. The decision left the children he’d paid for to be born in legal limbo.

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/chinese-billionaires-surrogacy-pregnancy-7fdfc0c3

[not guilty]

The link is behind a paywall.

Who furnished the eggs for the children and fetuses? Will those females now be responsible for rearing the offspring?

[TwelveInchPianist]

Assuming the legal issues settle quickly, newborns get adopted fairly quickly.

[Malika la Maize]

I do think it’s a problem for someone like this (the donor) to create a bunch of kids that will now need adopting.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Of course it is. But I'm not sure what that has to do with my response to NG's comment.

[Malika la Maize]

Just meant the likelihood of adoption doesn’t make this an all’s well that end’s well thing.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Sure doesn't. But hopefully it mitigates the issue NG raised.

[Malika la Maize]

Agreed.

[jb]

What if he just came to the US and had a lot of consensual unprotected sex instead? Would be an easy way to get to the same outcome without any surrogacy involved. Not sure what the judge is protecting from here.

[Bob from Ohio]

The dude is doing human trafficking. Paying women for innocent children.

[Frank Drackman]

I thought Australia had Gun Control

[hobie]

They do. But they also have a big fucking border to contend with.

[Frank Drackman]

Oh year, that Ocean is a Bitch.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Protip. If you grab an unfamiliar weapon from someone, beat him with it, don't try to shoot him.

[Frank Drackman]

Most guns aren't that hard to figure out.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Clubs are easier.

[Michael P]

An amateur security guard at a "No Kings" protest faces manslaughter charges for shooting at one law-abiding rallygoer but fatally hitting a bystander. (I am not sure whether it is a plus or minus for the killer that his first two shots apparently didn't hit anyone, and the third shot was the fatal one.)

https://www.abc4.com/news/wasatch-front/no-kings-shooter-charges-slc-da/

Does the left get off on killing random civilians?

[hobie]

One Utah gun nut shoots another Utah gun nut for carrying a gun. Open carry...what could possibly go wrong?!

[Michael P]

Leftist manslaughter, obviously.

In a follow-up to previous news, two men have been convicted and sentenced to decades in prison for murdering Secoriea Turner.

https://apnews.com/article/secoriea-turner-atlanta-rayshard-brooks-shooting-df6afa77f985436b02e035c0e904d944

[hobie]

This being MichaelP, I better check the photos...

[Checking...]

Well I'll be. The shooter, as usual is black, but this time the victim is a little black girl and not a pretty white lady. You're making progress, Michael. Before we know it, you'll be acknowledging that whites commit crime as well!

[Michael P]

Why are you mad that I remembered an even more egregious case of amateur security guards killing an innocent person at a leftist protest?

https://abcnews.go.com/US/members-armed-militia-shot-breonna-taylor-protest/story?id=71990031 was maybe the funniest similar shooting because (a) nobody died and (b) it was from a negligent discharge by a member of the "Not Fucking Around Coalition".

[Sarcastr0]

Michael P:

Leftist manslaughter, obviously.

Obviously.

You're pretty childlike, in your need for all villains to pile up according to your political allegiance.

There are nuts all over, Michael. Many of them are nonpolitical, even!

[Michael P]

You're welcome to cite cases of amateur security guards shooting people at right-wing protests, if you can -- but you might have to settle for Aaron Danielson or Ashli Babbitt as the closest examples.

[Sarcastr0]

Why would I do that? What would that weird narrow metric be relevant to?

[Bwaaah]

Sarc: "Why would I do that? What would that weird narrow metric be relevant to?"

Maybe the crap that piques your interests? The crap you write non-substantive comments about day in and day out?

[Malika la Maize]

Talk about abject biting!

[Michael P]

Doing that would be one way for him to rebut his hypothesis that villains do pile up according to my political allegiance. I guess he can't rebut that theory. *shrug*

[Malika la Maize]

Shooting a rally-goer whose firearm was in a downward position? Now where I have heard that before?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-69013312.amp

[John F. Carr]

The charging document is here: https://www.saltlakecounty.gov/globalassets/1-site-files/district-attorney/documents/charges-filed/matthew-scott-alder-information.pdf

[ThePublius]

In Epstein news, which the MSM has apparently moved on from...

"So. Best the Democrats and their flying media monkeys could do from the latest tranche of "Epstein files" is an image of adult women from a beauty contest in Hawaii with their faces blacked out by deceptive editing 31 years after the fact.

I'm not Trump's biggest fan, but crap like this makes it very difficult not to take his side.

They've got nothing. If they had any evidence of Trump messing with underage girls it would have come out as part of the lawfare blitz during the Biden years. This attempt to keep those charges alive is pathetic, and makes Trump look like a persecuted hero.

Somehow I don't think that's the outcome they wanted."

https://x.com/esrtweet/status/1999955241169744358

[Malika la Maize]

This isn’t news, it’s some guy named Eric S. Raymond tweeting his thoughts about recent news.

[ThePublius]

"This isn’t news..."

Boy, you can really be a dick. 'In other news' is a turn of phrase, that's all. You manage to pick every nit for people of stories you don't like.

[Malika la Maize]

You didn’t even quote yourself correctly, you said “In Epstein news…” but this is no news about Epstein, it’s this rando’s musings on recent news.

[ThePublius]

QED

""Best the Democrats and their flying media monkeys could do from the latest tranche of "Epstein files"...."

[Malika la Maize]

That’s not news. The release was news. That was days ago. This is some rando musing about what the news means. It’s a real problem with partisan sources, they rarely do any actual reporting, they just tell the rubes how to think about it (what they used to call spin).

[ThePublius]

Boy, as dickheads go you are like a dog with a bone. So now I'm supposed to adopt your unstated definition of "news" from a temporal perspective? Get lost.

[Bob from Ohio]

"The release was news. "

Fake news. They blacked out the faces to imply it was a bunch of under-aged girls.

Does not intentional deception bother you? Even a little?

[Michael P]

It stings when the Aspie software dweebs provide more trenchant analysis of political events than the mainstream media, huh.

[Malika la Maize]

Oh tweets are good for caustic analysis, no wonder they’re a go-to source for MAGAns.

[Bwaaah]

Malicia: "caustic analysis"

[Michael P]

Malicia pretends that Bluesky isn't what it is.

[Sarcastr0]

No one here does with bluesky what you lot do with twitter - i.e. cite randos and call it proof.

[Poxigah146]

It's very simple. Epstein was a well-connected, wealthy social butterfly and had many rich and powerful friends. That's why nearly everyone who is well known has a picture out there with him.

It's really not that remarkable at this point.

[Malika la Maize]

What’s remarkable is how MAGA kept spinning cover up conspiracy theories about that *until* Dear Leader got in charge and focused on and then the talking points were changed.

[Poxigah146]

Trump has nothing to do with anything. I didn't believe the official suicide story back when it happened, and I still don't.

[Malika la Maize]

Are you disputing that MAGAns like Patel, Bongino, etc., stoked Epstein conspiracies regarding the files and then when Trump put them in charge changed their tune?

[hobie]

It's quite simple, really. None of us libs gave a fig about MAGA's incessant QAnon whining about pizza gate and Epstein and global cabals etc....UNTIL your boy suddenly told everyone to stop talking about it. That got the antennae up. So now we're running with the baton you handed us

[John F. Carr]

As I remarked a few weeks ago, the Epstein files led some Trump opponents to think "this time we've got him" when it was clear nothing would happen. Trump is not going down for hanging out with Epstein and Epstein's girls.

[Josh R]

If they had any evidence of Trump messing with underage girls it would have come out as part of the lawfare blitz during the Biden years.

Agreed. So, why did Trump do a 180 and not release the files long before Congress forced his hand?

[John F. Carr]

The Washington Post has a surprisingly favorable article about a Trump appointee, Dr. Oz. His boss, RFK Jr., doesn't understand Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and doesn't meddle.

Yet some policy experts said that compared with the tumultuous layoffs, leadership turmoil and infighting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, Oz’s agency appears less chaotic — at least so far.
[...]
As Oz tells it, health insurance is “a bit of an away game” for Kennedy. Shortly after the November election, Oz recalls Kennedy saying he was really excited about every part of running HHS — except for the highly technical health insurance programs under CMS’s purview.
[...]
Rep. Richard E. Neal (Massachusetts), the Democratic leader on a committee overseeing health agencies, said he viewed Oz as a moderating force after lawmakers on his panel met with the administrator over the summer.
“He didn’t come across as being radical,” Neal said. “Largely because he’s a real scientist, a real doctor.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/12/13/mehmet-dr-oz-cms-leadership/
https://apple.news/AkHynK_gGS-adDqjDa-jO2Q

[hobie]

"A massive, worldwide safety concern has been the risk that artificial intelligence (AI) could be used not just to manipulate existing pathogens but to create novel lethal pathogens, and there is an even deeper concern that, in the future, AI could create them autonomously."

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RBA4087-1.html

God help us if these buffoons are still in charge when this happens. Any vaccine we produce they would most likely have destroyed out of political spite. And be cheered for doing so...SMH

[JoeFromtheBronx]

These days, it is not "surprising" when the Washington Post or some other MSM sanewash and/or provide positive spin for the Trump Administration.

[Bob from Ohio]

LOL

[Mr. Bumble]

Quite the busy day.
Isn't anyone out shoveling snow yet?

[ThePublius]

It's still snowing here on the Massachusetts South Coast. I'm planning on going out about noon. We don't have too much, maybe 2 to 3" so far. It's warmer here by the coast, so we don't get as much snow as inland.

[Frank Drackman]

Snow? not in Atlanta, but it is 43F right now.
I've heard rumors that there's a time of the year where it gets cold and snows and the Native Amuricans called it "Maiz"
I mean "Winter"
Which is Navajo for "Time when White Man eat 4 Legged Beasts they ride on"

Frank

[JoeFromtheBronx]

A hero bystander who wrestled a rifle off an alleged gunman in a moment of bravery that may have saved lives has been identified as 43-year-old father of two Ahmed el Ahmed.

In an incredible act of courage, Ahmed placed himself in the line of fire to take a rifle from the shooter, and was later hit by at least two bullets himself.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/hero-bystander-tackles-gunman-in-incredible-footage-20251214-p5nnlb.html

Some people step up in heroic moments in the heat of the moment. One general summary of events:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/at-least-12-dead-in-terror-attack-at-bondi-beach-after-mass-shooting-20251214-p5nnkr.html

[hobie]

Ahmed el Ahmed

Yikes! This is going to get awkward...

[Frank Drackman]

For Ahmed, when his Terrorist Confederates (see what I did there? I used "Confederates" correctly) find out he pussied out at the last minute.

[hobie]

It's like Imam Shlomo always says, Frankie: "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire"

[Frank Drackman]

Oh I get it, "Shlomo" it's funny because it's a Jewish name!

[Bored Lawyer]

Why? Two Muslims engaged in "globalizing the intafada" and murdered 11 Jews, because they were Jews.

One Muslim (I presume from the name) acted heroically and tried to stop it. Good for him.

How that excuses the murderous actions of the perpetrators, and the fellow travelers who support them, is a mystery.

[Sarcastr0]

Early hours yet facts are not clear.

But if true it sure deflates the kind of anti-Muslim bigotry you seem to be trying to gin up.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Ahmed el Ahmed"

Seems like fake news

According to this detailed article, it was Edward Crabtree

https://www.thedailyaus.world/edward-crabtree-bondi-hero

[Michael P]

Sexual predators target girls in mixed changing rooms; Dozens of rapes and sexual assaults committed in sports centres, police figures reveal
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/09/sexual-predators-target-girls-mixed-changing-rooms-wrn-uk/

All the Best People assured us that this just doesn't happen.

[Sarcastr0]

Lets look at how this article leads people into unsupported conclusions.

New police data show at least 16 rapes, 80 sexual assaults and 65 acts of voyeurism were committed in sports centres in 2023, equating to three offences a week.
That's bad! How many sports centres are there? Why did you mix sexual assault with voyeurism?

Many of the offences were in mixed-sex changing areas, according to a report by the Women’s Rights Network (WRN), which obtained the figures via freedom of information requests.
Many? We're even fuzzier than the not baselined numbers we started with!

Sharron Davies, the former Olympic swimmer, backed the report
Cue the deniable but spicy quotes!

"Horrendous crimes, including rapes, sexual assaults and voyeurism, are occurring daily in our local swimming pool changing facilities"
Already contradicting the starting sentence.

One teenage girl who was sexually assaulted by a man in a swimming pool while she was showering said: “I was crying myself to sleep and walking to school with puffy eyes.
“I suffered vivid nightmares...
From numbers to anecdote. Gotta inject the outrage in!

In September, police raised “substantive concerns” about the potential of voyeurism in mixed changing rooms at a proposed new swimming pool in Stevenage
OK so now we're onto purely voyeurism.

The WRN also accused local authorities and other providers of sports centres of “designing in harm” by promoting mixed-sex changing areas.
Acting as a stenographer for an advocacy organization is not journalism.

Sandie Peggie was suspended from her job in Kirkcaldy’s Victoria Hospital after she complained about Dr Beth Upton – a biological male who identifies as a woman – using a female changing room.
This doesn't have anything to do with anything. It's not even a relevant anecdote!

Whether the NY Times or the Telegraph or Powerline, please read *critically*! Especially if it's something you want to believe to begin with!!

[Michael P]

Gaslight0 would rather be dead than approximate "three times a week" with "daily", and is apparently okay with both (a) this happening three times a week and (b) pretending it is just right-wing performative outrage to observe that it does happen.

Alternatively, he's always spoiling for a fight over third-party editorial choices in news media.

[Michael P]

Some people here probably oppose obligatory pregnancy tests in cases like this: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15378347/mom-baby-boy-giant-tumor-abdominal-ectopic-pregnancy-los-angeles-cedar-sinai.html

Suze Lopez, 41, was set to have a 22–pound benign cyst on her ovary removed at the Cedars–Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles when doctors had her undergo a required pregnancy test.

Stunningly, it turned out that she was expecting a baby.

(To be clear, the baby was not mistaken for a cyst; he was growing ectopically behind the cyst.)

[hobie]

Proposed Trump coin designs are out. I'm going for the one where he is depicted at about the age of 40 (they didn't go with the mugshot so you have to take what you can get). Whoever drew the older Trump didn't shave off near enough of the turkey neck. I see a mortgage fraud case in his/her future.

For the reverse I like the attacking eagle. Like it's doing a boat strike or something.

I don't like any of the proposed slogans. I think they should use the Trumpy Montana line from Orangeface: "America's like a great big pussy just waiting to get fucked!'

https://www.usmint.gov/news/media-kit/semiq-dollar-coin

[John F. Carr]

The cabinet can not dismiss the Attorney General of Israel, who is a holdover from the previous government. Imagine President Newsom being stuck with Attorney General Bondi. Or Trump with Garland.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-supreme-court-rules-against-governments-dismissal-attorney-general-2025-12-14/

[Bob from Ohio]

So the man in custody for the Brown U. shooting is a "man" in his 20s.

No race or ethnic ID.

Black? Muslim? Both?

[Zarniwoop]

Translation: BobFOH doesn’t know how to spin the shooter’s motivations yet.

[David Nieporent]

Hey, he hasn't (yet) claimed the guy was trans.

[jb]

That's usually joe_dallas's job.