Maduro was not the legitimate winner of the recent election in Venezuela. So a POTUS who exactly five years ago attempted a violent autogolpe to remain in power is going to remove him.
Maduro allegedly is involved in trafficing narcotics. So a POTUS who quite recently pardoned another corrupt leader who was in jail for the crime of trafficing narcotics is going to remove him.
This was an exercise in naked power. Folks around Trump have their own various reasons for championing it. Trump's own reasons are obscure, but could be as simple as his enjoyment of exercises in naked power. Most likely he thinks there is some upside for him, personally, most likely because one of his minions told him so. Good luck to him with that.
I am beyond confident that none of them - not one - is motivated by a desire for a free and peaceful Venezuela. Venezuela is just another example of, to quote Ledeen, a crappy little country that we can throw against the wall.
And Miller's observations about what makes the world go around is how we get world wars. The man is a cancer on the nation.
"The Danes, and the Canadians better get to work on a nuclear deterrent, and hope it’s ready in time."
France sent a nuclear sub to a port in the Maritimes back in the early days of Trump II. Both France and Canada are NATO nations.
As are we, for that matter. So who knows what was intended, or how any of it would play out. But my understanding is that it was... unusual for a French nuke to show up in North America .
Trump is basically flipping the tables. Who knows where it will all end up.
"Well, he just executed the arrest warrant from the Southern District of NY for among other things illegal possession of firearms and intent to acquire such."
What jurisdiction does the SDNY have over the president of another country?
Trump’s increasingly-insane inanity will make any Bush-style Republican very attractive in 2028
Attractive, but likely not to the current base of the (R) party.
Is there a cadre of old school (R)'s ready and able to turn the GOP around in 2008? I don't see it. I don't know how they would do it.
I'm also not sure the (D)'s will go for someone who leads with "we're gonna go after all of the Trump era malefactors". Too divisive!! Can't have that!!
My epiphany of the last year (or 10 years) is how durable the paranoid style continues to be. Drive a stake through it's heart, it just keeps coming back for more.
Santa on a cross - Christmas has become the holiday of very mixed metaphors.
Whatever y'all take away from the mish mash of Jesus in a manger + jolly saint Nick + elf on a shelf + Mariah Carey saying all she wants for Christmas is you, I send my very best wishes to you all for peace, joy, and love, now and in the new year.
The world's a crazy place, cherish your personal pockets of sanity and grace.
Trump has takento referring to himself in the third person, so the usage here doesn't indicate whether he wrote it or not.
TBH I'm not sure if it's better or worse if he did.
Speaking of Wiles, she has apparently gone on record sayingshe thinks that he has the mind of an alcoholic, only without the booze. Dry drunk would explain a lot. But then again, so would dementia plus flagrant narcissism.
I had a friend, father of another friend of mine and my wife's. He was a tank guy in WWII. Killed a number of people. Had a cool and complicated shotgun he took off a guy - a German civilian - who tried to shoot him, and who missed. But he - my friend - did not miss.
In his late 80's and into his 90's, he had really bad dreams where he relived his time in Europe. Unsettling, violent dreams, which would cause him to thrash and kick and punch in his sleep.
He went back to Europe in much later life to see if he could lay his ghosts to rest. He could not.
This was not the advent of mental or neurological decline, he was sharp as a tack right up until the end.
It was the legacy of what he was required to do as a young man.
Some folks think that sleep, and dreaming, is another bardo. Another form of consciousness, distinct from waking awareness. I don't really know, one way of the other.
But my own thought is that sleep and dreaming is the time when your mind and consciousness tries to repair itself. Tries to come to terms with and resolve all the crap you don't have the time or attention or capacity to resolve in your waking life.
It's kind of a gift. Not always welcome, but essential nonetheless.
I try to remember and pay attention to dreams. I don't think of them as some kind of messages from the great beyond. They just seem like messages from myself, to myself. Or maybe not even messages, just ruminations.
But helpful, and occasionally useful. Sometimes amusing, sometimes disturbing. More or less your own mind, without the filters. But speaking in images, not prose.
I live in MA, where we definitely have winter, but I live pretty near the ocean, which has a mind of it's own as far as seasonal cycles of warm and cold go.
Net/net, we get less snow than places even as close as 10 miles away.
And that's the way I like it.
To me, snow means I have to drag my sorry behind out there in the wet and cold with a shovel before I can go anywhere. It means half the parking spaces are not available again until April or May.
In short, it's a PITA.
Basically, I'm over the romance of snow.
My wife tells me it's good for the plants - helps insulate them from a hard freeze while they are dormant. So i'll put up with it.
A discussion of early Christianity needs to consider the practices and institutions of Second Temple Judaism in addition to those of Rome. And those include the tzedekah, which was a mandatory tithe for helping the poor as well as travelers.
It was administered through religious institutions - the temple, and then synagogues during the early Rabbinic period - but there was no clear line between those religious institutions and civic or municipal government. To the degree that the Jewish community was self-governing during Roman occupation, the religious institutions *were* the government.
"“heritage American” refers to the offspring of the Anglo-Protestant and Scotch-Irish settlers — in other words, the white people — who populated the original colonies before heading west to settle the American frontier."
That's not going to be a very large slice of the US population. It's not even a very large slice of the white population.
Notably, it excludes Trump, whose family history here starts around 1885.
"Elon Musk approached the problem of reducing government spending as a kind of coding error, a problem of computer engineering. You didn’t need any subject-matter expertise."
As something of an aside, this assumption - that an understanding of subject matter is irrelevant to building software systems - explains why so much software sucks.
I will confess that I got about three paragraphs into the thesis and my eyes glazed over.
What I take away from the various snippets of statements by Karp is that he is kind of an odd guy. I'm not sure why it is - there seems to be some kind of self-selecting dynamic in play - but all of the techbro leadership seem to be... unique individuals.
To speak plainly, they seem like a bunch of weirdos. Listening to them speak publicly is like listening to bong-fueled late night dorm room conversations. They seem pretty detached from, for lack of a better word, normal real life, as lived by normal real people.
Maybe you have to have a kind of obsessive monomaniacal personality to rise to the positions they hold. But the absurd levels of wealth these guys - almost all guys - have accumulated gives them a truly outsize influence on public life.
So we end up being ruled by people with strange, anti-social, yet deeply held beliefs about the world.
I always thought the whole "sea steading" thing was a great idea. Go build your giant rafts out in the middle of the ocean, declare yourselves to be sovereign lords beholden to no-one, and leave the rest of us alone. Enjoy the fish!
If anyone has plowed through Karp's oeuvre and can boil it down for a layman like myself, I'd be interested to know more about what makes him tick.
"Even if the EU and UK did step up, it would be hard and embolden Putin"
How would that embolden Putin? My assumption would be the opposite.
"My take on Trump is to try to see the play and not focus on the particulars."
If you will pardon my language, my take on Trump is that he has no f****ing idea what he's doing, other than finding ways to make money for himself, his family, and a close circle of already obscenely wealthy people.
In terms of actual governance, I think he's basically making it up as he goes along.
He wants to make a lot of money, he wants to be adored, and he wants to punish people who aren't nice to him (as he sees it). If there's more to him than that, I'm not seeing it.
sometimes you have to settle for imperfect in order to get anything at all
TBH, at this point I'm holding out for "not utterly shitty".
i'd be fine if Manchin was still there, and I'm fine if he's not.
Maybe someday folks in WV will figure out that coal is not their future and voting for people who are all about coal because $$$ is not in their best interest. I'm not holding my breath.
in the meantime i'm just tryna get through it all. And i have it damned easy. house paid off, Enough money to satisfy my pretty modest needs, Medicare.
if I was, say, 30 or 40 years old I'd be seriously pissed right about now.
A mixed bag, but definitely not a consistent (D) vote on some important stuff.
Probably not a big deal when the overall mix of Senators includes middle of the road (R)'s as well. Also probably not a big deal when there is a clear majority for one party or another.
When the majority margins are really slim and your opposite party includes a caucus leader who vows that nothing presented by a (D) POTUS - including SCOTUS nominees - will get a single (R) vote, it's a bigger deal.
The days of Tip 'n Ronnie are long dead. It's a hyperpartisan time, and that is not a world the (D)'s have created. It's just the world they have to work in.
So Manchin was not a helpful guy, net/net. I understand that he was representing one of the most hard-core red areas of the country, but he nonetheless did not do the (D) caucus many favors.
I'm not sure his being replaced by a hard core conservative makes that much difference.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “2026, as f**ked up as 2025”
"How can one be even-handed about this?"
Thank you.
Maduro was not the legitimate winner of the recent election in Venezuela. So a POTUS who exactly five years ago attempted a violent autogolpe to remain in power is going to remove him.
Maduro allegedly is involved in trafficing narcotics. So a POTUS who quite recently pardoned another corrupt leader who was in jail for the crime of trafficing narcotics is going to remove him.
This was an exercise in naked power. Folks around Trump have their own various reasons for championing it. Trump's own reasons are obscure, but could be as simple as his enjoyment of exercises in naked power. Most likely he thinks there is some upside for him, personally, most likely because one of his minions told him so. Good luck to him with that.
I am beyond confident that none of them - not one - is motivated by a desire for a free and peaceful Venezuela. Venezuela is just another example of, to quote Ledeen, a crappy little country that we can throw against the wall.
And Miller's observations about what makes the world go around is how we get world wars. The man is a cancer on the nation.
"
"Maduro is a narcoterrorist and was illegally importing cocaine"
What acts of terrorism has he committed?
"Panama, Grenada and Libya show this to not be so norm-crushing as some might think"
Precedent does not equal norm. Also, FWIW those are also not the greatest moments in our history.
"The US has wanted Greenland for a long time."
It's not our fucking island. Full stop.
"
"The Danes, and the Canadians better get to work on a nuclear deterrent, and hope it’s ready in time."
France sent a nuclear sub to a port in the Maritimes back in the early days of Trump II. Both France and Canada are NATO nations.
As are we, for that matter. So who knows what was intended, or how any of it would play out. But my understanding is that it was... unusual for a French nuke to show up in North America .
Trump is basically flipping the tables. Who knows where it will all end up.
"
"Well, he just executed the arrest warrant from the Southern District of NY for among other things illegal possession of firearms and intent to acquire such."
What jurisdiction does the SDNY have over the president of another country?
On “Moving towards Epiphany”
In the spirit of moving toward whatever epiphanies await us, good or ill, I wish all here a happy, peaceful, healthy New Year.
Here's a lovely old chestnut. I probably post this every year, but it's a personal favorite, so I hope you will forgive me.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xQXU2PIgreM
"
Attractive, but likely not to the current base of the (R) party.
Is there a cadre of old school (R)'s ready and able to turn the GOP around in 2008? I don't see it. I don't know how they would do it.
I'm also not sure the (D)'s will go for someone who leads with "we're gonna go after all of the Trump era malefactors". Too divisive!! Can't have that!!
My epiphany of the last year (or 10 years) is how durable the paranoid style continues to be. Drive a stake through it's heart, it just keeps coming back for more.
On “An inscrutable Merry Christmas”
Santa on a cross - Christmas has become the holiday of very mixed metaphors.
Whatever y'all take away from the mish mash of Jesus in a manger + jolly saint Nick + elf on a shelf + Mariah Carey saying all she wants for Christmas is you, I send my very best wishes to you all for peace, joy, and love, now and in the new year.
The world's a crazy place, cherish your personal pockets of sanity and grace.
On “The Wiles Interview”
They're looking for Charlie Baker.
I don't think he's interested in the gig.
"
Just read about Trump adding commemorative plaques to the set of photos of previous POTUS' in the White House.
And for "commemorative", please read rude and insulting, in the most puerile 7th grade bully style.
And a solid third of the country thinks this guy craps rainbows.
We're never coming back from this.
On “Author, author?”
Trump has takento referring to himself in the third person, so the usage here doesn't indicate whether he wrote it or not.
TBH I'm not sure if it's better or worse if he did.
Speaking of Wiles, she has apparently gone on record sayingshe thinks that he has the mind of an alcoholic, only without the booze. Dry drunk would explain a lot. But then again, so would dementia plus flagrant narcissism.
The man is not well.
On “How are you sleeping?”
that said...
I had a friend, father of another friend of mine and my wife's. He was a tank guy in WWII. Killed a number of people. Had a cool and complicated shotgun he took off a guy - a German civilian - who tried to shoot him, and who missed. But he - my friend - did not miss.
In his late 80's and into his 90's, he had really bad dreams where he relived his time in Europe. Unsettling, violent dreams, which would cause him to thrash and kick and punch in his sleep.
He went back to Europe in much later life to see if he could lay his ghosts to rest. He could not.
This was not the advent of mental or neurological decline, he was sharp as a tack right up until the end.
It was the legacy of what he was required to do as a young man.
Some folks think that sleep, and dreaming, is another bardo. Another form of consciousness, distinct from waking awareness. I don't really know, one way of the other.
But my own thought is that sleep and dreaming is the time when your mind and consciousness tries to repair itself. Tries to come to terms with and resolve all the crap you don't have the time or attention or capacity to resolve in your waking life.
It's kind of a gift. Not always welcome, but essential nonetheless.
I try to remember and pay attention to dreams. I don't think of them as some kind of messages from the great beyond. They just seem like messages from myself, to myself. Or maybe not even messages, just ruminations.
But helpful, and occasionally useful. Sometimes amusing, sometimes disturbing. More or less your own mind, without the filters. But speaking in images, not prose.
"
5 mg of indica MJ at bedtime. sleep like a baby. or better than a baby, maybe.
even before they made MJ legal in MA, I slept pretty well. I enjoy my dreams, they're often funny. And I'm often the butt of the joke.
I take it as a sign of sanity.
On “Open Thread”
Open thread -
I live in MA, where we definitely have winter, but I live pretty near the ocean, which has a mind of it's own as far as seasonal cycles of warm and cold go.
Net/net, we get less snow than places even as close as 10 miles away.
And that's the way I like it.
To me, snow means I have to drag my sorry behind out there in the wet and cold with a shovel before I can go anywhere. It means half the parking spaces are not available again until April or May.
In short, it's a PITA.
Basically, I'm over the romance of snow.
My wife tells me it's good for the plants - helps insulate them from a hard freeze while they are dormant. So i'll put up with it.
But not gracefully.
On “Am I missing something?”
A discussion of early Christianity needs to consider the practices and institutions of Second Temple Judaism in addition to those of Rome. And those include the tzedekah, which was a mandatory tithe for helping the poor as well as travelers.
It was administered through religious institutions - the temple, and then synagogues during the early Rabbinic period - but there was no clear line between those religious institutions and civic or municipal government. To the degree that the Jewish community was self-governing during Roman occupation, the religious institutions *were* the government.
"
Gary Oldman as Lamb is worth the price of admission.
Ho is perfectly cast as well FTM.
"
"Have you read all of them"
I've only seen the series on Apple TV. The books are in my queue.
And yes, Roddie Ho is non-self-aware perfection.
"
Roddy Ho is my fave
Team Lamb here. The man is my shadow self. Or maybe not so shadow.
In early Christian times, there was no state or welfare, so I think that you can argue that, actually.
Followed by:
The Christian tradition is about communities and families and charity, not about compulsory taxation in order to pay welfare.
Somebody needs a theological / historical clean-up on aisle three.
On “The surprising philosophy behind Palantir”
"“heritage American” refers to the offspring of the Anglo-Protestant and Scotch-Irish settlers — in other words, the white people — who populated the original colonies before heading west to settle the American frontier."
That's not going to be a very large slice of the US population. It's not even a very large slice of the white population.
Notably, it excludes Trump, whose family history here starts around 1885.
On “An openish thread featuring the comedy stylings of Steve Witkoff”
"Elon Musk approached the problem of reducing government spending as a kind of coding error, a problem of computer engineering. You didn’t need any subject-matter expertise."
As something of an aside, this assumption - that an understanding of subject matter is irrelevant to building software systems - explains why so much software sucks.
On “The surprising philosophy behind Palantir”
I will confess that I got about three paragraphs into the thesis and my eyes glazed over.
What I take away from the various snippets of statements by Karp is that he is kind of an odd guy. I'm not sure why it is - there seems to be some kind of self-selecting dynamic in play - but all of the techbro leadership seem to be... unique individuals.
To speak plainly, they seem like a bunch of weirdos. Listening to them speak publicly is like listening to bong-fueled late night dorm room conversations. They seem pretty detached from, for lack of a better word, normal real life, as lived by normal real people.
Maybe you have to have a kind of obsessive monomaniacal personality to rise to the positions they hold. But the absurd levels of wealth these guys - almost all guys - have accumulated gives them a truly outsize influence on public life.
So we end up being ruled by people with strange, anti-social, yet deeply held beliefs about the world.
I always thought the whole "sea steading" thing was a great idea. Go build your giant rafts out in the middle of the ocean, declare yourselves to be sovereign lords beholden to no-one, and leave the rest of us alone. Enjoy the fish!
If anyone has plowed through Karp's oeuvre and can boil it down for a layman like myself, I'd be interested to know more about what makes him tick.
On “An openish thread featuring the comedy stylings of Steve Witkoff”
bc and GFTNC, thank you for your explanations.
TBH, I can't make sense of any of this mess. It's utterly unclear who exactly is driving the bus on our end. Or what their motivations are.
Putin wants Ukraine absorbed into Russia. Ukraine doesn't want to be absorbed into Russia. The UK and EU very much do not want the conflict to expand.
What do we want? Who is the "we" that is deciding?
"
"Even if the EU and UK did step up, it would be hard and embolden Putin"
How would that embolden Putin? My assumption would be the opposite.
"My take on Trump is to try to see the play and not focus on the particulars."
If you will pardon my language, my take on Trump is that he has no f****ing idea what he's doing, other than finding ways to make money for himself, his family, and a close circle of already obscenely wealthy people.
In terms of actual governance, I think he's basically making it up as he goes along.
He wants to make a lot of money, he wants to be adored, and he wants to punish people who aren't nice to him (as he sees it). If there's more to him than that, I'm not seeing it.
"
"There could be many explanations"
My best guess at this point is that he just likes Putin, in a kind of fanboi crush way.
Putin is doing it the way Trump wishes he could do it.
On “Spelunking for fun and profit”
sometimes you have to settle for imperfect in order to get anything at all
TBH, at this point I'm holding out for "not utterly shitty".
i'd be fine if Manchin was still there, and I'm fine if he's not.
Maybe someday folks in WV will figure out that coal is not their future and voting for people who are all about coal because $$$ is not in their best interest. I'm not holding my breath.
in the meantime i'm just tryna get through it all. And i have it damned easy. house paid off, Enough money to satisfy my pretty modest needs, Medicare.
if I was, say, 30 or 40 years old I'd be seriously pissed right about now.
"
Manchin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Manchin
A mixed bag, but definitely not a consistent (D) vote on some important stuff.
Probably not a big deal when the overall mix of Senators includes middle of the road (R)'s as well. Also probably not a big deal when there is a clear majority for one party or another.
When the majority margins are really slim and your opposite party includes a caucus leader who vows that nothing presented by a (D) POTUS - including SCOTUS nominees - will get a single (R) vote, it's a bigger deal.
The days of Tip 'n Ronnie are long dead. It's a hyperpartisan time, and that is not a world the (D)'s have created. It's just the world they have to work in.
So Manchin was not a helpful guy, net/net. I understand that he was representing one of the most hard-core red areas of the country, but he nonetheless did not do the (D) caucus many favors.
I'm not sure his being replaced by a hard core conservative makes that much difference.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.