Perhaps someone here can explain something to me. Trump says Ukraine must accept the Russian-written "peace proposal or "risk losing US support. So, let's assume a counterfactual: Ukraine accepts the proposal. What good is US support supposed to do them, even assuming it lasts more than milliseconds beyong Russia moving it's troops forward?
It looks to me that the actual choice is between losing US support or losing US support. The only difference is between losing a bunch of territory at the same time or not.
With all this rage, we must also have a bold, simple policy plan — one that every American can understand. In the richest country in the history of our planet, we should not fear raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour, which had a 74 percent approval rating in 2023. We should not fear an America with free public college tuition, which 63 percent of U.S. adults favored in a 2021 poll. When 62 percent of Americans say their electricity or gas bills have increased in the past year and 80 percent feel powerless to control their utility costs, we should not fear the idea of expanding rural broadband as a public utility. Or when 70 percent of Americans say raising children is too expensive, we should not fear making universal child care a public good. And darn it, we should not fear that running on a platform of seismic economic scale will cost us a general election. We’ve already lost enough of them by being afraid to try. The era of half-baked political policy is over.
I'm well aware that not everyone here thinks kindly of James Carville, but I'm betting that nonetheless few will disagree with the extract above. Here's the whole thing:
I have tried to put down roots here, and I think I’ve done a good job, but given that it has been a conscious effort, I have to say that those roots aren’t deep, certainly not as deep as Japanese from here.
It's true that those who have moved tend to have shallower roots than those who have lived somewhere for a lifetime. And also, it's not surprising that some are better than others at developing new roots when they move. But I would point out that, while you feel your new roots are shallow, you are hardly someone who is perpetually moving. (I'd put the threshold for "perpetually moving"/rootless at relocating every couple of years or less.)
I acknowledge that my perspective is probably skewed by my personal experience. The US is called "a nation of immigrants" (suck eggs, Steven Miller!) for a reason. And California is a bit extreme, even for the US.
Growing up, I lived in a little farm town, just starting to evolve into a suburb. When my parents moved here, after WW II, the population was under 500. By the time I graduated high school, my graduating class was around 500. For all that there were a couple of families who had been here for a century, pretty much everybody in town was from somewhere else. Often, the kids in my classes had moved a couple of times already. Today, the town is up to nearly 50,000.
That sort of thing continues. I'm in the long time rooted category because, although I've lived in a half dozen different places over the years, they've all been within a hundred miles of here. But my family, my friends, my neighbors? All have moved or lived previously, far away. I've got a brother who, in his 20s and 30s, lived "in Europe" -- never settled anywhere for more than a couple of months, as far as I could tell. Definitely in the perpetually moving category.
Hartmut, no worries, It's complicated by the fact that Karp is a non-native speaker of German, so it would be difficult to know what is from the translator and what is from Karp's German. In the New Statesman podcast, they say that Habermas turned down Karp's request to be the second reader on his dissertation because he didn't think that Karp's German was good enough, though softened that rejection by acknowledging that the ideas in the dissertation were probably difficult for native speakers of German to get across.
No guarantee that I will find the time to read it (let alone compare the German and English versions).
That Karp piece you quoted from the New Republic sounds like a Roman senator preparing the next 'imperial expansion by pure self-defense' (although to my knowledge Rome never used drug smuggling as a pretense. They'd have gone British Opium War style anyway.).
The parts of this article that really had me shaking my head at these hubristic tech muppets were the reports of how much they were spending to build tech centers and how gormless the private equity pinheads are being in their rush to invest money in them.
And then we have this:
The tech firm makes an investment in the data center, outside investors put up most of the cash, then the special purpose vehicle borrows money to buy the chips that are inside the data centers. The tech company gets the benefit of the increased computing capacity but it doesn't weigh down the company's balance sheet with debt.
The return of the "special purpose vehicle" for financing. So very bubble.
I'd say we are better off investing in tulip bulbs, but at the rate those data centers will swallow up water and warm the planet, you'd never get those tulips to grow, and the Netherlands will be entirely underwater - just like all those mortgages were the last time we let the promise of easy money gull us.
In reality, there have always been those who put down roots, and those who kept moving. As far as I can see, that is still true today.
Is it really? I have tried to put down roots here, and I think I've done a good job, but given that it has been a conscious effort, I have to say that those roots aren't deep, certainly not as deep as Japanese from here. And even for my wife, who is from Hokkaido, those roots aren't so deep. And certainly, those roots are shortened even for those who are from here, with cultural touchstones fading and replaced by consumption events. At some point a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind.
“Maybe we are done putting down roots and will just keep moving.”
In reality, there have always been those who put down roots, and those who kept moving. As far as I can see, that is still true today.
There were also those who, from necessity, picked up and moved, sometimes a very long way, before stopping and putting down new roots. (I am put in mind of a story I read long ago about a guy who moved from Europe, but having arrived in New York City, never went west of Ocean Parkway.)
I suppose you could make a case that, at least in the US since the middle of the last century, it became more common for entire families to pull up stakes and relocate multiple times. They put down roots serially though; they weren't really moving constantly.
The one thing I think has changed is that those who just keep moving are now able to form lasting connections online. Before, they were largely isolated. Being able to make lasting connections allows them to form communities. Just communities not based on geography. That makes them more visible.
I don’t think American voters, as a general rule, give a shit about what goes on outside of the borders, unless it is for the purposes of mythologizing
I think this is probably true. Although I suppose foreign affairs is only one of the ways an administration may behave dishonourably. January 6th was within the first Trump administration, and I guess was a sort of epitome of dishonourable behaviour. But it is debatable to what extent honour is even an applicable concept in the context of nations or administrations. Breaking promises and commitments, now, that's another matter, and can have serious practical repercussions.
A bunch of clowns indeed - the implosion of the GoP is quite funny to watch (or should we actually be worried ...?) in the way the downfall of the GDR was quite funny to watch (but the there was the, still ongoing, decades-long hangover...) :
Some Republicans are now finding themselves in the extraordinary position of clarifying what long seemed obvious: Nazis are evil.
“It’s something that we all should know, but the fact of the matter is, it had to be said,” said Representative David Kustoff of Tennessee, explaining why he felt the need to denounce Nazis and antisemitism at a recent gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition. He was joined there by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who declared, “I’m in the ‘Hitler sucks’ wing of the Republican Party.” And even Laura Loomer, the far-right activist, who is Jewish, has argued on social media that “the GOP has a Nazi problem.”
I hope the Wall Street Journal editorial is right about American voters, but I fear it is not. Surely if American voters hated dishonour as much as all that, there would not be a second Trump presidency
It all depends on what American voters perceive as dishonor. Perhaps surprisingly, they seem more likely to take that view of foreign policy screwups than they do of dishonorable behavior on the domestic (or personal!) front.
Surely if American voters hated dishonour as much as all that, there would not be a second Trump presidency.
I'm not sure exactly what would be the focus of 'hating dishonour', but I don't think American voters, as a general rule, give a shit about what goes on outside of the borders, unless it is for the purposes of mythologizing, so the 2nd Trump dumpster fire is only marginally related to that.
As a Wall Street Journal editorial on Friday put it: “Mr. Trump may figure he can finally wash his hands of Ukraine if Europe and Ukraine reject his offer. He’s clearly sick of dealing with the war. But appeasing Mr. Putin would haunt the rest of his presidency. If Mr. Trump thinks American voters hate war, wait until he learns how much they hate dishonor. … A bad deal in Ukraine would broadcast to U.S. enemies that they can seize what they want with force or nuclear blackmail or by pressing on until America loses interest.”
Well, I hope the Wall Street Journal editorial is right about American voters, but I fear it is not. Surely if American voters hated dishonour as much as all that, there would not be a second Trump presidency. The piece from which I have taken that is in today's NYT:
However, I do have some (tiny amount of) hope that if this kind of criticism is very widespread, along with all the signalling from Europe, Trump might (once again!) back slightly off from this kind of approach. I guess this is what's behind today's statement that this was not his final offer. But to follow that by saying if Zelensky refuses to accept the terms, “then he can continue to fight his little heart out.” makes me feel sick. The Chamberlain comparison makes sense; appeasing Putin has been Trump's consistent approach as POTUS in both his terms.
Yeah. I get warnings about the site being potentially unsafe. But I cheerfully downloaded the files anyway. Now I just need to get the software to open them.
Status report on dewarping documents from photographs. I've finally settled on a camera (iPhone 17) and set up lighting, so I'm starting to take pictures seriously. Current state of the art for my dewarping software shown in these images. First one is a 24MP "original" taken with the iPhone. Second one is the dewarped output for it. I've settled on the .avif format as the best combination of quality, compression, and availability.
I read this NYT article
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/opinion/dubai-migration-trump.html
but didn't finish it and lost the page that had the gift link. Some pages suggest that Dubai is 92% 'immigrant' and the article had some discussion about a rethinking of what citizenship is and means.
German neonazis use stickers "American Indians did not control immigration. Now they live on reservations."
And that was years before they Syrian civil war or Putin's "special military operation" in Ukraine. Then it was mainly against Turks (These days even neonazis buy at the Turkish greengrocer. Probably the same 'problem' that Himmler noted that every German had 'one decent Jew' he did not want to get persecuted).
Berlin in the 18th century was close to immigrant majority (French Huguenots) and that was essential to the economy (Brandenburg was the 2nd most devastated region of the 30 Years War after Bohemia).
I have strong suspicions that I have Huguenots in the family tree myself.Did not help with learning French though :-( .
I see a hot debate, whether this will be called 'apeacement' or 'apiecement'.
(and whether Ghislaine Maxwell will be successfully nominated as Secretary of Whore after pardon and damages for suffering).
As for reparations, I would not be surprised in the least, if that became part of it (maybe even with a coerced 'admission of guilt' for the war on the part of Ukraine).
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “An openish thread featuring the comedy stylings of Steve Witkoff”
Perhaps someone here can explain something to me. Trump says Ukraine must accept the Russian-written "peace proposal or "risk losing US support. So, let's assume a counterfactual: Ukraine accepts the proposal. What good is US support supposed to do them, even assuming it lasts more than milliseconds beyong Russia moving it's troops forward?
It looks to me that the actual choice is between losing US support or losing US support. The only difference is between losing a bunch of territory at the same time or not.
"
With all this rage, we must also have a bold, simple policy plan — one that every American can understand. In the richest country in the history of our planet, we should not fear raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour, which had a 74 percent approval rating in 2023. We should not fear an America with free public college tuition, which 63 percent of U.S. adults favored in a 2021 poll. When 62 percent of Americans say their electricity or gas bills have increased in the past year and 80 percent feel powerless to control their utility costs, we should not fear the idea of expanding rural broadband as a public utility. Or when 70 percent of Americans say raising children is too expensive, we should not fear making universal child care a public good. And darn it, we should not fear that running on a platform of seismic economic scale will cost us a general election. We’ve already lost enough of them by being afraid to try. The era of half-baked political policy is over.
I'm well aware that not everyone here thinks kindly of James Carville, but I'm betting that nonetheless few will disagree with the extract above. Here's the whole thing:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/opinion/democrats-platform-economic-rage.html?unlocked_article_code=1.3k8.RLeA.wVApkzjlRXhM&smid=url-share
On “Shabana burns the cakes”
I have tried to put down roots here, and I think I’ve done a good job, but given that it has been a conscious effort, I have to say that those roots aren’t deep, certainly not as deep as Japanese from here.
It's true that those who have moved tend to have shallower roots than those who have lived somewhere for a lifetime. And also, it's not surprising that some are better than others at developing new roots when they move. But I would point out that, while you feel your new roots are shallow, you are hardly someone who is perpetually moving. (I'd put the threshold for "perpetually moving"/rootless at relocating every couple of years or less.)
I acknowledge that my perspective is probably skewed by my personal experience. The US is called "a nation of immigrants" (suck eggs, Steven Miller!) for a reason. And California is a bit extreme, even for the US.
Growing up, I lived in a little farm town, just starting to evolve into a suburb. When my parents moved here, after WW II, the population was under 500. By the time I graduated high school, my graduating class was around 500. For all that there were a couple of families who had been here for a century, pretty much everybody in town was from somewhere else. Often, the kids in my classes had moved a couple of times already. Today, the town is up to nearly 50,000.
That sort of thing continues. I'm in the long time rooted category because, although I've lived in a half dozen different places over the years, they've all been within a hundred miles of here. But my family, my friends, my neighbors? All have moved or lived previously, far away. I've got a brother who, in his 20s and 30s, lived "in Europe" -- never settled anywhere for more than a couple of months, as far as I could tell. Definitely in the perpetually moving category.
On “The surprising philosophy behind Palantir”
Hartmut, no worries, It's complicated by the fact that Karp is a non-native speaker of German, so it would be difficult to know what is from the translator and what is from Karp's German. In the New Statesman podcast, they say that Habermas turned down Karp's request to be the second reader on his dissertation because he didn't think that Karp's German was good enough, though softened that rejection by acknowledging that the ideas in the dissertation were probably difficult for native speakers of German to get across.
"
No guarantee that I will find the time to read it (let alone compare the German and English versions).
That Karp piece you quoted from the New Republic sounds like a Roman senator preparing the next 'imperial expansion by pure self-defense' (although to my knowledge Rome never used drug smuggling as a pretense. They'd have gone British Opium War style anyway.).
On “Pop!”
Here's another piece that I ran across on NPR:
https://www.npr.org/2025/11/23/nx-s1-5615410/ai-bubble-nvidia-openai-revenue-bust-data-centers
The parts of this article that really had me shaking my head at these hubristic tech muppets were the reports of how much they were spending to build tech centers and how gormless the private equity pinheads are being in their rush to invest money in them.
And then we have this:
The return of the "special purpose vehicle" for financing. So very bubble.
I'd say we are better off investing in tulip bulbs, but at the rate those data centers will swallow up water and warm the planet, you'd never get those tulips to grow, and the Netherlands will be entirely underwater - just like all those mortgages were the last time we let the promise of easy money gull us.
On “Shabana burns the cakes”
In reality, there have always been those who put down roots, and those who kept moving. As far as I can see, that is still true today.
Is it really? I have tried to put down roots here, and I think I've done a good job, but given that it has been a conscious effort, I have to say that those roots aren't deep, certainly not as deep as Japanese from here. And even for my wife, who is from Hokkaido, those roots aren't so deep. And certainly, those roots are shortened even for those who are from here, with cultural touchstones fading and replaced by consumption events. At some point a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind.
"
“Maybe we are done putting down roots and will just keep moving.”
In reality, there have always been those who put down roots, and those who kept moving. As far as I can see, that is still true today.
There were also those who, from necessity, picked up and moved, sometimes a very long way, before stopping and putting down new roots. (I am put in mind of a story I read long ago about a guy who moved from Europe, but having arrived in New York City, never went west of Ocean Parkway.)
I suppose you could make a case that, at least in the US since the middle of the last century, it became more common for entire families to pull up stakes and relocate multiple times. They put down roots serially though; they weren't really moving constantly.
The one thing I think has changed is that those who just keep moving are now able to form lasting connections online. Before, they were largely isolated. Being able to make lasting connections allows them to form communities. Just communities not based on geography. That makes them more visible.
I suppose
On “The surprising philosophy behind Palantir”
Win $1,000 by Predicting Palantir’s (PLTR) Closing Price
On “Shabana burns the cakes”
GftNC, thanks!
I was struck by the close of that article, which was:
On “An openish thread featuring the comedy stylings of Steve Witkoff”
I don’t think American voters, as a general rule, give a shit about what goes on outside of the borders, unless it is for the purposes of mythologizing
I think this is probably true. Although I suppose foreign affairs is only one of the ways an administration may behave dishonourably. January 6th was within the first Trump administration, and I guess was a sort of epitome of dishonourable behaviour. But it is debatable to what extent honour is even an applicable concept in the context of nations or administrations. Breaking promises and commitments, now, that's another matter, and can have serious practical repercussions.
"
A bunch of clowns indeed - the implosion of the GoP is quite funny to watch (or should we actually be worried ...?) in the way the downfall of the GDR was quite funny to watch (but the there was the, still ongoing, decades-long hangover...) :
Some Republicans are now finding themselves in the extraordinary position of clarifying what long seemed obvious: Nazis are evil.
“It’s something that we all should know, but the fact of the matter is, it had to be said,” said Representative David Kustoff of Tennessee, explaining why he felt the need to denounce Nazis and antisemitism at a recent gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
He was joined there by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who declared, “I’m in the ‘Hitler sucks’ wing of the Republican Party.”
And even Laura Loomer, the far-right activist, who is Jewish, has argued on social media that “the GOP has a Nazi problem.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/us/politics/republicans-antisemitism-carlson-fuentes-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.3U8.2zff.86d5NwQCde2M&smid=url-share
(gift link; not sure it's ethical to contribute to Bret Stephens' salary, but hey ho)
On “Shabana burns the cakes”
London’s foreign-born population is 41%.
Yeah, what a hellhole. I increasingly run into US citizens relocating here...
On “An openish thread featuring the comedy stylings of Steve Witkoff”
I hope the Wall Street Journal editorial is right about American voters, but I fear it is not. Surely if American voters hated dishonour as much as all that, there would not be a second Trump presidency
It all depends on what American voters perceive as dishonor. Perhaps surprisingly, they seem more likely to take that view of foreign policy screwups than they do of dishonorable behavior on the domestic (or personal!) front.
"
Surely if American voters hated dishonour as much as all that, there would not be a second Trump presidency.
I'm not sure exactly what would be the focus of 'hating dishonour', but I don't think American voters, as a general rule, give a shit about what goes on outside of the borders, unless it is for the purposes of mythologizing, so the 2nd Trump dumpster fire is only marginally related to that.
"
As a Wall Street Journal editorial on Friday put it: “Mr. Trump may figure he can finally wash his hands of Ukraine if Europe and Ukraine reject his offer. He’s clearly sick of dealing with the war. But appeasing Mr. Putin would haunt the rest of his presidency. If Mr. Trump thinks American voters hate war, wait until he learns how much they hate dishonor. … A bad deal in Ukraine would broadcast to U.S. enemies that they can seize what they want with force or nuclear blackmail or by pressing on until America loses interest.”
Well, I hope the Wall Street Journal editorial is right about American voters, but I fear it is not. Surely if American voters hated dishonour as much as all that, there would not be a second Trump presidency. The piece from which I have taken that is in today's NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/22/opinion/ukraine-russia-negotiations-trump-deal.html?unlocked_article_code=1.3E8.xN85.ecN93aJ-jZL7&smid=url-share
However, I do have some (tiny amount of) hope that if this kind of criticism is very widespread, along with all the signalling from Europe, Trump might (once again!) back slightly off from this kind of approach. I guess this is what's behind today's statement that this was not his final offer. But to follow that by saying if Zelensky refuses to accept the terms, “then he can continue to fight his little heart out.” makes me feel sick. The Chamberlain comparison makes sense; appeasing Putin has been Trump's consistent approach as POTUS in both his terms.
"
Any of Chrome, Firefox, or Safari should do it.
Also Edge, if you have a fairly recent release. Microsoft has been slow to support AVIF at the operating system level.
"
Now I just need to get the software to open them.
Any of Chrome, Firefox, or Safari should do it.
"
Yeah. I get warnings about the site being potentially unsafe. But I cheerfully downloaded the files anyway. Now I just need to get the software to open them.
"
firefox is very insistent that i not visit https://mcain6925.com/ordinary/demo1.avif
On “Shabana burns the cakes”
If you want it lj, here it is:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/opinion/dubai-migration-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.3E8.A3HK.Gd0uik9LLL9G&smid=url-share
On “An openish thread featuring the comedy stylings of Steve Witkoff”
For wjca, since it's an openish thread...
Status report on dewarping documents from photographs. I've finally settled on a camera (iPhone 17) and set up lighting, so I'm starting to take pictures seriously. Current state of the art for my dewarping software shown in these images. First one is a 24MP "original" taken with the iPhone. Second one is the dewarped output for it. I've settled on the .avif format as the best combination of quality, compression, and availability.
https://mcain6925.com/ordinary/demo1.avif
https://mcain6925.com/ordinary/demo2.avif
On “Shabana burns the cakes”
I read this NYT article
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/opinion/dubai-migration-trump.html
but didn't finish it and lost the page that had the gift link. Some pages suggest that Dubai is 92% 'immigrant' and the article had some discussion about a rethinking of what citizenship is and means.
"
German neonazis use stickers "American Indians did not control immigration. Now they live on reservations."
And that was years before they Syrian civil war or Putin's "special military operation" in Ukraine. Then it was mainly against Turks (These days even neonazis buy at the Turkish greengrocer. Probably the same 'problem' that Himmler noted that every German had 'one decent Jew' he did not want to get persecuted).
Berlin in the 18th century was close to immigrant majority (French Huguenots) and that was essential to the economy (Brandenburg was the 2nd most devastated region of the 30 Years War after Bohemia).
I have strong suspicions that I have Huguenots in the family tree myself.Did not help with learning French though :-( .
On “An openish thread featuring the comedy stylings of Steve Witkoff”
I see a hot debate, whether this will be called 'apeacement' or 'apiecement'.
(and whether Ghislaine Maxwell will be successfully nominated as Secretary of Whore after pardon and damages for suffering).
As for reparations, I would not be surprised in the least, if that became part of it (maybe even with a coerced 'admission of guilt' for the war on the part of Ukraine).
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.