William Blake's 'Ancient of Days' painting - God in the sun? creates the world using a compass

"There is, indeed, as Bishop Nulty says, a peculiar beauty in the clearness with which the wisdom and benevolence of Providence are revealed in this great social fact, the provision made for the common needs of society in what economists call the law of rent" -Henry George

Populism is out of control

This is however exhibit ZQ of ‘Black people don’t count as within class but millionaire farmers do”

I’ve been complaining about this for so long, it honestly is a civil rights violation imo

Zelenskyy played hardball & it played off. Get wrecked Fidesz

Two things can be true:

Congress should pass uniform, national legislation reining in partisan gerrymandering; and

Until that happens, or every state adopts an independent redistricting commission, neither party is going to (or, frankly, should) unilaterally disarm.

The GOP entered this redistricting under the rather childish delusion they were going to gerrymander, and nobody would gerrymander them. In TX, MO, and a half dozen other states, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind

How do royalties work?

How awful are these people? I once took my kids to our local playground in Chicago and counted five different languages spoken by the handful of families present. My kids made friends with those kids! They learned that there are other languages! And that some people wear a hijab!

Israel doesn’t want this; KSA & the UAE don’t want this, and we the people don’t want it but it is a uniquely good outcome for Putin

So weird that Trump just happens to choose the course of action most favorable to Russian interests and no one else

Put more simply, it’s fertile ground for straight grifting.

“I call it cry me a river, a Russian river” he’s a dick.

But the point is *not* to make him the main character so in the spirit of practicing what I preach I’m going to block you & this exchange

I mean he’s on record being neutral in the conflict where Ukraine is the victim

Food & nutrition science has an additional hurdle in that nutritional evidence tends to be noisy and difficult to experiment on, and the standard “don’t overeat, exercise, and try to eat plants” continues to be boringly correct and rarely needs to be expanded on, but that doesn’t make headlines.

For actually knocking down drones

I give 5% of my income to them each month

Sadly this has no real utilitarian purpose except impressing my students

I don’t like him because of his antipathy towards Ukraine & love for the USSR.

Factoring a trinomial in my head is one of those ‘ah yeah still got it’ moments for me

Indeed. You cannot let a challenger be the main character but you should let an incumbent be!

Trump stating "I'm surprised, because they are really rich." lays out his view of the world in one sentence.

In Trump's view being rich means not being held accountable or suffering any bad outcomes.

No but he wants to be the main character of Discourse, his job is literally to talk and be talked about

At what point in the post did you stop reading

“We didn’t think they’d get hit” okay well then all appointed DoD & State leadership need to resign for being criminally incompetent

Actually I think you’re right - the issue is that most US Zionists are spooked by the prospect of yanking material support from the state of Israel, which means Israel is less likely to compromise on maximalist goals

Fundamentally, how many Jewish Israeli voters would tolerate being in a position of rough demographic parity and political equality from the Jordan to the Mediterranean?

I think that’s a fine answer but it’s quite obviously understating the goal of the Israeli state & of most US Zionists

The sixt from twelve scrolls, depicting the 1751 Emperor's inspection tour of southern China.In this scroll we see the Emperor's pages in the city of Suzhou

"we all hear with interest and pleasure of improvements in transportation...we are all disposed to regard the opening of canals, the building of railways, the deepening of harbors, the improvement of steamships, as beneficial. But if such things are beneficial how can tariffs be beneficial? -HG

Again the voters will generally prefer candidates who tell them what they want to hear. Politicians who disagree with their voters on climate change or trans rights or immigration aren’t just failing to sell their positions, they are running up against voters who are wrong or cruel