What about eight itty-bitty eyes like a spider?

If you had to pick one…

It sounds like you aren’t actually leaving me any choice.

I’m back in the U.S.S.R
You don’t know how lucky you are, boy
Back in the U.S
Back in the U.S
Back in the U.S.S.R

Things that I wish web interface devs would just let me type, for God’s sake:

• years
• months
• state abbreviations

Just validate the input after I type it in. Don’t make me scroll through 50 different states or 100 different years.

I know people whose grants have been put on hold and these people don’t even know if they have health insurance anymore, since grant money pays for that too. This is wild.

If Trump wants Cuomo to win, then Trump should try endorsing Mamdani.

The American tradition of democracy is exactly that - a set of traditions built up over centuries. It is more than just the law. Republicans have done and continue to do serious, permanent damage, and the main way in which they do that damage is by violating those traditions. If the goal is to stop the damage, the means of attaining that goal has to include the defense of traditions.

This is the game now. There are no refs; no fouls are going to be called. There’s no consequence or penalty for Trump redrawing the maps in Texas mid-decade. Stop pretending like there is.

The danger is not that Republicans will win. The danger is that the American tradition of democracy will be permanently damaged. Democrats can’t avert that by becoming part of the problem. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that the only victory possible is a victory won despite refusing to resort to tactics of this sort. Anything else is a defeat.

A friend’s husband keeps his phone on silent but also expects to be notified if plans change.

Perhaps you would accept a close substitute?

Whenever I see a hummingbird, I become a little happier than I had been the moment before.

It’s odd to see very Jewish names at the top of both the blue and the red lists of boy names.

When I played GURPS we had a guy in our group with OCD (officially diagnosed). He had most of the rules memorized and he knew right where to look up the rest. It was very convenient for us. The one catch was that he had to keep a log of everything that took place in the game so he asked us not to do anything without him present. It wasn’t a big deal since he had perfect attendance.

It’s a form of investment in the colloquial sense, but the relevant difference is between paying for physical objects that are completely outside of China’s control once they’re delivered to you and paying for shares of a Chinese company which may be fake and which the Chinese government might take away from you at any time.

There’s a tragedy of the commons going on with manufacturing. Moving all US manufacturing to China is a big risk for the entire USA, but moving one company’s manufacturing to China is good for that company (or even required to be competitive). Meanwhile investing in Chinese firms is risky for each individual investor.

The article doesn’t say so but it might be part of bankruptcy proceedings or something similar. The company is sold off to pay debts but there isn’t enough money to pay everyone, debts are paid off in a legally determined order, and stock or option holders aren’t near the front of the line. I know folks who worked for First Republic and lost all their stock and options (and accrued vacation time, which is also apparently a debt) like that.

What a bizarre story. Toronto voters elect a city government in favor of bike lanes, then for some reason the premier of Ontario decides he knows what Toronto needs better than Toronto voters do, and now a judge decides that removing bike lanes is somehow unconstitutional because apparently the constitution is detailed enough to specify things like that. (Does this mean that it’s unconstitutional to have any roads without bike lanes, or is it just unconstitutional to remove existing bike lanes?) I drive, bike lanes piss me off, but they’re a local matter that should be decided by the local government.

I seem to recall that there is a proverb about how doing this is a great idea. Or is it the other way around?

I write my texts like I’m writing a cover letter or a wedding invitation to flex on the less erudite and meticulous.

I get permitting these blogs as part of a commitment to avoid censorship - someone with non-mainstream but far less extreme opinions can look at them and say “If Substack doesn’t censor even these guys, it definitely won’t censor me.” With that said, I’m still surprised that Substack apparently doesn’t manually curate its push notifications.

People decided to care about the ethics of fur farming after synthetic materials made fur obsolete. The majority isn’t going to object to the cruelty of factory farming unless they already have a replacement for factory-farmed eggs.

I’m not necessarily supportive of Thiel - he does some things that I oppose, and also some things that I think are silly. He’s not a very likeable man overall. I’m supportive of transhumanism. The substance of this article is merely that:

Peter Thiel hesitated when asked if he “would prefer the human race to endure.”

The article doesn’t even say what his reply ultimately was, but the implication is that even considering that a transhuman future would be better is somehow horrifying, and that’s the implication I’m surprised to see supported here.