Americans consistently bemoan violent teenagers until they put on a uniform. Maybe we should start referring to them as Military Age Males.

The Totenkoph is popular among fascists the world over.

From Mussolini’s Black Brigades and the British Royal Air Force to both the Azov Battalions and the Wagner Group to the Punisher Logo that American fascists love so much.

Feel the same way about people wringing their hands over dead US soldiers, as though they’re the only people who matter.

A Thai shipping frigate just got hit in the Straight of Hormuz, and I have seen absolutely nobody on national news raise the question of whether any of the crew were injured or killed. Similarly, Israel and the UAE have been incredibly close-mouthed about civilian deaths from Iranian attacks into civilian areas, because they consider it a public embarrassment. Nobody seems to want to talk about the “collateral damage”.

And then there’s the death toll in Iran itself. I was getting ear-blasted with “Iranian Government Murders 10,000! 20,000! 30,000! people!” for weeks. Suddenly, Iranian deaths don’t matter, unless they’re high ranking politicians or military figures.

This reeks of the same coverage we got out of Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, and Ethiopia. National news is entirely contained within jingoistic nationalist terms. We’re covering (and increasingly gambling) on the outcome like its a basketball game.

Vile.

if you’re born into a religious family initially you just adopt it

Right. Because there’s no inherent reason not to do so. And little kids tend to want to follow along with what they’re elders are doing.

Compare it to how most kids initially believe Santa Claus exists because they were told so.

Kids are told that they get presents by pleasing their parents. And then the decision making / agency is displaced onto a fictitious figure. That’s a very neat analogy for religion in the aggregate. Whether or not you “believe in Santa”, you’re still getting gifts based on your parents’ resources and generosity. If you want the newest kids’ favorite widget, you’re following the letter of the law whether or not you adhere to the spirit.

You can also participate in some church community stuff without being a member or even going to church.

If you’ve got friends/family who are members/do go, sure. Because they’re your social connection.

But you’ll struggle to join a community event if you don’t know anybody - or even when/where the event takes place. Nevermind knowing what’s in the works, what needs volunteers, what needs money, and who is in charge of leading them. The more you want to participate, the more you need to attend the religious church functions. The more you want to get into leadership, the more you need to demonstrate your piety.

Everyone is born into the world entirely ignorant. Cultures, customs, languages, and superstitions espoused by their parents, teachers, and peers are adopted as a matter of survival. And as the individual develops more autonomy, they use the information they gathered in their youth to navigate into new cultures and belief systems, in pursuit of improved material conditions.

You can be born into a Catholic family and become Atheist just as easily as you can be born into an Atheist family and become Catholic. What has driven the modern collapse in religiosity is - at least in my view - the mass migration driven by economic expansion and ecological collapse. People aren’t just waking up one day and deciding they aren’t gullible anymore. They’re being shuffled around by tidal forces and torn away from the historical cultures and infrastructure that had reproduced their families’ beliefs.

As a kid, my mom was deeply Catholic and tried to get us to attend church. But we moved several times, and after each move we found ourselves at a new church (often not even a Catholic church) with an alien congregation and divergent dogma. So what had rooted her and her sisters and parents and grandparents in Catholicism never took root with me or my sister.

By contrast, my wife’s family lived in Galveston for four generations. Virtually her entire family is devote practicing Catholics. She only slipped through the cracks because… her dad moved around a lot, particularly after her parents got divorced. Everyone else - even two of her transgender cousins - are still practicing. Churches are, at their heart, social institutions. And I think modern New Atheists often miss that fact in their quest to Own The Dumb Pious Folks.

Epstein didn’t keep a low profile. He was everywhere, taking pictures and glad-handing other plutocrats and showing up at events.

Like, if anyone is on your short list, I would think it would be Elon Musk. Musk’s initial gambit was throwing a bunch of keggers at Stanford to make friends with the prior generation’s Silicon Valley failkids. That’s how he met Thiel and got into Paypal, made his first billion, and became an ahem Angel Investor for all sorts of glamour projects.

this was a CIA Mossad operation that got out of hand stupid and sloppy

Pretty much the history of intelligence services in a nutshell.

the rich pedophiles really REALLY started liking the setup

I do kinda wonder what the final shoe to drop was. But my money is more on Epstein extorting more money/freedom than his handlers believed he was entitled to.

The fact that Trump took over in 2017 and Epstein was arrested/murdered a few years later suggests - to me, at least - that he maybe called up his old friend and started making a few too many insistent demands. And it occurred to Trump (or someone in his immediate vicinity) that it would be easier to just arrest this guy and wack him than keep paying him off forever.

Opus 4.6 is genuinely pretty decent at programming now if you give it a good backbone to build off of.

Soup from a Stone.

Amazed they didn’t ask for 5-10 years of experience in AI coding.

Liberals love to pretend the law is self-enforcing and refuse to ask what role the state’s deeply racist and violent state bureaucrats, or the police and sheriff’s offices (nevermind any ICE agents operating in the state) will play.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eagle_Eye_(United_States)

Incidentally, Supreme Court Justice William Renquist started his career as a poll-watcher in Arizona, screening out any who looked too Democrat.

the volume of such posts surged from just under 2,000 per day to more than 6,000

I refuse to believe Twitter only had 2,000 anti-islamic posts a day.

A brave drone operator’s struggle with guilt and despair as she/they drop the bomb onto an all girls school mislabeled as an airforce base.

Swelling music as she stares at a picture of her own daughter while the burning bodies of the children play on a monitor just slightly out of focus behind her.

Even better.

The only thing cooler than Americans embracing green energy is Americans embracing illegalism.

Greeted as Liberators

assigns them a score if a citizen walks on the sidewalk correctly

Funny story about Jaywalking

The automobile lobby in the US took up the cause of labeling and scorning jaywalkers in the 1910s and early 1920s. In 1912, for instance, Popular Mechanics magazine reported that the term was current in Kansas City: “The city pedestrian who cares not for traffic regulations at street corners, but strays all over the street, crossing in the middle of the block, or attempting to save time by choosing a diagonal route across a street intersection instead of adhering to the regular crossing, is designated as a ‘jay walker,’ in Kansas City.”

In 1915, when New York City’s police commissioner Arthur Woods sought to apply the word “jaywalker” to anyone who crossed the street at mid-block, the New York Times protested, calling it “highly opprobrious” and “a truly shocking name.”

Originally in the US, the legal rule was that “all persons have an equal right in the highway, and that in exercising the right each shall take due care not to injure other users of the way”. In time, however, streets became the province of vehicular traffic, both practically and legally.

Anyway, enjoy your hyper-criminalized car culture hellscape while making spooky fingers about Evil Foreign Country.

Isn’t that just a modern Tesla at this point?

5 minutes to get it to 70% capacity, with a battery that drives several hundred miles on a charge.

But if you’re at the mall and there’s a charging station, you can plug it in and refill it while you do your shopping.

Truth Sparkler

The Mayor Pete of Silicon Valley