"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux

Unsurprisingly, the thing Noah Smith is saying is obviously not true. Look at reports on the reaction to the assassination of MLK... "glee, satisfaction and weeping in equal parts" (www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/r...) as the Smithsonian notes "some actually celebrated" (nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stor...).

I hope everyone will forgive the bluntness of my language, but it seems like bluntness is warranted: it now seems pretty clear that the president raped children or at least knew about and actively facilitated the rape of children. I think it is time we stopped using coded language to say that.

Hegseth's insistence that 'Department of War' fake-name-change is about 'warriors' and 'warfighters' is the dumbest s*** I think I have ever heard. The guys that created the Department of Defense in 1947 - in NINETEEN FORTY-SEVEN - had done more warfighting than Trump's entire cabinet put together.

The really relevant thing here is, "when they respond to you, do they tell the truth?" We generally prefer fire departments that show up to ones that don't, but if the fire department showed up to your burning house, sprayed it with gasoline, tossed a bomb in and left, that's not better.

Hm, bold, but I can see the argument here.

The election is gonna be The Warp in the West where every plausible outcome (and some impossible ones) all become true at the same time. Congress is going to assemble and have two thousand members and somehow eleven of them will be George Santos.

So now we're going to spend billions of dollars ripping out the catapult system so that we can spend billions of dollars putting it back in. You would think, with the Iran War going so badly, Trump and Hegseth wouldn't have time to damage national security in other, new ways. Alas.

Apropos of recent discussions, this is also correct. And I would also add that the 'backlash' isn't really backlash? Like, it isn't justified by what happened before - it's just a naked grab for social power by authoritarians who were authoritarians before and after.

Sorting my books into boxes alphabetically while I get ready to - at some point, I hope - set up new bookshelves and I really need to look into balance issues. I mean, one of my boxes is just straight up labeled O-P. Gotta balance that. Nerfs required.

FWIW, I think the question of "Did Woke 1 go to far?" it depends on where you ask! On college campuses? Sometimes. In making cops responsible for bad behavior? Obviously not! In holding sex pests and criminals to account? Clearly incomplete, look at the damn White House.

I mean, vote in the state you are registered to vote in, but honestly, register to vote in the state where your vote will have the most impact. I kept my registration in Virginia when I was an undergrad in Mass., but switched it to Florida when I did my MA there (back when it was competitive).

Light infantry: remarkably useful, it turns out. Remember to bring some.

Have we considered the bold, new idea of paying for finished products (perhaps on a on a cost+ basis) rather than throwing money at companies regardless of what they deliver? (This is how we did a lot of military contracting in WWII)