Danny Deck

Imagine hating someone so much you volunteer them to be Speaker.

For sure. I just don't find him or any of the supporting characters likeable. This is somewhat on topic for this thread as well. I've thought about how they say it's impossible to make a truly anti-war film because at some point you do have to show someone being heroic, I think it's also impossible to make an anti-sociopath television show or movie as well. I'm victim of it as much as anyone. The Godfather (especially Part 2) is about Michael becoming and acting as a monster, but when he tells Senator Geary, "You can have my answer now, if you like. My final offer is this: nothing." I'm still like hell yeah, get him Michael. Even though I know that by the end he has murdered his own brother, and so many other people. This scene from Goodfellas is De Niro deciding to kill everyone involved in the Lufthansa heist and he might as well be Satan in it, but still I'm like damn he looks cool and it's gotta be done. So now we have all of these people brought up on this media and hidden behind their screens and so they get to play act at it themselves. And it just gets reinforced that you will get likes for pretending like this is a moral way to act. Most will never actually do something in the real world, but it's still a bad stew for people to live in.

For fans of The Wire, I recommend David Simon's (creator and showrunner) books Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and The Corner. Both have scenes that go directly into The Wire. Homicide was also adapted on its own into the NBC series that's finally streaming on Peacock, and The Corner was made into a miniseries on HBO, but I think it's only uploaded to Youtube. I cannot get into Breaking Bad. I've watched the first season twice and both times I've thought "I'm supposed to watch these characters I despise become worse people?" Pass.

Isn't this about the rate cut rather than the election? Events have continued.

The one on the left is Qasem Soleimani, leader of the Quds forces of Iran. The one on the right is Brendan "Dark" Hughes, a member of the provisional IRA.

I was thinking it's interesting to see this lionization of Mangione when the Say Nothing miniseries was just released. The people who think this was justified would do well to watch it (or read the book!) and see how people like Brendan Hughes felt about their youthful "revolutionary" violence once they reached middle age.

I'll say there is one more common thing than a busted charger. The Aldi by my house has some chargers and inevitably the ICE vehicle in the worst condition in the lot is parked in one of the spaces for the charger.

On this first one, this is true for much smaller things than a car. Buy high quality adapters and cables for your phone too! But one thing I've noticed is that usually when I see a bay of chargers at least one is out of order. Not having anyone on site to fix problems like gas stations have seems like a real issue. Don't want to just barely get to a charging station and find out it's broke and there is no one you can get in touch with to fix it.

"During Newsom's successful 2017 run for governor, the California Democrat pledged that he would "lead the effort to develop the 3.5 million new housing units we need by 2025 because our solutions must be as bold as the problem is big." Can't find an actual number they built in that time, but they added 123K in 2022 which was an increase over 2021. They have a reduced goal of 2.5 million units by 2030 which would mean 500k a year. Won't get there without extensive permitting reform.

I hate this time of year. All of the "Opening on..." dates are lies as they mean opening in maybe 5 cities. Particularly looking forward to September 5 and The Brutalist. I find it particularly annoying that The Brutalist isn't going wide over the holidays because it's 3.5 hours. I'm going to set the time aside but work with me here on releasing it when I'm going to have days off work anyway.

I'm not downloading that app and it won't let me watch in the browser anymore so all of your links are useless on me. I just find the actual question of if he will or won't follow through on the ban he supported before Jeff Yass gave him money and told him TikTok was good actually.

Do we think Trump will try to rescind this or just grant continuances and never enforce it?

The ACLU and other groups wanted Biden to pardon anyone who was put in home confinement during the Covid pandemic and allowed to stay there after the emergency order was lifted. He gave them what they wanted. It is why it was part of such a large pardon order. Most of these people are now quite old, and non-violent offenders, so they had a very low recidivism rate, so it's an idea that sounds good on paper I guess. Still some pretty awful people can be included in this. The worst I've seen is the "cash for kids" judge who was sentencing kids to prison and getting kickbacks from the for profit prison they were going to. The pardon power is already pretty abused at this point IMO and this kind of blanket action seems like it just expands on that abuse.

Shadow government sounds a lot more insidious than shadow cabinet which is a feature of a lot of governments. I'm not altogether clear on what they do other than issue press releases. I don't think it would work in our system. In the UK the shadow cabinet is made up of MPs, who may would be likely candidates to hold the position they're shadowing in a new government. In our system, unlike in the UK, our cabinet is made up of people from all over not just Congress. Our parties seem to be significantly weaker than in the UK and other parliamentary countries and I don't think either could display the discipline necessary to put this in place. Nevertheless, I don't think we will want for politicians releasing press releases saying Trump administration policies are bad and theirs would be better.

Went to this over the weekend. I enjoyed it. Jude Law trying his best to be Gene Hackman. They did great with the robbery scenes.

We're now entering a point where so many who work in politics are multiple generations from someone who hasn't gone to college. They only know other people who have gone to college, they marry people who went to college. This isn't so much about liberal brainwashing at college, I think if anything this is more about living in a theoretical world rather than the real world. They have lost the ability to talk to people who didn't go to college and don't run into them except as theoretical people who only have desires that make it into textbooks. But now it's not like they have that many people to even pull from who can speak "non-college" natively. Not sure how you rebuild that.

Got quite a few I'm watching right now. The Agency (Paramount+ w/Showtime) - It's a remake of the French show The Bureau which I really liked. So far it's a slow burn, but I've enjoyed it. Say Nothing (Hulu) - One episode left. They have had to leave out a ton from the book, but it has been a great adaptation. Day of the Jackal (Peacock) - Has been good so far, but with 3 episodes to go, this is going to end up being pretty flabby I think. Landman (Paramount+) - Wholly ridiculous, but still fun.

There was a reason back in September and early October all the banks and tech companies were suddenly bullish on nuclear. They all finally had this realization.

People can compete in the leagues that correspond to their gender at birth. They would still presumably have to stay within the rules regarding steroids and associated hormones.

Okay I've googled and it appears Clarendon is FTM transgender not the other way?

Define mild. In Oklahoma we get the worst of all worlds IMO.

The Rav4 and Prius plug in hybrids are both rated for about 40 miles on the electric engine. I could run exclusively on it for about 90% of my driving. It would mean very little change in my behavior, plugging in at night, and would even have benefits, it's way faster than a standard Rav4. To the extent people are worried about pollution from cars, and climate change, it seems like these are a much easier sale than full electric. I'd consider one of these as my next vehicle way before a full electric even if they had price parity.

Migrant encounters were down significantly in 2024. Mexico has said they will continue the policies they put in place. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/mexico-stick-with-policies-aimed-stopping-migrants-after-trump-win-2024-11-08/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/mexican-border-crackdown-takes-heat-out-trumps-migrant-jibes-2024-10-28/

They did end up expanding Juror #2 so I was able to see it this weekend. I really enjoyed it. It has some of the usual Eastwood weaknesses, the pros, Nicholas Hoult, JK Simmons, Toni Collette, have no trouble delivering good performances in 1 or 2 takes, but the rest of the jury could have probably used a few more takes. But I found the premise, a juror thinks he was involved in the case, very compelling gives you something to think about well after leaving the theater. My showing, Saturday 3:30, was pretty full which is impressive for a movie that has gotten no promotion. It's unfortunate that WB-Discovery is so broke they can't put any money behind this. They could have sent Eastwood out on a much higher note than they did.

I think where activists on the left go wrong is when they turn away from the tenants of a liberal society. Where many of the victories of liberal society were appeals to equality before the law or put more simply, fairness, now many of the fights are not appeals to that. You cannot convince most people that it is fair to let anyone who has gone through male puberty compete against women, you cannot convince people that it is fair to prioritize one group of people over another due to historical wrongs against their race or gender. Affirmative Action is unpopular even among the groups it is meant to help. I think there is an insufficient amount of liberalism in the air today rather than too much because so many tenants of liberalism are being explicitly rejected. Instead of ground up arguments based on the tenants of liberalism we get top down decrees from "the experts."