You can be smart and evil, but at this point it’s pretty hard to be a conscious human engaged in society and not have an opinion either way.

For what it’s worth, there’s been talk that they’re really having to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find true undecided voters willing to go on TV and be part of these panels. That’s unfortunate in the sense that it suggests there aren’t many actually-persuadable voters out there, but these clowns aren’t especially representative of the general electorate, either.

TLDR: the polio vaccine used to contain weakened versions of the three strains of poliovirus. When weakened live virus vaccines are used, the people inoculated with them shed copies of those viruses, which is usually no big deal… except that one of those weakened polio strains would, very rarely, mutate back into its full-strength form and sicken unvaccinated people living around those who were being vaccinated.

Eight years ago, the decision was made to remove the problematic strain of polio from the vaccine, because it was thought low wild infection rates meant that the risk of vaccination-derived infection had become higher than catching it from the environment. Regrettably, it seems that decision was made in error – type 2 polio outbreaks have soared since then.

Do you think he capitalized “LAW & ORDER” like that because it’s how it looks in the TV show title sequence?

Doubt it. “RuPaul” and "Lachluster"are too clever to have emerged from the dishwater-soaked, infected sponge sitting on top of his spinal column where a real human would have a brain.

Somewhere a philosophy undergrad just sat bolt upright and shouted, “A TROLLEY PROBLEM! I must go, the world needs me!”

It was a pretty milquetoast acknowledgement of Israeli war crimes, without even mentioning them by name as the perpetrators. I would have hoped for at least something along the lines of:

The children of Gaza deserve better than to be trapped between a terrorist regime and an Israeli military, that, by their actions, shows that they do not value Palestinian lives as worthy of protection.

But I guess even that would have been too spicy for the pro-Israel lobby within the Democratic party. That said, I’ll take any public acknowledgement and push for a ceasefire over the current status quo. Much as I wish it were possible, I don’t think we’re ever gonna get a major figure in any political party to come out and say, for example “Israel is an deeply unjust nation that must reckon with the status of Palestinians if it wishes to become a true, legitimate democratic state.”

Deepfake exploitable, if nothing else

Only by giving massive amounts of no-strings-attached government money to Smithfield and ConAgra while lightly scolding them about shrinkflation can we address high grocery costs!

Alas, I was so looking forward to hearing them parrot the talking points of acclaimed Leninist… (checks notes) … JD Vance.

Conservatism is about preserving a historical social order, rather than existing conditions generally. Acknowledging an environmental change and altering the structure of the economy to prevent it threatens the social order that allows oil companies, chemical companies, and auto manufacturers to be some of the wealthiest and politically powerful entities in the world.

Further, in the short term, ignoring climate change preserves the status quo for the wealthy and powerful. In the long term, though, it only really becomes an existential threat to those who are not positioned to profit from it – look at Nestle attempting to take control of water supplies for an early example of what this might look like. Cataclysm is a life-and-death issue for the masses. For the powerful, it’s an opportunity.

Ohio rizz

Consider that many of the same people think of Arch as a viable daily driver distro for the everyman. Some folks are more accepting of jank than others.

It’s a combination of things – Trump’s agressive, chauvinistic persona maps well onto Latin concepts of machismo, and there’s also a surprising strain of pull-the-ladder-up-behind-you thinking amongst established Hispanic families aimed at the current wave of migrants.

With regard to this specific issue, you don’t even have to go looking for cases of young women being discouraged from reporting rape and sexual assault allegations against promising young athletes, because “think how you could hurt his future prospects” – examples are so plentiful that you can’t help but find them if you spend any time reviewing sports news. It’s really only been in the last decade or so that anybody has seriously pushed back against the idea that Johnny Sportsball’s ability to score points for the local team is more important than the safety and bodily autonomy of women.

I’ve not rewatched Voyager since its original airing, but my recollection is that they had been playing up a Seven/Doctor pairing for a while and then Chakotay just swept in out of the blue as the Designated Guy in the final episodes. I always wondered if there was pressure against pairing off the two most “synthetic” members of the crew as being too much like having them “keep to their kind?”

In Trump’s case it is usually to do with his own inflated claims of rally attendance rather than any firm polling data. Donny really knows how to inflame his base, but his party’s consistent underperformance in by-year elections suggests that doesn’t translate into general election success.

The only people who didn’t take that bet were ones who didn’t see the point of putting money on 1:1.01 odds.

Jumping all the way back to 1954 in Lee Atwater’s infamous timeline of the Southern Strategy and hoping the 2024 electorate will go with them is a bold strategy. We’ll see how it plays out for them.

There’s a certain sweet irony in the “token DEI hire” being the overwhelming and enthusiastic consensus pick to take over the campaign. Not that I expect Republican commentators to make the connection, but at least I can enjoy it.