American here. Assuming we muddle through the next 3.5 years (a fairly big assumption, I admit), I think things will get better, but in a qualified way. The tension will dip and you can even make short term changes that will be welcome to everybody like easing border restrictions and increasing communication and cooperation, but it’s going to take literally generations of non-crazy American administrations to rebuild the trust to where it was, and that’s 100% fair.

Large infrastructure projects are going to get delayed or shelved, treaties will not be negotiated, money will be spent on duplicating efforts because the US may be a better or worse partner in future administrations, so we’re no longer a reliable partner in any way. All because half the country thinks you should never have to deal with anything you don’t immediately understand and approve of, and anything that’s mildly unpleasant in your life is the fault of people who don’t look or speak or pray like you.

Stick to football, bro.

Having seen Tuberville as a college football coach, that’s a hard no. Tommy is an idiot and an asshole.

How about the cop who decided to pop a (right leaning apparently!) Australian reporter from close range with a rubber bullet, just for shits and giggles?

I’ve never played crokinole, but I made a carrom board (mentioned in the article) years ago and it’s a lot of fun. Mine was not from very good plywood, so it needed extra starch, but while messy, I could get (what the internet said was) an acceptable number of rebounds. We still have it, but its last use was to hold a partially completed Harry Potter jigsaw puzzle whose many dark areas stubbornly outlasted my daughter’s interest in the franchise. Given ol’ Jo’s proclivities, that’s just as well, though there’s still a few wand and such floating around, a few of which I made on my lathe.

No! Not Jordan Catalano!

Actually, totally yes. Leto is a walking hollywood predator cliche.

Not immune, but let’s say resistant. Due to federation, they couldn’t lock down existing federated content; due to open source they couldn’t lock down the user experience; and due to those two, nobody’s going to offer them a check for a couple million dollars.

I have a third cousin (genealogy brings different sorts of “family” into your life) who lives in Vancouver. She is the sweetest old lady, feisty, active, and a little on the conservative side by BC standards. Whooo buddy she is heated about all this. She still likes me, and she adores my wife, but she is no fan of America these days and is not shy to Facebook the everliving fuck out of that fact. Can’t say I disagree. :-)

There is test-taking software that locks out all other functions during the essay-writing period. Obviously, damn near anything is hackable, but it’s non-trivial, unlike asking ChatGPT to write your essay for you in the style of a B+ high student. There is some concern about students who learn differently or compose less efficiently, but as father to such a student, I’m still getting to the point where I’m not sure what’s left to do other than sandbox “exploitable” graded work in a controlled environment.

I too am into the afternoon of my life. Fuck I hated getting up to go to sacrament meeting. When I was a kid, we still had two hours of classes afterwards, too. Jesus what a beatdown the Morning church was.

Literally the one undeniable success of the post-WW2 order was the lack of a global-scale hot war. Everything else is tainted by smaller scale conflicts and self-interest and economic inequality and picking winners and losers in a callous and awful way. But, you could always say it’s been 60, 70, and then 80 years with no world war 3. We didn’t nuke ourselves. We didn’t devastate our species’ potential to make the world better for more people. I guess on net there was even progress, statistically speaking, though that’s small comfort to those it bypassed and the benefits sure as shit were not distributed equitably.

That one thing, that lowest of bars – no global shooting war – is now at risk because a handful of men who are stupid or evil or both, surrounded by people orbiting around them on those axes of stupidity and evilness, have decided that too much is not enough.

Maybe for any sort of food-supplementing gardening and/or egg-farming. For simple living space, it’s extravagant. I live in the Texas suburbs, and half-acre lots are nowhere near the norm until you get way out into the exurbs. Quarter acre lots are a rather generous and (and resource intensive), and 1/8 would be standard for “starter” homes.

And this:

https://www.theverge.com/news/656720/ed-martin-dc-attorney-wikipedia-nonprofit-threat

Texas: does something extra stupid and fascist.

Oklahoma: “Hold my three point two!”

Yup! They got the safest of safe Albertan Conservatives to just cuck himself publicly (that’s what they like to say? Right?) for Poilievre’s benefit, because an “unstoppable movement has grown under his leadership.”

Basically seems like Waltz is the designated fall guy to preserve Hegseth, most likely because Hegseth has a jawline and more pomade.

Earlier in the week, news broke that Hegseth had personally created a Signal group chat including his wife, brother and about a dozen other people who he then texted highly sensitive information on active strikes in Yemen… One person said Russian and Chinese spies were no doubt directly targeting susceptible people in Hegseth’s inner circle.

Even if, as I am sure he very wrongly does, Hegseth believes himself morally beyond reproach and too smart to be tricked, does he honestly think every single person in his circle and in their circles is as well? JFC.

I do sometimes think there is a bit of hand-wringing that happens where people glom onto the most visible sign of changing times and blame it for things that probably aren’t as different as the adults think, but by the same token most schools in richer countries have screens everywhere with school-related interconnectivity and even tools that are not unlike social media.

I see very little downside here, even if it may not result in some magic rebirth of older forms of social interaction. It seems like the major benefit from the French pilot programs was “improved atmosphere,” in which case it’s still better than nothing. Having a period when kids are learning to deal with small-group dynamics is not a bad thing, and neither is taking “dealing with phone bullshit” off the teachers’ plates.

I mean… fine? France always does things kind of top-down and there’s certainly no reason you have to have your phone readily available, and plenty of evidence it’s good to be away from it.

It’s not like they need to get to their phones to tell their parents there’s an active shooter on campus. 😐

Agreed. Can we have this article taken off the internet? I don’t want it accessible from any of my connections.

Just that whatever level of fame he achieved, his talent and performances warranted more, IMHO, and between being choosy on projects, the occasional commercial dud, having a few of his greatest performances before he was a major name, and finding success in supporting roles while having “classic Hollywood” looks, there was just a disconnect. I have enjoyed his work much more than I have Tom Cruise’s, for instance.

Critic Roger Ebert wrote: "If there is an award for the most unsung leading man of his generation, Val Kilmer should get it.