ICE Lawyer: He’s out of our custody, there’s nothing that can be done.

Judge: I order you to get the State Department involved and demand his return from El Salvador, or else I will hold you and your boss and your boss’ boss in contempt.

Shouldn’t that be the next step?

Aw, I remember hearing about these years ago and thinking that investing in a cask of booze sounded so much cooler and more real than investing hallucinatory financial instruments or whatever.

The former Berlin businessman I referred to earlier told me that he blamed his own group, people with the time and the money and the opportunity to know better, for what happened to Germany. “We ignored Hitler,” he said. “We considered him an unimportant fellow, not quite a gentleman, not of our own class. We considered it just a little bit vulgar to bother with him, to bother with politics at all.”

They thought of the government as “They.” The only possible route to a clear conscience in politics is to accept political responsibility, either as an active member of the party in power or as an equally active member of the loyal opposition.

Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government

I’m out of the loop. Is this ball balancing image a political metaphor with which I’m not familiar, or is this just demonstrating the weird arbitrary limitations put on AI image generators?

That doesn’t sound fair to Greenland if/when Trump loses.

/nottheonion

The idea did occur that I’d better be damn sure that I like whatever honey I’ll be eating for the rest of my life.

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequila.

—Mitch Ratcliffe

“I declare myself President for life!”

“So you’re saying there’s exactly one very particular way for us to make you not be President anymore…?”

“Uh…”

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

–Jean-Paul Sartre

You know how people remember how the fecklessness of the Weimar Republic is what allowed Nazism to take over? They’ll be remembered like that. And by “they,” I kind of collectively mean nearly all of us.

Named official envoy to… Romania, so that he can go back and pick right up where he left off, except now he’ll have diplomatic immunity.

The difference is that Zuckerberg is pretending to be a Totally Cool Dude^TM, whereas Trump is authentically a psychopath manbaby moron. People are very good at detecting inauthenticity.

On 1 March 1815, Napoleon and his followers landed on the French mainland at Golfe-Juan and headed for Grenoble through the foothills of the Alps, taking the route now known as Route Napoléon. The 5th Regiment intercepted him just south of Grenoble on 7 March. Napoleon approached the battalion alone and called to them, “Here I am. Kill your Emperor, if you wish!” The soldiers responded with, “Vive l’empereur!” and joined Napoleon’s men. Six days later, 5,000 troops under Michel Ney, who had boasted that he would bring Napoleon to Paris in an iron cage, also joined Napoleon.

I rather doubt Trump has the kind of personal magnetism and courage that would get him to go face to face with armed troops and recruit them to his own side.

Where Is My Mind?

He’s spent his entire life falling up the stairs.

comfortable, like… like old leather.

SLXPLOVS

No person ought, or of right can be compelled, to attend any religious worship, or erect, or support any place of worship, or maintain any minister, contrary to the dictates of his conscience.

–Vermont Constitution, Article 3

Wish we could have got that one in the national Constitution.

In for a penny, in for a pound.