Of course what you can tell is that Musk hasn't engaged with the actual poem, he's engaged with school-boy summaries of Trojan War mythology, so he's thinking about Paris and Helen (neither really central characters in the Iliad) and/or the movie adaptations.

it's not that i ever doubted that being a barista was a skilled position, but my year-long effort to try to produce a half-decent latte at home has convinced me that a good barista is easily more skilled than virtually every c-suite executive on the planet

Folks are rightly focusing on how gross and racist-orientalist this is and I just feel the need to note that Ahmed al-Sharaa has one wife, Latifa al-Droubi, who from what I can find (she seems quite private) has an MA in Arabic literature.

I agree that Trump would never resign. It's just simply not part of his malignant psychology. Zero empirical evidence indicating he would do such a thing. In fact, his track record indicates much the opposite.

IMO, the only way it would happen (theoretically) is as part of a criminal immunity deal.

I'd sooner believe that Trump would Charles-the-First himself into Congress in pursuit of the Five Members than that he'd resign.

But to be clear, this is an investigation into extremely serious criminality by major politicians; it deserves to be brought out for its own sake.

It is hard to imagine even graphic video evidence would break Trump’s hold on the Republican Party. But I can well imagine outrage ruining the prospects for Democrats who had this information and sat on it for the sake of “propriety”. What’s the state of their precious nonpartisanship now?

That is true, but I think the effect of delegitimizing do-nothing Dems is also a positive result. Biden’s Justice Department sat on this for 4 years and I assumed that was because there was nothing there. If that’s wrong, the people involved need to be out of the running for any future Dem admin.

I mean the big thing is being able to go into individual house districts next year and say "your congressman voted to cover up for pedophiles" and just hammer that message.

Really wild how all these Harvard scientists and mathematics guys constantly talked about how Jeffrey Epstein was this brilliant, "misunderstood" man and then you read his emails and he's clearly a barely literate lecher, extremely easy to understand

*ding ding ding*

There it is. Wealth may not trickle down, but the erosion of ethical norms by those powerful enough to ignore them sure does.

You don't need to implement full communism for this; you just need to make it impossible to control enough wealth to be able to destroy someone's life on a whim.

As with many such things, tax the piss out of the richest of the rich

Social norms break down when you cannot refuse to associate with someone because they are either ungodly rich or are supported by someone who is. The only solution for a stable society is one where *no one* is obscenely wealthy.

So my question is how do we establish (or reestablish) sufficient social shame that no one would make this argument in public for fear of their reputation?

And to be clear, I don't mean 'for fear of their reputation' in the sense of Worf, 'Oh no, my honor!' because that will never move some people.

I mean 'for fear of their reputation' as in, 'no one in polite society will ever talk to me after this.' Because no one should.

More than anything else, powerful men - like the ones who run the NYT - believe in the legitimacy of power itself. Because if it isn’t legitimate, they have to start asking hard questions about the world and themselves.

All I can say is I attended a Democratic Party event in DALLAS, TEXAS 10 days ago with officials and candidates and the biggest cheers were for Mamdani and the most questions/most frequent topic of conversation was Epstein.

We should not overthink this.

From Bond Girl to Diamond Queen, Rosamund Pike Still Wants To Provoke You Rosamund Pike discusses her journey from Bond girl to versatile leading lady, her return to the stage, and saying goodbye to The Wheel of Time.

I profiled the phenomenal Rosamund Pike about playing the #NowYouSeeMe franchise's newest villain, why she's still grieving the end of #TheWheelOfTime, and the roles she's gravitating towards next — although she'll always be interested in more provocative characters:

I'm not trying to be mean, but racists who believe Trump betrayed them by being a child molester are not going to embrace the Democratic Party without forcing that party to embrace racism. And the people gained would in no way make up for those lost.

the connections trump had to multiple "modeling agencies" that were actually fronts for human trafficking is pretty interesting! i mean, maybe not AS interesting as the question of whether tim walz visited china in may or june of 1989, but like, at least moderately newsworthy imho

The early days of the internet poisoned a whole bunch of brains of people my age +/- 10 yrs into thinking news and movies and music could be, should be, must be free at point of consumption.

Education minister wants UCP volunteers to counter-campaign against his own recall bid | CBC News Demetrios Nicolaides wants supporters to share the "positive things" he's done. The leader of the campaign to recall him worries about "undue influence" against petitioners.

“Nicolaides said his team won’t be verifying signatures.

“I think that was a typo,” he said”

#abpoli #ableg #cdnpoli

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

"I bring a sort of 'borders shouldn’t exist' vibe to the immigration debate that liberals don’t really like."

Saw someone repost this but, folks, this is literally the liberal position. It doesn't get more liberal.

I did not know why Charlotte was a target.

75-80% of the population, sure: we as humans do some very shitty things that are socially accepted at the time. But if it's creeping up much past that, I think it should probably raise flags that something's missing from your thinking, because it is not the case that almost the entire population

I can't help but feel that if your ideological and moral commitments make out 95%+ of the population to be fundamentally evil, you might want to review them.

Beginning to understand why Mamdani's first move is to reform property taxes lmao what is going on

People always think they can afford their bigotry. Most cannot.

News sites have had a few decades now to set up microtransactions and they haven't done it for reasons that utterly escape me. No, I won't subscribe to the Podunk Gazette, but if they have a viral investigative feature, I'll pay them a couple bucks for it!!

places that keep him around are going to be sending a pretty strong signal that they value complicity with powerful men more than they value women.