Sam Bergman

It's ok to simply condemn a military action as immoral without even questioning whether or not it's illegal. It can be immoral, condemnable, and unambiguously wrong without being illegal!

The Most Chilling Detail in the U.S. Attack on an Iranian Naval Ship The Iranian warship was taking part in an international exercise with many other countries—including the United States.

This is a chilling crime. A shame on our country. The Iranian ship was unarmed. The US knew this. The sailors were murdered by our navy, and the survivors were left to die at sea.
newrepublic.com/post/207429/...

A brown penguin chick of some kind. It looks very much like a man in a suit. It is bedraggled and miserable

Made it to Friday but at what cost

lollllll

It would be even funnier if you could see the town of Winchester, New Hampshire, apparently beset by hardened criminals in need of a good knuckling.

Her argument was that, since New Hampshire already allows people to carry handguns, why not support house bill 1048, which would remove the state's prohibition on blackjacks, slung shots, and metallic knuckles.

She makes an interesting point.

Newspaper article, headlined "Bill would allow adults to carry brass knuckles"

What

The Iraq war — by the numbers Some key statistics on this 20th anniversary of the war’s beginning.

Just to return to the topic from yesterday, only the US can kill hundreds of thousands of civilians in previous wars and still have its citizens and reporters pretending that it doesn’t do that.

www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-pre...

At least 13 hospitals and health facilities hit during attacks on Iran, WHO says Global health body investigating reports that four medics are among the 1,230 people killed in Iran since start of war

In Gaza, Israel and Biden normalized war crimes beyond anything we have seen before.

And now, Israel and Trump are using that model against Iranian civilians.

At least 13 hospitals and health facilities hit during attacks on Iran, WHO says

www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

one thing I like saying to my cats in admonishment is "you know the rules" when they very clearly do not know and will never know the rules

New sentence I have just spoken aloud to a cat: "Act like you've been here before."

And we'll call it "innovation"

You want to make art? We'll steal it. You want to make food? We'll poison it. You want to manufacture widgets? We'll structure the laws so that a PE firm can buy you out, saddle you with some other company's debts, strip everything you've ever built for parts, and fire all your employees.

I'm not smart enough to explain things the way Judah can, but one thing I've seen coming my whole adult life (roughly since Enron collapsed) is the way the US overclass is determined to make made-up financial chicanery the *only* component of the economy.

This should be terrifying to anyone who makes their living actually doing something, as opposed to moving imaginary piles of money around a computer screen.

Trump has now explicitly affirmed the right to choose or veto leaders in Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, Honduras and Argentina, and implicitly Brazil and various European countries.

This is a direct violation of sovereignty and self-determination, which are bedrock foundations of any international order.

Hard to argue

"We think. We read. We are not peasants. We are mechanics. But even the peasants know better than to believe in a war. Everybody hates this war." "There is a class that controls a country that is stupid and does not realize anything and never can. That is why we have this war." "Also they make money out of it." "Most of them don't," said Passini. "They are too stupid. They do it for nothing. For stupidity."

I started reading Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” a few days ago. This passage made me put the book down for a few seconds…

There's a very famous (non-classical) musician who went to Juilliard with a few of my friends, and he apparently used to walk around with a melodica in his mouth, and when anyone would talk to him, he would answer by blowing the melodica. This is what I mean by a person using art as a vehicle.

He can be talented and still be only in the game for the money and the attention.

I once built an entire orchestral/theatrical show around this rant of mine. It contained one of my better gratuitous shots at Tchaikovsky.

That quote is as clear a statement as anyone could possibly make that art is only important to him as a path to celebrity. That's his prerogative, and it bears no resemblance to why most of us do what we do. It's fine.

The thing about the Chalamet quote is that it's not worth getting upset about. It's not new that there are people who get into the arts because they care deeply about a particular art form, and people who get into the arts as a vehicle for becoming as famous as possible.

the biggest problem with polyamory is that it increases the odds you could be in a relationship with someone who writes personal essays

i'm taking a brave stance that may get me canceled: there is no reason for the pervert glasses to exist

YouTube video by Forbrukerrådet - Norwegian Consumer Council A Day in the Life of an Ensh*ttificator

WATCH: This is my favourite thing on the internet right now. Well done Norway! youtube.com/watch?v=T4Up...

I've never actually read/seen that one!

Of the tragedies, I really do like Romeo & Juliet a lot, but only in a production that understands that this is NOT a love story, it's the story of a brutal, grinding gang war that's been going on so long that both sides sacrifice their own children to it without a second thought.

I'm the guy who likes the comedies better than the long, drawn-out tragedies. Give me a nice tight Midsummer Night's Dream with a Puck who knows how to chew the scenery and I'm happy.

The very existence of commercially available glasses with Internet-connected cameras sold by Meta, a company built entirely on hiding the costs of services in negative privacy externalities, is an indictment of U.S. tech law and policy. This is an unfixable product from a fundamentally bad company.