John Pfaff

That just got saved for future use!

As someone quick to point out baserate fallacies, looks like the oil price jump is not one.

My usual rebuttal to “biggest percent change!” is “yeah, but what abt the absolute change?”

Which here? Also the biggest of all time.

Someone talking abt gas prices in 2008.

This post has to violate some terms of service somewhere.

We at least need a content warning. If Twitter screenshots can get auto-hit w “click to see,” ones w aged-based violence like this surely can too.

And what we do with that is a tough thing to figure out.

I don’t accept that framing myself.

But saying “see how you’re inconsistent” fails, BECAUSE HE WAS NOT.

Which is, to be clear, worse.

It means we had no common ground to stand on.

That’s the false hope embedded in cries of “hypocrite”—that we share common values we can get back to.

We don’t.

It was a good example of how yelling “hypocrite!” misses the point.

His views were internally consistent.

Abortion is a crime. And one is personally responsible for the crimes one commits.

A baby is also a choice. And one is personally responsible for the baby one has.

I expected him to seem uncomfortable or prevaricate in some way.

He didn’t.

He leaned right in to a personal-responsibility take.

Abortion was a crime, to him. But what comes next is entirely their responsibility.

He wasn’t really pro-life. He was abortion-as-crime.

It’s a real distinction.

Way back in the pre-Trump days in the other place, when it was slightly less crazy and I didn’t know better, I‘d sometimes get in debates w a future-MAGA person whose work and mine intersected.

This came up once: I asked how pro-lifers could be so anti-support-for-babies.

Found his answer bracing.

More of the orange clouds

Cotton candy colored clouds in a sky that is not dark at 7 pm.

Oh lost hour of sleep last night, you were 10000% worth it.

Oh, not me—I’m the photographer, the four pounder is my now-healthy teenager. But thank you!

Genuine question: is this the sort of thing—explicitly labeling as “Saturday” footage that was not from Saturday—the sort of thing a functioning FCC could punish Fox for?

And if so, what is the statute of limitations for doing so?

Man, talk about a strategic failure by Nixon and Kissinger. Selling billions of our own weapons to a country we were actively at war with at the time?? I’m surprised that didn’t get more coverage then.

I can’t decide if “inveterate lying” or “miles-deep stupidity” is worse for democracy.

It's like someone saying "I miss the NFL. I don't care about anything else, but we need to bring back football."

What do you even say to something like that?

Or is this an (sub)urban design complaint? Do these parks no longer exist in our suburbs, just in amoral cities?

There's a playground like that on, like, every other block here. We don't have to go back in time, just walk a few blocks.

Or does he miss it snowing in December? I think detonating oil refineries isn't going to help bring back the snow.

This one is just BONKERS.

Well, they're not four pounds anymore, but otherwise yes.

I don't have any real point here. I just didn't expect to come across this pic tonight, and it always throws me for a loop when I do.

(It's also why I teach my 1Ls that provocation is crap doctrine, assuming that trauma steadily declines w time. This pic hurls me back 13 yrs in an instant.)

Going thru some old pix tonight, and came across this.

It's true our medical system is a mess. But the doctors, researchers and EMT themselves?

Inside that pile of machinery is a 4 lb newborn whose insides all pointed the wrong way. 50 yrs ago? Doesn't live 2 days. But now? Thriving teenager.

(And I knew who you meant in your first version, and in fact had him in the back of my mind when I wrote that but didn’t want to get into the weeds. Plus sixty yrs ago is a different reality in politics, I think.)

Fair enough … tho within four years he was so unpopular he decided to not even bother running for reelection.

And I’d argue Vietnam is less like Iraq and Iran and more like Afghanistan: maybe a bad call, but tied to legitimate if mishandled geopolitical situations.

These takes are always such transparent cope bc … when have Dems ever elected someone who has launched destructive wars of choice like W in Iraq or Trump in Iran?

They haven’t. So there’s never a “see, for ex …” that points to a real person.

So the problem isn’t partisanship. It’s GOP POTUS’s.

cc: all past, present, and future law students.

“Adversarial” and “asshole” are not synonyms.

(I’m not saying that’s wrong.)

“Pokémon is neoliberal carceralism” might truly be Peak Bluesky.

Densest fog I ever saw was a Thanksgiving break back in college or grad school, when Buffalo got about 3 or 4 feet of snow in less than a day, only to have it hit the 50s the day after and melt it all.

Every airport from Buffalo to Syracuse shut down; had to fly out of Toronto (just north enough).

City just posted a dense fog advisory for tonight, as we get into the 50s, and think this is awesome news (as long as you're not flying).

Gotta think that's the last of the snow, rapidly melting and evaporating. At last.

OMG.

I just realized that when my wife asked me who Leopold and Loeb were, I actually gave her the story of Sacco and Venzetti.

Can’t keep my high-profile 1920s cases straight.

How my mind works:

My wife just asked me if I could remember the name of those tiger performers in Vegas, and without missing a beat, and in total sincerity, I answered “Leopold and Loeb, right?”

(I realized my mistake right after, but then couldn’t reorient my mind to the correct answer at all.)