If ICE is rounding up anyone who looks Hispanic, ignoring or dismissing their papers, then a new visa isn’t going to help, is it?

This administration is just 97 Karens in a trenchcoat

I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t think I buy that as a comparison.

Revocation of statutory citizenship would presumably come from an act of congress, revoking the citizenship of whole classes of people at once, like “everyone born on an overseas military base” or “everyone born on a US territory.”

In contrast, the administration is going after naturalized (constitutional) citizens in a systematic way. It’s not happening at a scale that has any policy-level meaning in a country as large as this, but it can create fear and uncertainty, a feeling of precariousness.

If you have some citizens with real citizenship and other citizens with provisional, revocable citizenship, then you have created a system, both in theory and in practice, with first-class and second-class citizens.

Yet I have a feeling those of us who really were born here are never going to have a citizenship advantage over the likes of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Patrick Soon-Shiong, and so on.

The belief in patriarchal hierarchy on the one hand, and the belief that women and children are less-than-human property that exist for the benefit of men on the other, may not be identical beliefs. But they sure go together easily, don’t they?

What if the connection between reactionary MAGA politics and the sexual abuse of children is deeper than we want to admit?

The name for this idea is pedocon theory.

Pedocon theory suggests that this is not an aberration. Pedocon theory suggests that this was the inevitable result of the conservative project, because the conservative project is inherently pedophilic.

– We Need to Talk About Pedocon Theory

I wouldn’t mind reading some background on this, if anyone has a link to share?

If Moderna can figure out how to use mRNA to give you Mar-a-Lago face, mRNA will suddenly be in good graces again.

The National Park Service said in a statement provided to USA TODAY that, with limited exceptions, only the U.S. flag and other authorized flags are permitted on flagpoles managed by the agency. The policy was outlined in a directive the agency issued on Jan. 21. Exemptions can include flags that provide historical context…

Well if the facts aren’t the facts and the truth isn’t the truth I guess the rules get to not be the rules, too.

Not enough people are aware that the compound added to gasoline, tetraethyl lead (TEL), was understood to be potently toxic before it was used as a gasoline additive. Effective alternatives to TEL existed, but TEL had the advantage that its use could be patented. It could make some very rich companies even richer.

Short article from Smithsonian Magazine, 2016: Leaded Gas Was a Known Poison the Day It Was Invented

…in February 1923, a filling station sold the first tank of leaded gasoline. [TEL developer] Midgley wasn’t there: he was in bed with severe lead poisoning, writes History.com. The next year, there was serious backlash against leaded gasoline after five workers died from TEL exposure at the Standard Oil Refinery in New Jersey, writes Deborah Blum for Wired, but still, the gasoline went into general sale later that decade.

Long, long article from The Nation, 2000, by way of archive.org: The Secret History of Lead

In March 1922, Pierre du Pont wrote to his brother Irénée du Pont, Du Pont company chairman, that TEL is “a colorless liquid of sweetish odor, very poisonous if absorbed through the skin, resulting in lead poisoning almost immediately.” This statement of early factual knowledge of TEL’s supreme deadliness is noteworthy, for it is knowledge that will be denied repeatedly by the principals in coming years as well as in the Ethyl Corporation’s authorized history, released almost sixty years later. Underscoring the deep and implicit coziness between GM and Du Pont at this time, Pierre informed Irénée about TEL before GM had even filed its patent application for it.

A concise history in timeline format: The Rise and Fall of Leaded Gasoline: An Absurd and True Timeline

1923: GM partners with Standard Oil (now Exxon) and DuPont to form Ethyl Gasoline Corporation. They market the product as “Ethyl,” deliberately avoiding the word “lead” despite known toxicity.

I have heard it said that the prosecution has enormous power over what grand juries get to hear, to such an extent that grand jury results are mostly just a way of formalizing what the prosecutor has already decided. If the state wants an indictment, the state pretty much always gets one.

I believe surgeons, dentists, and people who do similar small-scale hands-on work, like precision soldering, avoid coffee, because it makes for shaky (but alert!) hands. There are likely enough others that I’m not thinking of.

How about 15?

Fight dementia today, by dying of a heart attack at 45 instead

I’m confused. If you don’t like the headline, why did you post this?

The headline sounds like a reasonable summary of the situation described.

Months ago, YouTube pointed me toward a video that recommended Substack as a platform for some hobby. I made a public comment pointing out that Substack was profiting from spreading Nazi ideology. The YouTuber replied, said something like “No way, they’re not really doing that, are they?”

Maybe I’m naive, but I expected a YouTuber to be more terminally online than I am, to have heard of the Substack Nazi problem already. I also expected a YouTuber to at least Google “Substack Nazis” or similar before replying to some internet nobody. But apparently, no.

A lot of the coverage of the Substack Nazi issue that I’ve seen has been, broadly speaking, social media material, including blog posts. Those of us who read such stuff (like me, maybe you too) probably have some incorrect intuitions about how well-disseminated the ideas we find that way really are. Having a mainstream source like the Guardian pick up the story may be useful even if it doesn’t say anything new to us.

Rolling back a new ballot initiative, even.

…a metric shit ton of evidence that could destroy your nice cushy life…

But it didn’t even happen, though.

To think some people will tell you privilege isn’t real.

I think it’s really strange that none of Epstein’s contacts have (to the best of my knowledge) said anything like:

“I can’t really make any excuses. He was charming. He invited me to these great parties, which had me rubbing shoulders with other interesting, famous people. I guess I was star-struck. I gave him the benefit of every doubt because I wanted to believe he was as good a guy as he seemed. I wanted to believe that lifestyle was as glamorous and available to me as it seemed. I was wrong. Maybe I ignored some red flags because I didn’t want to acknowledge them.”

I think something like this must be the story for many of them, and admitting it would be honest and relatable. But it would take a degree of self-awareness, self-reflection. I wonder if ambition and self-reflection are natural antagonists.

They put “TikTok” right into the headline, but the story says:

Caleb Chabolla heard about the trend of heating the squishy toy from a friend at school…

I’m sorry this kid got hurt, but cramming “TikTok” and “social media” into the headlines seems like engagement bait. There have always been trends, rumors, and dangerous dares, social media didn’t invent that stuff.

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Noun

terrorism (usually uncountable, plural terrorisms)

1. The use of unlawful violence against people or property to achieve political objectives.