If it was ruled unconstitutional you’d think it would automatically be considered repealed
The change in law resolves a lot of peripheral bullshit, because the Legislature can long windedly close the door on municipal bigots who think they can rules lawyer homophobia at the local level.
Similarly, articulating bigotry back into state law can open the door for homophobic municipalities to harass gay couples.
How would they bring this new plane up to that standard
Spoilers: They absolutely will not be bringing this death trap up to the current plane’s standards.
This will either site on a tarmac largely forgotten about for four years, at which point Trump will try and off-load it (if he hasn’t completely forgotten he owns it). Or it’ll become one of those “never going to be finished” government vanity projects that becomes an excuse to write blank checks to Boeing for billing statements littered with “Headlight Fluid: $4k, Crank Shaft Lengthening Service: $20k” line items.
Absolute best case scenario, someone in the administration actually tries to fly in this thing before the term is complete. And we all get to laugh (or cry, depending on who it lands on) on reading the consequences.
It seems that they’re just trying to appease a stupid man who thinks like a dodgy car salesman, and thus is happy to accept big dumb bribes
That’s who Americans believe is best able to run our country. We have been kicking and screaming for the last 40 years to have the US run like a business. And what other business best exemplifies the US than Used Car Dealership?
I think the “why can you concentrate on video games?” thing is really missing the whole point of TV as a medium. The sight/sound combo, particularly with bright colors and crisp volume and lots of rapid movements (graphics, camera work, etc) is explicitly designed to grab and hold your attention.
Asking why a TV/game can hold your attention but casual conversation / dry educational instruction cannot is like asking why you got here faster on a car than by hiking with a broken leg. Or asking why you can eat a gallon of ice cream or a bucket of fried chicken, but shy away from canned spinach. Like, ffs, that’s the whole reason the thing exists.
I often find myself in restaurants or bars, forcing myself back to focus on the people I’m there with even when the TV playing in the background is showing something I viscerally do not want to watch. It can be total slop, but I’m still drawn to it, because it is bright and loud and attention-demanding.
Video games adding a kinetic aspect only amplify the problem. Now you’re “juggling” an extra thing (manual control inputs). And the fun is that the sights/sounds/engagement all point you in the same direction - often with a gameplay loop that provides stimulus reward on continuous interaction. Normal life doesn’t provide that. Perhaps it shouldn’t, because the sensation overload can (and often does, via F2P games) be so easily exploited.
Like, people will call this neurodivergent but this is literally how all brains work.
The neurodivergence is in failing to read the social queues of your dad, who was clearly very invested in talking to you about the carnival.
Return it to the Cuban people from whom it was stolen, maybe?
Suspicious that these are places difficult to escape.
It’s just magical realism. Easier to believe in a magical utopia on Mars than to deliver on a municipal government that isn’t overrun by bears.
It’s not Musk being influenced by Cyberpunk nearly so much that Cyberpunk’s development was influenced by Prospera, Seasteading, Balaji Srinivasen’s “The Network State” and other “Startup City” anarcho-capitalist advocacy efforts.
I don’t want to live in that city, though.
The root of the appeal of the Free Enterprise Zone model originally embraced by Singapore, Hong Kong, Manilla, Monaco, and other micro-states is that you can consolidate the financial industry into a walled garden and then strictly control the lives of the inhabitants with a hyper-military police state.
Then the outlands are just impoverished wastes. Real political freedom, but no access to capital. Or real economic freedom, but no civil rights.
It isn’t that you “don’t want to live in the city”, because you absolutely will want to live there when presented with the alternatives. You’re presented with a false choice of proximity to wealth versus social autonomy.
The key to the penny auction was intimidating speculators and outside interests from scooping up property being auctioned away.
Good luck intimating a Blackrock agent at a sheriff’s auction in the modern United States. You’re not going to scare off a trillion dollar oligarch and a paramilitary police state with pitchforks
Do you mean lentils or are you suggesting we’re going to be eating door jams?
The FBI is not on Trump’s side.
The director of the FBI is absolutely on Trump’s side. And anyone downstream of him who isn’t is getting weeded out.
That’s what Trump wants.
It’s win-win. Either Dems don’t sign a blank check, and Trump uses this as an excuse to hand more power to the DHS. Or Dems do sign a blank check, and Trump uses it to fund an FBI dedicated to further dismantling the democratic state.
President Xi, I am sending you Trump’s golf schedule by way of TikTok coded message.
Please, President Pooh-Bear, you’re our only hope.
Mendacity.
He knew. He didn’t care. He just put out his hand and dared the Senate not to give him a blank check.
And he’s going to get that check, because Democrats more are terrified of looking obstructionist than of looking like they can govern.
it’s all a magical story about a dude who didn’t exist at all probably
No shortage of self-proclaimed messiahs and apocalyptic prophets running around Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. Less a question of whether Jesus existed than which one you’re talking about.
American Christian resists the message but embraces the magic.
That’s hardly an American thing. All the Abrahamic religions and the pagan ones, too, were obsessed with the magical realism of their personal mythologies.
Neither were people blind, deaf, and dumb to the social message of the gospels. But people do lose sight of them as you become less like a 1st century apostle and more like a 1st century Pharasise.
What Republicans have come to realize (and Democrats refuse to accept) is that you can just DO THINGS at the executive level. And if the bureaucrats follow along, then you’ve functionally established new policy.
The Iowa legislature can pass a rule saying “No more issuing marriage contracts to gay couples” and the state courts can say “Okay, we’ll stop doing that and we’ll also stop recognizing existing contracts”, and all the low level county officials can just ignore the legal status of gay married families and then private businesses can follow suit. And then that’s it. No SCOTUS decision is going to pay out on insurance benefits claims to a legally de-certified no-longer-spouse.
On the flip side, the Iowa legislature can author this act and the people of Iowa can rise up in protest and say “Fuck you, we won’t do what you tell us.” Private businesses can continue to honor marriage contracts. Low level bureaucrats can continue to treat gay couples as married. Mid-level bureaucrats can defend and promote them. High level bureaucrats who continue to force these abhorrent laws on people can be removed from office.
The problem is that… the fish rots from the head. More likely than not, we’re seeing this push because Iowa’s basket of deplorable plutocrats want to expand the number of minorities they can piss and shit all over. Just like how DOGE gutted the “Woke” federal bureaucracy, I suspect we’re going to see Iowa state leadership tearing the spine out of any state or local government agency that refuses to accept gay rights are expired.
Do you have the courage to stand up to your boss? Do you have the support of your friends and coworkers to call a strike in a business that singles out the LGBTQ folks who work there? Will you march on your city council and demand they take your side or get out of the way? Will you march on your state house? Will you stare down a bunch of bigots in badges when you do it?
This is a big ask and its not easy to find enough folks willing to stand up for what is right.
In fairness, the thing he said that got everyone upset was “I am the King of Kings, abandon all your worldly ties and join me on a pilgrimage to the capital city of the Levant. I will fulfill the ancient prophecy of a new independent Jewish state blessed by the One True God who may or may not also be me, we’ll sort that out in another 300 years.”
But the “Good Omens” line makes for better dark comedy.
I’m not tempted to test the theory in order to find out. Either way, the sudden collapse in human life would put enormous downward pressure on carbon emissions. Can’t burn gas if you don’t have anyone left to pull it out of the ground.
impoverished countries are stuck in a cycle of poverty by overpopulation
That’s simply not true. Countries with large populations regularly produce enormous quantities of materials and offer professional services that post-industrial consumers pay high prices to access.
The problem isn’t the size of the population but the share of revenue received by the people doing the work.
Diamond miners in Nigeria and Congo and South Africa aren’t getting anywhere near the face value of the rocks they dig up. Call center workers and IT professionals in the Philippines and India are getting a tiny fraction of the rate their employers charge. Textile workers seeing pennies on the $100 when they output luxury apparel.
Yes, helping them control that goes a long way toward helping them to help themselves.
No. Charging them through the nose for medical technology is what’s hurting them.
They want a policy and they’re loudly advocating that any politicians standing in their way get removed.
The thing they’re asking for is awful. But God Damn, this is the kind of FDR/LBJ style titty twisting that any major legislation needs in order to happen in this country.