That’s been obvious since the beginning.

The New York Times did an article on it last fall. Here’s a non-paywalled copy of the article or, if you prefer audio, here’s the episode of The Daily where they discuss it.

It’s possible Trump will win again. And even if he doesn’t, he’s not the only threat. There’s so the emboldened MAGAts, a resurgent white nationalist / neo-Nazi / christofascist movement being weaponized, an unapologetically corrupt Supreme Court, a Republican party that’s too scared of their own voters to do their job, a heavily militarized and intolerant police force, and plans to forcibly re-make the country with the next Republican president.

So it worked and he gave it to you, and when it arrived at your place it no longer worked? I’d try checking that all the internal cables are connected properly; one of them may have jostled loose in the journey.

Are you getting any POST codes?

I’ve been saying for years that the insanely heavy-handed politics of both Florida and Texas aren’t an accident nor are they a miscalculation. They’re a deliberate policy to drive out liberals, attract conservatives, and ensure that both Florida and Texas (and their precious, precious electoral college votes) remain red.

Asking for bribes, no doubt …

This isn’t going to go well for the Taliban’s effort to increase tourism in Afghanistan.

https://archive.is/heCxq

The US has been Hamas ever since they said they were holding back bombs that might be used in Rafah.

the aid trucks will be unloaded on the shore in an area secured by Israeli forces […] Israeli forces will be in charge of security on the shore

Right … those same Israeli forces that have refused to let aid trucks into Gaza, have refused to let aid trucks move through Gaza, who have let Israelis loot burn and destroy aid trucks, who have deliberately and repeatedly targeted aid trucks and aid workers, repeatedly killing them? Those Israeli forces? I’m sure this’ll be fine …

In response to customers’ complaints about its security measures, Loblaw, Canada’s largest grocer, has repeatedly said that organized crime is to blame. “This surge in organized retail crime remains a significant problem for the retail industry,” said Loblaw CFO Richard Dufresne during a conference call in late 2023.

Didn’t they find that there hadn’t been a surge in retail theft, that the “report” it was based on combined every source of shrink - including employee theft, retail theft, writing off stuff that spoiled in the store whether due to improper storage or inability to sell, writing off stuff that the managers over-ordered or mis-ordered, stuff that was exposed to mice and rats, etc etc etc. And that basically the “surge in retail theft” was actually just a cover to make managers feel better about mis-managing their stores?

Last year, the U.S. National Retail Federation initially reported a startling statistic: Organized retail crime accounted for nearly half of the estimated $94.5 billion US that retailers lost due to missing merchandise in 2021. However, the industry group retracted the claim eight months later, after it was revealed that the report was based on erroneous data.

Ah, yes, there it is. Funny how the corpos are still leaning hard on their discredited “report”.

Possibly true, but we can’t ignore the same possibility with Biden’s “Uncommitted” voters.

There have been decades of tensions on the archipelago between Indigenous Kanaks seeking independence and descendants of colonizers who want to remain part of France. […] The unrest started on Monday with a protest over France’s efforts to expand voter lists that would benefit pro-France politicians on New Caledonia and further marginalize the Kanak people, who once suffered from strict segregation policies and widespread discrimination.

Sullivan said that the Israeli state had hindered aid deliveries in the recent past but had improved the flow sufficiently, so as not to be subject to restrictions on military aid that might have been required under US law.

So they’ve found that sweet spot, have they? Just enough aid ‘let through’ to pacify the Americans, and nowhere near enough to help the Palestinians.

I wonder what his position is on who should pay to rebuild Gaza …

But there are too many people with huge sums of money invested to allow a cataclysmic event to happen, and for swathes of cities to become ghost towns. […] vacated commercial buildings are set to be updated, transforming areas formerly packed with office workers during workweeks, and nearly deserted over weekends, into “hybrid destinations” filled with greater green spaces, pedestrianised areas and leisure options that keep a more consistent weekly footfall. […] Developers might be forced to the cliff edge to be creative, but they have around five years to prepare, mobilise and get ready for the future that’s coming.

Lol, this guy imagining that they’re going to spend their time accepting massive losses and making plans to convert their buildings, instead of spending massive amounts of time and money re-writing laws and codes so they don’t get stuck with the losses.

I mean, I could see what he’s saying if this was one city, or some percentage of cities. But this is every city, plus half the suburbs, all at the same time, all trying to offset the same trillions of dollars of losses.

From what I understand, you can convert a lot of buildings that were built before the middle of the century; it’s the massive onees that are the issue. Older buildings were designed to let in light and air from the outside. If you break them into apartments, you can get something that’s a reasonable size with windows.

But if you try to convert one of those massive square skyscrapers, you run into issues. You could break each floor into a set of massive apartments, but there aren’t enough people who can afford them. You can make really long, thin apartments with windows at one end, but most people don’t want to live in something that’s 10-15 feet wide, a third of a city block long, with windows at one end. Or you can put the apartments around the edges and then do something with the center space; say, put tenant storage space every 3 floors, a gym every 8 floors, a play area every 5 floors, etc. But that raises the cost of the apartments and incurs monthly fees to clean and maintain those areas.

One of my neighbors moved out and I’ve mostly been murdering the tiger lilies he planted in the common areas. (He said he liked them and the deer would keep them in check. The deer only ate them in the spring, and he ‘liked’ them because then his pitbulls could chase the deer. Fucker . Then one of the other neighbors’ dogs chewed on the lilies and got sick, so …)

Anyway, I’ve replacing them with a mix of like 20 local pollinator plants, chosen for a mix of both pollinators and seasons. Trying to figure out how I can get some rain barrels in to feed the new gardens without pissing off the HOA, and carrying on the eternal battle to let the HOA let us install solar (beyond the two panels we hid in the backyard, but we can’t get any more in there).

Common area veggie garden has finally settled in, and the apple trees should be bearing fruit in another year. [The berry bushes we snuck in the woods are doing nicely, and the local animals love them!]

Why would anyone listen to anything said by the man who singlehandedly created Brexit?