Jump to content

bolverk

Certifiably Surly
  • Posts

    15631
  • Joined

  • Days Won

    12

Everything posted by bolverk

  1. I see nothing other than your quoting of my post, and I've checked two laptops, plus a cellphone. What's your point? What's wrong with being upset by the deaths of both sets of innocents?
  2. I mean, there are psychopaths among us, for sure. There's nothing we can do about their existence, but what in God's Earth says we should empower them? Seriously. I've got to say, turning off "give a shit" for people based on their social, political, racial, national, or religious standing is just so fucking gross, but that's where we're at when we pick and choose victims based in teevee attention.
  3. Sounds familiar. I get the righteous indignation. People get unjustifiably screwed on "deals." Unfortunately, it happens all the time, whether that happens in the jury box or at the ballot one. In this particular case, unless there's some sort of complete and utter societal breakdown, we know that this individual will no longer be capable of harming other innocents. At the end of the day, and in the abstract, we can be fairly certain that guy will die in a place where he's not likely to do much more harm to society at large. At least there's a cap to contain that damage. Sure, none of that can truly assuage the revenge, harm, or any other hateful thoughts they might feel, and I certainly feel an immense sense of pity for the shit they're going through, but there's some semblance of justice - even if it doesn't scratch that itch. I will say, however, I don't quite get the compulsion/obsession with this kind of stuff when there are so many other examples of people getting shit on across the country and around the world where the victims are even more numerous, the crimes are equally (if not more) heinous, and the damage is more widely spread among the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of victims of injustice. It's the picking and choosing of folks we should feel sorry for that kind of bugs me. Four young women are brutally murdered? Grab the pitchforks. It's an unforgivably horrendous crime. Four hundred thousand old people die early deaths because their government cuts off medical care in order to give tax breaks to billionaires? Hey, there's a couple of brown kids who speak a diffferent language or worship a different god. Therefore, their lives are expendable? Let's not discuss that in polite company so as to not disturb social etiquette and broach the topic of politics. It's horrible that those young women died, but this double-standard shit is so out of whack, inconsistent, and immoral.
  4. Almost a third of Congressional Democrats is ten years past retirement age, and that's not even counting Schumer from this list.
  5. I'd never heard of this guy before. He was fucking psychotic fraud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kinkade
  6. A competent party should have a data team that would've put together a table showing how this the Big Bullshit Bill would affect the constituencies of every county, congressional district, and state, blasting that info out to every local news station and newspaper across the country along with every state and local official of any capacity (regardless of party) and updating it with every change throughout the negotiations. They would also have provided key talking points to any state/local Democratic official and leader of any stripe, all the way down to the local precinct captain, with specific instructions on how to go on a furious attack against any and every Republican at every level of government. Shit, if the Upshot's data team can aggregate this shit with updates on the fly, then a national party should be able to do it, too. Free link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/30/upshot/senate-republican-megabill.html?unlocked_article_code=1.TE8.YBh0.Ufoc066kKLkj&smid=url-share
  7. That is really fucked up. Good article that goes into the background/history of this for those who don't click Xitter links: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/06/27/new-army-shaving-policy-will-allow-soldiers-skin-condition-affects-mostly-black-men-be-kicked-out.html
  8. 800 miles from the Ukraine/Russia border.
  9. Thom Tillis, the NC senator who just announced he's quitting, was the sole 'nay' vote. Weird.
  10. This isn't the most eloquently written op/ed, because I doubt the author is a native English speaker. That said, he hits the nail on the head. Trump’s Deportation Program Is About Control. Even if You Are a U.S. Citizen. By Chandran Kukathas Mr. Kukathas is the author of “Dialogues on Immigration and the Open Society” and “Immigration and Freedom.” The tactics of the Trump administration’s immigration agenda have shifted from time to time, but the broader objective has remained consistent: to deport as many people as possible and, more broadly, to transform the restrictions and reach of America’s immigration system. President Trump and members of his administration believe they have a democratic mandate to do this. Their ultimate fear is that outsiders pose a danger to American values — the threat of not just taking our jobs or becoming welfare scroungers but also transforming our society into something different. “America First” means not so much putting Americans first as putting a distinct idea of America and American values first. Yet the danger to those American values comes not from immigration itself but from immigration control. You cannot control outsiders (immigrants or would-be immigrants) without controlling insiders (citizens). The more vigorously you try to control immigration, the more you end up limiting the freedom of your citizens and violating equality and the rule of law. This isn’t hypothetical. As Hiroshi Motomura and others have noted, during the Great Depression and in the years following World War II, an estimated two million people were forced to leave the United States. Astonishingly, more than half were American citizens, mostly people who were (or were suspected of being) Mexican. They were blamed for taking jobs and public resources and were deported or self-deported under intense pressure from authorities after targeted raids on neighborhoods. This number does not include the many others who were wrongfully arrested, detained or incarcerated, often for days and weeks and sometimes for months or years, by the U.S. government. Nor does it include the many immigrants who were legal residents and were wrongly deported. These statistics do not tell the whole story. To understand how immigration control undermines freedom — and the fundamental values not just of America but of most Western democracies — we need to look deeper. The popular image of immigration control is border security, but there is more to immigration control than that. Governments everywhere encourage people to cross their borders and enter their countries. The U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office strategy aims to have 90 million annual international visitors — tourists, students, athletes, business travelers, transport workers — by 2027. Immigration control is not necessarily about restricting entry but about controlling what those who enter do: determining whether they can work, study, reside, buy property, open bank accounts, set up businesses or marry. This is a challenge because many citizens are all too ready to employ outsiders, admit them to schools and universities, sell to them, buy from them or fall in love with them — in short, welcome them. The only way for a government to prevent this from happening is to control its citizens by limiting their freedom to live as they choose. This means citizens must be controlled with penalties or punishments: fines, imprisonment or violence. They must be inspected, monitored, scolded, threatened and made to be fearful of finding themselves in violation of the law and at risk of being punished. Citizens will challenge the laws, find ways around them or even violate them if the law limits their freedom to hire, teach, befriend or welcome whomever they choose. To overpower citizens, governments will have to spend more money — on courts, judges, lawyers, prisons, the police and compensation payments — or find ways around their laws (or both). In 2016 Denmark criminalized any act that could be viewed as helping asylum seekers, leading to hundreds of Danes being prosecuted for giving strangers a lift or buying them a cup of coffee. The British government decided over a decade ago that to control movement, it needed to create a hostile environment for immigrants. But what this did was create a climate of fear for citizens, most notably for those who might be mistaken for immigrants. When “Go home” vans began touring selected places in Britain in 2013, many citizens had to ask themselves: How do I prove I am a citizen in my own country? The question applies to everyone: To control immigration, how much control over our lives should we be ready to accept? The evidence we have suggests that the number of people affected by such controls is not trivial. For example, British law required any citizen wanting to sponsor a spouse or partner to immigrate to have a minimum annual income of 18,600 pounds, or about $25,000. In 2015 roughly 40 percent of employed British citizens did not earn enough to reunite with their families. Initially, somewhere around 15,000 citizens might have been unable to reunite with their families each year. The law was changed in 2024, raising the threshold to $39,000, probably making it even harder for poorer citizens who want to come home or bring in their spouses. In only a decade, at least 150,000 citizens were burdened by just this one regulation aimed at curbing immigration. In the European Union, billions of euros are spent each year on immigration enforcement and the detention of suspected violators in more than 200 centers. And each year thousands of European citizens are caught and detained, some for days and many for longer, including those who struggle to establish their credentials. Citizens are affected by immigration controls because of the costs they must bear not just in the taxes they have to pay but also in the services that they must forgo as government funds are redirected. Already, the U.S. immigration and border enforcement budget is several times higher than all other law enforcement budgets for the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Justice Department, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and similar agencies combined. The “big, beautiful bill” under consideration by Republicans in Congress would add $175 billion to immigration enforcement. Mr. Trump’s deportation efforts have moved thousands of law enforcement staff members at the Department of Homeland Security, the F.B.I., the D.E.A. and the U.S. Marshals Service from investigating violent (and other) crime and toward immigration enforcement. The more determined governments are to control immigration, the more they will have to abandon due process and act as if the corruption of the rule of law were justified. Or turn a blind eye to the misuse of power by its agents. We have to consider what these measures do to a society. They affect America’s core values, particularly liberty and equality. Liberty, because Americans see freedom to live as they choose as central to their way of life. Equality, because liberty is the natural endowment of all, not just some. Americans are not alone in thinking this, but they have said it more loudly and clearly than anyone else. Proponents of such control will have to persuade at least some citizens that this violation of liberty is warranted and even normal. As the use of power by immigration authorities to stop and search citizens becomes routine and the voices of dissent are suppressed, citizens will even come to accept the militarization of society. But the efforts at control will be divisive among citizens: Some will accept them as necessary, but others will resist them. So as governments try to normalize the violation of liberty, those who buy this story will look at those who object or resist not as fellow countrymen but as enemies. This is what we are seeing now unfolding on the streets across the United States. Immigration control will transform America. The more vigorously it is pursued, the more it will turn us into people who do not care about the liberty of others. Worse still, it may turn us into people who do not care about our own.
  11. I've mentioned it before, but I was working in one of the divisions that fell under the umbrella of the governor's office during the transition between Perry and Abbott. It wasn't a terrible place to work before the change, but after Abbott's political appointees took over, it quickly became a toxic workplace environment.
  12. Satellite Imagery Shows Iran at Work at Fordo Nuclear Site Amid competing assessments of how badly the enrichment facility was damaged in U.S. strikes, Iran appears to be making its own inspection. Satellite images taken in the days after the American attack on Iran’s Fordo nuclear enrichment site show a flurry of activity at the heavily fortified facility built deep inside a mountain. New roads can be seen constructed to the points where U.S. bombs struck the top of the mountain, and an apparent crane and an excavator seem to be working near one of the impact sites. Many other vehicles are also visible at additional points around the site in the images, which were captured by Maxar Technologies. “It appears that they’re evaluating the hole, evaluating how deep it went,” said Joseph S. Bermudez, senior fellow for imagery analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The images are showing us that the Iranians are beginning the process of investigating what happened and what level of damage the facility has.” American B-2 bombers dropped 12 Massive Ordnance Penetrators — 30,000-pound bombs often called “bunker busters” — on the Fordo enrichment site on June 22. Afterward, President Trump said the facility was “obliterated,” though other assessments have been more cautious. Experts said the Iranians were most likely using the newly constructed roads and equipment to assess the damage themselves. “It looks to me like they’re examining the impact of the event rather than doing any thing more substantial like carrying out repairs or recovery. I don’t think I see any evidence of that,” said Peter McDonald, a director at Viper Applied Science, a company that specializes in blast and structural dynamics and computational physics. A day after the American attacks, Israel said it had also hit Fordo, striking access routes to the site. Satellite imagery shows that repairs began quickly: By June 27, Iran had already filled in a large crater at the site’s entrance left by the Israeli strikes a few days earlier, the images show. Iran doesn’t appear to be beginning any type of reconstruction or repairs to the enrichment facility itself. “I don’t think they’ve moved into the phase of reactivation,” Mr. Bermudez said. “There’s no real evidence for that. You would expect to see more vehicles, different types of vehicles.”
  13. AI used to rate how hot restaurant reviewers (as a proxy for patrons) are for restaurants in LA, SF, and NYC. https://looksmapping.com/
  14. The third season wrapped the story up neatly and tied a nice pink bow on the games.
  15. The second season was a bit of a letdown, but the third season landed the ending.
  16. Digging the shit out of this weather. Got 0.84 inches yesterday.
  17. That's a 'no' for me, dawg.
  18. Wordle 1,473 4/6 ⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛🟩⬛🟩 ⬛⬛🟩⬛🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #751 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🙂 Daily Quordle 1254 8️⃣4️⃣ 7️⃣6️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/ ⬜⬜🟨⬜🟩 ⬜⬜🟩⬜🟨 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬜🟩🟨🟨⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟩⬜🟩⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜🟨🟨🟨⬜ 🟩⬜🟩🟨🟩 ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
  19. Congrats to all the Surly Bobcats!
  20. I watched the first two seasons with everyone else, but skipped the third last summer when I was in the process of moving. After seeing all the comments in this thread about how bad season 3 was, I never watched it. Do I need to watch season 3 to enjoy season 4, or can I just go find a recap of that season and proceed with 4?
  21. Looks like this photo is from his ID. https://channel2now.com/2025/06/30/article/news/crime/coeur-dalene-shooting-suspect-identified-as-wess-roley-2-firefighters-killed-one-injured-canfield-mountain/
  22. Something similar appears at the 23-second mark of this 49-second video.
  23. His Facebook profile is down. https://www.facebook.com/people/Wess-Roley/100094065606797/?_rdr
×
×
  • Create New...