I doubt Ashton and Mila apologized because they actually regret writing those letters; this is just damage control because they got caught defending a rapist. Also, Scientology isn’t a religion, it’s a criminal organization, and it ought to be treated as such.

I was disappointed to hear that Kurtwood Smith wrote a letter in support of Masterson too. I really liked him in RoboCop… but I guess there’s a reason why he was so good at acting like a total bastard.

I only have a small amount of experience with generating images using AI models, but I have found this to be true. It’s like making a photocopy of a photocopy. The results can be unintentionally hilarious though.

The United States has very similar problems. The oppressed are encouraged to work within the system if they want things to change. They go to the system, and find it broken. So they protest, and the moment the protests turn violent-- or appear to turn violent-- the oppressed are labeled as being impatient or perhaps even deserving of being marginalized. Cries for freedom are willfully misinterpreted as the howling of barbarians, and used as populist propaganda.

Like you, I don’t know what it’s like to be treated like a second-class citizen in my own country, but I do know that racism doesn’t go away simply because the government declares that it won’t be tolerated. It’s hard to come up with any specific solution to this particular problem though, when it’s a conflict that humans have struggled with for their entire existence. Back in 2020, people were just trying to get the message out that black lives matter. Even when taken as a plea for solidarity with no specific policy demands, somehow that statement proved controversial.

France has been a big fan of revolution since the late 18th century. They’re on their Fifth Republic and I’m sure some French people feel they’re overdue for a Sixth, just for the sake of keeping the tradition alive.

It’s Florida, in the United States. The article is from a local news station, which is probably why they don’t mention their own state. Sorry for the confusion!

It’s insane that Thomas is still a Supreme Court justice

Absolutely zero argument with you there.

I think it’s interesting how Trump cultists have been screaming for months that the DoJ should leave their guy alone, and look into Hunter Biden instead.

Turns out, they have been looking into him, and Hunter’s going to enter a guilty plea. Because the DoJ can conduct multiple investigations simultaneously.

Sooo… Trump supporters should be happy now, right? Everyone can shut up about the Trump investigations being witch hunts?

Thanks for all the info! It’s especially helpful to know that naloxone/narcan is still recommended even if the fentanyl has been mixed with xylazine.

I’ll have to check that out. It can be hard enough to bring someone back from a fentanyl OD even with Narcan, so it’s definitely concerning to think that xylazine could make it even harder.

Scenario #1: GOP contenders believe that Trump’s legal troubles will be his undoing before the 2024 Republican convention. DeSantis will be sunk by similar legal troubles, or lack of electability outside of Florida. Despite current polling, the field will look very different by early 2024 and they want to position themselves now as the alternatives who aren’t going to prison.

Scenario #2: Trump and/or DeSantis avoid their many scandals, somehow, and they’re going to be looking for a vice president. It’s unlikely that Trump will run with Pence again, so Nikki Haley, Francis Suarez, and the rest are looking to distinguish themselves as vote-getters so they will be seen as a good addition to a Trump or DeSantis ticket.

Either way, I don’t know what the hell Pence thinks he’s doing in this field.

Interpol’s legal team will take one look at Malaysia’s request, laugh, and then respectfully decline to assist. They won’t be wasting any of their resources on this.

Malaysia has no power to actually do anything about this, so I think they’re just trying to use strong rhetoric to have a chilling effect on anyone who’s thinking about making similar jokes.

I don’t think there is a specific process for that outlined in NATO’s treaty. However, Article 60 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties suggests a member country could commit a material breach of the treaty, if that nation that violated the principles of the treaty in a systematic and egregious manner. The decision to suspend or expel that nation would have to be a unanimous decision made by all other existing members.

There have been calls to suspend Turkey from NATO in the past, but there’s no precedent for suspending a NATO member, and that’s probably part of the reason why the member countries have been hesitant to do so. The U.S. in particular might not back the idea, since this would be very damaging to our diplomatic relations with Turkey in general. However, Hungary has been so pro-Russia lately that there may be a strong case for suspending them from NATO, and I don’t believe they’re seen as important as Turkey from a diplomatic standpoint, either. So, that’s a possibility if they continue to block Sweden from joining.

If Southern Baptists could ban male and female pastors, I would be so happy.

Russia could only find one tank for their World War II Victory Day parade, and Prigozhin is openly rebelling because they couldn’t find enough ammo to supply the Wagner Group. The shortages have been obvious for a while now.

I’ve heard mixed reports on that… Trump is either being allowed to provide a photo in lieu of mugshot or, if a mugshot is taken, it will not be made public.

Is Kotaku’s business model rage-baiting to generate clicks? Yes.

Is toxicity toward female gamers online a real problem? Also yes.

Some of my friends get annoyed when I take that stance, but it’s absolutely possible for both statements to be true simultaneously. I want women to feel safe if they want to try online gaming, and it’s counter-productive when sites like Kotaku constantly post fear-mongering articles about it rather than offer any solutions.

I don’t think the slippery slope argument is good enough to justify continued inaction at this point. Could a Republican president try to use a domestic terrorism EO against liberal groups? Yes. But they’d have a hard time finding any liberal groups calling for gun owners to take retributive action against the government over decisions they don’t agree with. The EO would have to be worded so that only groups that make terroristic threats would be targeted, and that kind of conduct simply doesn’t exist outside of the MAGA death cult.

If Congress would actually back legislation that would classify the Proud Boys or similar groups as terrorist organizations, I’d be advocating for that instead. But they’ve already blocked one such attempt, and I firmly believe that we’ve reached the point where continued tolerance of violent rhetoric is going to get people killed.

President Biden needs to abandon his current strategy of being centrist and trying to negotiate with people who want to drag our country into a second civil war. Instead, he should be signing an executive order that authorizes Federal law enforcement agencies to start treating these people like the domestic terrorists that they are. Threats to national security like this would actually be taken more seriously, and we would have more tools to respond to them, if they were being made on foreign soil. Instead, insurrectionists like Kari Lake are allowed to hide behind the First Amendment and claim “free speech”, even though their goal is to set fire to the very Constitution that currently protects them.

Inaction at this point only gives the lunatic fringe an opportunity to organize, and we’ve already seen the consequences of inaction play out once. There’s no doubt in my mind that a lot of this is meaningless bluster and rhetoric, but at least a handful of people will actually take these calls to violence seriously. We need to be asking ourselves, how much damage do we want to let these people do in the name of free speech, before we finally recognize their domestic extremism as being just as big a threat to our country as foreign terrorism?

There are a number of other highways that people can use as alternate routes to get around Philadelphia, but this could be a major disruption depending on how long it takes to repair the damage. I was planning on driving to New England sometime this summer, and I use some of those alternate route to avoid traffic… I’m guessing that won’t be an option this year, though.

One of the Top Secret documents he was holding onto looks like it contained detailed information about nuclear weapons. I wonder how much the Saudis paid for a copy of that one.