“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: […] like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.” —Jonathan Swift
For what it’s worth, “economic terrorism” isn’t that, and he’d surely know as much. It definitionally means “non-state actors”, but that’s clearly not what Vance is referring to (state vs. state actors); it’s like he’s taking “economic warfare” and slapping the word “terrorism” over it – probably to subtly agitate Americans’ association between terrorism and the Middle East. So “it’s a blockade when we do it; it’s terrorism when they do” is the doublethink rationale here.
It wasn’t intended to be “if you live here, then hi!”. It was intended to be “if you live here, and hi!”. Could’ve been clearer, but the semicolon did its job of replacing “, and”.
Okay, this comes on behalf of the HRC, and they note this is the methodology.
Data collection was conducted from February 20 through February 23, 2026 among a sample of 1,032 respondents. The survey was conducted via web (n=1,002) and telephone (n=30) and administered in English (n=1,005) and Spanish (n=27).
Already a pretty fucked ratio for the medium. The questions also never get specific about what “equality” entails. It’s very general “rights and protections”, “access to healthcare”, employment discrimination", and “discrimination in schools”. Nothing about bathrooms; nothing about gender-affirming care. Basically just “transgender people should be allowed to exist in society”.
I’m sure even people who make fun of transgender people behind their backs in a hushed tone would say that they deserve to be able to go to school.
SSRS is okay enough as pollsters go; I just don’t think this shows much of anything, because 85% of Americans might begrudgingly say trans people deserve to be able to see a doctor, but certainly 85% do not support actual healthcare trans people need. It’s not real equality; it’s at best a strictly egalitarian idea of equality where “well I can’t do it either (by my arbitrary definitions of “not using the opposite-sex bathroom” and “changing my primary sexual characteristics and/or hormones to those of the opposite sex”), so we’re equal,” is equality.
I thought it up while I was peeing in a Hot Topic.
An abnormally high concentration of wheelchair users in a town famous for death and not much else seems a bit sus. 💀 (Absolutely agreed.)
“I’ve come to make an announcement: the EU is a bitch-ass motherfucker. They pissed on my fucking wife. That’s right: they took their Brussels fucking bureaucratic dick out, and they pissed on my fucking wife. And they said their dick was ‘T H I S B I G’, and I said ‘That’s disgusting!’ So I’m making a callout post on my kormany dot hu: European Union, you got a small dick. It’s the size of Andorra except way smaller. And guess what? Here’s what my dong looks like! PWOOOOOSH [cut to the Austria-Hungary 1914 borders]”
Don’t forget the most important one:
Boomers reviewing locations they’ve never been to and products they’ve never used:
New business idea: fortune cookie text but on tampon wrappers.
Self-plagiarizing:
Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and Poland, where Poland has by far the highest rate of trust in US and Chinese tech companies. Seems therefore like the five other countries might not be a representative sample of Europeans, even though total Polish trust of US tech companies still only amounts to 38% compared to ~15% in runner-up Italy.
Coincidentally™, Polish trust nearly triples over more “Western” countries, which shows that this clearly isn’t a representative sample of Europeans – definitely not enough to claim “8 in 10 Europeans”. (Politico actually changed the headline from earlier which didn’t claim this.)
I totally think Star Wars could’ve pulled off a more political plot – I actually even think it could’ve been just as good for a popcorn flick as the OT and far better for the people who want deep, complex, meaningful lore while enhancing the OT. Palpatine’s plan to instigate a war and play both sides, to me, is the actually perfect Palpatine backstory. Anakin’s backstory in the (very) broad strokes is extremely compelling too, and Obi-Wan was overall fantastic. Problem is that George completely fucked up the writing, Anakin’s character development and his relationship with Padmé, a lot of the acting, etc., and squandered so much of the potential the premise had.
This new wave of prequel apologia, that, imo, was catalyzed by the influx of memes, is pointing at criticisms of the prequels from like 15 years ago while totally ignoring the more nuanced, well-argued, and – I think – damning criticisms of the modern day. It’s basically strawmanning when the criticisms are so old and so dead.
I’m so happy for Leonardo DiCaprio and Andrew Rannells that their child has become so successful.
Great for a five-night stand.
Here’s the original article from Mozilla instead of this third-party AI slop regurgitating it.
The year is 2030. The leaders of the US, China, Cuba, Iran, Israel, Russia, Ukraine, etc. walk onto the stage and take a bow, revealing this was all an elaborate display to frighten the world into a rapid switch to renewables.