All I know is that Kagi triggered my scam alarms from the start, and moving into the browser market just made them ring even louder.

Gee whiz - who would’ve thought that creating moral hazard could have negative consequences?

What “us?”

I’m going to be right there alongside her, on my way to an execution too.

And so are you.

I wonder how she’s going to feel about this choice a few years down the line, when President-for-life Trump orders her execution.

I haven’t read those yet, but I intend to. And I expect that, like every one I’ve read yet, they’ll be solid 7 or 8 out of 10 books.

That’s the thing that reminded me of Crichton. He has that same ability to start with some fascinating idea and run with it and deliver a solid, well-told and satisfying story, then move on to some completely different fascinating idea and run with it and deliver another solid, well-told and satisfying story. He’s not locked into any specific genre or any specific approach to telling a story - just whatever works for that idea, that’s what he does, and it just works.

Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I’ve been on a bit of a Tchaikovsky binge lately. I read Children of Time years ago and enjoyed it, but for whatever reason, didn’t read anything else by him then. I had a copy of Made Things knocking around though, and I finally read it a few weeks ago and was so impressed I started reading him in earnest. This is the… let’s see… seventh book of his I’ve read lately.

He sort of reminds me of Michael Crichton. He’s not a particularly notable prose stylist - his writing is entirely competent and sufficient, but not in any way really remarkable. But he tells very imaginative stories very well, so he’s a satisfying read.

This one is a sort of political thriller wrapped around a mystery that plays out a bit like a science fiction update of a Lovecraftian eldritch abomination story, leavened a bit with Emily St. John Mandel style misfit spaceship crew slice of life. I’m enjoying it.

Guaranteed they are.

Even if he wasn’t a racist fuckwad on his own, he’s of a generation of white New Yorkers for whom being racist against Puerto Ricans was sort of a universal minimum.

In a statement to the Miami Herald, a Trump campaign spokesperson said that Hinchcliffe’s joke about Puerto Rico does not “reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”

Bullshit.

They didn’t book him by accident. They booked him for one and only one reason - so that he’d say things that they expected would appeal to Trump’s supporters.

And that’s exactly what he did.

Oh come on.

There will be no regional deal because Israel doesn’t want a regional deal. Israel wants to conquer the entire territory, from the river to the sea, and kill everybody who might stand in their way. And they’re not going to stop.

I’ll take that as a yes.

Do Russians (and western Putin supporters for that matter) have an unusually high rate of domestic violence?

It strikes me that this whole spin that Ukraine “provoked” Russia’s invasion is basically identical to the stereotypical wife beater’s claim that she “provoked” his violence.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if people who tend to believe the one tend to believe the other too.

No war but class war.

I hadn’t put it together before, but Israel is sort of an international case of affluenza - a spoiled, indulged rich kid who ends up a psychopath because daddy’s money has always given them whatever they want and shielded them from ever having to face the consequences of whatever they do.

It’s long past time to cut off their allowance.

Has anyone else noticed that the NYT’s coverage of the election lately has been more generous to Harris and more critical of Trump?

I think a case could be made that that’s potentially an even more sure indicator that Harris has the advantage than any poll, since the NYT is so craven and cowardly that the only way they’d shift their coverage like that is if they’re reasonably confident that Harris is going to win. If they thought that Trump might win, they’d still be kissing his stinky ass.

More precisely, Israel is finally admitting to what has been the plan all along, while trying to pretend that it wasn’t the plan all along.

And Netanyahu’s obvious provocation strategy is playing out exactly as intended.

I’d say more the latter, but people are multifaceted, so it’s likely not quite the case that it’s people being their true inner selves as just indulging a part of their true inner selves.

Oog.

Lovecraft was very imaginative, but he was a medocre writer at best, with prose that’s alternately stilted and self-consciously purple.

Oddly, this sort of thing is the reason that I tend to think that MTG is not as stupid as she appears to be (and the reason I responded to an earlier thread on the subject to ask people what they thought her ratio of malicious to stupid was).

It actually all started with the Jewish space lasers thing, but this one reminded me of it.

She’s clearly stupid (and angry - a common combination among her supporters too). But I just can’t convince myself that she’s so incredibly stupid that she actually believes this. I mean - there’s stupid, but then there’s so frighteningly stupid that she shouldn’t have even been able to survive to adulthood, and this is much more toward the latter.

I guess anything’s possible, but…