Every now and then, Israel acts to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power – and honestly, we’re all the better for it, the world does not need another set of religious crazies to have nukes.

At this point, I would be fine with Iran having the bomb. I really don’t see any evidence that they would behave more recklessly with it than Israel does.

Do you know what an actual scientific attempt to define races would look like?

Let’s say you wanted to scientifically define races. Instead of using subjective things like facial structure, you look at actual DNA and the groupings among populations. Let’s say we want to group humanity into a half dozen races, and to avoid bias, we do it based on some statistical analysis of DNA patterns.

You know what you would end up with? The computer would spit out that there are five racial groups represented the population of Subsaharan Africa…and one racial group representing everyone else.

The vast majority of human genetic diversity lies within Subsaharan Africa. If you tried to rationally define a list of ‘races,’ you would end up with a bunch of African racial groups and then one group for literally everyone else.

This is what people mean when they say race isn’t real. Our culturally-defined racial groups are completely unrelated to the actual diversity and distribution of human DNA patterns.

Disengaging does not help spread propaganda. Engaging and giving horrible ideas a platform does help spread propaganda.

Your “debate bro” advice is about ten years out of date.

The differences between the sexes is much less than people like to pretend. Every cell in your body has different modes it can operate in. Many, perhaps most, cells have estrogen-dominated and testosterone-dominated modes. If you change the dominant hormones in the body, every cell in the body switches between these modes. Trans people who medically transition are simply taking advantage of the body’s existing mechanism of secondary sex characteristics.

Ultimately, any person could have a male- or female- typical phenotype. If you put the right hormone injections into a fetus at the right time of pregnancy, an XY fetus would be born with a vagina and a uterus. And the opposite is true as well. These conditions sometimes happen naturally with intersex conditions. Every human body has the potential to develop along a male- or female-typical path. It’s just a matter of what hormones are passing through the body at what stage of development.

But race? There’s no comparison. Cells don’t have different expression modes that correspond to different racial phenotypes. There are no “black hormones” that a white person could take to gain many of the characteristics of black bodies. There is simply no equivalent to the medical transition process many trans people undergo. There is simply no equivalent to the fundamental rewiring of the body that occurs on a cellular level with trans medical treatments.

Well trans people, if they medically transition, quite literally change their sex.

The NY Times was a leading cheer leader of the Third Reich, and they are a leading cheer leader of the fourth.

Well tough guy, where’s your truck bomb?

Letting people know and trying to cancel a protest are two very different things.

You cannot surrender to terrorists.

You have a myopia that makes you incapable of looking past a single election. It is that myopia that has gotten us to this point here. Cycle after cycle of blind, zero-thought “blue no matter who” has made the democratic power-brokers completely disconnected from the base. You’re going to vote for them no matter what, so your opinions, thoughts, and desires are absolutely irrelevant. You do not matter to the political process at all.

It’s different when it’s fascist talking points or lies advocating intolerance or hate speech.

You’re describing Harry Potter.

If I ran a business, I wouldn’t engage in any political events whatsoever.

So you won’t have holidays, period.

If you’re like, from a country where that’s a capital offense, and you’re applying for asylum somewhere…then yes, you would have to prove it. But other than rare occasions like that? No.

Except he’s not going to change. He’s going to vote for the next Republican running for office. These types never learn.

• The case the election is rigged is also based on citing the purportedly fraudulent election results.

• Republicans won the popular vote in 2024.

• The swing state results are not independent variables. They usually swing together.

Is it possible the election was rigged? Sure. But the evidence so far is pretty weak.

I mean, I’m going to remain skeptical of widespread fraud until proven otherwise. The thing that people keep forgetting is that almost all states have some random spot checks built into their vote-counting process. Just as a matter of regular course, they’ll randomly select a certain number of ballots and compare the hand-counted and machine-counted results.

Also, fuck Trump, but I don’t really see anything odd about the idea that far more people would vote for Trump than a Republican Senate candidate. Trump’s whole shtick is getting low-propensity politically disengaged people to vote for him. And look at how low Congress’s approval ratings are. A fair number of people coming out just to vote for Trump is not unreasonable.

The point is that if there was malfeasance, it was likely applied by an algorithm in a way that was meant to be non-obvious. But, if you’re applying any kind of broad vote-rigging algorithm to vote tallying equipment across the country…well you’re going to screw up in some cases.

The idea would be to first find absolute definitive proof of election fraud in one precinct. Once that’s been done, you can use those result it justify broader searches. For example, if it’s found that this one area has fraud, then the NY legislature might direct funds to do a hand recount of the whole state. And other states can do the same.

Even if it wouldn’t revert the presidential election, if fraud is found in house votes, enough blue states might be able to reverse the elections of Republican House members elected by fraud, enough to flip the balance of power in the House. Plus definitive proof of fraud would immediately make Trump lose all political legitimacy, regardless of whether there is any actual legal mechanism to remove a president from power after being proven to be fraudulently elected…well any mechanism beyond the broken impeachment mechanism.

It may just be a factor that a lot of YouTubers don’t want to give up creative control. Working with Hollywood ultimately usually means giving up a lot of control on the type and content of your work. They’re paying for the big production budget; they get final say in all creative decisions.

YouTubing is a career type that naturally attracts those that want creative independence. And by the time someone would be of the clout to make a deal with a studio or network, they’re probably already earning enough money to be making a comfortable living from their work. 10,000-follower YouTube channels aren’t getting calls from Discovery, Nickelodian, or Fox News. They’re only going to be recruiting from the top channels. And people at that level are probably already earning a nice full-time living. Channels of that level are often entire miniature production companies. The biggest YouTubers aren’t individuals, but creative teams.

That’s a level of success many people would consider ideal. You get to live comfortably, you get to have a decent amount of social esteem, you get to pursue what projects you want. And you get the personal satisfaction of providing incomes for a whole bunch of your closest colleagues and maybe even closest friends. Many would call that about as perfect a life as there is possible. And you want to maybe give all that up to go work for a cable network?

I suppose for enough money, you could buy people out. But there’s more to life than money after all. If you’re already living quite comfortably, already very financially secure, would you really want to give up what you have - complete creative independence*, just to make a bit more? YouTube’s top ranks are filled with people who left the rat race to get into YouTube. Many simply won’t want to go back into that big corporate world, regardless of how gilded their chains may be.

*Obviously, creative independence is relative. All forms of ad-funded content will have to pander to the whims of advertisers. Even completely audience-funded works are subject to the whims of the audience.

It sure would be a shame if, in the bravest act of bravery so far this century, a few patriotic soldiers were to steal some demolition munitions and take out a bridge along the parade route, the night before the parade is to start. Sure would be a shame.

We need to start finding ways to take away the rights of Evangelical Christians. Let them see how it feels for once.

Anyone who thinks undocumented immigrants don’t deserve in-state tuition in Texas is a racist bigot. That sounds extreme, but that’s really what it comes down to - a fundamental belief that immigrants are not full human beings. There is no motive accept for racial animus behind this. There is no reasonable position to oppose giving them in-state tuition.

Why? BECAUSE TEXAS HAS NO INCOME TAX.

Texas is funded entirely by sales tax, property tax, and various fees. Someone living in Texas illegally pays all the same taxes as someone in the country legally.

Texas is happy to exploit immigrant labor. But they want to be able to use people and then throw them in the landfill when they’re done with them. Typical conservatives.