https://gcaptain.com/ntsb-baltimore-key-bridge-collapse-risk-was-30-times-above-acceptable-threshold-68-other-bridges-need-assessment/

For those who are interested, gCaptain generally has the goods on maritime accidents.

https://newrepublic.com/post/195324/trump-administration-crimes-jail-time

«Even among the gravely worried, there is this sense that the “rule of law” is like a machine someone turned on at some point in the past, which runs in the background of American life like some sort of ambient presence. What the rule of law really is, it turns out, is the sum total of our deeds—and our inaction. The rule of law lives or dies on our willingness to act….»

https://archive.ph/Yx2Hs

The *New Yorker* has a PERL script that puts a diaresis above the second of every doubled vowel, and they are *very* proud of it.

«When it came time for the reëlection campaign,»

…

«Coördinating it all was wildly complicated. ≥

Istg, I’m gonna learn how to write brower plugins just to get rid of this shit.

https://apnews.com/article/medicaid-cuts-trump-tax-cuts-bill-1e2b12a91a3d12ceb0420ce7053de58e

I wonder if even the low-info non-voting people know that “waste, fraud and abuse” is just a Republican lie.

«While Republicans insist they are simply rooting out “waste, fraud and abuse” to generate savings with new work and eligibility requirements, Democrats warn that millions of Americans will lose coverage.»

…

«The preliminary CBO analysis said the committee’s proposals would reduce the deficit by $912 billion over the decade — with at least $715 billion coming from the health provisions.

Central to the savings are changes to Medicaid, which provides almost free health care to more than 70 million Americans, and the Affordable Care Act, which has expanded in the 15 years since it was first approved to cover millions more.»

https://apnews.com/article/india-pakistan-missiles-air-bases-1de0ca13c13899f0bd3530b4808d45ad

«India and Pakistan on Saturday agreed to a ceasefire following U.S.-led talks to end the most serious military confrontation between the nuclear-armed rivals in decades.»

Ok, this sort of thing bugs me. “Nuclear-armed rivals” in Every. Single. News story. As if to say, “brown-skinned people who talk funny and sometimes wear towels on their heads and eat weird food and maybe can’t control their tempers and OH MY GAWD have nukes!!!1!1!”

Meanwhile, we have a president who wants to nuke hurricanes and wonders why we have nukes if we can’t use them. And there’s another guy considered to be white, in another part of the world, who constantly talks about using nukes in his attempt to outright conquer another sovereign nation.

And it’s not just our current man-child. It’s the assumption that somehow only the white people are capable of cool-headed, clear thinking and responsible stewardship of so much destructive power.

And, yes, there’s the Chinese, but somehow, in the context of nukes, the evil, corrupt Chinese government becomes the anciently wise thousand-year Chinese culture because orientalism, baby.

It just occurred to me: this thing we’re seeing in the US right now is a riot. I don’t think it’s a takeover. I think it’s a bunch of people who are unhappy. They’re not trying to build something better; they’re only interested in destruction. They are voicing their unhappiness (and their joy in destruction) the same way rioters do.

If I’m right, then the response is the response to rioters: a show of overwhelming force and arrests of leaders and worst perpetrators.

Not sure how we do “overwhelming force” since they control many means of violence right now. Massive nonviolent resistance and voting, I think. That’s tough. Especially the voting.

Also, and maybe more importantly, sometimes riots go on for days, night after night. (“Night” because the reasonable people go to bed. Only when they have checked out do the extremists start doing damage.)

And the reason they go on for days, in spite of shows of force and arrests, is that the conditions for the riots still exist. They’ve been building for weeks, months, years (years and decades, in the case of politics-modelled-by-riots), so, in a sense, it’s too late once the riots have started.

The China shock, specifically, and globalization, more generally. Job loss and change.

We can’t dismiss racism, but I wonder (and now I’m thinking super-grand) if racism is just the shock (spread over generations) of meeting people different from us.

I probably can’t reduce it that far, though; it’s kind of absurd. There’s also plain competition over resources and our desire for war. Well… the desire for war on the part of our hot-headed young men and those demagogues and enablers who use that desire.

I’m thinking of northern Ireland – everybody looking the same and talking the same and picking a fairly abstract reason to murder each other over. And “fairly abstract reason” when violent young men are concerned is really just “excuse”.

So, anyway. It’s just a riot. Now what? 🤷‍♂️

Welp… Top news of the hour.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/10/arts/francis-fukuyama-history-liberalism.html?unlocked_article_code=1.E08.Ad04.dae-IhO2z2oy&smid=url-share (gift)

Been seeing some recent chatter about Target but it looks to me like Target’s been having trouble for a while. (XRT and XLP are retail-sector funds, and seem like a reasonable comparison to me, based on stupid googling.)