https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/19/oregon-vineyard-manager-arrest-ice

Are we this stupid, as a country, that we vote for this hogwash?

«At one point in our conversation, we talk about those US citizens who put Trump back in the White House, even though, as she puts it, they knew who he was. “Nothing was hidden. People had plenty of time to think about it, and they chose this. And that disgust, I couldn’t shake that. I thought: ‘People wanted this – and I don’t want to have anything to do with this.’”

Does that mean she will never return to the US? “I would never say, ‘I would never go back.’ I always feel that what history teaches you is not what will happen, but what can happen. The possibilities are generally much more capacious than anyone is expecting at that moment.”»

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/16/why-a-professor-of-fascism-left-the-us-the-lesson-of-1933-is-you-get-out

I wonder if I should get my procrastinating ass in gear.

«Drone warfare and software are of particular interest to China, the document says.

“The war in Ukraine fundamentally shifted intelligence priorities for both countries,” said Itay Cohen, a senior researcher with the cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks who has followed Chinese hacking groups for years. Experts say, and the document indicates, that China wants to learn from Russia’s war experience to bolster its own preparedness for potential future conflicts. Taiwan, in particular, is a major potential flashpoint with the West.»

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/world/europe/china-hackers-russia-war-ukraine.html?unlocked_article_code=1.QU8.ln5Q.O9QRDD3PnOXJ&smid=url-share (gift)

https://futurism.com/slop-farmer-ai-social-media

Learning some new language: “sloperator”, “slop farmer”.

Just amazing stuff.

https://futurism.com/risk-expert-learn-to-code-face-tattoo

«During a recent exchange on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” risk analyst Ian [Somebody]….

Yyyyep, nope, I’m out. Maher’s an idiot. Anybody watching him is an idiot. Anybody on his show isn’t worth my time.

Like… literally, that’s my thought process. Didn’t even finish that first sentence.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/06/18/iran-war-trump-hegseth-gabbard/

Um… good?

I guess we’ll just have to depend on the TACO thing.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/jury-reaches-verdict-karen-read-184716323.html

White woman on trial!

Ach, I’m not even interested. Why is this a news story? (I know, I know, if it bleeds, it leads.)

Ok, I guess for every white woman getting drunk and killing her boyfriend, there are 0.12 Black women doing the same thing, and I haven’t seen enough Drunk White Women On Trial! stories to notice that Drunk Black Women On Trial! hasn’t gotten the same attention. Even over 40 years, which is how long I’ve been at least sort of paying attention.

Have there even been eight of these stories? There was whatsherface Susan whatshername drowning her kids in South Carolina, and whosits in Italy who didn’t! kill her boyfriend, and the woman who drowned her 5 or 6 kids in a bathtub after her conservative quiverful engineer husband left for work, so that’s… three?

This is not a fun exercise (at all) and I would actually prefer to never have enough data to draw a conclusion.

Yglesias being smart and semi-right:

«The contemporary American right has this grand social vision of trying to refashion the United States into a more churchgoing, gender-traditionalist society, where everybody has tons of kids. And I don’t think they have any idea about how to make this happen. One reason they keep getting bogged down in wildly inaccurate nostalgia economics is that getting the sign reversed in terms of the relationship between prosperity and stay-at-home moms helps cover for the fact that none of their ideas make sense.

The self-deportation plan, by contrast, I think does more or less work. If you tell ICE not to worry too much about criminals and not to show any leniency to even the most sympathetic cases, then I think that does maximize the odds that people will leave voluntarily.

The problem, as Trump was saying at the top, is that the consequences of it working are really bad.»

https://www.slowboring.com/p/trump-rediscovers-comprehensive-immigration

«There are just tons and tons of people who would like to come here for the exact reason that my various ancestors came here in the days before national quotas — it’s a way to improve your standard of living and to give your kids greater opportunities. The conservative notion that it’s all killers and rapists is a ridiculous lie. Of course there are people who come here illegally and commit crimes, just as there are plenty of native-born Americans who commit crimes.

But it’s overwhelmingly people just trying to work for a living.»

https://www.slowboring.com/p/trump-rediscovers-comprehensive-immigration

I don’t think Trump has “rediscovered” anything. He’s just a liar trying to keep playing his child’s game of “boss of the world”.

«People become enemies of Trump not when they substantively work against some principle he supposedly holds dear but rather when they publicly criticize him, hold him accountable, fail to be sufficiently worshipful of his glory, or become an inconvenience in any way.»

https://newrepublic.com/article/196919/trump-iran-war-tucker-carlson-maga-rattled

«In other words, Trump grasps that “America First,” or MAGA, is simply whatever he says it is at any given time. And here it may mean enthusiastically backing war with Iran. Will MAGA robotically go along? We’ll soon find out.»