First, I agree with all of the above: within existing lore it seems obvious that the transporter wouldn’t be able to transport the one ring for several reasons having to do with magic.

But also, this is just a reminder that I think the transporters in Star Trek are so narratively uninteresting. I like Trek, but pretty much in spite of the tech writing. The degree of magic in their technology just does nothing for me. I wish we had more fiction that was like a cross between Star Trek and The Expanse.

Carbon tariffs is an interesting idea. It would be a fascinating but positive silver lining.

YIIIIIIKES

Big oof

Am I crazy for assuming that they’re in “go for broke” mode, and everyone else assumes this too?

Yeah, that was my thought.

I think it’s clear that Biden and the west is banking on collapsing the country economically, which I totally understand as a reasonable idea. But I think that it fails to account for the incredibly unpredictable and negative consequences of collapsing a state. And that’s before considering that it’s a nuclear state.

I’ve heard of at least one: believe it or not, Hapoel Tel Aviv F.C..

They’re a socialist Israeli football club popular among leftist Israeli Jews and Arab Israelis. Famously, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, the American-Israeli hostage who was killed in Gaza in August was among their fans.

As you can imagine, they face a pretty hostile environment throughout Israel these days.

I think people should also be aware that Israeli football culture is notoriously violent and nationalist. Even by Israeli standards.

It should come as no surprise at this point that Israelis have come to believe in an entitlement to act aggressively anywhere in the world and treat any response as illegitimate and unjustifiable. This has become an inherent part of Israeli nationalist culture from top to bottom at this point.

That is factually untrue.

Brig Gen Itzik Cohen declared last week that the hundreds of thousands of people remaining in northern Gaza have been reclassified as combatants and no further food will reach them.

They are going to be eliminated, and the land annexed and resettled.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/07/idf-israel-military-no-return-remarks-north-gaza

Maybe one day we can get there, but right now it might be better for a lot of folks if the default was “I’m not horny”.

But I’m with you on the dream.

I’ve heard this called “soft climate denial”, and unforntuately it’s widespread.

People like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi say that they believe in climate change. But let’s imagine that we’re roommates and you told me that there’s an out of control wildfire a few miles away and the governor has told us all to evacuate. One roommate says that they don’t belive it and they’re staying. And I say ‘Shame on you for denying this! I firmly believe in the wildfire. It’s urgent that we act now, which is why I’ve ordered travel maps on Amazon so we can begin plotting our evacuation route as soon as they arrive.’

Would you characterize this is accepting the crisis, or being in a state of soft denial?

I don’t know if this is a hot take, but I think allowing straight and cis people to identify as such is appropriate, because the alternative assumes that we live in a state of default heteronormativity.

If anything, I want to live in a world where homophobes get mad that if they want to be assumed to be straight online they have to identify like anyone else. No one gets assumed to be straight any more. That’s better imo.

What broad coalition?

There was no coalition. It was a campaign by and for white college educated professional women in the suburbs.

That’s not a coalition, that’s a book club.

Do you know what I’d like to see?

Instead of banning them, ban the extraction of profit on producing and selling them. Turn them into an entirely recreational market. I’d love to see the outcome of trying that.

I’m not sure what the point of this is.

I didn’t know who this specific woman is, but it doesn’t sound like any of this is a secret. For instance, it is public knowledge that Qatar has provided financial aid to Hamas, and serves as a go-between for Israel and the US. Netanyanu famously defended his practice of facilitating these cash transfers.

Also, this all seems sort of secondary when Israel – the US’s close ally – is beginning an extermination campaign in northern Gaza. It’s hard to really discuss any other issue in the midst of what has become a macabre genocide in full view of the international community.

This is the shoddiest “good-cop-bad-cop” routine I’ve ever seen.

I think his intense commitment to getting Trump elected makes more sense when you consider this article.

His enormous wealth is largely stored in the form of Tesla stock, and that stock has been valued based on the belief that it isn’t a car company, it’s a robotaxi service currently selling the hardware to finance the software development. The value – and his wealth – can persist indefinitely as long as investors continue to accept that premise, no matter how long delayed. But if something tangibly undermines that premise, Musk could conceivably lose the majority of his wealth overnight.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Agency is probably the greatest threat to his wealth. He doesn’t worry about competitors or protestors or Twitter users or advertisers. They’re all just petty nuisances. But the federal regulator over roads… that is his proverbial killer snail. And I think fully capturing the entire federal regulatory state is his strategy to permanently confine that snail.

More than anything else, I think that’s what is motivating his radical embrace of fascism.

DAMN! That’s fucking hilarious.

And also… you know. Sad. But boy: it’s wild how well that aged.

That doesn’t sound at all like the point he was making, but I haven’t read the book so I’ll withhold further opinions.