The process through which I was placed on TPUSA’s list was anathema to public debate. Instead of writing an op-ed in response to my New York Times op-ed, or inviting me to a public debate on these issues, TPUSA instead added me to an online list that is — as I explained in another New York Times op-ed back in 2016 — essentially a new species of McCarthyism.

Maybe we didn’t realize the extent back then, buy by now I think we all know the playbook for a speaker to accuse their opposition of the speaker’s offenses.

In this case, it is easy to check that, yes, Kirk SAYS he’s for debate, but we can check records to see there are no Kirk/Yancy debates, yet there is a TPUSA list (rather than give them hits, here’s an old archive page).

Trump and his sycophants are implementing political repression, censorship, and politically targeting free speech, which means that those of us who believe in democratic speech, in dissent, in open and critical debate, are being targeted, are being silenced, are being marked for further violence. This is not new for Trump.

Again, we just saw the FCC threaten ABC over Kimmel, and Trump himself has opined that criticizing him should be illegal and networks should be punished for allowing it. They just sent troops to Portland to stop demonstrators?!? That’s not a free democracy! That’s Fmmhmph[CENSORED]

Great read! And with the current headlines as they are, it is absolutely refreshing to have a positive story about a real hero fighting the good fight.

Does not work for ANY phrase. It seems to be presuming that the person asking is referencing something. Sample results copied here in order of AI’s least theorizing to its most.

• horses before giraffes meaning

“Horses before giraffes” has no scientific meaning because giraffes are not ancestors of horses…

• put your horses before giraffes meaning

“Put your horses before giraffes” is not a recognized English idiom. The similar and well-known idiom is “put the cart before the horse,” …

• always put horses before giraffes meaning

The phrase “always put horses before giraffes” is a variation of the well-known medical aphorism: “When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras”…

• titrated solutions beget relief meaning

The phrase “titrated solutions beget relief” means that carefully adjusted or fine-tuned treatments can bring about an end to a problem…

From Al Jazeera:

Governor Cox told a news conference on Friday: “On the evening of September 11, a family member of Tyler Robinson contacted a family friend, who then informed the Washington County Sheriff’s Office that Robinson had either confessed to or implied that he had committed the incident.

“This information was relayed to the Utah County Sheriff’s Office and investigators at Utah Valley University and conveyed to the FBI.”

and

Governor Cox said cryptic messages were engraved on shell casings recovered with the rifle, which he read out phonetically. Their meaning is not immediately clear.

One spent shell case read: “Notices, bulges OWO what’s this?”

Cox said three unfired shell cases read: “Hey fascist! Catch! Up arrow symbol, right arrow symbol, and three down arrow symbols”, “Oh Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao, Ciao” and “If you read this, you are gay, LMAO”.

So he’s online a lot. There’s the wikipedia article on the history of Bella Ciao.

Thank you for the excellent essay.

a conservative might believe the egghead democrats would want to kill a simple truth-teller

I’m so sad that this is true. Not only did Musk himself tweet “The Left is the party of murder,” but various random accounts have called Democrats responsible by demonizing conservatives as fascists and Nazis… which would only be demonization if the people accused weren’t spouting Nazi/fascist talking points. Further, we’ve no idea what percentage of the random accounts are bots or actual humans – but surely the volume of hate will sway too many conservatives to become increasingly hostile.

Minor quibble:

it is extraordinarily difficult to hit a person-sized target at all from this distance

I disagree. It’d be hard with a pistol or AR-15 style weapon, but this was an old style bolt action hunting rifle. I haven’t seen a report saying it had a scope, but that’s how you’d generally set it up. If you hunt, you practice hitting much smaller targets (deer heart, etc.) at that distance, and may well actually hunt well beyond that range. Also, the guy missed. You don’t aim for the neck. He probably aimed for the head, but possibly the chest, and had his shot miss his target.

I’m hoping this push to make Kirk an angelic martyr of the Trump movement is forgotten as quickly and Kirk resumes his rightful place in obscurity.

Same here. Perhaps tomorrow we can remind people that we still want to release the Epstein files.

the goal for me is co-operation

I asked a sincere question and you reply with snark. I don’t know why you commented when you weren’t willing to advance the discussion. You failed at your goal.

I don’t care for individual greatness and competition

That’s sweet, but it has nothing to do with the topic. It also doesn’t help you any when you need to punch a Nazi. I was talking about the government paying civilians to work for the common good (irrigation, bridges, etc.) and a population with a high standard of living. For whatever internal reason, it seems you decided to thrust imperialism into the definition of “great” – or redefine the word to mean something outside its definition, like “nice”.

Know what’s great? Great White Sharks are great. They aren’t the whitest or largest, but they are the biggest of the commonly seen ass-kicking sharks. Know what’s not great? The Little Blue Heron – but it is much bluer than the Great Blue Heron.

Well then the Roman Empire could never have been Great, nor the Greek, Persian, Ottoman, Chinese and various dynasties therein. Cleopatra wasn’t Egyptian. She and her lineage of rulers were greek conquerors subjugating the locals, if you want to look at it that way. You are denying all of South America the right to ever claim greatness.

I think I made it clear in my post that we all know there’s a history full of problems, so you seem to be trying to redefine terms without making any argument about the current case. Per the OED there are 85 definitions for “great”. Why skip the intended usage (powerful/eminent) for an informal meaning (good)?

The U.S. used to be known for high literacy, excellent schools k-college, high standard of living, countless innovations in sciences from health care to airplanes, and a presumption that you could improve your position in society rather than being confined to a class. All that sort of stuff combined is what I think of when the idea of U.S. greatness comes up.

I think I covered that with my introductory sentence. The post-war boom had to be from more than isolation or we’d expect Mexico and Canada to be rivaling the U.S. for (now falling) dominance.

I hate everything about this because even as a kid, the big problem with mass transit was not enough routes and times to get where you wanted. Want to see a live show a town away? You could get there by bus, but the route stopped service around 8pm so you couldn’t get home. Want to get from one suburb to another? Two hours and three routes by mass transit or 20 minutes by car.

I would have loved to live car-less, but the continuous slashing of U.S. mass transit has made it increasingly impossible to do.

This reminds me of a post a year ago about orb weaver Araneus ventricosus also using fireflies as bait. I thought this would be a follow-up, but they’re talking about a different species here.

I see a duck demanding peas. Tasty rolly green peas.

descriptive summarization?

Kudos! I no longer have to deal with any of that, but I appreciate it’s been a problem and am glad you took action. Thank you!

Hey OP, you gotta give us a quote or synopsis or something. This is an archive of an Economist article from Aug 13th 2025 about a new English law and older protestors who have the free time to go out and make frail, wobbly, noise.

The government placed Palestine Action on a terror list in July after its members vandalised two aeroplanes on a British air base. Most were arrested for holding a placard reading “I oppose genocide” (which is legal to say) and “I support Palestine Action” (which contravenes section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000). Yet it revealed an overlooked facet of British politics. At street protests, it is often the boomers who are on the barricades.

On your advice, I read it. Good essay. Yes, the image is Whatever, but the creative part for this post was the pun, so I still gave it an upvote because I haven’t heard it death.

“It is not average precipitation that really is most affected by climate change,” Swain said. “It truly is mathematically correct that the more extreme the rain event, the clearer the connection to climate change is.”

I appreciate the simple examples of the physics (steamy HOT bathroom, sweaty cold beer in HOT air, and less obviously, HOT ground leading to preponderance of summer storms happening later in the day).

I appreciate your skepticism and if I was randomly hearing the tale online, I would probably make the same conclusion. Personally, I believe the guy based on how I’ve seen him treat people for over 40 years and his general politics/world-view. If he’d said it happened to someone else, or if he hadn’t seemed so confused and saddened when he asked me if he was wrong, maybe I’d feel different. As it is, I can imagine his shock at being accused may have lead him to exaggerate how hostile the waitress was, but mostly I’m thinking @Skua@kbin.earth is correct that it was just a case of mishearing what was said.

I doubt Trump himself has actually heard about any of this, but if he did happen to hear that feds were prosecuting for ‘housing discrimination’, I’m SURE his knee jerk reaction would be, “That’s what they did to my dad! Not on my watch!”

In another case, a predominantly white Michigan township allowed an asphalt plant to open on its outskirts, away from its population centers but near subsidized housing complexes in the neighboring poor, mostly Black city of Flint.

Unlike his dad, these cases aren’t about denying housing to minorities, but mostly about doing harm to places that already have minorities. Again, I doubt he knows that, but I bet that Stephen Miller would make sure Trump approved, if needed.

I’m hoping that’s what happened because I don’t know what else she could have expected.