Sarah Jessica Parker and Gwyneth Paltrow are jolie laide - close enough?

And was wildly overrated as a combat commander, FWIW.

So even Whitney Houston ripped off other artists? Why even get out of bed today?

The set of people who nitpick like that tend not to have much overlap with the set of people who’ve studied Greek. Or languages or grammar. But you are entirely correct, of course.

I ... had assumed there are such laws. Apparently in some states there aren’t. Another thing that is utterly intuitive to non-Americans but baffling to many Americans, apparently. Holy shit.

That vast majority of mentally ill people are no threat to anybody but themselves. (Yes, self harm and neglect, and certainly suicide, do profound damage to those who loved them, but you know what I mean.) And very few mental illnesses actually stop you from understanding it is evil to kill people. So utterly sick of…

Non-American here - are there not a raft of criminal and civil approaches that can be taken for making the father pay some price for letting his (clearly awful) teenager have access to a Glock and ammo? It’s legal for him to take his kid shooting with his supervision; my understanding is that it’s not legal for him to…

Watch Okkupert. Great TV, but terrifying.

How hard is it for academics?

I’m always amazed at how little Americans understand their own immigration laws and process.

“My problem with the focus on virginity is that it defines a girl or woman by what she has done or had done to her in relation to a man (I don’t think fundamentalists recognize virginity in a lesbian relationship, but who knows).”

Texas?

True. Ugh. But my hope is that the demographic shift they’re so terrified of will ultimately moderate them, as being nakedly racist will guarantee you less and less of the electorate.

Do they realize that if they weren’t raving racist assholes, brown people would quite possibly vote Republican more? The Canadian Conservative party figured this out and did quite well that way, for a while.

Beating the shit out of their kids, if the stats on ‘corporal punishment’ and ethnicity are accurate.

Can you expand on that? Are women of colour more likely to have gotten apologies? That’s not a trend I’ve noticed, but the incidents are so fucking exhaustive (exhausting) that I might have missed it. Or are you saying something else?

Not to mention it’s better if your candidate is not a convicted felon. And no, it’s not relevant here that Drumpf ought to be a convicted felon too; we’re trying to do better, not sink to that level.

Sounds like ours. We pay a whopping $4 a month. I’m guessing, though, that the nature of a $4 per month HOA is going to be totally different from that of a $100 per month HOA.

This really comes down to social capital. HOAs are trying to enforce the behaviours that used to be consensus civility and “good neighbour” issues. If you’re in an area in which there is still enough “thin trust,” as he describes it, they’re not necessary. But that social capital is dissolving, so we try to create…

Very true. My husband was recruited to be on the condo board, many years ago, and very soon voted to kick himself off it.