That reference is over my head, sorry.

Yeah, but if those of you saying government should have less power also took care to root out the self-serving assholes among you I might be more inclined to listen.

I wonder if fatalistic humor is just a more palatable term for rationalizing depressive ideations. 

Are you ever exhausted by it? We can’t even joke about units of measurement now because someone somewhere wants to be nasty to an entirely blameless group of people.

Say what you will about the U.S., at least they don’t use stone as a unit of measurement.

Reminds me of that time Obrador was seriously compared to Trump. They’re totally alike, what with their reliance on things like ... oxygen.

I kinda have to hand it to Splinter, religiously watching and reporting on television for old people and prolonging Meghan McCain’s relevance.

Yeah, that nonsense. 

Also his take on Mexico if memory serves.

There was a recent survey asking Europeans if they thought the union might be dissolved within, IIRC, the next 10-30 years, and in some countries a majority of respondents said yes, including, I think, in Germany. I’ve been trying to search for the damn thing, knowing that I heard about it in the last month, just to…

Out of curiosity, what’s the prison gang situation like in Indiana. Is he now getting 3 years among people who share his views and getting the opportunity to be further radicalized?

Yeah. This is fine.

Well, time to take the Tigris pigeon hunting.

East Germany had pre-k that cost something like 10% of the minimum monthly wage per month per child and sometimes provided on-staff medical and dental care. It had free kindergarten that is now considered to have been more rigorous than the modern German equivalent. And it had a literacy rate of 99% as opposed to the…

2007's great! There’s a movie about a French rat in a restaurant, those Freaks and Geeks kids made a couple of great movies, and an oil baron’s drinking milkshakes. Democrats won a majority of governorships and state legislatures, and took the House and Senate last year. Mad Men just started on AMC and that Don Draper…

Martin actually said the opposite. He said if you planned your story so that the butler did it, and some internet commenters figure out the butler did it then it’s a mistake to change it, because it turns early forshadowing into a dead end, requires retconning, and the story just gets too messy.

They’re a negotiating tool.

They were intended to bring the Chinese to the bargaining table and to force them to implement structural changes that would solve those issues.

Is it accurate to say that there’s no reason? Chinese IP theft and forced tech transfers in order to enter their market are well documented, as are other government-led efforts to distort their economy.

I actually would be interested in seeing a rational argument for staying out of WWII. Can’t say that I ever have read one.