Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

This fight is for everything.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

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Monday Evening Open Thread: Readership Capture

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In the ‘national divorce’ the GOP loves to talk about, Dems already got ice cream, football, Taylor Swift…

Genuinely good news, assuming it happens:


 
… Aaand, another development from the Trump Crime Cartel:

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Three Months That Changed The World (Respite)

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Time for another thread, and perhaps a break from our exhausting round of ragegasms.

I don’t have anything particularly useful to offer, so I’m afraid that what you get is some random musing on some science-y stuff.

Yesterday afternoon I was reading a fascinating essay by Abraham Pais* on Einstein and quantum theory (as one does).  I was rolling along when this passage brought me to a screeching halt:

In the last four months of 1859 there occurred a number of events which were to change the course of science.

On the twelfth of September, Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier (1811-1877)submitted to the French Academy the text of a letter to Hervé Faye (1814 1902) in which he recorded that the perihelion of Mercury advances by thirty-eight seconds per century due to “some as yet unknown action on which no light has been thrown,” (Le Verrier, 1859). The effect was to remain unexplained until the days of general relativity.** On the twenty-fourth of November a book was published in London, entitled On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, by Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882). Meanwhile on the twentieth of October Gustav Kirchhoff (1859) from Heidelberg submitted his observation that the dark D– lines in the solar spectrum are darkened still further by the interposition of a sodium flame. As a result, a few weeks later he proved a theorem and posed a challenge. The response to Kirchhoff’s challenge led to the discovery of the quantum theory.

I know, I know.  While Darwin’s book was pretty much instantly understood to open enormous new vistas in the study of the living world, no contemporary observers could have had more than a twitch of recognition of the significance of either Mercury’s motion or what would come from a deep dive into the electromagnetic spectrum.  But in hindsight we can (as Pais did) see those three months as a watershed, a before and after moment in the making of modern science, and hence of so much of our allegedly modern lives.

Three Months That Changed The World (Respite)

The economic historian Brad DeLong has made the case that 1870 or so was a critical turning point, the moment when humankind at last broke out of Malthusian trap that had capped growth and the chance for an ever increasing fraction of humankind to enjoy lives that exceed subsistence. He makes a strong argument, IMHO, but what strikes me is the way the last half of  the nineteenth century was genuinely a break with the past across so much of human experience, for ill (see, e.g. this) and very much for good.

My book in progress (out next spring) looks at one of those shifts, born of the long struggle to understand the mechanisms of infectious disease that came to a climax in the 1870s and 1880s. Pais here points to parallel leaps in other scientific domains. There’s no doubt that a raft of technologies born of various sciences made everyday life in the last third of the century meaningfully different across growing swathes of the globe than what one’s parents or grandparents had experienced in recent decades.

All of which to say is that I’m finding it both fun and provoking to look into that time.  History does not repeat itself, but, as they say, it knows the chords. I’m hearing a lot of resonances between our own time and what was going on about one hundred and fifty years ago.

That’s enough late-night dorm room meandering from me.  What do y’all think?  Leaving the miseries of minute-by-minute politics aside for a moment, how radical a shift in our understanding of and engagement of the world have we gone through over the last while?  What are the odds we’ll find a way to turn any such new ideas into human flourishing.

Or, if you’d rather, MLB’s Opening Day is ten days away.*** That’s fair game too.

Which is to say, this thread is as open as are at this blessed moment of possibility each team’s chances of winning the World Series.

*Pais was a physicist, a friend of Einstein and Bohr, the biographer of both men, and someone I had the good fortune to know, albeit slightly. One afternoon we got to walk around the Prague Jewish cemetery together; it was a truly moving hour or so.

**I tell the story of Le Verrier’s Mercury discovery and the at once serious and comic scientific quest that followed in The Hunt for Vulcan. It’s a fun read, if I do say so as shouldn’t.

***I, for one, do not take this coming Wednesday’s two game set in South Korea as baseball’s opening day. YMMV.

Image: Joseph Wright of Derby, A Philosopher Giving that Lecture on the Orrery… c. 1766.

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Trump: Bottled in Bond

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Seems our favorite adjudged rapist and fraudster is having a spot of bother raising half a billion:

Trump: Bottled in Bond

[That link leads to Friedman’s feed, as the post itself seems to be visible only to Bluesky users.]

TL:DR–no one in the rather small universe of insurance companies that provide such bonds will take on such an enormous sum without cash or cash-equivalent collateral.

Trump: Bottled in Bond 1

What I found particularly interesting was the remark in an insurance broker’s affirmation that most of the handful of companies that do handle transactions on this scale cap their exposure at $100 million.

That suggests to me that even if Judge Engeron were to reduce the bond to, say, the principle amount without interest (high in the $300 millions) or even just to cut the demand in half ($232 million) Trump would still have a big hill to climb. And even at the lower amount, he’d still be on the hook for a 4% premium, or over $5 million in ready money.

[ETA: to repeat, I am not a lawyer, but if I’ve read actual lawyers correctly, the bond has to cover 110% of the judgment, so if Engeron does not drop the amount required Trump needs to raise or get surety for over $500 million.  That’s kinda of a lot of money even for a real billionaire.]

Not to mention that Trump and his attorneys did not exactly ingratiate themselves with this judge.  That shouldn’t and maybe won’t make a difference to Engeron’s engagement with the merits of their argument, but (recalling that IANAL) it seems likely that the quality of mercy may be just a bit strained in this instance.

In possibly unrelated news, popcorn futures opened significantly higher in the morning markets.

As open as Trump’s books aren’t, this thread is.

Image: Victor Dubreuil, Barrels of Money, c. 1897

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Monday Morning Open Thread: Are You Better Off?…

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My Irish-American Nana, the lace-curtain one, would’ve had a phrase for this: Irish schmaltz. There’s a particular kind of faith-and-begorra blarney that hides a knife, and President Biden is gifted in its use: The Kennedy family, which has given so much to America & Democratic politics, is always welcome here. But RFK Jr — the closest you’ll get is if you take the visitors tour, assuming you can score a ticket.

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Late Night Open Thread: The RNC Bust-Out

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Late Night Open Thread: The RNC Bust-Out

(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)

In case anyone’s wondering where TFG picked up his new vocabulary word — Politico, “Bloodbath at RNC: Trump team slashes staff at committee”:

… All told, the expectation is that more than 60 RNC staffers who work across the political, communications and data departments will be let go. Those being asked to resign include five members of the senior staff, though the names were not made public. Additionally, some vendor contracts are expected to be cut.

In a letter to some political and data staff, Sean Cairncross, the RNC’s new chief operating officer, said that the new committee leadership was “in the process of evaluating the organization and staff to ensure the building is aligned” with its vision. “During this process, certain staff are being asked to resign and reapply for a position on the team.”…

Trump advisers have described the RNC’s structure as overly bloated and bureaucratic, which they believe has contributed to the party’s cash woes. The RNC had about $8 million at the end of December, only about one-third as much as the Democratic National Committee.

Under the new structure, the Trump campaign is looking to merge its operations with the RNC. Key departments, such as communications, data and fundraising, will effectively be one and the same.

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War for Ukraine Day 753: The Starlink Snowflake Is Allowed To Move Into Geospatial Intelligence

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I’m still exhausted. So this is going to be as brief as I can make it. I apologize in advance for my exceedingly exhaustion driven short temper.

Odesa once again came under Russian attack overnight. Fortunately it was just drones and not cruise missiles.

The Biden administration has decided to give known security risk, drug addict, neo-NAZI, racist eugencist, insider threat, and overall anti-American oligarch Elon Musk a contract to do geo-spatial intelligence.

Reuters has the details:

WASHINGTON, March 16 (Reuters) – SpaceX is building a network of hundreds of spy satellites under a classified contract with a U.S. intelligence agency, five sources familiar with the program said, demonstrating deepening ties between billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company and national security agencies.

The network is being built by SpaceX’s Starshield business unit under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency that manages spy satellites, the sources said.

The plans show the extent of SpaceX’s involvement in U.S. intelligence and military projects and illustrate a deeper Pentagon investment into vast, low-Earth orbiting satellite systems aimed at supporting ground forces.

If successful, the sources said the program would significantly advance the ability of the U.S. government and military to quickly spot potential targets almost anywhere on the globe.

The contract signals growing trust by the intelligence establishment of a company whose owner has clashed with the Biden administration and sparked controversy, opens new tab over the use of Starlink satellite connectivity in the Ukraine war, the sources said.

The Wall Street Journal reported, opens new tab in February the existence of a $1.8 billion classified Starshield contract with an unknown intelligence agency without detailing the purposes of the program.

Reuters reporting discloses for the first time that the SpaceX contract is for a powerful new spy system with hundreds of satellites bearing Earth-imaging capabilities that can operate as a swarm in low orbits, and that the spy agency that Musk’s company is working with is the NRO.

Reuters was unable to determine when the new network of satellites would come online and could not establish what other companies are part of the program with their own contracts.

SpaceX, the world’s largest satellite operator, did not respond to several requests for comment about the contract, its role in it and details on satellite launches. The Pentagon referred a request for comment to the NRO and SpaceX.

In a statement the NRO acknowledged its mission to develop a sophisticated satellite system and its partnerships with other government agencies, companies, research institutions and nations, but declined to comment on Reuters’ findings about the extent of SpaceX’s involvement in the effort.

“The National Reconnaissance Office is developing the most capable, diverse, and resilient space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance system the world has ever seen,” a spokesperson said.

The satellites can track targets on the ground and share that data with U.S. intelligence and military officials, the sources said. In principle, that would enable the U.S. government to quickly capture continuous imagery of activities on the ground nearly anywhere on the globe, aiding intelligence and military operations, they added.

Roughly a dozen prototypes have been launched since 2020, among other satellites on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, three of the sources said.

Much more at the link!

Why is the Biden administration doing something this stupid? Here’s why:

“Even though Musk is not technically a diplomat or statesman, I felt it was important to treat him as such, given the influence he had on this issue,” Kahl told me.

Biden’s senior national security appointments: the gifts that keep on giving to dictators, tyrants, authoritarians, oligarchs, and kleptocrats. During the Obama administration these idiots allowed Theil a contract for Palantir that gave Palantir control of all the intelligence that was loaded into the system. So Theil and his companies own all of that, not the US government. The learning curve is flat.

More analysis on this after the jump.

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

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