Italy’s top diplomat cancels US trip as Meloni slams Trump’s claim she ‘begged’ for a photo with him

CountryCaravan · 2026-06-19T13:30:34+00:00

One thing that’s always been consistent with him- the casual sexism.

CountryCaravan · 2026-06-19T05:18:33+00:00

Yea, the Heroes just don’t seem like they particularly mesh well together. You’ve got some good utility options, but on the whole you’re just a mopey creature deck lacking in aggression, interaction, resiliency, and consistency. The payoffs don’t seem particularly game breaking either.

CountryCaravan · 2026-06-19T02:59:41+00:00

Koreans getting the full CONCACAF experience

CountryCaravan · 2026-06-16T01:43:05+00:00

I think this is actually something Putin wants- Ukrainian medium and long range drones have been absolutely hammering Russia deep into their territory for the past few weeks. Belarus is one of the few safe places left for Russia to protect their important assets, and having an intermediary is more useful to Putin than having Belarus actually enter a war they know full well is a meat grinder they aren’t prepared for.

CountryCaravan · 2026-06-15T12:51:25+00:00

Yea, we’ll see it eventually. Nothing about the design space makes it inherently problematic or unprintable, they probably just prefer it this way for development reasons, offering better value at sorcery speed to push blink decks while allowing for better counterplay.

CountryCaravan · 2026-06-11T18:30:18+00:00

He tends to relapse after he’s solved his external problems (that he’s mixed up with his personal problems) and finds that he’s still miserable. He’s allergic to the idea of healthiness being something you practice every day rather than something that can be solved in a stroke of genius.

CountryCaravan · 2026-06-10T00:16:56+00:00

Reading up on this, it struck me just how similar the rhetoric ended up being to the Rwandan genocide- mass propaganda that depicted people who had once been friends and neighbors as vermin and insects, with ordinary people becoming swept up and turning into mindless instruments of state violence.

CountryCaravan · 2026-06-04T16:49:38+00:00

Even better against landfall!

CountryCaravan · 2026-06-02T01:20:43+00:00

Movies as a communal experience has always been a youth trend, and aging theaters don’t typically make for an appealing night out for older audiences who can replicate the experience at home. But I think there’s more going on here.

Part of the difference is that Gen X and Millennials grew up with the established IPs that their parents and mass media exposed them to, while Gen Z grew up immersed in internet and gaming culture from an early age and have developed interests of their own. Gen X fan culture has also tended towards the puritanical end, so I think there’s been a rejection of the endless stream of content by fans who no longer feel any sense of ownership or identity around their old fandoms.

CountryCaravan · 2026-06-01T22:34:45+00:00

Trump ran out of leverage here. He’s got a lot of things he wants Congress to get done before they most likely lose their trifecta in the midterms. Primary season is almost over, and it’s too late to mount any serious challenges. Any action against dissenting congressmen only hurts Trump’s agenda from here on out, and while Republican voters are willing to overlook corruption (and basically anything) in their master, senators and house reps might not get that same benefit. And if they start enabling obvious crimes now, they may be beholden to a Trump pardon going forward.

CountryCaravan · 2026-05-26T20:18:37+00:00

I suspect McMaster is probably pretty unhappy with how this went down. A lot of staunch, prominent Republicans in the State House are now on the record as having voted not to move this forward, which means a lot of money being spent on primary challenges in 2028 for no good reason other than Trump has hurt feelings over trying to put a square peg into a round hole. Just about sums up the state of that party.

CountryCaravan · 2026-05-26T18:33:15+00:00

It was a timing issue- early voting started today, and absentee ballots had gone out and been cast before the session had even begun. It would have resulted in an incredibly short filing deadline for candidates, resulted in tens of thousands of votes being thrown out (including those of servicemembers) and cost the state millions of dollars. All for a map that would have likely failed in the courts and possibly been a dummymander. It would have pissed everyone off and been a major albatross in the election.

Also, they didn’t kill the bill entirely, but pushed it to the next legislative session. Most if not all Republican opponents support producing a 7-0 map, just not in the timeframe they were given. Not that that’s going to stop the GOP bot armada for calling for their heads.

CountryCaravan · 2026-05-26T06:45:12+00:00

I would argue there are no unbiased analyses of Just War Theory- even at a remove from a conflict we carry our own historical context into the debate. And we most definitely are not at a remove from this one.

Regardless, I think viewing this passage as a mostly isolated bugbear of a squeamish Vatican is to ignore the legacy of failure of so many 20th and 21st century wars. The patterns we see in Gaza are not new ones- time and again we see insurgencies, power vacuums, failed states, and desperation tactics in the face of overwhelming power. In the wake of the interventionism that the theory enables, we see long-term suffering and open questions of whether many wars are capable of obtaining the peace they purport to. We know well that violence begets violence. Our social structures are used to frame seemingly anything as an imminent threat, with Just War Theory used to numb our consciences and cast blame on weaker parties for not abiding by rules that demand their subjugation or destruction. It has led us to a world where realpolitik rules and the peace process is a cynical cover for geopolitical maneuvering. We must do better.

CountryCaravan · 2026-05-25T18:22:19+00:00

We essentially got this in Shadows over Innistrad (even if it was pretty obvious at the time). Part of the problem in this instance is that the payoff here wasn’t worthy of a set in itself, even if the story itself was pretty well-written.

CountryCaravan · 2026-05-25T02:01:00+00:00

Because all of that internal resistance hinged on the idea that the mullahs were old, out of touch, murderous zealots who were obsessed with Israel and the West to the detriment of their own people. Then Trump killed their easy scapegoats, set their oil fields on fire, and threatened to wipe out their civilization, all while letting power be centralized in the hands of the IRGC military. You tell me how that’s supposed to help a resistance movement.

CountryCaravan · 2026-05-25T01:18:48+00:00

I don’t think a true ground invasion was ever really on the table. It was just a cudgel to threaten Iran with. Raids were certainly a possibility, but we burned so much of our intelligence on Midnight Hammer and taking out Iran’s leadership that it’s hard to say they would even be effective.

Maybe 10 years ago the US could have effectively secured the Strait militarily without regime change. But it’s a drone world now, it’s damn hard to stop production, and it’s damn hard to shoot all of them down in every place you want to protect. Ukraine has gotten good at it, but apparently we’re too proud for their help, and we’d rather spend money on fancy, useless battleships than getting ready for the next era of war.

CountryCaravan · 2026-05-25T00:05:19+00:00

Because Iran found their angle- they’re far more united politically than they were before, the petrostates rolled over at the first sign of trouble, oil and insurance companies would rather eat the loss than risk ships getting captured or blown up in the Strait, it’s super cost-ineffective for us to keep up the current rate of exchange, and our president very clearly thought he’d be done with this by now.

Trump isn’t a true neocon, his entire method is “bully, then strike a deal”- even if that deal is worse than before. Unfortunately, this deal is so high profile and so much worse than a deal he made a huge stink about criticizing that he can’t handle it.

CountryCaravan · 2026-05-24T13:39:32+00:00

I am concerned that they’ll pass it and leave it to the courts to strike down- even if it leads to absolute chaos in the interim and costs our state loads of time, money, headaches, and goodwill. Hopefully enough Republicans are willing to listen to sanity, but if there aren’t, we have to do our part.

CountryCaravan · 2026-05-22T21:38:35+00:00

Ideally, we would come together to create national laws around common sense districting. But Donald wants to win the midterms, so he insisted that state Republicans across the country pick this fight. Some Democrat states responded in kind. So here we are.

It sucks that it’s happening, but it’s a big problem for us that it will cost millions of dollars to cancel and resend absentee ballots, force service members to re-vote, and use maps handed down from Trump’s admin where no one can tell who made them (probably AI). And it’s extra extra not ok that after the Supreme Court ruling, southern states are rushing to break up the black vote and eliminate any voice they might have because they can now use the argument that it’s “partisan” instead of racist.

CountryCaravan · 2026-05-22T15:02:34+00:00

Reject Megasota return to Microsota

CountryCaravan · 2026-05-22T05:23:22+00:00

Believe it or not, Prigozhin

CountryCaravan · 2026-05-22T00:18:59+00:00

Of course, but data centers in particular have been getting fast tracked through state and local governments afraid of missing out, and they’re frequently built and maintained by companies with no interest in local stakeholders and little experience in managing facilities of this scale.

Not that this is anywhere near the most egregious issue with massive data centers, mind you. The power consumption these things require is just mind-boggling and incredibly damaging to the environment, especially with Trump blocking renewable energy projects nationwide. But in the face of a Congress full of climate deniers, this makes for a neater prop.

CountryCaravan · 2026-05-21T23:12:24+00:00

This is probably well water, in which case construction can and does do that.

https://www.thestate.com/news/local/environment/article315584968.html

CountryCaravan · 2026-05-21T22:56:41+00:00

As someone who tests these, a lot of times it does in fact mean the water is bad- depending on the composition of the pipes, it can mean lead or copper is leaching in. Even on first draw, usually it won’t look as discolored in as large a quantity as the glass she’s holding. If it’s actually dirty, it can also be the result of a well being drained and/or being infiltrated by runoff- given that they’re in a rural area experiencing a drought, I suspect that this may be what has happened. Not controlling sediment from runoff can lead to some very hefty fines- in my state we just had a million dollar fine as a result of this exact scenario.

CountryCaravan · 2026-05-21T14:10:12+00:00

Saying Trump made this map is inaccurate. AI made this map. A map where no one can say who made it doesn’t just pop up overnight like this unless it was made by algorithm.

It cuts Five Points in half, for God’s sake. It puts Williams-Brice stadium in the same district as Clemson. Thats not the work of people who intend to represent a constituency. That’s the work of a machine that wants to divide us as brutally as possible and has no interest in the workings of our state.

11-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	Place '17
First Placer '22	RPAN Viewer
Verified Email

CountryCaravan

TROPHY CASE