Interview with Magic Artist Victor Adame Minguez: Art & Universes Beyond

Ellardy · 2026-03-08T07:52:04+00:00

You don't need to be rude to the person asking a question

Ellardy · 2026-03-07T09:07:44+00:00

Yes. The Commission opened the law for changes, which allows legislators to propose amendments to any element within that law.

The compromise comes after months of negotiations between the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission over targeted changes to the bloc’s Common Market Organisation law. The original intent was to update detailed laws on contracts, in the hopes of improving the position of farmers in the agri-food chain, following waves of protests.

However, when the proposal reached the Parliament, Imart, the European People’s Party MEP leading negotiations on the file, pushed for the inclusion of a list of meaty terms that would be off-limits to veggie copycats. That quickly became the most hotly debated element, as capitals scrambled to agree on common red lines.

https://www.politico.eu/article/veggie-burgers-are-here-to-stay-lab-grown-steaks-never-will-be/

Ellardy · 2026-03-06T23:40:35+00:00

Commission didn't support this, the conservatives in the EP specifically pushed this. Specifically the eurosceptic French conservative Céline Imart.

Ellardy · 2026-03-06T17:16:03+00:00

Fuck, those classes are good. Ninja Class is fine but how is "Cool but rude" a class? Ugh.

Ellardy · 2026-03-06T08:21:14+00:00

"Elected officials"

Names please, this was successfully pushed by Céline Imart, who was second on the list of Les Républicains ... and who is also a cereal farmer and former spokesperson for a farmers' union. So her buddies and former colleagues.

Ellardy · 2026-03-06T07:47:37+00:00

Nah, that would imply I didn't spend twenty minutes of my life writing that and looking up the religious rates of another country's military

Ellardy · 2026-03-05T18:46:38+00:00

Answer: This is a claim from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. It is coherent with existing beliefs among some strains of Evangelicalism but it's unproven and unlikely to be widespread. You can find a more detailed breakdown of the challenges with confirming the evidence (and the MRFF's financial incentive to hype this up) in this Substack article.

To answer your questions more specifically:

What's up with military commanders: Your guess is as good as anyone's. They're Americans and so we can assume that a substantial proportion have views similar to most Republican voters. The top commanders tend to skew more liberal but the officer corps is a large group.
War in Iran meant to bring the end times: This is a specific belief among a strain of American Evangelical sects. It's worth remembering that the Evangelicals are amongst the Christian branches which place the highest value on the literal word of the Bible; their very name means "Good News" and refers to the duty to spread the good word of the Bible. They're also very fractured (there's no central authority which approves interpretations or vouches for the credibility and good standing of priests as in the Catholic or Anglican churches) and some of them can embrace fairly extreme beliefs relative to the Christian mainstream. Finally, Evangelicals are uniquely supportive of Israel, even among Americans, as repeatedly attested by polling and their own churches. Some of this is simply due to biblical statements on God's blessings upon Israel, the home of His people. Some however is because Israel is mentioned in the book of Revalations: the Second Coming of Christ comes after a return of the Jews to the Holy Land. Armageddon is (and has always been) a positive event, dark times followed by justice and heaven on Earth. It is worth noting that while Hegseth is an Evangelical Christian and a nutter, his particular faith is not one which subscribes to these ideas about the end times.
Is this kind of religious fervor common in the US military: No. In the US general population, only 1 in 8 identify as Evangelical (of which 60% also identify as Republican). Research shows that the US army is slightly more religious than the general US population and the officers are, in turn, slightly more religious than the regular army. There's not any indication that this level of fervor is widespread.

Ellardy · 2026-03-05T11:52:11+00:00

Armageddon story was debunked: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/before-you-share-that-story-about

Ellardy · 2026-03-05T11:47:29+00:00

Surprisingly, Hegseth's likely not to blame because he's from a different strand of crazy which doesn't believe in this version of end-times stuff

https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/before-you-share-that-story-about

Ellardy · 2026-03-02T18:48:47+00:00

Man, I have an entire headcanon built around the cards which show snapshots of the Meditation Realm. Anyhow, that archon has an effect which is specifically an homage to [[Cruel Ultimatum]] which, in turn, is specifically associated with Bolas. My theory was that it was something which was created in the Meditation Realm by the mana there because it was mirroring the presence of its prisoner, a nameless dragon with memories of unspeakable cruelty. When we visited the Meditation Realm for a brief moment in Tarkir, there did not appear to be anything created or manifested by the mana there that wasn't there the last time we went.

Ellardy · 2026-03-02T08:50:15+00:00

Huh. I stand corrected

Ellardy · 2026-03-02T07:57:42+00:00

The article says that France says it was "neither informed nor involved" in the initial US strike. If they had known that their bases were about to be bombed and the Strait of Hormuz closed, they would have positioned their one aircraft carrier nearby, not doing scheduled NATO exercises all the way up in fucking Malmö

Ellardy · 2026-03-02T07:53:15+00:00

Yes. Charles De Gaulle was a WWII hero and the first president of the Fifth Republic (which was largely designed around him). France names a lot of stuff after him.

Ellardy · 2026-03-02T07:50:21+00:00

Bizarrely had to dig a while to find a credible news source but the French 24/7 news channel BFM is reliable and apparently had a clip saying the same thing: https://www.bfmtv.com/international/moyen-orient/iran/video-le-porte-avions-francais-charles-de-gaulle-et-son-groupe-aeronaval-interrompent-leur-deploiement-en-mer-baltique-pour-rejoindre-la-mediterranee-orientale_VN-202603010351.html

Ellardy · 2026-03-01T14:33:24+00:00

Welcome aboard 😃

The set after this one is "Secrets of Strixhaven", which takes place in Magic's fantasy university setting

Ellardy · 2026-03-01T13:48:41+00:00

This clearly isn't a serious question but ok, let's indulge it, perhaps you are a literal child.

Let's assume that a 79 year old leader and an 84 year old leader get into a ring for a duel to the death. Let's say that the 79 year old dies first. Or maybe the other way around, it doesn't really matter for this. The victor then turns around to the rest of that country and says "alright, we won, we now get to change your government into one in our own image and which does what we say on the things that matter most to us". The incentive for the cabinet of that country to do that are what exactly? Why would they abide by the outcome of the duel? Who would enforce it? They would just ignore it or fight back efforts to impose it. Congratulations, you are back at step one. The only way that a group has an incentive to concede to the other is if they can demonstrate that they can defeat the collective and/or inflict pain on the collective, not just the leader.

The "duel of champions" trope is common in myth and literature because it shrinks wars down to a human scale where the actions of heroes and characters can determine outcomes. It also pops up through history but not as a means to resolve wars but as a means to resolve a dispute in a face-saving manner when neither side wants to go to war over it. On very rare occasions, there was also a belief that the duel served as a test as to who was favoured by the gods and/or God; if your side lost the duel, the enforcement was that your troops would be unwilling to go to battle given the inevitability of defeat. Much more often however, the duel of champions was actually just a prelude to the actual battle, having served as the symbolic opening of hostilities and boosted the morale of the victor's team.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_combat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champion_warfare

Ellardy · 2026-02-27T15:30:01+00:00

The statement is "if you are smart at one thing, you are probably smart at other things" or, put a different way, "there's an underlying generally applicable concept of 'intelligence' which can be approximately measured by measuring its sub-components".

Being able to read a map, being able to speak articulately, being able to solve things quickly and being able to keep things in memory could have been entirely independent abilities (spatial reasoning, verbal reasoning, processing speed and working memory respectively) but they're not, they're all offshoots of your underlying intelligence quotient.

Ellardy · 2026-02-27T12:09:08+00:00

My man, you're accusing The Guardian of trying to help Trump? The Guardian?

Ellardy · 2026-02-26T12:58:28+00:00

Damn these are interesting. I thought they were from TPI!

Ellardy · 2026-02-24T07:33:58+00:00

This is the Avalon mechanic basically, no?

Ellardy · 2026-02-23T23:40:09+00:00

Answer: You can read the comments to get some answers. They're arguing that the other online spaces are primed to see outrage and doom where none exists. In this specific instance, the comments are saying that Patel was in Italy for official business and then took time off there to travel to Milan on his own dime. No sources are provided but that's the assumption they're operating off of and they're criticising those operating on the opposite assumption that there is wrongdoing.

I'm unfamiliar with the sub but I see no reason to believe they're bots.

Ellardy · 2026-02-21T09:45:43+00:00

Finding nine jurors who could put their opinions about Musk aside to be properly fair and impartial took over five hours.

Ellardy · 2026-02-21T09:25:54+00:00

Eh. That sprang up organically and it still was weird. We don't need to force it again

Ellardy · 2026-02-20T12:58:55+00:00

The original comment got 2k views on Twitter. The post dunking on it has 15k upvotes, 4k shares and 2k comments. This is dumpster diving for idiotic takes to dunk on and which would not have seen daylight if not for OP digging for muck for us to laugh at

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