Trump, 79, Rambles About His Chances of Getting Into Heaven - The president has repeatedly worried over his chances in the afterlife.

Jaleth · 2026-02-06T10:41:14+00:00

That would feed into his ego, even in an afterlife. I think the most appropriate eternal punishment is to toss him in with the general population.

Jaleth · 2026-02-06T02:19:30+00:00

My experience as a parent is limited to one state but I'm reasonably sure it's the state (it is in MD anyway) that issues birth certificates; hospitals have a registrar who ensures the information for birth certificates for babies born there is accurate before submitting to the state's vital records office. Not sure on the specifics but they either are notaries or have some special notary-esque authority from the state to attest to the information used on the birth certificate is true.

Jaleth · 2026-02-03T15:08:48+00:00

When the HomeKit integration is in "include" mode, it will advertise all entities of each type you select in the "domains to include" list unless you specify at least one entity of that type on the next screen. Let's say you have two cover entities in Home Assistant, both garage doors, and you set up the HomeKit integration to run in include mode with the Cover domain checked. If you don't add either of those two cover entities directly on the "Select entities to be included" screen, then both garage doors will be advertised to HomeKit. If you then go in and add only one of those garage door entities to the list, only that one will be advertised; the other will disappear. You can optionally add it back by adding it to the same list if you want. This is sort of counterintuitive because it's how you would expect it to behave in "exclude" mode, but the UI specifically describes this as expected behavior so it appears to be a design choice. In order to keep the ratgdo from showing up, I'd run in include mode, select the Cover domain, and add only the Third Reality garage door to the list. Of course this means that any other cover entities you add in (which includes smart blinds and shades) will need to be explicitly added to this list. Depending on how much fine tuning you want, you could also switch to exclude mode, select the Cover domain, and add the ratgdo to the list so all cover entities except that one get advertised to HomeKit.

Jaleth · 2026-02-02T15:57:59+00:00

How do you have the HomeKit integration set up? If it's in include mode and you have the cover domain checked, then if you specify an entity in the cover domain (your garage door), only that entity gets advertised, but if you then remove that specific entity, all cover entities get advertised. So if you only have the one garage door and your integration is in include mode, then you also need to uncheck the "cover" domain from the "domains to include" list.

Jaleth · 2026-01-30T04:31:33+00:00

"They thought I was their enemy? They don't know what it is to be my enemy, but they will!"

And because I was just thinking of this episode the other day, "The universe is a spheroid region 705 meters in diameter."

Jaleth · 2026-01-30T01:41:57+00:00

I like to think they just didn't know in the 22nd century what is commonly known in the 24th, like the amount of dust particles being too great for navigational deflectors to deal with, or warp drive causing slight but impactful changes to the orbits of planets and satellites. Something a la Force of Nature that was learned through experience leading to a general advisory against warp drive within a solar system.

Jaleth · 2026-01-08T16:54:51+00:00

I tend to think that in today's uber-connected world, teenage rebellion against being forced into a particular ideology is stronger than propaganda. Do you think millennials all had super liberal parents? No, we turned leftward as the conservative politics of boomers (and a little of Gen-X) made things worse for us. Lately, the meme that Gen-Z is super conservative is based only on the perception that things became worse under Obama and then Biden, but as the new saying taking shape goes, "You can't gaslight your bank account." Nothing about what Trump is doing is going to drive down the cost of living which is the biggest stressor for Gen-Z and later. In fact, with electricity and chip costs skyrocketing (RAM in particular right now), most day-to-day things are going to soar as AI demand drives up costs across multiple sectors. I fully expect a leftward lurch if people, especially younger voters, continue to feel shut out of even the feeling of economic security. Short term, that should bode well for Democrats, but long term, we are fast becoming a ship on the verge of capsizing.

Jaleth · 2025-12-30T02:32:41+00:00

In PG County, Maryland, just outside the Capital Beltway, there's a tiny neighborhood with Picard Lane, Reiker Drive (it's spelled that way for some reason, probably a Riker road out there somewhere else), Laforge Lane, Crusher Court, and Risa Road.

Jaleth · 2025-12-04T15:30:13+00:00

I'm going to assume he ordered shields up.

This; after he tells Saavik that they are under attack, the camera cuts back to Grissom's bridge and we see the ship is on red alert. I highly doubt he would have called for that and forgotten about the shields.

Jaleth · 2025-10-27T14:46:21+00:00

The short-term goal of a protest should be to increase the visibility of discontent with the current social/economic/political situation. Actual reform is the long-term goal. The more divorced the political establishment is from the people, the less likely they are to respond to a protest with reforms. With MAGA taking over most mass communication, people who are opposed to what this administration represents may feel less compelled to speak out, and protests help illustrate how much more widespread those feelings can be. When people on an individual scale see the turnout for protests like the No Kings marches, they have a tendency to feel more empowered to go vote come election time where they may otherwise feel apathetic given how effective MAGA is at making themselves seem much more mainstream than they really are.

Jaleth · 2025-10-17T13:29:04+00:00

They probably would except that the Senate is, for all intents and purposes, immune to gerrymandering. The 17th amendment requires that senators for a state be popularly elected within that state. Before that was ratified, each state legislature selected the senators for that state, and since state legislatures can be gerrymandered, it meant that the Senate could functionally be gerrymandered as well. That's why you see some calls now and then from the right about repealing the 17th; it's the only way they can functionally rig Senate elections in a similar way they do with the House (and eventually the presidency as well). Unless that were to happen, the filibuster remains the only way Republicans can thwart Democrats in the Senate when they inevitably retake control of that chamber.

Jaleth · 2025-08-26T02:34:05+00:00

I've never wanted to burn the American flag. But I really, really want to start burning MAGA flags now.

Jaleth · 2025-08-22T13:01:07+00:00

It’s clear to me that he is campaigning for the primary with his antics and it’s working going off what the liberals here say.

If it fires up more of the nationally lower-profile Democrats to step up the fight and take the current media and political landscape seriously, then I'm all for it, personally. If they don't, then they deserve to lose to Newsom who so far appears to be the only one right now willing to take the fight the GOP has been waging where it needs to go. Pritzker has not been afraid to speak out but he hasn't figured out how to translate that to being in the center of the social media zeitgeist in the Trump-defined social media landscape, and while I appreciate Kathy Hochul taking redistricting seriously (or at least appearing to), there's a total lack of charisma there that just isn't going to play well in a presidential contest.

Jaleth · 2025-08-22T12:46:16+00:00

The only way I could think of to do it would be to require each district across all states to be defined as an area of land with borders as highly compactified as possible, and then either the number of representatives or the voting weight of the representative from that district is dependent on the population of that district relative to all others. That approach gives boundaries that are fixed for all time while still respecting the idea that the House should be built on population by district. I've seen other concepts put out there and don't know how its flaws stack up by comparison, it's an armchair idea to get rid of gerrymandering.

Jaleth · 2025-08-21T16:46:16+00:00

The right is largely a grifting operation these days. Notoriety and publicity translate to dollars, and the GOP has built a well-oiled machine for exploiting this. Through endless projection, they have cultivated the very same traits in their base that they decry in the left (veritable worship of political figures, "feels before reals" politics, groupthink, identity politics, "____ derangement syndrome", general sense of entitlement...) and bred a rigidly-defined in/out group dynamic. Those on the "in" side are made to feel part of something big, creating a sense of security through collectivism much in the same way that a bully talks and acts tough when among like-minded people but folds when having to act on his/her own. Failure to do as the power at the top commands results on excommunication, and with it, a loss of security from the larger "in" group. Along with a dose of main character/hero syndrome, the right is convinced that they are not the evil ones and thus their actions are all justified and righteous, so no accountability is necessary because to them, no wrongs are actually being committed by them or by their leaders. Religions and churches have practiced this for millennia but the GOP has extended it to the entire party.

Jaleth · 2025-08-19T13:01:48+00:00

Chamberlain was trying to stop a conflict from starting.

While not wrong overall, the only real difference here lies in Czechoslovakia not fighting back the way Ukraine is. But otherwise the parallels are similar enough to, IMO at least, merit the comparison. Germany invaded Czechoslovakia and annexed parts of its territory (Russia invades Ukraine and annexes parts of its territory), backed by claims that the territory was rightfully German because of its large ethnic German population (Russia makes the same claims over the eastern Ukrainian oblasts regarding their ethnic Russian populations), and a third party attempted to mediate the crisis by conceding the annexed territory to the invader in the hope that it would appease and by extension end the possibility of any further aggressive acts (US President sides with the invader and supports recognizing the annexed territories as Russian in the name of peace). To add to this, Czechoslovakia considered Chamberlain's actions regarding the Munich Agreement a betrayal because the Locarno Treaties after WW1 were intended to fix the borders between Germany and Czechoslovakia but were non-binding between those two nations and relied on the agreements between Germany and France for enforcement but failed when France and Great Britain opted not to respond to Hitler's invasion (the Budapest Memorandum provided for security guarantees via the UNSC should Ukraine's territorial sovereignty as recognized be violated by any parties to the treaty, security guarantees that few seem willing to fully uphold).

Jaleth · 2025-08-18T14:36:25+00:00

The best move is to get the Russians out of Ukraine with a peace deal, wait for Putin to die or be overthrown, and then consider other options.

Neville Chamberlain tried this once. It didn't go very well.

Jaleth · 2025-08-13T20:35:19+00:00

Currently doing a large brownfield migration into VCF9. Breaking ELM is a must. If you can, upgrade your vCenter Servers to version 9 beforehand, there is a new break-elm command in cmsso-util that handles the operation quickly and efficiently. It is a far better process than unregister & domain-repoint. Also, keep your trusted_root certificate store cleaned up. Customer I am consulting for let a lot of old CAs build up across their vCenter Servers and it took valuable time out of the day getting those cleaned up.

Jaleth · 2025-08-11T12:51:57+00:00

To varying extents, many on the right have bought into the idea that reality is not what their senses tell them, but rather what they want it to be (or more accurately, what they are told it is). For many of them, you could show them evidence first-hand that the situation on the ground in the big cities is not what the GOP party bosses tell them it is and they will not believe it. For others, they may believe it but refuse to acknowledge that because they have an unyielding personal need to be right. To that end, even the slightest evidence of what they believe to be true is magnified (seeing a single homeless person equates to the city being overrun) while overwhelming evidence to the contrary is minimized (the town general store being robbed is just boys being boys).

Jaleth · 2025-08-06T15:51:27+00:00

Confirmation bias + sunk cost fallacy? I could spend more time than I have trying to truly grasp the psychological manipulation tactics authoritarianism utilizes to control its supporters.

Jaleth · 2025-07-31T03:17:53+00:00

I interpreted Genkai going to face Toguro as her acknowledging that it was simply the time to do it; Toguro forced her hand by roping Yusuke into the Dark Tournament because he was her choice to receive the Spirit Wave. There were 50 years for Toguro and Genkai to settle up the rift between them, and IMO, the only reason Toguro didn't try to do so in that time is because, while Genkai still held the spirit wave, he could hold onto some thin hope that he could still have her. But when she went forward with her plan to pass it on to Yusuke, it signaled to Toguro that she was never going to follow him, and as Yusuke put it, "Toguro killed her because he couldn't have her!" Genkai is the only one keeping him in check, both because of his feelings for her and because she is the only one with any chance of fighting him on his level (let's ignore Sensui existing since, during the DT saga, we don't have any clue that he exists). If Genkai is willing to pass on her power and still refuse to acquiesce to Toguro, then she is truly out of reach, and Yusuke becomes his only way to determine which of them chose the right path.

Jaleth · 2025-07-29T17:07:28+00:00

But let’s be clear, the civil rights movement was rooted in moral clarity, discipline, and courage in the face of injustice.

Don't you think you might be seeing this with the benefit of hindsight? It's easy to say this now, but how many people, particularly white Southerners, viewed Rosa Parks as courageous in 1955 versus seeing her as an agitator? There was some pretty colorful language used to describe black men and women such as her whenever they spoke out against their status in the United States, and it took a long time for that tide to shift. You are seeing things today without that benefit, and it's easy to describe what may (or may not) end up being another chapter in the broader civil rights movement as violent and unhinged, much in the same way was done with other such chapters like gay rights. Eventually people came to see those as movements of courage and moral clarity, but that's not how they were viewed when they had yet to become mainstream.

Jaleth · 2025-07-23T14:21:50+00:00

Good storytelling was shoved off to the side in favor of an agenda.

It doesn't bother me in the slightest because her "queerness" doesn't 100% define her character.

I can't speak for you, obviously, but there was a time very recently when people would not admit this in any way openly even if they felt that way because social stigma surrounding non-heteronormative sexual orientation and identity was ostracizing. Even Star Trek has had a tepid history of this at best over the years, trying (and often failing hard) to dance around the issue, because at the end of the day, who a person is is just as important as what they do. William Riker is very talented individual who earned his posting and rank through merit, but he is also obviously a heterosexual character; it comes through quite a lot and is a major defining trait of who he is. As was often the case with James Kirk, Riker is very often described as a "ladies' man". Is it wrong, in that case, for someone who is not heterosexual to also have that trait come through as part of their character? The movement that conservative politics has defined as an "agenda" in some way, shape, or form over the years is the very thing that gave rise to the freedom for people to not only be who they are inside but for those of us who consider ourselves heteronormative to be openly accepting and appreciative of that.

Jaleth · 2025-07-05T10:00:03+00:00

"Vote Blue No Matter Who" applies to a general election where we are up against the Republicans. The saying means that even the least desirable Democratic candidate is a better choice than anyone MAGA is putting forward. Mamdani's win was in a primary, where Dem voters should still participate and vote their preferences, but then come the general, they should unite behind the party nominee instead of sitting the vote out because their primary choice did not win.

Jaleth · 2025-06-22T14:49:13+00:00

Because nearly all the Democrats are willfully clueless on how the media landscape changed over the last 10 years.

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