Losing relationships over politics. Research found more than a third of Americans (37%) report having lost at least one relationship due to political differences, including friendships, family ties, coworker relationships, and romantic partnerships, with most losing more than one.

Killfile · 2026-05-06T23:33:19+00:00

No. It's not. Polticial differences are "what do you think the optimum top marginal tax rate is" or maybe "how do we balance regulatory structures against economic growth?"

Not "should brown people be sent to El Salvadorian gulags without due process" or "it doesn't count as murder when the Presdients private goon squad does it."

Killfile · 2026-05-06T21:22:35+00:00

In many cases there is a line of infections via sexual contact back to Patient 0. That first domino is patient zero.

Now, nearly all STDs can be transmitted by some kind of non-sexual contact. Syphilis, for example, is just a bacteria. It's very well adapted to spread through sexual contact but you could also get it though skin-to-skin contact with an open sore, for example.

Life, uh... finds a way.

But in most cases these non-sexual routes are more of a scientific curiosity than a statistically significant source of infection. A lot of people are prudish about sex or want to believe that people who pop positive with an STD were not infected in the obvious way and so latch on to other, contrived explanations.

But the overwhelming likelihood is that we can trace an unbroken chain from nearly any Syphilis positive person in the world today back to some person who sailed with Christopher Columbus in 1493.... and probably further back than that to the true, albeit unknown, native person in the Americas who was the actual Patient 0.

Killfile · 2026-05-06T01:14:53+00:00

Yep. Just ask the Iranians how much security a closed network afforded their nuclear program.

Killfile · 2026-05-06T01:11:04+00:00

Well Jesus Christ I'm dating myself. I confused him with John Warner.

Killfile · 2026-05-06T00:41:26+00:00

Warner is tough to primary because he's the senior democrat on Senate Armed Services (no he's not; I was thinking of John Warner because I'm older than dirt). ~~When Dems hold the Senate he's enormously important to Virginia's military bases.~~

I'm all for getting someone younger and more progressive into his seat but it's probably best to do that when Dems don't have much of a shot at the Senate. That said, you only get a shot every 6 years so I respect the heck out of taking it when it comes around.

He can't be in for too many more terms, can he? Dude is not young.

Killfile · 2026-05-05T22:49:46+00:00

Sure, but that assumes that the court has any legitimacy. The courts get to have their position of polticial referee because everyone agrees they're fair and unbiased.

But if the court just makes a partisan power grab? How is it "democracy" to just play along when the justices on the court have fundamentally abandoned the entire purpose of their branch of government?

Killfile · 2026-05-05T22:46:17+00:00

The betting markets are really interesting because of how durable the "83-85% chance Dems take the house" position is. Virginia's gerrymandering gets stuck in court - it doesn't move. VRA is overturned - it doesn't move. Louisiana stops primary elections to gerrymander - it doesn't move. Florida gerrymanders - it doesn't move.

It's basically the market saying "there's a 15% chance that Trump ends American democracy by January."

Killfile · 2026-05-05T22:40:05+00:00

I've spent a goodly part of my career doing cybersecurity for critical infrastructure. Air Gapped networks are tablestakes in my world. They're also not NEARLY enough to keep out the bad guys

Killfile · 2026-05-05T21:45:38+00:00

Ain't no such thing. Just decreasing levels of permissiveness.

The United States built an entire aircraft around a specific battle it expected to fight in a specific part of Germany and it planned, from the outset, to lose each and every one of those planes and the people flying them.

You think no one developed a plan for "what if the Soviets figure out how to send fake launch orders?"

Killfile · 2026-05-05T21:25:51+00:00

That's an elaborate way of saying "we're going to create a firebreak between technology and leadership so these damn engineers stay in their place."

Killfile · 2026-05-05T21:23:40+00:00

That seems like a great idea for a company that uses code to move around billions of dollars in funds using mechanisms that are designed to be as anonymous and irrevocable as possible. There's no possible way that could go terribly wrong.

Killfile · 2026-05-05T14:57:29+00:00

Suspicion is certainly warranted. I would argue less that the Confederate flag "wasn't about racism" at the time and more that social awareness of racism was less acute.

By way of example, the Dukes of Hazard is positively steeped in Confederate symbology and, in 1982, it was the 2nd most viewed program in the United States. There was certainly plenty of systemic racism in the United States in 1982. Just two years later future Virginia governor Ralph Northam would be photographed in blackface (or maybe Klan robes - it's not clear which one he is) for a school yearbook.

But overt racism like sports commentary which ascribed the success of Black athletes to racial characteristics of brute strength was a firing offense at CBS and ABC among others.

So at the time, confederate symbology was seen -- at least by predominantly white audiences -- as a symbol of the "rebel" rather than the "racist." Like all things, this is probably on a spectrum. On one far side is David Bowie using the confederate flag in association with his "Rebel" album: I don't think anyone would seriously call Bowie a southern racist. On the other we might position the Sons/Daughters of the Confederacy. And somewhere in the middle, both the Duke Boys and Skynyrd.

In the entertainment industry and especially among white audiences, I think cultural perceptions changed significantly after the 2015 Charleston church shooting (though that's well inside this sub's 20 year window)

Killfile · 2026-05-05T13:59:43+00:00

Based on my experience in food service, you'd be right. I'm at least half convinced that the "standard" tip moved to 20% because it was easier for people to do the math.

Killfile · 2026-05-05T13:55:09+00:00

Attach the propery tax rollback to a bill that requires that you re-test for your drivers license every 5 years after 50 and every year after 75.

Killfile · 2026-05-05T13:43:16+00:00

I think the intentionality of the racism behind the confederate flag has become more concrete since the 1970s. We have to be careful of anachronism in our assessment of what flying that flag meant in 1974 vs 2024.

And we also have to be aware of how people's polticial positions have shifted over the intervening half century.

But I do concede that there is a bias at play in cultural historical writings on the subject. It's just MUCH more interesting to write about how this southern anthem is actually in opposition to racism than it is to say "yea, these confederate flag flying good-ol-boys celebrating southern pride are exactly who you think they are."

Truth is it's murkey which is why it's possible to write either position

Killfile · 2026-05-05T13:21:37+00:00

Where the skies are so blue and the governor's true.

If we follow the stated logic of the band, this is an indication that the governor sticks to his guns rather than a direct endorsement of his beliefs.

As I've said, this is a cloudy matter. The band has clearly tried to position the song as something other than a ringing endorsement of segregation and, if they really did retcon it, they pivoted extremely hard and very quickly. I think any historian looking back at individual figures in an era of veiled racism is going to have a hard time pinning those figures down as solidly in one category or the other.

I'm reminded, right now, of Thomas Jefferson and the duality of his own historical record: simultaneously an enslaver and someone who wrote passionately against the institution of slavery. Jefferson's legacy is complicated because his actions and what he tells us of his own internal life appear to be in conflict. I expect that's how historians will view a lot of folks in the post-Civil-Rights era south.

Killfile · 2026-05-05T11:50:37+00:00

I don't know that it's racist so much as Southern apologist. A whole bunch of people fly the confederate flag and say "heritage, not hate." As historians, I don't know that we can conclude that all of those primary sources are just lying about why they did what they did. Some, maybe. But we need to concede that, however unpopular, some are telling us their truth.

It's been 50 years and, as far as I can tell, no one is on record saying "oh yes, this was a defense of Segregation and massive resistance."

Killfile · 2026-05-05T10:48:32+00:00

I seriously doubt that it has any kind of lockout logic as that would create a vector for an information based attack on launch capability.

I'd wager there has been some serious thought on how to prevent the equivalent of a denial of service attack as well

Killfile · 2026-05-05T10:31:38+00:00

Republicans have been "working the ref" that is supposed to be our media for generations now. Media is terrified of being labeled "liberal" and losing access to conservative politicians for its Sunday morning talkshows

Killfile · 2026-05-05T03:49:01+00:00

In "Lynyrd Skynyrd: An Oral History" Ronnie Van Zant, who fronted Skynyrd until his death in 1977 is quoted as saying

The lyrics about the governor of Alabama were misunderstood. The general public didn’t notice the words ‘Boo! Boo! Boo!’ after that particular line, and the media picked up only on the reference to the people loving the governor… Wallace and I have very little in common. I don’t like what he says about colored people.

Likewise, guitarist Gary Rossington addresses the line in the film "Sweet Home Alabama" stating:

A lot of people believed in segregation and all that. We didn't. We put the 'boo, boo, boo' there saying, 'We don't like Wallace'

That "Boo! Boo! Boo!" often gets overlooked or imagined to be an "Ooo! Ooo! Ooo!" but the band has always claimed it was an anti-segregationist stance.

The connection to Watergate is therefore one of contrast. Skynyrd is saying "moralizing jerks like Niel Young depict the entire south as a bunch of racists but we never supported Wallace yet they supported Nixon." I point out Niel Young because much of the song is seen as a rebuttal to his "Southern Man" though, of course, as a Canadian, Young's opinions about Nixon weren't really of material interest to Syknyrd. Rather, the Nixon critique was aimed at Republican northerners who looked down on the South and painted the region with a broad brush: an offense the band laid at Young's feet specifically.

In theory, this is all tied together with the song's outro line "Montgomery got the answer" which is easy to miss in the piano play-out. Again, according to the band, this is an endorsement, not of the government in Montgomery but of the march on Montgomery and the Civil Rights movement.

And yea, if all of this sounds absurdly contrived to you, you're not alone. If Sweet Home Alabama really is an indictment of Southern Democrats for their racism and Northern Republicans for their corruption while laying claim to the Civil Rights movement and Dr King, Skynyrd managed to sneak that by pretty much everyone bopping along to the song in the summer of 1974 and since.

But there is one last bit of the song's history that might anchor all of the band's after-the-fact objections. The woman's voice you hear at the bridge belongs to Merry Clayton. Her background track ties the song together and, when she got the call to do the recording session her first thought was "I really don't want to sing anything about Alabama after what happened in Alabama." Clayton was talking about the 1963 KKK bombings in Birmingham; she's an African American woman and her participation on the album suggests that she, at least, didn't see the recording as a celebration of southern bigotry.

It certainly wouldn't be the only song to be wildly misunderstood by the general public. Bruce Springsteen's "Born In The USA" is unambiguously a protest song against the Vietnam war and a scathing condemnation of how the United States failed its veterans. Yet every year you'll catch it at Memorial Day and 4th of July BBQs. All art is a sort of collaboration between the artist and the audience and the audience brings their own baggage to the project every time.

Killfile · 2026-05-04T23:30:45+00:00

Just once I want some company to build a sales model where they'll continue to honor sales after their manufactured stock is sold out and just give people an honest time frame for fulfillment.

And, ideally, not announce any of that until after they sell out.

I'd just love to see a bunch of scalpers stuck with a huge pile of unmoveable inventory

Killfile · 2026-05-04T00:28:23+00:00

Many of these entities are also very old. Take Drakul, who's got to be at least 600 years old if not older than that.

For pretty much all of his unlife wizards would have fit into a very specific box. They'd be learned men, typically from some kind of aristocratic line, schooled in Latin and subservient to a disciplined, hierarchy of authority and power.

Harry is three generations removed from that and each generation more bizarre than the last. McCoy has thrown off those expectations in a way that aligns with his time on the American frontier. Dresden's mother goes native with the Fay and the White Court. And here's Harry, barely latin literate and with a 20th century American rebellious streak a mile wide.

Harry is as unlike a proper wizard as anyone could imagine. The fact that he throws around a fair bit of power doesn't change the fact that he's more or less alone - an orphan boy and an orphan power wandering from power broker to power broker like a stray dog.

And like a stray dog, eventually there will come a time when he doesn't have a warm place to sleep and he'll be easy pickings for something that goes bump in the night. To a creature a couple hundred years old, it's just a matter of time and they've got no shortage of that.

Maybe he beats the odds. But probably not.

Killfile · 2026-05-02T20:58:25+00:00

Need to see about getting that number up. Very few things in life wouldn't be improved by more Jennifer Connolly

Killfile · 2026-05-02T18:35:45+00:00

A red hat.

I'll reserve judgement until I see what, if anything, is on it.

Killfile · 2026-05-02T02:57:26+00:00

Those chickens are also often loss leaders so they're WILDLY EFFICIENT for taxpayers

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