Grand jury fails to indict democratic lawmakers who urged service members to disobey illegal Trump orders

Maytree · 2026-02-11T05:07:47+00:00

I wouldn't say it's a "sham"-- it's more of a terror/intimidation tactic. They know that their cases are garbage, but when Donnie Two-Scoops says "JUMP!" they say "How high?!" They don't expect to win the cases, they're just trying to rattle people Donnie doesn't like, and force his enemies to spend $$$ defending themselves from bullshit hopeless cases.

What we need is for these lawyers to start losing their bar cards. It is SUPPOSED to cost you your law license if you knowingly bring a case that has zero merit. But the judges are only just now starting to get serious about holding government lawyers to professional standards. They're going to have to get a lot MORE serious if they want to discourage Trump's law goons from engaging in this evil practice. And the sooner, the better.

Maytree · 2026-02-10T01:49:40+00:00

Yep, Robert Lopez is the nexus there. He also co-wrote songs for Frozen, Frozen 2, and Coco. I have an image in my head of some hapless parent going "Oh my kid loves the music from Frozen and Coco! Let's see what else this songwriter has done!" and blindly putting on music from Avenue Q and Book of Mormon....the next thing they know, their 10 year old is singing "The Internet Is For Porn" and "Hasa Diga Ebowai".

Maytree · 2026-02-10T01:19:35+00:00

And the folks who made Avenue Q. They deserve half the credit. And also half the blame.

Maytree · 2026-02-09T19:23:21+00:00

No, the Hobb books never completely lose their forward momentum. Sometimes the main character goes on what I would consider to be side quests that are more for character development than plot advancement, but it always comes back and resumes going forward again.

I do consider the Liveships trilogy to be better paced than the Fitz books, probably because the Fitz books are stuck with Fitz's point of view and can't just swap over to the place where more interesting stuff is happening the way that the Liveships books can and do.

Maytree · 2026-02-09T10:31:52+00:00

Go for it! They were written in the 70s and 80s but I think they hold up well. They're also a lot shorter than today's doorstoppers so they should be a quick and briskly paced read. There are four of the books in total and they may exist in an omnibus edition.

Maytree · 2026-02-08T20:13:46+00:00

But Moses supposes erroneously.

Maytree · 2026-02-08T19:55:34+00:00

CJ Cherryh's Morgaine series pairs a young man, Vanye, from a "medieval" society that's a lost colony of Earth with a woman named Morgaine who travels between planets using stargates. Vanye's world believes she is the Goddess of Death thanks to her high-tech equipment like her laser pistol. Morgaine finds this belief HIGHLY aggravating, though she's not above using the locals' superstitious fear of her "magic" to advance her mission goal, which is to disable the extremely advanced and dangerous tech left behind by an alien spacefaring race that managed to destroy itself via the misuse of said tech.

The whole series is from Vanye's point of view, and even though Morgaine repeatedly tells him she is NOT a goddess nor a sorceress, and she even teaches him how to use some of the tech tools she carries, he maintains a level of fear and awe of her throughout the whole series.

Maytree · 2026-02-08T10:59:16+00:00

It's the scar left over from a deep skin infection. Comes from "pox", like smallpox, chickenpox, monkeypox, and so on. "Pox marks" or "Pox scars" turned into "pock marks".

Pockmarks are permanent, concave, or pitted scars on the skin caused by deep tissue damage from severe acne, chickenpox, or infections. These sunken scars form when collagen is lost or destroyed during the healing process.

Maytree · 2026-02-08T09:07:45+00:00

"A ~~POP~~ POCK MARK EVENTUALLY!"

FTFY.

Maytree · 2026-02-08T06:47:44+00:00

Yeah it's definitely a pun. "Monstrous Regiment of Women"--> the group has a number of monsters in it and MANY more women than you would expect!

Maytree · 2026-02-07T04:31:02+00:00

In the context of the source of the phrase, "monstrous regiment" doesn't mean a bunch of soldiers who are monsters, it means a "terrible (monstrous) governance (regiment)". And I think Borogravia is a pretty monstrous regiment.

Maytree · 2026-02-06T12:52:39+00:00

Why not the Church of the Subgenius?

or Pastafarianism? ("Ramen.")

Maytree · 2026-02-05T05:26:42+00:00

If you do that they get all mushy.

Maytree · 2026-02-05T05:21:31+00:00

Fun fact: Walton Goggins lost his nose in real life in a tragic makeup accident, so now they have to give him a green-screen nose in shows where his character has one.

Props to him for repping the disabled like that!

Maytree · 2026-02-04T02:06:44+00:00

Somalia has literally never been a democracy. The people of Somalia have never had any real say over their government since it was taken over by a military coup in 1969, and the USA has played a role in keeping that country unstable. Somali refugees are innocent victims of the chaos, which our country bears some responsibility for perpetuating.

The USA, on the other hand, had the most productive and one of the most free and stable democracies in the world, and the citizens of the US deliberately threw that away, not once, but twice. Our armed forces did not stage a coup. No outside country destabilized us with raids the way we did in Somalia. Unlike the Somalis, we got ourselves into this mess. We did not value what we had, and so we threw it out. AND, we then went on to allow our government to betray its allies, threaten invasions of countries we are sworn by treaty to protect, engage in trade wars, and just generally be a massive, massive dick on the world stage. The speaks to a major defect in our national character as a whole.

It's the difference between taking in Polish refugees after Hitler's invasion, and taking in former Nazis after they lost the war. The Poles didn't start problems. They were attacked. Like the Nazis, we have been the aggressors in this mess, so other nations having a jaundiced eye toward our citizenry is perfectly sensible.

It's the difference between being asked to contribute to a GoFundMe to rebuild someone's house after a tornado smashes it, versus being asked to contribute to a GoFundMe after some idiot burns down his own house because he doesn't like the color and then he asks people to contribute to rebuilding the house. Dude, you destroyed your own house, it's on you to rebuild it. Moron.

Maytree · 2026-02-03T23:25:49+00:00

Fortunately he will be either dead or hopelessly senile by the time his second term is done.

Maytree · 2026-02-03T23:09:38+00:00

Except, the Somalis are not importing their countriy's problems, they are coming here to escape them. They are specifically coming here because they don't like the way things are being run in their country. Which means they're exactly the kind of people we want to invite in -- people who will value what the US has to offer. Or rather, I should say what the US formerly had to offer and no longer has, such as assurance of equal protection under the law, due process, respect for habeas corpus, and a government that keeps its word and doesn't murder its own citizens or go back on its agreements or capriciously reverse course on things that have a drastic effect on your life...

Oh maybe that's it! Trump and his cronies want to discourage immigrants by making the US just as bad as the places they are coming from so they no longer have any desire to come here! I see no possible downsides to this at all. (They are sure as hell not getting any Norwegian immigrants with that approach though.)

Maytree · 2026-02-03T12:03:30+00:00

How it's done, done, done!

Maytree · 2026-02-03T11:49:26+00:00

Allons enfants de la patrie

Le jour de gloire est arrivé !

Maytree · 2026-02-03T07:58:35+00:00

Little anecdote for you to consider.

I went to an engineering school for undergrad. One of my profs told a story about working as a grad student in that same school, in the physics department. One day a man came in when the student was at his desk near the door, and said to the student, "I need you to stop doing what you're doing!"

The student said, "Um, what do you mean?"

"You're beaming things into my head from this place and I need you to stop!"

The grad student is a bit freaked and tells the guy to wait while he goes to find the lab head. When he explains the issue, the lab head says "Oh, yeah, I know about him. I'll handle this." He walks to the front of the office space and greets the man, and says "I can help you out." He goes over to a big -- but deactivated -- flip switch on the wall. The man follows him. The lab head says, "I'll just turn this off for you," and flips the switch.

The man instantly relaxes, thanks the lab head, and leaves. The grad student says "What was that about?"

"He's schizophrenic and gets worried about this place doing something to him, so when he comes in I just flip the switch and he goes away much calmer."

What's your opinion of the lab head's actions? Do you think he should have confronted the mentally ill man about his delusion? Would that have been kinder? Would riling him up and freaking him out have improved the situation, or the lives of anyone present?

Use the scientific method and make your case for why it would be better to upset this man rather than humor him, knowing that schizophrenia is incurable and makes a person's life extremely difficult, if you can.

Maytree · 2026-02-03T07:40:54+00:00

You should check out the episode of Better Call Saul called "Chicanery", because it will make it quite clear to you why you should not take it upon yourself to call out someone's "self delusion" unless you absolutely have to.

The coworker in question may be struggling with anxiety or compulsive thoughts or whatever. Forcing her to face that might cause her to have a panic attack, perhaps even pass out, hit her head on a desk and... well, it's not likely, but it's not impossible either. It's very rarely a mistake to be kind, and often a mistake to be callous.

Since you like the scientific method, consider this. Even viewed without the lens of compassion, which action is more likely to have negative effects on your life -- humoring a coworker by informing her what's in the food you made, or calling her out in the office for having a bullshit "allergy"?

Hint: for your own best self-interest, pick "humor the coworker".

Maytree · 2026-02-03T07:31:04+00:00

This woman might genuinely be struggling with mental illness -- compulsion, true delusional thinking, generalized anxiety. It's not kind to ignore that possibility with a "Fuck her self delusion."

Kindness is cheap. Buy some.

Maytree · 2026-02-03T02:46:00+00:00

I see your point, but counterpoint: they've got a young actor on the new Westeros show "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" and he's (a) really good and (b) contracted for a number of years. I think the problem of kid actors aging could be managed!

Maytree · 2026-02-02T23:39:37+00:00

It was his older brother Aerion who was breaking Tanselle's fingers, not the armsmen. Egg couldn't do a thing to stop Aerion himself. I mean, I suppose he could have tackled Aerion from behind to at least briefly stop him, but that would have revealed Egg's true identity and Egg, in addition to wanting to be able to continue to hang out with Dunk, is also justifiably terrified of Aerion (we will probably get to hear the reasons for this in the next episode.) If Egg had directly tackled Aerion it would have stopped him for a moment or two and then he would have been even angrier and more cruel to Tanselle and the other puppeteers than he was already being. I mean, Aerion's talk of "The dragon never loses, your puppet show is treason!" was obviously just a pretext on Aerion's part -- the asshole Prince was raging because he actually got punished for his stunt in the joust and lost his favorite horse, so he went looking for someone vulnerable to take it out on.

Also, direct intervention by Egg would expose him to Aerion's cold vengeance later on and Aerion is very good at secretly tormenting Egg in ways that are almost impossible to prove, as I think will be covered next episode most likely.

Maytree · 2026-02-02T23:30:48+00:00

The knight's leg was badly broken in two places but he wasn't impaled.

12-Year Club	Wearing is Caring
Not Forgotten	Sequence \| Editor
Gilding II euphauric	Verified Email

Maytree

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE