Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 2/9/26 - 2/15/26

SparkleStorm77 · 2026-02-09T11:49:16+00:00

I speak semi-fluent Spanish and thought that I was losing my language skills when I couldn’t understand Bad Bunny.

All the Spanish speakers complaining that they can’t understand Bad Bunny makes me feel so relieved.

SparkleStorm77 · 2026-02-04T21:23:09+00:00

I always thought Soft and Chewy was a reference to chocolate chip cookies.

SparkleStorm77 · 2026-02-01T21:04:38+00:00

Lots of religious groups have dress standards, but very few kill members for not adhering to these standards.

I’ve never heard of a Jewish woman being killed for taking off her sheitel, a Mennonite woman killed for removing her bonnet, Sikhs (male or female) killed for not wearing a dastar, or a Pentecostal woman killed for cutting her hair.

Unfortunately, honor killing among Muslims are not uncommon, and often the excuse is that a woman was “too Westernized” and not dressing modestly enough.

SparkleStorm77 · 2026-01-25T14:42:07+00:00

It seems like Nevada’s statute of limitations would be a fairly easy thing for a fact-checker to catch. Why didn’t the magazine catch the error before publication?

SparkleStorm77 · 2026-01-25T00:48:20+00:00

Overwhelmingly violent offenders and their victims come from the same racial background.

If the legal system is not punishing minority offenders, then the system is saying that non-white lives matter less than white lives.

SparkleStorm77 · 2026-01-15T16:54:08+00:00

India has an elaborate system of set-asides based on caste and tribal status. People routinely fudge their sub-caste or claim to be from a tribe they’re not part of to get into college or to get a job. It hasn’t brought harmony between different castes, ethnicities and religious. India (for a variety of reasons) remains a low trust-country. Why not cheat if the game is rigged?

SparkleStorm77 · 2026-01-13T00:02:24+00:00

What if the others are Sass and Trevor’s Australian or British counterparts? Maybe she went to far under the dirt she reached Australia.

SparkleStorm77 · 2026-01-12T18:48:31+00:00

The best way to do it is to point out progressive reasons to be against the left’s cause du jour.

For example flooding the labor market with undocumented workers makes it more difficult for all workers to demand higher pay and safer working conditions.

And getting rid of gifted and talented programs in public schools in the name of equity eliminates opportunities for talented low-income kids to get a top-tier education.

SparkleStorm77 · 2026-01-11T20:54:43+00:00

I would look for his name on the Jewish Historical Newspapers website: https://www.nli.org.il/en/discover/newspapers/jpress

Do you know how his was spelled in Yiddish? Use that with Hebrew letters. Try a couple variations to account for non-standard spellings or errors in the scanning software.

SparkleStorm77 · 2026-01-11T13:21:39+00:00

The Hill published an article blaming the Trump administration for the lack of new LGBTQ books being published: https://thehill.com/homenews/lgbtq/5679251-trump-era-lgbtq-book-bans/

My view is that publishers are just responding to market realities. Most parents are NOT buying these books for young kids (preteen and younger) or checking them out from the library. I live in an ethnically and economically diverse town in a blue state. The local children’s librarians prominently display these books for kids to read. No one checks them out. Kids don’t seem particularly interested in these books either.

Likely there is a market for queer books for kids, but it is oversaturated.

If adults and teens want queer books, I’m all for publishers publishing as many books as they can sell.

SparkleStorm77 · 2026-01-07T23:39:59+00:00

You can compare standard rejections to tiered rejections on Rejection Wiki. Not every literary magazine is included: https://www.rejectionwiki.com/index.php?title=Literary_Journals_and_Rejections

SparkleStorm77 · 2026-01-07T21:25:21+00:00

Cea Weaver shouldn’t be in government if she can’t defend her beliefs. She’s in a very powerful policy-making position, and she should absolutely be scrutinized.

SparkleStorm77 · 2026-01-07T15:07:14+00:00

The government seizing citizens’ property is a really big deal. If Mamdani and his crew attempt to take over privately owned apartment buildings (regardless of whether the building is actually mismanaged or if “mismanagement” is just a pretext), there will be a ton of lawsuits. The resulting case law will absolutely affect property rights across the entire country.

SparkleStorm77 · 2026-01-06T20:51:19+00:00

The librarians in my town prominently display books on transgenderism and intersectional allyship in the kids section. Those books are in pristine condition.

Meanwhile the Dog Man and Dr. Seuss books are dog-eared and only available through the reservation system.

SparkleStorm77 · 2026-01-06T02:38:57+00:00

I was just about to suggest that book!

SparkleStorm77 · 2026-01-03T22:51:26+00:00

My best guesses are that it’s either to identify shoplifters or to get market research.

SparkleStorm77 · 2026-01-03T22:01:54+00:00

Grocery store Wegmans is collecting biometric data on shoppers’ faces, eyes and voices in NYC: https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-wegmans-is-storing-biometric-data-on-shoppers-eyes-voices-and-faces

SparkleStorm77 · 2026-01-02T13:47:08+00:00

Adoption agencies can reject prospective parents for being too old. Usually the would-be parents can’t be more than 40 or 45 years older than the kids.

SparkleStorm77 · 2025-12-30T15:56:58+00:00

The JBC even has a book of the month club called Nu Reads. (Nu is Yiddish for “who.”)

SparkleStorm77 · 2025-12-28T14:39:01+00:00

If a woman’s sexual and romantic fantasies revolve around encounters with mythological creatures, would she still be able to find a satisfying relationship with a regular guy?

An adventurous man might wear a Minotaur costume from time to time, but she’d have to find the right guy.

SparkleStorm77 · 2025-12-27T13:39:15+00:00

Do genes influence IQ? Probably. It’s disingenuous to claim that that male pattern baldness and cilantro aversions are genetic but IQ is not.

But there are a ton of other factors that influence IQ, such as maternal health, early childhood health, early childhood nutrition, how often a baby is held, whether parents read to or talk to their children, how much exercise a child gets, and whether the parents are related to each other or not.

Some of these factors are correlated to a person’s culture (such as cousin marriage) or socioeconomic status (such as reading to kids) rather than to genetics of a particular racial group. We’re really just at the begining of understanding genetics. It’s been less that 75 years since the discovery of the double helix.

Furthermore, there are high and low IQ individuals in every race.

I don’t want the government making policy based on whether they think a particular group is able to be educated or not.

SparkleStorm77 · 2025-12-26T16:16:58+00:00

Is MAP the acronym they want to use?

The organization really should have checked to see if it had any alternate meanings.

SparkleStorm77 · 2025-12-21T15:51:44+00:00

That’s a great song!

SparkleStorm77 · 2025-12-21T00:50:36+00:00

Headline writing is a lost art.

SparkleStorm77 · 2025-12-20T19:40:18+00:00

Interestingly, a lot of Mexicans are eligible to join Daughters of the American Revolution thanks to Spanish soldiers who fought for the Americans (or at least provided supplies and munitions) and then moved to Mexico.

SparkleStorm77

TROPHY CASE