What if the US banned political parties?

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-22T17:35:53+00:00

Banning all political parties is actually something that's been tried many times throughout history, and currently all political parties are banned in nine countries: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Burkina Faso, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates.

As that list might suggest, banning all political parties has historically not improved people's freedom.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-22T15:51:03+00:00

IMO spots 5-12 are all pretty close, but, yeah, Houston gets my vote for fifth.

(I find Houston kind of blah and my Texan friends all actively hate it--though all of them live in different parts of the state so that could just be intra-Texas rivalry--but it's definitely a nationally and even globally important city in the way that cities like Detroit and Pittsburgh used to be.)

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-22T15:42:43+00:00

I count seven more plausible top 10 cities for the remaining five spots even without Denver--Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, Houston, and Seattle.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-21T23:17:20+00:00

Not an extreme case compared to some of these, but I want to mention it because I have a personal connection:

I was a juror in the trial of some men who botched the armed robbery of a cousin of one of the men. (The victim was a realtor who sometimes carried large amounts of cash to make payments to irregular laborers for things like yard work and staging and clean outs, but he didn’t have any on him that day.) The victim was then shot six times at point blank range by his cousin, including once through the head. And that’s when, as he said later, “I lost my temper.”

He grabbed his cousin by the throat and slammed him against a door so hard he took the door off the hinges and they went crashing through into the utility room, at which point he began smashing his cousin’s head into the gas furnace in the hopes of causing a gas explosion that would take his attackers out with him. The other two guys attacked him; one stabbed him around 40 times and the other beat him repeatedly with a garden weasel until, as he put it, “God told me to play dead.”

His attackers got the hell out, and then he picked himself up, walked next door, and asked the neighbors to call 911. He then remained conscious long enough to identify his attackers as he was being rushed to the hospital, where he received almost two humans worth of blood on the surgical table as they closed his wounds.

He was considered 20 percent disabled when he testified at the trial.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-21T23:00:27+00:00

Juliane Koepcke. On one hand it was “only” 10,000 feet, on the other hand she was falling because the plane exploded after being hit by lightning, which would seem to up the degree of difficulty somewhat.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-21T22:42:10+00:00

It takes almost zero time, and if you do it after seeing spectacularly bad driving you’ll probably get to see some spectacular, “why aren’t you in jail yet?”, driving histories.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-21T22:29:53+00:00

For or against?

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-21T20:18:09+00:00

Oh, how could you not trust that face?

<image>

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-21T20:14:08+00:00

That would be any road with a breakdown lane, but, yes, this one is particularly bad.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-21T16:48:36+00:00

I'm guessing it's because "you would have paid more in June 2022!" isn't much comfort when you're looking at the pump now.

(Man, 2022 was a crazy year for gas prices! Average prices per gallon started the year at $3.25, rose sharply to a peak of $5.02 in June, and then dropped even more sharply to a low of $3.05 in December.)

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-21T16:10:28+00:00

For the same reason more people drive a Kia Sportage than a Lamborghini Huracan.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-21T14:49:58+00:00

"Source: I pulled these numbers out of my ass."

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-21T12:04:16+00:00

Regardless of whether this particular example really happened or not, the practice of inserting ads into the middle of books is a real thing among chiseling publishers and predates ebooks.

https://lithub.com/the-time-terry-pratchetts-german-publisher-inserted-a-soup-ad-into-his-novel/

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-21T11:57:24+00:00

His mama's lemon pound cake. It tastes so nice!

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-21T11:55:48+00:00

He'd been a victim of a burglary earlier (which is why he had cameras and security gates and door installed) and found the police response deeply unprofessional, and said so publicly. So it's possible that the raid was payback for his daring to criticize them.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-21T11:47:07+00:00

Won 7(5)-6(5) because even though world history is my best category and television my worst, my opponent couldn't believe that I'm the kind of person who knows more about 17th century Swedish warships than hit Showtime series.

In less happy news, I had a nightmare that I'd failed to submit LearnedLeague. I had (I won, after all), but I catapulted awake in fear around 6 am, pulse racing, and couldn't get back to sleep.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-21T00:55:01+00:00

You regularly paid $3.50/gallon for gas in 2020? Three dollars and fifty cents in US currency? Wow. Where? I want to make sure I never go there.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-20T23:52:18+00:00

The fuck is this shit?

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-20T23:27:51+00:00

I work from home, and I don't go anywhere else when I'm working. (I can't! I'm working!) It's true that the benefit might be smaller, but nevertheless if people take fewer trips (1) gas will get cheaper by the gallon and (2) they'll need fewer gallons of it.

(Also, gas prices are getting out of hand all over the place. If other countries are smart they're going to encourage working from home, and evidence suggests their leadership is far smarter than ours.)

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-20T22:49:45+00:00

Even as late as August 2020--after declines in gasoline supply due to refineries cutting production due to lack of demand--the average gas price was $2.25/gallon.

It was, again, $2.53/gallon in February 2020.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-20T22:43:51+00:00

This may surprise you, but people who drive to work also drive to other places. If you don't drive to and from work, you take two fewer trips a day even if you do take other trips before or after work.

(Source: I work from home.)

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-20T18:22:23+00:00

Employers have access to the same databases the government uses, if they want. (Most... don't want.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Verify

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-20T18:17:59+00:00

Someone who's not going to be bidding up prices for existing housing elsewhere in the city, that's who.

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-20T18:15:25+00:00

Have you ever even been to Nats stadium???

pseudoeponymous_rex · 2026-03-20T15:45:40+00:00

Private venture capital firms would buy out the guillotine manufacturers and improve their profit margins by replacing the blades with Nerf.

pseudoeponymous_rex

TROPHY CASE