I’m someone who actually calls myself socially liberal but fiscally conservative, and that’s because my primary concern (in the terms of moral foundations theory) is the liberty/oppression axis. In other words, I think leaving people alone is a good thing, and while it’s not the only good thing and it needs to be balanced against other concerns, we should still be doing it more than we are now.

Two caveats:

1. I’m socially liberal because a free society requires tolerating even the people you hate. This is hard, and even many people who consider themselves tolerant because they simply don’t hate a particular group aren’t (and often don’t want to be) tolerant in this sense.

2. I’m economically conservative because the freedom to act without government interference even in an economic context has great inherent worth (but I’ll repeat here that I don’t value it to the exclusion of all else) but also because the free market usually does a better job than central planning at making everyone prosperous. I don’t care much about wealth inequality - a world in which I have two dollars and you have two million dollars is a better place than a world in which we both have just one dollar.

Edit: in practice I always end up voting for moderate Democrats at the national level, both because I think social issues are generally more important than economic issues and because neither party usually does what I would want regarding economic issues. However, I have more options at the state and local level.

Criticism from Democrats is not going to have any effect.

Except it’s not just some guy vandalizing a car, or else you wouldn’t be making memes about it.

I’m picturing it jump up rapids like a salmon.

Identify specific acts Trump has taken to harm you that cannot be construed as core executive functions. This will give Roberts the chance to list some conduct that is—and conversely that can never be—a core executive function, to diffuse Trump’s notion that he can get away with murder. Hint: trying to impeach a federal judge is not, and can never be, a core executive function. Lying to American citizens about a foreign invasion is not, and can never be, a core executive function.

I don’t see how the Presidential immunity ruling is relevant to Trump’s current actions. So what if something Trump does is not a core executive function? The idea that Trump could face criminal charges right now, as the sitting President, seems far-fetched. It’s especially far-fetched for these examples, which he doesn’t need immunity for because they’re not crimes.

Floating upstream - what a coconut!

A great game if you like gritty fantasy, turn based tactics, and losing.

I don’t think they’re feral anymore if they live in an apartment.

Would you like to be a moderate? I’ll propose giving the hogs the assault rifles and you’ll instantly become a moderate.

humans have assault rifles <— no one has assault rifles —> hogs have assault rifles

Edit: would arming both humans and hogs also be a good compromise?

I think Tsar Putin wants the Russian Empire, not the USSR.

(Thanks Alamy!)

Coconuts have evolved to spread from island to island by floating, but it’s still weird that one happened to float to the other side of the world in historic times. I would have guessed that either the currents could never take a coconut there or that the currents would have taken a coconut there long ago.

(When I visit Florida, I see coconuts float by sometimes. Some have been in the water a long time - they’re covered in barnacles. However, if they’re still floating does that mean they might still be viable?)

It looks like a fire-damaged apartment in an otherwise nice building, and it could be worth a lot more than 105k in the right location.

I say we cede the country to the pigs. They might do a better job.

Sometimes I pretend that I’m an astronaut a million miles away from Earth.

Note that finding a psychiatrist who (1) accepts insurance and (2) accepts new patients might be difficult. Mine doesn’t accept insurance and charges about $600 per hour. (I have a 20 minute appointment every three months.) Going to a general practitioner would be much cheaper if I had one that would prescribe the same medication.

My impression from watching the video linked in the article is that the driver of the car did appear to be willing to hit the cop in order to get away. Unless the cop shot at the car after it already drove past him (which could presumably be determined by looking at the angle at which the bullets hit the car) I think that this really does look like self-defense.

I was confused about how the restraining order could conceivably lead to shutting down the agency but apparently Leland Dudek simply wanted to spite the court.

“My anti-fraud team would be DOGE affiliates. My IT staff would be DOGE affiliates,” he said to Bloomberg News on Thursday. “As it stands, I will follow it exactly and terminate access by all SSA employees to our IT systems.” He continued, “Really, I want to turn it off and let the courts figure out how they want to run a federal agency."

I hope that the “clarifying guidance” he received from the court before he changed his mind included an explanation of the judicial smackdown which he would receive if he tried this bullshit.

You’re one of several people mentioning shared cultural references, but if you’re male and your partner is female then I’m surprised that she has any interest in things like Thundercats or He-Man regardless of her age. I’m more of a Transformers fan myself and I’ve never even met a woman who would respond to anything Transformers-related with more than just polite disinterest.

I’m a nerdy heterosexual man, and in my experience practically no women share my interests or hobbies. Therefore my relationships have been built around doing the things that pretty much everyone enjoys - eating a nice meal, going for a walk, talking about current events, playing with pets, etc. A good partner is someone who enjoys doing these ordinary things with me. Maybe someone who does share my interests would be even better but I don’t think finding a person like that is likely enough to be worth passing up other opportunities.

I wonder why your experience is apparently so different from mine. Am I unusual or are you?

It’s a programming joke. The field contains an arbitrary value.

It’s OK, this is what the majority of American voters chose.