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bolverk

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by bolverk

  1. West Texas
  2. I hate you all.
  3. How Brexit, a Startling Act of Economic Self-Harm, Foreshadowed Trump’s Tariffs Britain’s decision to leave the European Union in 2016 was sold to voters as a magic bullet that would revitalize the country’s economy. Its impact is still reverberating. Britain has watched President Trump’s tariffs with a mix of shock, fascination and queasy recognition. The country, after all, embarked on a similar experiment in economic isolationism when it voted to leave the European Union in 2016. Nearly nine years after the Brexit referendum, it is still reckoning with the costs. The lessons of that experience are suddenly relevant again as Mr. Trump uses a similar playbook to erect walls around the United States. Critics once described Brexit as the greatest act of economic self-harm by a Western country in the post-World War II era. It may now be getting a run for its money across the Atlantic. Even Mr. Trump’s abrupt reversal last week of some of his tariffs, in the face of a bond-market revolt, recalled Britain, where Liz Truss, a short-lived prime minister, was forced to retreat from radical tax cuts that frightened the markets. Her misbegotten experiment was the culmination of a cycle of extreme policies set off by Britain’s decision to forsake the world’s largest trading bloc. β€œIn a way, some of the worst legacies of Brexit are still ahead,” said Mark Malloch Brown, a British diplomat who served as deputy secretary-general of the United Nations. Britain, he said, now faces a hard choice between rebuilding trade ties with Europe or preserving them with Mr. Trump’s America. β€œThe fundamental issue remains the breach with our biggest trading partner,” Mr. Malloch Brown said, adding, β€œIf the U.K. ends up in the arms of Europe because neither of them can work with the U.S. anymore, that’s only half a victory.” cont'd
  4. Thanks, but I officially left Austin about 8 months ago, and I don't have a truck/trailer for hauling stuff, so I'll need someone to deliver to me.
  5. I'm in the market for some new living room furniture. Can you hook me up with your connection?
  6. That's fine insofar as any religious group is a "protected class," but when 1-2 religious groups are the only ones receiving protection and one, in particular, is especially disfavored by the regime, we've got a serious problem.
  7. A second measles case was reported in Midland where a traveller may have caught it at the Midland airport. https://www.newswest9.com/article/news/health/midland-health-department-reports-second-measles-cases/513-03d39310-8a6c-41a1-a63b-2dee15a739af
  8. Wordle 1,394 4/6 β¬›πŸŸ¨πŸŸ¨β¬›β¬› πŸŸ©πŸŸ©β¬›β¬›β¬› πŸŸ©πŸŸ©β¬›β¬›β¬› 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #672 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟦🟦🟦 πŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺ πŸ™‚ Daily Quordle 1175 5️⃣7️⃣ 4️⃣6️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/ 🟩⬜🟩⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 🟩🟩⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟩🟨⬜ ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜🟩🟩⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
  9. Very cool, and congratulations! There are at least three adopted Surlyists that I know of, myself included. It's pretty wild suddenly finding out "where you came from" after living decades in the dark. I was in grad school at UT in my mid-to-late 20s when I first met my birthmom and started learning family history on her side. It's been really cool to find out a lot of that stuff. If we don't already have a genealogy or adoption thread somewhere around here, you should start one if you plan to do some digging on your ancestry. @atomheartbevo has mentioned multiple times that he's become his family's historian, so I'm sure he could give some pointers. Edit: It looks like we have a genealogy thread -- I must've missed it. https://www.surlyhorns.com/board/topic/19599-genealogy-discoveries/
  10. Not that it means anything in the grand scheme of things, but I just archived it. https://archive.is/LNGRM
  11. I hate to agree because fuck nuclear proliferation, but yeah.
  12. Like a lot of middle-aged white women, Nicole is absolutely obsessed with true crime stuff. You can probably blame much of that on Nancy Grace on all the various podcasts, but in her defense, Nicole also says she knows someone who was murdered in Louisiana (I think) some years ago. In that case, Nicole is convinced it was the work of a serial killer, and she thinks the cops were/are too lazy to fully investigate. Because of that history, Nicole has been pretty vocal in thinking that all the bodies found in Town Lake over the past few years are also likely victims of a serial killer and that Austin PD has been inept or lazy in its investigations. Her obsession has become a running gag, where everyone accuses her of being the real Town Lake killer. Of course, Nicole has been a good sport about it and has also embraced the joke.
  13. SIAP: Poland queasy as US hints at pulling back from Eastern Europe Source is Lithuanian National Radio and Television
  14. Meanwhile, Witkoff, who had zero diplomatic experience until a couple of months ago and is the regime's special envoy leading the talks with the Kremlin, proposes giving "ownership" over SE Ukraine to Russia, basically saying we should recognize the rigged elections. Witkoff first publicly floated the idea of handing over to Russia the four Ukrainian regions - Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson - in the March 21 interview with Carlson. β€œThey’re Russian-speaking,” he said of the eastern territories. β€œThere have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule.” https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-envoys-embrace-russian-demands-worries-republicans-us-allies-2025-04-11/
  15. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/12/us/jewish-groups-synagogues-ice-student-detentions.html They are a group of progressive Jewish organizations and congregations, and they are coming to the defense of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Muslim graduate student at Tufts, who faces deportation after she helped write an essay critical of Israel. The coalition includes synagogues in places like West Newton, Mass., San Francisco and the Upper West Side of New York, along with J-Street, a pro-Israel advocacy group. On Thursday, they filed a brief in federal court in Burlington, Vt., objecting to the tactics the government was using against Ms. Ozturk in the name of combating antisemitism. In the brief, the groups argued she should be released from the Louisiana immigration detention center where she has been held for over two weeks, after masked immigration agents surrounded and arrested her on a street near her home in Somerville, Mass. β€œJewish people came to America to escape generations of similar predations,” the brief says. β€œYet the images of Ozturk’s arrest in twenty-first century Massachusetts evoke the oppressive tactics employed by the authoritarian regimes that many ancestors of amici’s members left behind in Odessa, Kishinev, and Warsaw.” There have been reports of almost 1,000 international students and scholars at universities across the country who have lost their legal status since mid-March, according to the Association of International Educators. Anecdotally, the visas have typically been revoked with little or no notice and without telling the students what they might have done wrong. In some cases, students have committed legal infractions, like speeding or driving while drunk, according to universities and lawyers that are monitoring the revocations. But some have not. If the students do not leave voluntarily, they face deportation. The Trump administration has defended the campaign, saying it is revoking the visas of students who have broken the law, who have engaged in antisemitic harassment and violence, who pose a threat to the foreign policy interests of the United States, or who are terrorist sympathizers. A few Jewish activists have applauded the effort, echoing the Trump administration’s mantra that β€œa visa is a privilege, not a right.” But mainstream Jewish groups have expressed qualms about the crackdown, even while approving of the Trump administration’s focus on antisemitism. As the number of students the Trump administration is targeting has grown, Jewish groups have said that while they may not like the views of pro-Palestinian students, they cannot condone students’ being swept up for vague reasons, without formal charges against them. Ms. Ozturk’s detention followed the arrest two weeks earlier of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate who was a spokesman for pro-Palestinian protesters. An immigration judge in Louisiana found on Friday that the Trump administration could deport Mr. Khalil. But he is still challenging the case in a separate court. In response to his case, the Boston chapter of Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff wrote an open letter, titled β€œNot in Our Name,” that has been signed by nearly 3,000 faculty and staff members and students at universities across the United States. β€œWe are united in denouncing, without equivocation, anyone who invokes our name β€” and cynical claims of antisemitism β€” to harass, expel, arrest, or deport members of our campus communities,” the letter reads. Sara Coodin, the director of academic affairs for the American Jewish Committee, said some federal interventions, including congressional investigations of antisemitism on campus, had been β€œtransformative” in forcing universities to confront problems on their campuses. But she said Ms. Ozturk’s case appeared to be β€œa clear disregard on the part of the federal government for the rights of people on U.S. soil to speak their minds.” The only evidence that has surfaced against her is an opinion essay she co-wrote that was critical of Israel. β€œThe idea that someone can be pulled off the street for something they wrote, something they think, really affects as all, and we all need to fight back against that,” said Elaine Landes, a member of Congregation Dorshei Tzedek, a Reconstructionist synagogue in West Newton, Mass., that is one of the parties to the court brief. β€œThe whole push to fight antisemitism, to me, feels like we’re being used for another agenda, and that is not going to keep our community safe,” she said. β€œWe need to look out for others.” Ryan Bauer, senior rabbi at Congregation Emanu-El of San Francisco, another signatory, said he supported Ms. Ozturk even though he disagreed with her essay. In it, she pushed for Tufts to end financial ties with Israel and to recognize Israeli conduct in Gaza as a genocide. β€œI don’t like her statements β€” I think they’re wrong,” Rabbi Bauer said. But, he added, he believes in free speech, and β€œthe beauty of America is that we don’t all agree with each other.” He said he felt so strongly that Ms. Ozturk’s detention violated Jewish values that he talked about it in a recent sermon. β€œWhen you see the floor fall out from under her, it’s naΓ―ve to think that those cracks won’t eventually reach our feet,” he said. A federal judge in Vermont, where Ms. Ozturk spent a night in custody before being sent to Louisiana, is scheduled to hear her habeas corpus petition for release from detention on Monday.
  16. Northwestern Oklahoma around Weatherford would make a lot more geographic sense.
  17. Here’s a story about how Putin became the ideological head of the international far-right and why Trumpism embraces Russia. I’ve been saying it for a few years now, but Pat Buchanan was Trump’s political forebearer in the US. You can also see this thinking in Steve Bannon’s infamous Vatican speech from a decade or so ago when he proposed uniting Christendom in the Northern Hemisphere against liberal secularism and the Muslim world. Gift link to NYTimes Magazine (10-15 minute read): How the G.O.P. Fell in Love With Putin’s Russia
  18. Wordle 1,393 5/6 πŸŸ¨β¬›β¬›β¬›πŸŸ© β¬›β¬›πŸŸ©πŸŸ©πŸŸ© β¬›πŸŸ©πŸŸ©πŸŸ©πŸŸ© β¬›πŸŸ©πŸŸ©πŸŸ©πŸŸ© 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #671 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟦🟦🟦🟦 πŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺ πŸ™‚ Daily Quordle 1174 4️⃣5️⃣ 6️⃣8️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/ ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜ ⬜🟩⬜🟩⬜ ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜🟨⬜🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜ 🟩⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟩🟩⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
  19. I read about this last time around. He said he's tired of picking up his own trash because the high school has janitors for that. Here's an old article: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/438178-dem-lawmaker-takes-aim-at-miller-re-emerged-video-of-high-school-speech/
  20. El Paso's on deck with three new cases. Gaines County continues to see the most infections (75% of new ones since Tuesday), with 27 new cases. Here are New Mexico's numbers. Lea County (Hobbs/Lovington) is just west of Gaines County. Okies won't say where their cases are, but I think it was mentioned a while back they were somewhere in northeastern Oklahoma. Southwest Kansas outbreak. Three cases total are reported in Colorado: Pueblo, Denver, and Pagosa Springs. So far as I know, all the above in these other states can be traced to the outbreak in Gaines County.
  21. I've got a really shitty track record. I initially supported Bradley over Gore and Dean over Kerry in the primaries because I viewed them as more progressive. By the end of the primaries, I was "okay" with Gore and Kerry as the nominees. Hell, I was on the Governor Moonbeam bandwagon in '92. Obama is the only candidate I've fully supported throughout the primaries who actually ended up getting elected president.
  22. True, but TrumpWorld has redefined anti-semitism to mean talking shit about Israel. They’re totally fine if you talk shit about Jews, though.
  23. Wordle 1,392 3/6 β¬›β¬›πŸŸ¨β¬›β¬› β¬›πŸŸ¨β¬›πŸŸ©πŸŸ¨ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #670 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩 πŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺ πŸ™‚ Daily Quordle 1173 7️⃣6️⃣ 5️⃣4️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜ ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟩 ⬜⬜⬜🟩🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 🟨🟨🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟨⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟩⬜⬜🟩 🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
  24. Stop it. You're such a tease, AHB.
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