I’ve accepted that we won’t survive the coming storm. Covid showed us that people couldn’t be bothered tonwear a mask or get a shot to fight off a disease that was visibly killing millions. If we can’t come together on that, there’s no way we’ll come together to survive the climate crisis.

They brought in an excavator.

The city I work for is an enclave for the mega-rich. Literally every home is millionaires (cheapest house on the market in the city is 2.5 million), and it’s going through another round of gentrification, where the 1% is getting displaced by the .01% who are buying 5 million dollar homes to tear them down down and build 15 million dollar homes.

All the properties are owned by LLCs who’s membership is something like Register Agents Inc, who act as members for hundreds of thousands of LLCs for the purpose of obscuring ownership.

It means that when they ignore our rules, we end up having to cite the contractors working on the site to stop it, because the court process of tracking down the owners by through subpoenas can take months. So then they just hire different contractors, who we then cite and it becomes a vicious cycle.

Though we do tend to win in court in the end. We’ve had the court give us permission to bulldoze 25-million dollar houses built without permits, though we usually use that order as a negotiating tactic to make them fall in line instead of losing the house entirely. Also, it takes 5-10 years for those cases to resolve, which is very frustrating for the city and the neighbors.

We can deny the permit until they hire a real person, but that’s what we were going to do anyway, so there’s no harm in trying from the developer perspective. The building is usually being built by an LLC that’s unique to that structure and will be dissolved when the property sells, so there’s nobody to go after when it fails in 3 years.

My first car was a 1985 LTD that was pirpose built to scar. The seat belt, of course, but also fun little things like the controls and the metal bands in the steering wheel.

But it was also super easy to work on because the hood was the size of a small nation and you could get to anything. The big hood also gave the tires plenty of room, so it could turn on a dime. I swear you could rear-end yourself with that thing.

I work in municipal development, and we have people trying to turn in building plans designed by AI. And the AI even puts in real-looking Engineering and Architectural seals. I really don’t love that I have to verify seals these days.

Our team is made up of hyper-vigilant bureaucrats, but lots of cites have worn out people who stopped caring if it looked mostly right, and people are going to die when buildings start collapsing.

The difference that still matters (for now) is that the US justice system applies in the United States, regardless of citizenship, war, or anything else.

Gitmo detainees were strategically never brought into the US. NSGB is a naval base that’s leased from Cuba and is explicitly not territorial ground of the US, so detainees there are not protected by US laws, but the adversarial relationship with Cuba also keeps the host country’s laws from applying.

It’s pretty much the only place the US permanently controls where there are no civil protections at all for detainees.

My retort to a lot of these people is to ask if they can prove their citizenship right now, on the spot.

They can’t.

He hasn’t been charged with anything, and the issue isn’t picking up trach, but dredging the river with heavy equipment and removing silt.

That can have severe unintended consequences. You’re changing the speed and flow of a waterway. That’s a big deal.

There’s these new payday loan scam apps they call earned income advances or some bullshit like that where they take the loan amount and fees out of your next paycheck directly.

These asswipes charging what amounts to like 500% APR have the fucking audacity to ask for tips.

I love the concept of having negative money in a bank account. When I was younger, dumber, and poorer, I’d look at my bank account and think, “Man, all I need is another $220. Then I’ll finally be flat-out broke.”

Both are true regarding my battle with algae.

I’m saying we should adopt the Mexican flag.

And fewer stripes. 13 is too many.

And put a cool picture on it instead of those stars. We like eagles and violence. How about an eagle killing a snake? That would be badass!

To be fair, as someone who’s fought algae for years, I can attest that it’s fucking hard to do.

But I lost the battle for way less than 300 million dollars.

It’s how the pretend it’s a nutritious breakfast.

Only person to be convicted was the woman.

The th8ng about this administration is that they’re drumming constantly about everyone. Yeah - they attacked Iran, but the also threatened to attack Canada and Mexico and Greenland and China and everyone else. They’ve overwhelmed us with so much bullshit we’re too busy being shocked by the new attrocity to give a proper response to the last one.

Maybe we understand that the US is the greater of 2 evils in this specific war, while also feeling like the Iranian government is evil.

A lot of it at the time was also antisemitism. They didn’t want to give Jews a homeland - they wanted to get rid of them and convinced them Israel was the answer. And the only people it’s worked out for are rich assholes and religious zealots.