Zachary Cohen and Jennifer Hansler, reporting for CNN:

Russian paramilitary group fighting in Ukraine on behalf of Vladimir Putin attempted to buy weapons and equipment from an unlikely source: NATO member Turkey, according to a leaked US intleaked US intelligence document that was obtained by CNN.

Does this surprise anyone? Of course it was Turkey. Why are they still in NATO? They been antagonistic towards the democratic goals of the rest of the NATO members for years. Fuck Turkey, and fuck the fascistic piece of shit Erdogan.

Nicole Chavez and Justin Gamble, reporting for CNN:

A film about a Black first grader who integrated an all-White elementary school in the South is under review in a Florida school district after a parent objected to the movie[…]

Two weeks before the movie was shown to second graders at North Shore Elementary, permission forms were sent to the students’ parents along with a link to the “Ruby Bridges” trailer, Mascareñas said. The parent who filed the objection was among the two families that opted to not have their students watch the movie, she said. […]

The 1998 film’s screenwriter, Toni Ann Johnson:

“If children are old enough to be called the N-word and learn what it means, then it’s my opinion that second graders who are 7 and 8 years of age can and should begin to learn about the history of racism in this country,” Johnson said. 

Such a salient point. The people trying to prevent this movie from being shown are the same people whose parents were in school when Ruby Bridges was integrating William Frantz Elementary School, and their grandparents were the ones hurling slurs at a six-year-old girl.

It’s a truly succinct summary of the Republican Party’s evolution: a generation of outspoken and violent racists, followed by a generation of stereotype-prone assholes, followed by the generation who “just asks questions” and wants to “protect the children”.

The ignorance is unparalleled. If a six-year-old is old enough to be vilified like Ruby Bridges was for simply daring to go to school, then your fragile, tender eight-year-old babies are not too young to learn about the transgressions and atrocities their immediate relatives committed against her.

A few notable excerpts from the BBC’s obituary:

She became for many the one constant point in a rapidly changing world as British influence declined, society changed beyond recognition and the role of the monarchy itself came into question.

[…]

She was said to have shown a remarkable sense of responsibility from a very early age. Winston Churchill, the future prime minister, was quoted as saying that she possessed "an air of authority that was astonishing in an infant".

[…]

The hallmark of her reign was constitutional correctness, and a further separation of the monarchy from the government of the day. She took seriously her rights to be informed, to advise and to warn - but did not seek to step beyond them.

[…]

The Queen described 1992 as her "annus horribilis" and, in a speech in the City of London, appeared to concede the need for a more open monarchy in return for a less hostile media.

"No institution, city, monarchy, whatever, should expect to be free from the scrutiny of those who give it their loyalty and support, not to mention those who don't. But we are all part of the same fabric of our national society and that scrutiny can be just as effective if it is made with a measure of gentleness, good humour and understanding."

[…]

Although the monarchy might not have been as strong at the end of the Queen's reign as it was at the start, she was determined that it should continue to command a place of affection and respect in the hearts of the British people.

What an incredible life.

The Queen’s death was an event that we all knew was coming, but it was the sort of day you never quite believed would actually arrive.

The year is 2021, the NFL has been around for a century, and an active player has just come out of the closet for the first time. On the one hand, it’s astonishing that it took this long, but on the other hand, it’s a miracle that it happened at all. 

Earlier today, Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Carl Nassib posted a video and a statement on Instagram today coming out as gay:

Full statement from Carl Nassib. #PRIDE pic.twitter.com/92cSSDqZoR

— NFL (@NFL) June 21, 2021

I think this has the potential to spur similar announcements (not that they’re required to share the details of their personal lives) from more NFL players and other professional athletes. 

Whether that happens or not, I think this announcement will definitely be a big deal for boys and young guys who are having trouble reconciling their attractions to other guys with stereotypically masculine demeanors and interests, because Nassib is totally correct, representation does matter. And it doesn’t just matter for little boys who want to be broadway stars or princesses, but also for boys who want to be soldiers or football players. There’s nothing wrong with boys who have more feminine personalities or interests, but our society seems to forget that not all same-sex attracted guys fit that mold. 

For the first time, boys who can tell that they’re a little different but otherwise feel normal will have a man to look up to who acts them and likes some of the same things they like. And I think that means a lot — I know it would’ve made life a lot less confusing for me, personally — because it’s important for boys to know that honestly acknowledging who you’re attracted to, whether publicly or privately, doesn’t mean you have to alter your behavior, interests, or personality to fit a stereotype. Seeing masculine, everyday guys come out in roles they look up to will help to show young guys that healthy expressions of traditional American masculinity don’t just belong the insecure, conservative, evangelical men who have tried to exclude other men who make them feel threatened.

On that note, while progressives have done a ton for same-sex attracted people, there’s a large part of the movement that thinks being male and acting like it gives you enough privilege to alleviate all your other problems, and that’s just not the case. Being able to pass as a straight guy in a homosexual-hostile community has its advantages, but it also results in a lot of internalized problems that these men don’t deserve to be blamed for, because they’re conditioned to never feel comfortable addressing them. Given this hurdle, it’s remarkable that a successful football player with everything to lose finally worked up the courage to go against the grain and take this step, but it’s great that he did because it helps to break a link in a vicious cycle. If more young guys in those homophobic environments see same-sex attraction as a normal aspect of human sexuality, then they won’t have to wrestle those demons as young men, and our whole society will be better off. 

All that to say, representation does matter, and for a lot of kids, having a football player to look up to who is open about his same-sex attraction is a big deal. Nassib is going to be at least a few kids’ new favorite player.

This piece began well before the Biden Administration did, well before the election, even. I thought about this a lot, considered different directions I could go with this article to make my point, but I think it’s actually better off as a short commentary on reputations.

Donald Trump and Henry Ford are two of the most well known businessmen of the past 100 years, both seen as moguls in their fields.

The story with Ford is that while he himself was not an expert at many of the various processes vital to the growth of his company, his management skills and business savvy helped him create one of Americas most famous automobile companies. It’s said that he had a button on his desk that he could press to summon a subject matter expert on any number of topics, bridging the gap between his lack of specific expertise and the needs of his company.

Let’s quickly contrast this with Donald Trump. Trump also had a button on his desk as president, but his button summoned diet cokes, not experts. In fact, Trump’s narcissism often got in the way of him actually taking advantage of the experts he had access to. Remember when he drew his own hurricane map? Or when he said we should drink bleach?

Trump’s arrogance and ignorance led him to be an antithesis to Ford. To suggest anything else is to romanticize Trump beyond recognition.

Last night at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, Taylor Swift took home one of the biggest awards of the night, when her surprise eighth album “folklore” was named album of the year. This honor follows several other album-of-the-year awards for “folklore,” including titles from Rolling Stone and the Apple Music Awards.

Many people were talking about Beyoncé’s record setting wins, but nobody mentioned the historic nature of Swift’s most recent award. Prior to last night, there were only two artists in Grammys history who had won the “album of the year” title three times, and they were Frank Sinatra and Stevie Wonder. But last night, Taylor Swift joined their ranks, as only the third person to ever win the Grammy for album of the year three times, and the only female act ever to do so. She had previously won the title in 2010 (for her second album, “Fearless”) and in 2016 (for her fifth album, “1989”).

Regardless of how you felt about “folklore” and whether or not it was your style of music, it was clear that there was something special about it from the very start, and I’m glad it’s gotten the recognition it deserves. It was the perfect quarantine album, and it was a masterful showcasing of Swift’s talent for songwriting and storytelling.

I know we’ve had pictures of Mars before, but not like this. These images are really breathtaking and hard to comprehend, even though they’re mostly just pictures of the Martian ground. There are already over 5,000, and I’m sure they’re going to keep coming and weI’ll see plenty more wild sights from Mars, but it’s already well worth your time to click through a few pages of the images NASA has made available.

Here are a few I liked:

When day comes we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade. We’ve braved the belly of the beast. We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what just is isn’t always justice.

…

If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made. That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb if only we dare it. Because being American is more than a pride we inherit; it’s the past we step into and how we repair it.

…

But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated. In this truth, in this faith we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.

…

We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be: a country that is bruised, but whole; benevolent, but bold; fierce and free.

…

We will rise from the gold-limned hills of the West. We will rise from the wind-swept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution. We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states. We will rise from the sun-baked South. We will rebuild, reconcile and recover in every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country our people diverse and dutiful will emerge battered and beautiful.

When day comes, we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it—if only we’re brave enough to be it.

Donald Trump’s presidency has been one of many firsts (most of them very negative), but the first that will live on in textbooks forever was penned in the annals of history today, as Donald J. Trump became the first president to ever be impeached twice.

This impeachment had bipartisan consensus, with the final vote being 232 in favor and 197 opposed.

In the wake of this historic impeachment, I want to address three audiences.

First, to the people who still support Donald Trump:

This impeachment was carried out swiftly by a bipartisan majority, in fact, it was the most bipartisan impeachment vote in the history of the United States. If you are still standing with Donald Trump, you are a racist, xenophobic, homophobic, ignorant bigot. At this point, you can longer support Donald Trump despite the horrible things he’s done; no, at this point, you are with him precisely because of those horrible things. Whether you realize it or not, people still enamored by Trump never truly cared about his “policies” or his alleged business acumen. Those who still support Donald Trump do so because he offered a perpetuation of a status quo that afforded them great comfort and privilege as a result of their race and their religious beliefs.

You are not a patriot if you care more about an orange conman who easily duped you into believing his lies than you care about the sanctity of democracy in the United States. You are a fool, and you have been fooled.

Secondly, to congressional Republicans:

Over the past week, many Republican leaders have made bad faith arguments and performed gold-medal-worthy mental-gymnastics routines to explain to themselves and their constituents as to why Donald Trump shouldn’t be impeached or held accountable for inciting the attack on the Capitol.

One of those arguments was that Donald Trump shouldn’t be impeached a second time because it would be too divisive at a time when the nation needs healing and unity. This is the biggest pile of dog shit I’ve ever heard. You can’t have unity without first getting closure for the transgressions that were committed. You can’t have healing before the wound has been stitched back together.

You’ve also argued that Trump shouldn’t be impeached because doing so could further enrage his base, prompting them to organize additional attacks. The response to this point is simple: the United States does not negotiate with terrorists.

A common theme of all the arguments is that the attack was a spontaneous event that occurred independently of Donald Trump and his lackey’s incitement. It’s hard to believe that this wasn’t planned: since when do innocent citizens find themselves in violent riots, just happening to have zip tie hand cuffs in their backpacks? Give me a break. And apparently, you don’t consider phrases like “fight like hell,” “let’s have trial by combat” to be incitements of violence. If that’s the case, then you’re seriously calling into question your comprehension of the English language.

Finally, to everyone else:

Trumpism has been its own plague, which took in many new followers and steeped them in hatred and emboldened them to spread that hatred far and wide, from cowardly internet intolerance to physical violence at the U.S. Capitol. Without a doubt, Trumpism has been an immeasurably destructive force in American society, and going forward, we must chastise and shame anyone who subscribes to and promotes Donald Trump’s ideology. Trumpism is a social cancer, and we must treat it as such. Chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery are aggressive, damaging treatments to get rid of cancer that come with negative impacts for healthy tissue and organs, but they are effective. We will have to employ similarly aggressive tactics to rid our society of Trumpism, and those efforts may well have negative consequences for those of us trying to do good in society. We will have to have difficult conversations with our neighbors, and we may have to burn some bridges.

However, Donald Trump was also a symptom of the sweeping problems our country has never addressed. The racism and other intolerances that lie at the root of Trumpism are problems that have been with our country since it was in the womb, Donald Trump merely came along and rebranded them for his own personal gain. We have to have real conversations about topics like race and other intolerances. For a tolerant society to survive, the only thing they cannot tolerate is intolerance. Trumpism is a doctrine that is built on intolerance, and we must now undergo the painful process of purging Trumpism from our nation. We have to remove the cancer, the fascists. Then we can work toward unity and healing.

The last time the Capitol Building was overrun was over two centuries ago, when it was taken by the British in 1814. As was the case in 1814, the individuals laying siege to the U.S. Capitol Building are insurrectionists, terrorists. Their actions are seditious and treasonous, but the difference is that these people hail from the United States, not Britain.

Nonetheless, they are still terrorist insurgents. They are ignorant, hateful, cowardly racists, homophobes, and xenophobes who are terrified at the thought of a United States that doesn’t go out of its way to favor and cater specifically to the whims of straight white Christians. They are not patriots.

The implications of this coup on the long term (or short term) health of our nation are unknowable. Personally, I am in awe, and I am furious.

Here’s what I think should’ve happened to them. They should have been gunned down by the United States Capitol Police. They should have been treated as enemy combatants, a threat to be neutralized as swiftly and efficiently as possible, and as enemy combatants, they should be afforded no constitutional rights. The fact that the Capitol Police were so laughably unprepared for this, juxtaposed with their ludicrous over-preparedness during the Black Lives Matter protests, is another blinding example of institutional racism.

What do I think should happen to the insurrectionists now? I think they should all be immediately arrested and held without bail to face trial for treason. The odds of that happening are slim, so here’s to hoping they spread plenty of vicious COVID cases amongst themselves and their families.

What did Donald Trump say to them? He affirmed “this election was stolen from us, it was a landslide”, and followed it up with “we love you, you’re very special.”

The question now, is what should happen to Donald Trump.

Twitter and Facebook should immediately ban him from their platforms lest he continue to pour gasoline on the flames, but that’s just the start. He is clearly unfit for office. He needs to be ousted from the presidency immediately. He deserves to be impeached and removed from office immediately. At this point, I wouldn’t put it past Mitch McConnell. If impeachment is not the solution lawmakers choose to take, then the 25th amendment should be invoked. Let Mike Pence take over for the next two weeks and facilitate the transition to Biden’s administration. I wouldn’t necessarily put it past Pence and the Cabinet at this point, either. Once he’s out of office, he needs to be put in jail to rot. I wouldn’t even take the death penalty off the table at this point: his actions have cost countless lives and had an immeasurable destructive impact on the foundations of our democracy.

As for his pathetic minions and mouthpieces who incited this rebellion, namely Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Rudy Giuliani, they should face jail time. All the representatives and senators who challenged the results of the election should be expelled from Congress. This parasitic weed has deeply intertwined itself in our national politics, and we must rip it out, root and stem, before it chokes the life out of the Great American Experiment.

---

If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.

— Ulysses S. Grant

I’ve listened to a few episodes of the “Noble Blood” podcast, and this episode about the King Edward II of England, and his lover Piers Gaveston is really fascinating. It reminds me a bit of Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell from Game of Thrones.

Also worth noting: the host does a great job of contextualizing same sex relationships during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, before that predisposition was given a label and took on an entire identity. Men today often seem compelled to perform a particular lifestyle upon acknowledging their same sex attractions, but that’s actually a very recent phenomenon, and prior to a few decades ago, that wasn’t the case at all. I’m glad the host took the time to make sure listeners understand that while we have labels for men in positions similar to Edward II and Piers Gaveston, they did not define themselves in this way.

It’s a fascinating story, and well worth a listen.

Netflix has a new, four-part docuseries that walks through the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster in an explanatory way while still being respectful of the tragedy of the event. It features a lot of interviews with NASA personnel, as well as heartbreaking accounts from the families of the astronauts who were killed. It’s really interesting and insightful; if you’re interested in the history of the United States’ space programs, or if you just don’t know much about what happened with the Challenger, this docuseries is well worth your time.

A broader societal question occurred to me while I was watching this. American history has no shortage of tragedies, but the ones people tend to obsess over and analyze endlessly (I’m thinking of JFK’s assassination, 9/11, the Challenger disaster, etc.) have something in common. They all feature people dying in violent, gruesome ways, on camera. It makes you wonder.

---

President Reagan's address to the nation in the aftermath of the explosion actually included a line that is one of my favorite quotes: “The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted, it belongs to the brave.”

“Greyhound” is a new Tom Hanks film about a Navy captain during World War 2 that debuted on Apple TV+ over the summer. It was originally destined for a theatrical debut, but that wasn’t a possibility given the COVID-19 pandemic, and Apple ended up securing the rights for an exclusive debut on Apple TV+.

I’m a fan of historical movies, especially ones centered around WW2, and I really enjoyed the film. Tom Hanks was great, story was gripping, and the effects were well done. Check it out.

Side note: I’m a big fan of special features and behind the scenes content — I’ve always really enjoyed seeing how movies and TV shows are made and how the creative processes come together to build something people find entertaining. Along a similar vein, director/producer/cast commentaries have always been really interesting to me. In the past several months, I’ve stumbled across a few shows and movies where the creators have gone on to host or guest host podcasts to talk about their work (one example being the HBO miniseries “Chernobyl”, which is also definitely worth your time). Delightfully, there’s a great podcast episode you can listen to which encapsulates a conversation between Tom Hanks and host Dan Carlin (of the podcast Hardcore History) that is a great accompaniment to the “Greyhound” film.

From a nuance-lacking report from The Guardian on the results of a survey commissioned by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference):

The survey, the first to drill down to state level in the US, ranks states according to a score based on three criteria: whether young people have definitely heard about the Holocaust; whether they can name one concentration camp, death camp or ghetto; and whether they know 6 million Jews were killed.

My gut instinct is that whoever conducted this survey didn’t know what they were doing, or they were trying to produce clickbait-y results.

In regards to the first question:

One in eight (12%) said they had definitely not heard, or didn’t think they had heard, about the Holocaust.

I can’t imagine a single person in the United States has “definitely not heard” about the Nazi’s genocide. My K-12 education focused enormously on it, from grade four, to eight, to ten. Collectively, we spent months covering it. It makes me wonder about the surveyors’ definition of “Holocaust”, as well as whether the survey was conducted in a way that treated people like they were stupid and compelled them to give incorrect answers out of spite. I simply do not believe that 12% of people aged 18-39 years in the USA have “definitely not heard” about the Germans’ extermination campaigns. You’d have to be immaculately stupid to not know anything about it.

In regards to the second question:

According to the study of millennial and Gen Z adults aged between 18 and 39, almost half (48%) could not name a single concentration camp or ghetto established during the second world war.

I don’t think we ought to expect people who haven’t studied the third reich to be able to list off their concentration/death camps: they’re German names that people here have no idea how to pronounce, and they all served roughly the same purpose, so it’s hardly fair to fault people for not committing the names of the camps to memory when they aren’t of integral importance to their lives or careers. It’s worth noting that 44% of people surveyed were able to identify the Auschwitz camp; I would’ve expected that number to be a little bit higher.

In regards to the third question:

Nationally, 63% of respondents did not know 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, and more than one in three (36%) thought 2 million or fewer had been killed.

I also don’t think we ought to blame people for not knowing the number of millions of people who were killed. Any number that large is too difficult for people to visualize, so the best way to understand it is by comparison, but to compare it to the general population of Europe or of specific countries (the most natural comparisons to make) would portray the number of people killed as a small percentage, and discounting the number of people who were murdered just isn’t an acceptable outcome when trying to educate people about a genocide. It’s a difficult problem for educators to tackle.

Another reason I don’t expect people to know the exact number is because different numbers get thrown around a lot, and that comes back to the definition of “Holocaust”. The vast majority of people think the word “Holocaust” refers to the genocide in general, not realizing that it’s a more specific term that ONLY applies to the extermination of the Jews. So while it is accurate to say “the Holocaust was the event/time period/operation where the Nazis killed 6,000,000 Jews in concentration camps”, it misses the big picture, and excludes form the conversation everyone the Nazis killed who wasn’t Jewish. In total, 11,000,000 people were killed by the Nazi state.

It’s possible that the survey could’ve have a number of respondents give close-to-accurate numbers like 10 or 11 million, but counted those responses as incorrect on the grounds that they were only asking about Jewish victims. Given the wide misunderstanding of the term, if the surveyors intended to use the technical definition of “Holocaust”, then they should’ve taken the time to explain the term to the people they surveyed before allowing them to answer. I doubt any such effort was made.

Obviously, I don’t make that distinction to diminish the gravity or significance of the Jews who were killed — the Nazis certainly had it out for them — but I do find it oddly judeocentric and frankly and irresponsible that the number most frequently thrown around when we talk about the Nazis’ genocide is 6,000,000. Yes, they killed that many Jews, but again, they killed 11,000,000 people in total. I find it disrespectful to focus only on the Jewish victims. Let’s not lose sight of the forest for the trees and forget about the other 5,000,000 political opponents, homosexuals, Russians, and people with physical/mental disabilities that the Nazis imprisoned and exterminated.

Robert Costa and Philip Rucker, writing for The Washington Post:

“This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,” national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien told Trump, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward. “This is going to be the roughest thing you face.”

[…]

“Trump never did seem willing to fully mobilize the federal government and continually seemed to push problems off on the states,” Woodward writes. “There was no real management theory of the case or how to organize a massive enterprise to deal with one of the most complex emergencies the United States had ever faced.”

No shit.

Trump knew it was worse than the flu.

Trump knew coronavirus was deadly. #TrumpKnew and he did nothing. pic.twitter.com/rWKzj5Ti1i

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 9, 2020

This is real audio (expertly assembled into a video by our friends at The Lincoln Project), straight from Donald Trump, where he admits to knowing how deadly the coronavirus was, and a subsequent admission that he intentionally downplayed it to the public. Allegedly he wanted to avoid creating a panic.

This is a stunning revelation, but to hear it come directly from Trump’s own mouth is really something else. The pandemic is the biggest issue of this election, and a lot of pundits have been saying the election could boil down to a referendum on the Trump administration’s response to it. If the election really does turn out to be a referendum on the COVID response, then Trump’s already hole-y ship just hit an iceberg. The question now isn’t whether the ship will sink (it’s undeniably going down; history will not look favorably upon his response), but whether they can keep it afloat until November third. They’ll certainly try to patch up the damage as much as they can (probably by releasing an untested vaccine in mid-October), and they’ll try to deflect attention to other issues, but I personally think they’re taking on water too quickly to stay afloat until the election. If it does come down to a COVID referendum — knocking on lots of wood here — I don’t think Trump can win.

From a CTV News interview with American History Professor Allan Litchman, summarized by Graham Slaughter:

[The revelation that] Donald Trump knew COVID-19 was deadly in the early days of the pandemic but publicly downplayed the virus will go down in history as "damning."

“This is the greatest dereliction of duty in the history of the U.S. presidency,” Allan Lichtman, a professor of history at American University for nearly 50 years, told CTV News Channel on Thursday.

I respect Litchman and his analysis a great deal. You may recognize his name, as he’s the historian who constructed the unbelievably accurate “Thirteen Keys” model of predicting U.S. presidential elections.

Why Trump felt comfortable speaking so candidly with Woodward, one of the most influential journalists in American politics, has everything to do with his “pathological ego” Lichtman said.

“Donald Trump thinks he’s smarter than everyone, he thinks he’s more cunning than everyone,” said Lichtman, who is a Democrat. Only one of the dumbest people in the room would constantly act like they’re the smartest person in the room.

As for Trump’s defence that he didn’t share how deadly the virus was because he didn’t want people to panic, Lichtman said it simply doesn’t pass the sniff test.

“What is Trump’s whole campaign based on? Causing panic. ‘Elect Joe Biden and your streets are going to burn. The criminals will be attacking your houses. The suburbs will be abolished.’ This is a guy who’s worried about causing panic? Come on. How could you possibly believe that?”

Again, rich hypocrisy. He’s effectively saying “look at what’s happening, our cities are on fire, Antifa* is coming, this is what will happen if you elect Joe Biden”, hoping his followers are stupid enough to ignore the fact that Trump is president now and it’s already happening. It’s so self unaware.

But let me guess, Republicans: y’all are totally okay with this. Something about not wanting to create a panic, sometimes you have lie to your kids because you love them, yadda yadda yadda. Republicans should be more offended by this than anyone. It’s an outright admission by Trump that he’s playing them for fools because they take every (self conflicting) thing he says as gospel.

*The “Pod Save America” boys aptly pointed out that Trump’s whole “Antifa” play is basically the 2020 rebrand of his “caravan” play from 2018. Baseless, divisive fear mongering that his most ignorant supporters are all too happy to gobble up without any evidence.

For more articles about the United States’ failed federal response to the pandemic, check out CopyrighBro’s COVID-19 Roundup.

UPDATED: 10/06/20, 14:58

A fascinating story from David Shayer, writing for TidBITS:

“I have a special assignment for you. Your boss doesn’t know about it. You’ll help two engineers from the US Department of Energy build a special iPod. Report only to me.” […]

They didn’t actually work for the Department of Energy; they worked for a division of Bechtel, a large US defense contractor to the Department of Energy. They wanted to add some custom hardware to an iPod and record data from this custom hardware to the iPod’s disk in a way that couldn’t be easily detected. But it still had to look and work like a normal iPod. […]

We discussed the best way to hide the data they recorded. As a disk engineer, I suggested they make another partition on the disk to store their data. That way, even if someone plugged the modified iPod into a Mac or PC, iTunes would treat it as a normal iPod, and it would look like a normal iPod in the Mac Finder or Windows Explorer. They liked that, and a hidden partition it was.

Next, they wanted a simple way to start and stop recording. We picked the deepest preferences menu path and added an innocuous-sounding menu to the end. I helped them hook this up inside the code, which was rather non-obvious. In all other respects, the device functioned as a normal iPod. […]

My guess is that Paul and Matthew were building something like a stealth Geiger counter. Something that DOE agents could use without furtively hiding it. Something that looked innocuous, that played music, and functioned exactly like a normal iPod. You could walk around a city, casually listening to your tunes, while recording evidence of radioactivity—scanning for smuggled or stolen uranium, for instance, or evidence of a dirty bomb development program—with no chance that the press or public would get wind of what was happening.

Wow, what a story. It’s a commentary on the cultural ubiquitousness of the iPod in the 2000s, and an intriguing reminder that the secretive exploits of the U.S. government were not limited to the cold war. It reminds me of this clever image from the HBOMAX listing of CNN’s docuseries, “The 2000s”.

I first heard about Allan Litchman in the weeks before the 2016 election, and at the time, his prediction that Trump would win seemed far fetched. Still, I was enthralled with his “thirteen keys” system, and anxious to see if it would prove accurate for that election cycle. Of course, it did. However, Trump’s win wasn’t the only thing Litchman predicted: he also predicted that Trump would be impeached way back in 2017. Suffice to say he has a strong track record, and I trust his judgment.

Allison Gordon, reporting for CNN:

He has correctly predicted the winner of each presidential race since Ronald Reagan's reelection victory in 1984 using his "13 keys" system. […]

Now, Lichtman and his "13 keys" are ready to call 2020.

In an interview with CNN, Lichtman was definitive in his answer: "The keys predict that Donald Trump will lose the White House this year."

Lichtman bases his prediction on a model of "13 keys" that can be answered as either true or false for any given election. The "13 keys" in his system include factors such as the economy, incumbency, social unrest and scandals, as well as the candidates' personal charisma. […]

When asked if the key model could account for something as cataclysmic as the Covid-19 pandemic, Lichtman remained confident. "Look, retrospectively and prospectively, the keys go all the way back to 1860. They are what we call a robust system. So, I don't fiddle with them. They've lasted through enormous changes in our politics, in our economy, in our democracy. Don't fiddle with the keys," he explained.

I’ve been feeling pretty good about Biden’s chances the past few months, and this really cemented my belief that he will win the election (I’m knocking on wood read hard, though, believe me). Things can certainly change, and this doesn’t mean we should let off the gas in our attempts to get people excited about the Biden Harris ticket, but for the past 12-18 months, you could just feel Trump’s public support eroding. He still has his inalienable base, of course, but I think he’s losing ground among fair-minded people. I believe America has enough non-racists, non-xenophobes, non-white supremacists, non-homophobes, and non-bigots to outvote Trump’s base. The the issue now is whether we can get enough of those people to turn out to be able to counteract the damage that will be done by his blatant efforts to cheat.

If you’re interested in learning more about the thirteen keys, here’s a good place to start.

Isabelle Khurshudyan and David L. Stern, writing for The Washington Post:

Ukraine knew Flight 752 had been shot down, but it was careful not to antagonize Iran […]

Ukraine wanted its investigators to gather hard evidence of their own to prove that a missile had downed the plane, Danilov said, suggesting that their work ultimately pressured Iran into accepting responsibility. They were also careful to avoid sharp criticism of Iran during this time to ensure its cooperation in the probe. […]

“Once again, Zelensky walked a thin diplomatic balance beam and came out without falling flat on his face,” said Nina Jankowicz, a scholar at the Wilson Center. “For a political novice, he seems to have a keen sense of exactly how to appease opposing factions in order to protect Ukraine’s interests.”

The United States shouldn’t need to look to Ukraine for an example of how to conduct diplomacy, but the Commander in Cheeto needs to grab his magic marker and take some notes.

Props to Zelensky for dealing with Iran responsibly in the wake of a tragedy that could’ve easily led to war; we can all exhale a bit, now. Let’s not forget that while the plane that Iran shot down was mostly carrying Iranian passengers, there were also Brits, Canadians, Germans, and Swedes onboard. This could’ve been an international disaster for the U.S.

Handled poorly, this event could’ve gone down very similarly to the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand (the event that kickstarted the First World War). Ferdinand’s assassination likely would’ve been of relatively little historical significance had a multitude of powerful nations not gotten involved to protect their smaller allies, but that’s not how things went down. What started out as a conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia dramatically escalated at each turn, until it had quickly devolved into the most devastating war humanity had ever experienced. The international alliances of 1914 were positioned in such a way that just a handful immeasurably impactful decisions lied between peaceful resolution and The Great War. Fast forward 105 years, and Zelensky found himself having to make a similarly impactful decisions, and he made the right call.

To be sure, there was a certain amount of situational homosexuality that occurred among the all-male crews of buccaneer ships back in the golden age of piracy, much like there is in modern-day prisons and professional wrestling organizations. But it's not as though those super grizzled, hyper-masculine throat-slitting machines engaged in same-sex coupling, right? It's a fiercely divisive subject even today, so 400 years ago it must have been absolute insanity to even suggest two men getting married, much less two pirates.

On the contrary, some historians claim that the original "Pirates of the Caribbean" (pirate crews who docked, traded, and intermittently lived in port towns in the West Indies during the 17th century) had entire communities where homosexual couples were considered perfectly acceptable.

You see, pirates had a form of civil partnership called matelotage, a marriage-like institution wherein two male pirates shared all of their ... OK, we need to think of another word for "booty" here -- let's go with "loot." Additionally, each would name the other as his sole inheritor. While this makes a good I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry kind of economic sense, in as much as it was essentially the only kind of financial security a pirate could hope for, some commentators argue that these relationships were also romantic in nature, possibly because matelots could routinely be observed having sex with each other.

Dudes have always been boning each other, but this is fascinating and definitely more progressive than I would have expected for 14th century seafarers. These arrangements between matelots makes you consider the origins of the stereotypically pirate-y word “matey.”