Events

Special prosecutor Jack Smith has requested US District Court Judge Tanya S Chutkan issue an order telling the XPOTUS to stop threatening people online: In a 19-page motion, prosecutors said that some of the people Mr. Trump has gone after on social media — including the special counsel, Jack Smith, who has filed two indictments against him — have experienced subsequent threats from others. Mr. Trump’s statements, they said, could also affect witnesses and the potential jury pool for the trial, which is...

IDTWHQ almost made it to 22°C this afternoon, with a low dewpoint, sunny skies, and a lake breeze. In other words, perfect. Of course, the sun sets just after 7pm tonight, fully an hour earlier than it did five weeks ago...but that's autumn for you. Not everything in the world went perfectly today, of course: House Speaker and noted invertebrate Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) continues to survive as third in line to the Presidency even though his unhinged back bench keeps forcing him to do stupid things, like...

Former college football coach Tommy Tuberville, now a United States Senator grâce a the wisdom and good sense of the fine people of Alabama, continues to degrade the United States military by preventing the US Senate from confirming 301 (and counting) general and flag officers from formally taking the jobs they're already doing. Earlier this month, the commanders of the Naval Air Forces and Naval Sea Systems Command retired, passing their responsibilities—but, crucially, not their policy-setting...

I didn't only read about leaf blowers today. In other news: For reasons no one can fathom, there seems to be a relationship between how much scrutiny the individual Justices of the United States have gotten over their conflicts of interest with billionaires and their rejection of outside ethical oversight. Oh, and the two most defiant happen to be the two most ideologically Republican. Hard to figure out why. Paul Krugman tries to figure out why inflation has dropped to 3%—not that he's complaining!...

IDTWHQ got all the way up to 16.9°C this afternoon under clear skies, a nearly perfect early-autumn day ahead to start a week-long string of them. Fortunately the landscaping company comes to my complex on Fridays, so I didn't have to rearrange my meeting schedule to work around their leaf blowers. This coming Friday, though, I expect they'll be back. As they will next spring, unless I can finally convince my HOA to ban them, just in time for the 50th anniversary of the technology: Fifty years ago, in...

Fifty years ago today, Gen. Augusto Pinochet overthrew the democratically-elected government of Chile: U.S. officials were especially concerned about Salvador Allende, a self-proclaimed Marxist and a member of Chile's Socialist Party who ran for president multiple times and was a leading contender in the 1964 election. He had pledged to nationalize the mostly U.S.-owned copper companies, a large industry in Chile. The U.S. spent massively on anti-communist propaganda and support for Allende's opponent...

Inner Drive Technology WHQ cooled down to 14°C overnight and has started to climb up into the low-20s this morning, with a low dewpoint and mostly-clear skies. Perfect sleeping weather, and almost-perfect walking weather! In a few minutes I'm going to take Cassie out for a good, long walk, but first I want to queue up some stuff to read when it's pissing with rain tomorrow: A Wall Street Journal poll (which the XPOTUS funded in part) appears to have bad news for the Biden re-election campaign, not least...

I mean, look at this rotating boat lift in Falkirk, Scotland: Archimedes' principle makes this a lot easier than it seems. Both gondolas have exactly the same mass (about 600 tonnes), and they oppose each other perfectly. So rotating the wheel through only takes 22.5 kW, "about the same as boiling eight kettles of water." The Scots invented the steam engine, so they have some engineering game.

It never stops, does it? And yet 100 years from now no one will remember 99% of this: A group of psychiatrists warned a Yale audience that the XPOTUS has a "dangerous mental illness" and should never get near political office again. Faced with this obvious truth, 59% of Republicans said they'd vote for him in 2024. Timothy Noah looks at the average age of the likely nominees for president next year (79) and the average age of the US Senate (60-something) and concludes our country needs a laxative....

Today's weather feels like we might have real fall weather soon. Today's XKCD kind of nails it, too—not the weather, but the calendar. In addition to nice weather, we have a nice bit of elected-official hypocrisy, too: the president of the Chicago Teachers Union got caught sending her son to a private school, and giving a really crappy explanation for it. In other news: A jury took all of four hours to convict right-wing intellectual grifter Peter Navarro of contempt of Congress for ignoring the January...