I give it 90 seconds after that moment until their searching for the old reference lands them on some new and better reference they’d rather use instead

[says that out loud in American English]

Yeah this all checks out

Another comment in this thread has a link to a source confirming the die is real, doesn’t mention the pillar tho

I am sort of amazed that between Charles Dickins and other serialized writers’ zeal for selling stuff and the Goths’ tendency to love superstitious parlor games somehow nobody in 1800s era ever managed to come up with a tabletop storytelling dice game (at least that I’ve ever heard of)

Oh, totally /s (arc)

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: One of the senators voting today is Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. In fact, the reason senators are voting today is that Senator Shaheen and other Democrats voted to reopen the government last month. And in exchange, Republicans promised a vote on the subsidies, with no promise that they would pass. Senator, good morning.

JEANNE SHAHEEN: Good morning.

INSKEEP: Selena just reported you’re going to vote on two plans today, and neither is likely to get the 60 votes that it needs. Is that how you read the situation?

SHAHEEN: It is, sadly. And it’s sad because so many people are seeing their insurance rates come through, and they are doubling, tripling - in some cases, even more. And people are concerned about whether they’re going to be able to pay those rates. And we’re going to see a lot of people who are going to lose their health insurance if we don’t address this.

INSKEEP: I’m wondering if there’s a chance you’re getting played here. And here’s what I mean by that, Senator. Vulnerable Republicans - a few of them will be able to vote for something today. It’ll still fall short of 60. The Republicans get cover, and the bill doesn’t pass.

SHAHEEN: Well, I think people will know very clearly who to blame if it doesn’t pass. We’re seeing in the House a discharge petition that’s trying to force a vote that has a number of Republicans who have signed on, who are trying to force the speaker to actually get a vote on this so that - because they’re feeling heat from their constituents, who are seeing these rate increases and not being able to afford their health insurance. We had a shadow hearing yesterday. We heard from a woman in Virginia who’s a small business owner. She paid $544 a month for her plan in 2025. Currently, she’s going to - that same plan is slated to cost $842 for the month. And without the subsidy in 2026, her plan would cost $1,552 a month. That’s not affordable for her.

INSKEEP: That sounds…

SHAHEEN: And we know that…

INSKEEP: …Similar to the - yeah. That sounds similar to the story that Selena Simmons-Duffin just gave us. So if both bills do fail today, what happens next? Do you vote on something else? What happens?

SHAHEEN: Well, I hope that talks are going to continue and that we might be able to reach a compromise agreement because [bullshit continues]

Now there are two “culturally homogeneous” groups

Hard to know where to begin with all of the history that you’re ignoring or just flat wrong about, but I guess one place to start would be pointing out that the US’s federation of colonies blew up in a civil war like a generation after its founding

calling on the incumbents up for reelection next year to support a Democratic bill to extend health care subsidies.

Ugh, Democratic party managers are so fucking bad at their jobs, the Republicans are just going to count their votes so their people up for reelection can make a show of supporting this while the rest of them guarantee it still fails

I think opportunities will present themselves because fascists are paranoid backstabbing idiots who can’t avoid objectively fucking things up, so our primary concern right now should be just surviving and being in a place to do something with opportunities when they come along

If he’d done this exact same shit at work they’d have given him a medal

Actually, it’s even worse than that, the FDA clown is saying some children have died, not may have. The author just ignores all of that to so he can get on his “you ivory tower academics are too close minded!” soap box.

Also, just going from the quotes in the article, it seems like this author is attacking an argument nobody is actually making. This article says we can’t dismiss the possibility that this could happen, but the FDA is saying it already definitely did happen and the researchers are saying it didn’t, which is a whole different conversation and all the currently available evidence points to the researchers being 100% correct about it.

and the best the US media can do is speculate that maybe the deranged toddler-in-chief might maybe not support him quite as much as he used to because maybe a few of the brazenly traitorous Republican scumbags in Congress might actually take issue with him

While also doing some drive by racism on Native Americans with a stupidly written racist ass headline

Homeland Security officials described the incident in October as antisemitic, but in a social media post days afterward, Temple Beth Zion in the Boston metropolitan area town of Brookline said it did not appear to be motivated by antisemitism. Police initially told the synagogue that “the individual was unaware that he lived next to, and was shooting his BB gun next to, a synagogue or that it was a religious holiday.

“So you say you’re tired of the weakness and degeneracy of society and want to tear down a government that you think coddles the weak and doesn’t allow the master race to subjugate everyone else under their hierarchy? Well, I don’t think I need to take a political science course to know an anarchist when I hear one!” - cops (actually)

“Well, if a duly sworn law enforcement officer says so it must be true.” - journalists (actually)

The US has been using this kind of logic since Sept 12 2001 (arc)

SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:

After the attacks on September 11, 2001, the George W. Bush administration arrested hundreds of suspected terrorists. Most of them were never criminally charged and eventually let go. Some spent years in inhumane conditions, even though they had no connection to the Taliban or al-Qaida. In 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where many of those prisoners were being held, and described them using this term.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DONALD RUMSFELD: And one of the most important aspects of the Geneva Convention is the distinction between lawful combatants and unlawful combatants.

PFEIFFER: By labeling them unlawful combatants, the U.S. said it was justified in holding them indefinitely without trial and denying them international legal protections. The Trump administration is now applying the same term to people on board boats it’s blowing up because it says they’re transporting drugs from South America. The language here matters. It underpins the legal arguments presidents make to justify their actions. Here’s current Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth referring to the cartels that ship drugs from the southern hemisphere to the United States.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PETE HEGSETH: So our message to these foreign terrorist organizations is we will treat you like we have treated al-Qaida.

A lot more good information and history in that article, but the important point is that because they’re not soldiers (i.e. lawful combatants), they don’t get Geneva Convention protection, but because they’re not criminals either they don’t get due process protection either. It’s a completely blatant and stupid way to just ditch all the humanitarian guardrails around government violence we spent the 20th century building, it was fucked 20 years ago and it’s fucked today but we never held the people doing it accountable so here we are.

Huh, I hadn’t thought of that implication but I see what you mean. I guess it’s always been kind of misleading though, because it’s not about the delay between strikes, it’s about shooting a target that’s already been neutralized to try to kill survivors.

Seems like the specific phrase might have orginated from a 2003 order the army gave to troops in Iraq (arc), which would explain the minimizing language (while we’re on the subject - blowing someone up with a missile isn’t exactly a “tap,” either), but then groups like Amnesty International ran with it to talk about how the Bush and Obama and Trump administrations would all drone strike targets a second time to kill medical responders.

Reminder that the US has been doing double tap drone strikes to try to kill medical responders since 2013 at least (arc)

Good to see the reality of our violent foreign policy is finally sinking in for some lawmakers but it took decades longer than it should have

That’s completely irrelevant, they demonize every Dem. It was a bad decision to put her up as a candidate because she’s a giant asshole and not a talented enough liar to cover it up.

And the fact that all he’s cognitively and physically capable of anymore is watching Fox and shitposting