Matt the Bruins

"Moooom! Ukraine hit me back!"

Since the science is making it ever more clear that covid can cause permanent cardiovascular damage, brain damage, diabetes, and infertility, I mean to continue masking indoors in public for the foreseeable future.  I intend to do my part to prevent transmission of a disease that is literally more contagious than measles.

I wear a mask more for fear I may be infected and not know it, and I do not want to be responsible for infecting others.

I intend to keep wearing my mask and sanitizing my hands in every public gathering place. I haven't had a cold or 'flu in two years, and I'd like to keep it that way.
 
Here in Canada, during the first COVID lockdown period in 2020, hospitalizations due to influenza were only 4% of what they were the previous 'flu season.

I have finally gotten around to seeing No Way Home. It was excellent. Brilliant writing as usual, and Tom Holland and Zendaya are very good at their jobs. 

The Russia-China entanglement was the cover story for the March 19, 2022 issue of The Economist.  Their analysis is that Xi Jinping finds Putin and his war useful as a tool to gauge the power and resolve of the West in general, and the US in particular, as a guide for his own geopolitical strategy -- and as a tool to weaken American power. As such, they suggest how the US responds to Putin's invasion is a way of dealing with Chinese ambitions. If the alliance to support Ukraine goes wobbly, Xi may conclude that he can afford the price to move against Taiwan or ramp up his bullying of other East Asian neighbors. Conversely, if the US, NATO and further allies back Ukraine to the degree of dealing Russia a catastrophic defeat -- its military exhausted and humiliated, its economy shattered, and Putin possibly deposed and dead -- why, Xi will decide he needs to play a longer game in his quest to seize primacy from the US.
 
It seems to me that by this logic, the swifter Russia's defeat, the better for curbing China.
 
Dean Shomshak

Congressman says he got advice from 'cult deprogrammers' to learn how to deal with his extremist Congress colleagues

It's hard for me to care TBH. I don't much like the character, and the seemingly interminable reinterpretations of him have become boring to me. As you might imagine, I won't be seeing this movie regardless. But I don't object to anyone else enjoying it. 

Just saw the Legend of the Lone Ranger for the first time. And that is bad. So bad that the lead actor never made another film and neither did the director. Jason Robards who was established was exempt from anything happening. Christopher Lloyd was a bit restrained as the bad guy but really did nothing wrong. Michael Horse who played Tonto went on to do better work notably in Twin Peaks and the X-Files.
The film suffers from trying to do too much with the origin story and takes too long with it. The ending also feels a bit rushed. It does not help that the actor played the Lone Ranger was dubbed.
But what really hurt was banning Clayton Moore who played The Lone Ranger from doing signings or appearing in costume as the character. This generated really bad negative publicity and did the film in. 

A bigger nightmare (for Republicans) would be if Disney were to throw Scrooge McDuck levels of money at a massive PR campaign to convince Floridians just how badly they were going to be hurt by DeSantis and Republicans ruffling the feathers of the golden goose...

Although, one has to wonder what would happen if Disney decided to throw Scrooge McDuck-level amounts of money at his opponent based on this.  

Evidence is that he experienced a great deal, just not the particular things you mentioned.
 
Have you noticed that as you get older, time seems to compress? A year for us now feels like a fraction of what it felt like thirty or forty years ago. So much of what we experience seems to pass in the blink of an eye, compared to the full span of the time we remember; and we change so gradually as a result. Imagine how much more so it must feel for someone who remembers 1.5 millennia.

To be clear, a federal District Court judge who was deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association, has zero experience leading trials in court, and was appointed by Trump after the elections in November, struck down the federal mask mandate on air travel in the U.S. 
 
Further discussion probably belongs in the political thread.

As a science teacher in one of the Reddest states, I can state from my own experience that this is true. Our Legislature gives lip service to the importance of education ... as a means of training workers to be competitive in a high-tech global economy. But in terms of kids actually learning science, never mind philosophy, the arts, etc., not really so much. Our Legislature also looks for literally anything they can throw education money at other than public schools — charter schools, vouchers, online high school, you name it.
 
I'm occasionally asked by students, "Why do I have to take science classes when I'm going to be a lawyer/entrepreneur/engineer(no, I'm not kidding about that)/whatever?" I always want to say, "Because if you don't have a solid education in science, you might grow up believing that vaccines cause autism, or that the Earth's climate isn't changing, or that an ex-reality show host knows more about how to contain a global pandemic than doctors do." I have to bite my tongue, because I know I'll get nasty e-mails if I say it.

That it's the opposite of teaching a child to think. Thinking is evaluating, asking questions to clarify. Thinking is being receptive to new ideas and viewpoints, comparing them to what you'd already heard and coming to a conclusion. Fascists never want people to learn to think, because then they'll realize that what they've been told is lies and fantasy.

My Russian History professor said the Mongol conquest was the single most important event in shaping the Russian worldview, especially in foreign relations. As he put it, more or less: Deep in the Russian imagination, the Horde is always coming. The face and flag changes -- Teutonic Knights, Mongols, Germans (repeatedly), Napoleon's French; Americans (among others) in the Russian Civil War; now NATO (in Putin's telling); but it is always the Horde. The Horde has no mercy, so neither can you.
 
And the "Tatar Yoke" lasted more than 200 years! Those centuries of brutal absolutism shaped Russian ideas of what power looks like. See: Ivan the Terrible. Yes, Ivan the Terrible was a maniac prone to outbursts of homicidal rage, to the point of killing his own son, but he beat the Mongols and freed Russia. Which is why Western folk err in translating Ivan's epithet as "the Terrible." Russians mean "the Awesome." Of course he's frightening! That shows how great he is! Or Stalin: Yes, he killed millions of his subjects in his purges and forced collectivization, but he beat the Horde when it came in the guise of Nazis. So for many Ruddians, he's still a great leader.
 
So I do not expect Putin to scruple at, well, anything.
 
Dean Shomshak

When we first meet Thor in his debut movie, he's been living what amounts to an extended childhood. Over the 1,500 years of his life he's always been privileged, never known failure, never had to suffer the consequences of his actions. (We've learned that humans can live that way for at least seven decades.)   He defined himself as a warrior, a prince, a hero, but in the end he failed at all those things. Over the span of a decade he lost his power (albeit temporarily), lost his lover, lost his whole family, lost all his closest friends, lost his home, and lost the weapon that was like a part of him. He failed to protect his people, and lost most of them. He failed to save half the people in the entire universe. That so overwhelmed him that he lost the will to do anything but eat and drink and play video games, becoming a mental and physical mockery of who he was.
 
I don't care how long you've lived, if all that doesn't prompt deep soul searching, I don't know what could.

I really don't want a repeat of Thor: Ragnarök, but it looks like that is what we're going to get. Sigh...

The books rejected were in the K-5 age bracket. In early childhood education, you use stories and activities (even better if they're hands-on with manipulatives) to teach Math, not page after page of problems.
 
Or reciting counting tables as a class to the schoolmarm.

Just saw "Everything Everywhere All At Once".
 
It was... amazing!
 
It was the most fun I've had in a movie in years.  It was funny, poignant, and filled with the most creative martial arts sequences I've seen in a while.
The film is a sci-fi martial arts fusion, and dives into the Multiverse.  Beyond that don't spoil yourself if you can avoid it before going to see it.
It stars Michelle Yeoh with a really great supporting cast.  I didn't know I needed Jamie Lee Curtis in a Michelle Yeoh action movie.. but I did.

I know I'm talking it up, but I was blown away.  Its been a long time since a movie has blown me away.
 
Everyone should go see it!

Cast a Deadly Spell. Haven't seen this in such a long time. I forgot how great to cast was -- David Warner and Clancy Brown? Yes, please.
 

Can you explain what the above amounts to other than, "Don't ask us questions we don't know the answer to or that would incriminate us?" And pursuant to that,
 
 
I would say that only applies if they can set the ground rules of the debate to avoid discussions of policy (which they have none of) and stick to culture-war talking points; and to not be fact-checked for their numerous lies in real time. When it comes to real debating, the current leading Republicans have all shown themselves to be poor performers. They're only good at rabble-rousing.

archer, you're assuming Biden is going to run for a second term.  I don't think it's a foregone conclusion.  I do agree that Biden's not going to fare well in debates...his mis-steps WRT Putin have been bad.  Not that we disagree with them per se, but e.g. the war criminal comment was completely inappropriate for a head of state to make at that time.  
 
CNN is opining it's a petty revenge move driven by Trump.  That's certainly in character and plausible...but CNN is going to take the most anti-Trump view of things they can.
 
But I don't think your argument holds up.  Pulling out of CPD debates doesn't mean pulling out of debates during primary season.  It's plausible, sure, that there won't really *be* any meaningful primary opposition to His Orangeness and thus few/no debates.  Trump is also going to spew extensive nonsense during the primaries;  isolating him from debates doesn't protect him from himself.