Matt the Bruins

Engineering Students Invent Edible Tape That Stop Burritos From Falling Apart

*sigh*
Would that migrating to Canada was truly Super Easy, Barely An Inconvenience... 😕

Marjorie Taylor-Greene is likely stupid and/or ignorant, but I honestly think she is mentally ill as well

More context.
 
Federal agents ignored local cops to storm Texas school.

There is a fine line between duty to act (which isn't a legal duty in the US for LE, but I believe a moral one), and duty to serve the community by living to continue to serve the community (by avoiding unnecessary risks, including throwing away a life that can help a large number of people to make a reckless attempt to help a single individual). Uvalde PD does not appear to be on the ethical side of that line. They didn't follow current doctrine of getting in as quickly as reasonably possible to preserve lives, and hindered other agencies who were willing to do so. Their reasons for the delay just don't seem to be justified.
 
Apparently, the Texas Rangers and FBI are investigating the Uvalde PD response. It'll be interesting to see what the outcome is.
 
 
 
 

You really should read some of the stories. Yes, you'll want to fact check the hell out of them. The shooting was going on while the cops stayed outside. They had to hear the shots. What did they think was going on in there? Balloon popping? You're right that a lot of information is still incoming, but apparently the UPD had active shooter training two months before this. If reports are true that some UPD went in to get JUST their own kids and left other folks kids to die, it's even worse. Police officials have been caught in blatant lies about the time line and events. And, of course there were 9-11 calls going on like this one, from within the school. For the record:
 
 
I understand that getting shot at must be terrifying. I will stay behind the safety of my fantasy games and the like. And, I won't be joining the police force. I'm also not a fire fighter, but if a building was on fire and the firefighters just stood around staring at it while there was still a chance to save children trapped inside, I'd be livid with them. I'd know they shouldn't have picked this career. If they then were caught bare face lying about what happened in order to make themselves look good?  Beyond livid with a high dose of disgust and disdain for them as human beings.
 
I don't think the Uvalde police deserve a good nights sleep, or their current jobs.  YMMV.
 

The Democrats have been disappointing as far as enacting progressive policies, or even seriously discussing them. But they aren't the one of the two major political parties actively trying to subvert the democratic system of government and institute a fascist white-nationalist semi-theocracy.
 
We have to keep telling the Millennials and Zoomers to look up Tiananmen Square, because if the Republicans regain power they've made it clear they'll move to a dictatorship, and then protest marches will end up like that.

sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn) was interviewed on All Things Considered yesterday, about legislative efforts at gun control. He's still trying, but warned that the numbers in the Senate are, not to put too fine a point on it, impossible. No Republicans, he said, are going to have epiphanies and switch their established party-line vote. Change will only come through "exercise of raw political power": when there are enough Democrats in the Senate to push through gun control laws by themselves. Ditto at the state level.
 
Unfortunately, I also read that a large fraction of Millennials and Zoomers have given up on politics and don't intend to vote for anyone. They think it's more useful to go to protest marches. This seems to me a recipe for keeping Democrats for ever reaching Murphy's threshold -- which means they will never be able to enact the policies that younger liberals want. Sorry, kids, but "Hey Hey Ho Ho" is not a magical mantra: It doesn't matter how many times you chant it, it will not force change.
 
(And I'm sorry to be the grumpy old guy saying "Kids these days," but I have a low tolerance for magical thinking.)
 
Dean Shomshak

No cynicism needed. The Supreme Court has held that the police have no duty to protect us.
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html
 
It's taken me a long time to realize the truth. Police write up reports for insurance companies and (selectively) police our behavior.  Above all, they protect the wealthy and powerful (and their property) from the rest of us.
 
It's not an accident as far as I can tell; the system seems to be set up that way. Heck, when we peaceably assemble in front of a supreme court judge's home, look what happens. Or when we assemble to protest legitimate concerns such as elites shipping our jobs overseas (one-sided trade agreements) or police summarily executing citizens with impunity. But when a murderer enters a school to kill children, the police make room for him and start arresting the parents who ask them why they're not saving the children. And then they lie about it. They apparently lie constantly, seemingly reflexively, about every aspect of their jobs. And they get away with it, are given almost complete impunity for their behavior toward us.
 
It seems pretty clear to me what the police are there for, and unfortunately it's not what decades of copaganda TV shows had led me to believe.

He was looking for a scenario in which the heroes win.

You will notice that the old motto of "To Serve and Protect" does not say who cops serve and protect. A cynical person might say it's the ruling class. And that though police are part of a wider "pacification project" to keep the wider populace sufficiently docile that they do not trouble their betters, a certain degree of random violence does not entirely displease some of the people in power.
 
I have no proof, of course, just a nasty, suspicious mind.
 
Dean Shomshak

Well, apparently they didn't take action to save any kids but their own, but they DID restrain and taser parents who wanted to get in and get their kids since the police wouldn't. Really good at stomping unarmed citizens, the UPD

It was one of those typical "everyone stands around looking busy while the main character takes them out one at a time jobs" I never like and almost never works.  Also a really weird treatment of the Marvel Illuminati

I saw it.  I liked Dr. Strange (first movie) with Cumberbatch, and I liked how Dr. Strange worked in this movie.
 
Visually stunning, but I wish they'd made different choices in the story.
 
I will say, however, that Charlize Theron as Clea looked awesome and a great choice to play Clea.
 
It was nice to see in the theater for a change, though.

Sliding to mild? Nope—omicron BA.2 caused worse COVID symptoms than BA.1

Meanwhile, the NRA is holding their Leadership Forum in Houston this week, and are banning guns from the event.
 
https://www.businessinsider.com/nra-conference-wont-allow-attendees-to-bring-their-guns-2022-5

Atwood responds to book bans with ‘unburnable’ edition of Handmaid’s Tale

David Frum hails from an era in American politics when a political conservative could be a rational person who had a set of views that differed from those of more liberal people, but which were logical and not unreasonable. Now to be called a "conservative" you apparently have to pass some sort of ideological purity test, and swear undying loyalty to whichever Dear Leader your faction kowtows to.
 
Of course David Frum is also Canadian. Our conservatives rarely list as far to starboard as American ones.

I didn't want my coffee THAT dark.

From Garry Kasparov:
 
”Putin's propagandists on TV said nuclear war is fine because patriotic Russians will go to Heaven. Heaven heard it and immediately applied to join NATO!”

The Russian people were entirely too ready to fall into line behind Putin's aggression. No one in Europe is going to trust that whoever succeeds him won't try to follow the same path. This is only the latest time Russia has burned them for their optimism.
 

Madison Cawthorn, the North Carolina Republican congressman who managed to alienate...well, almost everyone...lost in his primary today.  

New Daredevil series in the works at Disney Plus

She is an absolute despot, and she does not tolerate any challenges to her rule.
 
Any. Challenges. At. All.
 
She has destroyed entire worlds full of people out of frustration. That’s pretty scary, and it puts a serious damper on this whole benevolent ruler facade she wears. She is only benevolent as long as you toe the line and obey.