[-] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 8 points 9 hours ago

At that price I’m definitely sneaking in my own drink and snacks.

[-] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Russia desperately doesn’t want Ukraine to join NATO or further their ties to the west. Agreeing to those terms plays direct into Russia’s hands.

There is a wide gap between “Russia stops their invasion and pulls their forces out of Ukraine” and “unconditional surrender by Russia.” No one is calling for the latter, the former is a very reasonable outcome.

[-] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

I don’t think he actually thinks that, I think it’s just that he is simple-minded and once he makes a concrete connection between concepts he’s unable to stop using it.

In his 2016 campaign, his advisers were pushing him to focus on immigration reform. They had policies that would make it harder for people to illegally immigrate (and legally, tbh), and they figured that would be a winning issue with republican voters. But Trump couldn’t stay on script, and kept neglecting to talk about immigration. So his advisors told him that the policies would be “like a wall” that stopped border crossings. “The wall” was supposed to be a mental image to remind him to discuss immigration. But Trump is too literal-minded, and starts just talking about the wall. The rest is history.

[-] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 11 points 4 days ago

Fun fact: fiestaware plates (this was the company that made the uraranium glazed ceramics) are commonly used by radiation safety folks as check sources and for teaching how to use survey meters. This is because they usually aren’t considered a radioisotope source, so there’s less paperwork to keep them around.

[-] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 27 points 4 days ago

I thought the same thing about George Zimmerman, but despite multiple domestic violence arrests involving a gun, and numerous other scandals he’s apparently still free, living his best life.

[-] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago

Fyi the internet archive has paywall free versions of most Atlantic articles

[-] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

They could’ve made this clearer.

[-] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

“Fairy Tale” is good but it’s not King’s best work. It has some of his classic tropes I really like, such as portals to alternate worlds, and thematic similarities to classic literature (in this case, fairy tales). But it’s also a bit drawn out in parts. I periodically reread some of Stephen King’s books, this probably won’t be one of them.

An alternative King story that has similar themes that I’d highly recommend instead is “The Talisman”, which was cowritten by Steven King and Peter Straub.

[-] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago

I really enjoy Steven King’s work. He has an engaging style and some great, often spooky ideas.

He doesn’t plan his stories out; he just writes and lets the story flow, essentially shooting from the hip. Sometimes this works out great, other times he winds up resolving things with a deus ex machina. Generally you aren’t reading his books for the ending, but rather the journey. His short stories tend to avoid this issue - it’s much harder to write yourself into a corner when the story isn’t that long.

The best introduction to King is probably his first novel, “Carrie.” Some of it is now cliche or standard tropes, but that’s just because of how impactful this book was. “Firestarter” is another great introduction.

[-] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 45 points 6 days ago

Despite how crazy that all is, I really like the last line of the post. It’s a great way to end pretty much any comment on the internet.

The Great Meeting is on.

[-] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 78 points 6 days ago

King is facing a federal lawsuit filed by Eva Goodman, 15, and her mother, Latoreya Till, after Goodman was forced to put on jail garments, handcuffed and put in an isolated holding cell during an educational trip to King’s courtroom.

The trip certainly was educational, though probably not in the way the school intended.

39

Non-paywalled link

[The Biden administration] assigned itself a larger mission than full-throated solidarity in the aftermath of the attack. It wanted to avert a regional war that might ensnare the United States. It aspired to broker an end to the conflict, and to liberate the estimated 251 hostages that Hamas had kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip. It sought a Gaza free from Hamas’s rule, and the dismantlement of the group’s military capabilities. And despite the scale of those tasks, it accelerated its pursuit of the Saudi normalization deal.

What follows is a history of those efforts: a reconstruction of 11 months of earnest, energetic diplomacy, based on interviews with two dozen participants at the highest levels of government, both in America and across the Middle East.

55
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by macarthur_park@lemmy.world to c/truecomics@midwest.social

Apparently an autograph album is “is a book for collecting the autographs of others. Traditionally they were exchanged among friends, colleagues, and classmates to fill with poems, drawings, personal messages, small pieces of verse, and other mementos.”

They were popular among university students from the 15th to mid-19th century, but have since been replaced by yearbooks.

84

Everett’s methods may violate the Hippocratic Oath, but they sure are effective.

97

Just hold this pose for a while until the cement sets good!

Ever the artist, Mr. True branches out into mixed media (cement and fool face).

126

Get up out of that so I can take one more punch at you!

Sadly, Everett would need to wait for the Fair Housing Act of 1968 for this landlord’s behavior to be federally illegal. It’s unclear what state Mr. True lives in (besides anger, obviously).

115
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by macarthur_park@lemmy.world to c/truecomics@midwest.social

“There’s no hope of my beating any sense into you, but I’ll knock some of the ignorance out of you!”

-Everett True

Sometimes Everett’s angry chastising gets downright poetic. Here he throws out a one-liner worthy of an 80’s action movie, all because of a messy banana eater.

58
What Europe Fears (www.theatlantic.com)

American allies see a second Trump term as all but inevitable. “The anxiety is massive.”

Fear of losing Europe’s most powerful ally has translated into a pathologically intense fixation on the U.S. presidential race. European officials can explain the Electoral College in granular detail and cite polling data from battleground states. Thomas Bagger, the state secretary in the German foreign ministry, told me that in a year when billions of people in dozens of countries around the world will get the chance to vote, “the only election all Europeans are interested in is the American election.” Almost every official I spoke with believed that Trump is going to win.

Paywall removed: https://web.archive.org/web/20240603193105/https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/06/nato-trump-europe-allies/678533/

[-] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 159 points 6 months ago

Former president Donald Trump ratcheted up his dehumanizing rhetoric against immigrants Saturday by saying that some who are accused of crimes are “not people.”


“I don’t know if you call them people,” he said at a rally near Dayton, Ohio. “In some cases they’re not people, in my opinion. But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say.”

Apparently I’m part of the radical left, because yes that is a terrible thing to say.

Non-paywalled alternate article

344
133
20
XKCD: Banana Prices (imgs.xkcd.com)
93
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by macarthur_park@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

Congress on Thursday sent legislation to avert a partial government shutdown to President Biden, racing to fund federal agencies through early March one day before money was to run out.

Over the strenuous opposition of far-right Republicans, the House voted 314 to 108 to approve the stopgap funding just hours after the Senate provided overwhelming bipartisan backing for the measure in a 77-to-18 vote, allowing lawmakers to narrowly beat a Friday deadline.

In the end, Mr. Johnson was only able to cobble together a bare majority of Republicans voting on the bill, with 107 backing it and 106 opposed. Democrats supplied the bulk of the support.

Alternative non-paywalled source: ABC News

218

Gay’s resignation — just six months and two days into the presidency — comes amid growing allegations of plagiarism and lasting doubts over her ability to respond to antisemitism on campus after her disastrous congressional testimony Dec. 5.

Gay weathered scandal after scandal over her brief tenure, facing national backlash for her administration’s response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and allegations of plagiarism in her scholarly work.

view more: next ›

macarthur_park

joined 1 year ago