And carrying cast iron cookware across the entire damn continent.

John Stark, one of the rescuers of the Donner Party.

In Summit Valley the remaining rescuers discussed what to do and took a vote to save only two of the children in Starved Camp. That might have been all they could manage. The others would have to stay behind.

John Stark, above, could not abide that. That meant that nine people, mostly children, would die on the mountain, exposed to the elements down in a very deep hole in the snow. John Stark decided he would save all nine, “Already shouldering a backpack with provisions, blankets, and an axe, he picked up one or two of the smaller children, carried them a little ways, then went back for the others. Then he repeated the whole process again and again and again. To galvanize morale, he laughed and told the youngsters they were so light from months of mouse-sized rations that he could carry them all simultaneously, if only his back were broad enough.” Once they were out of the snow he would eat and rest he said, but not before. He saved all nine. That is extraordinary and that is heroism. It was also heroism he never got contemporary credit for.

Imagine being JD Vance, looking at all of the people smarter and more experienced than him with their shattered careers after working for Trump, and thinking “But I’m the one who will figure out how to ride this tiger to my own advantage!”

Rudy Giuliani went from being “America’s mayor” to being an absolute fucking laughingstock, a man so generally reviled that he couldn’t sustain an appearance on The Masked Singer.

Anyone, literally anyone at any level, at this point who thinks that Trump won’t throw them under the bus at his earliest convenience is just actively seeking their own destruction.

I counted at least twenty references to the “Harris administration,” or “Harris’ immigration policies,” and one full-on “the Harris/Biden administration.”

Sorry

Jesus, he went to Burlington VT? Was he trying to generate so much psychic dissonance that he summoned the angry ghost of Ethan Allen?

Sweet Jesus, I wish that Democratic voters and politicians were unified enough that if we had a solid majority in this country that we could be considered a one-party state. Even if we somehow did manage to finagle things such that we won the next election 60-40 or more, it’s obvious to anyone with a brain that we would immediately celebrate by turning on each other like dogs. The neolibs can’t stand the hippies. The hippies can’t stand the tech liberals. Most of the people pushed left by identifying with one oppressed minority group or another are in a coalition approximately as stable as the Balkans in 1913.

Democrats’ favorite activity is infighting. We like it more than winning elections. The times when we actually manage to get our shit together enough to win are the exception to the rule.

“Big, beautiful submarine captains come up to me. Covered with muscles, muscles like nobody has ever seen before. Tears running down their cheeks. They say ‘Sir, thank you for sending us to the South China Sea! Nobody ever sent us there before!’ But I don’t get angry! I should get angry and sometimes I do get angry, but with these captains I don’t get angry. They say ‘Thank you, sir! Thank you!’ But nobody ever thought of South China before! I came up with that, but nobody gives me credit for South China!”

“Anyone can become President.”

Me, thinking about Abraham Lincoln or Bill Clinton: “Yeah!”

“Anyone can become President.”

Me, aware of Donald Trump, with Tucker Carlson waiting in the wings: “Oh no!”

I’m just imagining being the poor sap working for a foreign power trying to extract useful information from his cottage cheese brain.

“Do you have nuclear subs in the South China Sea?”

“We have to be extremely vigilant and extremely careful when it comes to nuclear. Nuclear changes the whole ballgame. … The biggest problem we have is nuclear — nuclear proliferation and having some maniac, having some madman go out and get a nuclear weapon. That’s in my opinion, that is the single biggest problem that our country faces right now.”

“Where! Are! The nuclear! Subs! Deployed!”

“Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible.”

When asked whether Vance believes Robinson’s denial that the comments were made by him, Vance said that the situation needed to “play out.”

“I don’t not believe him, I don’t believe him — I just think that you have to let these things sometimes play out in the court of public opinion."

Remember that for Republicans it’s not a matter of how despicable a candidate is, it’s only a matter of if they’re popular or not. Vance came right out and said that the truth doesn’t matter, just public opinion. If 50.1% of voters in North Carolina were going to vote for Robinson, the GOP wouldn’t care what he said. If that number was 49.9%, it wouldn’t matter if he was an amalgamation of Jesus Christ and Captain America, they’d throw him to the curb and claim they’d never heard of him.

They have no principles. The only thing they believe in is power; getting it, and using it against the people they hate. That is their only true ideology.

• Reservoir Dogs / Pulp Fiction / Kill Bill

• Stand By Me

• Dirty Dancing

• The Lost Boys

That is one of the stupidest takes I have ever seen, and I’ve been on the internet since AOL chatrooms.

Not voting makes politicians less accountable to you. If you somehow organized everyone who thought like you do, regardless of your agenda, and convinced every single one of them to not vote, then you would achieve the lofty political goal of… absolutely ensuring that no politician would ever try to pursue your goals.

Voting, by definition, is what makes politicians give a shit about your cause. There’s a reason why the Greek word meaning “one who does not take part in public affairs” is the root of the modern word “idiot.”

I’d be curious to see that chart for a Toyota Yaris. I drove one for a few years and it was almost unnerving how little hood it had.

There’s a tough lesson I learned about trying to get my friends into board games: It’s easier to turn gamers into your friends than it is to turn your friends into gamers. I’ve learned that some of my friends are never going to share my interests as much as I’d like, but that just means I needed to find people who were already in whatever hobby and start hanging out with them and some of them will eventually be your real friends.

Making and keeping friends as an adult is way more difficult than it seems it should be, but it’s a painful reality.

Star Trek: TNG

Batman: The Animated Series

Space Ghost Coast to Coast

Sexual positions are locked behind tiered paywalls. The most basic ones are free, but as they get more interesting, you have to pay increasing royalty fees.

Chemtrail conspiracy theorists in absolute shambles.