Wat? Are you thinking of Snowden?

Worse, it validates the precedent that non-U.S.-citizens can be prosecuted for breaking U.S. law over things they did outside of the U.S.

Really happy that Assange gets to go home, since he’s suffered enough personally, but I really don’t like the precedent that I can be prosecuted in, say, Israel under Israeli law for things that I did in Wisconsin (e.g. boycotting).

Not quite. The Santa Clara decision gave corporations equal protection under the 14th Amendment, is law in the same sense that Citizens United is, and has been applied many, many times. The 2010 decision held that 1st Amendment protections apply to corporations.

It’s a 19th century idea that appeared in the published decision of the Supreme Court in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co.

Only—get this—it wasn’t even what the Court decided. Instead, it was the guy in charge of recording the decision for publication who declared “corporate personhood” in the headnote (summary) of the case. And would it surprise you to learn that the guy was the former president of a railroad company? We just sort of went along with this not-precedent until the Citizens United case.

Honesty, I don’t think that there is a Great Filter. The Fermi Paradox strikes me as not very well-reasoned. A whole hell of a lot of things would have to go exactly right for civilizations to make contact, rather than it being the default assumption. There are lots of filters, not just one Great one.

But the closest to a Great Filter is that space is really, really. stupendously big. The chances of even detecting each other across such distances is vanishingly small, much less traversing them. Add in the difficulty of jumping the metabolic energy gap to become complex life, and that could reduce the density of civilizations down to a level that they’re just not close enough to each other in spacetime to admit even the possibility of contact. And we’re hanging our hat on some highly-speculative concepts like alien mega-structures harnessing whole solar systems to allow detection.

I think a lot of persnickety, smaller filters combine to make interstellar contact between civilizations against long odds. Perhaps the best we’ll get is spectral signatures from distant planets that are almost-conclusive proof of some sort of life.

It could be a word, like everybody or everything, perhaps a synonym for “24/7”.

When times is the diner open? Everytime!

I’m with you, but I’ve been reading online that “woman doctor” is now the preferred form.

That’s true, but the OP’s and my experience is that the adjectival use, like “woman doctor,” was pejorative. I associate it with Greatest and Silent Generation relatives. We changed to say “female doctor,” as it sounded more neutral.

Now, there’s a movement back, and lots of younger folks now say that the latter is demeaning, and that “woman doctor” is the respectful phrasing. I know it’s essentially arbitrary, and defined by usage, it’s just interesting to see the evolution.

Ah! Yes! I’m not the only one.

Sheer bloody-mindedness.

Thank you for this moment of Zen.

I don’t have much to contribute, except that I recently got to a see a friend’s backyard. The whole street is built in an old quarry, so the yard abuts a weathered rock wall, which makes it a quiet, secluded enclave. You’d never know that you were in the city if you woke up there, and you’d almost expect to see gnomes and fairies among the maze of trees.

As in my other reply, the Constitution allows the suspension of habeas corpus in cases of rebellion or threats to public safety, and without that writ, charges and sentences are irrelevant.

I’m not sure if I’m joking. In any case, the writ of habeas corpus is the legal tool that a court can theoretically use to compel the appearance of a prisoner before it. It is the legal doctrine that underlies the right to trial, and I say “theoretically” because courts rarely need to issue one; it’s just standard procedure to bring people to court to face charges.

By suspending it, Abraham Lincoln could detain those people he deemed dangerous seditionists indefinitely, because the detainees would have to go to court to challenge their detention, and there was no way to get to court. The effect of suspending it again is that it wouldn’t matter that Baboon (autocorrect and I’m leaving it) and Stone were pardoned, or that there were even criminal charges.

Lincoln did it, George W. Bush did it. Barack Obama did it. The Constitution contains a clause which allows it to be suspended due to rebellion or threats to public safety. It’s a dangerous thing to allow a president to do, but the MAGA danger might be greater.

Why aren’t these guys in jail? Seriously. I mean, I know the theory of the rule of law and all, but even our widely-acclaimed greatest president suspended habeas corpus when insurgent seditionists tried to overthrow the Union.

It’s an old joke. Here’s on permutation of it: McGregor the Pier Builder

I’m no expert, either, I just read about death grip in Savage Love, and it always made me cringe and wonder, how in the hell? Then I learned more and figured it must have something to do with the skin being able to glide back and forth.

From what I understand, the penis is supposed to have a mobile skin system, so it can glide up and down. The “death grip” is when guys get a tight grip and crank it up and down to get maximum stimulation. Circumcision can (often?) remove the entire mobile skin system, leaving the penis skin as tight as the skin on, say, your thumb.

Get a tight grip on that, and start cranking, and it’s basically trying to rip your dick off.

Tell that to MacGregor the church-builder.

There was a survey a few years ago that found that some absurdly-large number of Americans think that chocolate milk is produced by brown cows. Like, over 10 million people. I hope it’s not true, but it’s become kind of a meme to convey that Americans are misinformed about a lot of things, and generally just really dumb.

It is, and always has been, an option. Perhaps not an easy one, but the two-party duopoly has brought us here to the brink of democratic collapse.

But what gets me is being told that the other guy will be so much worse for Palestine, when it’s not entirely clear that there will even be a Palestine by inauguration day.