While he never played professionally, so directly blaming them is a little tortured, we should absolutely be open to the idea that this was his genuine surface-level motive, and also that there might be something to it. Almost alone among sports, American football is a very popular activity that relies on constant subconcussive hits to the head in practice and games, starting as early as 8 years old. Repeated subconcussive brain injuries over an extended period of time is exactly what causes CTE. The NFL has been very adept at turning the conversation away from CTE by offering up concussion protocols and treatments, as this “feels” the same to the public and is not without value, but can be addressed without fundamentally changing how the game must be played and practiced, and how the pipeline of young players – which the NFL gets for free because High School and especially high-level college football are financially self-sustaining – would develop.

The sufferers can’t be properly diagnosed without autopsy, so a former football player might be tempted to blame any issues he has on it, but symptoms include depression, paranoia, early cognitive decline, and drastic personality changes. Several prominent players, including a couple of legends in the NFL world, have committed suicide by writing a note asking for an autopsy and then shooting themselves in the chest. The infamous Chris Benoit case may have involved CTE as well.

Dennis Miller

Leslie Knope in shambles…

Feels more like a jab at the “upstanding” citizens of Athens/Corinth/Sinope/whatever.

I kinda like this as a way to market based on the potential for affirmative defenses.

Choirs accompanying soul artists is not unheard of, but yeah, it does seem to be more of a tool that’s leveraged when the sound feels right for a track, rather than being a core part of the act. The linked song is verging pretty close to “regular” gospel, but the lyrics are a bit too modern and on the nose for church, I’d think.

Oh hey, it’s that magic time period somebody clearly explained to Donald once when he was younger!

Try Ray Charles’s Self-Titled album from 1957. Some of it feels literally like Gospel songs with Jesus subbed out for a girlfriend.

1. Where is The Winds of Winter, George?!?!?!? 🤣
2. He called Star Wars “science fiction.” He is in for a world of trouble now!
3. He’s right. It’s possible to overpraise Andor generally, just because it’s so much better than recent SW efforts, but it really is a very solid, very compelling show, and while it wears its Star Warsniess lightly, the outfit is gorgeous.

Why do you need to bother with making the flight?

LLMs shall prioritize historical accuracy, scientific inquiry, and objectivity, and shall acknowledge uncertainty where reliable information is incomplete or contradictory.

This may not go how they think it will. As an aside, for the moment at least, this is only for AI used/procured by the federal government.

One of the recurring themes I keep coming back to in all this is that the US has a uniquely bad situation with regard to its Constitution. We worship it as an infallible and complete guide to running a democratic republic, but really it’s extremely old, extremely vague, and depends on goodwill and sensible interpretation to function. We have neither the explicit understanding that everything is old AF and cobbled together and dependent upon custom and moderating tyrannical sensibilities like the British, nor the unwieldy but straightforward comprehensiveness of EU treaties and certain other lengthy modern written constitutions.

To me, him just telling Pamela Bondi what to do in such a delicate matter feels just wrong, as in lacking the due seriousness on the matter, utterly sloppy and populist in a bad manner.

This feeling you have is exactly how presidents of either party would have felt for the last 80-100 years. The idea of a largely independent Department of Justice was considered eminently sensible and moral and even to the realpolitik set it provided outer bounds of what was politically possible and so they would nudge and tug at the edges, but never blow right past it, lest they suffer Nixon’s fate. I think we make a mistake to say that Trump is stupid in a binary yes/no sense, but he is deeply uncurious about things that don’t interest him, like democratic norms, so when people tell him “The Constitution doesn’t actually say that,” his eyes gleam and he just does whatever he might get away with. And because we have a Supreme Court dominated by the idea that the US Constitution is more akin to a piece of computer code than a framework for sensible governance, they simply throw up their hands and say, “whelp, it didn’t SAY that the administration of justice should be handled with integrity, so guess we makin’ a fascism now.” Better vote them out, except oh wait the Constitution also doesn’t say you can’t fuck with the elections either.

One of my anxious worries lately is that at the end of this term, Trump will look at our term limits amendment and parse the verbiage with a simple literalism and Clarence Thomas et al will back him up. It says you can’t be elected president more than twice, so why not simply run for VP and then have your patsy resign five minutes after swearing in? After all, we’re mindless textualists now. We didn’t want an FDR type getting overly entrenched in the machinery of power, but we clearly meant to allow loopholes that are significantly less democratic!