The Hobbit trilogy. It’s hard to understand how Peter Jackson could mess up movie after movie after movie like that.

In my admittedly limited experience, women willing to kiss a guy are still often going to be reluctant to do something that they think might hurt that guy, even if the guy insists otherwise.

But if there are no bisexuals, there are no unicorns…

the official app doesn’t have a way to save images from comments anymore

Now even the web interface doesn’t make it straightforward to save images. “Open image in new tab” and “Save image as” don’t work.

I assumed that the VC is talking about small startups, the sort that have a dozen employees and just one project.

I do generally lean towards lowercase-L libertarianism (I don’t support the Libertarian party) but running a huge deficit isn’t libertarian. Taxes shouldn’t be lower than spending in the long term.

I didn’t mean to imply that Trump’s overall budget is a good one - maybe the cuts could be justified as part of a serious effort to reduce the deficit, but I don’t support them when they’re accompanied by even bigger tax cuts and the deficit grows.

And here I am stuck babysitting an inferior human baby.

So far, Milei has been right and his critics have been wrong. I assume he’ll veto this again.

The thing about government spending (and I’m seeing it come up a lot in the context of Trump’s budget cuts too) is that pretty much all of it is important to someone sympathetic who will experience hardship without it. Reducing spending means taking money away from people who need it, but reducing spending is still sometimes necessary for long-term national prosperity.

they can just hire more people

In software development, it’s not that easy. Having multiple people working on the same code adds a lot of overhead. Also, finding another excellent programmer is slow and expensive. (The “fast, cheap, good: pick two” rule applies.)

Plus, do you want two software developers with a good work/life balance and fulfilling ways to spend their free time, or do you want one software developer with mental issues that, among other things, leave him with nothing to do except work and no source of meaning in life except getting work done? The first option is more dependable, since the guy in the second option is crazy. However, if you’re building a startup then you need to take risks and the second option is the one more likely to create something amazing. (IMO, of course.)

Yes, that’s what I’m saying. There’s no way that anyone except Mamdani will win unless something really bizarre happens. He’s not going to lose to forced-to-resign-in-disgrace Cuomo or should-have-been-forced-to-resign-in-disgrace Adams, and he’s certainly not going to lose to Silwa. People who are afraid that the Democratic establishment will succeed in sabotaging him don’t need to worry. In fact, I’m surprised that Paterson is apparently willing to embarrass himself by trying something so clearly futile.

I think I’d rather have the Republican but there’s no chance that a Democrat won’t be elected.

In fourth grade we would read short stories and answer multiple-choice questions about them. One such story was about romantically involved terrapins, and the question was “What would be a good title for this story?” The answers included

a) A turtle love story

b) Two turtles in love

I don’t remember which one I picked but the correct answer was the other one.

You’re never going to get power, limitless power if you’re not even willing to read a few cursed tomes.

Approval rating collapsing after the election? Is that the modern version of the “closing the barn door after the horse got out” saying?

I agree that the notion that Hamas can be defeated by denying it food, and furthermore that doing so justifies starving the civilian population, is indeed something I consider well outside the boundary of civilized warfare. The fact that Israel is doing that makes it hard to believe that it is seriously attempting to minimize civilian casualties in other ways. With that said, my point is that Dershowitz is still in principle correct.

That’s the only viable strategy - if there was some number of Palestinian civilians that Hamas could operate among with impunity, it would do. I don’t think Israel is currently fulfilling its obligation to protect civilians as much as is practically possible while still fighting a war effectively, but civilian casualties would be high even if it was simply due to the nature of urban warfare against an enemy operating among civilians who have nowhere to evacuate.

I doubt that Trump has ever read Shakespeare.

I think it’s important to note that America’s permissive immigration policy during the 18th and 19th centuries was accompanied by the lack of a government-provided “safety net” for those immigrants.