Apocalypse – Politics Plus

Open Thread September 23 2026

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:05 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 232026

Yesterday, It was surprisingly cold … or at least I was. Of course staying up late at night and then sleeping late into the day may have something to do with that. But that’s just how my Circadian rhythm works – and has, really, as long as I can remember. Retirement was my first chance to really start paying the sleep debt which had built up for so long.

David Sirota – who is no fool – wrote this for The Lever. It got me thinking that – throughout history, we have had multiple situations where innovations theoretically intended to make work easier have threatened to eliminate the human race by making workers redundant. Yet here we are. But the predictions have never been 100% wrong. There have always been people who literally died as a result of the consequences of the innovations. And at least since the 19th century, someone has said that those deaths were merely evolution doing its job – and that we were simply becoming more fit as a race. I would invite those people to look at MAGA. I don’t expect to be around to see the full consequences of any AI apocalypse – not because I expect AI to kill me, but because I am 81. Nor do I expect there to be anyone who will be able to accurately predict, nor to prevent the casualties of the next time around. I do wish the human race the best of luck.

Please be sitting down and be sure there is nothing in your mouth when you read this. I will not be responsible for personal or property damage when you realize Fox is included on the right side of this action – voluntarily.

Jesse Wegman (with the Brennan Center) is mostly concerned with law and the courts, and this is o exception – it’s a fairly deep dive into (one aspect of) legal ethics – as they should be. It’s not brand new news, but a response to recent news. I might call it food for thought.

Open Thread June 12 2026

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:09 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jun 122026

lYesterday, Public Citizen revisited a lawsuit they already won to ask SCOTUS to enforce the settlement, “which, again, the USPS agreed to and which requires it to prioritize the timely delivery of election mail to all voters without exception.” This of course was a reaponse to the Apricot Antichrist’s attempt to weaponize USPS by turning it into voter police. It could get interesting.Also, Malcolm quoted Pete Hegseth as saying “We’re negotiating with bombs. That’s what we do.” (As a veteran, this just makes my stomach churn.)

Archived from Huff Post, not because of a paywall, but because their cookie policy is so convoluted – and time consuming to navigate, and confusing – that I had no idea what I’d be getting you into with the original link. I strongly suspect that the person who has the very worst case of TDS in the world is Trump**(*) – although there are cases to be made for Marco Rubio, Todd Blanche, Pete Hegseth, and others.

I am guessing (and that’s all it is – a guess) that reasers here either do not trade stocks – or, if they do, do so through a trusted financial advisor and may not pay much attention to individual stocks [that would be me – with only a small 401(k) which I mostly only look at when it’s MRD time, though I have been following it periodically thtough the war, and it’s been very stable.) But this is an IPO which even I can see is different – though I could not even come close to explaining it as Robert Reich can. If you do trade, whether first hand or seconf hand, caveat emptor.

This is the Part 2 I promised – but unfortunately it’s for paid subscribers only, and archiving won’t get around that with Substack (I tried.) So we only get the summary of Part 1.

I want to address the International Criminal Court at the Hague (not to be confused with the International Court of Justice – also at The Hague, which is more like a civil court to settle disputes between nations. An international criminal court was proposed as early as 1919, but it took until 2000 for a treaty establishing it to be finalized and signed. We, the United States, signed it in 2000, but never ratified it, and in 2002, when the Rome Statute was passed and submitted for ratification (which 125 nations have done, then or since), this is what the United States said:
“This is to inform you, in connection with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court adopted on July 17, 1998, that the United States does not intend to become a party to the treaty. Accordingly, the United States has no legal obligations arising from its signature on December 31, 2000. The United States requests that its intention not to become a party, as expressed in this letter, be reflected in the depositary’s status lists relating to this treaty.”
Sounds like Dick Cheney wrote it, doesn’t it. So we are not a member state. I didn’t have time to verify this, but I think a US citizen can be tried in the court, but cannot be arrested on US soil – or the soil of any other non-member state. I also did not have time to look up all the member states, though I did notice that the UK is (and thought of a golf course in Scotland.) We are still a member of the UN and therefore subject to the Mandela Rules, which lay out rules for treating prisoners, which among other provisions specify that, when outside the prison, fot instance, while in court, prisoner be allowed to wear their own clothes. We don’t always require that, but I expect the ICC does,.

Pujo Committee

Primate

PHP is a programming language used to build websites. We have it at all through our hosting partner, BlueHost. In order to update it, we have to go through Bluehost. During his life, TomCat was the only one who had access to our account there. I (JD) am now the only one. I have been to BlueHost and investigated updating our PHP to 8.3 or even to 8.1. I found instructions to do so - in fact, I found two conflicting sets of instructions. I went through one set of the steps and got the message that Our site could not handle 8.3, but that it had successfully updated to 8.1. I then went back here to see what it looked like. But I couldn't get in - either as an administrator or as a reader. It was just gone. I had to reach BlueHost by phone. It was determined that Politics Plus is in fact not compatible with any version of PHP newer than the one we have. BlueHost therefore uninstalled it for me, and the site came back to normal. Of course, like everyone else, I care about security. But I also am aware that TomCat elected to use different providers for several of the services that BlueHost provides, for instance backups. We are backed up daily - but not by BlueHost. However, out PHP is through Bluehost. I feel that if they are not worried about the older version, I am not going to worry about it. I believe that our security here is all or mostly through WordFence, whom I trust.