wiffles

I like that Canada has major political parties like “liberal”, “conservative”, and “French”

me when I’m in a bowling competition and my opponent is Robert Putnam: ironic.

We genuinely need a revival of virtue in the United States.

In my view, that’s almost as critical a project as any other structural reform project necessary in the wake of trumpism. We should become a society that actually values human life such that we would feel shame about this.

i'm so excited for tomorrow i can't even sleep. monday is the most magical day of the week, because it's only four days away from whiskey friday with tony dokoupil. that's almost as close to whiskey friday with tony dokoupil as you can get

I wonder how many people need to get killed in the street by masked agents of the state before conservatives stop pretending that they’re being oppressed by the existence of HR departments bsky.app/profile/shar...

As tens of thousands across America protest the violence that ICE sows with impunity, federal agents shot and killed another person in Minneapolis today.

ICE terrorizes our cities. ICE puts us all in danger. Abolish ICE.

Gary Larson: In my cartoon I invented Cow Tools as a cautionary tale

Cows: At long last, we have created the Cow Tools from classic newspaper comic Cow Tools

I’m not opposed to many of the new flags that have actually been adopted. I actually like Utah’s new flag a lot, and Mississippi’s Magnolia flag is one of the best state flags. But these crucially deviate significantly from what the current prevailing opinion on what necessitates a “good flag” says.

Unfortunately nuance in anathema to the Reddit Vexillologist, and so there’s doubling down on these rubrics that if embraced would create a sea of mid-sized real estate company logos masquerading as regional emblems.

I think that much of what makes a flag good or bad is not tied to the design, but to the context and the history of the flag. There are certain intangible factors that guide a flag’s successes, a certain degree of je ne se quois.

I have a pretty strong contempt for those who read that booklet—or more likely, watched the CGP Gray video on it—and now treat it as gospel. A good flag can have text on it, a good flag can have complex designs on it.

“Good” Flag, “Bad” Flag has frankly ruined flag discourse. The obsession with forcing every flag to ascribe to a narrow set of prescriptive rules dramatically reduces any chance of settling on an actually creative and memorable design.

I really enjoyed Tactical Breach Wizards. It’s a fun, short, turn-based strategy/puzzle game. Nice art style also.

About a quarter of the vendors were selling NFL related merchandise. I don’t know who the target audience is for a Minnesota Vikings koozie purchased among the imposing ruins of a classical civilization, but there seems to be one.

Wooden carving of Ganesha atop an elephant. It sits on a bench near other elephant carvings and a dog (a xoloitzcuintli perhaps?) wearing sunglasses. Above them is a table with various skull and pyramid trinkets.

I saw a carved Predator statue also, and a Ganesha statue for sale that seemed a little out of place among the rest of the wares the person was selling.

In contrast to Uxmal, which I visited yesterday, I was struck by how commercialized Chichen Itza was. Lots of vendors throughout the complex selling everything from cheesy t-shirts to Brighton and Hove F.C. wooden masks. Really ran the whole gambit.

El Castillo viewed from an angle. Photo taken with skill as not to show any other tourists.

photographic evidence of the pyramid, sans chicken bake since they were out. Otherwise that would dominate the foreground. It still can if you use your imagination!

For whatever it’s worth, they were out of chicken bakes by the time I got there. I don’t know what that says about the globalized world but it probably says something. Under Biden they never ran out of Chichen Itza Chicken Bakes™️. The harvests were plentiful then and no field was bare

The Temple to Kirkland in the shadows of the Temple to Kukulcan … is this anything?

one of the most interesting aspects of the globalized world we live in is the fact that you can buy a Costco chicken bake less than a hundred yards from El Castillo, Chichen Itza’s largest pyramid.

i recently switched to a new brand of mouthwash that i’m pretty satisfied with

Maybe we shouldn't call it giving away money when billionaires give it to themselves.

Turkey Seeks 2,000-Year Jail Sentence for Erdogan’s Top Political Rival

Imamoglu inspires me a ton because he keeps staring down brutal, illiberal suppression of political opposition and refuses to give up. They stripped him of his college degree so he wouldn't legally be able to run for President and he just said “I will never bow”
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/11/w...

We *know* shockingly little about prehistory—we *speculate* about it, in ways that tend to reaffirm our own assumptions and biases, and then these speculations become sage wisdom about human nature, but only to the exact extent that they assert that women evolved to make sandwiches.

relatedly, i know lib/left types sneer at free marketeers but a lot of them do genuinely believe what they're saying which is why places like Cato are holding the line on tariffs/etc. some others are too (jessica riedl is basically fighting alone at manhattan institute, aei notably slipping a bit)

teaching my new dog a trick called being a freethinker, he displays it whenever I ask him to sit, stay, shake, or speak.

Freedom from kings.
Freedom from fascism.
Power to the people forever. ♥️

Happy Independence Day 🇺🇸

Kathleen Wellman’s Queens and Mistresses of Renaissance France is quite good.

my day wouldn’t be complete without greeting by yet another marvelous illustration of an apple by Royal Charles Steadman. Bravo!