Today's Great New Thing

Gartner Group

The promise of great things is real, and the hype is really real, but the reality &/or the time it takes the Great New Thing to deliver on the promise always falls short, or it causes problems that can be quite a bit bigger than the one it was intended to solve.

Adam Conover

Dan Olson

We Have Arrived

I grew up with the understanding that no matter how "important" we thought Denver was becoming, it was still just a cow town out on the plains of Colorado - bigger - but still a cow town.

So it seems a little weird that Denver would attract the kind of attention that gets The New York Times to do a feature on an old defunct landmark joint out on West Colfax that's been more or less derelict for 30 years, and is now being redone and re-opened - weird until you throw in the part about local-boys-make-good.

The South Park guys

The Refries That Bind: A Cavernous Cantina Returns, Cliff Divers and All

With “infinity dollars” poured in by the creators of “South Park,” a fabled Colorado restaurant reopens with the same 1970s vibe and drastically improved food.

Colorado’s defining features include glorious mountain peaks, vivid seasonal colors, skiing and a widespread compulsion to exercise and eat well. But for generations of Colorado children, arguably the most commonly shared experience involved Casa Bonita, a vast, filthy, poorly-lit, underground restaurant with food that many diners deemed barely edible.

Casa Bonita — then sprawling over 52,000 square feet in Lakewood, a Denver suburb — served steamed refried beans, tacos and enchiladas to thousands of people a day, buffet-style. The dinner entertainment was a child’s fever dream: waterfalls, cliff divers, Black Bart’s Cave, faux gold and silver mines, puppet shows and a person in a gorilla costume chased by a sheriff, who sometimes joined in the cliff diving. Casa Bonita’s curious childhood grip was chronicled in an episode of “South Park.”

After that episode ran, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the show’s creators, were regularly asked whether such a place actually existed. “Oh, that’s a place,” Mr. Parker would respond, he said recently. “It’s crazy. It’s weird.” Like so many Colorado children, Mr. Parker had held his birthday parties there.

Then, in 2020, Casa Bonita went bankrupt, hit by the pandemic slump. The place was already in disrepair, crumbling from deferred maintenance, rife with electrical hazards, the ventilation systems coated with grease and the carpet encrusted into something like concrete. The jokes about the food had earned it the nickname Casa NoEata. Still, its passing was mourned.

But in the coming weeks, the enormous casita will reopen with new owners: Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone, both native Coloradans, who have spent upward of $40 million to tear it down, rebuild it and, they joke, to keep everything the same, except now sanitary.

“It doesn’t stink like chlorine anymore,” Mr. Stone said in an interview in late May, during the final, frantic stretch to reopen. “We could have rebuilt this twice as big, for half as much money, but we spent so much restoring it, like a piece of art.”

Mr. Parker added: “And the food is excellent.”

Indeed, Casa Bonita returns as one of the biggest Mexican restaurants in the world, and the new executive chef, Dana Rodriguez, is a six-time James Beard Award nominee. Local fans of Casa Bonita speak of the reopening as if the beloved “Orange Crush” Denver Broncos of 1977 had been revived from a cryogenic state. More than 100,000 potential customers have signed up on the restaurant’s website to make a reservation, Mr. Stone said.

“It’s its own Colorado thing,” said Rick Johnson last Friday night, when some 400 guests were invited for a test run, in the company of Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker. Mr. Johnson, 44, had come to the restaurant as a child and had now brought his own sons. “There are these certain places that bring you back — that bring the nostalgia,” he said.

His son Isaac, 10, was struck by his father’s enthusiasm. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him more excited,” he said.

Isaac had just joined a dozen other children watching a puppet show, during which a friendly taco puppet introduced a somber burrito puppet that sang an Italian aria. The puppet stage was tucked next to Black Bart’s Cave, a windy maze minded by two skeletons. Steps away, the mercado sold Casa Bonita T-shirts, mugs and other trinkets. Every 20 minutes, divers splashed from faux cliffs into a blue pool.

“This is heaven on Earth,” Isaac said.

Mr. Stone, smiling, took in a mariachi band near the bar. The original cost of renovations was projected at $10 million. When the figure reached $20 million, business advisers encouraged Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker to pack it in. These days, Mr. Stone said, the investment was closer to “infinity dollars.”

As Mr. Parker put it, “It would be way cheaper if we just went hang gliding over volcanoes.”

Replicating the proper shade of pink was one of the more benign refurbishing challenges. “Twenty seven different tries to get the right color,” said Scott Shoemaker, who has overseen the renovations.

Casa Bonita occupies a building colored a signature pink that looms like a flamingo’s neck over an outdoor shopping complex; other tenants include a Dollar Store, a Ross Dress for Less, an H&R Block and a coin-operated laundry. The restaurant first opened to the public at the same spot in 1974, patterned after another with the same name, and the same owner, that had opened in Oklahoma City a few years earlier.

Finding the right shade of pink was one of the more benign refurbishing challenges, but still demanding. “Twenty seven different tries,” said Scott Shoemaker, who has overseen the renovations. Finding the right shade of gold for the lettering took nine. Some features, like the four fake deciduous trees and the 62 fake palm trees inside the restaurant, could simply be touched up: fake leaves removed, cleaned, trees repainted, leaves reattached.

“There aren’t many construction projects where you have to re-frond the palms,” Mr. Shoemaker said. “Which is the name of my new band.”

Other features, like the old cliff-diving pool, were actual physical hazards. It turned out that divers, once they leaped into the pool, could only exit through a 30-inch-wide underwater tunnel brimming with pipes, Mr. Shoemaker said. Then they emerged from the water into an electrical room.

“There were 200 amps of power directly to the left,” Mr. Shoemaker said. “When I saw it, I called Matt and told him, ‘This is the most dangerous room I’ve ever seen.’” (They have heard no reports of injuries.) The renovated pool, 14 feet deep, resembles the old one but provides the divers with a wider, relocated exit, among other changes.

Other changes will be more evident to customers. There are four new bars. A new indoor ticketing plaza, meant to recall a street in Oaxaca, adds 4,000 square feet and is intended to reduce waiting times before sitting down and eating. Some attractions, like Black Bart’s Cave, have received some narrative polish to help them make actual sense.

The original Black Bart character “was a cross between a weird pirate and a bank robber,” said Chris Brion, the creative director of both “South Park” and Casa Bonita, and who goes by the nickname Crispy. “He was an amalgam of 16 different comical bad guys.” The new Black Bart, he said, was based on “the actual character who robbed stage coaches.”

But part of Casa Bonita’s appeal was the thematic smorgasbord, and much of the original weirdness has been left untouched. “We sat down and talked a lot about it: We know how to clean this up, narratively,” Mr. Parker said. But they opted against, he said, and instead embraced a unifying theme of exploration.

“It’s about discovery,” he said. “Little kids like to say, ‘What’s in that hole?’ There’s a lot of that.”

Mole by Loca

The whimsy of the original Casa Bonita was matched by culinary mystery: Why was the food so-so at best? “There’s got to be a place in hell for people who serve food like that,” said Victoria Gagnon, 57; she said she and her family got food poisoning after a visit to Casa Bonita in 2013.

Nonetheless, she said, she was eager to go back to her favorite childhood destination. Years ago, when her father, a construction worker, received his pay, the family voted on where to dine. “Hands down, Casa Bonita,” Ms. Gagnon said. “I know it sounds corny.”

During the demolition phase, one cause of Casa Bonita’s subpar cuisine became clear. “There were no ovens, no range tops,” Mr. Stone said. “It was all steamers. They steamed everything.”

There were other surprises. The old gas lines leaked, and the gas service to the building had to be redone. All the drains had been plumbed improperly, allowing cooking grease to “get into the city wastewater,” Mr. Shoemaker said. The list went on.

The quality of the food, at least, is being addressed by Ms. Rodriguez, who is known by the nickname Loca, owing to her relentless enthusiasm and her sailor’s vocabulary.

Ms. Rodriguez immigrated from Chihuahua, Mexico, in 1998, and applied for her first job at Casa Bonita; she was turned down as being underqualified. She went on to establish and own several celebrated restaurants, including Work & Class, in Denver, and has her own Tequila brand Doña Loca. In 2021, when she heard that Casa Bonita might reopen under new ownership, she applied for the top job. “Now am I qualified?” she said she had asked.

Her kitchen staff, numbering 110, will cook everything from scratch, in a modern, stainless-steel kitchen built to produce huge quantities. One hundred and ninety-eight gallons of mole sauce will be made for the chicken, every night. Also: enchiladas with red and green sauce; green chile-braised brisket; chile relleno, with vegan and vegetarian options, served with refried beans (not from a can, thank you very much) and rice; and of course, sopaipillas with honey.

The Casa Bonita team said they were still working out the pricing, an area of uncertainty that reflected their inexperience in running a restaurant. “What we’ve come to realize over the last couple of months is, now we have a lot of work to do to make it a sustainable business,” Mr. Parker said.

Not to mention balancing the weight of tradition and nostalgia, and their own high expectations.

“It’s such a visceral place,” Mr. Parker said. “That’s what I hope makes it so cool.”

Mr. Stone said: “That’s worth infinity dollars.”

Quit Hoggin' It

We've allowed politics and economics to combine so that, if left to continue on its merry way, it will most certainly lead us to full blown plutocracy.

Wealthy people are so fat with Power Coupons (ie: dollars - thanks, Beau), they've become accustomed not just to getting their way on issues like tax policy, but using their out-sized influence on government to control large pieces of public property so the rest of us are left standing there with our dicks in our hands.

I'll say it again:

Rich people are not required in order to form a more perfect union. In fact, when left unsupervised, they become the very thing that prevents it.

Colorado corner-crossing property legislation poised for comeback following Wyoming ruling
Colorado Rep. Brandi Bradley wonders if she should revive corner-crossing legislation after Wyoming judge dismisses civil trespass complaint against hunters

A Wyoming federal judge has ruled four hunters did not trespass when they stepped over fencing that met at the corner of public and private property.

The seemingly obscure case involving the hunters and a wealthy landowner in Carbon County, Wyoming, has been closely watched by public land advocates hoping for clarification of the murky corner-crossing issue. Corner crossing is when a person steps from one parcel of public land to another at a four-corner point where private and public land meet. Private property advocates — and the owner of Wyoming’s 22,045-acre Elk Mountain Ranch east of Rawlins — argue corner crossers are trespassing in private air space above their land.

The question of trespassing in that air above private land is the crux of the debate over corner crossing. It’s an important issue. The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership has identified 9.5 million acres of federal public land in the West that are “corner locked” and inaccessible to the public.

“Landowners have 5,000 acres next to 5,000 public acres that aren’t accessible and they want the whole 10,000 acres and that’s not fair to the people paying taxes for that public land,” said state Rep. Brandi Bradley, a Republican from Littleton, who said her “phone has been blowing up” since Wyoming’s U.S District Judge Scott Skavdahl issued his decision last week.

Bradley in February offered legislation that would allow public land users to freely walk between corners of public land by eliminating the possibility of trespassing charges and prohibiting landowners from fencing corners of their land that meet public property. Lawmakers in Wyoming, Montana and Nevada have attempted similar legislation to no avail. Bradley’s House Bill 1066 eventually ended up as a bill creating a task force to study the corner-crossing conundrum in Colorado.

Now she’s wondering if she should stick with the task force plan or return next session with the same bill and try again.

“We need to come up with some sort of position on corner crossing in this state,” she said.

The corner-crossing Wyoming hunters were acquitted of criminal trespass charges in an April 2022 trial and the ranch owner sought more than $7 million in damages in the civil trial.

Judge Skavdahl, in his decision, ruled there was no evidence that the hunters’ “airspace intrusion caused actual damage to or interfered with the plaintiff’s use of its property.” He ruled that while owners possess the air space above their land and can exclude people from that air space, “that right is not boundless.”

The judge ruled that when a person crosses from public corner to public corner on land owned in a checkerboard pattern without touching the private land and without damaging the private property “there is no liability for trespass.”

“In this way, the private landowner is entitled to protect private-owned land from intrusion … and privately-owned property from damage while the public is entitled its reasonable way of passage to access public land,” Skavdahl wrote in his ruling. “The private landowner must suffer the temporary incursion into a minimal portion of its airspace while the corner crosser must take pains to avoid touching private land.”

Backcountry Hunters and Anglers has collected more than 4,000 signatures from its members in support of legal corner crossing. Tim Brass, the state policy and stewardship director for Backcountry Hunters and Anglers said Colorado’s public land users of all political persuasions are eager for “a meaningful public access legislative solution” to corner-crossing challenges.

“I know Rep. Bradley remains committed to leading this charge on this effort and I think the people of Colorado deserve a solution that reflects the judge’s ruling, which was based on existing federal law.”

Another Fun One

Arctic may have summers with no sea ice sooner than projected, study finds

A much-feared moment — a summer in which the Arctic Ocean features almost entirely open water — could be coming even sooner than expected and has the possibility to become a regular event within most of our lifetimes, according to a new study.

Experts have long feared at least an occasional dwindling of floating Arctic ice down to minimal levels by 2050, with a greater risk as humans emit more greenhouse gases. The new research, though, suggests that even in a fairly low-emissions scenario that holds the planet’s warming to below 2 degrees Celsius, regular years without summer Arctic sea ice could occur in the 2050s.

The trend gets worse as the emissions levels increase. In the worst-case scenario, the study said, there is a possibility that the Arctic could have Septembers with no ice as soon as the 2030s, a decade earlier than previous research indicated.

“We do seem to be destined to see ice-free summers in the Arctic. That seems to be baked in at this point,” said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., who was not associated with the study. “The question has always been when.”

Arctic sea ice follows an annual cycle, peaking in the unbroken darkness of winter and then dwindling in the equally constant glare of summer. Even if ice does dip below 1 million square kilometers in area at the summer low in September — a threshold deemed to represent a basically ice-free ocean — that does not mean it won’t rebound quickly in the winter or persist through summer the next year. Much depends on weather. But the warming of the Earth makes it easier for the ice to melt and harder for it to rebound.

The impacts will be far-reaching, threatening communities, harming ecosystems and exacerbating global warming, scientists said.

“The impacts are already upon us, and they are growing. You could still have a fair bit of sea ice out there in summer and have very important or tremendous impacts on fish species, phytoplankton blooms on the people of the north,” Serreze said.

Without sea ice, the Arctic will also warm faster. Arctic ice sends solar radiation back to space, because bright ice reflects more than the dark ocean. If the ice melts, additional solar energy will be added to the region, increasing planetary warming.

“Disappearing sea ice will add an enormous amount of additional solar energy to the Arctic,” said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a climate scientist at the University of California at San Diego.

The authors of the study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications, compared years of satellite observations of Arctic ice to 10 existing climate models. The satellite imagery showed a starker loss in Arctic ice than climate models projected, informing the authors’ predictions of an even faster decline, said Nathan Gillett, a climate scientist and one of the study’s authors.

The authors then ran the updated models under four potential scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions. Under the best-case scenario, the Arctic would be ice-free most Septembers by 2050. Under the worst-case scenario, the Arctic would experience Septembers without ice by the 2030s. This could grow to be several months without ice later in the century.

Gillett said reducing emissions will reduce how quickly ice is lost.

“Reducing emissions will limit warming,” he said. “It does make a difference as to how much ice we have.”

Curiouser

The first rule of the Nordstream attack is you don't talk about the Nordstream attack.

It looks a lot like the US and European allies had a pretty good idea about what was about to happen with Nordstream.

That doesn't mean they could've done anything to stop it, and it doesn't mean they didn't try to keep the Ukrainians from do it - if it was Kyiv that did it - and it probably was.

What it tells me is that there's nothing new: geopolitics sucks, and somebody's always fucking with somebody, who's fucking with somebody else.

Throw in an actual war, and we've got a very bad thing that just gets worse. Wanna talk about the dam at Nova Kakhova? - yeah, me neither, but we'll have to eventually.

U.S. had intelligence of detailed Ukrainian plan to attack Nord Stream pipeline

The CIA learned last June, via a European spy agency, that a six-person team of Ukrainian special operations forces intended to sabotage the Russia-to-Germany natural gas project

Three months before saboteurs bombed the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, the Biden administration learned from a close ally that the Ukrainian military had planned a covert attack on the undersea network, using a small team of divers who reported directly to the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces.

Details about the plan, which have not been previously reported, were collected by a European intelligence service and shared with the CIA in June 2022. They provide some of the most specific evidence to date linking the government of Ukraine to the eventual attack in the Baltic Sea, which U.S. and Western officials have called a brazen and dangerous act of sabotage on Europe’s energy infrastructure.

The European intelligence report was shared on the chat platform Discord, allegedly by Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira. The Washington Post obtained a copy from one of Teixeira’s online friends.

The intelligence report was based on information obtained from an individual in Ukraine. The source’s information could not immediately be corroborated, but the CIA shared the report with Germany and other European countries last June, according to multiple officials familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence operations and diplomatic discussions.

The highly specific details, which include numbers of operatives and methods of attack, show that for nearly a year, Western allies have had a basis to suspect Kyiv in the sabotage. That assessment has only strengthened in recent months as German law enforcement investigators uncovered evidence about the bombing that bears striking similarities to what the European service said Ukraine was planning.

Officials in multiple countries confirmed that the intelligence summary posted on Discord accurately stated what the European service told the CIA. The Post agreed to withhold the name of the European country as well as some aspects of the suspected plan at the request of government officials, who said exposing the information would threaten sources and operations.

Ukrainian officials, who have previously denied the country was involved in the Nord Stream attack, did not respond to requests for comment.

The White House declined to comment on a detailed set of questions about the European report and the alleged Ukrainian military plot, including whether U.S. officials tried to stop the mission from proceeding.

The CIA also declined to comment.

On Sept. 26, three underwater explosions caused massive leaks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, leaving only one of the four gas links in the network intact. Some Biden administration officials initially suggested that Russia was to blame for what President Biden called “a deliberate act of sabotage,” promising that the United States would work with its allies “to get to the bottom of exactly what ... happened.” With winter approaching, it appeared the Kremlin might have intended to strangle the flow of energy, an act of “blackmail,” some leaders said, designed to intimidate European countries into withdrawing their financial and military support for Ukraine, and refraining from further sanctions.

Zelensky, in private, pushed for bold attacks inside Russia, leak shows

Biden administration officials now privately concede there is no evidence that conclusively points to Moscow’s involvement. But publicly they have deflected questions about who might be responsible. European officials in several countries have quietly suggested that Ukraine was behind the attack but have resisted publicly saying so over fears that blaming Kyiv could fracture the alliance against Russia. At gatherings of European and NATO policymakers, officials have settled into a rhythm; as one senior European diplomat said recently, “Don’t talk about Nord Stream.”

The European intelligence made clear that the would-be attackers were not rogue operatives. All those involved reported directly to Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s highest-ranking military officer, who was put in charge so that the nation’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wouldn’t know about the operation, the intelligence report said.

Keeping Zelensky out of the loop would have given the Ukrainian leader a plausible way to deny involvement in an audacious attack on civilian infrastructure that could ignite public outrage and jeopardize Western support for Ukraine — particularly in Germany, which before the war got half its natural gas from Russia and had long championed the Nord Stream project in the face of opposition from other European allies.

While Gazprom, the Russian state-owned gas conglomerate, owns 51 percent of Nord Stream, Western energy companies, including from Germany, France and the Netherlands, are partners and invested billions in the pipelines. Ukraine had long complained that Nord Stream would allow Russia to bypass Ukrainian pipes, depriving Kyiv of huge transit revenue.

A map showing the Nord Stream leaks in the Baltic Sea. The neighboring countries are labelled, and it is indicated if they are an E.U. or NATO member.
The intelligence summary says that the Ukrainian military operation was “put on hold,” for reasons that remain unclear. The Ukrainians had planned to attack the pipeline on the heels of a major allied naval exercise, known as BALTOPS, that ran from June 5 to 17, 2022, according to the report.

But according to German law enforcement officials investigating September’s Nord Stream bombing, key details emerging of that operation line up with the earlier plot.

For instance, the Ukrainian individual who informed the European intelligence service in June said that six members of Ukraine’s special operations forces using false identities intended to rent a boat and, using a submersible vehicle, dive to the floor of the Baltic Sea and then damage or destroy the pipeline and escape undetected. In addition to oxygen, the team planned to bring helium, which is recommended for especially deep dives.

German investigators now believe that six individuals using fake passports rented a sailing yacht in September, embarked from Germany and planted explosives that severed the pipelines, according to officials familiar with that investigation. They believe the operatives were skilled divers, given that the explosives were planted at a depth of about 240 feet, in the range that experts say helium would be helpful for maintaining mental focus.

Investigators have matched explosive residue found on the pipeline to traces found inside the cabin of the yacht, called Andromeda. And they have linked Ukrainian individuals to the rental of the boat via an apparent front company in Poland. Investigators also suspect that at least one individual who serves in the Ukrainian military was involved in the sabotage operation.

A collaboration of German media organizations previously reported the suspected involvement of the Ukrainian military service member.

The June plot differs from the September attack in some respects. The European intelligence report notes that the Ukrainian operatives planned to attack the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, but it makes no mention of Nord Stream 2, a newer line. The intelligence report also says that the saboteurs would embark from a different location in Europe, not Warnemünde, a German port town on the Baltic, where the Andromeda was rented.

The CIA initially questioned the credibility of the information, in part because the source in Ukraine who provided the details had not yet established a track record of producing reliable information, according to officials familiar with the matter. The European service, a trusted U.S. partner, felt that the source was reliable.

But despite any reservations the CIA might have had, the agency communicated the June intelligence to counterparts in Germany and other European countries, officials said. The European service also shared it with Germany, one person said. German intelligence personnel briefed lawmakers in Berlin in late June before they left for their summer break, according to an official with knowledge of the closed-door presentation.

Officials familiar with the European report conceded that it is possible that the suspected Ukrainian plotters might have been apprised that the intelligence was shared with several countries and that they may have changed some elements of the plan.

But the report from the European intelligence service isn’t the only piece of evidence pointing to Kyiv’s role in the pipeline bombing.

The Post previously reported that governments investigating the explosions uncovered communications that showed pro-Ukrainian individuals or entities discussed the possibility of carrying out an attack on the Nord Stream pipelines. Those conversations took place before the attack, but were only discovered in its aftermath, when spy agencies scoured data for possible clues, a senior Western security official said.

Despite waiving Trump-era sanctions on the Russia-to-Germany natural gas pipeline as an attempt to mend fences with Berlin, the Biden administration had long harbored concerns about Nord Stream and did not shed tears over its September demise.

After months of pressure from Washington, the German government halted final authorization of Nord Stream 2 just days before Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, surprising many U.S. and European officials who had worried that Berlin would find Russia too important an energy source to sever ties. At the time of the attack, the pipeline was intact and had already been pumped full with 300 million cubic meters of natural gas to ready it for operations.

Nearly a month before the rupture, the Russian energy giant Gazprom stopped flows on Nord Stream 1, hours after the Group of Seven industrialized nations announced a forthcoming price cap on Russian oil, a move intended to put a dent in the Kremlin’s treasury.

Officials have said that the cost of repairing the pipelines would run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

While U.S. intelligence officials were initially skeptical of the European reporting, they have long been concerned about aggressive operations by Ukraine that could escalate the war into a direct conflict between Russia and the United States and its NATO allies.

In February of this year, on the eve of the war’s first anniversary, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency agreed, “at Washington’s request,” to postpone planned strikes on Moscow, according to another intelligence document leaked on Discord. That incident illustrated a broader tension that has existed throughout the war: Ukraine, eager to bring the fight to Russia’s home turf, is sometimes restrained by the United States.

Officials in Washington and Europe have admonished Ukraine for attacks outside its territory that they felt went too far. After a car bomb near Moscow in August killed Daria Dugina, in an attack that appeared intended for her father — a prominent Russian nationalist whose writing had helped shape a Kremlin narrative about Ukraine — Western officials said they made clear to Zelensky that they held operatives in his government responsible. The attack was seen as provocative and risked a severe Russian response, officials said.

Ukraine has persisted with strikes inside Russia, including drone strikes on an airfield and on targets in Moscow that U.S. officials have linked to Kyiv.

Today's Tweet

New era, same shit.

conservatives in

1923: black men are gonna get your kids hepped up on reefer and steal your pure white daughter

2023: trans people are gonna get your kids on tiktok and turn your daughter into a boy

same shit https://t.co/OKxcSHJ9Xf

— Oliver Willis (@owillis) June 6, 2023

Hovel III

I got the keys and the move-in checklist, and my POD thingie should be here Friday.

OK so far, but I've got a neighbor dog that sounds like it could be a problem.

Good to be back tho'.

Today's Reddit

AI won't be the reason for the collapse of human civilization. AI is a tool - like a hammer - you can build a house with it, or you can bash in your neighbor's face with it.

Midjourney is a generative artificial intelligence program and service created and hosted by a San Francisco-based independent research lab Midjourney, Inc.

Midjourney generates images from natural language descriptions, called "prompts", similar to OpenAI's DALL-E and Stable Diffusion. Wikipedia

I think we need to talk about what is going on at Hobby Lobby... won't someone please think of the children?!
by u/Dead_Inside512 in midjourney

 

War

War is a losing proposition - duh.

But more than that, it's a phony proposition altogether.

There's no such thing as a war of ideology, or a war over theology. Wars are fought over resources. The religion, &/or the fervor of patriotism chauvinism, is just the way the lords of the manner scam the peasants into fighting and bleeding and dying for power and riches that will always (and almost only) benefit the rich guys

The war that's brewing between Iran and Afghanistan is about the water.

We can expect a lot more just like this.

What caused deadly Afghan-Iran border clashes? What happens next?

The two countries call to de-escalate the situation after deadly clashes erupt apparently over river water-sharing dispute.

Last week, deadly clashes broke out between Afghan and Iranian guards at their border raising fears of a new conflict.

Both sides have accused each other of initiating the shooting in which at least two Iranian and one Afghan guard were killed. However, they have issued measured statements aimed at de-escalating the situation.

Following the border violence, Iranian authorities closed the Milak-Zaranj border post, an important commercial crossing – and not the site of the clash – until further notice, Iran’s IRNA news agency reported.

Despite a treaty in place since 1973 on the sharing of Helmand River waters, the two sides have wrangled for decades. The river flows from Afghanistan towards eastern Iran.

What caused the fighting?

The reasons for the clashes are still unknown but the shooting at the border post between the Afghan province of Nimroz and Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan province comes as Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi earlier this month accused Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers of restricting the flow of water to Iran’s eastern regions in violation of the 1973 treaty.

“We will not allow the rights of our people to be violated,” Raisi said on May 18.

The Taliban, which has denied the accusation, called on to “solve the problem” in accordance with the treaty. The Taliban, which remains diplomatically isolated since it came to power in August 2021, said it wanted “good relations” with Tehran.

According to Sina Toossi, a senior non-resident fellow at the US-based think tank Center for International Policy (CIP), there is a ““lack of clear demarcation and understanding of border boundaries and rules” from Taliban fighters since their takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021.

Iranian officials have repeatedly blamed the Taliban for its disregard for international laws and border protocols since its takeover of Afghanistan two years ago. Clashes have erupted on multiple occasions, but have rarely led to casualties and have been routinely blamed on “misunderstanding”.

A day before the border clashes, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian called on the Taliban to “follow legal framework” to resolve the water dispute.

“In recent years, this treaty has not been adhered to by Afghanistan’s rulers, including the Taliban,” CIP’s Toossi told Al Jazeera, adding that Kabul has delivered only “a fraction of the agreed amount”.

“It has been exacerbated by Iran’s worsening drought conditions, making the water issue increasingly critical,” he said.

The Taliban issued a statement saying it did not want to “fight with its neighbours”.

What is the Afghan-Iran water dispute?

The Helmand River, which is more than 1,000km (621-mile) long and flows across the border, is being dammed on the Afghan side to generate electricity and irrigate agricultural land.

Drought has been a problem in Iran for some 30 years, which has worsened over the past decade, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The Iran Meteorological Organization says that an estimated 97 percent of the country now faces some level of drought.

According to the Helmand Water Treaty signed by Afghanistan and Iran half a century ago, Afghanistan should annually share 850 million cubic metres of water from Helmand with Iran.

It also calls on both sides to address their differences via diplomatic channels and, if that fails, through an advisory board headed by a mutually chosen arbitrator.

Iran has accused Afghanistan of failing to adhere to the treaty on several occasions and has opposed its decision to construct dams on the river.

How have both countries reacted to the clashes?

The Taliban leadership has called for the resolution of such issues “through diplomatic channels”.

“We don’t want relations with our neighbouring countries to deteriorate. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is never in favour of escalation,” Hafiz Zia Ahmad, deputy spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Saudi Arabian newspaper Arab News on Monday.

Meanwhile, Seyed Rasoul Mousavi, head of South Asia division at Iran’s foreign ministry, has urged both countries to avoid conflict as it would be detrimental to them.

“If the people and elites of the two countries are smart, any kind of conflict is to the strategic disadvantage of both,” he tweeted.

Analyst Toossi believes the border clashes have prompted both sides to de-escalate the situation and “reaffirm their commitment to dialogue and cooperation”.

He said there is an indication that Iran is open to dialogue, given that the Taliban’s acting foreign minister met an Iranian envoy to discuss the Helmand River water rights on the day of the clash.

Where does the Afghan-Iran relationship stand?

As Kabul and Tehran are “trying to balance their interests and concerns”, according to Toossi, their relationship remains in a state of “uncertainty”.

“It is not clear whether the Taliban have pulled back their fighters from the border or whether they will abide by the agreement in the future,” he said after videos showed large numbers of Taliban fighters approaching the border with Iran last week.

He said the water dispute between both countries is likely to remain a “contentious issue” as they face increasing water scarcity and demand.

Additionally, while Iran has held a dialogue with the Taliban, it has not officially recognised them as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan.

The Shia-majority country has called for the formation of an inclusive government that represents all ethnic and religious groups in Afghanistan.

“Iran has expressed concerns about the security and welfare of the Afghan people, especially the Shia Hazara minority, who have faced persecution and violence from the Taliban in the past,” said Toossi.

Conservatives Aren't

There's no greater bullshitty bullshit than "we need conservatives to run things because they're the good business people."

Florida taxpayers pick up bill for Ron DeSantis’s culture war lawsuits

Governor’s Disney battle and extremist policies are met with costly lawsuits covered by ‘blank check’ from Republican legislature

Since Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, took office in 2019 and embarked on his culture wars, lawsuits from various communities whose rights have been violated have been stacking up against the far-right Republican.

As DeSantis fights the lawsuits with what critics have described as a blank check from the state’s supermajority Republican legislature, the mounting legal costs have come heavily at the expense of Florida’s taxpayers.

In recent years, DeSantis’s ultra-conservative legislative agenda has drawn ire from a slew of marginalized communities as well as major corporations including Disney. The so-called “don’t say gay” bill, abortion bans and prohibition of African American studies are just a few of DeSantis’s many extremist policies that have been met with costly lawsuits in a state where residents are already struggling with costs of living.

“The list of legal challenges precipitating from DeSantis’s unconstitutional laws is endless,” the Democratic state senator Lori Berman said.

“We’ve seen Floridians rightly sue many if not all of the governor’s legislative priorities, including laws that restrict drag shows for kids, prohibit Chinese citizens from owning homes and land in Florida, suppress young and Black and brown voters, ban gender-affirming care and threaten supportive parents with state custody of their children, and of course, all the retaliatory legislation waged against Disney for coming out in support of the LGBTQ+ community,” she said.

As a result of the mounting lawsuits against DeSantis, the governor’s legal costs, which the Miami Herald reported last December amounted to at least $16.7m, have been soaring.

In DeSantis’s legal fight against Disney following the corporation’s condemnation of his anti-LGBTQ+ laws, it is going to cost the governor and his handpicked board nearly $1,300 per hour in legal fees as they look into how the corporation discovered a loophole in DeSantis’s plan to acquire governing rights over Disney World, Insider reports.

“Disney is a perfect example. It doesn’t hurt any Floridians. There is nothing. It’s creating a legal issue out of nowhere and now Disney sued so they have to respond and that is going to cost taxpayers’ money. The whole Disney case is just because of DeSantis’s ego and his hurt feelings,” the Democratic state senator Tina Polsky said.

“Taxpayers are paying to foot the bills to pass unconstitutional bills and to keep up with his petty vengeance,” she said, adding: “I don’t think they’re aware at all … They’re too brainwashed at this point that they wouldn’t even care.”

Meanwhile, in another case covered by the Orlando Sentinel, DeSantis’s administration has turned to the elite conservative Washington DC-based law firm Cooper & Kirk to defend the governor against his slew of “anti-woke” laws. The firm’s lawyers charge $725 hourly, according to contracts reviewed by Orlando Sentinel. As of June 2022, the state authorized nearly $2.8m for legal services from just Cooper & Kirk alone, the outlet reports.

With mounting taxpayer-funded legal costs against DeSantis’s legislative agenda, critics ranging from civil rights organizations to the state’s Democratic lawmakers have lambasted DeSantis’s policies as unconstitutional and mere political stunts designed to propel him to the frontlines of the GOP primary.

“DeSantis went to Harvard for his [law degree]. This is someone who should understand the constraints placed on him and the state by the United States constitution and the Florida constitution. He knows those constraints, but he doesn’t care. His goal is to intentionally pass unconstitutional laws and set up legal challenges in order for the conservative supreme court to overturn long-held protections,” Berman said.

Bob Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University, echoed similar sentiments, comparing DeSantis to his main competition and current GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, both of whom he said are cut “from the same cloth”.

“Ron DeSantis is a Harvard law school graduate. He is a lawyer. Whereas Donald Trump at least could make the argument, ‘I’m just the layperson, I don’t know’ if … something is deemed illegal or unconstitutional … DeSantis does not have that defense,” Jarvis said.

Nevertheless, DeSantis appears unfazed.

“DeSantis knows very well that … what he is doing is unconstitutional and illegal … Lawyers by training are very cautious so this is quite remarkable to have a lawyer-politician who not only knows better, but does not care,” said Jarvis.

To DeSantis, it does not matter whether he wins or loses the legal battles as he knows he “ultimately controls the Florida supreme court”, according to Jarvis.

“He is playing a ‘heads, I win, tails, you lose’ game. If he gets one of these crazy policies passed and they’re challenged and the court upholds him … he can say to the press and to the public, ‘I was right and the proof is in the pudding because the courts agreed with me,’” he explained.

“But even better for DeSantis when they rule against him … DeSantis is able to stand up and say, ‘These crazy judges want our children to watch drag shows, they want our children to be taught to be gay, they want Disney to be this terrible company. That’s why you need a strong governor and why you will benefit from having me as president because I will make sure to get rid of these judges and replace them with judges that have traditional American morals,’” Jarvis added.

As DeSantis continues to fight his costly legal battles, the state’s supermajority Republican legislature appears to encourage him wholly.

“We’re in a litigious society,” the state senate president, Kathleen Passidomo, told the Tallahassee Democrat while the senate budget chair, Doug Broxson, told the outlet: “We want the governor to be in a comfortable position to speak his mind.”

With Republicans rushing to DeSantis’s defense, perhaps the most glaring example of the legislature’s endorsement of his legal wars is the $16m incorporated into the state’s $117bn budget to be used exclusively for his litigation expenses.

Speaking to the Guardian, the state’s Democratic house leader, Fentrice Driskell, called the budget a “carte blanche” from Republicans and the result of zero accountability.

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“The legislature is supposed to be a check on executive power. By giving him a carte blanche to go and fight these wars in court, it’s basically just saying that there are no checks and balances when it comes to the state government in Florida,” said Driskell.

“It’s a waste … They are just allowing this single person to impose his will on the state of Florida and they’re willing to waste taxpayer dollars to do it,” she said, adding: “Most Floridians can’t afford their rent and property insurance rates are through the roof. We could have redirected that money towards affordable housing.”

Driskell went on to describe Medicaid iBudget Florida, a waiver that provides disabled Floridians with access to certain services and which currently has a waitlist of more than 22,000 residents.

“It’s very difficult for them to get off that waitlist because the Republicans underfund Medicaid. We could put that money towards funding the waitlist and getting people off of it. I think there’s only $2m that was put in the budget for that this year. If we added the $16m that was added for these culture wars, my goodness, that’s $18m. Presumably we could help get nine times more people off of the waitlist,” said Driskell.

As DeSantis remains embroiled in his legal woes at the expense of Florida taxpayers, there is perhaps a single group of people that have benefited the most out of all the legal drama, Jarvis told the Guardian.

“The lawyers who got that $16.7m, that’s money from heaven. That’s money that fell into their laps … Anytime there’s a loser, and the loser here is the Florida taxpayer, there is a winner. The winners here are the lawyers who are collecting those enormous fees. The more that plaintiffs file lawsuits and the more they fight these crazy policies, you know that’s just money in the bank for these lawyers,” Jarvis said.

“DeSantis has been God’s gift to lawyers,” he added.

So we can now counter the usual conservative complaints about profligate libruls:

Republicans have no problem

spending Other People's Money.