Additionally, with the firepower at just the US’ disposal, we could level almost every major pop center in Russia. Waves of Tomahawks, ICBMs and bombers could do it without the US putting boots on the ground. We nearly did this with Baghdad back in 02.

Don’t forget the press secretary literally laughing as gay people die, until Reagan’s friend Rock Hudson got HIV.

Yes, just like Trump and COVID, Reagan’s some policy on HIV was “do nothing and hope people don’t care”.

Yeah, it seems more the IDF is just shooting literally anything human-shaped. Aid workers, friendlies, journalists, civilians, in addition to the odd actual “guy actually shooting at us”.

Nah, Trump is incredibly useful as a mouthpiece even if he loses, he’s got MILLIONS of people who hang on his every word, globally now. They’ll do him like they did Assange and simply trot him out whenever they need to justify something, have him rant and rave about “the decadent liberal west”, and when he’s no longer useful, they’ll find a nice pool for him to drown in or something.

This is also just an attempt to shore up demographics after losing THOUSANDS of men against Ukraine, and a good chunk of Russian nationals simply fleeing the country to avoid conscription. So you don’t get a nice apartment in Moscow or St Petersburg, you get a little hovel out in Siberia and all the farmland you could want.

And then had people swimming in it after a TORRENTIAL rainstorm, which anyone involved in sanitation can tell you will raise ecoli and bacterial levels in general.

Oh they fucking tried a LOT. The public at large, and a lot of the lobbying groups, kept up the pressure really well to get this through.

We actually do have a pretty good indicator that she’s biologically female - the fact that her home country, where she still lives, would’ve jailed her if they figured out she was a trans woman before they sent her to the Olympics. Algeria doesn’t allow gender transitioning in any way, and they can and do imprison people who live as a gender other than the one they were born as.

Also, the body that DQed her in 2023 apparently ONLY found out “she was trans” (which she isn’t) after she had fought 9 other matches under the same federation, with testing before each one - her defeating a Russian boxer and immediately being DQed after that match, while fighting under the auspices of a Russian boxing federation, is totally coincidence, I’m sure.

They likely won’t do anything. The IRS is extremely gun shy about enforcing that doctrine ever since the Church of Scientology thing.

Once again, the UDHR is not legally binding in any way.

+1 for If Books Could Kill. They’ve kinda run out of shitty famous self help books, but they still do good rundowns on other books now.

I’ll also recommend Michael Hobbes’ other podcast, Maintenance Phase, which is largely about health grifts.

He didn’t even grab them, he was sent the wrong box by the warehouse by mistake.

The independent Russian Athletes thing they did for Russia is a compromise, because the IOC is all corrupt as hell and can’t stand losing ANY viewers. They knew that saying “yeah but we don’t care about the thing with Ukraine” wouldn’t fly, so they did that instead (despite a lot of the athletes still doping and not maintaining neutrality on the war like they’re supposed to). I’m honestly mad several countries are allowed to compete under their own flags, including Israel and Iran (ironically, there’s a TON of Iranian athletes competing AGAINST IRAN on the Refugee team this year).

Because Russia is mad they’re TECHNICALLY not allowed to compete for a variety of reasons.

Remember as well that modern small arms rounds are built to inflict serious injury if they don’t kill you outright - it takes more personnel to evac and care for a wounded soldier (unless you’re doing what Russia is ALLEGEDLY doing and just killing soldiers too injured to fight).

And at the end of the day, if you have separated it but you’re STILL not sure, throw it out. Not having mushrooms is preferable to being a corpse.

Most plants that we eat are excellent at taking up heavy metals too - potatoes and herbs especially.

You forgot that this government has spent years telling their people that literally everyone in Palestine is supportive, materially or otherwise, of Hamas.

Moreover, surrendering whatever Russia sticks a flag in is appeasement nonsense. We’ve already seen this strategy before WWII: *oh, Germany will be OK if we just cede Czechoslovakia. Oh, Germany won’t attack if we cede Alsace-Lorraine…" An aggressive power like Russia, who already tried to annex large portions of another sovereign nation in 2008 (they invaded Georgia and got their shit kicked in because they tried the whole “three day thunder run” strategy), almost certainly will not stop if you just “give them what they want”. Eventually, they’ll want more, and more, and more, and you wind up surrendering slice after slice after slice of your country.