Incentives include: to control/direct the impact on their own citizens, to maintain relationships with the 5th largest economy in the world, to subtly make a political point. Probably in that order.

Oh— forgot to mention this is a baby-of-convenience story. Which I NEVER read. I would absolutely not have read this if I'd known. But it's a good thing I didn't know, because iirc the pregnancy doesn't actually happen until waaay at the end, almost off the page.

So if you also hate baby stuff in your romances, fear not! There's no actual baby until the epilogue.

For sure! I don't even really go for diamonds but this bracelet, I like. Just something about it! And it looks great on your wrist.

I don't tend to gravitate to historicals (partly for this reason) but I absolutely loved {A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant}. For this reason. And no, it's not one of those Anachronistically Feminist Heroine! situations. At all. This FMC is very much of her time and place. So are her feminist problems.

And it's not just feminist friendly, it's genuinely well written: the prose is nice, the romance is visible, the characters are well drawn and distint, the sex scenes are just right, the MMC is worthy, and oh man that plot resolution. I literally fist-pumped!

 
Personal sidebar, when I read this I was feeling pretty bleak— it was the height of the Kavanaugh hearings— and it straight up restored my soul. I needed this book. Like, there were some tears along with that fist-pump. Tears of gratitude. (I'm serious.)

5/5, very rec.

So… many… shouldhavebeenadealbreakers.

From lie-bragging that the destruction of the Twin Towers made his building the tallest ON THE DAY THEY FELL all the way up to "well I have concepts of a plan!" and beyond.

Mentally exhausting is an understatement. I feel like I've lived a thousand fucking lifetimes.

It's the political version of telling the ER staff you slipped in the shower and fell on that shampoo bottle. Honest!

Nurses/Everyone: 🙄

Maybe this is one of those blue dress/white dress things? Because I'm not seeing any "illusion" at all! I'm zooming in, zooming out, squinting… even with a detailed explanation I still just see interesting octagonal links adorned with narrow baguettes. 🤷🏽‍♀️

(And tbh if I mentally replace the big links with octagonal diamonds of the same size… I immediately die of boredom. Even if I could afford it I think I'd choose this bracelet over that.)

I mean I keep thinking, he seems to want total isolationism. But in the 21st century the only way to do that is to be a pariah. You can't withdraw from the world. The world would have to shun you. Like North Korea. Or Russia to a certain degree.

Well we're on our way to "a certain degree." At least.

At this point even the 1% must be at least a little concerned. We might still be heading for a global recession and confidence is SO shook that this time (first time ever??) there's a real chance they might not come out of it ahead. Still rich, but not richer. And they really don't like "not richer."

It's not like he cares about the poor and middle class. But if the wealthy get pissed? At him? Now that'd test his commitment. We'll see.

Exactly!! Can't upvote this enough.

I'd even say make her teach you.
Because that's how you help her with her schoolwork!

Soy is the Devil's bean, it makes the frogs gay or something. We'll have to eat field corn Freedom Corn!

Ooo, except for that we'll need potash, and Canada's preeetty ticked. So I guess we'll eat nothing. For, uh, victory.

Classic narcissistic abuser.
The worst mistake you can ever make is to break up with one and then get back together with them.

A potentially fatal mistake.

Really? I mean I'm from NYC and just about every tourist takes photos exactly like these.
Them, pointing excitedly at something they recognize from home. Them, in front of a type of eatery home doesn't have. And at least a dozen of them, standing on a busy New York street.

Doesn't even have to be a famous street. Nearly any one will do because just the busyness, verticality, and sheer density of Manhattan is remarkable and non-mundane to most visitors. Which is understandable: it's legitimately rare! You and I may be used to it, but the fact is there are very few places like that on Earth.
IOW Manhattan (like Tokyo) is itself an attraction. All of it.

 
Hell, even being from New York, if/when I ever go to Tokyo I just about guarantee I'll be taking the same pictures.

Anyway as regular ole POC trying to avoid getting caught up in an ICE sweep: Order a passport card and expedite it.

Complicating factor: POC and noncitizens aren't the only demos they hate. They also hate women.

I know not one but two natural born white American women who've been trying to renew their passports for months, but the paperwork keeps getting rejected. Without explanation, but it's obvious what the problem is: they changed their names on marriage. So their adult ID docs don't match their birth certificates, and the U.S. Department of State apparently can't figure that out.

"Can't."
It's ridiculous and deliberate. Neither had any trouble renewing before.

Basically what I'm gathering is that unless you're white, male, natural born, tattoo-free, and not a liberal in public, you can't assume you're safe.

Again, you're missing the obvious point. If the rates were only about trade volume, uninhabited islands wouldn't be getting the 10% baseline. No tariffs for NK and Russia can't be due to low trade: $183,000 is still incalculably more than $0. So this was presumably a manual override. I don't know why it was done, but it was clearly done deliberately.

Someone looked at those two countries specifically— and that's objectively odd because that obviously wasn't SOP.

I'm so fascinated. It's gold and the style looks relatively modern so I thought it'd be pretty easy to ID the mark, but none of my research tricks turned up anything. Maybe try… r/hallmarks??

Looking at how it's assembled I'm guessing it was fully bench made because there was clearly a lot of hand work, and none of the components really look "stock" except maybe the bail. I'm especially intrigued by the settings, I don't think I've ever seen modern jewelry with opals set this way. (Assuming they're solid; zooming in it sure looks like they are. And yet… closed backs. Huh. That's unusual. But wow, that was definitely the right move. They look incredible.)

All I know for certain is that this pendant is gorgeous and I am super jealous!

Obviously 54% tariffs against China are a huge supply side problem, but I'm struck by how none of them seem worried about giant tariffs affecting demand. When you're suddenly a lot more broke, how much do you want a grinning life sized cutout of the man who made it happen?

But the one guy's out there ordering 25% more to stock up before the price increases.

No worries, somehow (somehow) this well never runs dry.

I honestly had no idea the rightwing base had this much cash just lying around. I was told they suffered from severe economic anxiety but it's been 10 years of wall to wall scams and they're still casually forking it over by the hundreds of millions.

Ah, a purist. I appreciate that.

To dumb people. Someone— lots of someones!— bought it at $200+ dollars a share.

Just, wow.

It didn't even actually happen.

It was one school district, where teachers got bucket toilets in case of a lockdown, but as far as anyone could find no classroom ever used one. And again, not litterboxes, bucket toilets. Like you use after a natural disaster: a 5 gallon bucket with a seat, lined with a bag that may or may not have some litter in it.

So NONE of it was right.

 
^{eta: And actually, there's a very credible theory that's not even what sparked the rumor! Given the timing it's very likely the litterboxes-for-furries thing was just was just straight made up. A right wing fabrication that was boosted for clicks. IOW they may never have been even the tiniest grain of truth at all.}

I think they're saying that treating girls and boys differently actually causes (some) of the physiological differences too.

Which I'm pretty sure is true, like for some brain differences.

Nope, never! This type of glue (white glue) is very flexible, so it doesn't crack or crumble.

If you swipe a glue stick on something nonporous, let it dry, and peel it off, the result is almost like plastic. You can bend it, roll it into a tight tube, even crease it like paper, and it won't crack. Even poking lots of holes close together (eg, zigzig stitch) isn't a problem.

Well I know the terms from I job a had years ago, but the area to look would be pedagogical materials meant for math teachers. I did a quick google for "summation line" and got a few hits but nothing suitable for a citation (Google doesn't really understand the question so the results aren't great). I did come across this paper using "total line" though, I think that should work?

On the 24th page (numbered 153):

… addition methods in which the regrouping is done below the total line also involve recomposing the total …

Human, P. (1997). Children's Conceptual Structures for Multidigit Numbers and Methods of Multidigit Addition and Subtraction. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education.

The first people being "disappeared" in America are the people speaking out again Isreal and the genocide.

I don't think that would be happening under a President Harris.

They'd still be walking free and speaking out. I'm not saying their speaking out would have convinced a President Harris and/or Dem-controlled Congress to break up with Bibi— because yeah! as you noted, America's politics are pretty fucked up! Literally everyone is aware. So no, not probable. But that said… it's not straight up unimaginable. The right set of circumstances maybe possibly youneverknow could have lined up for that to happen. Not likely, but not impossible.

Seems pretty impossible now.