Maithanet

Ridiculously premature to say that. If this passes the House (without some kind of poison pill that Dems will never support), then it'll get through the Senate+WH in a matter of days. But I would personally put the odds that this doesn't get torpedoed one way or another at only a shade above 50/50.

Surveys found that the overwhelming reason why married with kids couples have less sex is because of two side effects of having children. Less alone time where spontaneous sex could occur, and less sleep which reduces the sex drive. I can't really speak for married couples with no kids, although I would say my wife and I had basically the same amount of sex before and after marriage. Marriage was not the big change, it was having kids.

I have read Fevre Dream and Nightflyers, and both were worth reading, although Fevre Dream was the better of the two. I would also check out Dreamsongs, his two part collection of short stories. There are some people on this forum who insist Martin is better at short stories than full novels, and I can see why. Short stories need to have an end in mind when you start, so you're never going to have meandering plot or bloated chapters about tertiary characters. Meathouse Man and Song for Lya are both excellent short stories.

I don't see any way he's outside the top 10. He's better than Kobe or Durant, so unless you just feel like the older guys can never be moved (not a perspective I share) then he's in.

That's odd, because I feel kind of the reverse on Johnson/McCarthy. I'm not an expert on this kind of insider politics, but from what I've read McCarthy was ousted because he was a liar. He would make a bunch of promises that were contradictory and when he failed to deliver he would just point fingers at whoever was convenient (the democrats, the far right, the Senate). People figured this out fairly quickly and nobody wanted to deal with that anymore. In contrast, Johnson does not make a bunch of idle promises. Not that this makes him some paragon of virtue, but he doesn't make one deal with establishment Republicans and then the exact opposite deal with the far right. Instead, he mostly just waffles around doing nothing much and trying to find something that his caucus can actually live with, even if none of them are particularly happy about it. That's basically what happened in the budget deal, where he ran out the clock and then got some window dressing to throw to his caucus so that at least he could claim he's "fighting for them" and not completely folding. That was enough to keep his job, although eventually MTG and co will tire of his milquetoast compromises and cast him aside. Then it's just a question of whether Democrats want to stick with Johnson or see what Speaker is in the Mystery Box. But in all likelihood, any priorities like Ukraine aid are dead if the House has to do another round of leadership wrangling, because it's an election year and nobody is going to be doing actual legislating after June 1.

I'm surprised that a guy with no kids in his 40s who makes 100k a year would be unable to afford an annual trip to Europe. Unless you are planning on staying at 5 star hotels the whole time, that seems extremely doable. I did international trips to Argentina, Thailand, England, Belize, and Tanzania in the 2008-2014 timeframe, and I was making a lot less than that.

Mike Johnson is a scumbag, but not a particularly noteable one. He willingly signed up for a position that has a lot of responsibility but very little power. He can be removed at any time based on the feelings of crazy people like MTG, and this is bound to happen sooner or later. Thus his tenure as Speaker is basically doomed to failure. The only hope is to get something passed before this happens.

There are a fair number of countries, including Canada, that if they were willing to spend the necessary money, could make a nuclear weapon in less than a year. They haven't done so because they do not want nuclear weapons, but if the calculus changes where those weapons are needed for defense, then the list of nuclear powers could get quite a bit longer very rapidly.

Meh. This is a results based business. The Republican House is not going to pass much that will actually become law regardless, and the weakness/disunity amongst the Republican members has already allowed Democrats to have influence over bills they otherwise would not. If the Democrats need to vote "present" on a motion to vacate to get important bills passed like keeping the government funded and preventing Ukraine from being overrun, that is a small price to pay. I personally can see the upside of a Republican speaker who needs to stay in the Democrat's good graces. It sounds completely untenable for Johnson, but it sounds pretty good for Democrats (and the country as well).

It is Tuesday.

Speaker Johnson announced last night that Ukraine and Israel aid were going to come to a vote in the House on Friday. Details of exactly what will be included are not clear, but it is expected to be close to the $60 billion that has been discussed. It may include some less favorable things like loans for a portion of the aid (but not even close to the full amount, maybe like $10 billion in long term loans and $50 billion in aid). This is Donald Trump's stupid idea and so we should assume Johnson will probably include it. Now, there are still a lot of potential hurdles. The biggest is probably Johnson straight up changing his mind before Friday, but this is the first time that we've had an actual date on a vote. In all likelihood if it comes up, it will pass, because there are plenty of Republicans and virtually all Democrats that will vote for this. It will then almost assuredly need to go to the Senate which will slow things down again, but probably it goes through there without too much issue, since McConnell and Schumer are both pro-Ukraine. So...we'll see but there's reason for cautious optimism.

To many on the pro Palestenian side, the US is not so much a restrainer as an enabler. Israel can rely on US weapons tech and aid, as well as a permanent security council vote, and thus far the only price is a bit of diplomatic tut-tuting.

Are there no shorter operas available? If I we run with IHT's baseball analogy, you can invite a date to a baseball game even if it isn't their thing, but choosing a doubleheader seem inconsiderate.

Wemby is paid basically half as much as Brunson and is like 50/50 to win MVP in the next three years, so I think the best contract in the NBA is out of reach. But Brunson is playing very well, I didn't expect him to improve so much form his time in Dallas.

Speaking generally, I feel like a lot of this issue comes down to power imbalances. Young men are usually bigger and stronger than young women, and this means that if a situation comes to violence, a woman is likely to be hurt or killed. Women know this, and quite understandably seek to avoid that situation, which can often lead to sexual assault occurring via perceived rather than explicit threats. Usually these crimes happen in private settings, with little/no evidence beyond individual testimony. In addition, women know that we have a patriarchal society where a "boys will be boys" attitude is often used to excuse a great many unacceptable behaviors. This all combines to create a society where sexual assault is sadly very common and very rarely punished. Most people are disgusted and outraged about the prevalence of sexual assault and rape, and one solution is to have a default assumption of trusting the victims of assault. In most cases, this is absolutely the right approach, and can help protect victims and discourage future assault cases. However, it is an imperfect solution, and there are cases where false accusations are made and innocent people have their lives/careers ruined with very little ability to defend themselves. Which circles back to the issue of power imbalances. If we create a society where men can say "look what she was wearing!" as a defense for sexual assault, then we should expect sexual violence to be very common. Some men will exploit this huge power imbalance knowing there will almost assuredly be no consequences. However, if we create a society where we genuinely trust the person reporting sexual assault with minimal/no evidence*, then that would represent a power imbalance as well. Some women would certainly exploit that knowing there will almost assuredly be no consequences. I understand I have not made any useful recommendations on how to solve this problem. I think the best that we can do is adopt a "trust, but verify" attitude when cases of sexual assault and rape are reported. But basically no matter what, the criminal justice system is going to make some horrible errors and some people's lives will be ruined, because that's what the criminal justice system does. * I do not think this has actually occurred anywhere, ever.