Ah, yes the idiots they found.

And here in lies one of the many problems with American exceptionalism. “It’s always from our perspective.”

As an American abroad, I have to say I really dislike the ignorance from where I was born.

In that, I congratulated you on your very Dutch directness in querying.

The president did not share any names as to the leaker, the journalists, or the media outlets that he believed had publicized the story. But after his comments, some members of the press pointed toward Fox News and The Washington Post for being among the first to land the scoop.

Yet those media companies were not the only ones to report that one member of the military had been unaccounted for after the initial rescue on Friday: Reuters also reported at the time that just one of the aircrew had been rescued. Hours later, the outlet reported that a search and rescue was underway.

Other journalists jumped to claim the scoop, even after Trump’s threat. Amit Segal—an Israeli journalist with ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—said on his Telegram chat later Monday that he was the first to report the story.

“As you may recall, this was first published here,” Segal wrote.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former staunch ally turned Trump critic, said everyone in the Trump administration who claims to be a Christian needs to “beg forgiveness from God” and intervene in the president’s “madness”.

In a lengthy post on X, the former Republican congresswoman wrote: “I know all of you and him and he has gone insane, and all of you are complicit. I’m not defending Iran but let’s be honest about all of this.”

She went on: “The Strait is closed because the US and Israel started the unprovoked war against Iran based on the same nuclear lies they’ve been telling for decades, that any moment Iran would develop a nuclear weapon.”

You know who has nuclear weapons? Israel. They are more than capable of defending themselves without the US having to fight their wars, kill innocent people and children, and pay for it. Trump threatening to bomb power plants and bridges hurts the Iranian people, the very people Trump claimed he was freeing."

You it’s a Mad Easter when MGT is the voice of reason you are applauding, even if she is nucking futz.

So that’s rumors of Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, and now Gabbard. I doubt any changes will help Trump improve his ability to control reality… But I also doubt it until I see anyone dismissed.

In a remarkable 24 hours in Washington, House Republicans snubbed a bipartisan funding deal cut by their own Senate GOP counterparts and instead approved an entirely different plan — prolonging the Department of Homeland Security shutdown.

Then, they left town.

Now, there’s no end in sight for the 42-day shutdown that has hobbled airports across the country with TSA shortages. With the House GOP’s plan going nowhere in the Senate, even Republicans acknowledge it’s not clear how to end the standoff until there’s a breakthrough with at least some Democrats.

Both chambers of Congress are now out on a two-week recess. In a 213-203 vote, Speaker Mike Johnson and his House Republicans voted Friday night to effectively jam the Senate with their plan, fully funding DHS for eight weeks – including with border and immigration money that the prior deal left out. Three Democrats crossed party lines to vote in favor of the bill. In the meantime, Republicans say the Senate should return from its recess to approve the plan, while President Donald Trump makes his own unilateral attempt to fund TSA without Congress’s help.

It’s a surprisingly aggressive move for the House speaker, who is directly challenging his Senate Republican counterpart, even as he sought to blame Democrats for what he called an “unconscionable” bill. Instead of the House voting on Friday to send a bill to the president’s desk, House GOP lawmakers escalated an intra-Congress feud that scrambles any chance of reopening the department anytime soon. It’s an act of defiance by House GOP leaders, who insist they didn’t agree to Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s middle-of-the-night agreement that withheld funding for border patrol or immigration enforcement.

It’ll be interesting to see if we can find more than a correlation. This ought to be a polymarket bet… But mine would be on either ultra processed foods or microplastics.

NASA event info

Many eyewitnesses in the states of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the District of Columbia and the Canadian province of Ontario have filed reports on the American Meteor Society website of a very bright daylight fireball seen March 17 at 8:57 AM Eastern Daylight Time (2026 March 17, 12:57 UTC). The meteor was also detected by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper on the GOES satellite and several cameras in the region. An analysis of all currently available data places first visibility of the meteor at an altitude of 50 miles above Lake Erie, off the beaches of Lorain in northern Ohio. Moving east of south at 40,000 miles per hour, the fireball - caused by a small asteroid nearly 6 feet in diameter and weighing about 7 tons - traveled over 34 miles through the upper atmosphere before fragmenting 30 miles over Valley City, north of Medina. The fragments continued on to the south, producing meteorites in the vicinity of Medina County, Ohio.

The asteroid unleashed an energy of 250 tons of TNT when it fragmented, resulting in a pressure wave which propagated to the ground, causing the booms and explosive noises heard by many of the public. It may have also shook houses north of Medina.

We thank the American Meteor Society for providing the eyewitness accounts.

3:31 seconds in is when she say it.

Satisfying, but verse others who believe in this it’s still disheartening.

While I understand the hypothesis, I am not sure it is working out that way.

Although Trump is trying desperately to find a way to subvert the elections, given the decentralized State based nature of it, it’s going to take more than an external war with Iran to justify an internal canceling of the elections. The SAVE Act is an attempt at nationalizing the Elections, but while it’s moving it lacks the capacity to jump the biggest hurdle in the Senate. Any Executive attempt at nationalizing the elections has very little judicial basis, which would make it hard to hold up in court. It’s dynamic and complex, but it’s not as simple as his declaration of marshal law.

That is not to say your sentiment isn’t correct. If he can find a way, or his backers can find a way, they will try and do it.

On the second point, Trump didn’t get a 9/11 style bump. Indeed it seems to have gone almost the opposite way based on polling. Given inflation and other economic impacts, it might cause more defections before it helps him.

What it has done is push Epstein out of the US new. This too might have been part of the calculus. It is still rippling through the UK and other political systems, but the US has put it aside for now.

You are correct, but that won’t stop them from trying to blame them.

Also the Dems are so ineffectual lately, they might just make it easy for him.

Ship be happen’ now

I just watched his newest video and Sal’s doing it daily right now. Not much new in broad substance, but details are developing.

I went back and looked twz reported 770 missiles expended over the 9 months of their Hohthi protection. This is all missiles, so it’s unclear how much of this was offensive vs defensive, but:

Many of these weapons were used in direct defensive actions to protect commercial shipping and U.S. Navy and allied warships operating in and around the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. While there is no price on human life and even a drone packed with explosives could severely damage an American destroyer, putting it out of action for months and possibly injuring or killing members of its crew, it’s interesting to put a price tag on what these weapons might have cost. This is becoming an increasingly important issue as the U.S. evaluates its own stockpiles and what would be needed to sustain a conflict in the Pacific against a foe exponentially more powerful than the Houthis.

Without knowing the exact breakdown of the missiles and other munitions employed during the IKECSG’s recent deployment, it is impossible to put a dollar figure on all of the weapons expended. The unit price of a single Block V Tomahawk is $1.89 million or so, so launching 135 of those missiles would have cost the Navy $255,150,000.

So stockpiles, resupply, and production becomes a big issue, beyond the astronomical cost of this.

(All for the fucking ego of a Cheeto.)

Sal’s What’s going on with Shipping? Channel did a video that adds to your points, while covering other things that happened in between too.

We don’t have the destroyers to so this, let alone the stocks to keep them full. Last time we tried something similar with the Houthi when we stood off and bring them down along the Red Sea we ran out.

The best we might be able to do is the 5 or so US flagged vessels. Apparently France is going to do the same for their vessels. All the rest of them are probably just going to wait for the War insurance to get sorted and then start running it again (like some of them are apparently).

Overall, Europe’s gas ​stockpiles across major markets are currently around 30% full compared to nearly 54% full for the early March ​period.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/europes-skimpy-gas-storage-under-scrutiny-qatar-halts-lng-flows-2026-03-03/

So that adds to the hit.

The Norwegian have their issues, but when they get things right they really nail it.

https://www.niwater.com/media/geso5q4o/2024-ni-water-drinking-water-quality-annual-report.pdf Is the report vs those standard.

This is a comparable report from NYC. https://www.nyc.gov/assets/dep/downloads/pdf/water/drinking-water/drinking-water-supply-quality-report/2025-drinking-water-supply-quality-report.pdf

'Tis a great question and one very worth digging into. First off, I suggest getting The Big Thirst from the library. It’s a great book describing the challenge of water for several cities across the world and the processes used to make your water safe.

Second, I’d also suggest checking out some YouTube videos like this Animagraffs video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsVfshmK0Ak. As The Big Thirst and others describe, there are a plethora of engineering techniques now to purify water on a citywide scale, and it is very much up to local utilities to decide how they do it.

Third, someone has already pointed out that there are water quality standards in N. Ireland. As others have noted, it needs to be “safe,” not “sterile.” Indeed, you actually do want some minerals in your water—otherwise it can be detrimental to your health. Drinking straight distilled water continuously, for example, is problematic because “pure” water will actually leach the minerals it encounters.

Fourth, the purity of water is ultimately about how much money is invested in purifying it. Chip companies and scientific endeavors need higher levels of water purity for some of their processes. This can be achieved through the engineering processes mentioned above, producing incredibly pure water—which is actually dangerous to drink.

Lastly, the purification of water from your swamp is a function of how much money the city is willing to spend, but it is feasible to take nearly any water and make it safe to drink with enough investment in infrastructure. As part of this, the pipes that deliver water to your house are crucial: they must remain full and pressurized (pushing clean water out, not allowing contamination in). I mention this because it’s important to understand that the infrastructure around water delivery is nearly as important as the treatment itself. (Similarly true for wastewater.)

While I applaud her bring it out on the house floor and making it public, I wonder at the general impact apart from making Trump face his responsibly directly and publicly.

For those of you who can stand it, I’d suggest reading what the conservative side is portraying it as. I say this as around 40% of the voting public seems to swallow this without question. They portray Minnesota as:

The theft of billions of dollars in welfare payments in Minnesota by primarily Somali criminals became an overnight political liability for Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and other state officials who, at best, ignored the problem. Trump has designated Vice President JD Vance to lead the fraud investigation; you can be sure that Democrat-run states like California and New York will be in the crosshairs.

So no mention of the killing, among the many other things that the guardian article did discuss.

It makes me wonder what the swing voters read and believe.

I really appreciate the TLDR, as I like to know the point before I start reading the support of it. However “legible” is a horrible word for this as precise as it might be.

Once a threat becomes legible — primarily, by an elected authoritarian beginning to act in authoritarian ways once in office — people start prioritizing democracy in a way they didn’t beforehand.

Which I would rephrase as saying: 'When politicians act like dictators, document it, yell it out, and call them out."

And even that’s to long and not direct enough.