This apparently is how the Swiss nightclub fire started.

This one should keep the psychologists busy for decades. Watch the footage of the Bondi Beach terrorist attack. Ask yourself how it comes about that any human being has the courage of this guy.

UD‘s learning new words and phrases from this angry denunciation of a building that just went up in Manhattan.

“They claim that I, this grandma, was the mastermind behind this murder,” [Donna Adelson] said.

I guess when you put it like that, twenty years in prison doesn’t seem overlong.

… makes Puerto Rico look good.

Turks and Caicos lies very close to Haiti.

As you know, UD finds some of her favorite sentences in real estate listings.

JONATHAN ALTER:

Why is this so important to the MAGA base?

MICHAEL WOLFF:

I’m not sure. It seems contradictory, as Trump is most imperiled. But a mythology grew around Epstein as the epicenter of elites like Bill Clinton, and that’s what some believe Epstein might expose.

… time, the Herculaneum scroll haltingly gives up its words. And we get to sit back and be amazed at the technology that finds them.

It’s about time.

[B]anning candidates from running for office due to financial crimes is highly dubious. The damaging effect on the democratic choice seems out of proportion to the crime in question, and (even coupled with a €2 million fine) is ineffective in punishing the party… [T]he idea that the party is being stifled by politically motivated “lawfare” — a claim likely amplified from the heights of the White House and Twitter/X — seems well-designed to galvanize its base… [T]he Rassemblement National can, even now, be beaten. But not like this.

“I think the Democrats’ brand is really bad, and I think this was an election based on culture,” [said Democratic Senator Mark Warner]. “And the Democrats’ … failure to connect on a cultural basis with a wide swath of Americans is hugely problematic… I think the majority of the party realizes that the ideological purity of some of the groups is a recipe for disaster and that candidly the attack on over-the-top wokeism was a valid attack.”

Mélanie Laroche, a professor at the Université de Montréal who specializes in the relationships between employers and unions, said Amazon’s decision [to close all of its operations in Quebec, very likely because of imminent unionization,] was not a surprise. 

She said Quebec’s labour laws are more restrictive on businesses than elsewhere. 

Amazon currently recognizes one other union, in Staten Island, N.Y. But it has not yet reached a collective agreement with them.

In Quebec, by contrast, labour law would have obliged the two parties to negotiate a collective agreement and could have imposed arbitration on them. 

“Amazon was probably confronted with that imminent arbitration demand for a first collective agreement and wouldn’t have had a choice but to conclude a collective agreement,” she said.

“They’re deciding to close facilities in a province where perhaps the labour laws are much more restrictive for management.”

As for Quebec’s premier, he says this was a private decision by a private company. Like increasing numbers of politicians around the globe, he’s no Union Maid; and indeed the unionizing forces who generated this unfortunate outcome might have considered not only the growing conservatism in many countries – including their own – but also the quite healthy hourly wage Amazon Quebec employees enjoyed until they all lost their jobs.

Few people incorporate idiocy and degeneracy as intensely as Unity Mitford did. Reading her newly released diaries from 1935 is a mildly interesting way to spend a snowy afternoon.

… we’ll know soon enough.

***************

Probably terrorist. Definitely dead.

***************

‘An ISIS flag was attached to the pickup rear hitch.’