What’s shocking is that 18 year old cutoff age. It seems unfair and arbitrary, in a country where millions of 15-17 year olds currently buy/carry/trade/threaten with/injure with/kill with guns, to suddenly disenfranchise this large group of citizens. In the present American context, an 18 year old with a gun is a seasoned marksman. It’s absurd to think of disarming 18-20 year olds.

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/04/06/measles-texas-outbreak-death-unvaccinated

For a Bethesda garden club’s annual tour.

Why pretend to be blasé about this, UD? Admit your excitement that your garden, only one small piece of which was professionally designed, and all of which is maintained by you and you alone, has attracted this sort of attention.

Of course this means I have to fast track the Bonhoeffer meditation garden at the top of the property. Not to mention sniff out the random dogshit, catshit, deershit, etc. The tour takes place in June.

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Will they expect me to walk around with them, chatting in a casual highly informed way about my plants? I don’t tag anything! I’m an old hippie! I grab stuff I like in plant stores, throw it in the ground, and immediately forget – if I ever knew – what it is. I can only identify hydrangeas. But not the type of hydrangeas. And I often call hydrangea hibiscus because they both start with the hi sound.

The Milwaukee public school system comes up with a new phrase for “loaded gun.”

For all the dog show people out there.

[Photo: Karen Fleming]

https://www.facebook.com/kffleming/videos/594496710307535/?rdid=2wuxGQrKG3KvFbKL#

A spokesperson with the city of Lakewood sent a statement … that said in part, “The city has received many complaints about this, and both our homeless outreach team and the Lakewood Police Department have contacted the Colorado Department of Transportation about this issue because the camp is on state property. Given that, any enforcement or cleanup ultimately rests with the state.”

On Thursday, CDOT … dispute[d] this statement from the Lakewood spokesperson. CDOT shared a copy of a letter the department gave to the city, authorizing “the Lakewood Police Department to take action toward any person on any CDOT property located within Lakewood City who does not belong on the property.”

Und so weiter. You really do wonder, as well-meaning idiots in secular countries crash into problems over and over, what it will take for them to cut it out.

Now that the city of Montreal has removed the image of the hijabi from its welcome poster, perhaps that municipality has finally realized that (say it with me, one more time), Quebec is secular.

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Maybe this will help: Iran is not secular. It is a theocracy. It mandates that all girls and women cover themselves with hijabs and chadors and if they don’t do it they go to horrible disgusting jails for decades. Women in Quebec on the other hand are free to wear or not wear hijabs, except in certain public sector settings.

… (UD ain’t Catholic, but various friends and family are), has died. The very embodiment of religious hypocrisy, he was allowed by a church fully aware of his depravity to prance around for decades enacting piety and telling other people how to live.

Part of the much-larger story of Catholic church cover-up and abuse of power, his legacy will be that, in a strong field of child rapists, he was pretty much the worst.

Not only has he pledged to reduce taxes for each individual Pole by three hundred percent; he has also promised to rename the Pacific Ocean the Polish Ocean.

Vinca coming in nicely.

A family member known to be mentally ill goes out of control and is desperately handed off by his father to his mother — WITH FOUR WEAPONS ON HIM INCLUDING AN AK47.

“[E]very country contains mentally ill and potentially violent people. Only America arms them,” writes Adam Gopnik. And man this story out of Maine makes that pretty graphic, don’t it. Son killed his mother in the car, then exited and took up a position along the road and starting shooting at passing vehicles. Killed one person and badly injured two before he decided it was time to kill himself. (With the AK47. That’s gotta hurt.)

Shades of Adam Lanza’s mother, who believed giving her violently insane son lots of guns would be therapeutic.

You kinda wonder under what conditions these people would call the police. Or an ambulance. If he had twelve guns on him? Body armor? IEDs?

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What is with these people? Gotta be a death wish.

And meanwhile, civilizationally, it’s really not a good look. “Not even the most primitive of societies can compete now with our new predictable savagery.”

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“This is something that you don’t see very often, even though we saw it in Bowdoin not too long ago,” said a police spokesperson. LOLOL.

… Wisconsin Public Radio. After all, the fact that this person chairs an English department is as much of a news story as the fact that he’s violent with students.

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UPDATE: Good call. For your upcoming search, focus on someone with basic literacy skills.