Home » Open thread 5/10/2025

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Open thread 5/10/2025 — 11 Comments

  1. Niketas,

    Thanks for that reference and excerpt regarding Dickens’ Mrs. Jellyby character and “telescopic philanthropy” that you made on a prior post.

    I had never heard reference to that and it’s a brilliant encapsulation of a trait we humans seem susceptible to.

  2. Someone leaked Trump Administration plans to try to rein in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to far-left NPR. The plans are good news since previous Democrat administrations have populated the agency with anti-nuclear advocates. The details on the new structure for the bureaucracy are not clear, but any effort that speeds up the approval of nuclear power plants is welcome.

    https://www.npr.org/2025/05/09/nx-s1-5392382/trump-nuclear-regulatory-commission-watchdog-safety-radiation

  3. @Rufus: Dicken’s giant talent was for creating memorable characters with just a few paragraphs or even sentences, who frequently remind us of someone we know.

    The book is Bleak House, and worth reading if you have the energy for a Victorian doorstopper.

  4. The issue with zebras being not good candidates for domestication presumes the first candidates for what we know as “horses” today were considerably more mellow. It’s a planted axiom, comparing today’s horses to wild zebras rather than pre-domesticated (not domesticated breeds who got loose).
    The reason that even in domesticated animals–cattle and horses–the majority of males are gelded is that whole males are still potentially dangerous even after umpteen thousand generations.
    We “fix” dogs to keep the population down. We “fix” the big herbivores to keep from getting run over or otherwise attacked. Bull, anybody? And that’s the domestic brand.
    To domesticate an animal, you usually need to confine it. And you can’t fence in enough prairie land to support a bunch fo cattle. You have to grow food elsewhere and feed them, while confining them to a convenient area. Which is to say you need the Neolithics to have some agricultural surplus. Only then do you have the capacity to domesticate large herbivores.

    So, as to zebras…case not proven.

  5. Re: Michelle Obama

    Great dish from Megyn Kelly and Maureen Callahan. Fun and insightful.

    –Maureen Callahan, “Breaking Down Michelle Obama’s Ongoing Midlife Meltdown and Disdain For Barack, with Megyn Kelly”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pDfcEjD-I4

    At one point Kelly and Callahan are so horrified by how poorly MO speaks of her husband that they hope Obama is having an affair, as rumored, with Jennifer Aniston.

    I don’t think Michelle O. has any idea how negatively her podcast comes across to most people. She seems to be a small, miserable person.

  6. Great dish from Megyn Kelly and Maureen Callahan. Fun and insightful.
    ==
    I’m sure I must have been acquainted with women who were catty to this degree, but I cannot think of a name.
    ==
    No insight into MO. I might think her dissatisfaction is derived from the realization that almost nothing she and her husband have is due to any actual skill either one of them possesses (above and beyond knowing how to work a room at a fundraiser). Which suggests that she sees herself as she is and sees him as he is. Mmmkay….

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