Home » Open thread 3/18/2026

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Open thread 3/18/2026 — 25 Comments

  1. Back in the 2000s Blowfish was the hot sushi joint in San Francisco. Blowfish is a potentially deadly fish to eat and requires a trained chef to cut around the poisonous parts.

    The full name was Blowfish Sushi To Die For. 🙂

    It closed in 2019, then reopened six months later, then closed again. Restaurants are a tough biz these days.

  2. @Jon baker:the false idea that the church has completely replaced Israel in God’s plan

    Sounds like burying the lede there; somebody’s had a direct revelation from the Almighty apparently. Did God clear up anything else or did He just comment on this one topic?

    “False” only has relevance within an accepted theology, and Billy Graham’s organization can’t speak for more than a very small fraction of Christians. (Joel Rosenberg, according to his bio, is himself a Jewish evangelical Christian and that’s a much smaller group yet.) On this particular issue there’s been a lot of variation historically. As for what Billy Graham’s organization considers “false” theology in general, that’s a lot of things that many other Christians have believed in for centuries.

    The communion I grew up in, for example, is based on “false” ideas according to them, though “replacement theology” is not one of those ideas. Which is fine, as mine would and does say the same about them. There are things in common of course.

    People can argue for whatever theology they like, in the end only God knows.

  3. Re: There’s a new squirrel in town

    Last week another squirrel showed up @Chez Huxley. Squirrel 2 looks lean, young and hungry. Even eats the almonds that Squirrel 1 always passes by.

    I’ve seen them together three times. Squirrels are solitary and territorial, so this is unusual. Once I saw them within touching distance. Their tails don’t twitch and they look relaxed.

    It seems likely they are related or mating. My best guess is Squirrel 1 is mother to Squirrel 2.

  4. I have been following the allegations of Netanyahu’s death and subsequent “AI videos” with some bemusement. The New York Times finally has something on it.

    It’s becoming clear that people decide that something is an AI fake based on whether they want it to be true. Partly this is because the videos are getting so good, but partly because AI algorithms are being used everywhere now and genuine image and video processing are not exempt. We’ve reached the stage that Crichton predicted in Rising Sun that video evidence is no longer good.

    Saw some very silly fakes of USS Carney sinking, but there will probably be some very good fakes eventually.

  5. Devout Catholic here. My husband and I never heard of Replacement Theology until our trip to Israel in 2018 and it was told to us by our Orthodox Jewish guide. We sponsored friends through RCIA in 2015, no less. I’ve heard some Catholics espouse it since then, but considering Nostra Aetate (1965–which explains why I didn’t even know about it)–they’re wrong. Personally, like so many things in the Tenach (Old Testament), I see it as “both/and”. The Church was grafted on–Jews still exist and St. Paul has prophectic words about that fact in the book of Romans. Am I wrong? Well–“seeing through a glass darkly” makes that a good possibility. People who deny Israel’s historical connection to the land mass are ridiculous. But disagreement of what that has to do with today is wide open across the religious/geo-political sphere.

  6. @Sharon W:Devout Catholic here

    Welcome to the “false according to BGEA” club! I think the vast majority of us are in it, for one reason or another. You didn’t make the “replacement theology” cut but you qualified in many, many other ways!

  7. Feds leave interest rates unchanged. Disappointing, but I guess Iran caused them to keep status quo.

  8. @ F,

    Your talking about , [many dangerous animals], reminded me of a comedy song, by the Australian…comedy duo- The Two Scared weird Little Guys.

    They wrote a song to “encourage” people to come and visit Australia. The song goes something like this, [paraphrased]:

    “Poisonous octopus, poisonous jellyfish,

    Brown Recluse spider, Black Widow spider,

    [thing] that lives in a shell…that [stings] you when you pick it up!

    Come to AUSTRALIA! You might ACCIDENTALLY get killed…!

    It’s you [best] vacation yet! Did you get bitten yet!…”

    Meanwhile, I live in an area, where wolf-sized coyotes in my backyard, + Black-widow spiders in my backyard, are a common thing.

    Like the police Sergeant in the TV show, “Hill Street Blues”, says: “Folks, that’s all for our morning meeting.”

    “Let’s ALL be careful, out there.”

    😀

  9. Marisa at 1256:
    “Y’all seeing that César Chávez is getting #MeToo’d?”

    Mr Chavez was vehemently opposed to illegal immigration- they were used as replacement workers and strikebreakers back in the days when he was organizing farm workers.
    Too bad Mr Chavez could not predict how the Oppression Totem Pole would be scrambled 30 years after his death.

  10. Marisa – “Y’all seeing that César Chávez is getting #MeToo’d?”

    Probably because “they” found out he was vehemently opposed to illegal immigration. “He sounds like a right-wing militia nut” a lefty news outlet once fretted.

  11. Y’all seeing that César Chávez is getting #MeToo’d

    If what’s alleged is true, it’s deserved and long overdue.

    It’s true that the timing of the allegation and the motive for its disclosure is suspect. But that doesn’t not make the thing not true, and the thing if true is far more consequential than the motive and timing of bringing it up now.

    There have been plenty of people held up to us as secular saints who have had failings of this type. A good reason to always be skeptical of media hagiography from the beginning.

  12. Uhhh… it’s kinda hard to avoid the idea of supersession in Christianity. It’s a pervasive assumption that goes way back to the grudge matches and eventual separation of the Christian sect. It’s present when Christians compare the “Covenant of Law” with the “Covenant of Grace” and was embedded in the Christian worldview in most places and times. It’s important to remember that the current Jewish-Christian entente is recent and novel – and for that, even more precious and important.

    My impression was always that Nostra Aetate is a landmark/watershed precisely because it explicitly relinquished/disavowed supersessionism – by stating unequivocably that the Jews’ covenant with G-d is still valid. This cut across centuries of Christian demonization of the Jews for rejecting the new covenant, and discounting their allegiance to the Torah.

    The notion that “nobody comes to the Father except through Me” is a doctrine with a similar motive – that was also born from the early conflict with the mother religion. Islam – the other daughter religion – also had to make exclusive claims to differentiate itself from Judaism.

    By contrast, Judaism applies no such strictures, and judges righteous gentiles positively by their actions.

  13. WTXI – Great minds think alike:). (Our nearly identical comments have the same time stamp)

  14. so how is it that except for the cobra, the people in the video are picking these things up safely?

  15. One thing I like about western Washington is pretty much anything that can kill you is a big mammal.

  16. @Chases Eagles:western Washington is pretty much anything that can kill you is a big mammal.

    Well, landslides and lahars and such. We have more than our share of geological hazards. Eastern Washington has meaner snakes but the scorpions are about bee-sting level.

    Out in the Snake River canyon at night the snakes would all congregate along the gravel, keeping warm. The bull snakes would put up a big display, but the rattlesnakes would just keep still and wait for you to get closer. I learned that rattlesnakes will chase a laser pointer.

  17. @Ben David:Uhhh… it’s kinda hard to avoid the idea of supersession in Christianity.

    I think there are lots of Americans, out of a desire to be nice essentially, who would like to believe that the theology of Christianity and the theology of Judaism are more compatible than they really can be made to be. Most American Christians do not know much of the theology of their own communions much less about Judaism, and I think might be excused for their good intentions. I’m not sure how much of a straw man “replacement theology” is; I’ve never met anyone who claimed to believe in it, only those who claim to oppose it.

    I wouldn’t want to say theology is not important. I’m looking for a way to say “people should treat each other decently” without it sounding like theology is unimportant in that but I don’t know how to do this.

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