First off, my kids are not slothful in ways that strike me as unreasonable. When they have stuff to do, they get up and do it. On the days they don't have stuff to do, they're giant beanbags that just kind of camp out all day.

It's totally normal and it matches my memory of being a teenager. What strikes me as funny is how unappealing that seems now, as a grown-ass adult. It's like I've turned into Calvin's dad. I can easily remember the appeal, but I don't connect with it personally at all anymore.

(During the stress of the semester, nothing seems better than spending a day in bed watching TV and reading. But that's driven by exhaustion, which is different than this summertime aimlessness.)

Mossy Character writes: Interesting profile ($) (archive) of Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy's éminence grise.

I suspect this guy alone is much of the reason Ukraine has done so much better than expected: unlike the hangers-on of most rando populist candidates,* Yermak is actually not unqualified for the job - nomenklatura, international law, diplomatic service (Kabul embassy during the war**), successful-ish film production.***
Of course, he's also an overconfident and probably corrupt egomaniac. Like Les Grossman.

*Which Zelenskyy of course was. Like Trump.
**At risk of overreading, that makes him high enough to get an important assignment, but not high enough to get a really plum one; enough status to get good training, but not to get an easy ride. Like Jon Snow.
***A particularly demanding kind of project management: herding financial interests and powerful personalities under time pressure and brutal technical constraints. Like the first hour of Babylon.

Heebie's take: When a military profile holds my attention, you know it's a good read.

1. The Supreme Court Is The Median Voter. I truly can't tell if this is well-researched and accurate, or truthy and glib. (I mean, I haven't gone so far as to click through on any of the sources like some sort of chump.)

I did listen to an interview recently with a pollster who said that the median voter is fiscally liberal and socially conservative. (Both of these in the context of 2025 Democrats and Republicans, not like worldwide standards or 1970 standards or something.) So that primed me to hear what this blogger is claiming.

2. This is so repulsive that I'm hesitant to link it, but you can read the commentary ahead of it, before deciding whether to read the actual thing. It's a very explicit, very horrible, first-person narrative of someone describing being raped by Trump at age 13ish.

I don't know how to evaluate it whatsoever. It's such a terrible allegation that it has to be held to a fairly high standard, and while it's totally plausible, I... I... I am handing it off to you all to finish this sentence.

For my 70th Birthday I Hired an Escort.

Surprisingly relatable. Also, Mitch, Mitch. Read the room, for god's sake.

Mossy Character writes: Last week, some people in Ireland find a literal message in a bottle. It's a distress message from a boat crew who went missing in December 2020. Fine. Except, the boat was fishing in the Pacific: USCG found it damaged and abandoned 1,100km NE of Midway. So:
1. Ockham's razor, it's a prank, in which case fuck you you asshole, that's 10 grieving families; or,
2. This bottle actually drifted from some island (the message mentions an island) in the North Pacific to Ireland in 4.5 years. Is that at all possible? I'm thinking the answer is yes, but you need some mechanism to explain how the bottle jumps from one gyre to another.
Original Irish Reddit post
Malaysian story with more detail
Indonesian story
Taiwanese 2021 incident report

Heebie's take: This is wild, and I'm going with that it's real. Based on scrolling a little through the Reddit user page of the guy that found it, there's nothing that remotely indicates he'd be capable of forging a convincing note in Taiwanese.