Yesterday made things really clear.



I believe the filibuster has to go. Short thread explaining why:

So there's a class of puzzles called "river crossing puzzles" which involve having to cross a river on a boat/bridge containing some set of individuals/items with restrictions on which ones can be on the boat/left on each shore, right?

and the most common subclass of these problems is the one where you have 3 items/animals to cross with.
This is alternatively called the "fox, goose, and bag of beans" or "wolf, goat, and cabbage" puzzle.

the idea is that your boat can only carry one item at a time, but if you leave the wolf/fox unattended with the goat/goose, the wolf/fox will eat the goat/goose.
and similarly, the goose/goat will eat the beans/cabbage if left alone

so you have to set up a set of actions that never leaves either side of the river in one of the lose-states.

the solution to this variant being:
1. take the goat/goose over
2. return empty
3. take the wolf/fox over
4. return with the goat/goose
5. take the cabbage/beans over
6. return empty
7. take the goat/goose over

READ AND RETWEET AS THOUGH THE LIFE OF YOUR NATION DEPENDS ON IT. WHICH IT DOES. Citizens, I am going to add to the picture with more information. I am not going to let this pass while keeping information to myself. I am going to walk you through 2 narratives.

A printing shop in Michigan prints ballots for Delaware County, Pennsylvania and as Lancashire County, Pennsylvania (this is normal). But along with the ballots it prints on contract and delivers to those counties, it prints some ballots that get diverted to Bethpage, New York.

There, a boiler room of folks fill in "Biden" (often without even voting downballot). The ballots (which are forensically legitimate, given that they come from the same print shop as the good ballots, ) then get trucked into Pennsylvania and mailed. Hundreds of thousands.

We have all of that documented. Texts, statements, affidavits, everything.

We also know that this same ballot printing company (and other firms in the same family) also print for Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia.

Rani Chennamma of Kittur was one of the first women rulers of India who fought against the might of the British Empire in 1824. Rani Chennamma was born in 1778 in a small village of Kakati in Belgaon distt of the State of Karnataka.

She was born into the Lingayat Community to a man named Dhulappa Desai. From a very young age she was trained in horse riding,sword fighting, archery and diplomacy. At a very young age of 15 yrs, she was married to the King of Kittur and became the Queen of Kittur.

It is said that King of Kittur Mallasarja was once moving around in the neighbouring kingdoms to find support to fight Tipu Sultan. It is then, when he came across Chennamma and he immediately got attracted to her sheer confidence and bravery.

Rani Chennamma and King Mallasarja had a son together who died very soon after the death of King Mallasarja in 1816. As the Queen of Kittur, Rani Chennamma immediately adopted Shivalingappa as her son and declared him the heir to the throne of Kittur.

This did not go well with the British East India Company who was enforcing the Doctrine of Lapse those days, according to which the adopted children of the Indian rulers were not allowed to become their heirs and if the native rulers did not have children of their own, their...

शमशान में जब महर्षि दधीचि के मांसपिंड का दाह संस्कार हो रहा था तो उनकी पत्नी अपने पति का वियोग सहन नहीं कर पायी और पास में ही स्थित विशाल पीपल वृक्ष के कोटर में अपने तीन वर्ष के बालक को रख के स्वयं चिता पे बैठ कर सती हो गयी ।इस प्रकार ऋषी दधीचि और उनकी पत्नी की मुक्ति हो गयी।

परन्तु पीपल के कोटर में रखा बालक भूख प्यास से तड़पने लगा। जब कुछ नहीं मिला तो वो कोटर में पड़े पीपल के गोदों (फल) को खाकर बड़ा होने लगा। कालान्तर में पीपल के फलों और पत्तों को खाकर बालक का जीवन किसी प्रकार सुरक्षित रहा।

एक दिन देवर्षि नारद वहां से गुजर रहे थे ।नारद ने पीपल के कोटर में बालक को देख कर उसका परिचय मांगा -
नारद बोले - बालक तुम कौन हो?
बालक - यही तो मैं भी जानना चहता हूँ ।
नारद - तुम्हारे जनक कौन हैं?
बालक - यही तो मैं भी जानना चाहता हूँ ।

तब नारद ने आँखें बन्द कर ध्यान लगाया ।

तत्पश्चात आश्चर्यचकित हो कर बालक को बताया कि 'हे बालक! तुम महान दानी महर्षि दधीचि के पुत्र हो । तुम्हारे पिता की अस्थियों का वज्रास्त्र बनाकर ही देवताओं ने असुरों पर विजय पायी थी।तुम्हारे पिता की मृत्यु मात्र 31 वर्ष की वय में ही हो गयी थी'।

बालक - मेरे पिता की अकाल मृत्यु का क्या कारण था?
नारद - तुम्हारे पिता पर शनिदेव की महादशा थी।
बालक - मेरे उपर आयी विपत्ति का कारण क्या था?
नारद - शनिदेव की महादशा।
इतना बताकर देवर्षि नारद ने पीपल के पत्तों और गोदों को खाकर बड़े हुए उस बालक का नाम पिप्पलाद रखा और उसे दीक्षित किया।

Ok, I'll hop on this Elizabeth Warren/Native American testing bandwagon (gently and non-politically).

I've been a @23andMe customer for a while, and have followed their ancestry updates closely.

All is more or less as expected....except for this bit about Native American.

The family is almost completely composed of Spanish peasants (from various regions) who emigrated, along with a massive wave in the late 19th-cent./early 20th-cent., to Cuba back when it was a booming economy (richer than Spain's) and worth emigrating to (Communism killed that).

Also, the native population of Cuba was annihilated early on---was the first place the Spanish colonized after all. Having a native background in Cuba would be like having the same in, say, Massachusetts, particularly if you're (say) mostly Irish. Just really, really unlikely.

(Note: the North African/Arab background is less mysterious. The Iberian peninsula was part of the Muslim world for centuries. It would be odd *not* to have some Arab/Middle Eastern background coming from Spain. Given the family is mostly from Northern Spain, it's small though.)

I have a Spanish passport, have been back to the ancestral villages in Spain, seen the church where my grandmother was baptized, my grandfather told me stories about growing up as the child of Spanish colonists in rural Cuba. The native bit just clashes with all the family lore.