Don Dechert

@dondechert.bsky.social

4777 Followers 12949 Following

Lawyer, veteran. Ex-baby historian, current litigator, lapsed social scientist, still playing TTRPGs. Unabashedly pro-cat because cats are awesome. Various thoughts, some well articulated in 🇺🇲/🇩🇪. 📍Chicago, IL, Vereinigte Staaten, Terra

Niccolo Machiavelli. My copy of The Prince has this picture on the cover.

We are looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran,” an officer in US Central Command’s intelligence branch wrote in a message sent Wednesday to a broad group of military analysts, according to a source familiar with the message. A second source also said that a senior US military officer sent the message last week soliciting new ideas for how to deal with Iran.

Cover of Shadowrun for Sega Genesis. It is the same art as Shadowrun 2nd ed, and the game and stata were based off Shadowrun 2nd ed. The art is by Larry Elmore and depicts an elf decker (Dodger), a female mage (Sally Tsung), and a street samuri (Ghost) in the middle of a combat/hacking/doing magic. Iconic piece of art.

Tortie kitty in her chair. Looking at askance at the camera.

Screenshot of VHS of Highlander 2 as "the smartest sci-fi thriller since Blade Runner."

Far Side Cartoon. Caption: Testifying before a Senate subcommittee, the Hardy Boys crack the Iran-Contra Scandal.

Picture is dudes in suits, who are senators, and the Hardy Boys at a table, with TV cameraman focusing on the Hardy Boys. One is testifying, saying "Well sir, at the time, me and my brother were trying to solve the secret of Pirate's Cove. We had no idea where the whole thing would lead."

Screenshot of voicemaila, each is 17sec and related to a scam.

Radarkarte vom jetztigen Wetter. Es gibt ja Sturme um und auf Chicago. Luftqualität ist aber gut.

Score App showing Germany (Die Mannschaft!!) vs Paraguay.

Yes, I'm rooting for Germany.

Arman, an Afghan cookbook by Mirriam Seddiq. It was a Kickstarter.

Da Pope!

Results of quiz - photo 1.

Vol. 1-3 of the collected 40th Anniversary Terminator comic stories. Probably taken ~2 years to get via Kickstarter. Picked then up because I ended up backing the Terminator RPG which incorporated a lot of the comics' ideas into the game and antagonists.

A tortie cat sitting in her (really my) chair. I think this picture is mid-cleaning, as she has this "how dare you interrupt me, you papparazi" look on her face.

A skeet showing the trending topics on Bluesky as (1) Philadelphia Sports and (2) Socialism and asserting this place [Bluesky] has the juice.

The reply quips "Welcome to Bluesky. Here is your copy of the Communist Manifesto and Phillies Seasons tickets for some reason."

Part of Aff where grok gov was used to deploy 2,000+ munitions at 2,000 different targets (some targets hit multiple times), and consumed 2B tokens, equating to 2B uses(?) of grok gov to do so.

My name showing that Gemini says someone with my name played for the NY Giants in the 1950s.

7.

The United States of America undertakes to terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the United Nations Security Council resolutions, IAEA Board of Governors resolutions and all unilateral U.S. sanctions, primary and secondary, in an agreed upon schedule as part of the final Deal. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America acknowledge the critical importance of the sanctions termination issue above mentioned and express their intentions to immediately address these issues in the negotiations in order to achieve mutual agreement on them.

Left-out Left

I actually think this label is bogus, but what one gets in the black box Punnit square.

A bookshelf with lots of books. One shelf is Battletech. Another is a lot of Savage Worlds. Peeking out from the bottom is more stuff, including Delta Green in the bottom right corner.

My Unc score. Cargo shorts are useful as I have a lot in my pockets.

The Black Path by Emil Bulls

I joke that we don't need AI music; we have Emil Bulls, which is slightly unfair, but sometimes none of it makes all that much sense. It's probably one of their heaviest albums, but "End All Wars", "Close to the Wind", "Worlds Apart" are real bangers, in my opinion.

Cat has a side quest meme picture, with a cat on a sidewalk spotlit and looking like a quest giver in a RPG.

Oakley Sonnenbrille von https://www.oakley.com/en-us/product/W0OO9208?variant=888392280022

Flag of Chicago. I saw a shirt where the stars were the Cameron stars of Star League, same Chicago flag otherwise.

A bio that reads "I use Blue Sky to get news in politics, sports, and technology so I can broaden my knowledge without being bothered by ads."

Seeing it in a lot of scam(?) bot(?) accounts.

Said red velvet donut from Stan's Donuts. I'm sure it is tasty and lacks nutrituous value, but it looks good and tasty. Time for second breakfast, I guess.

Joint targeting cycle graphic. From JP 3-60.

Cover of GI Joe #29. Destro, from Cobra, is firing dual linked machine guns at a plate of armor held by Roadblock who is using the plate of armor to protect himself and Duke from being turned into paint by vehicular machine guns.

Astonishingly, this scene does actually happen in the pages of the comic.

Cover of Batman comic that was 20 cents in 197X. The Shadow is pointing automatics at Batman who is standing in a train yard and wondering what's going on. The Shadow is menacing over a train(!) and Batman like it's attack of the fifty foot gunman. Some poor boxcar has the tagline "The Batman asks 'Wgo knows what evil–‐?' Only The Shadow knows" painted on it.

Compendium 1 of GI Joe collecting issues 1-50 of Larry Hama's run on GI Joe for Marvel. Please note that this compendium is as thick as my ring finger is long.

Final score, Cubs 10, White Sox (boo, hiss) 5.

Said cat. Tortie cat taking up space on a sofa. To be fair, the blankets cover up a lot of clawings of said sofa.

Kitty showing emotion at being photographed, sitting in what was formerly an office chair of mine. Nearby is a cat tree from which she can survey her domain, look down on things, and otherwise hold court.

Brandenburger Tor circa 2009. Ich war jünger dann.

Sample from my running "Books I want" with ones acquired stricken out.

Tortie cat in an office chair. Nearby is a cat tree/tower arrangement. In the corner is a multi-shelf case with movies on DVD & Bluray.

Kitty is in the middle of self-care beautification and seems annoyed at having to deign to be photographed. At some point, the self-care will be completed, and she'll go back tp being her personably, purring self.

Picture of me, my mother, and my son (her grandson); mom was in memor, care at the time and was slipping and needed help, but was still mobile and communicating, albeit about delusions.

Steak n' Shake advert saying "You had me at tallow" with a woman looking like an extra from Happy Days wearing vintage (?) clothing eating a french fry. Steak n'Shake had advertised that they are using beef tallow in their friers.

Box art of Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego, made in 1986. It's a picture of an almost noire-ish scene with Carmen packing a suitcase in a flophouse motel and holding a snub-nose revolver as a silhoutte in trench coat & PI looking hand opens the door. Carmen is dressed with a red dress, some sort of partial fur coat thing, and a hat that is basically a femm fatale ensemble, keeping with the noire aesthetic.

The game was not that, instead it was problem solving and using US geographic and trivia knowledge to chase bad guys and deduce who they were & get warrants. Spawned a bunch of other games a TV show, a cartoon, and ia apparently still available.

https://www.hotplate.com/aficionadough 's page where they answer various questions as a micro-bakery (?) based in the Evanston Farmer's Market (which is a suburb of Chicago that blends in to northern Chicago). The site claims to have various sourdough starters, some of which are hundreds of years old.

A picture of garbage in bins, with MRE boxes next to the bins. A person is out of frame in the Army PT uniform. There is a fire extinguisher and a water fountain with the bottle fill feature also in the picture. The floor looks clean, but I wouldn't eat off it.

Jabberjaw & Buford and their Space Race spaceship, which is an open top spaceship that had a treadmill that makes the spaceship go faster...somehow. Jabberjab is the shark who talks (& can't shut up) and tells lots of bad puns and jokes. Buford is a dog. The whole Space Race idea is pretty bonkers upon reflection.

Space Race image. It's of various Hanna Barbera characters in open-top space ships doing their wacky races thing, but IN SPACE. It ran in the 80s and made next to no sense, but it's racing IN SPACE!

Peanut M&Ms with a best by date of 02/2020. Possibly eaten before seeing the date. On a martial occasion.

Lung.org's scorecard. It rates it down to the County, in this case Cook County, IL where Chicago and its major suburbs are. Here Ozone is a F and 24-hour particle pollution is a D. It is marked as Fail.

I live in one of suburbs of Cook County and waa mildly surprised.

Far Side: where the Hardy Boys crack Iran-Contra. Picture of a Far Side Comic where the Hardy Boys are testifying before a Senate sub-committee that cracks the whole Iran-Contra. One of the Hardy Boys is saying "Well, at the time, me and my brother were trying to solve the secret of Pirates' Cove. We had no idea where the whole thing would lead."

It's one of my favorite Far Side strips.

The litigation continued but became a ghost ship of a case after Mr. Trump replaced it with his own regulation. In 2022, this time following normal procedures, the Supreme Court concluded that the Clean Air Act did not authorize the E.P.A. to issue sweeping regulations across the power sector to address climate change.
Since then, even as the court’s approval ratings dropped, applications like the one it confronted a decade ago have proliferated, swamping the court’s ordinary work.
This is partly a consequence of a gridlocked Congress and presidents willing to push the boundaries of executive power, particularly Mr. Trump.
But it is also the result of the justices’ decision to entertain emergency requests like the one in 2016, warping procedures that had developed over centuries.

He (Justice Breyer) skipped over the question of whether the plan was lawful, asking only: Why the rush? The circuit court had already set a date to hear the case in June. The first deadline for power plants to reduce their emissions was six years away; full compliance was not required until 2030. That was plenty of time for the case to play out through the legal system.
The chief wrote right back the next day sounding irritated and blunt.
Speed was vital, he said, because environmental regulation was going to be very expensive for states and the power industry. The sums involved could approach $480 billion, he asserted, and industry groups would have to start preparations immediately.
“Without a stay of the E.P.A.’s rule, both the states and private industry will suffer irreparable harm from a rule that is — in my view — highly unlikely to survive,” he wrote. He was predicting the ultimate outcome of a case that had barely begun to be litigated.

It was initially hard to tell how the vote would fall, people familiar with the discussions said. The Supreme Court felt less predictable back then, more alive with debate. The court was technically divided 5 to 4 between justices appointed by Republicans and Democrats, but Justice Kennedy, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, was a true swing vote, “a persuadable person,” as one of those people put it. The term before, he had written the majority opinion to establish a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
(Yep, burnish Kennedy's reputation)

Mr. Obama had been one of just 22 senators to vote against Chief Justice Roberts’s confirmation in 2005, saying that the nominee had “far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak.” Four years later, the two men managed to botch the simple task of reciting the presidential oath at Mr. Obama’s first inauguration.
(In reality, botched by John Roberts)

The court’s liberals pushed back, but compared with their recent slashing dissents, they were not especially forceful, mostly confining their arguments to procedures and timing.

In the Trump era, he and the other conservative justices have repeatedly empowered the president through their shadow docket rulings. By contrast, the papers reveal a court wielding those same powers to block Mr. Obama. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. warned that if the court failed to stop the president, its own “institutional legitimacy” would be threatened.

public, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has cultivated a reputation for care and caution. The papers reveal a different side of him. At a critical moment for the country and the court, the papers show, he acted as a bulldozer in pushing to stop Mr. Obama’s plan to address the global climate crisis.
When colleagues warned the chief justice that he was proposing an unprecedented move, he was dismissive. “I recognize that the posture of this stay request is not typical,” he wrote. But he argued that the Obama plan, which aimed to regulate coal-fired plants, was “the most expensive regulation ever imposed on the power sector,” and too big, costly and consequential for to act.

It turned out that the answer was still Patel. He had not been fired. The access problem, two people familiar with the matter said, appears to have been a technical error, and it was quickly resolved. “It was all ultimately bullshit,” one FBI official told me.

The Downy Ball, a plastic contraption to go in with your clothes in the washing machine and dispense fabric softener during the wash.

A rug depicting Neuschwanstein with a border saying "Army Strong" and the seals of the US Army, US Army Reserves, and Army National Guard.

Not bad but Neuschwanstein has zero to do with the Army Reserve.

A tortie cast sits perched on one of those coich cushion back rest thing up against the wall. Cat is looking to camera wondering what human is up to and if human got her good side. (Cat yawned after photo was taken).

Of note is a throw rug of Neuschwanstein (the Bavaria castle Disney's modeled on) that has the Army Reserve (?!?) symbol on it (it's bizarre but the first piece of Army Reserve swag I ever received).

Final score from a site sort one's autism(?) and German-ness(?). I got 59% German, 40% autism. 🤷‍♂️

I guess I feel unsurprised, given that I am a German speaker, but I'm also a lawyer and few of the questions for rules hit differently. Hence why there needs to be a third category.