Cool now I have two funny comics with this pun (RIP Something Of That Ilk, a vastly underrated web comic that died too soon)

Money laundering. Not even joking. Large denominations of cash is one of the more important ways of transferring value across borders for laundering purposes, which is why the largest number of bills in the most significant international currencies (USD and EUR, primarily) are in denominations mich larger than their day to day use value should suggest.

Yeah. Though not really a fan of the use of ‘simpler’ here, as it has other connotations than simply ‘less syntactically complex’ which is really what we’re seeing. In many very real ways, the fragmented phrasing etc of less formalised forms of language are structurally more complex than regular written forms.

I’m surprised that what seems to me to be the most obvious hypothesis isn’t covered. Until very recently, historically speaking, written and spoken language have been very clearly separated forms of language use.

With the advent of the internet, instant messaging, social media etc, the distinction has been gradually blurring in the sense that written language is being used more and more frequently for what would previously have been considered ‘spoken uses’.

We know spoken language mostly consists of shorter fragmented phrases compared to the longer complete sentences of the written word. It should not be surprising that as writing is increasingly used for ‘written speech’, regular writing will be influenced to move in the direction of the shorter phrasing of spoken language while otherwise maintaining the syntax and grammar rules of written language forms.

Always worth keeping in mind that the first rule of power is that it never surrenders itself willingly.

In this case, what that means is thatthe courts - supreme or not - will only go along with Trump’s power grab for as long as the belief that it furthers their own power prevails. And that belief is cracking.

It’s cracking way too late to stop the power grab from progressing further, but still.

Israel doesn’t give two shits about the hostages beyond their propaganda value. That much has been obvious since before day one to anyone willing to actually believe their eyes and ears.