Unstoppable (in group play).
The UCL wraps up pool play today. Yesterday Liverpool ended their group with a perfect record and sent AC Milan completely out of all European competition. Today has even more drama in store than yesterday. Mainly because there was very little drama yesterday at all. Ohio State got their defensive coordinator, so hopefully that woeful secondary will get it together. And Serena is out of the Aussie Open, but Joker is playing. I wonder if they’re planning on airing the tournament in the prison covid camps for the inmates guests. Guess we’ll find out next month. And that’s sports.
Basinger
Roman poet Horace was born on this day. How hard was it to be a Roman poet? Didn’t most of the nouns rhyme anyway depending on gender used? Same with verbs and tenses for that matter. Sounds like an easy gig. Anyway, he shares it with Mary, Queen of Scots, inventor Eli Whitney, Mexican painter Diego Rivera, Rat Pack member Sammy Davis Jr., actor Max Schell, comedian Flip Wilson, drummer Bobby Elliott, singer and public masturbator Jim Morrison, comedic genius Sam Kinison, actress Kim Basinger, actress Teri Hatcher, singer Sinead O’Connor, pitcher Mike Mussina, and MMA fighters Frank Shamrock.
Right, now on to…the links!
The people selling the drug says you need the drug. Meanwhile research is showing most everybody will do well without any form of the drug at all against the current variant. But that’s not gonna get nearly as much press since we’re living in a fascist nation where the government and a private business collude to try and run your fucking lives.
“one, two three, four, FIF!”
Good. They all should. In fact, everybody from the private sector called before the House in a fishing expedition should, regardless of party, politics, or whatever other reason they’re called. Because the entire exercise is bullshit. Oversight? My fucking ass.
Damn, this is some grim news. Good thing I don’t live in a major city. Good luck, those who do. Get a gun and arm yourselves.
The progressives ain’t gonna like this. Not that it’ll matter. The upcoming rulings from this session will cause many of them to ignore the findings and take remedies into their own hands. Get a gun and arm yourselves.
Two shithead scumbags
I’m gonna paraphrase what he’s really thinking: “After his brother the governor resigned in shame, he was no longer of use to us so we decided to finally fire him for all the shit we knew about for years but did fuck all about because he was useful.” Or something like that, but with better grammar.
“Democracy Dies In Darkness”, my ass. Not that this should surprise anybody. The media have stated their allegiances quite clearly for decades.
This shitshow is almost done. If any of you haven’t payed attention, that’s too bad. It has been freaking hilarious.
Yeah, let’s look into the causes, shall we? Oh wait, the people releasing the study are the ones who caused it all along. “Pandemic hardships”? Yeah, Mr Surgeon General…you fuckheads caused all of them.
These amounts are entering the realm of absurdity. Oh well, lawyers gonna lawyer.
BONUS LATE LINK: I can’t wait to see how this ends when schools come back after the winter break. Reminder: there’s a section of the California constitution that guarantees all children a free public education. And that was upheld by a state SC ruling in the last 50 years.
Some of you will like this song. And a handful will probably hate it. I’m in the camp with the former.
Now go have a great Wednesday, friends!
Poor Joe, everybody is always picking on him.
Joe doesn’t know if anyone is picking on him unless it results in him not getting his pudding or ice cream… He is basically cannon fodder for the evil fucks really pulling the strings.
Those damn Republican nominated judges always pouncing on him.
“ Two vaccine doses may not provide sufficient protection against Omicron coronavirus variant, but protection improves with three doses, Pfizer says”
Improves… there’s a strong word
It’s also a word they can’t prove…otherwise they would release the actual data.*
*Note: that data does not exist.
At this point it is all actual misinformation that the powers that be tell us is actual infomration as they silence anyone that points that out by claiming those people are the ones doing misinformation…
Fucking clown show.
You know… if you die from heart conditions, you can’t get the ‘vid.
/taps nose
The first taste is always free.
It would be great to know which booster the second case detected in the US had.
“The people selling the drug says you need the drug. Meanwhile research is showing most everybody will do well without any form of the drug at all against the current variant. But that’s not gonna get nearly as much press since we’re living in a fascist nation where the government and a private business collude to try and run your fucking lives.”
COMPLY CITIZEN!
The Kung Flu has been one of the fastest and biggest transfers of wealth from the middle class and small businesses to the top 0.01% and the mega corps that all side with the globalist movement.
And they have no intent on giving up on the whole lockdown and mandate shit until the people decide they would rather kill our credentialed elite class off, at whatever cost, than keep letting them do the shit they are doing to us.
I’m not going to cry when the mob starts attacking the actual criminals.
I’m going to actively cheer them on.
Doing right ain’t got no end.
https://mobile.twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1468291374114119687
Oh it most certainly does.
⚰️
Kim Basinger is 68?
Wow
Yeah, she’s supposed to stay 26 forever, just like me.
The panel voted unanimously this month to refer former Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark to his previous employer for criminal contempt of Congress after he invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.
Say what?
“Those rights aren’t for you, asshole. They’re just for people we like.”
“The right to remain silent doesn’t mean you have the right not to be prosecuted for remaining silent.”
-Ken White, probably.
What is it with bloggers who start writing good shit, get popular, then jump off the rails screaming obscenities on the way down?
I don’t know that it’s them.
I started reading that blog in the aftermath of Oatmeal v. Funnyjunk.
It appealed to me because it partially agreed with my worldview, but mainly because I (like too many people) was a sucker for the ingroup bonding technique of “shitting on people I don’t like and think deserve to be shat on” (see also: Prenda Law). But being hateful for a (self-) righteous cause doesn’t change the fact that your whole schtick is being hateful. Eventually I grew out of that thrill. I think Patrick did too. Grady never did.
I still write good shit, 6000 posts in, but I still haven’t gotten popular. 🙁
It’s not about the quality of your work, it’s about the quality of your marketting.
“I don’t want you to take this personally…”
/Heard that before
You need more sex, drugs, and rock & roll in your pieces then…
Probably.
He went full retard.
American: Is it true your constitution guarantees the freedom of speech?
Soviet: Yes, but your constitution guarantees freedom after speech.
“Like with a cloth?”
The Fifth Amendment is criminal contempt now?
We really are down the rabbit hole.
I want to say we are officially a banana republic, but it actually seems even worse than that.
We don’t even have the bananas.
https://youtu.be/BSBTg1VApkI
I did not know that DoctorDonna had her own show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QqkrIDeTeA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGldNpngDws
When Obama told us he planned to fundamentally change America, he meant it. Idiots thought he planned to change things for the better because of the mention of hope. Others joked that he meant he would leave everyone hoping that they would have enough change in their pockets left to pay for the basics. The reality is that the biggest and most fundamental change he actually pursued was placing politically connected partisans in charge of every three letter agency – most importantly in the Justice & Intelligence ones which would then end up being run in the most partisan manner possible – in the country, thus completely subsuming the massive bureaucratic machine to the lefts globalist agenda and making them beholden to the democrat party’s version of that agenda (team red has/had their own globalist agenda but they were cock smacked into irrelevancy), and in the process creating a system that had different rules for different people, depending on what helped the globalists on the left and their agenda.
Their problem was that the American people fucked up the election they thought they had rigged for their candidate – Clinton – in 2016, and put Trump in charge. Being a loose cannon (they had nothing to control him and he was not part of their globalist cabal that is selling us all out to China) he became an existential threat to that movement and those people. He was finally taken down by 365/24/7 bullshit lies and negative coverage by a corrupt media and attack after attack by the corrupt bureaucratic machine that STILL required a fortified election to deny the American people their say and desire to stop/reverse the sellout our credentialed elite class has been doing to them.
When Obama told us he planned to fundamentally change America, he meant it.
Yes, and as you note, how he meant it was very important. Fundamental transformation is a Marxist euphemism for their revolution/takeover of the institutions of power. What we are experiencing today, from the weaponize bureaucracy, to the legislating from the executive, to the corporate fascism, to the aggressive censorship, to the final bald-faced corruption of the education system, to the Pravda style media industry, to the coordination via constellations of non-profits, it was all finally enabled by this fundamental transformation. 100 years of preparation culminated in fundamental transformation, and although there is plenty of blame to be heaped on the people who flipped the final switch, the lion’s share belongs on the shoulders of the people who were allowed to wire up the entire system for decades.
The Bush’s bear a large part of the blame. I would venture that they’re cheering it on in secret.
Milbank said Forge.ai’s data showed the media was treating Biden worse than it had Donald Trump.
‘My colleagues in the media are serving as accessories to the murder of democracy,’ he wrote.
He got that part right, anyway.
I keep waiting for democracy to die, but it just won’t happen.
What most people unfamiliar with the basics of AI don’t understand about AI is that it is only as smart or unpartisan as the people that write it and give it its instructions of what to do. I can quickly create a simple AI program, or invest a shit-ton of time writing a sophisticated neural network AI program, either of which will tell you Biden is actually the smartest guy in the universe by looking at news coverage (or whatever criteria you tell me to). All I need to do is to tell the AI to look at the things that will convince people it is actually doing research and running some complex algorithm to determine the end result, but then ignore all that shit, and simply say what I want it to say. Shit all I need to do is tell the AI to consider anyone picking on their slanted coverage of Biden for what it is to see that as negative, and presto: Biden has negative coverage!
These people are counting on most consumers of their propaganda masquerading as news being products of public schooling, and thus, being too stupid and lacking in critical thinking skills to see through their bullshit, to peddle this sort of idiocy.
Wait, they used an “AI” to determine Biden was being treated badly?
There are so many layers of horseshit to that.
Yes, they used the cover of an AI to provide them with “unbiased data produced by analysis” to inoculate themselves from the claim they are biased lying fucks that have been covering for the cabal pulling that poor demented idiot’s strings.
SEE! WE ARE NOT A BUNCH OF PARTISAN LYING HACKS! WE ARE THOUGH ON BIDEN! SCIENCE!!
/lying sacks of shit
AI these days boils down to “really sophisticated pattern matching.” It can only spot what it has been trained to see. If you train it that shit is really shinola…
I am certain this was not any sort of AI trained to do shit. Just some bullshit program they claimed was AI that like climate models produced the expected results.
AI means correlation==causation.
Dumb statistics.
It can only spot what it has been trained to see
And even then, there are confounding factors that make it more of an art than a science.
“AI says” should be an enormous red flag that somebody is likely talking out their ass.
They have experience getting the answer they want with climate models, budget projections, …
“They’re real, and they’re spectacular.”
The Surgeon General looks like he too has been a victim of the pandemic shut down. Biden’s choices for VP and cabinet members does hit all the diversity and inclusive markers though. He can’t be sued by ADA.
?
San Siro was going nuts after that first goal. Watching them go from that to the mood at the end was just fantastic.
Group G will be interesting today – the last could be first and all that.
I guess so…but really no one cares about group G.
Only real drama left is Villareal vs. Atalanta and seeing if Bayern can send Barcelona to Europa (assuming Benfica win).
Group G has three American national team players – that makes it of interest. Oh, you mean it isn’t dominated by one of the BIG clubs like most every other group (and is Ajax really that good or has that group just kinda stunk?).
Can confirm. Don’t care.
Villareal vs. Atalanta
Were you having a stroke when you typed this? //jk
I added a bonus link that y’all will get a kick out of. Don’t forget to scroll back up and take a look.
Doesn’t like my ad blocker. 🙁
No biggie, they’ll get a free quality education on what happens to you if you disobey your betters.
concluding nearly seven months of work that was set against the backdrop of pressure from progressives to expand the number of seats on the court.
“You have been told what the conclusion should be. Now get in there and fabricate a justification.”
When do all the show trials start for those assisting in breaking the murder records? Mr Smollett gets his day in court, Riddenhouse proves his innocence, and yet thousands of other wannabees are left in the shadows.
Sweet summer Child….
These people are just lashing out after decades of being marginalized and denied their due equity, Fourscore, so don’t you dare blame them for the bodycount!
So what Sloop is saying is to keep your powder dry…
Will there be night classes for those interested in learning to tie knots and nooses?
Most of us on this board learned those lessons when we were tads.
http://boisdejustice.com/Drawings/Drawings.html
I’m not the biggest Pixies fan but you found my favorite track. Well done!
*clicks like button*
That is a fine tune.
Love Pixies and yes, one of their better tracks.
Meanwhile, down at the panic factory
Videos of reviewers and drivers accessing the game while in motion have popped up on YouTube and were noticed by the New York Times this week. While gaming in Teslas isn’t new, (the company started adding arcade-style games back in 2019) doing so while the vehicles are out of park is.
According to the Times, that particular feature was shipped over the summer as part of an over-the-air update. The update included three new games—Solitaire, Sky Force Reloaded, and The Battle of Polytopia: Moonrise—all of which are allegedly playable while driving. When these games are launched, the user is shown a warning saying the game should only be played by the passenger. There is nothing currently stopping the driver from simply lying and starting up the game regardless, according to the report.
Those crazy kids are all driving around on autopilot, playing video games!!
“There is nothing stopping the driver from lying “
OMG
Coming soon, the Tesla lie detector app.
This guy is fucking nuts – and a U.S. Senator.
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/roger-wicker-suggests-ending-humanity/
JFC
And I thought we ruled out first strike nuclear actions a long time ago.
We ruled out compulsory medical treatments too – seems they are all back on the table.
https://ussanews.com/forget-the-nuremberg-code-eu-chief-says-its-time-to-consider-mandatory-jabs/
Something something through the looking glass.
If I told you in December 2019 that Australia would have concentration camps, the EU would be agitating for abandoning the Nuremberg Code, the President had issued Executive Orders requiring most companies to force experimental medical injections on their employees, people in many jurisdictions are being forced to carry around papers attesting to their vaccination status in order to live life in the town square, and it would all happen to either the ignorance or the fawning adoration of the masses, you would think me insane.
Sometimes I find myself needing to reflect back on the speed and magnitude of the changes, because it’s very easy to get caught up in the latest controversy. Even if we go nowhere from here, the world has still gone mad.
I want to be a judge when the Re-education programs start. I have my own ideas.
I often really fucking piss off people peddling the call to arms to enact a fairer system of government that I am all for that as long as I get to be the one deciding and telling people what is fair and how to go about making it happen. Otherwise they can all kiss my ass.
My wife works for the State, so I’m thinking I can get a gig as a Capo when they send me to the camps.
I am all for making sure the other side knows that when push comes to shove, they are going to regret it, and to do so, nothing, including a holocaust war, should be on the table when dealing with bad actors. This all could be nothing but that kind of posturing, although team blue globalists have not been willing to do this sort of shit in the past. But it is worrisome that team Biden now needs to do this sort of posturing, because based on past history of drawing lines in the sand and then doing shit after the line is crossed (see Obama), it leaves me worried that the idiots pulling this man’s strings will when the line is crossed feel compelled to act though, and actually do something seriously stupid like this.
Sounded to me like the DoD just wanted a Senator to say it to the press rather than a general saying it.
Yup.
I don’t know, I think it’s a stupid tactic to explicitly tell an opponent that no matter what, here is the limit of our response and all these other things are off the table.
Here is a list of businesses I don’t want hijacked, Mr Putin. Read and heed. If you (Russia) continues to shut down our electrical grid I’m going to get mad, stomp my feet, call you bad names and pout. Let that be a warning.
The hostile posture against Russia is one of, if not the stupidest and most self-defeating foreign policy position of the current pretend administration and this stupid cunte isn’t helping.
Anything you say can and will be used against you.
Who wouldn’t want to stop by for a casual chat?
I always make it my purpose in life to approach the Queen’s Cowboys so that they will arrest me last. I’m a sensible man!
But not… violent video games right?
https://www.rt.com/uk/542484-scotland-covid-tests-omicron/
Get fucked, you lunatic.
What country hasn’t gone batshit?
A bunch of African ones that have bigger fish to fry?
Atlantis?
Yeah, but their economy’s under water.
It’s a bit much, but at least she is acknowledging the only way to know you aren’t a dirty spreader is to get tested.
I forget who, but they make a decent argument on scaling rapid tests. Of course they think the government should provide them for free, but really if the FDA didn’t suck we should have a decent amount of competitors by now that would offer cheaper options. Most people probably don’t want to kill grandma, and would voluntarily take a rapid test before visiting if there was any reason that they weren’t feeling well AND didn’t have to report the result to a government agency.
There’s also the issue with the accuracy of at home tests. After watching people fail to follow simple directions for almost anything, you think there’s not a high error rate with the at home tests?
Their pretty simple…but you’re right that most people are also less than simple.
When I was a much younger lad, one of the local radio stations would do whole bits on strange news stories and headlines. The one that I remember the most was the woman who was suing a company that made contraceptive jelly. In the story, she said she was putting the jelly between her toes.
She must have a weird sex life.
Don’t judge someone until you walk a mile in their shoes.
/hands Sean a pair of dripping shoes
I’m not going to be fair, I’m just going to be judgemental.
I ain’t got the time for that many miles.
This testing should be done before
No.
Get fucked, you lunatic.
Indeed.
Apparently, one of the new Twatter CEO’s first acts was to fix it so I can’t see twatter links.
#NOTALLBAD
WAR ON CHRISTMAS!
Well, Fox News are a bunch of Nazis, so it’s all good.
Is it safe to say the tests are taxpayer funded and she owns stock in the company that makes them?
Safe in this tiny corner.
Two vaccine doses may not provide sufficient protection against Omicron coronavirus variant, but protection improves with three doses, Pfizer says
It might have something to do with the fact that this is not a vaccine and this “vaccine” technology has always failed, disastrously. Take your scareiant and shove it up your ass.
“Given that the Select Committee’s demand for documents is overbroad, overreaching, and far too wide-ranging to be deemed anything other than a fishing expedition, Mr. Stone has a constitutional right to decline to respond,” wrote his attorney, Grant Smith. “Indeed, the Select Committee seeks an imprecise and undefined category of ‘documents and communications concerning’ a broad range of constitutionally protected political activity.”
Was he wearing a powdered wig and breeches when he wrote that?
“Given that the Select Committee’s demand for documents is overbroad, overreaching, and far too wide-ranging to be deemed anything other than a fishing expedition, Mr. Stone has a constitutional right to decline to respond,” wrote his attorney, Grant Smith. “Indeed, the Select Committee seeks an imprecise and undefined category of ‘documents and communications concerning’ a broad range of constitutionally protected political activity.”
Invoking constitutional rights means you are guilty. ///CNN
CNN and a sitting Congress-critter. I pay way too much attention to this and I blame Glibs! It’s not even my country! I need an intervention.
Funnily enough I’m going to re-up my Driver’s license and Med card on Thursday. They will seize both of them. Problem being I need my med card for the second dose of poison. Replacement documents won’t arrive for weeks. Square that circle, assholes.
“It’s terrible to every morning get up and have to go look at the numbers and then look at the news and see the stories. It’s just crazy. It’s just crazy and this needs to stop,” Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said after his city surpassed its annual homicide record of 500, which stood since 1990.
Are you one of the cuntes not enforcing the laws of the city?
Get a gun and arm yourselves.
But self-defense is racist.
Well, his DA is.
Duly-elected DA, in fact.
Maybe the citizens should take a closer look in the mirror.
And… I want to know why cities like Philadelphia are hitting new “grim milestones” while my city NYC is still 75% down from our own. We have all the pieces in place – climate of hatred for cops, lazy DA’s, insane radical mayor – for setting new “grim milestones” of our own but… it’s not happening.
How dare you blame the victims of incompetent government for electing the incompetent to govern them!
Violent crimes and murders are significantly up in NYC, but they just haven’t reached the insane levels of the 1970s and 1980s before Giuliani cleaned that shit up.
That’s a great question that one would hope “inquiring reporters” might want to probe, considering Philly’s chief newsrag is called “The Inquirer.”
What country hasn’t gone batshit?
Based on the ongoing total news blackout-
Sweden?
Sweden is encouraging chip implants, so strike them.
Yeah Sweden jumped from the bottom to the top.
Atlantis?
HEEYY!!!
So who knows why we were spared the infliction of this pox on our houses?
Because of the evil WSJ.
Saule Omarova Withdraws
I would concur. Anyone that grew up under Soviet communism that is not virulently anti-communist is a fucking evil idiot. Especially if they feel we need to go back to more of that.
With the right Top Men we can fix it this time.
It’s not her Soviet childhood you mendacious fucks, it’s her open embrace of communist principles.
It’s the NYT that’s being quoted here. No surprise that is how it decided to characterize the WSJ.
The other day, I went into one of the dollar-store places looking for a cheap throwaway something-or-other. On a whim, I picked up a package of generic no name shortbread cookies. Much to my surprise, they’re good. Just right with my morning coffee. An acceptable substitute for Lorna Doones. even. Now I’ll have to go back and get more.
Were they made in Turkey? The last knock-off brand of chocolate bars that Judi brought home from the Dollarama were made in Turkey. Tasted weird, not like turkey at all.
The halal grocery store across the street has a number of products from Turkey. Their ketchup and orange soda at least are really good. The tea biscuits… not so much.
Isn’t “Turkish chocolate” some kind of Turkish prison slang for.. Never mind…
One can still get illegally imported Kinder Eggs in NYC. The proper way is through a European grocer/deli (some very nice Polish places by me) as their K. Eggs are made in Europe by Kinder; the chocolate is good and the toy is a small, multi-part kit. The suboptimal way is through the Arab/Syrian grocers/delis. Their Eggs are made in the UAE under license; the chocolate is vile and the “toy” is usually just a sticker.
OMG that reminds me a “European grocery store” opened up in Astoria just before I moved out. That place was great.
I’ll need to check if Hansa Import has the EU ones or the US ones. They do sell Underberg and those soft Christmas gingerbread cookies with chocolate on them.
Our Dollar stores just went up to $1.25
#twentyfivePercentInflationIsNotInflation
#transitoryInflation
Three senior White House officials have embarked on a campaign to persuade newsroom executives to be more favorable in their coverage of President Joe Biden, according to a report on Tuesday night.
But Tump is a fascist because he talked to Sean Hannity.
Washington Post columnist goes on CNN to claim that president is being treated WORSE than Trump by press
Just when I think journos could not get more insane/dishonest.
How insane/stupid do you have to be that you feel you make a serious statement by burning down a TeeVee channel’s Christmas tree?
Moron: That’s what you get for picking on my geriatric dementia addled dude pretending to be in charge!!!1!!eleventy!!
Casualty of the war on Christmas?
The DEBIL made him do it?
Had Monday off to get tested because one of my (favorite) students tested positive. Had main-gig classes on Tues afternoon….and today I find out that both my morning gig/main gig aren’t having classes the rest of the week. So…yay? But this seems like it’s going to take away Winter Vacation (last week of December)….but that seems like it’s still in question. I suppose so are classes next week. Waiting to find out! Still have to get tested Fri again. I suppose we’ll see where that goes.
I haven’t been out of Daejeon since I’ve been back (March, 2021). I’ve been pretty much everywhere in Korea, except for Jeju and the DMZ, which my parents have even been to! I need to go to the DMZ, no excuse. Jeju, meh. It’s Korea’s Hawaii. But I’ve been to Hawaii and I’m sure it’s pretty lackluster in any comparison, and especially here in December. Strongly tempted to find someplace I can head off to Friday afternoon just to get out of the city. Will have to think about it tomorrow and see where I can bounce off to and spend Fri/Sat night to get away from Daejeon. I’m in the middle of the country, which is almost the EXACT same size as Indiana, so I have pretty much free reign to bounce off on a train and find a spot in two-three hours or so. Not sure how I’ll decide. That lady Julie that I watched the eclipse with is in Seoul, so that’s an idea. But I’ve been there so many times.
I was strongly thinking about going to Mongolia for that winter vacation that no longer exists. That’s long-been a box I’ve meant to check off. I’m sure the COVID rules would make anything outside of Korea impossible. Hrm. I’ll see. Oooooh what to do?
Keep us updated, Dent-head! You are an interesting young man and we’re all richer for your posts!
Thank you! Dent-head! HA! That’s actually pretty solid. One of my main goals is to finish my article on why my Korean is the way that it is. I think I’m about 70% through? Gave to check.
(My Korean is good enough at certain things, and certainly good enough to get through Korea, but shitty enough that I cannot form any sentences and only rely on vocabulary. The fun lost-in-ex-pat land reality of my existence. I’m quite comfortable with it. My Korean is actually better than most foreigners here, which is pretty embarrassing –I don’t see how they do it without even being able to sound-out/read the damn alphabet.)
Teachers should not have favorite students. It is unfair
Noting sarcasm, but just in case: Meh. He’s smart, and that helps. He is always willing to to actually speak (he’s 10-11 or so) and is always on point with his classwork. He’s funny and asks questions, which is unbelievably rare. He’s genuinely interested in learning. He is also well-behaved in class and kicks ass at it. He gets my Benefit of the Doubt check mark, but I’ve never had to do it.
I don’t have homework, nor tests, and don’t even have any framework of grading/scoring that might bring out the fairly human reaction of grading on a curve (in this sense, in a literal way). I have other favorites. He’s my favorite in that one class, but he has contenders. Chris is my absolute favorite, along with Olivia and Clara. They’re my highest level of kids. I don’t even fuck with a book with them. We just talk about whatever, all in English. That’s a known rule for when we play poker (we’re up to Texas Hold’Em!). If they speak Korean…I take away some of their money (candy-as-chips). It never comes up. We can literally just have conversations in English and they’re only 14. My job is just to get them to think and speak quickly in English. I don’t give a fuck what that entails, as long as they are getting that part of their brain working fast. I could drop them off in New York, all on their own, and their English is more-than-good enough for them to be able to navigate that no problem. No shit.
The younger kids are always fun and easy to deal with. It’s the middle schoolers that are (naturally) shy and quiet that are always the hardest ESL classes to manage. Progress is being made with those kids. I’m not fluent in Korean like their old foreign teacher, Greg, a great friend and we were in a band together, kinda spoiled them with.
Just don’t bang the kids mom okay?
Fixed it for you. A lil punctuation goes a long way.
Pie: I’m more in danger of banging my boss. She’s probably 40-something, but I know that she was HELLA fine back in the day. Still looks damn good. Could add something, but….I shan’t.
@Sean: Legit LOL. Let’s eat grandma, OK?
Sweden is encouraging chip implants, so strike them.
??????
I can’t keep up.
It started slowly (two weeks to flatten) and now it’s a giant Warner Brothers snowball. Sorry, Friend. We’re fucked.
“He don’t know me very well, do he?” ? ?
I feel so smart when I get one of your references.
Students who are not fully vaccinated — or exempt — will be forced into the district’s independent study program or will have to leave the Los Angeles public school system.
Let fly the lawsuits.
shoot.. them… with… vaccine… darts
Interesting article that reminds me a bit of debates here.
Of course they don’t “need” Trump – that was always just ridiculous lefty spin.
They probably do need to adopt some of Trump’s style, though. And maybe even a plank or two.
I know the Republican Party doesn’t stand for much, but if they swing to full on national conservatism, we liberty loving people are well and truly fooked.
Why?
So far we’ve seen half our ideas get stolen by the left and then implemented in perverse ways and combined with utterly anathema ideas to make a complete monster of governance and mockery of liberalism. “Anarchotyranny” is what the natcons call it, and it’s hard to argue with them. In a state-approved “riot”, the police won’t defend your life or your property, they’ll arrest some of the rioters only for the DA to drop all the charges, and then the system will go after you with the force of the national media and the hollowed out husk of the “justice” system should you try to stand up for yourself. You may win (Rittenhouse) but your name will still be drug through the mud to do it. And this, we are told, is “freedom of speech”, “freedom of the press”, and “freedom to assemble”, even as people get fired from their jobs for declassé opinions, even as independent outlets are marginalized via the face of “private” corporations working in tandem with mid-level government bureaucrats, and even as unapproved demonstrations against or simply in spite of COVID restrictions get shut down.
If the natcons want to send the “homeless” to asylums, treble the tariffs, and stop most immigration, but they’re going to let conservative-minded people be free of selective state coercion, then it’s hard for me to see them as the worse choice. He who controls the culture ultimately controls the country, and it is getting past time for libertarians to think that control of our culture is purely market-determined.
He who controls…
Assumes there is a set of controls and a sentient force at them. What if there isn’t?
A truly disturbing possibility, Lovecraftian almost. If it be so, then it still needs to be remedied. I do not know where such an entropic system would lead, but all sane people should fear it.
So much for the theory of spontaneous order. All is given to man from above! Top.Men are merely the modern manifestation of the divine right of Kings. We just need the right kind of Top.Men.
And you say you are an anarchist? Or have I confused you with someone else?
Spontaneity does not govern. When the market moves, it moves as if guided by an invisible hand. The consumers are sentient, no? It is their hand, collectively, which is moving, yes? So to presume no control and/or no sentience in control is to presume Cthulhu. One does not need “Top Men” to achieve sentient control. But it doesn’t necessarily hurt, either. And if there already is sentient control, one ought to look at whence it emanates. Is it the consumer? Does the pure will of the sinful heart drive the market? Or is there also a force, which moves the desire of that heart, even if it acts weakly? A weaker force is overcome by a stronger force. Ten men acting with intent can overcome a thousand men acting “spontaneously”. Ten thousand men acting with intent can overcome a hundred million consumers acting “spontaneously”. Who are these men, and what are their goals?
An anarchist need not be a pollyanna. Just because we have a diffuse, multi-leveled, not-entirely-coherent oligarchy does not mean there are no archons. If there are archons, why should I submit to them? Can I not replace them with my own instead?
Our entire problem stems from the loss in belief in allowing rules to operate and people to choose freely within that. It is now that power itself is the object and the wielding of power is what matters. That power crushes both the rules and the freedom within those rules. Saying we will use that for less bad ends still means you are using the ends to justify the means.
I don’t believe most people, even wild-eyed populists, are really for that. The Republicans are already the less-bad version of Democrats – moving to being equally bad is not an improvement.
What is libertarianism? As I understand it, vis-a-vis social policy, it is the NAP in application: you are free to do as you wish as long as in the process, you do not initiate harm against another. As to economic policy, TAANSTAAFL reigns, and the role of the state should be minimized in the affairs of the market. An oversimplification perhaps, but it captures the gist.
Well, these are rules. One can argue that they are the minimal set of rules necessary to build a certain kind of society (“the liberal order”) and thus equate libertarianism with minarchism. There’s a definite aesthetic appeal to minimalism, I can’t deny that. But that still requires rules and people to enforce them.
We have the rules. Some old white dudes who owned slaves wrote them down on some pieces of paper. They called these documents the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the Federalist Papers, etc. Setting aside the occasional incongruity between the ideas of 1780s liberalism and 2010s libertarianism, this is more or less the template for a liberal order.
But where are the people to enforce this order? The police, whom libertarians have long been suspicious of? The bureaucrats, whose existence is a welfare case of the highest order? The military, that jobs program-cum-cultural education for the can’t-quite-hack-it-in-college set? The academy, a combination of all the aforementioned pathologies and then some? The media, which Reason happily reminds us every campaign season has always been a festering pile of putrid stench (but then, being a part of that media, pretends is righteous the rest of the time)?
A set of rules without people has no power. It will be dominated by people working together, even if those people don’t all share exactly the same goals or exactly agree what those rules should be replaced with. Iterate that process over a dozen generations and the result would look utterly alien to the people who created the rules.
So yes, people do matter. Tammany Hall was a more effective political machine than the Libertarian Party has ever been, currently is, or likely ever will be. It is also gone today because a different political machine (FDR/New Deal) came along and defeated it. Where did these new rules get written down? Who decides whether to be more faithful to them, to the rules that came before them, or to the rules that will come after?
If you are afraid to wield power, it will be wielded against you. We have been raised to be afraid of wielding power, by the voices of the people who do wield power. It is not clear to me why I must carry down an alien set of values taught to me by puppets of faceless forces. Peace is good, and to keep it, you should prepare for war. Nothing is more predictable than a docile group of people being led by the slightly-less-docile.
Power is an undeniable aspect of politics. The question is, do you minimize or maximize it. I stand (for all the good it does) for minimizing. Therefore that is what I want in the people I vote for. I do not want a “good” Tammany machine.
I do not want a “good” Tammany machine.
Unfortunately, that is how politics works. There are other strategies but they all involve some form of patronage. There is no such thing as a large group of people working selflessly toward a common cause. Soldiers in the Continental Army got paid (though not always paid well or on time), Franklin did quite well for himself after the war, Hamilton would have built an early-modern technocracy if he hadn’t run his mouth too much, half the reason Washington marched against the Whiskey Rebellion was because he was an established player in the whiskey business, etc.
Reward your friends and punish your enemies. It’s not a rule, it’s a law. Stuff doesn’t fall towards Earth because we want it to, it falls towards Earth because something beyond our control makes it so.
…then it’s hard for me to see them as the worse choice.
Let the ox-goring continue, it’s someone else’s ox?
Pretty much. If it’s a choice between a world where my godchildren and nieces are told they are scum, guilty of their forefathers’ sins, who are responsible for all of the world’s problems, and are better off dead or at least sterile, and one where they’re told they have a respectable heritage, a full life to lead, and a duty to pass that all down to the next generation, the latter is going to win me over every day and twice on Sunday.
A libertarian society will “allow” for both of these possibilities (and others besides), but we clearly do not have a libertarian society, and differential power dynamics will tilt the scale one way or another inevitably. Unless one is Amish, Mennonite, Hasidic, or part of some other self-isolated subculture, you are going to be part of the “default” culture. That culture is not beyond anyone’s control; it can be bent, and is being bent, to particular ends. I don’t like those ends and I especially don’t like my principles being selectively applied and turned against my desired ends.
Your principles aren’t being selectively applied, they are skin-suited by hypocritical mother-fuckers obsessed with power.
The skinsuiters are nothing without an army, and that army is rewarded with money (jobs for the literati) or money-equivalent compensation (reduced bail) not power.
I don’t see it. The only way forward is to weaken the state and I would think that the elephants swinging that way, for real, will accelerate the split and seriously disrupt the mess we have now.
Nice, neat philosophy aside, how would you attack the problem? It took more than 100 years for the proggies to take over the institutions. The quickest way to fix it is to disappear the institutions, not have debates about how ours is a superior philosophy. No one cares.
The quickest way to fix it is to disappear the institutions, not have debates about how ours is a superior philosophy.
I would say that the quickest way to fix it is to disengage from the institutions. I can’t make TMITE or the department of education or PlannedBabyMurder go away, no matter how hard I try, no matter how hard I vote. However, I can ignore TMITE, homeschool, and refuse to buy from any company that donates to PlannedBabyMurder.
Well, the national conservatives don’t want to weaken the state. They are perfectly okay with the progressive expansion of it – they just want to seize the controls away from them. Hell, they may even expand the uses of the state further – after all, the argument is people are good with that.
You think the commies will roll over for that?
By the way, how do you define ‘national conservatism’?
National conservatism as per the article.
10-4
I’ve probably said this before – the Republicans can win the culture war if they bother to fight it.
They don’t want to win, they like being the controlled opposition. All of the grift, with none of the responsibility to get anything done.
You talking about the politicians or the people? Cause yeah, the GOP politician is usually a sell out scumbag. But the people that are team red tend to believe in things and want those things, but like team blue players, never seem to identify that their leaders are just playing them.
It will remain to be seen if any Republican, pro-Trump or anti-Trump or ambivalent about Trump, can build a lasting electoral coalition. While the Democrats are still not back to their 1930s heyday, the momentum consistently points in their favor. The Republican revival of the 1990s has now been fully spent, and the GOP has returned to a strategy of careful victory and frequent retreat. Politics nationally is dominated by the whims of wealthy suburbanites, and though they may occasionally tack in a vaguely reactionary direction (“anti-CRT”), they prefer to be following the vanguard (“anti-racist”). Their values are dictated by the academy and the media, albeit with some time lag (which seems to be shortening), and they will all else being equal put their class interest first. As “working professionals”, they favor those policies which benefit the means of their own production: pro-educrat, pro-technocrat, pro-managerial, anti-labor, anti-entrepreneur, anti-nationalist. A coalition between them and the non-lumpen working class is going to be tenuous at best.
Another asshat that feels compelled to preen and virtue signal turns out to be a fucking scumbag…
Gah! I need to step away and have some chow. It’s just one fucking thing after another, lately. I’m physically spent as it is. If I feel this bad what about the people that are really on the edge? God-speed Glibbies! Make the best of it!
I did nazi that coming.
On Tuesday, police in Senzig, Brandenburg discovered the deaths of an entire family living in the town just south of Berlin. A suicide note was also present at the scene, which was left by the husband and father of the family. In the note, the 40 year-old confessed to murdering his wife and 3 daughters before killing himself. The motive he described behind the murder-suicide was his fear of forthcoming penalties after it was discovered that he forged his wife’s vaccine certificate.
Elon Musk: “The government is simply the biggest corporation, with the monopoly on violence.”
https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1468270850596089857
So….Elon’s a secret Glib, eh?
Alright – which one of you poseurs is really Elon!? Come on, tell the truth!
(And post some pics of that absolutely crazy hot Amber Heard).
She is a smokeshow – but she is certifiably insane.
Elon’s been mugged by reality enough to know better; he basically is Hank Rearden.
Hank>Galt
Hell yeah!
Amber is my “yeah, I probably would knowing full well that I’d regret it.”
If he were here, you know he’d just be lurking.
Really? He doesn’t seem to keep his hands off the keys on Twitter.
Isn’t that what we assume of the operative here from The Bee?
Well, he loves anime. But I will confirm that it’s not me.
It finally happened. I’ve been avoiding talking about that Penn State swimmer with Mrs. TOK. But she heard about it on a podcast. And boy was she salty.
It was a Univ. of Pennsylvania swimmer, not a tPSU swimmer. Penn State athletics has suffered enough embarrassment already this year.
U Penn actually. My alma mater. And when they asked for money I told them to kiss my ass.
I still get alumni letters begging for money, almost 30 years and at least a dozen addresses later.
I have never given mine a dime, nor do I intend to. Not out of any animus, mind you, I just don’t care. And it’s a public school so I’m paying for it anyway.
I would maybe give to my undergrad institution in a small, targeted way. They’ve fought hard to avoid the worst trends in higher education, despite being a large public school. My law school will get nothing. Despite being only a fraction of the size of my undergrad engineering department, they managed to make it feel like they couldn’t care less about our individual outcomes.
Generally, though, I have no idea why people donate to their alma maters. There is no other economic transaction that I can think of where it creates a perpetual expectation to donate to their cause. I don’t keep giving money to Ford because I’ve been happy with the cars I’ve bought from them.
Tell her men are so much better at doing things than women, that it takes a trannie to set the real good women’s records?
She kinda gets that. She holds a few amateur weight lifting records for her age and weight class. The men’s records for the same age/weight are much higher. So she can easily imagine this happening to her, and all her hard work getting erased.
Thank you for the correction. I knew it was somewhere in that state over there.
““Nobody’s getting arrested anymore,” Boyce said. “People are getting picked up for gun possession and they’re just let out over and over again.””
This is the example they use? “Gun possession”? Felons in possession… maybe. But how about the people who are nicked for armed robbery or assault and are out with no bail later that day? No. Must always support the narrative no matter what. STAY. ON. TARGET.
Also: “Defund law enforcement” is mentioned once but absent any context of who and where that originated.
Give them a little time, they can’t throw it out there as Republicans hacking at govt spending just yet.
“Data analysis” does not require context. If we “analyze” coverage of Biden by looking for keywords, it tells us nothing. Or, rather, it tells us exactly what we want to hear.
Just as those perennial favorites, the “X% of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction!” stories, without some sort of categorical breakdown, you lump the “too socialists” in with the “not socialist enoughs”.
Ass Wednesday knows the difference between squirting and female ejaculation.
https://archive.md/KwlQ8
is this what is called a tactical knife?
https://twitter.com/FirearmsRetro/status/1468216305127936005
Black Knives Matter!
OH! I forgot an important one from the other night about ex-pats/foreigners from/living in other countries: Me in Korea; Straff in Japan; Pie/Sky in Romania; Limey in UK, and I forgot one but I don’t know the actual answer:
MexicanSharpshooter: What’s your tale? Your beat is obviously the Hispanic/Mexican/South American realm. But I kinda always assumed that you were American military that had been/are stationed in that realm. I…embarrassingly, don’t actually know. You an American that was/is in that realm or are you from those parts? I excluded North America in my list of ex-pats/foreigners because of Festus/BEAM/other Canadians, but I didn’t at that point put 2-2 together. I’m not sure where you’re from. I believe it’s Hyperion’s wife who’s Brazilian. Pope Jimbo’s wife is Korean. Just curious!
MexicanSharpshooter is American as far as I know
Yes, ‘murican and prior service US Air Force.
I believe it’s Hyperion’s wife who’s Brazilian – I don’t believe it until I see bikini pics
We’re…both gonna need to get to the bottom of this.
*Furrows brow at fantasies…and at how poorly written that last paragraph of mine was*
Fourscore’s wife is Vietnamese IIRC, there was also SourKraut (potentially misspelling that) who was German based. Then there was the long missed Groovus Maximus who moved to Eastern Europe.
Dammit, I miss Groovus. I hope that all ended up OK for him and others.
Confirmed
Just a little ironic, don’t ya think?
Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, a bloodthirsty neocon who used his position to shill America into the war in Iraq and push forced vaccines, died on Monday after suffering from sudden cardiac arrest.
Hiatt, 66, “had sudden cardiac arrest on Nov. 24 while visiting his daughter in Brooklyn, said his wife, Margaret ‘Pooh’ Shapiro, and did not regain consciousness,” the Post reported.
The Post imposed a vaccine mandate back in July to “help safeguard the health and safety” of employees, though they provided exceptions for medical and religious reasons.
Good
He was no neocon. Liberal hawk, maybe.
Eagerly awaits CNN hagiography – “His last words were a somber, plaintive plea to the vaccinc-enthousiastic: Please think twice; I wish I hadn’t gotten those darn boosters!”
Try again.
Pooh? really?
Oh, bother.
Bill, Bill, Bill
All in all, it was a year of “big transitions” for the Microsoft billionaire, but that was far from the only thing on his mind. Gates said he spent a lot of time thinking about the long-term impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, including what he fears to be a dangerous decline in people’s trust in public institutions, a trend he attributed in part to the lack of regulation of social media platforms and the spread of disinformation.
“Based on what I’ve seen over the last couple of years, I’m more worried than I’ve ever been about the ability of governments to get big things done,” Gates wrote, adding that he is particularly concerned because of the need for governments to take action on challenges like avoiding a climate disaster or preventing the next pandemic. The billionaire, who is writing a book on pandemic preparedness, said this topic is the “biggest and most important thing I’m working on in 2022.”
All those underlings at Microsoft who kept telling you you were the smartest guy in the room?
They were lying to you.
There’s one that can’t drop dead soon enough.
Gates said he spent a lot of time thinking about the long-term impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, including what he fears to be a dangerous decline in people’s trust in public institutions
Go on…
a trend he attributed in part to the lack of regulation of social media platforms and the spread of disinformation.
?♂️
This is why it’s dangerous to have multiple internet browsers.
If only governments restrictied more speech, more movement, took more of our money and overall ground their boots a little harder into our nuts we’d trust them more.
I think there is a point at which competent and judicious exercise of government power works. The problem we have is that “competent” and “judicious” describe precisely zero of how Western governments operate today.
Lots of praise gets heaped upon China’s COVID strategy but mostly for the wrong reasons. The PRC is an evil system, but it’s hard to argue with their results in this matter. While neurotic Westerners run around with their hair on fire concerned that they’re going to get a disease which kills only the extremely fat and the extremely old, the Chinese government first covered it all up, then when that ceased to be tenable, made a big show of fighting it for a month before declaring victory and thereafter mostly pretending it didn’t exist at all, while also telling people to stop being fat. Their COVID case and death numbers are total bullshit, but so are ours, and each is bullshit for its own reason: the first stops a panic and keeps hysteria at bay, the latter fuels a panic and weaponizes hysteria toward the benefit of bureaucrats and their pets.
Put another way, if we’re going to be lied to, I’d rather the lies favor sane outcomes.
but it’s hard to argue with their results in this matter
Eh, what results exactly? The ones the Party/govt claims? If you believe [quite correctly] that the system is evil, what makes you believe anything they say about it?
The only thing I believe is that the average Chinese citizen is not half as concerned about coronavirus as the average urban/suburban Westerner. That is the only outcome right now that particularly interests me. Could the PRC at any point change its strategy to something as bad, if not worse, than the worst we’re seeing come out of the West? Absolutely. Would the people in China have even half the recourse that Westerners (allegedly) do were that to happen? No, they would not. Did the PRC state enforcers literally lock people in their apartments and wait for them to recover or die in the darkest days in Wuhan? Almost certainly. Is hooking someone up to a ventilator so they can die slowly while you dance on TikTok and keep their family from holding their hand better? I’m not seeing it.
The state control of the press (rather than the press control of the state) allows the PRC to set the narrative such that people believe they’ve dealt with COVID, and when “outbreaks” occur, that they’re going to deal with it with the same (imagined) swift competence they’ve shown in the past. Whereas, the bureaucrat-media cycle in the U.S. means this shit is never going to end. The state is not sovereign, and whoever is sovereign, they really don’t care about the consequences to ordinary people from this.
The only thing I believe is that the average Chinese citizen is not half as concerned about coronavirus as the average urban/suburban Westerner.
Why do you believe that?
swift competence
Emulating German efficiency? I don’t buy any form of govt being particularly competent – it violates the Iron Laws.
JI – I think what kbolino is saying is that the average Chinese person is treating this virus simply as what it is: not that big a fucking deal. IOW, in China, they’re not fighting a non-stop gaslighting campaign of PANICDOOM!! The ChiComs just lie and say “We’ve dealt with it by our swift and competent leadership, blah blah blah…” and otherwise, everyone gets to go on about their business now. Or when they have outbreaks, the govt takes drastic (but completely pointless, ineffective) measures for some period of time and then declares victory – because they KNOW it isn’t that deadly. So reality at least gets to rule the day. But here, it requires a ceaseless PSYOP on the part of the Media and so that’s why. it isn’t going to end. Ever.
I think he’s right.
That may be true, because in China the people already know not to buck the Party. We haven’t been forced to accept that yet and thus the gaslighting struggle here (and in Europe even).
Yes, to put it simply, the Chinese government is not any more competent at achieving the Western goal of eliminating COVID. Instead, the Chinese government is pretty competent at achieving the Chinese goal of putting COVID behind them.
A big part of the reason for this competence differential is that the former goal is now an impossibility, a fictitious future that not even the world’s most competent government could achieve, whereas the latter goal is very realistic, especially for a centralized authoritarian state. The PRC’s response were COVID much deadlier than it actually is would be catastrophic; but COVID isn’t that deadly, and so the response, as it turns out, is appropriate. Even the original coverup doesn’t look so bad as time passes. Hell, it might have worked, if not for Taiwan (not blaming the ROC, just stating that close “cross-strait relations” threw a monkey wrench in the coverup strategy).
The West could have adopted a similar strategy, and one country even did, to some extent (Sweden), but the only Western-ish country that’s had any success is not very liberal or democratic (Belarus). You don’t have to have PRC levels of state control to make it work, but it helped.
‘“Based on what I’ve seen over the last couple of years, I’m more worried than I’ve ever been about the ability of governments to get big things done,” Gates wrote,’
Uh, I dunno. Seems to me like governments have been getting all sorts of big things done over the last two years. Granted, those things have largely been absolutely terrible but it isn’t as if they’ve lost power over that time…
You thought meetings were bad now.
A screen full of jerking digital Toobins?
“Your honor, I’m not really a winged penis wearing a leather harness.”
Second Life 2.2?
There’s no appeal to that nonsense.
We’re experimenting with that BS in my department. I have an Oculus Rift that was issued to me by my company.
Besides some proofs of concept, it has not caught on. The Rift sits in my living room, occasionally to be pulled out to let my 4 year old play games on it.
It adds nothing and substantially detracts from the comfort and focus of the participants. The only half-serious justification I’ve heard is that avatars help protect against camera fatigue. Turning off the camera does the same thing. Also, not giving a shit about what other people think does the same thing, as well. My boss’s boss sometimes comes on camera in an undershirt. I feel confident that people aren’t judging me for wearing some disc golf tee shirt on the call, not that I’d care if they did.
I have Zoom/Teams meetings all through the day most of the day, and I never turn the camera on. I’m generally sitting here in a big fleece shirt and bib overalls, so it’s probably just as well.
It wastes tons of bandwidth and rarely adds value. The goal should be to share a work product, not a new haircut. This is especially so with Teams.
We have an “immersive” conference room which is frankly straight out of Star Trek. It’s half-hexagonal (trapezoidal) but with the middle of the long wall one continuous monitor. When switched on, the built in camera/mikes make it look like you’re in a hexagonal room with the people in the other location (which has an identical setup). It’s amazingly well done, and I don’t even want to consider what it costs.
I will not comply.
I’ve had one work meeting where we were requested to turn on our camera. We were asked to turn the camera on so they could make sure we were paying attention. I paid attention for the first five minutes (to determine it wasn’t related to my team at all), and worked on my other monitor.
After two years of zoom we are back to telephonic meetings…so probably not, at least in the FedGov realm.
“Based on what I’ve seen over the last couple of years, I’m more worried than I’ve ever been about the ability of governments to get big things done,”
Like cook up viruses in a lab?
#BREAKING China says ‘nobody cares’ about Australia Olympics diplomatic boycott
https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1468485092347887616
I mean even Chinese propaganda has a point once in a blue moon
Bwahahaha, NYT belatedly discovers leader hypocrisy on COVID restrictions!
The normal way you bury these things is by letting your restaurant critic cover these things.
Why was Newsom’s French Laundry moment such a big deal? Our California restaurant critic explains.
Miss Reginetta d’Italia – Cà del Lago ,Piove di Sacco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyiO6fKNSeI
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ghislaine-maxwell-trial-courtroom-sketch-artist-b1971078.html
Lulz
I never did like Dan Crenshaw.
Dan Crenshaw trashes ‘Freedom Caucus’ members Greene, Brooks, Gohmert, Gosar, Jordan, etc, as “performance artists” while defending Kinzinger. “We have grifters in our midst .. lie after lie after lie.”
Look in the mirror, you cycloptic cunte.
Is he pretending that Kinzinger isn’t a performance artist after his waterworks during the 1/6 hearings?
And Crenshaw is a neocon warmongerer. He’s one step away from being Liz Cheney. In fact, given Cheney’s dwindling popularity, I would bet good money that the permanent state of war agencies are actively boosting him as a replacement.
I can’t remember anyone getting elected to go fight the evil machine being coopted by said machine and selling out after going to D.C. faster than this dude. What a fucking waste…
But, but…he PWND that weird looking dude from SNL!
Republican Uber Allies!
Crenshaw didn’t sell out. He was always an internationalist scumbag. The GOP base was just too blinded by his medals to see it.
For anyone in Congress to throw around the accusation “grifter” is mighty rich. I wonder who pays Crenshaw’s bills and who gets Crenshaw’s kickbacks?
He (and Tulsi, by the way) were involved in the WEF ‘young leaders’ bullshit.
He is a statist fuck.
Look at all those trumpist anti-vaxers!
A group of Liverpuddlian boffins has taken time out of the research into the dampness of water to bring us SCIENCE!
https://nypost.com/2021/12/06/if-cats-were-people-theyd-be-psychopaths-scientists-say/
‘It is likely that all cats have an element of psychopathy as it would have once been helpful for their ancestors in terms of acquiring resources, for example, food, territory and mating opportunities,” said Evans.’
Stop the presses.
if cats were bigger, we’d be cat food
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDskJJu8cyM
Researchers at the UK’s University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University surveyed pet owners to rate their cats’ level of psychopathy — as defined by human psychological standards.
Then, it’s also possible that there’s a bias in terms of cat owners being inclined to see their cats as demonstrating psychopathic tendencies. Which would imply some level of psychopathy among cat owners. And if you know the trope about the crazy cat lady….
/owns a cat but is considering adding a dog
Good morning, Sloop!
You forgot the Wild beating the Oilers 4-1, shutting down the league’s best power play a half dozen times. Great game!
Your homicide story didn’t mention Minneapolis, but we should easily break the record by the end of the year. Way to go, proggies!
Regarding the song, I think you know what camp I’m in. Thanks for an inspired choice.
Excellent live version.
Have a great Wednesday, y’all!
The homicide rate here in Cleveland is outpacing last year as well. Shrinking population, increasing homicide rate, why won’t people come back to the offices?
My hometown was mentioned in the article.
It has lost almost half its population since I lived there and has more murders than ever.
Clicked through the article to see which cities were mentioned… who the fuck considers Toledo a major city in the modern day? I knew Columbus numbers were bad, and I believe Cincinnati numbers are also on track to break previous records.
Oh noes. I can’t believe it. Say it isn’t so. Look at how many politicians Pfizer and Moderna have purchased.
https://thenationalpulse.com/exclusive/pfizer-and-moderna-increase-lobbying-efforts
“Basically, our organization is run on COVID money now.”
* Faints *
I’ll say this again, it’s interesting how big insurance and big pharma were publicly the embodiment of evil, and yet somehow they get the Democrats to mandate that everyone uses their products.
I ran across this yesterday in an internet rabbit hole..
–A. Lincoln, 1859 correspondence
Seems quite relevant today, doesn’t it?
We have the knowledge of almost all of the ages at our fingertips – and yet we’re dumber by orders of magnitude (on average).
And as brilliant and insightful as that is, how does he justify his own actions in suspending the Great Writ?
While many are blind, even those of the greatest vision have huge blind spots.
Great passage though, JI. Thanks for that.
Oh I knew at least one person here would cock an eyebrow at a Lincoln quote. It would have been interesting if he had lived to see how he would have unwound his own evasions of the Constitution.
Principles tend to disintegrate when the shit gets real.
Lincoln clearly didn’t start out to be a blood-soaked monster, but he sure adapted quickly.
Christmas lights are now offensive?
Imagine being the person that wrote that letter.
Commies doing commie shit. Frame it, attach it to a post in the front yard, decorate the post, and double the Christmas lights.
This doesn’t end by ignoring them. It ends by openly acknowledging their demands and flouting them in the most flagrant way possible.
“Dear Neighbor,
Feel free to throw yourself off a pier.
Yours etc.”
Why even mail it? Don’t be a pussy and tack it to their door.
I’m guessing fake.
I’m in full agreement. Skip the Christmas lights. Replace them with progressives impaled on stakes in a festive display. Hell, you might even be able to put together a creche of them.
I wonder how they feel about Diwali lights. Those are probably good because Diversity!
Uh, I thought the whole point of dark matter was that we could not detect/measure it and it’s existence was entirely made up to balance the cosmic books?
There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with the galaxy, gravity is still working. “No dark matter” means – we measured the visible mass of the galaxy and we expect X million solar masses of dark matter for that much stellar mass based on our assumption that dark matter makes up 80% of the mass of a typical galaxy based on observations of rotation curves and the like. But when we measure the total enclosed mass by measuring orbital velocities of globular clusters around this galaxy, we measure about the same mass as we see in the visible stellar mass. In other words, the effect that dark matter was invented to explain is not present in this galaxy. Not that we have a way to directly measure dark mater and didn’t find any here.
But the point in the article is that these are sparse galaxies, not dense ones. Or are those meanings inverted?
They are low mass galaxies – and as an aside, some theories of galaxy formation ‘require’ dark matter cores to form some of these low mass galaxies. The sparseness or ‘density’ has no particular importance here. What’s happening is that the total measured luminous mass for this galaxy, normal stars, gas and dust, is very roughly what you’d predict by measuring the orbital velocities of the globular clusters around it. Hence normal matter and gravity fully explain the dynamics of the galaxy. Ergo – no dark matter. With other galaxies, if you do the same measurement, the orbits of globular clusters would require many many times more matter than what is observed from the luminous material so we made up dark matter.
Shorter – if we only measured this galaxy, dark matter would never have been invented.
OK, cool, our theory doesn’t fit the observed reality. Wonder what new plug will be proposed to fix this?
No, since it (theoretically) interacts with matter via gravity you can use that to detect/measure it.
IIRC it might interact via the nuclear forces, but don’t quote me on that.
The Ethical Skeptic continues to lead on Covid-19 bullshit.
https://twitter.com/EthicalSkeptic/status/1468266346446262290?s=20
There are a bunch of houses for sale up here in the Susitna Valley. One right down the road from us. Glibertopia North, folks. Glibertopia North.
I wish.
60 degrees today. No way I could get momma out of here with dynamite.
Hey, it’s above zero today!
One degree above. But above!
Fahrenheit, Celsius, or Absolute?
Here in the Great Land, we only use good ‘Murican degrees Fahrenheit.
Is there a job search site for the area?
No idea, as we brought our business efforts along with us. But if I was looking, I’d probably look into Wasilla or Palmer, as they are more populous areas with more businesses and presumably more job offerings, and there are plenty of outlying areas within a decent commute.
Anywhere I move, I expect to work remotely.
Innovation is bad, when you-know-who does it
Strictly speaking, Trump Media is not a campaign vehicle. Indeed, as a for-profit company incorporated in Delaware, it will be obliged to serve shareholders. But there’s no mistaking that Truth Social’s world view will be close to Trump’s own. The former reality TV host on Monday appointed former Congressman Devin Nunes, an ardent supporter who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory, as Trump Media’s chief executive.
Trump has plenty of experience raising money from rich supporters, so his ability to command sizeable sums is nothing new. But channeling investments into a listed company that can facilitate and engage in political debate, and in which Trump acts as chair and “company principal,” could amount to a leap forward in campaign financing strategies for his supporters.
——-
Trump hasn’t disclosed the identities of his new investors, and under Securities and Exchange Commission rules they will remain below the radar so long as they have less than 5% of the company, equivalent to more than $100 million based on the valuation at which the deal with Digital World was struck. Outsiders have no way of knowing whether small shareholders in a listed company are American or foreign, governmental or private. Trump can’t use the money for his political campaigns, but Truth Social could create a durable platform that would raise the visibility and electoral fortunes of candidates present and future.
The Federal Election Commission, which oversees campaign financing, would be unlikely to take issue. One reason is that it has granted exceptions for media companies. The watchdog ruled recently that social network Snapchat didn’t unfairly boost President Joe Biden when it blocked Trump from its news-feed page, since owner Snap (SNAP.N) was acting in its own commercial interest. Trump’s platform could use that defense to argue that its decisions on who can say what and to whom are merely attempts to profitably serve its customers. The FEC exemption would fall away if Trump were actively running for office while controlling or owning the company, but he has not thus far officially declared himself a candidate for any election.
This “workaround” is unfair competition for those other media companies who act as little more than stenographers for the Democratic National Committee.
“The watchdog ruled recently that social network Snapchat didn’t unfairly boost President Joe Biden when it blocked Trump from its news-feed page, since owner Snap (SNAP.N) was acting in its own commercial interest.”
But that was for the good of the nation.
Now we’ll hear from all of those people who said “build your own SM company if you don’t like (FB/Twitter/IG)!” about how this is really bad, mmmmkay?
Someday the normies will wake up and realize that screaming “Hypocrite!” – which used to actually be a very, very serious insult – are meaningless. Charges of hypocrisy require values to be effective.
(Look at who Christ called Hypocrites). The culture wars are just proxy battles in the same way that Korea, Vietnam, etc. were proxy battles in the larger war with communism.
But it is a war.
Charges of hypocrisy require values to be effective.
That’s worthy of consideration for becoming an Iron Law, or at least some sort of Bronze Law of rhetoric.
Hypocrisy is to us what racism is to them?
More likely if this actually goes anywhere and isn’t just a “give me money” scam they’ll push the credit card companies to deny any transactions (so no subscribers), the internet backend providers to deny service, etc. You really have to build an entire parallel economy to get away from these whining weasels.
The Gab CEO (Torba) has been saying this for quite some time now. He’s been pretty clear that freedom-lovers are going to have to build parallel institutions in order to survive.
I think he’s absolutely correct. It will be no small task, but I think there’s money to be made AND it should be sustainable.
I think of it this way – is half the country totalitarian Proggy twats? Probably not, but for argument’s sake, let’s say that’s true. Let’s say it’s 50-50.
That means that freedom-loving/freedom-adjacent people are ~170 million. There’s a NY Times headline from 1957 about the country cracking 170MM.
So, could we do okay with current tech and 1957 pop levels in a parallel economy? Oh fuck yeah.
You’ve only over-estimated the actual number of proggy twats by around an order of magnitude. The reality is those true believers aren’t really more numerous than libertarians; they’re just a lot louder. The vast majority of people in this country think both fringes are pretty damn nuts, and would prefer to pay more attention to Kardashians and sports teams.
My prediction is that they’re more likely to split the baby. At some point there will be legislation to turn payment processors into offical public utilities, initially with rules not permitting them to refuse service to people engaged in legal transactions.
Then the social engineering schemes will creep back in and be harder to wriggle away from because it will be illegal to set up a rival processor.
They’ve predictably gone from “build your own” to “you can’t build your own!”
Lots of praise gets heaped upon China’s COVID strategy but mostly for the wrong reasons. The PRC is an evil system, but it’s hard to argue with their results in this matter. While neurotic Westerners run around with their hair on fire concerned that they’re going to get a disease which kills only the extremely fat and the extremely old, the Chinese government first covered it all up, then when that ceased to be tenable, made a big show of fighting it for a month before declaring victory and thereafter mostly pretending it didn’t exist at all, while also telling people to stop being fat. Their COVID case and death numbers are total bullshit, but so are ours, and each is bullshit for its own reason: the first stops a panic and keeps hysteria at bay, the latter fuels a panic and weaponizes hysteria toward the benefit of bureaucrats and their pets.
Put another way, if we’re going to be lied to, I’d rather the lies favor sane outcomes.
Our press vilified the Cartoon Villain for attempting to throw cold water on the the panicmongers. I wonder how it would have gone if it had been President Memsahib urging people to keep things in proper perspective.
*I don’t wonder one little bit, to be honest.
*Rereads Sloopy’s first CNN link*
Life comes at you fast:
3 on top of the 3 now? Do I get a free footlong once I punch all my shots?
Sure – bend over.
He’s been getting advice from the Gillette and Schick CEOs.
Wow.
Hey Preet! Guess what I would do to these fuckers?
The one asshole in comments that stated “Facts: student not students”
Oh okay, totes cool then. Carry on, they only bribed one person to join in their grooming efforts.
No, they bribed them all, but only one took the bribe (I assume it was only one from the comment, I didn’t RTA). “Students” is correct, as “bribe” doesn’t necessarily imply it was accepted.
Potentially upcoming vaccine for the #Omicron variant “should be a 3-dose vaccine.”
Something something Holy Hand Grenade.
“It’s terrible to every morning get up and have to go look at the numbers and then look at the news and see the stories. It’s just crazy. It’s just crazy and this needs to stop,” Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said after his city surpassed its annual homicide record of 500, which stood since 1990.
Who could possibly have seen this coming?
About 34,000 students have not yet complied with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate in the Los Angeles Unified School District
🙂
Assuming everyone engaged in good faith, which of these groups would you expect to make better decisions? Group A: four liberal technocrats. Group B: one liberal technocrat, one Marxist, one libertarian, one reactionary?
https://twitter.com/NoahCarl90/status/1468278502591975429
From the replies:
Watermelon
@MrBannedAllot
Replying to
@NoahCarl90
The four liberal technocrats will make the most authoritarian decision
Group B: the liberal technocrat and the socialist would cancel the libertarian for being “racist” and then make an authoritarian decision
“Assuming everyone engaged in good faith”
Both group A and group B would elect one of them to be the leader. He would thereafter be tasked with making the decisions and bearing responsibility for them. He could consult with any of the other 3 for advice, and all 3 could unanimously overthrow him, but none of them would be allowed to act independently. In time, he’d become known as King, and his descendants would inherit this role, as the descendants of the other 3 would inherit their roles as well.
Good faith > ideology
Alas, most will not act in “good faith”. The prisoner’s dilemma gives defectors an advantage when power is leaky.
I can’t suspend my disbelief long enough to imagine most of these people ever acting “in good faith”.
All else being equal, the only prominent reactionary I can think of to not act in good faith was ole’ Benito. He sold out his country to a foreign empire because he was enamored with their leader. Turns out that leader was genuinely psycho and did not think he really needed any “partners” in governance.
Exactly. Anyone assuming good faith is already politically delusional.
“1984 gets a feminist makeover: George Orwell’s estate approves rewrite by little-known American dystopian author”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10283521/Now-1984-gets-feminist-retelling.html
LOL get fucked…not gonna read…
I read the article…I am not seeing the feminist part or is just a story told from a woman’s point of view now feminist?
My bad, she self-describes it as a feminist retelling but it’s not in the DM article:
https://www.polygon.com/22822388/1984-book-sequel-julia-feminist-retelling
Maybe it won’t be doubleplusterrible but I doubt it.
Yeah, that is the title and I wasn’t directing that at you. For all we know, she might tell a compelling story but the narrative must be set. Which is a bit ironic given the subject of the book.
https://nationalfile.com/twitter-bans-account-posted-updates-ghislaine-maxwell-jeffrey-epstein-trial/
Twitter needs to just go away.
It will.
Meanwhile, there’s this.
And this.
Architects against Humanity is the first thread I have ever scrolled down and read. That’s great.
It’s one of my favorite sites.
And biggest pet peeves.
At the risk of starting more arguments, ugly buildings are a perfect metaphor for the progressive mindset. Instead of insane beauty, we get brutalist crap.
Even DT Minneapolis had some gorgeous Art Deco buildings before the influx of concrete boxes.
I remember when languages were used for authenticity and subtitles were offered in the predominant language so that viewers could enjoy the film.
Spielberg believed that English subtitles would be giving the language “power over the Spanish.”
“That was very important and that goes hand-in-hand with my reasoning for not subtitling the Spanish,” he said. “If I subtitled the Spanish I’d simply be doubling down on the English and giving English the power over the Spanish. This was not going to happen in this film, I needed to respect the language enough not to subtitle it.”
I also remember that Spain was a colonial power that conquered and subjugated central and south America and that Spanish is a gendered language. ///CancelSpanish ///DecolonizeArt
Yet another brilliant dumbass. It’s all so tiresome.
He’s basically telling prospective audiences “if you don’t speak Spanish, fuck you”.
Sounds like he should have retired a while back.
I think filmmakers need to stop around the time they look at some of their greatest hits and go “I need to make changes.”
Christ, what an asshole.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FGDr2HJWYAEGCam?format=jpg&name=small
Australia has reached #7.
And the USA is close behind at #6.
“Disarmament” is probably implied but not on the list. That’s why tbe U.S. is stuck at 6.
Excellent point.
Has it ever been accomplished within a heavily armed population?
I mean, the signs are certainly not pointing in a positive direction, but what keeps you on the sidelines today? Risk? Uncertainty about how far this will go?
I know that supposedly the time to resist is before you know you need to, but I can’t ever recall genocide in a massively armed, somewhat balkanized and diverse population.
I think we bounce between #5 and 6 but there have been trial ballons for #7 at increasing rates and in some instances, done in schools by separating out the unclean to special classrooms/at home learning.
Kids texted me saying they go messages from friends of a threat to their school so they redirected to a friend’s house while I figure out if it’s teens screwing around or something real.
Either a really good lie from my teens or a smart move by them to take it somewhat seriously when they receive messages of some troubled teens.
The school phone lines not connecting and then not answering makes me think might be real, then again, no text messages from them or district makes me suspect.