We do have a guy whose work had great effect; a guy who showed that white people could also be wack with names; a true man of power; a truly interesting cartoonist who did something unique; a guy whose name is a perfect mashup of my favorite stooge and my favorite stadium; an elitist piece of shit best remembered for bathing in glory purchased with other people’s money (ours); a guy we all wished we were; a guy who got a bit sidetracked in his career; a guy who was sexually braver than I am; a guy whom I have no jokes about, and who was an actual inspiration to me; a guy who got burned; and… shit, there’s a lot more, but I’m totally out of energy. With this exception.
Editor’s Note: OMWC had some business come up, we interrupt his post to bring you Brett L Florida Man Links
Darwin Awards for some, prison for others. Florida is merciless for the young.
This is some great police work. Thirty-seven years later they finally capture a wanted suspect… doing an ID check on a disoriented elderly man. Exit question- did he live in Florida the whole time or flee and retire back here?
When you were betting on unicorn and got bunny-boiler
St. Pete woman arrested when pussy scratches girlfriend.
My house every morning, but with less makeup and more drama
whaddup doh’
Its around 35º and raining. We’re expecting graupel* here this morning.
*I didnt know what graupel was until some smarmy weather person mentioned it the other day
It’s that shitty stuff on my lawn, popcorn drool, mixed with snot.
How about grappa? Know what grappa is?
Does gramma know what grappa is?
I dunno about grappa. But I haff studied my Aggripa.
Nicely played sir.
One of the best movies evah. Not particularly deep or life-changing, but oh so memorable and lovable.
I learned about grappa from Hemmingway. Ironically years later, while on vacation in Key West, I get bounced out of “his” bar (Sloppy Joe’s) for being too drunk of all things.
I LEARNED IT FROM YOU DAD!
“I get bounced out of “his” bar (Sloppy Joe’s) for being too drunk of all things.”
Impressive!
I see your grappa and raise you a kirchwasser.
After that a shot (or 5) of Slivovitz
Plus some Saure Fritz.
My great grandfather used to make it. Italian moonshine.
It packed a little bit of a punch, but could be delicious.
Looks like snow to me.
And we have our first Dragons tickets of the season this afternoon. ? We may go just long enough to make sure our digital tickets (and our digital parking pass, which at last check had NOT had its bar code activated) work to get us in (ideally without having to be downloaded to a Google wallet I don’t have) and, of course, eat overpriced ballpark food. HOT food. (Donato’s personal pizzas FTW!)
You’re going down there today in this mess?
That’s the current plan, but I suppose it’s subject to change depending on conditions by around noonish. (Game’s at 1:00.)
Well, the mister got up and, seeing as how the forecast says there’ll still be snow showers at first pitch AND it’ll “feel like” low 30s throughout the game, voted against going. I can go along with that, especially since he also has a gig in a neighboring county this evening. Happily, the team has a very generous ticket exchange program for season ticket holders, though we won’t be able to trade for another parking pass.
Go you Mythical Fire-Breathing Reptiles!
Mornin’, GT. Minor League baseball FTW! Our local Independent squad is the New York (formerly Rockland County) Boulders. Nice venue, and the food/beverages are less overpriced than the major league equivalent.
Of course, this being Metro NYC, the ballpark has a checkered history…
https://news.yahoo.com/fbi-arrests-ramapo-york-town-supervisor-municipal-bond-114244548–sector.html
And our favorite prosecutor was on the case!
“At a news conference in Manhattan, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called the Ramapo case a “landmark” first to result in criminal securities fraud charges, adding: “I suspect it will not be the last.”
Go Baby Reds!
Thanks OM, good birthdays, hope all is well in New Yawk.
“TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Two teens were arrested Thursday after authorities said they took turns shooting at each other while wearing a body armored vest.”
O.o
I dunno if it gets any more Florida than that.
That could easily be West Virginia
They like to shoot road signs down there.
At least that was my impression from our first trip there.
There’s a place that doesn’t??
Good Morning from the land of barely alive, crawling to the bathroom every morning is getting old,
Nofefe!
Good morning! Tall Lattes!
Feel better.
Morning Yusef,
Crawling vs staggering in the morning? I keep a walker handy, just is case. One cup down, goin’ for seconds
It appears that little Miss Courtney finally met her Nigerian price and she was not a model lover, as described in the article. Somethig, something, about sticking it in crazy. Live and learn, oops.
Time to get better, Yufus. Soon, and very soon.
I’m headed back to the ER, I’m as bad off as ever,
Ugh. Sorry, dude.
a guy who got burned;
Richard Pryor?
Dives?
David Crosby?
Marion “bitch set me up” Barry ?
Michael Servetus?
Eh…I never wanted to be Hugh Hefner. I bet the guy was 1950’s Jeff Epstein.
Hefner didn’t kill himself, though. Neither did Epstein, for that matter.
Me neither.
I recently lived the life of Hef, sort of. Pajamas all day but I missed the round bed and the ladies part, but other than that…
I go to work in pajamas every morning. Unless I have a morning meeting, I stay that way until lunch.
Juicy Small-ay really, really wants you to know he didn’t kill himself…. you know… because of that huge conspiracy to attack, frame and eventually kill little known progressive actors.
Epstein didn’t kill himself
Appropriate music.
Daily Quordle 75
4️⃣7️⃣
6️⃣8️⃣
Daily Quordle 75
6️⃣4️⃣
5️⃣3️⃣
quordle.com
?⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
?⬜⬜⬜⬜ ?⬜?⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ?⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜?? ?????
?⬜⬜?⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
????? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬜⬜⬜?? ⬜?⬜??
?⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜??⬜
⬜?⬜?⬜ ?????
⬜?⬜?⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
????? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
Daily Quordle 75
3️⃣6️⃣
2️⃣5️⃣
quordle.com
⬜?⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜?⬜
?⬜⬜?⬜ ⬜⬜??⬜
????? ⬜⬜⬜??
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
⬜???? ⬜⬜?⬜?
????? ⬜?⬜⬜?
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
Sheesh. Save some of the glory for the rest of us.
Total fluke with 4 letters guess correctly on my first word. I’m still trying to knock out the vowels first. Also, I really hate the words with repeating letters.
Daily Quordle 75
7️⃣6️⃣
4️⃣5️⃣
quordle.com
?⬜?⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜?⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜?⬜⬜
⬜?⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜?⬜
?⬜⬜?⬜ ⬜⬜??⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ?⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜?? ?????
????? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬜⬜??? ⬜⬜⬜⬜?
⬜⬜⬜?⬜ ⬜⬜???
⬜???? ⬜⬜?⬜?
????? ⬜?⬜⬜?
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
My first quordle. Maybe I should have read the instructions. That initial bit was so confusing….. “Why can’t I pick just one….”
Nice! My lame result:
Daily Quordle 75
8️⃣7️⃣
4️⃣6️⃣
quordle.com
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜?⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜??⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
?⬜⬜?⬜ ⬜⬜??⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ?⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ?⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜?? ?????
????? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
?⬜⬜⬜⬜ ??⬜⬜?
⬜?⬜⬜? ⬜?⬜⬜?
⬜?⬜?? ??⬜⬜⬜
????? ⬜?⬜⬜?
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
*grumbles*
I’ve got to beat that?
*joins in on the grumbling*
8️⃣4️⃣
5️⃣7️⃣
Daily Quordle 75
5️⃣ 4️⃣
6️⃣ 3️⃣
6 5
4 3
Daily Quordle 75
6️⃣9️⃣
4️⃣7️⃣
quordle.com
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜?⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜?⬜
?⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
?⬜⬜?⬜ ⬜⬜??⬜
?⬜??? ⬜?⬜??
????? ⬜⬜⬜??
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?⬜⬜??
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
⬜???⬜ ⬜??⬜⬜
??⬜?⬜ ??⬜⬜?
⬜?⬜⬜? ⬜?⬜??
????? ⬜?⬜⬜?
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜?⬜⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
4 5
6 7
Nice and sequential.
Daily Quordle 75
9️⃣8️⃣
7️⃣5️⃣
quordle.com
?⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
?⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜?⬜
?⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ?⬜⬜⬜⬜
?⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
?⬜⬜?⬜ ⬜⬜??⬜
⬜⬜⬜?? ?????
????? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜?⬜?⬜
⬜⬜??⬜ ⬜⬜?⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜?⬜ ⬜⬜⬜?⬜
??⬜⬜⬜ ⬜????
⬜?⬜?⬜ ?????
??⬜⬜? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
????? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
Daily Quordle 75
9️⃣3️⃣
4️⃣7️⃣
I guessed poorly. Too many potential options on the last two that could have worked.
Daily Quordle 75
?7️⃣
4️⃣6️⃣
quordle.com
⬜⬜?⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ?⬜⬜?⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜?⬜⬜
?⬜⬜?⬜ ⬜⬜??⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ?⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ?⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜?? ?????
⬜???? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬜???? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬜⬜?⬜? ?⬜⬜??
?⬜⬜⬜? ⬜⬜⬜??
⬜⬜⬜?⬜ ⬜???⬜
????? ⬜?⬜⬜?
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
Damn. Had two shots at the last word.
Is this the Chump Bench? *sits*
5️⃣8️⃣
?9️⃣
Looks like.
Yo.
Daily Quordle 75
7️⃣?
6️⃣9️⃣
quordle.com
⬜⬜⬜⬜? ⬜⬜⬜⬜?
⬜⬜??⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
??⬜⬜? ⬜⬜?⬜?
??⬜⬜? ⬜⬜⬜⬜?
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
?⬜⬜?⬜ ⬜⬜??⬜
????? ⬜⬜⬜??
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜??⬜
⬜⬜?⬜? ⬜⬜⬜⬜?
⬜??⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜??⬜⬜ ⬜⬜?⬜⬜
⬜⬜??⬜ ⬜????
????? ⬜?⬜⬜?
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜????
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
4 6
7 8
I’m improving a little.
8 7
4 6
One word is one that I habitually use as a starter, but I tried something else today. SOAB. I could have had a 1 or a 2.
The top right is one I’ve seen before. How often do they repeat? Although, I do play practice quordle, so maybe I saw it there.
Also, fuck today’s Worldle.
Today’s Wordle was pretty easy for me today.
Wordle 294 3/6
?⬜⬜??
??⬜⬜?
?????
… he redundantly said again repeatedly.
Needs more covfefe.
“Also, fuck today’s Worldle.”
I managed to get it, only because one of my son’s roommates last semester happened to hail from that obscure place I did not know existed.
Are you playing on the NYT site?
*navigates*
WTF is that?
*sigh*
OFFS. I would not have gotten that in a million years.
Daily Quordle 75
6️⃣7️⃣
4️⃣5️⃣
Like clockwork. I need to gamble more.
Doesn’t anyone want to play Scrabble anymore? or is that quixotic of me?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Khvpz5DVvUY
I play all the time, damn near addicted to the damn game.
I haven’t in ages, but am always mentally playing it. Sheldon Cooper V/O: “Sygyzy would be an excellent Scrabble word.” Me: “You’d have to use a blank.”
Ever see Countdown? minus points, plus an arithmetic round. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138228/
Daily Quordle 75
7️⃣5️⃣
6️⃣4️⃣
9️⃣7️⃣
6️⃣5️⃣
Idiot Florida boys. When I was an idiot Florida boy, we would just get up to BB gun wars in the woods – big heavy coats and 1-pump only for the Crossman 760…yeah right. After the back window of my car got shot out (dad gave me such a whoopin’ for that one), we switched to using peppercorns; they still sting and leave a welt, but disintegrate if you go over 5 pumps on the gun.
I’m just imaging the reaction in Medieval Europe of throwing away peppercorns like that… Isn’t changes in market quantities fun? 🙂
?
I cook a lot of Indian dishes so I have a big bag of exotic spices (in their own individual baggies) in the pantry.
As I cook, I often think about the absolute fortune that big bag o’ bags of spice would have been in medieval Europe. And how many young men sailed off against great odds in hopes of bringing home a small bag of peppercorns, cardamom, coriander, javintri, etc.
Ok, now I’m hungry.
Peppercorns!! We never thought of that. We did use our full face motorcycle helmets though.
Dang, guys are stupid….
Heck, we had bb gun wars in California. I remember my brother taking head shots on me…
Of course, we were wearing sunglasses. SAFETY FIRST!!!
Went to elementary school with a fella, then different Jr. Highs, and then back to same High school with him. Sometime in Jr. High he lost one of his eyes to a BB gun war w/his brother.
Hahaha we too
Huh… I figured Brett L would wear his Sunday best, Mrs. L is quite tired and needs her rest and the kids would be playing up downstairs.
Now that song is stuck in my head
Maniacal laugh…
Our house
IS in the middle of our street
Damn, you are so house-proud…
“One Step Beyond” is a way better song.
And it wasnt played to death on the radio.
Baggy Trousers is the best because it was later repurposed for a toothpaste commercial .
I like that one and “Baggy Trousers” too. And “House of Fun”.
But “Our House” is the nostalgia winner for me.
My name is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-5yn3v3N8A
Welcome to the House of Fun…
My favorite by Madness.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cntvEDbagAw
Ha. That was Special I linked the wrong video.
Come get your MBA, the ROI is fantastic!
https://www.nj.com/education/2022/04/rutgers-created-fake-jobs-for-graduates-to-boost-mba-program-rankings-lawsuit-charges.html
“The lawsuit by Deidre White, the business school’s human resources manager, alleged the program used a temp agency to hire unemployed MBA students, placing them into sham positions at the university itself — for no other reason than to make it appear like a greater number of graduates were getting full-time jobs after getting their Rutgers diplomas.”
We’ve gotta protect our phony baloney jobs!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uTmfwklFM-M
Let the bubble pop…
Let the bodies hit the floor…
Oh that’s awesome. Please be true.
They stole that tactic from the law school. It’s a common practice at second tier schools looking for a boost in the rankings.
I was hanging out at the IT department on Monday waiting to pick up some equipment (Jabra headset and webcam), and happened to listen to a conversation two other folks were having.
The dude was a young, chubby loser type so he hung on every word that the cute blonde ditz uttered. She was going on about how she knew science was not for her when she took basic biology (unclear if high school or college). So she got her bachelors in English pedagogy, then got an MBA. She was just recently hired to the company I work for and is considering getting a PhD.
I want to find whoever hired her and smack them across the face. You hired a ditz who can’t even hack a biology class and put her in charge of the budget/schedule of experienced engineers like me???
MBAs with no real world experience are a pox on any organization.
I do hiring.
MBA = Must Be Avoided
Both I and the Spousal Unit have an MBA (quant-heavy, as was the bias of the University program we went into). We used to half-joke that MBA stood for “Major Business Asshole.”
Everton are a top 6 team at home and a mediocre Championship team on the road.
The draw I rooting for didn’t happen.
So those two guys got acquitted in the Whitmer kidnap plot. Did anyone notice any coverage in the national press?
Acquitted or hung jury? I thought the latter.
As I understand it, two acquittals and two other defendants had a hung jury.
To me the big story here is why in the world the entire US press apparatus participates in covering up the obvious questions.
The same guy went to go do January 6 after this. Both have at least credible suggestions of being a setup or a false flag operation. We just had the Russia hoax and the fake Mueller investigation…
And nobody even entertains the thought of looking into it. Forget being a weirdo like us and making wild claims…. they won’t even dig around a little. It is like the Hunter laptop… it seems they know that they don’t want to find the answer because it will be bad for their team.
Which I kinda understand…. but everybody? No real reporters work anywhere? Not at the WaPo, not at the NYT, not in Detroit or Nashville or LA…. not in print or on TV… not even somebody at Mother Jones or Rolling Stone….. nobody?
We have our 1 right wing journalist that they smear as a kook… and that is it??
Whose the one right wing jorn-o-list, Jennifer Rubin?
John Solomon
He had the story almost from the beginning.
Well, and I suppose you could count Greenwald too.
It took a few decades, but yes. Everybody. Everybody that counts, that is.
The U.S. has dozens of world-class universities. More indeed than the rest of the world combined. It is, or was, one of the country’s inarguable strengths. And yet, where do they all align on the Overton window? Not a single right-leaning institution to be found. And the ideological difference among all of them could fit within a thimble, varying from “well left of the mainstream” to “far left of the mainstream”. All else being equal there should be at least a couple of top-tier universities staking out heterodox positions. And yet there are none. You have to g all the way to, for example, the University of Alabama at Huntsville to find CAGW skeptics, and even then they’re tepid skeptics, and even then, once the current crop retire or die, the institution will almost certainly move leftward. Even the University of Chicago, once a venerable bastion of Austrians and free marketeers, has lately failed to distinguish itself from the rest of the crop.
Hillsdale U.? 😉
Dunno what reps Liberty and Oral Roberts have.
The problem with places like Liberty and Oral Roberts is, I think, two fold:
On the one hand, they can’t attract the top (secular) talent. They’re known as “Christian schools” and, even if they moderate their positions somewhat, are relegated to bottom-tier choices for anyone who isn’t a fundamentalist. This keeps them from ever making a dent in the “technocracy” since they can’t get the students or faculty who will make the sort of major contributions necessary to do so.
On the other hand, they are put in a box by the rest of academia. This is not to say they are or could imminently be a serious threat, but it is to say they have been contained so that they never will be. They will not be publishing very much in “high-impact” journals, they will not be sitting on the boards of major nonprofits, they will not be setting educational policy for K-12, etc. The only way out of this box is to drop any semblance of independence and join the herd, but then what’s the point.
Of course, these factors aren’t even slightly organic any more, even if they once were. Federal student aid, “civil rights” law, judicial inventions, state governments, etc. will all exert pressure to enforce eventual compliance anyway.
Well, Hillsdale then, who gave us Bob Clark and Kat Timpf.
2 acquitted on all charges. 2 hung jury.
At least that is what I heard on the grapevine. Did not see any real coverage.
It’s the top story on Google New’s US section.
Weird. I got Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine
An announcement about a girl who got promoted to video editor at the WaPo blog
https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2022/04/08/nicki-demarco-named-executive-producer-breaking-news-video/
Jan 6 guy cooperating
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/08/pro-trump-activist-ali-alexander-to-cooperate-with-capitol-attack-inquiry
That was the top 5 articles for me.
Maybe they just don’t trust me to know the truth….
I had to really search knowing facts I already knew to get results. As a casual reader of news, it wouldn’t even be on my radar
CNN has none, no information at all from what I searched. Typically they will run an opinion piece as coverage
Take that back, after searching CNN I found something but nothing on their front page, US section or Politics.
It was one of the featured links on RealClearPolitics. Of course it was from the Washington Examiner. 2 acquitted and 2 with a hung jury. Yet another massive fuckup by the FBI.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/crime/two-defendants-found-not-guilty-in-whitmer-kidnapping-trial
So let’s see….
Ruby Ridge, Vegas, that pedo gymnastics coach, this, possibly Jan 6, Eastern….
Yep they have my full confidence
Just think about all the shit that we know nothing about…
Or the shit we think we know about..
Absolutely.
NPR’s coverage never deviated from the assumption that all four of them were guilty. The FBI “discovered” a plot, etc. All the defendants’ names were read out, and they were all “accused” of the various crimes. Other than the opening sentence, they were never “acquitted.”
I slept in.
Just in case nobody else linked this
Tonio beat me to it.
Re: Florida hottie. At least they didn’t shoot the dog.
This is weird…
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/08/politics/impersonation-plot-federal-agents-duped-questions-remain/index.html
2 guys from middle east impersonating homeland security… maybe spies??
Police sound a little like the Richard Jewel investigation when they siezed his mother’s Tupperware.
Money quote: “”You don’t need almost 100 rounds of ammunition to be a special police officer in the lobby of a building,” Rothstein said”
Isn’t that 2 boxes of 9mm rounds? Who doesn’t have 2 boxes?
Also…. they had a drone … sophisticated spy equipment, that.
Super weird story… they had master codes to their apartment buildings units, a list of residents, a latent fingerprint kit, a battering ram…
And recent travel to Middle East.
Could be a new terror plot to infiltrate DC security… or couple of burglars …. or just some wannabe cops…
2 acquitted on all charges. 2 hung jury.
I’ll bet there are some red faces at the DoJ. I wonder if Governor Bitchface has issued a statement.
Ha ha ha. There are people at the DoJ working on how to continue persecuting the two that were acquitted, but no one is feeling shame.
We really shouldn’t let mega rich people own vital media outlets
The Post published a piece on Friday titled, “Elon Musk’s vision of ‘free speech’ will be bad for Twitter.” In it, tech investor and former Reddit CEO Ellen K. Pao bashed the billionaire’s bought-in “welcome” to Twitter, calling it “highly disconcerting — a slap in the face, even.”
“Musk has been open about his preference that Twitter do less to restrict speech that many see as hateful, abusive or dangerous. Given his new influence, the way he himself has used the platform bodes ill for its future,” Pao wrote. “Musk, who has nearly 81 million followers, often punches down in his tweets, displaying very little empathy. He called a British caver who helped to rescue trapped young Thai divers ‘a pedo guy’ (beating a defamation suit over the slur but adding to his reputation as a bully). In February, he tweeted, then deleted, a meme comparing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler.”
Pao mocked the tech mogul for calling himself a “free-speech absolutist,” writing, “like many ‘free speech’ advocates, he willfully ignores that private companies are free to establish some limits on their platforms.”
“Twitter made strides to remove hate and harassment and to give users more control over how they share their opinions… It added features that let users limit who could reply to their tweets, created labels for misleading content and banned President Donald Trump’s account. After all that, bringing Musk onto the board seems like a big step backward,” Pao wrote. “He can bend the company toward his preferences, removing reasonable policies on hateful speech and urging people who are harassed to have thicker skins.”
Ellen Pao, Supergenius.
DEMOCRACY! drowns in derp.
This is a huge deal… not that Elon is fighting back on our behalf.. but that the rest of them are saying the quiet part out loud.
Their thinking is so muddled… she sounds like some survivor of a soviet gulag or Mao re-education camp.
“Private companies can restrict speech on their platforms” vs “how dare he buy in to own a platform ” vs “we finally got Trump banned”
The world really looks more and more like Orwell and Huxley.
With enemies like her….
I have been absolutely stunned by the hard left turn of all of the dot com guys. These were my people. Nerds. Guys who were analytical, pedantic, guys who were absolutelist about free speech and freedom of information… many were so extreme that they opposed all copyright and patent law….
Google had the motto “don’t be evil” which specifically meant not being IBM and Microsoft and being neutral information consolidators.
Most were created in the open source movement.
They were natural libertarians.
And they turned into stalinist propagandists.
How the hell did that happen???
A big part of the explanation: Women’s Tears Win in the Marketplace of Ideas
Other key elements:
– The tech companies got in bed with the government big time after the late 1990s. While this relationship transformed both sides in many ways, it captured most of the borderline types in tech and pulled them into the mainstream fold. Some like John McAfee, Eric S. Raymond, Curtis Yarvin, Brendan Eich, etc. have fallen on the other side of the line despite being uncontroversial decades ago, but they have in all cases lost power because of it.
– The mainstreaming of nerd culture (e.g. Star Wars, Marvel) and the somewhat self-fulling prophecy of “high school bully target today, highly paid office worker tomorrow” transformed SV from a somewhat dissident outpost to the heart of the modern world. The fact that it was, for a long time, the most unregulated part of the economy helped too. It turns out that most “nerds” wanted to be part of the cool set but were too socially maladapted to achieve it at the time. So instead they got the culture rewritten to cater to their neuroses.
– While the tech companies sit at the heart of the economy in the U.S. today, they have also been hollowed out by the financialization trend. Everything, absolutely everything, is run for the benefit of large retirement funds. The most entitled and already well-off people are hollowing out the welfare of the general population so they can maximize their own net worth and assets and chase after a fantasy of being idle rich and adored everywhere they go and, if they can achieve it, never die. A huge amount of the economic activity in this country is directed towards this end. If tech hadn’t come along and enabled all this, these same people probably would have fled the U.S. to drain somewhere else dry.
To a man they all went to the “best” universities. All of which have been captured by the proto-woke bullshit. They truly believe they are the “best and brightest” for this generation, that they should be running the world, and that fascists’ lurk under every rock.
Tech has become bureaucratized and drawn in the “professional” managers and the administrative bloat.
That, plus Gates and Bezos and Zuckerberg haven’t written a line of code in decades.
I wouldn’t bet against Woz, though.
Pao is a race baiting POS that weaseled her way into CEO status by playing all the right identity cards.
She’s an incompetent executive and should have been run out of Silicon Valley.
Who owns the Washington Post, again?
That’s different cause he wants to muzzle the world so we continue to be the gatekeepers
And let us pretend that the CEOs of public media and tech companies aren’t billionaires themselves?
Sushi! If we don’t tell people they will never know and we can claim everything not reported to be misinformation or conspiracy theory.
Good grief…just won’t dry out enough to mow the lawn. (at least on my side of the fence – easy for my neighbors). Tree or no tree, will probably have to look at fill dirt options this year.
Oh well, they get to observe my natural lawn in all it’s glory till I get home next weekend. (hope it’s dry enough by then).
You can come mow my lawn if you want. It is beautiful out here.
Thanks for the offer, but I gotta get up at 2:30 tomorrow for my flight. You’d think I’d plan to slide a little right since I probably won’t even be able to get in my hotel room right away when I arrive…..
but…once bitten….my first trip last summer I got bumped twice, rerouted and arrived 8 hours later than planned…
Side note – sealed protein bars probably don’t “expire” per se do they? I mean…I’m checking my pantry and I have some FitCrunch bars marked “best by 2018…”.
I broke down and hired a guy for a Mow, Blow, and Go. $80 for twice a month. A bargain.
That was my plan when I first moved in two years ago, but even the guy with the big gas-powered mower kept saying my yard was too wet to mow half the summer….so I just canceled…and bought the battery mower…
I mean…if it gets absolutely critical, I can use the weed whacker…but gotta do something about that standing water/drainage – looked fine a few weeks ago, but maybe the ground was still frozen further down or something.
French drains? Maybe with a dry well?
The french drains is something I’ve researched, but based on placement of the lowest portions, a large tree and a fence, I think it would require circumventing the entire back yard and then out to the front yard and I’m not sure I can’t get the angles right over that distance (since the front ditch is so shallow).
Think my best option is still fill dirt to raise the lower portions.
And yeah…the willow may do more when it’s a little larger but just too small at this point.
Willows are from Satan. Think Cypress.
No one is still reading this, of course.
Too easy. I’m not gonna even swing at that.
Oh, not enough money for a swinger like you?
She continued, “Musk’s appointment to Twitter’s board shows that we need regulation of social-media platforms to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication. For starters, we need consistent definitions of harassment and of content that violates personal privacy. Most companies, I suspect, would welcome such regulations… If platforms continue to push for growth at all costs — without such regulations — people will continue to be harmed. The people harmed will disproportionately be those who have been harmed for centuries — women and members of marginalized racial and ethnic groups. The people who benefit from unrestricted amplification of their views will also be the same people who have benefited from that privilege for centuries.”
Women and minorities hardest hit.
This is the muddled thinking I was talking about. It is a word salad of slogans… women and minorities will be hurt if …who? White people? … are allowed to speak..
Not being censored == having your voice amplified.
How can they not see it?
The sweet smell of desperation.
It is not enough, and has never been enough, for them to “win” in the “marketplace of ideas”. Their opponents must be crushed. The barest possibility that someone somewhere could openly “deconstruct” their ideas and perhaps convince some, even if not very many, to turn away from the designated path is unacceptable. They are not liberals, or perhaps more accurately, they are ready to take the egalitarian impulse of liberalism to its final destination of permanent revolution.
You must realize there is not a shared value system between you and her here. She and people like her have not merely been “corrupted” away from “free speech”. Any unmoderated or lightly moderated space is a threat to them. They know it in their bones in a way many of their enemies don’t.
I wonder if Ellen Pao knows who owns WaPo. Somebody must have told her by now. He’s one of the good billionaires.
Bloomberg Opinion senior columnist and MSNBC political analyst Tim O’Brien called the move “bad news” for free speech,
“That’s worrisome because it’s not ideal to have a free speech absolutist who isn’t absolutely in favor of free speech at the helm of — or even close to — a media company,” O’Brien wrote. “And he’s in it to scare Twitter’s management. Somebody who has complained that his free speech is being ‘chilled’ should, perhaps, be sensitive to those nuances.”
Would you like some mustard for your logic pretzel?
In an earlier age I would have assumed that was a mis-print.
Now it somehow passes for “serious thought”.
This is the muddled thinking I was talking about. It is a word salad of slogans…
They are completely un-self-aware. They are like two year olds; ME, ME, MEEEEE!
Good morning Old Man With Gators!
Thanks for the lynx! And for that wonderful song. The stupid PR people used it for the Wild’s goal song after Prince died. Lame.
What’s not lame is ’80s Minneapolis, Apollonia and a sick guitar solo. That video has it all!
What’s everyone doing today?
Hopefully backyard finished today….the dude is now in the dragging his feet days. Firepit needs to be built and reexamine half my irrigation as I think he capped half the yard.
Kids will be breaking down chickens and for their effort get some of the meat to use for cooking. On that note, chicken up to $1.99/lb. Bought 3 to butcher.
I do not understand the retail chicken market.
Boneless, skinless breasts are $1.99. Wings are $4 or $5 per pound.
What?
Thighs are $2 or less… but not boneless or skinless….
Legs are more than breast meat.
This makes no sense to me.
Loss leaders sometimes
I am heading up to Delray Beach for a street art festival. Mediocre folk arts and crafts, overpriced bespoke furniture, food trucks charging $12 for roasted Brussel sprouts….
Gotta keep the wife haopy… probably run me $200 to take her, the kids and her sister to a free festival that the kids will hate. Yay!!
Lol.
We used to go to a festival in DT Minneapolis on father’s day. It was actually pretty fun – a car show and decent food/beer – but I’m sure it was torture for the kids.
Last summer when I was in Superior we went to a car show and festival in one of the small lake towns.
The kids had fun buying $6 snow cones.
There were more 4 wheelers than cars. Everyone up that way has those things now…. it was like golf carts in a beach town.
A lot of them are nicer than cars I’ve owned!
We used to stop at small town festivals on our way to and from the cabin. I fucking loved that.
Rinse and repeat. I went to the Deep Ellum Arts Festival. It was so generic I wanted to make a bingo card. Paintings of dogs and cats in clothing, enhanced photos of action figures, wind chimes and gazing balls, lady selling candles, etc…
Apollonia was something else.
I always assumed that prince was hitting that. I saw a long formninterview with her and…. nope. He was shy and a gentleman. And she was dating David Lee Roth at the time.
That information conflicts so hard with what I thought I knew in the 80s.
oblig: https://www.stitcher.com/show/political-beats/episode/episode-109-eli-lake-prince-part-1-202025979
I also love the recently circulating ’80s photo of RDJ, Anthony Michael Hall, DLR, and Sonia Braga in the back of a convertible, with SB’s arm around DLR.
If you’ve never seen Gabriela with Sonia Braga it is worth a watch, you definitely get to see a lot of her in it. Fun piece of 70’s Brazilian cinema.
About to murder a sourdough pancake that the wife is making, then go squat and press some heavy things, then the six year old’s soccer game, then some garage cleanup, then a bit of trip logistics prep for the Mt Whitney climb, then settle down on the couch to watch the qualifying for the Aussie GP (that happened last night) with a proper Manhattan. The big question will be bourbon or rye for the Manhattan.
You said ‘proper’, so rye, obviously.
Watching qualy now – I was up late enough that I contemplated watching it live, but I’m getting a little too, uh, ‘mature’ for 3am bedtimes.
Heheh, yeah rye is the traditional choice, but I do like a bourbon one. I found a two pack of Luxardo cherries at Costco a couple months back for 26 bucks so that should keep me good for the garnish for the next good while. This should be a great GP, track looks awesome. I see the race is on at 10pm my time tonite. I used to be a massive night owl, but now even 11 is kinda late for me, so I’ll probably just watch that one tomorrow.
Nice pick-up on the Luxardos – that’s a great price for two.
10pm I could handle – still a bit of a night owl. Just can’t stay up until 3am without utterly wasting the next day.
Carpet shopping. Went by another lumber yard yesterday. Pricing and lead time (from the same manufacturer) are much better for closet doors than my former go to store. No $2400 closet doors for me. Huzzah!
And he’s in it to scare Twitter’s management.
This guy works for Bloomberg, it says. I wonder what sort of coverage he has given to “shareholder activism” in the firearms sector. Or tobacco, or Big Oil, or any of the other evil companies who profiteer off the misery and pain of women and colored folk.
It only goes one way.
Hey, I was out Pocatello way, and if I was looking for a house out there, Montpellier (sp?) would be a good spot to look.
It is not enough, and has never been enough, for them to “win” in the “marketplace of ideas”. Their opponents must be crushed. The barest possibility that someone somewhere could openly “deconstruct” their ideas and perhaps convince some, even if not very many, to turn away from the designated path is unacceptable. They are not liberals, or perhaps more accurately, they are ready to take the egalitarian impulse of liberalism to its final destination of permanent revolution.
Several years ago, the Koch foundation offered to establish and fund some sort of research or think tank operation at Montana State. The outraged indignation was truly impressive. “How dare they come here and poison the delicate impressionable minds of our students?”
The fear was palpable.
If the merest whiff of contradictory evidence will cause your students to abandon everything you have told them, you should be prepared to do some serious self-reflection. Your worldview is a house of straw, and the Big Bad Wolf is coming.
Good example, though I quibble that their entire edifice will not come crashing down from a mere whiff of contradictory evidence. It takes an immense amount of willpower and deprogramming to leave their ideological house. Moreover, theirs is a “big tent” that encompasses people who haven’t necessarily received the latest ideological updates. But what matters is that the people in the tent will accept the updates when they’re given.
This is ultimately about temperament and alignment more than it is about ideas or ideological frameworks. It is more important to them that you are willing to obey than that you believe all the right things. If you’re willing to believe, then you need only to be told what to believe. If you’re unwilling or even slightly reticent, then you become a threat. It doesn’t matter if you agree 95% of the time, a single steadfast disagreement shows some measure of independence.
oblig
https://frinkiac.com/caption/S07E05/450048
I do not understand the retail chicken market.
Boneless, skinless breasts are $1.99. Wings are $4 or $5 per pound.
I have seen stories which imply “wing restaurants” have a big effect.
I’ve seen a few articles on the topic, but haven’t checked prices recently – Gourmeltz is officially closed due to upgrades – too much sawdust from expansion to keep the main side open. Not sure about reopening dates yet.
That was a theme on “Restaurant Impossible” episode this week. Big Wing buying up every chicken’s two wings, making it very expensive for independent restaurants to offer wings at a competitive price.
Seattle soap opera
It’s still too soon to tell whether Schultz will adopt a new playbook for a time when workers feel emboldened by rising wages and a tight labor market, but his recent actions and words could offer some clues.
On Monday he announced that the company would suspend stock buybacks to invest in its stores and employees, yet in a town hall with workers that same day, he repeated his belief in the company team approach to labor management.
“I’m not an anti-union person. I am pro-Starbucks, pro-partner, pro-Starbucks culture,” Schultz said. “We didn’t get here by having a union.”
Both organizers and labor experts expect the company under Schultz’s leadership will ramp up efforts to quash the labor push.
“I think they’re likely to double down on their anti-union efforts and do everything they possibly can,” said John Logan, a labor professor at San Francisco State University.
Anything short of an ardent invitation to a union is union-busting.
What he said is true – Starbucks thought they could beat unionization by offering good wages, flexible schedules, health and education benefits for part time employees, health benefits for domestic partners before gay marriage was a thing, and other perks not typically found at fast food joints, especially not 30 years ago when things started taking off. He is also not anti-union in the broad sense – he is firmly in the progressive camp.
However, now he will learn that you can never please the prog hive mind – it demands sacrifice. And he can suck a bag of dicks, because he is very much “union for thee not me” and for selling the Sonics to a buyer who made no bones about his intentions to move the team to Oklahoma.
To a man they all went to the “best” universities. All of which have been captured by the proto-woke bullshit. They truly believe they are the “best and brightest” for this generation, that they should be running the world, and that fascists’ lurk under every rock.
Harvard Business School looms large.
Also, SV is not so much the Wild West – many of the kids entering Tech today had parents in tech 25 years ago. Instead of just drawing the middle class nerds from around the country, they are largely pulling in a large contingent of people that grew up in Seattle and San Francisco in well of tech families.
First match of the season postponed due to weather.
A perfect morning to stay in and drink coffee.
Weather forecast shows a perfect evening to stay in and drink Scotch.
To date, more than 180 company-owned locations have filed petitions for a union election, although that is still a small fraction of Starbucks’ overall U.S. footprint of nearly 9,000 stores. Out of the locations whose votes have been counted, only one cafe has opposed unionizing.
This tells me everything I need to know about the intellectual horsepower of the typical Starbucks employee.
It’s not just that, but the percentage of non-public employees represented by unions has crashed and these kids have no direct or indirect familial experience with unions. They’re attracted to it the same way communist and socialist movements attract them, all koobayah and unlimited rice pudding. They’ve never seen the other side of it.
*the numbers of private sector unionization don’t paint the complete picture. Even non-represented professional and managerial workers had interactions and experience with unions that doesn’t happen anymore. And it wasn’t as anti union as one would think. Back when non-union wages were often based off of contract rate (and the benefits schedule was the same) and the flow was craft to non-union vs off the street/college to non-union, there was more of a mixed bag.
Guy I worked with years ago told me about working in Arizona at a company that went on strike. Coworker decided to cross and the company sent him to a different location so he wouldn’t be recognized. The local management that picked him was openly hostile to him scabbing and helping to break the strike. That was their salary increase he was working against.
*picked him up
if I was looking for a house out there, Montpellier (sp?) would be a good spot to look.
That’s a little farther from civilization than I would prefer, but I have definitely widened the net.
Ouch.
Walt is spinning in his freezer.
I wonder how much of this is coming from the woke Abigail D.
Today I’d a motorcycle ride benefit thingy for a local lady, former Madame of an old Pahrump brothel. She converted it years ago to a bar/restaurant and B&B. Unfortunately, it burned to the ground earlier this year.
She is a well-loved (snicker) member of the community, noted for her own generosity for local causes.
So today at 11, I am assigned to help take donations and direct parking traffic at one of the motorcycle stops. Mr Splosives will be playing bass in the band.
Pahrump is a weird town, but I love it.
We pretend to be loners, but community really is important.
Have a wonderful day!
Wow. Looks like the Steelers will need to revise their draft strategy.
Truly tragic. Shit can change in an instant.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10702989/Pittsburgh-Steelers-quarterback-OSU-standout-Dwayne-Haskins-24-died-hit-car.html