Good morning my Glibs and Gliberinas! And what an fantastic day it always is!
We are truly being led by morons
Gas Price Rises 5 Cents Overnight to Record High $4.67/Gallon
The CBO confirms Bidenflation is real
Quarter of Americans will delay retirement because of inflation
Jury rules in favor of Johnny Depp in defamation lawsuit against Amber Heard
Amber Heard faces career ruin and bankruptcy
Attempted Reagan assassin John Hinckley to get unconditional release, judge confirms
8 Senate Republicans Tell Schumer They Will Block Any Bill Undermining Hyde Amendment
New Lancet Study Destroys the CDC’s Justification for School Mask Mandates
Illegal immigrant population soars to 11.6 million
Radical socialist San Francisco DA poised to be ousted
Illinois ends its parental notification requirement for minors getting abortions
One-Third of Americans Making $250K ‘Live Paycheck-to-Paycheck’
That’s all I got for today. I’ll leave you with a song dedicated to Janet Yellen and move along with my day.
“We are truly being led by morons”
Yep.
Led? No.
Ruled is more like it.
I remember when rulers were decisive.
I remember when they were at least semi competent because they knew they could be held quasi-accountable…
Look, Kurt, we’re all friends here. You can just use your real name and all. 😉
Dangnabbit — wrong link. Again the gross incompetence rears its ugly ugly head…
Were they?
Remember what they said about Mussolini? “He made the trains run on time”. Maybe that’s such a remarkable quote because everyone was less than semi competent.
I have been wondering if its always been a mad dash from crisis to crisis. Maybe the media has always looked the other way. I hate to say this, but many times in my life I am the one flailing about from crisis to crisis (sheep escaping pen last night).
Maybe we are all “Fuckwits”
I certainly know everyone else is…
A good deal of success comes down to “luck”. But there is a great and fallacious misbelief, that all circumstances are essentially 50-50, or that because chance is involved, the odds cannot be manipulated.
If the odds are 20-80 against and you win, you really were just lucky.
If the odds were 20-80 against and you turned them to 80-20 in favor and won, then you were not merely lucky.
These two kinds of people are not the same.
No, from 1991 to 2001 there was a solid decade where the “crisis” consisted of who was sticking cigars where or whether we should continue to drop bombs on people in far away places while keeping ground forces mostly out of the way. Since 9/11, it’s been nonstop crisis mode in the media, but from 2012-2019 things were pretty tame in reality.
Hanlon’s Razor says, “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence”. Much like the “slippery slope fallacy”, which is a fallacy only of formal logic not informal argumentation, this maxim has been weaponized. While the government is indeed full of incompetents, the incompetents by and large don’t run the show. This is intentional, as indeed is letting the rank-and-file be largely composed of the obedient and loyal rather than the innovative or capable.
The fascist movement came from disillusioned marxists that realized any system created under marxism where government controlled everything, because the priority amongst the nomenklatura would always be loyalty to marxism and to the current top men, first and foremost, would result in a vacuum of knowledge in the critical expertise needed to make informed and correct ruling decisions for such a big and complex system, and then cause sub par results, before the inevitable failure.
The fascist system allowed the political class to control the private sector, indirectly, through laws, to delay the onset of failure, and most western world democracies adopted a version of that. While it worked for a while, the corruptocracy which was slowly stagnating and calcifying, was weaponized by the Obama admin. They put people that had as their first priority loyalty to the dnc and to the dnc’s top men, in charge of all the government entities. This has resulted in the same problem that one gets in the marxist system with ineptitude, lack of expertise, and misguided priorities basically causing failures and an eventual collapse.
At this point practically every single government agency is completely and utterly compromised and unable to perform their functions other than to engage in political bullshit and information manipulation. Their primary agendas are the tropes that allow them to do the great reset. In the name of democracy and saving it, of course…
I think you have it somewhat backwards. It was the DNC that got coopted, not the other way around. This is not to say there was some “pure” or “ideal” Democratic Party in the past (not since the end of Grover Cleveland’s second term, anyway), but rather that the DNC is not in the driver’s seat. These people are Democratic partisans, yes, but they wish to mold the Democratic Party to their designs. The leaders and insiders are not like the common voters and run-of-the-mill clients. The Fabian strategy is not to put the DNC perpetually in charge of the U.S. government, it’s to tune every institution they can get their hands on slowly but surely leftward, and that includes both the Democratic and Republican Parties (and many other things besides). The former is the leading edge, and the latter is the trailing edge, but they’re both moving in the same direction.
It is often said that Donald Trump is a “normal Democrat from the 1990s” and this is mostly true. Yet he is utterly out of tune with that party as it exists today. Do they hate him simply because he’s now a Republican? Or do they hate him because he represents a (rather mild) form of reaction? His election signified an unacceptable reverse turning of the ratchet. His ideas represented a wholesale rejection of the current iteration of Fabian goals. Even relative to the Republican Party, he was reactionary. And so it must be realized, in retrospect, that Obama’s election was not a victory for the “Democratic Party” (which indeed suffered significant electoral losses because of him, at least for a time), but rather a victory for a particular faction of the Democratic Party, one which was and is closely aligned with government, nonprofit, and corporate bureaucracy.
There are parallels to fascism, but the Fabians are older than the fascists.
@kbolino you should put some of your thoughts into an article. I always find myself getting some profound nugget of truth from your posts, and I think you’re more on target regarding cause and effect than many others, no offense to the other posters here.
Apologies if you already have and I missed it.
Agreed
^ this a thousand times over. Everything that is happening has been a priori expressed goal of the politicians. Then, as it happens, they claim it is an accident. I don’t understand how anyone can continue to claim it’s stupidity and not intentional.
It reminds me of in 1984 when the government announces the chocolate bar ration is being increased when it’s actually being decreased. Can you imagine Winston saying “Oh those dumb politicians, they’re too stupid to understand basic math and that this is really a decrease in ration”? Of course not. It’s the same thing here.
The government, like everyone else, is very good at self-rationalization.
The people who run it and work for it… don’t want to believe they’re part of the machine grinding the country down. They believe they’re the heroes.
As the saying goes “Nobody is the villain in their own story.”
The problem lies with the populace and its willingness to suck up propaganda like a Hoover vacuum. This is particularly true of the college-educated sect which has undergone massive growth over the past four decades. They’re the enlightened and the enlightened run the country. How could they be wrong?
Ah! A bird!
I think it must be recognized that propaganda is essential to the functioning of our system. There is a reason liberal democracy fails to take root when it is established hastily (e.g. Afghanistan, Iraq). It takes at least an entire generation of effective propagandizing to lay the foundation for what we consider “normal” today in the West. So to decry the population’s susceptibility to propaganda is to decry its ability to adapt and function in this “peaceful” and “free” society of ours. Peace and freedom are not the norm. People must be trained to these things, and they must be provided incentives both ways to ensure it remains.
The Pledge of Allegiance, our recounting of the Revolution and the Civil War, our reading of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, etc.: these things are also propaganda. Eating grilled hot dogs surrounded by patriotic bunting on Memorial Day is a kind of propaganda. Taking your child to the gun range to learn the proper and safe use of firearms is a kind of propaganda. Effective cultural propagation is indistinguishable from effective propaganda (and it turns out those words come from the same root). This susceptibility is not inherently bad.
“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who CAN be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”
If you haven’t done so I highly recommend reading “That Hideous Strength” by CS Lewis
‘Competent’ is like ‘expert.’ Nobody is competent at everything, and lacking external feedback makes objective competence very difficult, if not impossible.
In other words, the people running the show are highly competent at palace intrigue, but not so much at building reliable and effective systems of government.
Palace intrigue is just a means, not an end. It is, for many of them, their core competency, but it’s not the source of their agenda.
They have substituted “being in power” for “doing good in the world.”
I know I keep harping on this, but our society has progressed so far that we supplant our actual, original, stated goals with compliance with the structures erected to achieve them.
And that results in complete inability to achieve said goals, eventually, and excessive effort and cost expended to achieve nothing.
This is only true of the rank-and-file. The people at/near the top have agendas and are competently executing them.
Which is why I wonder about those agendas. I know, ‘Better to reign in hell,’ and all, but is it really going to be all that fun to be the dynastic ruler of a global slum?
I said “said goals.” Which were “do good in the world,” and meant as “good” as understood generally by those who set them. Those goals have been coopted by the people in charge to mean something else. I don’t think it’s a grand conspiracy, in the conventional sense, but those people at the top have installed themselves there and brought their ideological compatriots with them because they share different goals than the originals, or perhaps because they judge their methods to be superior to the means envisioned to achieve the original goals.
They then set compliance with the new methods to be superior to the original goals, while encouraging those executing them to believe they serve the original goals.
Have you seen trailer park chicks?
@db I think we’re broadly in agreement, but I also think there’s a middle layer where they realize/accepted/embrace that the original goals have been scrapped and replaced with new goals, but aren’t yet especially competent nor fully aware nor capable of setting the new goals.
If people making $250K a year are living paycheck to paycheck, it isn’t just morons in the lead.
“Gas Price Rises 5 Cents Overnight to Record High $4.67/Gallon ”
BIDEN ADMIN: I BLAME AMBER TURD!
IT’S THE “HEARD HIKE”!
I’ll help Amber work off her debt.
You should ask Johnny Depp about that idea.
I was just going to pay her to leave grumpies on the sheets of my enemies.
I didn’t know you were German.
She’s more radioactive than Monica Lewinski at her prime.
Monica Lewinski at least had plausible deniability: Young intern fucked and then fucked over by a much-older man who was in a position of power over her.
What I find ironic is that people in romancelandia who decry May-December and coerced sex between unequal people as “problematic” and “disgusting,” and who NEVER give the heroine credit for knowing her own mind, thoroughly trounced on Monica and defended Clinton. I’ve never seen a bigger display of hypocrisy in my life amongst ordinary people.
Oh I agree. I do feel a lot of sympathy for her. She has lived her life with a healthy dose of self deprecating humor. Would be interesting to hear her speak. I doubt I could survive what she went through.
Just comparing the infamy of the two people.
The immediate folding of the #MeToo movement in the face of Tara Reade was pretty stunning, too.
^^^THIS^^^
There is no inconsistency to these people. I recently joked that they were changing the definition of what a woman is so they won’t have to deal with the problem caused with the fact that they tell us women are fragile and indecisive or strong and smart depending on the situation and how they can benefit from one or the other stand.
I won’t be surprised when you plan fails miserably. You could even say that it shit the bed it will be so bad.
Just don’t be surprised when a grumpy shows up on your pillow.
Said Snow White to Prince Charming….
Don’t be grossed out when you find out that that isn’t a snot stain that Sneezy left on your pillow.
I’m wondering if we’ll now have to retire the phrase “shit the bed” after woke progs decide it’s oppressive to wombyn.
That’s a rule that covers this, but you do you.
“The CBO confirms Bidenflation is real” and “Quarter of Americans will delay retirement because of inflation”
And they will still pretend it is just bad luck and keep trying to blame others for their decisions, actions, and the idiocy of what follows when they enact their beliefs…
The survey revealed that 55.4 percent of Millennials who earn $250,000-plus a year reported living paycheck to paycheck compared to 21.8 percent of Boomer generation respondents in the same earnings category.
To me, this actually represents rational thought on both cohorts. Boomers are either already retired, or have (well, should have) ample savings and retirement assets piled up so that they don’t need to live paycheck to paycheck.
Millenials, at least the ones clever enough to be making 250 large, are also clever enough to figure out that in the current inflationary environment, saving money for a rainy day is a sucker bet. Or maybe they’re just playing the part of the grasshopper in the old fable, I dunno.
I hope they are at least loading up their 401K. If the government is going to confiscate mine at some point to give it to people that didn’t save, it would be a double insult if these millennials got to skip that experience as well because they were not willing to do the saving on their own.
My money is on ‘grasshopper’.
Can I put some money on leveraged grasshopper?
So, locust?
I think the younguns are just spending money like drunken sailors.
Avocado toast for everyone!
Gotta keep up on the Insta, photographing one’s brunches and travels.
Yeah — I fully expect this is a matter of paying too much for mortgages, not paying down cards, buying an electric (which start way high), etc.
As someone who isn’t anywhere near as fiscally responsible as he should be – I know all too well how easy it is to have the outflows expand to match the inflows. Doesn’t mean I’m proud of it, but I can see how it can happen, especially if these folks are living in places like the Bay Area or NYC or whatnot where the cost of living is sky high.
Side note: I don’t know what those two idiots were trying to do with the gator on the main page picture… and I strongly suspect I don’t want to know. Screamed Darwin Award contender, that’s for sure. Which translates to: “Morning, Banjos!” 😉
“saving money for a rainy day is a sucker bet”
Still a good idea because shit happens.
True enough — but I do still have the embers of my rage fanned when I look at the 0% (effectively) interest rate on savings accounts versus what the banks charge you going the other way whenever they can. Thanks, Fed with your “give the banks all the money they want for nothing” for a decade or more.
Wife and I know several couples in this situation. I don’t think that cleverness plays any part of it.
They pay for premium day care for their kids because both are working long hours. They both lease cars/SUVs. They own a boat. They live in a huge McMansion on a tiny lot.
On the surface they look like they are living high on the hog, but one missed paycheck and they are in deep trouble. I couldn’t live with the stress of that.
I wonder how much of the youngster’s problems are caused by social media? They see peers buying huge houses and posting online and figure they are more successful than that yob, so they also overextend themselves. One of the reasons I dumped FB was because I’d see posts from HS friends who made it seem like they were living large when I knew they didn’t have a pot to piss in. Even knowing that, it made me jelly. Time to quit.
I was always a kind of saver when I had the opportunity. Starting with a paper route at 13 got me money to buy the things I wanted and also to make decisions about how much I wanted rather than needed.
My wife is the financial person in our family. If it was left up to me, we’d have no money in the bank and a lot of stuff.
It is a system that works. I’m amazed at how much financial independence we have because of her efforts.
Yep, my experience is the same. I work with a bunch of people who make around that, and you can tell the ones who are in the paycheck to paycheck mode. They’re desperate now because of inflation. Their finances are balanced on a tightrope, and it’s starting to get gusty.
Late to the party, but “Keeping up with the Jones’s” is not a new phenomena. A large portion of people will always spend what they have. Usually a large chunk of them learn about age 50 to slow it down, some never do. It’s not a gen Y thing, it’s not a millennial thing, or any other generation. It’s just humans being humans.
Saving for a rainy day is only a sucker’s bet if the rainy day never comes.
That said, I’m moving a bunch of cash savings into hard assets.
I moved a bunch of cash into a liquid asset, by buying a tank of gas.
Gas, grass, and ass never lose value…
Inflation can cause the latter to lose value. Tres may disagree.
“Amber Heard faces career ruin and bankruptcy”
I am gonna bet money that the usual suspects will rehabilitate her and demand everyone shut up and accept that as one of the old fashioned women (the ones with wombs and not cocks and beards) she needs to be believed anyway.
I disagree. A massive cultural change has happened. You can feel it and see it. I’ve never seen so many people online mock corporate LGBQP+ pandering.
Kewpie dolls are in the club now?!
$6 gas really burns though the bullshit.
Far be it from me to question the wisdom you bring here Banjos, but when I see shit like this or this, I can’t help but assume the rot has gone too far and that we are done for.
Have they kicked her out of any movies yet?
Since everything is a reboot now, she would be perfect in a reboot of Fatal Attraction.
And since every reboot has to have a twist – Fecal Attraction.
Ahh… shit.
Doo-doo…. Gonna put it on you…
*narrows brown eye*
Thank you.
Still can’t figure out why I should care about any of this celebrity stuff.
I would think because we have all had an Amber Heard encounter of some sort. Its satisfying seeing someone lie on the stand in your face and get called on it.
And some expert witnesses look pretty bad on TV.
Because it keeps you from noticing all the other bad stuff.
This is one of the few things that the media can harp on that can’t be traced back to Biden’s puppetmasters.
Are you sure about that?
That trial was the most entertaining thing to come out of Hollywood in a long time.
I was thinking the same thing until my wife pointed out it’s a very public and high profile refutation of #metoo. Now there are actual consequences to the #metoo accuser for making false accusations against their victim. Certainly not earth-shattering, but this case will have a positive dampening effect and may spur more victims of #metoo to take action in court with actual damages.
Same as when the LuckyGunner countered sued the family who sued them for selling bullets to a mass shooter and won millions. LG donated all of their winnings to pro 2A groups, being satisfied alone with the message that there is repercussions for spurious accusations.
Yes.
I’ll admit to being biased. I have male friends that were falsely accused of sex crimes. Nothing ever happened to the women who made the false accusations even though they were caught lying.
She (?) is LGBTQ…
Enby FTF transfemme?
She used to be a lesbian who hit her girlfriend.
We are truly being led by morons
At this point I assume malice.
Embrace the power of both.
These people are all in on the Great Reset. Not because they believe they are doing something good or noble for mankind, mind you. The great reset is happening because they are watching their socialist system collapse, something that threatens their hold on being top men, and are scared the masses will turn on them when it becomes unavoidably obvious that they ran out of other people’s money (cause they will not give up their money). The reset is their way of taking the socialist bullshit that has made them rich and powerful, but that is on life support, and extend it’s life by a century or two.
Both really does get at it. If it were malicious and competent we couldn’t be as bad off as we are.
“Radical socialist San Francisco DA poised to be ousted”
They will blame White Supremacy!
It’s not like they didn’t know what they were voting for.
Ninety-five per cent of them didn’t look beyond his party registration. That is how Soros and friends sneak in their preferred candidates.
They get what they deserve.
Unfortunately, the rest of us get what they deserve, also.
After that statement, obligatory music link.
I’d bet most people thought that he’d lighten up on bullshit laws. That he’d stop citing poor people for bogus traffic laws and shit like that.
That doesn’t sound like a bad idea at all.
In practice, though, he focused on letting real dangerous people off and not charging people for property crimes.
Which is what you would expect from someone who has communist revolutionaries for parents and also went to work for one.
Destabilization is the name of the game.
I can’t remember who it was, but I remember an old 80s era interview with one of these radical marxist assholes where he all but admitted the problem with America was that it was too rich and the belief by the people to fight adversity on their own too ingrained into their spirit for the usual marxist revolutionary efforts to work to turn enough people away from the evil capitalist system (their words).
Took them 40 years to grind down the American can-do mindset, and one could even argue they are dong their best to not just undermine, but to eradicate the wealth in this nation, but they are getting ready for effort #2 to straddle us with the marxist yoke…
Yuri Bezmenov
Yuri was not a radical marxist, but a defector that warned us what the Soviet KGB was up to.. This was one of the early leftist shitbags of the Ayers ilk.
I think most of his voters had no idea who his parents are, but even if they did it probably wouldn’t have mattered.
Daily Ray of Sunshine
There still are real people out there, in spite of what the headlines tell us. We see it more often in flyover country, maybe ’cause there are fewer people and we get to know the neighbors, though I have neighbors that I’ve never seen and never met.
Neighbor across the street diagonally from me I’ve never met. But all through the year, he goes around and picks up free/cheap kids bicycles. He then rebuilds them to working and safe order and usually around twice a year (Christmas and early Spring are the most common) puts them all out on his tree lawn with a sign saying free bikes for kids.
I’m sure it’s technically against some yard sale/nuisance/eyesore measure but I don’t believe anyone has called in a complaint on them. All day seeing parents stop by (some with their kids, others without) and picking up bikes to give kids a ride restores a bit of hope to the world.
That’s great.
Now we just wait for the the town to shut him down…
Been going on for 10 years or so with no shut down yet. I’ll try to grab a picture of the bikes on the lawn the next time he puts them out.
Re Amber Heard
The only reason I cared about that circus is because a mean girl bullied somebody, lied about the person, and got him drummed out of his job. I’m glad somebody got justice over a mean girl.
People keep saying that if the world was run by women it would be a better place, and I am left baffled that anyone could think this was an accurate statement when there are so many mean girls out there and they would certainly end up being the ones in charge… Men are assholes, but you ladies can make us look down right incompetent in that area more often than not…
Everybody should go read Kipling’s “The Female of the Species”
There’s a reason that there’s never been a successful matriarchy.
“Experts have suggested that there is ‘no way back for Heard in Hollywood’ adding that the dramatic six-week court battle has left the actress, 36, ‘too icky for a studio’, raising questions about her career and future earnings. ”
A famous, good-looking, white woman? She’ll be back in a year.
I predict that she’ll be headlining Sharknado 27 in about five years.
No Onlyfans?
Luke Perry’s probably looking for work too.
I think the only work he could get right now is as an extra on The Walking Dead.
He was in a Hallmark movie that wasn’t bad (on the Hallmark scale). That was in …. 2016. Nevermind.
Imagine you are a movie producer. Now imagine you are a move producer and Amber Heard is licking your balls.
As crazy as she is? I’d be too worried she’d bite them off to let her anywhere near them.
Part of the thrill for some people.
You only live once.
I had fugu with ex-ex-Lady in Japan a while ago. I kept thinking about the Simpsons ep where Homer “nearly dies” (thinks he’s dying) after eating it. Good, early work by them.
It was a good ~6 course meal with different ways of cooking it. There was sashimi up to fried and all in between. For me, it was mostly about the novelty behind it all. Made for a fun experience.
That was a good box to check off.
I’d be wondering why Amber Heard was licking my balls, instead of one of my usual bevy of teenager ‘aspiring actresses.’
She has experience.
Jussie is already working again, and he hasn’t had his conviction overturned (yet)..
Stint in rehab. Ghost written book and tour where she blames all her problems on untreated bipolar.
Crying interview on Oprah.
Yeah, she’ll be back. At the very least she will get roles in the all female woke reboot of Platoon
“You all take a good look at this lump of shit. Remember what it looks like.”
Yep, I can see it.
She could always do some Scheisseporn.
Gas Price Rises 5 Cents Overnight to Record High $4.67/Gallon
This administration is full of records and accomplishments.
The Congressional Budget Office has just confirmed that President Joe Biden is blameworthy for the record-high inflation that is punishing workers. Further, this nonpartisan source says that Biden’s preferred fix, raising taxes, will only make the economy worse.
Well when you opt for Zimbabwe economics…
I must have forgotten to turn on TV to watch the Trooping the Colour but I still saw the RAF flypast with the Queen and the working royals on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. The thrills of vacationing in London during the Platinum Jubilee while finally catching covid after 2.5 years.
Ouch. Hope you’re okay.
Hey, apparently e’s not sleeping rough!
Thanks. Today is much better than the last couple of days.
Get well soon.
Feel better!
Get well soon!
School districts that choose to mandate masks are likely to be systematically different from those that do not in multiple, often unobserved, ways.
Unobserved, intentionally concealed, whatever.
John Hinckley, the would-be assassin of President Ronald Reagan, will receive an unconditional release from prison, a federal judge has confirmed.
Hinckley, 67, attempted to assassinate Reagan in 1981. U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman announced Hinckley will be released on June 15.
Back in my undergrad days, we were told that US incarceration models had gone from the “Penitentiary” model, where prisoners would use prayer and reflection to mend their ways (didn’t work), to the “Reform” model, where convicts would further their education and learn a trade while incarcerated so that they wouldn’t re-offend when they got out (also didn’t work), to the “incapacitation” model, which basically admitted that they were warehousing folks until they aged out of the criminal cohort.
FWIW, I don’t know any 67-year old schizophrenics, but I can imagine one, especially if he’s been on his psych meds for the last forty years, isn’t really a threat to anyone.
I’d still be checking my private security if I were Jodie Foster.
Jodie Fosters Army concerts are gonna be lit!
Who’s gonna tell Hinckley…?
He will just transition and bully Jodie into giving it up…
He’ll be on the street, selling his meds, talking to himself. One day Jodie’s “real lover” will stick a knife in him, he’ll get a paragraph in a news magazine. Even now few people know who he is or the prez he capped.
Eh, NYC let some octogenarian trannie out because they were “no longer a threat,” and xey murdered again on their first week out.
I read that as “no longer a treat” and understood it completely.
This study demonstrates how the CDC was cherry-picking data to support their school mask dogma. The article states that CDC’s MMWR journal rejected publishing this re-analysis. Most likely because it exposed the CDCs salami-slicing of data & use of science as political propaganda
How else are the next generations going to learn their place in the Great Reset/NWO?
There is this weird dichotomy where people complain about politics influencing bureaucratic agencies but then turn around and wonder why these agencies don’t seem answerable to elected politicians. The depoliticization of bureaucracy is inextricably tied with the lack of accountability. A nonpartisan/bipartisan/”politically neutral” agency gets to have its own politics and priorities and treats political elections at most as minor annoyances.
Illegal immigrant population soars to 11.6 million
I love it when a plan comes to – uh – you know the thing. ///FormerVPJoeBiden
One-Third of Americans Making $250K ‘Live Paycheck-to-Paycheck’
Live within your means.
What about your ways?
If I die with money in the bank or not, I won’t care.
Until then, I’d sure prefer to not be stressed out, dependent, and poor.
Check to the undertaker should bounce,.
Cash, ass, or grass. No one gets buried for free.
Speaking of gross incompetence — I’ll start off today’s Quordle scores sub-thread.
Daily Quordle 129
5️⃣8️⃣
6️⃣4️⃣
#waffle132 4/5
?????
?⭐?⭐?
?????
?⭐?⭐?
?????
? streak: 34
? #wafflesilverteam
wafflegame.net
65
73
/gets less dumber every day!
Daily Quordle 129
4️⃣7️⃣
5️⃣6️⃣
22. Meh.
3 6
8 5
Daily Quordle 129
3️⃣6️⃣
4️⃣5️⃣
Hey whiz, in case you weren’t aware, the Quordle wordlist seems to directly rely on the wordle wordlist, which is available online. I haven’t encountered a solution yet that wasn’t on the solution portion of the wordle wordlist.
It basically cuts the Michigan list you were using in half.
I’ll have to look for that.
Daily Quordle 129
6️⃣7️⃣
4️⃣8️⃣
good thing today is a rest day
Daily Quordle 129
7️⃣6️⃣
9️⃣4️⃣
quordle.com
?⬜⬜⬜? ??⬜?⬜
⬜⬜?⬜⬜ ⬜???⬜
⬜⬜?⬜⬜ ⬜????
⬜⬜⬜?? ??⬜?⬜
?⬜?⬜⬜ ⬜????
⬜⬜?⬜⬜ ?????
????? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
?⬜⬜⬜? ?⬜⬜??
⬜⬜?⬜⬜ ⬜⬜??⬜
⬜⬜?⬜⬜ ⬜⬜???
⬜⬜⬜?? ?????
⬜⬜?⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬜⬜?⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬜??⬜? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬜???? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
????? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
4️⃣5️⃣
7️⃣6️⃣
Daily Quordle 129
8️⃣6️⃣
7️⃣4️⃣
blech
Today’s Worldle answers a question I’ve had for a while. Although I think there are some scale issues in the pic.
they should have saved that one for the first week of July
Daily Quordle 129
7️⃣6️⃣
8️⃣4️⃣
Daily Quordle 129
4️⃣5️⃣
6️⃣7️⃣
5️⃣6️⃣
7️⃣4️⃣
“Given the poverty of alternatives, all sorts of names will arise, from Mike Bloomberg-like billionaires and Michelle Obama to most of those dismal 2020 primary retreads.”
I read that as “retards”.
Anyway, I hope Trump doesn’t run again.
Having outsiders run is a good thing.
Any outsider who comes from a non-political background (i.e. not Michelle Obama) who comes in and wins will be portrayed as badly as the Orange Man. They too will be accused of breaking the “norms” of politics.
As if the people didn’t elect Trump because they were sick of the Norms.
The real power center wants politicians that they can own ad controlled. People they don’t own are problematic as the bad orange guy clearly showed…
One day we’re going to have to give up the fantasy of the Great Outsider riding into Washington and setting everything right.
First off, we don’t invest ANY FUCKING INDIVIDUAL with that kind of authority in our system.
Secondly, it is the goddamn Myth of the Rightful Ruler – straight out of the Lion King (which tbf did it really, really well).
You want the system fixed – you better be in your Congress-critter’s face about it, because that’s where it starts. [OK, you can actually start with being in the face of even more local politicians to set the precedent.]
The only way the system will ever be changed is to burn it down and start over. That will take a Great Outsider, and his rise to rulership won’t happen at the ballot box. Likely someone in the military who’s had enough, has the ambition, and has the support to pull a coup. Not saying this will happen, but that’s the only option I see for meaningful change. I’m not the only one…. there is a reason the military and law enforcement are currently being purged of unbelievers.
Of course, we may not like what the new system looks like it. It may be better or it may be worse. The Republic had its run and talking your Congress-critter is just poking the corpse with a stick.
Honestly, I’ll take the decaying corpse of the Republic over what is sure to result from a caudillo installing a new system.
Possibly. The family of the Jan 6th political prisoners would disagree with you. But I agree that life is still pretty comfortable for most of us.
You let some idiot have absolute power, and we’ll all be Jan. 6th people.
You let some idiot have absolute power, and we’ll all be Jan. 6th people.
It’s hardly within my capability to let someone have absolute power or prevent them from taking it.
if it ain’t me, i am sure it will be an idiot….
Jefferson predicted today’s politics. A revolution every 20 years meant a change of government, trash the laws and regulations and start a new, with fresh faces. Today’s faces haven’t been fresh this century. Grassley and all the rest, are inbreds to the system. Safe districts and all for the win.
At the risk of drugs and derriere and all, was this discussed already?
There’s lying and then there’s LYING. Sometimes it really does seem like past generations had a point with duels and tar, feathers and the old out-of-town-on-a-rail… because our current completely consequence free culture just seems to spiral into an exponential vortex of existential evil.
As has been mentioned before, the reintroduction of dueling would solve some of this.
I must have been asleep for years and missed a lot, because I thought lynching someone was already illegal.
Lynching is a tool of terror. It was used to kill hopes for freedom. In Kentucky, it was used to kill three of my uncles.
In this historic election, the choice is clear. Rand Paul may want to divide us, but hate won’t win this time.
It’s time to move forward, together.
Did Paul say/do something that I am unaware of that would indicate a change in his apparent world view?
Oh I see. Literally every criticism he has of Paul is a lie by context (or lack thereof). Is this cunte related to Corey Booker?
Our study demonstrates that observational studies of interventions with small to moderate effect sizes are prone to bias caused by selection and omitted variables. Randomized studies can more reliably inform public health policy.
How quaint.
Don’t they know the Red Queen is in charge ? “Conclusion first. Evidence afterward.”
But muh-democracy!
An order from Justice Samuel Alito paused a lower-court ruling in a lawsuit over a disputed 2021 local court election that would have allowed the counting of mail-in ballots that lacked a handwritten date.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia had ruled that the state election law’s requirement of a date next to the voter’s signature on the outside of return envelopes was “immaterial.” …
The high court’s action, called an administrative stay, freezes the matter until the court can give it further consideration. The state law requires voters to write a date on the envelope in which they mail in their ballots.
That’s some mighty fine judging there…
Judges know the law better than the legislators that wrote it. It is known.
“I don’t concern myself with what the law actually says, as I, Lord Judge, consider my personal opinions more important.”
The signature contains a penumbra and emanation of the date. Plus, if the ballot dates were really ever in question, the good folks at CSI or NCIS could run them thru the copier and determine the time of signature based on the ink decay within a couple hours using a laptop and a copier.
Elections are irredeemably broken until we go back to the norms of, oh, all of three years ago.
I’d rather have better anti-fraud measures than accepting the degree of fraud we’ve had for centuries.
True enough. But getting rid of no-questions-asked ballot harvesting will get us at least back to a system that’s redeemably broken….
CHEERS! For a wonderful evening last night.
JEERS! For the NYC Board of Education who have barred me from my son’s (2nd grade) piano recital this AM because I did not take the COVID vaccine. I’m morbidly hypertensive and just had a wee stroke; that shot will kill me, ChiComPox won’t.
On a bright note –
Daily Quordle 129
3️⃣5️⃣
4️⃣6️⃣
quordle.com
??⬜⬜⬜ ⬜?⬜⬜?
⬜???⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜?
????? ⬜⬜?⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜?⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
⬜?⬜⬜⬜ ⬜?⬜⬜?
???⬜⬜ ⬜?⬜⬜?
⬜??⬜? ⬜⬜?⬜?
????? ⬜⬜?⬜?
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜???
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
The pathological clinging to the idea that the shots do anything outside of *at best* reducing symptoms and as such have zero benefit (and possibly negative benefit given symptom reduction might increase spread, if I recall some of the studies mentioned) on everyone else barring hospital costs in the *worst* scenario really continues to piss me off.
I don’t fault anyone who has weighed the risks and decided to take it — but anyone mandating it at this point should go screw themselves, you can’t justify it. And making the not-at-risk categories is just evil.
Ok… better go take a morning walk because now I’m in “yell at the damned sky” mode again.
Yeah, it’s enraging. And we’ve barely begun to experience the real fallout from the last two wasted years and counting.
Hey – those clouds deserve to be yelled at.
#waffle132 5/5
?????
?⭐?⭐?
??⭐??
?⭐?⭐?
?????
? streak: 8
wafflegame.net
Me:
Daily Quordle 129
8️⃣4️⃣
6️⃣5️⃣
QuordleBot:
4 3
5 6
Daily Quordle 129
2️⃣6️⃣
4️⃣7️⃣
quordle.com
I’ll take it.
I’m morbidly hypertensive and just had a wee stroke
Wait, you just had a stroke? Sorry. I hope you recover.
As easy as it is to blame Biden on the inflation, this has been a long time in the making. The massive stimulus checks during the last year of the Trump presidency amid decreased supply because of lockdowns (I blame the media and most governors here) was probably the straw bale that broke the camel’s back. But inflation bombs are inevitable when you have a central bank keeping the cost of money artificially low for decades.
The 21st century has been an absolute disaster.
Maybe — but I still think the PPP admin strapped JATOs to the inflation rate when they decided to force the economy to give money to their cronies *cough* transition to Green Energy. As much as people like to ballyhoo the current economy as information based, it is really still energy based at the foundation. Dramatically force up the cost of energy, and that effect will just multiple as things move up every level of the supply chain — and you get the cluster frak we’ve got.
But that will just help us own nothing and eat bugs or whatnot, so they don’t have to give an Amber Heard’s bedspread or anything….
Nothing Biden has done stems the tide of destruction, but it hardly started it either.
That’s the gist of my point. At this point, at 30 trillion in debt (or whatever it is), I see two ways out.
1. Defaulting and saying “we aren’t paying you back, you fucked up, you trusted us.” Reminds me of some quote from I forget where: if you owe $100,000 to the bank, you’re screwed. If you owe $10,000,000 to the bank, the bank is screwed.
2. Hyperinflating the currency so that 30T is the cost of a gallon of milk.
1 seems like the best scenario, but 2 seems like the most likely scenario.
Option 1 is the way they would need to fix it that at least leaves a small chance that we could recover in a generation. Option 2 is what they will do because they will keep the gravy train going for themselves and their cronies to the very last second and leave themselves setup to be the ones who automatically get to takeover and dictate the terms of whatever the new system is.
The behavior all along has been so predicably disastrous that it’s hard for me to believe you wouldn’t do what they’ve done unless option 2 was actually the plan all along. Or maybe I just don’t know what being drunk on power actually feels like.
Borrowing money to pay the interest on the debt never seems to be a solution. The deficit in incurred annually, some of which goes to buy votes, a lot to pay the interest on previous vote buying.
Working retail in the old days would see some people with a dozen or more credit cards searching for the one that wasn’t maxxed out. We might see a few rejects until we hit one that would ‘work’.
I don’t know what PPP is or JATO is.
JATO = Jet-Assisted Take-Off. They’re external motors strapped to planes to get them up to speed faster so they can be launched from shorter runways.
PPP = President Poopy Pants
Tossing gasoline on a fire is still tossing gasoline on a fire.
I watched this last night. I thought most of it was pretty good; worth watching. Spike Lee can (could) make a pretty good movie when the mood strikes him. I would be interested to know how much of Malcolm’s dialog was lifted from transcripts of his public appearances.
You can choose 3 potions
The effects of the potions are permanent.
https://twitter.com/thisisjimtait/status/1531855416434507776
Hmmm tough one… I would take the teleport one for sure. I am split between taste and body temperature… And I wonder how much money I could make of the cheese
Who TF wants to be able to go to airports?
I do it is a way to immediately escape any dangerous situation
I’d pick always feeling rested, speak every language, and perfect memory.
I don’t want remember everything…
It tells you you can choose what memories to remember…
That sounds pretty good. I’m on the fence between ‘speak every language’ and ‘domovi finish my chores.’
Easy: Perfect memory (negates the need for the language one), identify emotions, never need sleep
“negates the need for the language one”
You could learn every language only if you lived forever, and spent all your time memorizing languages.
Where are the ones for luscious hair and permanent boners we were promised in Ideocracy?
Man, that’s SCIENCE, not fantasy!
I basically already have 3 of them:
– green (cats) – meh
– blue (memory) – this is a mix of very handy and completely crushing, depending on the memory
– black (beard) – ‘cept now it’s greying and I look like I’m 900 years old
Would pick the airport and language ones.
Always feel rested, teleport to any airport, speak any language = Globetrotter supreme.
As an insomniac, eternal vigor is a no-brainer.
Polyglot is so stupidly useful, plus if it literally is “speak EVERY language,” you’d be the perfect codebreaker.
While the language + airport would seem to have good synergy, the teleport one seems WAAAAY to easy to monkey’s paw.
All the rest are underpowered, but having a clean house/dishes/laundry/lawn/landscaping done automatically would certainly leave me more of that extra eight hours available for ranting on foreign-language chatboards.
I passed up stations in PA yesterday that had it at $4.89/gal and bought in Ohio for $4.68.
When I road tripped a couple weeks back, my only fill-ups were in Ohio. First one in Conneaut on the way out, then one in the CLE suburbs on the way home. While the Mini is reaching the point where repairing optional things don’t make sense, getting over 36 MPG while having a fun to drive car means it’ll be sticking around.
The GF just put a deposit down on a Toyota Sienna hybrid–supposed to get 36 MPG, but on the other hand, I’ll have a fucking minivan in the garage. At least I’m not paying for that.
Minivans work with the MILF crowd, yo….
Don’t Bother Knockin’ (If This Van’s Rockin’)
Hey, look- my avatar’s back. Procrastination, FTW!
I miss seeing Straff’s avatar destroy shizz in the AM..
Well, I’m peeved.
I’m getting ready to get my car’s technical inspection for a Track Day event in Birmingham later this month, and check to see if a set of Ferodo racing brake pads are still in the trunk in case my current pads are too worn down to take out on the track. I pop the hatch and see, to my satisfaction that the pad boxes are still there — then take a closer look and see that the boxes are empty, with cardboard packing material strewn about the trunk.
So I’m kicking myself for apparently leaving the car unlocked where some ethically-stunted asshat could open the door and rummage about, eventually opening the trunk and helping himself to my stuff, while also baffled as to why anyone would want the things. They’re specialty racing brake pads. They’re loud as hell and only work at elevated temperatures, and they only fit two vehicles — Porsche 991 series GT3 and 981 GT4. It’s not like you can pawn them off and slap them on your Silverado, or whatever. So the thief deprived my of some $900 worth of brake pad that he can’t use or likely sell.
Buncha savages in this world, I tell ya.
/rant off
Shit, I park in my garage at night cause old angry girlfriends had puncture expensive to replace tires once or twice back a long time ago and I lurned my lesson…
But did they ever shoot a deuce in your bed ?
One time during anal sex….
That sucks. I’m sorry that happened to you. To tie it in with the anti-Rand advert, IIRC, the overwhelming majority of lynchings in US history had fuck all to do with ethnicity/race. Rather, they were administered to horse and cattle thieves. I wholeheartedly support and endorse thieves of all stripes being left dangling from lampposts, trees, overpasses, whatever. Make them sport for the crows.
Stealing a person’s livelihood, transportation, or food were seen as capital crimes at one time not oh, insurance will cover that.
Racing is dangerous, I would not do it if I were you. Also owning a racing car means you did not pay your fair share of taxes.
What’s more chickenshit than fucking with another man’s automobile?.
Plus why not take the boxes too..,
That sucks.
I hate thieves.
For those needing the background, there was the Elite 8 thread (and voting). From there you can go back to the initial bracket (below). We’re down to Wickard, Slaughterhouse, Chevron and Kelo. The voting begins below…
Image
SUPREME COURT MADNESS
Which of the following decisions should the Supreme Court reverse next?
https://twitter.com/CaseyMattox_/status/1532018077650587649
Whatever it is that makes it so hard to tar & feather our corruptocracy’s members.
have you seen the price of tar lately?
You solve that by making government have to provide the tar & feathers, DUH!
Wickard…the evil framework upon which so much government intrusion and power over us hangs.
Arguably, if you crushed Slaughterhouse, you’d take out Wickard as a by-product.
One would hope – but I have little faith in the application being done right.
That’s why I put it as “arguably”, but I think the gist of the exercise is these would be sweeping decisions, not narrowly construed over-turnings.
Yes, without Wickard so much of what government does goes *poof*.
This. The entire administrative state is built on Wickard.
I noticed that neither US v Miller, Griggs v Duke Power, or Regents of University of California v Bakke made the top 32.
But yeah, Wickard.
Speaking of masks, the NYT is also almost there:
Why Masks Work, but Mandates Haven’t
From the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a paradox involving masks. As Dr. Shira Doron, an epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, puts it, “It is simultaneously true that masks work and mask mandates do not work.”
To start with the first half of the paradox: Masks reduce the spread of the Covid virus by preventing virus particles from traveling from one person’s nose or mouth into the air and infecting another person. Laboratory studies have repeatedly demonstrated the effect.
Given this, you would think that communities where mask-wearing has been more common would have had many fewer Covid infections. But that hasn’t been the case.
So close.
Laboratory studies – just like the real world
This is a pet peeve of mine.
Empirical results > Lab studies > Computer models and theories
And FFS, a typical mask is not going to stop an aerosolized virus in any way.
Yeah, actual studies of how masks are actually used have repeatedly demonstrated that they don’t work.
In an engineering environment, when the real world empirical results don’t align with your lab work, it is presumed that you fucked up the design of the experiment and need to go back to the drawing board.
Not when you are a High Priest of Science! The flaws in the evidence are corruptions of The Theory.
From their perspective, this means we have failed The Science, not that The Science has failed us.
Yup. “The majority of people just aren’t wearing the masks right, that’s why it seems like they aren’t working.”
Part of the problem, Salzberg explains, is that the most effective masks also tend to be less comfortable. They cover a larger part of a person’s face, fit more snugly and restrict the flow of more air particles.
The stolen base is there. Obviously we are talking about uncomfortable masks that restrict breathing!
The masks haven’t worked yet, but they should have worked, so clearly we have to mask more aggressively until they start working.
Nobody thought the question the notion that every human on the planet was going to “correctly” wear the proper mask for 16 hours a day, every day, for years on end, never take them off, never touch their face.
And that’s assuming the damn things even work.
The stupidity of the “plague zero” mind-set they’ve been pushing is unbelievable.
And if we’re talking about n95s (German data would question their efficacy) you still can’t reuse them.
Like a PhD coworker told me, “You don’t make the model fit the real world. You make the real world fit the model.” Unfortunately, he was serious.
You do want to keep the lucrative government grants, right? If so peddle the bullshit. Especially the AGW and green energy garbage.
Aaaarrrgh…
That hurts to hear.
At my last doctor visit, I was handed a mask and told they must be worn while in the building. I told the young internist, I would happily put it on if she could name any virus that was large enough to be filtered by the paper abomination. She laughed and said “just hang on to it so the office manager doesn’t have a conniption.”
They’ll miraculously win the World Cup as well.
Ukraine score in either half at Hamden Park to earn a hard-fought 3-1 win over Scotland.
The best part is if they can beat Wales (probably not, but maybe) they will be in the same group as the US.
Laboratory studies have repeatedly demonstrated the effect.
Given this, you would think that communities where mask-wearing has been more common would have had many fewer Covid infections. But that hasn’t been the case.
“Laboratory studies” “repeatedly” demonstrated “this effect”. Except they omitted the actual virus in their “research” .
Well, the spherical cows indicated they were correct. What more do you want?
Facial reconstruction of Stafford Road Man, who would have been part of one of the earliest Saxon migrations to Britain.
https://twitter.com/sonofaelfred/status/1532128294715498496
Progenitor of all biker gang members.
That mullet rocks, huh?
Distant relative of Lemmy’s ?
I think it’s actually Lemmy.
Can’t you afford wheel locks?
Owen Wilson’s gonna need a hot new set of wheels … cause cops say his were stolen right off his fancy car!!!
Law enforcement sources tell TMZ … Owen parked his Tesla in front of his Santa Monica home Saturday — but he came out Sunday morning to notice someone had stolen all his rims and tires.
In all, we’re told the estimated cost was around $4K for everything, so not awful, but still a pain to handle.
Spoken like a true rich asshole
So, what fancy car did the wheels get stolen from, anyway? McLaren? Bentley?
This lady’s fetish is interesting…
In the links last night.
Rebel Scum on June 1, 2022 at 3:19 pm
“Woman who is sexually attracted to planes wants to marry toy Boeing”
Pan Am-sexual.
The polyglot Austrian Empire: ‘One soldier at the beginning of the twentieth century wrote his diary in four different languages—German for regimental matters, Slovene when thinking about his girlfriend, Serbian for songs he recalled, and Hungarian for his sexual fantasies.’
https://twitter.com/edwest/status/1532031656118321152
And women claim men can’t really compartmentalize our thoughts!
How was I supposed to know?
President Joe Biden conceded Wednesday he didn’t understand how big of an effect the shutdown of an Abbott baby formula plant in Michigan and subsequent recalls would have on the baby formula supply until April.
His admission came moments after formula manufacturers told him, during a White House roundtable on the crisis, that they knew immediately how bad the shortages could get. The White House has previously said it had been working on addressing the shortages since February.
Biden, responding to questions about how quickly the administration acted, claimed: “I don’t think anybody anticipated the impact of one facility — of the Abbott facility.” Abbott was not at Wednesday’s event.
“Once we learned of the extent of it and how broad it was, we kicked everything into gear,” he added.
Pressed by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on the comments from manufacturers that they knew immediately what the impact would be, Biden responded: “They did, but I didn’t.”
National Economic Council Director Brian Deese worked to explain later Wednesday how the situation had devolved into the current crisis.
Electricity comes from the wall.
Gasoline comes from pumps.
Food comes from grocery stores.
Left unasked is why the fuck the President should be involved in baby formula production and distribution.
Get the government out of it and the problem goes away.
The US government is kind of fascistic (in the real sense, not the “muh-fascisms” cries of leftists) and has been for quite some time.
I’m thinking of writing an article on how Spengler was proven right after all – just not in the way expected.
Especially when it comes to baby formula – most of it is paid for by… you guessed it, the government.
It’s the age old question: could Joe Biden run a lemonade stand?
Well. Things are progressing well. Last thing to do is set up the driver who’ll pick me up and help me with my luggage. I’ve been talking to my guy about it all day. The arrangement is in the works, on click away from the gears all locking together. I can get a direct flight to Detroit, but there may be ones to Chicago. That would be better. They used to have them but then they stopped for some reason. My guy tells me there might be a way around it. Direct flight is the priority. I do not want to, and probably can’t handle, a transfer. That is to be avoided at all costs.
Parsley is the dumbest herb imaginable. It is green. Got it. Other than that, it does nothing. Yes, I don’t have fresh stuff on me. But even basil in a shaker provides flavor. Parsley is just…green. I guess it could be worse.
I can taste parsley.
Normally I’d crack jokes about flying to Detroit or Chicago. But I just want you get out safely.
Detroit or Chicago being relatively safe compared to Korea (even north of the DMZ) probably is the joke.
I didn’t say where I wanted him out of safely, JI. I’m going to assume these cities were not the intended final destination.
All my family is in Indianapolis. Well, parents are up north in Carmel. They’re going to pick me up.
I feel relentlessly lucky. For all the shit that’s happened to me, I have ALWAYS had a loving, supporting, yet never overbearing, family that loves me and has always risen up to help me out.
Lots of people don’t have that. No idea what would have happened to me if I didn’t. Lady, as well. I’m incredibly lucky and I try to display as much humility as possible, though it’s hard to be humble when I’ve got a team of family making sure this Soldier gets home safely. Bless ’em all.
The safety has been confirmed. Now it’s just the planning of the route/availability out.
Flying to Detroit…uh…no.
Flying to Chicago…I can take care of some important…supply issues…when I’m there. I’ll hopefully just get a hotel room for the night and chill. And…take care of that important errand.
Ooooh. Apparently I can take care of that errand in Detroit as well…
Hitler’s Bday Fun. It’s legit important and I use it medically, but I don’t have a card or anything. If anyone has any knowledge of how it works there, that would be greatly appreciated.
Michigan? Be over 21, have a valid ID, pay cash.
I’ve 35, US ID, and can get cash. Seems like the same as Illinois.
That. Is very good news. That’s going to be a requisite for my bizarre return Stateside. I know it sounds damaging, and I’ve had to adjust and learn how to be as good as possible, but I need a daily dose of Escapism. Life is like doing an improvised sketch on the Johnny Carson show, just for about 12-18 hours a day in a foreign language/nation.
At night I just need to Get Out from it all. Hitler’s bday is far healthier, and more productive than other depressants to chase the blues away. (Though I am proud that I pretty constantly live underneath a rainbow of optimism. I see all the good in everything that I can, but it does use up the mental horsepower.)
Can you fly to Cincinnati? It’s way closer to Indy than either Chicago or Detroit is.
Closer than Chicago even with Cincy’s airport in northern KY and Indy’s on the west side?
(Well, duh. Location of Indy airport is irrelevant.)
85 miles to CVG vs 154 miles to ORD or 200 miles to DTW (straight line distances).
And that first 25 miles from ORD is probably a lot longer slog, time-wise, than the first 25 miles from CVG
“Parsley can sweeten even a camel’s breath.”
Parsley is the dumbest herb imaginable.
*triggered like Triggleypuff*
Owen parked his Tesla in front of his Santa Monica home Saturday — but he came out Sunday morning to notice someone had stolen all his rims and tires.
Tesla wheels are ugly. Why would you steal them? Maybe it was a neighbor sick of looking at them.
And?
The World Health Organization on Wednesday confirmed more than 550 monkeypox cases across 30 countries as the virus continues to spread across the globe.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the sudden appearance of monkeypox in multiple countries across the world indicates the virus has been spreading undetected for some time outside the West and Central African nations where it is usually found.
We’re all going to die, obviously.
All of the cases outside of Africa so far have been tied to promiscuous gay men, but it would be downright rude to make any targeted recommendations towards that particularly susceptible group.
It is PRIDE month after all.
From their perspective, this means we have failed The Science, not that The Science has failed us.
If only people were more like white mice…
The Most Intelligent Beings on Earth | The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy | BBC Studios
I’ve been trying to adapt Bertolt Brecht’s famous poem to these circumstances but alas I am not so witty.
Natalia Fedner | Resort 2022 | Full Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELHEyFqCl7o
I sure as hell hope you watch these things to perv on the ladies and not cause you fantasize about walking down the gangway in a dress, Pie…
Made the mistake of getting on Best Buy’s email list. (There’s one handy to my office.) This morning’s email subject line:
::Kif sigh::
Wow, a strong candidate for “the woke are more correct than the mainstream”.
[The underlying reason for the claim being that most of these “LGBTQIA+” people never existed before Tumblr/Twitter/Instagram]
New theory: they keep adding letters to distract from the B just sitting there with no scrutiny.
I think the G will disappear before the B.
So in romancelandia, with all the m/m romance, I got a glimpse of how bisexuality (and less so lesbianism) is treated. Bis are the slugs of the alphabet and, if spoken of, spoken of with contempt.
Hmm, I’m not sure what you mean by M/M romance, but in Asian M/M media (called “BL”), it seems nearly everyone is “bi” (a common trope is “I like girls, but I make an exception for X [a guy]”) but nobody actually uses the labels except occasionally as slurs.
So, in the world of straight-women-reading-male-homosexual-romance, “gay for you” is indeed a trope. However, there better not be a vagina anywhere in that sausagefest or heaven help the author who dared. Now, of the ones I have read (not many because…why? so take this for what it’s worth), they do indeed have a hero and a heroine. It’s just that the heroine is a chick with a dick.
There are no chicks with dicks: just dudes with tits…
No, that’s not the way it works in male homosexual romance. They both have dicks. That is the point.
It’s just that one is basically playing the girl’s part while pretending he’s not. This is a failure of the author.
There was very little PIV in Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty trilogy, despite the title character being a woman. And I think there might have been literally zero heterosexual anal.
Oh, no, there was bunches of everything and everyone and every combination.
I’m a Kinsey zero and I suppose my fiction reflects that (although I’ve never written romance.) I guess, if someone doesn’t like that, they can read someone else’s stuff.
I don’t know about you, but I have gotten email back saying I should’ve done X, Y, or Z. I thank them and say it’s what the story wanted, but I’m thinking, “Write your own damn book.”
I’ve gotten one or two like that, yeah. My reply is generally on the order of “I write my world as I see it.”
Interesting point–its very existence there belies the “there is no binary” assertion.
Jeez, do they even do phrasing?
Go fuck yourself.
“One of the issues, Neil, that I have articulated in the past and I will in the future – it’s less about mandates on the plane than it is about who has the right and the authority and the capability of making public health decisions,” Fauci said. “And I believe that the Department of Justice is operating on the principle that decisions that are public health decisions belong with the public health agency, in this case, the CDC.”
“So it’s more of a matter of principle of where the authority lies than it is about whether or not there’s gonna be a mandate on a plane or not,” Fauci added.
I’m inclined to believe that elected officials should have control over government agencies, you cunte.
While it is interesting to see the courts and bureaucracy fight, when usually they are thick as thieves, I’m inclined to believe this is just play-fighting. It’s not that the civil service should trump the courts, it’s that a bad judge shouldn’t be able to override a good civil servant.
Does Not Compute.
Well friend/enemy is more accurate than good/bad but I like to mix it up sometimes.
Related ponderings from Top. Men.
Why Omicron Is About To Make Americans Act Immorally, Inappropriately
Did that article have a point? He just cobbles together some definitions as though they’re being told to grade-schoolers and then slaps some labels on things that already happening now.
Going to work with a mild cold = immoral
Sexually grooming kindergarteners = moral
The thing that gets me is that a couple of years ago they made a video telling parents they were coming for the kids… Now if you point out this is happening and it looks like it is on purpose, you are the bad guy.
No. He’s smart and you’re not.
I’m passionate about transforming the American healthcare system and helping people understand the consequences of their medical decisions.
Kill it! Kill it with fire!!!
^^^THIS^^^
Fuck I hate the idiots that think healthcare is a problem today because people in corporations are making decisions based on greed, but if people in government get to make lie & death choices, they will always do wat’s right….
I like the line “most won’t be harmed”. Like the number is 51%.
Do a find/replace for the flu and get back to me doc.
Completely missing from the article is why they’re *wrong* about that — which means we have to assume the author is coming at it from a “Zero Omicron” standpoint — no one anywhere at any time can increase the risk of infecting someone else.
And the author can go screw themselves with their spherical cow in their Matrix bubble world fantasy as far as I’m concerned. If it mutates to spread like the flu, is about as bad as the flu (left out is that influenza is also at the “statistically, most Americans won’t die from” stage), then shock and horror — society will treat it about like the flu. The immunocompromised don’t get to dictate to the entire rest of the world how to live because they’re more at risk, assholes. But that reeks of “Individualism” which to these collectivist bastards is just “selfish”, I know…
Where’s that damned cloud to yell at again….
Curious how none of this was a problem until your administration.
BIDEN: “The idea we’re gonna be able to, you know, click a switch, bring down the cost of gasoline is not likely in the near term.”
“Nor food” – got to make it hurt a little more.
As always, he’s lying. The switches are permitting and regulations on drilling, along with pipelines. Flip those switches and a year, gas is back to where it was 2 years ago.
Plus there’s the fact that his handlers and the clapping seals in the party base love what’s going on.
Joe is trying to have it both ways and he’s too incompetent to carry it off.
Yep, this. They could temporarily suspend gas taxes too. This is being done on purpose with just enough plausible deniability to cover themselves.
Normally that’s right. But I don’t even think those switches work for Biden now. One of the main reasons they normally work is that they provide improved confidence in investment – “hey the barriers dropped so I can be confident this investment will really work”. But with Brandon, the actual confidence ain’t coming back soon, if ever. There’s just no reason to trust him or his base or handlers about that.
So it might work for grabbing some shorter-term gains, but not nearly as much as you’d expect from somebody who you could really believe.
Yeah, that was my thought shortly after all this crap began. Who in their right mind would sink the kind of capital it takes into drilling or refining these days when the government class has made it abundantly clear that they’ll shut you down in a heartbeat if they feel like it — and most of them hate you and would love to do it.
Sucks for those of us who rely on the product (aka humanity), but I can’t blame them for not wanting to make the investments.
got to make it hurt a little more.
They intend to leave us destitute and starving.
As I’ve been telling people:
Crushing fossil fuel production and high energy prices are the announced goals of the greens. These aren’t “unintended consequences” of green policies at all – they are the point. The full court press in the agencies to crush fossil fuel production is ongoing – energy prices aren’t coming down any time soon. If you think inflation generally is bad, and high fuel prices are bad, then the only solution is to get rid of the greens and their policies. Period. Full Stop. No Exceptions.
And just like that, new comments were highlighted again.
Also, probably thanks to whatever features webdom shut off, the site is considerably faster now.
This job sucks
On 4 March, Christopher Jackson tweeted that he was leaving the University of Manchester, UK, to work at Jacobs, a scientific-consulting firm with headquarters in Dallas, Texas. Jackson, a prominent geoscientist, is part of a growing wave of researchers using the #leavingacademia hashtag when announcing their resignations from higher education. Like many, his discontent festered in part owing to increasing teaching demands and pressure to win grants amid lip-service-level support during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He is one of many academics who say the pandemic sparked a widespread re-evaluation of scientists’ careers and lifestyles. “Universities, spun up to full speed, expected the same and more” from struggling staff members, he says, who are now reassessing where their values lie. The demands add to long-standing discontent among early-career researchers, who must work longer and harder to successfully compete for a declining number of tenure-track or permanent posts at universities. And Jackson had another reason. He received what was, in his opinion, a racially insensitive e-mail that constituted harassment and alluded to using social media to police staff opinions, which, he says, was the last straw. Jackson filed a formal complaint and the University of Manchester responded: “The investigation has now concluded. We have made Professor Jackson aware of its findings as well as the recommendations and actions we will be taking forward as an institution.”
The level of unhappiness among academics was reflected in Nature’s 2021 annual careers survey. Mid-career researchers were consistently more dissatisfied than were either early- or late-career academics (see ‘Mid-career malcontent’). In the United Kingdom, pension cuts have worsened ongoing university-faculty strikes. Now, researchers in secure, long-term posts are quitting. “For mid-career individuals, it says something much more significant if they have got a mortgage, car and kids — and still are leaving,” Jackson adds.
Boo fucking hoo. I like how the article manages to cloak everything in a cloud of ambiguity. I wonder how and why academia ceased to be an enjoyable little sinecure.
“‘It was horrific’: Women given saline instead of fentanyl, lawsuit says
What the plaintiffs are claiming is that Yale showed “carelessness and recklessness” in failing to prevent a diversion of at least 75 percent of the fentanyl stored at Yale REI by one nurse, Donna Monticone, over at least five months.
In all, 59 patients and 47 spouses are involved in the lawsuit against Yale.
Monticone pleaded guilty March 1 in U.S. District Court in New Haven to one count of tampering with a consumer product. Judge Janet C. Hall sentenced her to four alternating weekends in prison, three years of supervised release, a $100 special assessment and $637.56 in restitution.”
https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/It-was-horrific-Women-given-saline-instead-17204362.php
That’s it??
I’m assuming she’ll lose her license too. Depends on your viewpoint in addiction and how much you want to criminalize it.
I’d be more interested in seeing Yale fucked over for failure to supervise and have proper controls.
Addicts are still responsible for their behavior.
Karen Kelsky has watched conditions in academia deteriorate in the 12 years since the cultural anthropologist left her post at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to become a career coach. Grievances include a lack of support, increased workloads, micromanagement, increasing right-wing hostility towards academics and salaries that have not kept up with cost of living, says Kelsky, who is based in Eugene, Oregon, and wrote the 2015 academic-career guide The Professor is In. The pandemic set the stage for a mass exodus. “COVID-19 is the straw that broke the camels’ backs,” she says.
In early 2021, Kelsky, seeing a dramatic shift in discontent, started The Professor is Out, a private Facebook group for higher-education professionals to share advice and support for those who are leaving academia. It has grown to more than 20,000 members in the past year. “What’s wild is how many of them are tenured,” she says. “The overwhelming narrative is that people are happier once they leave academia.”
Yes, yes, of course. Anti-intellectual right wingers ruin everything. The mandarins of academia are blameless; it’s completely ridiculous to suggest they have been assiduously undermining their own credibility for a very long time.
Ugly, nasty people don’t like being ruled by other ugly, nasty people. They’ve discovered what’s it like to have “their own kind” in charge, and surprise, they don’t like it.
Also, they’re just there to milk the billing units known as federally subsidized students. Their jobs largely exist only because people who shouldn’t be in college are encouraged to go.
The last sentence is the clincher. The colleges whisper sweet nothings into the ears of a ton of people who they well know stand very little chance of graduating and then happily accept their money. It’s largely a scam.
I’m ugly and nasty, but I have absolutely no desire to rule over anybody.
“John Hinckley to get unconditional release”
Can we at least force him to take his meds? That seems important here.
unconditional
Nature spoke to more than a dozen scientists leaving academia, who describe toxic work environments, bullying and a lack of regard for their safety and well-being as factors in their decisions. A 2018 study predicted that higher education would lose half to two-thirds of its academic workforce to retirement, career burnout or job dissatisfaction within five years (T. Heffernan & A. Heffernan Prof. Dev. Educ. 45, 102–113; 2018). Established researchers might have the privilege to leave willingly, but many are unsure how their skills will translate to other sectors. Others who face systemic racism and sexism are finding themselves forced out, partly owing to structural biases. Their exits threaten progress on diversity, equity and inclusivity in the academic workforce.
Stop it. You’re killing me.
[insert Ghostbusters “they expect RESULTS” clip]
Results and no tenure. What’s a post doc social psychologist to do?
OFFS what horseshit.
It’s their nature.
Uh huh. And how many of these academics are of the (fill-in-the-blank) Studies variety?
Much of the article seems to be about scientists as opposed to other academics.
It’s kind of a weird argument because, usually, a lot of scientists in the private sector would make a lot more money than those in academia. When I first finished school, I interviewed for lab tech type jobs at mining companies. Very well paid.
I was commenting specifically on the study cited in that blurb, which spoke generally of “academic workforce”.
Got it.
but many are unsure how their skills will translate to other sectors
I’m sure there is a place for them at Starbucks.
“Amber Heard Verdict Sends A Message To Black Women Everywhere
If the mistreatment of a wealthy blonde haired, blue-eyed white actress is ridiculed by the world, what does that mean for Black women?
For Black women, who do not have whiteness or fame or money to protect them, Heard’s words of the verdict as a setback ring especially true. Whether you believe her or not, the way the world treated Heard was downright cruel and uncalled for. Not only were her bruises placed under a microscope by forensic experts during the trial, social media joined in on the skepticism.
Heard was turned in everything from memes to murals mocking the validity of her abuse. Some even believed Depp when he said that she was the aggressor in the relationship. If all of Heard’s privilege couldn’t protect her from such viciousness, Black women—like always—remain even more vulnerable…
What happened to Heard is another vile reminder to women—particularly Black women—that nothing can guarantee our safety.”
https://www.theroot.com/amber-heard-verdict-sends-a-message-to-black-women-ever-1849004234
Way to shoehorn that into the narrative
Completely ignoring that a court of law heard the evidence and concluded that Heard’s claims of abuse were bullshit.
Now do Tara Reade.
I can think of one or two ways to improve your safety, but yes, nothing can guarantee anyone’s safety. So you’re right, just not in the way you think.
Someone on Twitter posted an amusing compliation of Root stories ranting about how often white women lie about sexual assault…..when the accused is a black man.
particularly Black women
White woman loses defamation suit. Black women hardest hit.
“At this point, Amber Heard has become a completely dehumanized stand in for all the hate people have towards women but can’t find a way to justify”
https://twitter.com/JessicaValenti/status/1532008214178537474
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FUPjpbaXsAIszpu.jpg
muh narrative
Don’t be sociopath and avoid shitting in your significant other’s bed when you’re angry and, ladies, you should be golden.
You just expect us to be perfect? /retarded-narcissistic-women
“I mean, @ProfCAnderson is a black woman and I know that 95% of the people who need this knowledge cannot handle it coming from Black Excellence, but y’all ammosexuals should at least know how stupid you sound when you come at us.”
https://twitter.com/ElieNYC/status/1532338326514040832
“ammosexuals”
To be Fair, ranDom CapitaliZation Is a sigN of intelLigencE.
Also, you negate your condescending attitude and imperious personality by using “y’all”.
Well, he’s an idiot.
“An individual right to self-defense with a gun isn’t actually provided by the Second Amendment, @ElieNYC argues. Its original purpose was to preserve white supremacy and slavery. You’re going to want to hear him explain it:”
https://twitter.com/MehdiHasanShow/status/1532151606262870017
Don’t read the comments.
I gotta say, I like the term “ammosexuals”.
Is that what the USMC rainbow bullets was showing pride for?
I’ll wear it with a certain amount of pride.
Maybe the book should be titled The 1619th Amendment?
All I can think of when I see that person’s name is this.
Elie Mystal was given two Harvard degrees, was diversity-hired by DeBevoise, and failed to achieve a law degree. So he became a blogger specializing in race grift.
Ken White and Ann Althouse think he’s the greatest legal mind of our time.
Law LICENSE. He has a JD from Harvard.
That’s a low bar.
And yet, Elie failed to reach it. The rumor was it was a C&F violation.
Are ammosexuals fans of Amos & Andy?
Black Excellence
Uh-huh.
Randomized studies can more reliably inform public health policy.
Only if they tell the public health fascists what they want to hear.
San Francisco’s far-left socialist district attorney Chesa Boudin promised a “new vision” and “radical change” to the Bay Area’s criminal justice system. He was was supposed to usher in a utopian period of peace and safety by ending mass incarceration, the war on drugs, and the criminalization of poverty.
But now, just over two years into his term, he appears poised to be ousted by recall
I’d love to see him recalled.
Industry publication Pymnts.com and LendingClub Corp. conducted a survey from April 6-13 with about 4,000 US consumers, finding that roughly 36 percent of households bringing in $250,000-plus annually spend most of their income on household expenses.
WTF is wrong with these people?
The Alphabet people making the flags/graphics are just fucking with us now.
Needs to be a seizure warning with that flag.
It just looks like my tv is on the blink.
That Forbes
articleanguished screed was quite the derp omelette.Oh, no! people will adapt to this virus which is so contagious and lethal you can’t even be certain you have it without a test. Soon they will come to treat it as a fairly minor nuisance and adjust their risk assessments and behavior accordingly.
OH
MY
GOD!
They thought they would be able to keep this faux crisis going at least until they got deeper into their great reset…
San Francisco’s far-left socialist district attorney Chesa Boudin promised a “new vision” and “radical change” to the Bay Area’s criminal justice system. He was was supposed to usher in a utopian period of peace and safety by ending mass incarceration, the war on drugs, and the criminalization of poverty.
We’re all Jean Valjean. Victims of a cruel and unforgiving system.
In honor of Pride Month I saw Top Gun last night. I was entertained.
#MeToo Penny Benjamin was a nice call-back, but fortunately, they didn’t go heavy on the call-backs.
I had to look up Penny Benjamin since you mentioned her. I wondered what the story was there.
Newly uncovered Monty Python Sketch
Starring Loretta the Chicken.
Broken record
Southern California is imposing mandatory water cutbacks as the state tries to cope with the driest conditions it has faced in recorded history. Starting Wednesday, about 6 million people in parts of Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Ventura counties are limited to watering outdoor plants once a week — an unprecedented move for the region.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which supplies water to about 19 million people, declared a water shortage emergency in April and voted unanimously to curtail water use, either by restricting outdoor watering or by other means.
“Metropolitan has never before employed this type of restriction on outdoor water use. But we are facing unprecedented reductions in our Northern California supplies, and we have to respond with unprecedented measures,” Adel Hagekhalil, the district’s general manager, said in a statement. “We’re adapting to climate change in real time.”
Nearly all of California is experiencing severe, extreme or exceptional drought. Very little rain fell in January, February and March, when the state typically receives half its annual precipitation. As a result, the state is facing its driest ever start to the year, with one recent study calling the current drought the worst in 1,200 years.
1200 years? Not even the Germans have records that good.
Growing up in 1970s South Florida, I remember very well the water rationing we had to endure. That doesn’t happen so much anymore because Florida built a lot more desalinization/reverse osmosis plants.
Seems legit.
Richard Small is a self proclaimed “NRA Republican” and long-time gun owner who says the Uvalde, Texas, shooting made him question why he owned an AR-15-style gun – a gun that has been used in multiple mass shooting in the US.
Everything That Guy Just Said Is Bullshit.
He’s just pissed off about being saddled with that name.
Made me question why he has a gun, too. He might use it to randomly start shooting from an overpass. Can’t be too careful. If it saves just one life
Amber Heard Verdict Sends A Message To Black Women Everywhere
“You think you’ve got troubles, Mizz Lincoln? I had to park two blocks from here!”
“I’m at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, where about 30 Amazon employees are staging a die-in during Amazon’s Pride Flag raising ceremony in protest of the company’s continued sale of what they say are transphobic books.”
https://twitter.com/_katya_long/status/1532062593304580096
OFFS!!
If the protestors actually died, would anyone really care?
I’d have more respect for them.
I’m guessing they don’t any actual work, either. So, their bosses probably wouldn’t notice.
Attention whores gotta whore.
Governor Gavin Newsom last week called on Californians to reduce their consumption, saying, “Every water agency across the state needs to take more aggressive actions” to save water.
Just as long as they don’t approve any new desalinization plants. We don’t need that kind of water.
The big question is how many of these people are leaving because they realized what causes the failure vs. how many are going to bring beliefs that caused the failure in the first place to wherever they move to…
Interesting. We are up to 17 COVID patients. Last week we were down to 6 or 7. For context, our all-time peak was around 180, and our Omicron peak was around 100. Not sure if we have any in the ICU – for awhile, when we had less than 10, there weren’t any in the ICU.
Well, May/June is the time for the COVID “surge” in warm-weather states, so I’d expect an uptick in cases. What we aren’t getting is breathless (ahem) news coverage of said surge scaring the bejeezus out of oldsters and dullards.
Website fun: This morning the main page had the Thursday morning links as the most recent. Just now, GlibCar is the most recent.
Tucker: This is a power grab
What’s “this?”
Post-shooting gun grabbing.
I assume anyone trying to confiscate my firearms is planning to do something that will make me really want to shoot them.
What percentage of gun owners do you think would actually open fire on a squad of cops at their door demanding guns be turned over? If it is only 1%, then that’s going to be a lot of dead cops and dead gun owners. At some point, the remaining cops are just going to be interested in getting home safely to their families.
1) mandatory buyback
2) make possession a felony
3) sit back and prosecute at their convenience (and with whatever bias suits the string-pullers)
“buyback”
Ah, since I didn’t buy my pistol from the G, I don’t have to comply!
We are up to 17 COVID patients. Last week we were down to 6 or 7.
Do you have a feel for severity? Age or vulnerability profiles?
It’s all about signaling
I just got home from getting an oil change and filling up the gas tank. The gas tank fill up was more than double the cost of the oil change. FUCK!!
Why are you complaining? The benevolent government of NYS has decided to reduce its collection of taxes on gasoline. Everything else is the fault of kulaks and wreckers. And Putin of course.
Daily Quordle 129
4️⃣5️⃣
6️⃣7️⃣
quordle.com
??⬜?⬜ ?⬜?⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜? ⬜?⬜⬜⬜
???⬜? ⬜⬜?⬜⬜
????? ⬜⬜?⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
??⬜?⬜ ?⬜??⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜??⬜? ⬜⬜?⬜?
⬜??⬜? ⬜⬜?⬜?
⬜⬜?⬜⬜ ⬜⬜???
????? ⬜⬜?⬜?
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????