While we have a couple of posts sitting in our pending queue, the vast majority are part of ongoing series. We are very thankful to have so many people contributing to scheduled slots, as it makes our job much easier.
But we are once again very short on non-long form pieces that are waiting to be scheduled. So if you’ve got a draft sitting around, maybe knock the dust off it, give it a once over and switch it to Pending.
In my defense, one of the ongoing series I just dropped hasn’t had anything go up yet.
My standalone article I’m working on is delayed in shipping. I was going to follow up on the initial permit process article with a “first time carry concealed” piece, but the holster is in New Mexico.
You know, an Andy Rooney-style rant about shipping delays might be a good topic, too.
I ordered something off Amazon a while back, turned out to be through a third party seller (although it was a company I’ve heard of, not a random string of letters generated somewhere in China). Amazon site just says it was last seen leaving New Jersey and delivery date is unknown. Fedex site has a bit more info, it leaves New Jersey, is on its way to Ohio, then several hours later there’s a “shipment exception, unable to deliver” in New Jersey.
The Fedex Virtual Assistant Chatbot on their site is super useful. It basically just repeats whatever info is on the status page, but in a little chat box. If you call their support number, though, you can have the AI-generated voice read you the info on the status page.
Contacted the seller through Amazon, they opened a ticket with Fedex. I checked just now and it says the support ticket is resolved. No update on where the package is or if/when it’ll be delivered, though, so I don’t know what ‘resolved’ means in this context. I asked the Fedex Virtual Assistant Chatbot why the case was closed and it helpfully informed me that the case is now closed. I’ve tried several prompts, but apparently it’s not even a smart enough AI to be dumb enough to read the ticket updates to me. Still waiting to hear back the seller.
Resolved means they closed the ticket and won’t reopen it. Thus, there is no problem for them. Oh, you still want the thing you paid for? How is that their problem Karen?
I’m still working on the z80 build I did the video on, so I ordered some more parts from the UK. Seller sends by Royal Mail. The Royal Mail gets it near Heathrow, and marks it delivered. The place it was Delivered to? The Royal Mail.
No more Activity. USPS says “We’re waiting for the box”. Eventually I contact the Seller, he files a claim with the Royal Mail. They can’t find it.
Eventually the Seller has to send me another and file a “you lost my box” claim with the Royal Mail to get the cost of the lost set back from them.
I ordered a fire pit cover from Amazon. This is a pretty large piece of steel, about 38” in diameter.
Their first go at delivering it, I got some kind of table thing that tilted and had slots in the bottom? No idea what it was – it had no identifying information, just an assembly diagram.
I exchanged it for what I originally ordered. Their second try was a fluffy pink bathmat. I am not making this up. I was willing to exchange it again, but my only option was a refund.
So I ordered a different one. Which came a day early.
Yeah, I figured it was something like “We closed it because having it open would fuck up our response metrics.”
Remember 6-8 weeks for delivery?
I member.
#ows583 🔎 4/5 (01:33)
⭐⭐⭐⭐
🔥 streak: 1
onewordsearch.com
I’m as guilty as everyone else. I’ve got about a half dozen articles I’ve been meaning to put together and have been putting it off.
I think I have a plan to kill time on the flight to/from London though…
Articles in my brainstorming queue – maybe a paint tutorial, first look at Gunpla, assorted brain droppings not big enough individually to make a whole article… I have a half-finished review of a stack of video games.
There! I just submitted a standalone video game retrospective that was sitting half-done on my computer. What a use of my lunch break.
I salute your diligence.
Ooh, Londinium. What a good season to go.
Try to squeeze in Leighton House if you can (although it was free when I was there). https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/museums/leighton-house
I regret not seeing the War Rooms.
Hopefully it’s not required to speak Arabic or Farsi in London yet.
With the wife’s near-disability and all the extra work I had to pick up, I barely got this weeks’ GlibFlicks done. My article on “The Guns of Speed Racer” is just some random screenshots on my laptop. I don’t know when I will have spare time again.
I beg to differ — you’re less guilty than I. I don’t even have any article ideas at the moment.
I hope the UK speech police don’t find out that you hang out here with this crowd. But if they do, it will make a good article.
I just got back from the core pistol class at Gunsite.
https://www.gunsite.com/classes/250-defensive-pistol-class-pistol-mounted-optics/
I shot like shit. I should probably write it up.
Serious statesmanship
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday he fears President Donald Trump will try to cancel the 2028 presidential election so that he can stay in power.
During an interview on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Newsom said Trump will not only try to rig next year’s midterms but also the next White House race.
Newsom said he’s “raising awareness around how Donald Trump is trying to rig the midterm elections,” and “I fear that we will not have an election in 2028.”
“I really mean that in the core of my soul. Unless we wake up to the code red, what’s happening in this country — we wake up soberly to how serious this moment is,” the governor told Colbert.
This is the sort of calming rational dialog the nation needs in this time of heated partisanship and overwrought rhetoric from the right.
The lack of self-awareness would be absolutely staggering, if it came from anyone other than Newsom.
“Trump will not only try to rig next year’s midterms but also the next White House race.”
If you ever want to know what the Democrats are up to, just check out what they are accusing their opponents of.
Every. Single. Time.
OFFS what a drama queen.
Colbert and Kimmel interview politicians because they can’t attract enough A-list or even B-list celebrities that find any value being on those shows.
Also, I remember when Grewsom et al claimed that Trump was going to cancel the 2020 elections. Blather, rinse, repeat.
This. That said, it’s good to know that he’s still playing the game of going on a show about to go out of business and with fewer viewers than a middle school band concert.
Earlier in the interview, Newsom described the “tough time” Democrats have faced during Trump’s second term.
“A lot of anxiety, a lot of stress, a lot of folks that honestly don’t know if we’re going to get our country back, and I get it. This guy is flooding the zone. He’s dominating the narratives. Facts don’t seem to matter, and Democrats, frankly, have had a difficult time pushing back,” he said.
Trump is Satan, Hitler and Caligula’s horse all rolled into onr.
How do you treat mass hysteria afflicting millions of people, stoked by political opportunists?
Kill or imprison all the political opportunists, and destroy the communication channels that allow said opportunists to reach millions of people?
That would only prove them right.
I think the answer is that we need to start younger, take back the institutions (especially schools). People need to be indoctrinated into the correct culture if we’re going to have a democracy. If you’re having to re-educate you’ll only catch those with open minds and the inclination to listen and change. Most people turn their brains off once you challenge their beliefs, so you need to get to them before they’re fully formed.
They can be right in hell.
(Of course, you’re correct in your suggestions regarding the ‘educational system’, but that doesn’t help sate my murderous atavism.)
I like a good helicopter joke, but at best that is insufficient and likely counterproductive in the long run.
Lackadaisical:
To
stealborrow from Heroic Mulatto, get back to teaching logic and rhetoric.Translation: The entire Democrat Party has become so riddled with anxiety, depression, and assorted other mental illnesses that the existence of Donald Trump reduces them to whimpering babies. It would require brutal oppression to reduce a normal sane man or woman to this state, so we have to either believe that Donald Trump existing is brutal oppression or face the unpalatable fact that we are giant pussies, too worthless to survive. We do not ever face facts, that is one of our defining traits, ergo Donald Trump existing is brutal oppression. q.e.d.
Pretty good. Add 150 words, submit as an article.
If (((Jarflax writes it in the style of amaduh marcott the bonus is there won’t be any punctuation.
Kind of like writing in the archaic Lati..
*returns to eating high fiber, Glibfit banana pancakes with ham*
Aloysius, That would involve me reading enough of her crap to mimic her style. And if I did that all I would want to write is:
Goodbye cruel world!
and I don’t want to do that so, no!
we need to start younger, take back the institutions (especially schools).
Critical thinking means Republicans are evil and always wrong. That’s just the plain facts.
I remember when I first heard them talking about being in the ‘right side of history’ back when I was in highschool. It always creeped me out, at that time they were doing the day marriage activism thing.
I now realize*why* that is such a dangerous way to think, and the origins of the idea of a direction to history further confirms that
In the ditch
An uptick in consumer spending helped the U.S. economy expand at a surprising 3.8% from April through June, the government reported in a dramatic upgrade of its previous estimate of second-quarter growth.
U.S. gross domestic product — the nation’s output of goods and services — rebounded in the spring from a 0.6% first-quarter drop caused by fallout from President Donald Trump’s trade wars, the Commerce Department said Thursday. The department had previously estimated second-quarter growth at 3.3%, and forecasters had expected a repeat of that figure.
——-
“The U.S. consumer remained a lot stronger than many thought, even in the midst of a stock market sell-off and a lot of trade uncertainty,” Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, posted on social media.
A category within the GDP data that measures the economy’s underlying strength came in stronger than previously reported as well, growing 2.9% from April-June, up from 1.9% in the first quarter and in the government’s previous estimate. This category includes consumer spending and private investment, but excludes volatile items like exports, inventories and government spending.
Don’t worry, the Trump Depression is coming.
Democrats are already depressed.
A fairly large subprime auto lender surprisingly went belly up.
https://news.dealershipguy.com/p/tricolor-the-messy-collapse-of-a-subprime-auto-lender-explained-2025-09-16
It started a little bit of an auto industry collapse, apparently an auto parts vendor went under related to this. Not sure if the dominoes may fall further.
Oh.
Ha Ha!
Please Jesus, let this government shut down happen next week.
🙏
As long as
A) no back pay for no work
B) no spending extra money or resources to “close” and punish citizens on their own collectively owned land. None of this can’t enter an unfenced open field or pull off on the shoulder of a parkway.
Spending and investment by the federal government fell at a 5.3% annual pace on top of a 5.6% drop in the first quarter.
WOOHOO!
Spending and investment by the federal government
“You keep using that word…”
Think of the children!!!
That was my thought too.
https://conservativebrief.com/schumer-trump-2-95445/
Keep talking shit, Moobs. Please.
he needs to fall into a sewer and drown in shit.
Can I second that motion?
Smokey Robinson says yes.
Thanks to all for the comments on my footnote, even when you are wrong.
Hopefully I will have that piece finished sometime reasonably soon. Its only about 8 years overdue.
Tonio loves footnotes. Put as many as you can in your post. Makes him happy.
I tried student gov at my small Liberal arts catholic university, needless to say the stove was hot.
My job was running a subcommittee, thought I may be able to make somewhat of a difference and bring freer speech and openness to campus, but after spending a whole weekend with other members. It became obvious to me that these are some of the most close minded people ever, who are only in it for themselves. Any differing opinion is immediately shunned and shot down. That and they are trying to make their message for this year a SUPER woke and dei and blah blah blah, and decided I wasn’t going to deal with it, so I resigned monday.
Understandable – but good for you for taking a shot.
I feel the same way about county, state, and federal government.
Don’t get me started.
I tried it way back 2003 or so.
One of the wildest then is my county prosecutor now.
This could be fun.
Or so one might hope.
Now we need some democrat pinhead to decide that since Pam Bondi is trying to use hate crime laws, that all hate crimes must be removed from the books.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/pete-hegseth-military-meeting-virginia-b2833761.html
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered hundreds of U.S. generals and admirals to gather in Virginia on short notice and with no stated reason, a new report reveals.
Hegseth has ordered the group to meet at a Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, Tuesday, The Washington Post reported, citing more than a dozen people familiar with the order. The move has sparked alarm and confusion, according to the Post, particularly after Hegseth fired several senior military leaders earlier this year.
Purge Night!
“You are all being busted down to Private and drummed out of the military, your so-called leadership has made us a laughingstock.”
There’s more than one Marine Corps Base at Quantico, VA?
It identifies as 2-spirit.
Maybe Hegseth is reopening Quantico Brig?
Boo hoo. Those GO fuckers would do that sort of dog and pony show to their lessers all the time. My complaints about Hegseth aside, unlike the Top.Men DOD Secretaries of recent years, he has recent experience in junior roles and knows firsthand how much stupid shit is flowing down while the Perfumed Princes are bullshitting their civilian leadership.
Always so dramatic.
Reporting somewhere at a moments notice is confusing to military members, this is known
That’s the kind of tough-mindedness in the face of uncertainty and adversity that makes our generals feared and respected worldwide.
Bum fights!
so I resigned monday.
Save yourself.
I could never deal with that crowd.
The move has sparked alarm and confusion, according to the Post, particularly after Hegseth fired several senior military leaders earlier this year.
Hey, this trench is full of dead generals!
If getting called to report somewhere causes alarm and confusion, what would an actual hot war do to those primadonnas? And Lincoln’s early generals get a rap as incompetent. As far as I can recall, none of them were quivering pussies like this even McClellan.
As we head towards a government shutdown, the Trump Administration prepares for mass permanent layoffs. This should be fun to watch. Please don’t tease me Democrats by compromising.
https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1971202530768998401
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/white-house-omb-memo-mass-firings-government-shutdown-congress-rcna233590
Actual article.
Maybe we should just have an open post party if the government shuts down.
Id join but im expected to go to work
I started writing an article before I even registered here. I Haven’t worked on it in years. Too ambitious, and it would require too much time I don’t have.
For me that was “The Three Stooges and the Non-Aggression Principle.” Swiss suggested it. I can never complete it.
You could always write an article about how hard it is to write an article. Very Seinfeld-ian.
It was going to be a review of Torment: Tides of Numenara. It is a kickstarted sequel to Planescape: Torment. A classic game, and in the sequel, you get your own orphan!*
For those that never played the original, the fake name you can give when interacting with characters (which lets you build up a reputation under that name) is “Adahn.”
*spoiler: not actually an orphan. Orphan status strongly implied (and yeah, you can sell her off to
Jesse’san orpahanarium) but in the last act it turns out her parents were just banished to another plane. Which causes issues if you had sold her off.Now I have a new game to add to Steam.
Why AI faces an uphill battle.
When kids realize that they don’t need teachers after they’ve learned to read there will be no need to go to school. College professors will look at empty classrooms. Administrators will not have any make work to administrate.
AI will be totally changing “education” as we once knew it. The solution will be to strangle AI in its sleep or expand it so schools can go on continuing to do the same as the past. I see a greater need for the trades, since everyone will have the same info available and skills will be more in demand.
It’s a job an LLM can probably do just fine. It doesn’t take much intelligence to parrot Marxist slogans about equity and the evil white man. Word Salad is pretty much what LLMs do.
Someone posted an article (from a Substack channel called “Postcards from Barsoom”) that argued that universities are headed for a collapse due to AI. It makes sense: Tons of textbooks are open-source, and you can ask AI questions that you would ask a professor, and it’s reasonably good at answering them, or at least giving you a jumping-off point for further research into what you don’t understand.
Such a collapse would be great, in my opinion. Universities started out as the producers, preservers, and disseminators of information, but they have devolved into the gatekeepers of professions and indoctrinators of destructive ideologies.
And we now have kids who just AI their way through college, obviously learning little to nothing in the process, and employers are soon going to realize that a lot of people with a degree are actually no more knowledgeable, industrious, or disciplined than some guy off the street. A huge part of universites’ business falls away at that point. There are still occupational licensing laws that continue to give universities a customer base, and getting rid of those laws is a big hurdle.
At the very least, maybe universities would shrink down to gatekeepers for licensed occupations.
Khan academy seems to be starting to look into the LLM route as well. I think the real break won’t happen until Duke Power gets overturned, and jobs can test applicants. Unless someone decides to launch a certification course that would carry the weight of a degree. I could see some of the private universities offering something along those lines as an option.
I think the real break won’t happen until Duke Power gets overturned, and jobs can test applicants.
It’s very telling that most Lefties don’t want this outcome. It would make good jobs more accessible for those who have the talent but not the time and money for a degree, many of whom probably belong to poor minority demographics. Sure, they push for all kinds of affirmative action and subsidizing of college admissions, but that can only help so many people (if those things are actually helping, which is up for debate; very often they’re just pushing someone into college programs that they’re not suited for, then they fail and get soured on the whole idea of college).
I can’t think of anything to better increase that upward mobility that they love to talk about than opening up jobs to those who are qualified but uncredentialed.
The only losers would be university administrators, who could surely find great private sector jobs if they truly are such hardworking and intelligent people.
lol We’re not doing a very good job just to reach that stage.
FAAAKE… Richard Cox the sex offender…
So a friend of mine from way back just got dropped* from performing at a music festival because two of the guys who were joining him as part of the backing band for the live show are Transphobes who believe “trans women are men” and trans activists “should stop trying to fuck up kids”.
Apparently these guys were already canceled by “the community”, so my friend trying to replatform them is double plus ungood.
He also got kicked out of another band he was working with due to the controversy around his association with The Bad People.
*it’s unclear whether he was uninvited or bowed out due to threats against him and the festival promoters.
Fuck you! We’ll roll over and do what you tell us!
Also them: “Why is our country so divided?? I just don’t get it. Must have been Trump’s fault.”
Outright prolonged laughter
In a letter submitted in response to subpoenas from the House Judiciary Committee, attorneys for Alphabet said the decision to bring back banned accounts reflected the company’s commitment to free speech. It said the company values conservative voices on its platform and recognizes their reach and important role in civic discourse.
“No matter the political atmosphere, YouTube will continue to enable free expression on its platform, particularly as it relates to issues subject to political debate,” the letter rea
I kind of get the impression youtube has been pissing a lot of content creators off lately. They need to line up replacements.
Or maybe there’s good money to be made on free speech.
Bobby Kogan, a former OMB official and the senior director of federal budget policy for the left-leaning Center for American Progress, said in a statement that reduction-in-force efforts would “be an action of enormous self-harm inflicted on the nation, needlessly ridding the country of talent and expertise.”
Something something doing
wellpassably that which should not be done at all…