Happy Friday, y’all. I’m just sitting here feeding the three year old “Yucky Charms”. Don’t know if I shared we got a new to us cat about a year ago. His name is Miso (original owner’s name). Pretty sure his last name is Hungry. He coughs and begs whenever the first adult gets up until he gets fed.
If you want to know the dividing line between young Gen X and old millennials, whether you thought I was gonna write “Horny” instead of “Hungry” is probably it. My wife for get the joke.
The masks come off
it’s a ‘Stan up fight
Oh Florida Man. You’re supposed to wacky, not a cheap pervert.
Two kids were being assholes at 1am and this guy got 30 months probation for rewarding stupid games with stupid prizes.
Let’s wake up with a little SRV. Whiskey and cocaine in coffee, according to some tales.
whaddup doh’
The ceiling?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKSOb-3hOgc
It’s a preposition.
Good morning! Reason has something interesting for a change. Out in Cali they have a new tax on real estate transfers. To help the homeless, they are charging over 5% tax on multimillion dollar property transfers.
Billions to our coffers for the houseless (their new term)! Huzzah!!
Guess what didn’t happen…
Sales are down 50%.
Nobody is building new retail or residential properties.
A bit confusing from the article, because it initially sounded like it was a tax on single family residences over $5 million. But then they talk about apartment and retail construction. So I guess any property?
At any rate, blocking new construction with a punitive tax seems to be a great way to solve housing shortages….
https://x.com/i/status/2027360836894032166
To help the homeless…. and funnel another unaccountable 70 billion or whatever it was into “homelessness”?
I’m sure it will go into the right pockets to fund the Friends of Sacramento.
And re: not being able to build… probably because every time they try to ram through “Ve vill FORCE you to build
tenement blocks‘low income multi family apartments’ vere ve tell you!” they keep getting shot down. They’ve made everything else difficult (mandatory solar, mandatory expensive electrical, permits that end up being 2x land+construction costs, etc.), but those 5 minute cattleyards remain their dream, I think.Don’t forget the fact that they have made evicting tenants next to impossible and treat squatters as tenants. It’s a mystery why people won’t invest millions to house the poor, a mystery!
We have a tiny taste of that here in SoFla (where folks from the NYC area dominate politics). Over the last 2 decades the exploding housing prices have led to a cottage industry of house flipping. Buy an old house. Put in new kitchens and bathrooms. Paint and landcape… and turn a $50-100k profit.
So of course the cities wanted a slice. Permitting became confiscatory.
Many projects were then undertaken without permits. Around here you need a permit for everything. So people just avoided doing it legally.
In my case, I bought a house planning major renovations. I was going to add on a garage, enclose a porch, reconfigure the kitchen to an open floorplan and maybe add on a master suite with a new wing.
The city inspector informed me that the first step would be an “impact fee”, for all the new traffic and the water and sewer use caused by my larger living room and maybe additional bedroom.
How much?
$50k.
The city saw people making money, and they wanted it.
Contractors were so busy, they wouldn’t take a job unless they could take home $50k.
So right there, $100k added on to my project above base costs.
So 20 years later… I never did it. We make due with what we have. There was never another $100k for them to take. So we all get nothing.
California has been like a roller coaster. The ride up was slow and consistent but then it peaked and the descent has been swift. They haven’t bottomed out, some day CA will level off and it will become a different place again. It will take a change in the economic-political climate and the edges are fraying now.
I left there over forty years ago and it was a hot mess. I was only there a few years so it was easy to run away.
With all the crazy proggies living there I don’t think it will ever change. It will become a cautionary tale in the grand experiments between states.
“Don’t forget the fact that they have made evicting tenants next to impossible and treat squatters as tenants. It’s a mystery why people won’t invest millions to house the poor, a mystery!”
If I read them correctly it is because all of us that work for a living are greedy losers, and we do not realize we should give it all up to our betters to do whatever they feel is best with it?
Hey, it’s a jobs program for Vassar grads!
It will take a change in the economic-political climate and the edges are fraying now.
When the San Andreas gives, it is really going to shake things up for that economic-political climate.
I just encountered CAs “Franchise Fee”, $800 a year to do business in the state legally, even in years you do no business there. I’ve done three jobs in CA at a wash if they hit me with the fee.
I hope CA dosent like cinder blocks because I do maintenance on a critical machine that processes the cinder to its final size for the largest manufacturer in the region.
I will not be going back to California.
If sales are down 50% double the tax!
It’s math! It’s SCIENCE!
Stop givcing them ideas. They already read all the dystopian novels, and instead of seeing the warnings thought they were “How To” manuals…
Yes, that will…
(puts on sunglasses)
Mask the failure!
Not quite related, but two branches of government are coming up against each other: health care, especially mothers and children; and the heritage architecture people.
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41793053.html
Too bad it wasn’t the hospital against greenies. Or the heritage people against greenies.
Aren’t all (Republican) Irish greenies?
Any party bringing suit to declare someone else’s building historic to prevent them from altering it should be required to post a bond sufficient to buy the building for 10% over market value, which is turned over to the owner if the suit succeeds and the owner elects to sell.
I would expect they’d be the original Orange Man Bad! crowd at least, NA.
Except that the Rotunda is, as far as I can tell, at least a quasi-governmental entity.
Just because they’re fat doesn’t necessarily mean they’re feeding at the government trough.
I don’t know why people discuss these things as if the left is well meaning but mistaken. They are not. They know exactly what they are doing.
Prosperity gives people options. See if you can guess what the left is all about.
The people pulling strings know what they are doing. The people you run into yelling nonsense mostly believe what they have been trained to believe from childhood. The fact that those beliefs are contradictory and do not match reality is irrelevant since they have ben trained to replace actual critical thinking with critical theories of comparative victimhood.
If your axioms are garbage your conclusions will be garbage.
Classic American contradiction – houses should be affordable; also houses should always appreciate.
“Classic American contradiction – houses should be affordable; also houses should always appreciate.”
I am not sure there needs to be a contradiction. I can see appreciation happening at the same time as income keeping up and keeping the housing affordability. The problem has been the policies that have wrecked the growth of income by offshoring the jobs that kept the blue collar middle class chasing the American dream. Note that at the same time the people peddling some of the most ludicrous nonsense – like green energy and commie responses to climate or the offshoring of manufacturing to commie shit holes with slave labor where all our IP was stolen – made massive amounts of money.
There is no such thing as real appreciation in housing – it is all a matter of supply and demand. Hell, my rental depreciates every year. That you can’t see the contradiction is exactly why the contradiction works and is held.
Juris, people are weird. They have been trained to see their home as an asset when it is a liability, maintenance and property taxes are not free.
Similarly, I heard that Mamadama went crawling to Donald with hat in hand asking for billions of dollars to build “affordable housing”. Because nothing gets built except via warm collectivism.
And Donald might be vain enough to fall for the fawning attention from that one.
I still dont know why nobody else noticed this. He is pretty easy to read. Praise him, he praises you. He plays simple tit for tat game theory.
The democrats could have coopted him to get all manner of stuff through. But the establishment just could not allow someone they dont control to take power.
100% correct cyto. Trump will be your worst enemy or your best friend, and there’s not much in between. You can switch from one to the other in a heartbeat if Trump finds you useful. If the Dems hadn’t decided to go the batshit crazy route, they could have had 75% of what they wanted and we’d be talking about how pissed Republicans are at him.
This is great evidence that political parties don’t give a shit about giving voters what they want or actually accomplishing anything. They’d rather keep us all in a state of fear and cling to power.
It is probably very wrong that “Soup” was my first thought — but yes, I get the joke once you brought it up.
Morning all.
I had a dog named Soup.
Because everyone loves Soup.
I’m sure the True Believers(tm) who I could see masked up in their own car driving over the last 6 years will keep on keeping on. Faith doesn’t require a shred of proof, after all…. and their Fauci Votive Candles are proof they’re a Good Person after all.
It doesn’t matter if what you did helped. It only matters that you did what you were told to.
Far too many people will straight up admit this. Disobeying might have been the factually correct thing to do, but to do it in defiance of authoritah makes it wrong.
It was the thought that counted.
It’s unfortunately not a new idea:
Henry V, Act 4, Scene 1, 1599.
NA gets it. “Dissent is patriotic” is only true when Dems/Progs dissent.
It’s an easier signal than a LIVESTRONG bracelet!
You mean a DOPESTRONG bracelet.
It’s shocking that a handmade mask you bought on Etsy won’t stop pathogens from spreading.
We knew all this in November 2019 with the meta study from Johns Hopkins.
We knew it in 1919. There were multiple studies looking at masking for respiratory viruses going back 100 years and all of them got ignored in 2019. There was zero evidence that masking was effective at preventing COVID transmission when it was proposed as a public health measure and there continued to be zero evidence of effectiveness thereafter.
Next thing you’re going to tell me is that plastic straws aren’t really a threat to the environment.
Seems to me there are some alligators who conveniently might help clean up in such a situation….
On masks… I am still angry at the scientific community over that whole episode. They didnt “get it wrong”. The science didnt “change”.
They lied.
Straight up lied. All of them.
The mask one destroyed my faith in my fellow travelers in the skeptic movement.
Over at Science Based Medicine and on The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, I had learned that upper respiratory virus spread with various types of masks had been well studied in Asia (where masking is commonplace). I learned this from them years before COVID.
Both cloth and paper masks were completely ineffective. Not just “not that good”. They had *zero* impact.
Zero.
Yet Steven Novella, one of the leaders of the Science Based Medicine movement, went around telling everyone that masking was how to fight the spread. That this was Science. They openly mocked “right wing deniers” as being anti-science. This was a rare break from their fairly strict edict to avoid any partisan politics. They often took swipes at OMB.
Lying. Outright lying. He personally read the review articles… I know because he told me about them on air.
That trust has been broken. I was a supporter of those organizations. I haven’t even listened to a word from them in years.
These mask supporters lied. I dont mean the useful idiots who would gleefully order you to wear a shoe on your head. I mean those at the top. The scientists and medical policy makers. They weren’t wrong. They lied.
And given how Science works, that is unforgivable.
Hell, I thought all of this had been gone through before (masking vs. not, relative quarantine of sections of the population, spread rates, etc.) back in 19-Fuckin’-19 with the Spanish Influenza.
But noooooo… this variant of a coronavirus is SPECIAL… now OBEY, PEASANTS!
And yes — lost pretty much all respect for and trust in the medical community, the tech / medical press, and the SCIENCE! crowd in general.
It was a bait and switch. They quoted European studies done with N95 masks and respirators worn properly, and then applied the findings to claim surgical masks, bandanas, and those plague factory cloth reusable masks would protect people.
N95’s don’t do shit either. The “95” is the “relative calculation” – which is a fraud. From an absolute standpoint, the product should be called N2.
N95’s probably work when all conditions are ideal*. But when half the population thinks surgical masks are too uncomfortable to keep above their nose, there is no way to get everyone wearing an N95 correctly.
*Ideal is practically impossible even if everyone wore them correctly.
I think the N7’s were validated by a study in Normandy. They didn’t work well in small groups, but helped with a mass effect.
N95s worn correctly probably have some benefit.
“Correctly” means “extremely, uncomfortably tight to your face” and “only for a few hours at a time before replacing”.
Which nobody does.
It looks like a bait and switch – sure, cloth masks and surgical masks don’t do shit, of course everyone knows that, we never claimed they did. But N95’s now those…
But as Invisible Fingers says – N95’s don’t do shit either. It’s right there in the name. N95 = stops 95% of particles larger than 0.3um. Look at the label. It’s also a very steep size distribution curve – it goes from 95% @ 0.3 um to near 0 just below that – that includes pore size, electrostatic effects (that lose effectiveness very quickly with a worn mask which is why you’re supposed to change every 4 hours at minimum).
Then look at the size of airborne particles included those carrying viral particles. Significant population well below 0.3um. So – at best – an N95 might buy you a minute or two, i.e. if you receive a viral load sufficient to cause infection in 10 minutes with no mask, if you wear an N95 in the same environment (with all the caveats about proper fitting, proper rotation of used masks, etc), you may not get the equivalent viral load in 10 minutes, but rather 11 or 12. And the fact that breathing out through an N95 will likely aerosolize some fraction of small droplets, increasing the concentration of airborne particles in a given environment, even that small gain of time may be eliminated by an increased density of small aerosols due to everyone, including any infected people, breathing out through N95s.
Studies of N95s were done against surgical masks (the mask parallel to conducting ‘placebo controlled’ studies against a ‘placebo’ that is actually a low efficacy and more dangerous treatment) and found no significant difference in effectiveness.
So the whole “sure, we were lying/never said that/shut up about cloth masks and surgical masks, but put on your N95 you bigot” pivot is, in a word, complete bullshit. Go away now. You were lying then, you are lying now, go to hell you fucks.
I don’t follow the goings on with that crowd but hm… I expect that right there is a clue. I am not really surprised that TDS infected them too. I haven’t seen a more formidable virus in my lifetime.
Cyto nails it.
My benefit of doubt about honest mistakes evaporated 40 years ago when I could see the global warming lie taking hold. No one would listen to me when I said the credibility of science was already frail and if they pushed a lie for money and politics….oh never mind.
Yes, they lied. They lied their asses off right to everyone’s faces and they are still doing it today.
What!
Evolution is a constant. Slow but constant.
“My benefit of doubt about honest mistakes evaporated 40 years ago when I could see the global warming lie taking hold.”
I lost it when I saw a magazine I as an aspiring engineer had been reading since I was 11 flip from the coming Ice Age and population growth leading to collapse of civilization and the death of billions, to global warming and the need for communism and abandoning civilization and modernity to save Gaia. Mind you, this call came at a time where people admitted they were inaccurate as shit at any sort of observation and actual collection of data with the required margins of error, but their entire premise relied on the claim they had accurate enough data to prove it. The proof never came, but the solution – always – ended being larger commie government and loss of rights for the plebes. And then the champions of this cause started stealing tons of money, living large, and flying around on private jets to promote the panic and increase their take of loot for a couple of decades. Pure shit.
Amen Suthen! The global warning panic killed my faith in “SCIENCE!” and Covid merely tamped down the sod covering the grave.
I remain a huge proponent of the scientific method.
The problem is the scientific method is demanding, it is hard, it doesn’t just give us what we want. Is it any surprise that so few would actually employ it? Look at the goddamn people around you – they don’t want hard work, they want easy answers.
And given how Science works, that is unforgivable.
Yes, because of one part of the scientific method that is taught procedurally but not ethically. You CANNOT introduce your own biases in at ANY point of the process.
Not during the design of the experiment. Not while conducting the experiment. Not while compiling the data. Not while choosing which datasets to proceed with. Not while deciding what to publish. Not while drafting the publication.
Science doesn’t work if the scientists are low character, and Covid proved that entirely too many people who hold themselves out as scientists are merely low character people with subject matter knowledge. They shouldn’t be trusted any more than that shady mechanic who found 40 different things wrong with your car.
“Yes, because of one part of the scientific method that is taught procedurally but not ethically. You CANNOT introduce your own biases in at ANY point of the process.”
BUT SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS!
And the moment you told them that the scientific method had zero room for consensus, because falsification only has to happen ONCE, and be replicated, for any hypothesis to be sent back to the thought factory as incomplete or false. Instead what they did is destroy the lives and livelihood of anyone that falsified the bullshit that could ONLY be solved through moar taxes and communism.
This is why science is kind of a contact sport. You want to demolish other scientists, as that helps actual science.
You want to pick them apart, destroy their numbers, ideas, methods, as that will stop junk science. At the same time, you want to do everything you can to make your research impregnable. You work as hard as possible to make sure that every iota of bias has been removed.
And that is why Popper’s theory of Falsifiability is so god damn important.
BUT SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS!
Do not question muh authoritah!
It was around 2010 when I took one of my last college classes when I read a peer reviewed paper where the author used the word “I” followed by a political opinion.
I had known the global warming stuff was garbage when I was in Jr Hi because I remembered reading 70s school materials in the 80s talking about the coming ice age. I had enough biology classes under my belt and practical experience wearing masks for industry from time to time to know the N95 was useless and the paper mask a talisman.
I have had to (try to) explain exactly why they don’t work far too many times. Basically, virus particles are approximately .1 to .3 microns in size, and the gold standard mask, an N95, only filters down to… .3 microns. And it does that for only 30 minutes at 95% effectiveness. All of that is information that is available to anyone who is willing to look at an MSDS and basic medical texts. And if you tried filtering at a higher level, you would not be able to breath through the filtering agent.
But talk to anyone who is on that side of the political line, or is a hypochondriac, and you will get nowhere with this.
Because they aren’t relying on science, but on priestly authority. “If the priests tell you…” is the only thing that might make them question themselves because actual religion is such anathema to them (even as they indulge in blind faith).
At the risk of challenging the local biases. N95s do reduce the intake and output of water droplets we messy biological type humans exhale constantly from our moist breathing holes, and those droplets contain lots of viruses in concentration, so you do not need to filter out individual viruses to reduce transmission. If the mask fad had somehow managed to get everyone to wear an N95, properly fitted (bye bye beard) it might have had some effect on the rate of transmission. The disease was still going to spread, and eventually virtually everyone was going to get it, just like the flu, but in that brief lead up period when there was an argument to be made for slowing the spread universal N95s might have helped. The fact that we did not have anything close to the number of real masks to allow all of this makes the point moot.
JI: Only white people religion. Look at how they fall all over themselves to talk about so-called “indigenous ways of knowing” and suppress knowledge that might make such people uncomfortable.
Yes.
Having a model that models reality is vital to draw conclusions from. Saying that an individual virus is too small to be stopped therefore masks are ineffective is as… unjustified as those “visualizations” the pro-mask crowd was putting out.
N95s do reduce the intake and output of water droplets we messy biological type humans exhale constantly from our moist breathing holes,
Very true, but that’s droplet transmission. The mask on the person next to you is not going to protect against transmission via droplets anyway. So the wearer not depositing droplets on surfaces may reduce fomite transmission, but may increase aerosol transmission as some fraction of those droplets will be partially aerosolized and increase the likely-hood of aerosol transmission, even to others wearing N95s. Its a complex system. Given that every study I’ve ever read that compares N95s to e.g. surgical masks in a clinical setting finds no statistically significant difference in transmission, empirically speaking, the theoretical considerations about how N95s MIGHT provide benefit do not manifest in real world situations.
As an aside, since I’m leery of utilitarian ethics, I don’t find it particularly important if N95s are effective or not from an ethical perspective, it will only inform my personal decisions. And the bulk of the real-world evidence does not favor my use of one. So I will not in most circumstances; maybe in the wood shop when sanding or grinding metal, though I prefer a respirator for that. Or near forest fire for very minimal protection from larger soot particles in the air.
Do you think most people know what an MSDS is?
Those worthless fuckers “so called skeptics” have never shown any skepticism on CAGW. They also enjoy punching down on some school district in East Bumfuck that contemplates putting Intelligent Design into the school or some idiot on Twitter with 150 followers that promotes young earth creationism.
They don’t dare step in the ring with an actual subject matter expert on global warming, I mean cooling, I mean we make this shit up. They defend Michael Mann’s hockey stick the way the Pope defends the divinity of Jesus.
HG2G’s Ruler of the Galaxy showed the appropriate degree of skepticism and should be a role model (in my opinion).
I’m glad I stopped listening to SGU prior to Covid, because I can’t even imagine how insufferable they must have been during that time.
Yeah, but double masking is effective.
Well, if the cat isn’t fixed, it’s Miso Horney.
Tip the veal, I will be here all week.
Aaaaand it helps if I read the whole thing first.
Most people don’t even know that there was in fact an Asian (specifically Chinese) rapper in 2 Live Crew, Fresh Kid Ice. And I believe that he wrote most of the lyrics.
Newsome agrees with this service announcement?
Want a kitten?
They be ready in about three months.
And they say chivalry is dead….
(Ok yeah… a bit of an overreaction of course — but society functions better when doing crap like that can earn you a buttwhoopin’ right then and right there.)
What was a 15 YO doing out at 1 AM?
Grandma Fourscore would have thanked the enforcer. Then whomped Young Fourscore’s ass. I understood the home rules and only tested lightly.
Masks dont work. We have known this for 100 years. There are shit-tons of published studies showing just that.
Everything about the cootie bug scam was/is a lie. Who bought that shit? I guess the same people who were eating their own boogers in HS bio and grumbling about how they dont need to know this shit cuz daddy is gonna give me a job on his construction crew.
Did I mention that masks actually increase your chances of getting sick? You are re-inhaling some portion of pathogens thus upping your viral or bacterial load. It is a small increase but an increase none the less.
Yeah, it is infuriating.
I dont blame the Karen who works in accounting. She still thinks her 2nd kid was an Oops baby because “we weren’t trying” to get pregnant – even though she went off birth control.
I dont blame Tony on the framing crew who takes homeopathic medicines because they are natural.
They dont understand how their own bodies function at a minimal level. Of course they are going to believe what the group consensus tells them. They really have no choice.
But every MD, every PhD, and really every public health and science communicator knew better. *They* knew better, or should have known better.
Yet, with few exceptions, they lied.
And those who didnt lie paid pretty high prices.
Policymakers and we the people should take note of this. If this doesnt get fixed, maybe next time it wont be a few trillion dollars and a bunch of damaged lives at stake. Maybe it will be hundreds of millions of lives.
I can’t even imagine what Massie was thinking while people were screaming at him that he was “anti-Science!!!”
I checked the mortality tables, saw it was mostly old people checking out and deaths by flu had disappeared.
That was enough info for a decision.
Heard from my peers “But if it even helps just a little, I’m not taking a chance”
Increase your chances of getting sick.
Yep.
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/the-year-of-disguises/
“Masks dont work. We have known this for 100 years. There are shit-tons of published studies showing just that.”
I would disagree just a bit. SOME specialized (and very expensive) masks will work for some limited things. We can go into the specifics and semantics of that crap and argue the shit, but that’s not the point. Where the whole thing becomes a giant fail is the disposable cheap cotton masks (and even more ridiculously the numerous knitted dumbass masks some of the more radical idiots wore) that everyone was forced to wear but did absolutely nothing of any value to prevent the spread of respiratory diseases.
The problem is believing that shit was done to actually help with anything. That ludicrous requirement was nothing but an old and clear commie tactic. Force people to stay quiet, or even better, go along with something false and ridiculous, to shame them into obedience. Same for that 6 foot distancing arbitrary nonsense.
The Jacobins weren’t commies (even if all commies were/are Jacobins), and it is debatable that they were really the first to cause mass belief in absurdity.
I heard someone say we have a “crisis of trust”. i.e. we no longer trust the institutions we used to, and it’s their own fault. The people at fault think the solution is to censor anyone who disagrees. That’s why we have such a big push for censorship.
E.g., Hillary “1984 is a manual” Clinton.
“Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not ‘Every man for himself.’ And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.”
“Apes don’t read philosophy.”
Pretty soon, the London Underground may be a political movement.
Also on the real estate transfer tax out in Cali
The ACLU was the group quoted in support of the tax.
The ACLfuckingU.
Confiscatory taxes are now a civil liberty.
Im sure they all feel super free from government infringement out there now.
I know, I know. They died years ago.
But still…. how dare they keep the name.
The commies skin suit everything and turn it to sh*t.
They didnt die years ago. They were formed as a legal arm of the communist party in the US. They were commies then and they are commies now.
But that doesn’t allow Alex to go on another of his buzzword-filled screeds.
Bitch, please!
The man was ordered to serve 30 months of probation this week for the attack and must pen an apology letter to the victim.
“I’m sorry you’re an obnoxious little twat. And your twat friends, too.”
The take-home on this story is that the police spent weeks investigating this minor kerfuffle and tracking this guy down to prosecute him.
I have been the victim of 2 hit and run accidents that have my insurance premiums sky high. (Really. Over $12k per year for 2 cars).
Even with video and me having the car in sight, right in front of the police station, Ft. Lauderdale police declined to take any action at all. They said I could swing by and pick up a form for insurance.
The second incident they did investigate. Broward County sent out an accident investigation team. 2 high school graduates with uniforms and a crossover SUV in county police livery showed up. We had video from the gas station and testimony of 2 witnesses.
After 15 minutes they emerged from their car and handed me their official report.
It listed the time and location (incorrectly) and my VIN number.
That is all.
End of their investigation.
Not even a description of the accident, the vehicle. Nothing.
Time and date. Location. VIN.
Huge economic harm to me and all who travel the roads down here. 2 guys DUI.
Nothing.
But they got this asshole.
I wonder how many people they had on the investigation. Probably a couple of detectives, a couple of uniforms….
Sheesh.
“The take-home on this story is that the police spent weeks investigating this minor kerfuffle and tracking this guy down to prosecute him.”
When you are barred from investigating real crime by your legal and political system, you tend to overcompensate on the stupid shit you are allowed to do?
*falls out of chair*
Just think how many detectives, LEOs etc. they’d have on it if it was your 84 year old mother who disappeared.
That’s crazy high insurance.
My four Comercial vehicles are less than that.
Joseph Evangelisti, a JPMorgan spokesman, reiterated in a statement that the bank “fired” Epstein as a client in August 2013.
Has a spokesman ever had such a perfect name?
https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/how-jpmorgans-bankers-stayed-close-to-epstein-after-bank-fired-him-as-a-client-33b836ce?st=DauLro&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
IWA is Eurolandia’s biggest firearms trade show.
Czeska Zbojovka (current owner of Colt) released a high-end competition gun that is lefty friendly!
Unfortunately, the price they’re talking about puts it in the range of low-end-but-not-crap 2011s. But… those aren’t for southpaws. Yet. Maybe by the time I’ve got the surplus on hand there will be one that is at that price.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRo6WsJQtYQ
The video title has the name of the gun incorrect.
It comes in Pokey colors, if Hayeksplosives is in the market.
Sexy. Except for the thumb rest, those things are just stupid. And a 1.3# trigger out of the box? I might not quite believe that one (although I have been surprised.)
Sadly, I’ve just had to face up to the fact that I shoot 2011s measurably better than CZs. Not good for the pocketbook.
I don’t use gas pedals — none of my (admittedly few) guns came with them and my thumbs are too short to reach where most of them are placed. But some people swear by them and for CZ to apply the marketing gimmick to the other 10% of the market is a good idea.
I’m sure that if I had started life with a cheap BUL 2011 I’d probably be better with them than I am with my S2… or maybe not. The skinny-at-the-beavertail thing seems to work for me.
Undoubtedly the best thing I could do improve my shooting is to lose a bunch of weight. And then my hands will be a different shape.
Most of the people I see who swear by gas pedals, aren’t very good. I don’t know any ballers who use them. Myself, I’m firmly on the ‘no thumb contact on the gun’ train.
But, they’re cheap! And they look badass. And you can take them off easily enough, so they’re not really mortally offensive.
There’s nothing wrong with losing a bunch of weight. But it’s worth pointing out that Rob Leatham is 60 years old, 50+ pounds overweight, and is rocking two knee replacements, and he still crushes fools.
So I popped on to the Atlas Gunworks site to shop for some new magazines/drool over the new v3 Athena, and they have an Ayn Rand quote on the landing page.
Their owner paid for my dinner at one of the Hibachi places in Bangor, so I am generally well disposed to them.
I will say, he gives off near identical vibes to the huckster/cult leader/magus/high-end bladesmith that I used to work for. Self-promotion is a thing at this particular intersection of niche and price, but the main point of similarity is how he would pump his existing clients to buy more and make them “special” in order to facilitate that. The Atlas “sponsored” shooters are actually customers and AFAIK, the only benefit to the shooters is the jerseys and if they’ve bought enough, custom belts.
I’m NOT implying that he’s a scammer not that his products aren’t top notch. Just that I would not buy into any investment opportunities he offered me.
Not surprising. It’s a pretty common vibe in the gun world.
This is the case with easily 99% of the sponsored shooter jerseys out there. Between the tiny margins and the lack of advertising opportunities, real sponsorships are essentially non-existent.
It occurs to me that with working so many Nats I might have a bit of a distorted view about how “Team [Gunmaker]” is supposed to work.
When CA isn’t progressive or authoritarian enough – try New Zealand!
New Zealand Rolls Out the Welcome Mat for Wealthy American Home Buyers
https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/luxury-homes/new-zealand-american-home-buyers-70d344a2?st=9z6nrd&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Forgot the money paragraph.
For San Diego residents David and Katherine Burnett, the question wasn’t why they would move across the world to New Zealand. It was why they wouldn’t.
David, a venture capitalist, saw opportunities investing in New Zealand tech startups. Katherine worried about gun violence. They wanted to live somewhere beautiful, clean and English-speaking, with good schools and a less politically divisive climate. A bonus? No poisonous snakes or spiders.
Its Utopia! Just don’t swim too close to stingrays, eat berries off trees and make sure to stay hidden from hobbits.
Where I have the feeling that “less politically divisive climate” means “everyone is already a lefty like we are”.
Wait til NZ citizens start to groan about the Cali expats wanting to import their “culture’
Gotta say when we thought we had the woke nonsense on the ropes the media sure is doing heavy lifting and putting up quite the fight over nothing really.
They have managed to drag the hockey thing for a week now?
“Gotta say when we thought we had the woke nonsense on the ropes the media sure is doing heavy lifting and putting up quite the fight over nothing really.”
Cornered animal and all that….
Without this ideology their effort to destroy the American middle class, and hence America, and force us to accept the new world order, falls apart… And they are sold on this shit. It is how they all earn (meaning do nothing productive and get paid big bucks).
It is not on the ropes at all. These filthy commies will fight back until everything is destroyed. All of Europe and Britain has fallen, we are next.
if we can’t rule in heaven, we will rule in hell…
A week only?
The Missing Tucson Grandma has been going on for nearly a month.
After 3 days the authorities needed to look for disturbed dirt in the desert. Some mysteries remain mysteries, until an accidental discovery is made.
The MSM are finally losing interest in her so now I’m expecting a 24/7 focus on Epstein all the way to the midterms unless something more “interesting” comes along. They are trying their darnedest to pin something, anything on OMB – I’m sure something will turn up.
I feel bad for the probably 100s of other folk in the country right now dealing with something similar wondering why their loved one is nothing and barely any resources are given to their cases.
Or actually pump the septic tank rather than poking at it with a stick.
On the plus side for the MSM I know who Savana Guthrie is now.
I had to look her up.
They don’t want people feeling good. It might help Republicans.
“Rep. Jasmine Crockett was mocked online Thursday for reportedly having armed security guards eject an Atlantic reporter from a Senate campaign event in Texas.
Journalist Elaine Godfrey had just finished covering the Crockett rally in Lubbock Tuesday and was attempting to interview the Democratic firebrand when she was approached by a “woman with a badge,” she wrote in the magazine.
“Her team has asked you to leave,” the woman said, according to Godfrey, who noted the same woman had waved her into the press area hours earlier.
“They just said, ‘Elaine from Atlantic, white girl with a hat and notepad. She’s interviewing people in the crowd. She’s a top-notch hater and will spin. She needs to leave,’” the woman explained, after Godfrey asked why she was being booted.”
https://nypost.com/2026/02/26/us-news/jasmine-crockett-ridiculed-for-having-armed-guards-boot-white-girl-reporter-from-event-not-ready-for-primetime/
When the Atlantic isn’t left enough.
It isnt ‘left enough’ in this case. It is ‘she isnt the selected nominee our bosses want’.
The law exists for the left to use it against their enemies. That applies to anyone that gets in the way of their pursuit of power. Obama cemented this practice of demanding the fawning media never criticize him or team blue or be send to pasture (removed their access to them). You would think they would have carried a YUGE grudge against the left for that, and how it ended real reporting. Instead they embraced the whole thing with gusto, and now adopted this shit as part of their ethos. They are spoiled children that would rather burn it all down than admit others are going to win the game against them.
Yeah, I was thinking the same….they kicked out someone from The Atlantic?
Have I heard that the Dems want rid of Crockett? It might be that she knows her own party wants rid of her. The R’s are rooting for Crockett for obvious reasons.
It’s the same problem and solution they had for Bernie Sanders……
The R’s are rooting for Crockett for obvious reasons.
And the Dems wanted Trump in ’16. That doesn’t always work out like you think it will.
Considering Colbert is weighing in on a TX (D) primary in favor of the white male over the Womyn of Color, it’s pretty obvious the marching orders have been given. By who would be an interesting thing to know.
“Her mantra is that “We don’t know-know, but we know” — in other words, her malicious, irrational intuitions are superior to actual knowledge backed by facts.
She now says that “Erika Kirk should be dragged into a police precinct for questioning,” and anyone who disagrees is “a full-blown fraud.”
According to Owens, “the amount of evidence that is now piling up, I would say, against Erika Kirk, is almost akin to an NBC ‘Dateline’ episode.”
….it makes Owens’ conviction that both the moon landing and dinosaurs are fake look well-grounded by comparison.”
https://nypost.com/2026/02/26/opinion/candace-owens-depraved-erika-kirk-madness-hits-a-new-low/
Don’t we have all these bones and shit?
I blame Alex Jones for being the least crazy of his followers
Jones is a performance artist and I think Owens might be as well.
Performance artists whose primary effect is to make the sane side look just as insane as the crazy side.
Party like you read about, baby!
Kudos to Sheriff Ivey for penning that entertaining announcement.
On the other hand, the drugs didn’t just fall out of her ass.
…. “Ok stop!”
https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/1rb6l38/oc_not_once_but_twice_just_to_make_sure/
That…had to be intentional
Canadians.
“A prominent Ohio pediatrician has been fired after being busted with more than 100 photos of child pornography, court records reveal.
Bryan Shanley Sack, 43, of Michigan, was charged Saturday with multiple child sex offenses and immediately fired from his role as a pediatric urologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Toledo, according to court filings obtained by WTOL 11 News.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15596795/ohio-pediatrician-fired-hospital-child-sex-offenses.html
He looks like an asshole.
Wait a minute, is he from Ohio or Michigan? That’s going to matter to sloopy.
Pediatric urologist…
This is the dark side of “follow your bliss”
Pediatric urologist? A bit on the nose there isn’t it?
Ok. How sure are we it was actually child porn and not slides from his International Conference of Pediatric Urology presentation? I seem to remember parents being accused for taking pictures of their kids in the bathtub.
That’s the problem with journalisming these days — what gets reported has so little to do with reality that one really shouldn’t even have an opinion based on it.
Or was it even “children”? or was it “teens”? No mention of ages that I could see in the article.
This crossed my mind as well.
That’s where my mind went too.
Considering Dateline was notorious for fabricating evidence…
“Sydney Sweeney strips down to nude lingerie for a sizzling new SYRN collection called ‘comfy'”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-15596471/Sydney-Sweeney-strips-nude-lingerie.html
First pic doesn’t look comfortable.
“She also suggested that Erika’s work with a charity in Romania was actually a cover for child sex trafficking. And she speculated that Erika groomed and sexually harassed a 15-year-old girl….
In case there was any question of how outlandish this all is, the first episode teased the theory that Erika is a time traveler or was trained from childhood to be an agent of the U.S. government’s top-secret program to use ancient Sumerian technology to alter the course of history.
This isn’t new for her. In January, she spoke of a CIA-run “Project Looking Glass” in which the “deep state” stole a device produced by an ancient Sumerian civilization that allowed them to peer into the future and see different potential outcomes….
In this first Bride of Charlie episode, she expanded the theory. She revealed that Erika had attended a private “Tesseract School” in Arizona and that the school (which she said was run by Jews) had rented a building from a Jewish school with “Looking Glass” in the name. Owens was excited. “Looking Glass” like the secret CIA program! “Tesseract” like the bridge in space-time in the book A Wrinkle in Time!”
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/02/candace-owens-charlie-kirk-erika-israel.html
Perfectly reasonable.
On the other hand, it’s Slate.
To balance the scales, Candace should “find” a letter that Erica sent to “Dear Prudence” describing her perversions.
It is amazing that Faux News let her and now just-as-crackpot Tucker run around for so long.
Paging HM:
https://pagesix.com/2026/02/26/entertainment/amanda-seyfried-wore-a-prosthetic-butthole-for-new-movie-testament-of-ann-lee/
Um, why? Was her original one just too busted out to appear on camera?
I’m guessing that no, it probably did not.
It’s a movie about the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing (more commonly known as the Shakers).
So yes, I would say that full frontal nudity and explicit penetration would be absolutely necessary.
I read somewhere the new “Wuthering Heights” is packed with gratuitous “transgression” too. Whatever it takes to put oh-so-modern butts in seats, I guess.
Wait, I thought the Shakers were the no-sex cult, and the Oneida were the ones where you were assigned a sexual partner.
There was no assigning in the Oneida society, they were more of a free-love cult until jealousies made them go trad monogamy and just keep selling silverware.
One of those cults had it where there was always supposed to be an age gap.
Yeah Shakers would kick women out who got pregnant. They died out. Wonder why?
Because don’t fuck you, that’s why?
I saw Prosthetic Butthole open for The Revolting Cocks back in ’91.
Did they need to lube up before opening?
Did the Shakers do the Provo Push before the Mormons?
“Flavor Flav to host Las Vegas event for winning US women’s Olympic ice hockey team”
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/feb/27/flavor-flav-to-host-las-vegas-event-for-winning-us-womens-olympic-ice-hockey-team
STIJLTH
I suspect he’s filming a special edition of his reality show.
TAKE THAT, CHEETO HITLER!!1!
“A recent study by the Alpaugh Family Economics Center at the University of Cincinnati found canned tuna in Midwest grocery stores was up about 7.3% since just September, canned green beans are up 9.1% over the same period and canned soup is up a staggering 22.3%.
“When I was going to the grocery store over the last couple of months, what once was $20 and under for a pot of American chili is not that anymore. It’s around $30 to $35, sometimes $40 depending on whether it had meat, because meat has gone up too,” Moms For America Chairwoman Rebekah Lichtwerch told Just The News exclusively.”
https://justthenews.com/nation/economy/soup-crisis-americas-affordability-dinner-table-centers-around-tinplate-cans
Sardines are double.
That is bananas.
Now that we covered all of the important stuff does anyone know if we are going to bomb Iran and possibly kill thousands of people?
How about today’s version of Stalingrad over in the Ukraine where more than a million people have been murdered…how is that going?
Last I read in the WSJ was some talking round and a picture of a meal they finished eating.
So “talking”.
One of my pet work peeves. We are “listening”. Yeah, is the decision made? Can I change anything? Yes and no. Ok, no need to discuss further. I can either deal with it or quit. I don’t need you to fucking “listen”.
I think Iran is 50/50. When my son-in-law got assigned to the Nimitz, I started following all the aircraft carrier things. Our current admin is relying on them heavily. They didn’t attack Iran last year until the day the Nimitz arrived. They put the Ford in the Caribbean to get Maduro. Right now they have one carrier near Iran, and the Ford is a day or two out, so I suspect any attack would happen when it arrives. Having two in the area is a sign.
Part of it is that carriers are loaded with EA-18 Growlers, which are fighters equipped for electronic warfare. I suspect they were used to clear a path for the bombers in Iran. For Venezuela, there was a description of the attack going around, and the first line was “our radar just stopped working”. That’s what Growlers do.
At the rate reported fatalities keep coming in, shouldnt we be up to 30 or 40 million by now?
Speaking of casualties, what is always the first one?
Suthen it’s that Hamas Dr/Reporter/young father.
Where is first-term Trump when we need him?
Europe is busy berating each other for importing Russian oil while simultaneously promising to attack them. Because that makes sense.
More important research…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcwu6K4crHc
Excellent job.
My grandfather ‘showed’ my brother and I how to do this. One of the things I was frustrated with as a child was that the older generations were not very articulate. They would ‘show’ us how to do things by making us do it and assume we already knew how, constantly scolding us for doing it wrong. It was frustrating and painful.
This guy makes for a very good teacher.
Now I want a ham sandwich.
Wow, blast from the past. Good ol red-eye gravy. Biscuits. Grits. Eggs. Classic country breakfast.
As a kid we usually had a country ham around. Slice off a bit a couple of times a month.
Do people still do that? I haven’t heard anyone talking about that in many years.
My neighbor and I did one a few years ago. You can still buy them of course and they are much cheaper to just buy than to make – like wine and liquor .
How was it?
It was quite good. It did not last long.
It is simple to do but a long wait. As I said, fun but more economical to just buy.
That was my dad.
‘Here’s a motorcycle, you know how to ride it.’
Then five years later
‘Why don’t you know how to ride a motorcycle? I taught you how!’
I unironically love the level of service I get from the American Healthcare system.
I have a hurty shoulder. I go online and pick a day convenient to me to see my doctor without having to wait. I go in and talk to him, tell him the symptoms, he does an exam and narrows it down to two possibilities, one more probable than the other. He orders an X-Ray to rule out one. The front desk gives me a list of nearby imaging centers which take walk-in X-Ray customers, I pick one, don’t bother to tell them I’m coming until I show up, and I’m seen and X-Rayed promptly. I’m out the door there forty-five minutes after leaving my doctor’s office, and I didn’t even pick the closest one.
The good news is that I probably don’t have a Rotator Cuff Injury but just a Rotator Cuff Impingement. This is just some inflammation, and the most invasive treatment on the list of possibilities is a cortisol injection, which is the “if there’s no improvement from the other treatments”.
Now the billing begins.
Look for a separate bill from a doctor you’ve never met for “X-ray interpretation”.
That’s the Radiologist.
And don’t expect it for 8 to 10 months by which time you’ll have forgotten WTF that was for.
I would strongly recommend against a cortisol injection, under any circumstances. The short-term pain relief isn’t worth the long term damage.
This.
I have not had any but the people I know who have tell me by the time the agony from the shot is gone the effects are nearly worn off. Stabbing holes in fascia around joints is…a bad idea.
I’m with you, UCS. A few years ago, I developed a terrible toothache over the weekend. I called a dentist first thing Monday morning. I had never been to this dentist before, but they said come in now and we’ll see you immediately. They told me the tooth was cracked and I would either need a root canal, or have the tooth removed, so I need to see an orthodontist to make that decision. The dentist walked me to the front desk and explained the situation to her receptionist. The receptionist called an orthodontist and then asked me, is 1:00 okay? Yes, it is. So the orthodontist checks it out and says the crack is too deep, the tooth needs to come out. She walks me up to the receptionist desk and explains the situation. The receptionist picks up the phone and calls an oral surgeon. They can get you in one hour from now. Unfortunately, I had just eaten lunch so I couldn’t go under anesthesia. How about 9:00 tomorrow morning? Next morning, tooth is pulled. And other than the initial check-in at the dentist, no one bothered me about insurance or how the bill would get payed. I was in terrible pain and everyone along the way was only focused on helping me.
That’s because you live in NoDak and there is so few people there there is lots of time for personalized service.
That’s the reason people live there. Now that you have spilled the beans you can expect a flood of Glibs to move in.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045102/
Throughout my concussion treatment, my health care has been top notch. Except the ER doctor and my regular doctor, who just said “you have a mild concussion, it should go away on its own”. I asked to see a specialist, and he and my PT’s were amazing. They messaged each other constantly, even to the point of, “Kevin just left PT, he’s on the way to his appointment but he’ll be a few minutes late.” I had no idea PT for a concussion even existed, but I’ll bet it cut my recovery time in half.
This week I graduated from PT, and I have no follow-ups scheduled with the specialist. I am still getting tired, irritable, and headachy in the PM after a stressful day, but that should go away on its own. They left the door open if I feel like I need more PT.
ISTR that when people are polled on “the American healthcare system” the say it’s terrible but when asked about _their_ healthcare they’re generally positive.
TIL- Kirtland, Ohio is the site of the 1st Mormon temple in the US.
You wear the mask to show you CARE.
But I don’t care?
But I don’t care, way past that .
Compassionate fascism!
Test
The U.S. military used a laser Thursday to shoot down a “seemingly threatening” drone flying near the U.S.-Mexico border. It turned out the drone belonged to Customs and Border Protection, lawmakers said.
The case of mistaken identity prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to close additional airspace around Fort Hancock, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of El Paso. The military is required to formally notify the FAA when it takes any counter-drone action inside U.S. airspace.
It was the second time in two weeks that a laser was fired in the area. The last time it was CBP that used the weapon and nothing was hit. That incident occurred near Fort Bliss and prompted the FAA to shut down air traffic at El Paso airport and the surrounding area. This time, the closure was smaller and commercial flights were not affected.
When are they going to randomly shoot down light planes near the border? They’re all dope smugglers.
Would that were true.