We’re back with another Friday Afternoon Links, I hope this one stays up longer than the last.
BREAKING: Time to guilt the people who questioned the liar.
In sports news.
Markets… markets find a way.
A piece on AI LLMs and fiction from someone who has written some good stuff.
So… it’s in the vault?
If only you had some kind of power to do such a thing?
Have a ray of sunshine.
A decent ‘conservatives in the mist’ piece.
I have an idea… make the companies pay market rate for power, and give no subsidies.
Just because the doors are unlocked doesn’t mean people are coming in!
Ignore the books that are already getting pulped anyway.
Why won’t the rubes like the media we want them to? I mean, look at the poor rich directors who can’t find funding!
What was EvilSheldon saying about fiction vs. reality?
I have… questions.
Since the post wasn’t live long last week, I’ll reprint the cocktail recipe from last week in addition to a new one:
Cherry Bomb – From Last Week
- 3 part (1.5 oz) cachaca
- 2 part (1 oz) cherry liqueur (think Herrings)
- 1 part (0.5 oz) lime juice
- Club Soda to top
At this point, you should be able to figure out how to build this drink. All the ingredients but the club soda go into a shaker with ice, shaken until chilled and combined, and then strained into a highball glass over fresh ice. Top with club soda give a slight stir to combine and garnish with a cherry and lime wheel (flagged if you want to be fancy). For variants, think about swapping out the cherry liqueur for other liqueurs that work with lime, and play around.
For this week, if your area is anything like mine, fresh berries are in season and fresh. With that, now is the time to look into making yourself a Cobbler:
Sherry Cobbler
- 3 ounces sherry
- 0.25 ounces simple syrup
- Half wheel of orange
- Small amount of berries
This drink predates prohibition by about a hundred years. At it’s base, it’s a slightly modified sherry drink, served very chilled and over crushed/pebble ice. As one can imagine, getting a drink over crushed ice was a novelty and a big deal back in the early 1800s. There’s two ways to make this drink, the original or the modern. In the original method, you would add the sherry, simple (or a bar spoon of sugar), your half wheel of citrus, and berries into a shaker (perhaps a Cobbler shaker?) with ice, and shake it vigorously. Shake it like it owes your grandma money, you want the ice to do the work of muddling in this style. In the modern method, you would muddle the fruit first, and go with a standard shake (there will also usually be a couple of berries muddled in the bottom of the glass). After the drink is mixed and chilled, strain over crushed/pebble ice in a highball glass. Garnish with an orange wheel, some of the berries, and a sprig of mint (slap that mint first if you want to punch it up).
With that, I’ll let you get into the weekend, and I hope you find what you want.
Get the supervisor! I AM THE FirstERVISOR!
Questions aside, that is a fun Jagermeister ad.
Why won’t the Matrix dude fund his own trans movie? He’s got the money.
You think they want to lose that kind of money?
He knows he’d be pissing it away. Better to get someone else to fund the cause.
After three high-profile flops in a row, the money might be running a little thin…
Crowdfunding is always an option if them thinks it will be popular. Might also help answer the question – “is this a good idea?” If it does get made, I have a prediction 97% Rotten Tomatoes critics score/.05% viewers score.
Whatever happened with Critical Drinker’s crowd-funded film?
Whatever happened with Critical Drinker’s crowd-funded film?
Rogue Elements? Released in 2024.
“Sadly, a 41-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene. His next-of-kin have been informed and are being supported by officers,” a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police told the paper.
In a filthy alley, with a needle in his arm?
Good catch. Kinda surprised he ‘caved’ that quickly. (“You fold faster than Superman on laundry day!”)
And, yeah. “The scene.”
“He cited an “unrelenting level of public scrutiny” as his reason for resigning. “[It’s] simply the decision of someone who has reached the limits of what any person should reasonably be expected to endure,” he said at the time.
Well. I certainly didn’t want you to die. I do hope your bullshit unravels more bullshiters.
“Voting machines have real security issues. Researchers worry they could be weaponized by election deniers.” Or here’s a crazy idea. Close the obvious vulnerabilities in our voting system so people have more confidence in it.
I like when the headline is so stupid I don’t have to read any further. Saves me time.
1. There is no doubt in my mind that if they could get away with cheating in elections, they would. The idea that any of our ruling class truly views democracy as anything of value is pretty laughable and easily undercut by nearly all of their actions.
2. There are a shit ton of vulnerabilities in our elections to the point where in some ways it’s easier than ever to rig an election. Even 50 individual elections. Or at least a handful of important ones that truly are up for grabs and decide the whole thing.
More resources than ever up for grabs. More power than any other government in history. And they can’t get something as simple as identifying the voter or chain of custody down. Nah, let’s rephrase that. They actively despise questions about the subject let alone simple solutions.
So much of what people think about politics these days is magical thinking. People would never do that today! They did it throughout all human history even when far less is at stake.
That shit is horribly naive and yet it’s what most people believe. Even people here who distrust the fuck out of government on paper can’t wrap their head around the fact that they’d cheat the fuck out of an election in today’s modern world.
It was happening as late as the 60’s and is fairly well documented. I’m supposed to believe it just stopped.
So not really relevant, but just curiosity. Much is made of the Nazis burning books. We all learn that shit in grade school and any time a book is removed from the public library we get the comparisons. We all know the sort of shit they’ve been fighting and lying over recently on that subject.
What I didn’t realize is that the first books burned by the Nazis were at the Institute for Sexual Research run by Magnus Herschfield. I was looking to see just how deviant or crazy the guy got. It’s mentioned that he liked to doodle some sex stuff, but can’t really find much online of it. Though a lot of his research notes were lost.
But yea, he was an early pioneer of trans rights and advocated for acceptance of homosexuality. On top of the normal eugenics crap which he was fine with until he was targeted by the Nazis for being a Jew and a deviant.
Queer Ecology in Loïe Fuller’s Modernist Dance and Magnus Hirschfeld’s Die Transvestiten <– Just thought this was pretty funny. Reads as parody, but I don't know if the world from which this came from can be parodied at this point.
He had a thing for nubile young Asian boys apparently despite his racism. And he’s been subject to attempts to rehabilitate his image despite his racism in modern woke circles.
I was curious how deviant his “research” got. I can’t help but think what comes up online is maybe a bit sanitized, but who knows. He doesn’t seem to have much on moderns who think queering and transing children from birth is ok.
Same shit as the trans movement. “You have to go along with my delusions or I’ll kill myself!” OK, why don’t you do it by means of holding your breath just to complete the “I’m a tantrum throwing child” aesthetic.
The investigations will now be halted, and people will be told that it’s racist and %something%-phobic to speak ill of the dead in this case.
You’re being far too kind. I fully expect the fringe conspiracy lunatics to start spinning a tale of how, ‘A brilliant black scholar was defamed and murdered by…someone, for…some reason…’
You know what? The idea that the tenure committee at Cambridge had Arady clipped in order to short-circuit the investigation into their own malfeasance, that could have some wheels. Add in a maverick Scotland Yard investigator who plays by his own rules and a little T&A and you could get a pretty good airport novel…
Woah. Sheldon, did you change your avatar? Or is this some new WordPress madness?
He decided to become a second teir villain from an 80s action movie.
No one should be allowed to change avatars once I get used to them. You are forcing me to now read and pay attention to screennames and adjust. You are oppressing me and stealing my valuable Firsting time.
If I was going to be the villain from an 80’s action movie, I would be either Clarence Boddicker, or else the black safecracker dude from Die Hard.
I was thinking low level drug dealer on Miami Vice.
All of those options are too high budget.
This movie was made on a budget of two metric washers, a stick of gum, and pocket lint.
Keep complementing me like that and I might ask you out on a date…
One last fuck you, from the grave.
It’s genius.
Rhy, that is the perfect title for the piece – thank you.
NA – The Shadow 2 grips I borrowed to test were not where I thought I had them. I need to keep looking, but now it’s a game of “What place did they get moved to that made sense at the time”
I lay odds the answer will be “Something got put in front of them and until I move it I won’t see them”
Jesus H. Christ… Everything not forbidden is mandatory.
Yep. Kinda pisses a fellow off, doesn’t it? Makes me want to slap the igmos who say government does good things.
Lucky Strikes are the shit. It’s annoying as fuck when the little pieces of tobacco get into your mouth without the filter. Maybe there’s some trick I’m unaware of, but those things hit nice and smooth. It’s like smoking for the first time again with those things.
I’m a big believer if you are going to indulge in an unhealthy habit, just do it. Did filters actually accomplish anything beyond making people smoke more cigarettes to compensate for the lost hit and maybe even get people to delude themselves into thinking that they were doing something healthy?
I was thinking about sin taxes earlier today and getting angry. People are fucking dumb. Everything is fucking dumb. No one can just mind their own fucking business.
1. All smokes are the same outside menthol v not. Filters and packaging only.
2. Pack your smokes! Before ya open ’em, bang the pack against your hand a few times to settle the tobacky.
3. Oh, filterless? And you’re not rolling your own? Uh? Yeah, there’s your whole problem. (Add a filter to your own roll?)
Filters exist as a handle, to hold in your lips and fingers. Not complicated.
(Parliaments are fun! They’ve got a spot for your coke! *wink*)
Sin taxes are evil, stupid and predictable. See also: Humans.
I knew a guy in the Army who was kind of an idiot savant with mechanical stuff and had a fetish for being pegged due to repressed homosexuality.
Regardless, he used to roll his own cigarettes and bring it out to the field in a baggie.
Yea that’s too much work for me.
As a long time smoker, I’d also vehemently reject the idea that all smokes are the same or that menthol/regular is the big divide.
I generally smoked American Spirits. They really did last longer and take longer per cigarette. they were stronger than the average cig as well. Lucky Strikes are stronger than they are or at least removing the filter definitely impacts each hit.
American Spirits are actually just tobacco. Many other brands contain a bunch of filler shit and chemicals that speed up the burn time and you get less of the nicotine to begin with. I’m no expert, but I’ve most definitely observed that over the years.
On American Spirits and a few others, yeah, they’re better class. I’m talking Camel, Marlboro, Parliament, Winston’s, etc.
Back in my smoking days I remember a lot of the cool kids smoking American Spirits.
I liked Drum a lot but yeah, eventually I got too lazy.
Damn I want a cigarette. (I quit in 2018.)
American Spirit non-filters were my jam.
(I quit in 2002 and I still miss them.)
Oh, filterless? And you’re not rolling your own?
/scratches head
Cigars.
Kinnath-
Your bicycle restoration project brings back some not-so-fond memories.
In high school, I got a high quality frame and built it into a nice bike; not a full racer, but an excellent 10 speed road commuter. Just the thing for high school me, logging lots of general purpose miles. It was stolen less than two weeks after completion. It kind of soured me.
I did lowriders and choppers. I sold them al when I moved. I kind of miss it. It was a reasonably inexpensive hobby.
You know you want one!
https://www.reddit.com/r/bicycling/comments/1dtnzni/1971_schwinn_stingray_lemon_peeler/
I bought the frame around 1980 from a guy I worked with at Godfather’s pizza. He had it in his garage for several years. He had gotten if from a cousin that raced.
I stripped it down and hand painted with rustoleum paint. It looked pretty shabby, but I put decent parts on it. So it was a great bike to ride.
I was young and poorish. I rode it everywhere and locked it up in a lot of sketchy places. No one ever bothered it.
I was out a park one day talking to a random dude. He noticed my bike and took a close look at the components. He said “that’s actually a nice bike isn’t it.” I said yup. He said “you painted it that way on purpose didn’t you.” I said yup.
So, now I plan to strip it down and do a better job of painting it. I’ve found a place that sells new gear for vintage bicycle so I can get a new bottom bracket and headset.
It would be nice to find a matching set of gear for the rest of the bike. It’s not looking good in that regard.
You’re in good company. There’s a long history of bike couriers rattle-canning and duct-taping their rides to deter theft. Also of them doing truly ill shit to bike thieves that they caught in the act…
OFFS!!
How do I sign up for that ridiculous grift?
Won’t the dark oxygen cancel it out?
To be fair, modern woke circles are comprised of the most racist pieces of shit you’ve ever seen in your life.
Not sure how I Brooks’d that.
And the “they” in that article obviously has an agenda that places “their” hobby horse on a higher rung than mere racism and pedophilia.
It’s sick how those people operate.
I’m sad that Norm Macdonald didn’t live long enough to see his piss take twitter meme become part of the standard style guide for national media.
I can make neither heads nor tails of that Willie Wonka story. More “inside-stuff-I-do-not-in-the-least-care-about” news, I guess.
TOO LOCAL NEWS: ROADZ
A two-year standoff between Ayotte and lawmakers over whether to raise tolls for out-of-state drivers came to a head when the Senate added the revenue measure to the 10-year plan and Ayotte vetoed it in July.
Ayotte has fiercely opposed the toll-hike proposal, which would double the turnpike toll rates for all drivers who don’t have a New Hampshire E-ZPass transponder, including those with an out-of-state transponder or those paying with cash. The proposal would also provide free New Hampshire E-ZPass transponders — typically about $7 — to anyone applying in the first 10 months.
“I do not support raising the tolls. I will continue to focus on making New Hampshire more affordable for all and a destination for tourists in the region,” Ayotte wrote in her veto message last month.
But as they prepare to vote on whether to overturn Ayotte’s more than 30 vetoes Aug. 19, lawmakers say reviving the 10-year plan is a particular priority.
Anyone or just NH residents?
Answered in what I excerpted.
Coincidentally, I just received my NH E-Z Pass in the mail today for my truck with TX plates.
Because you can’t virtue signal against the evil data centers that way, duh.
We can’t do things like that. You see, government is here to control outcomes one way or the other. If something is good, then the government has to encourage it. We can’t just let people do that on their own. And if something is bad, we have to discourage or ban it. Because we can’t just let people do bad things even if it harms no one but themselves.
Government must be an active participant in every aspect of society.
When you think about utilitarian arguments, you can go further. Why is recognizing any difference between the races or genders such a big deal? It’s because of how people perceive the role of government and rights. If people aren’t truly all equal in terms of ability and potential, then too many people can rationalize their mistreatment.
It’s like the gay Jew I mentioned above. The guy who wrote a book about his racism can’t wrap his head around how the guy could believe that blacks were inferior intellectually, but also that they didn’t deserve to be brutalized because of it. I’m not arguing for race essentialism here, but these two ideas aren’t inherently contradictory. But if you believe that government should be the arbiter of what is good and bad, it becomes messy when you believe that some group or the other is lacking in some way. That must mean that group needs to be discriminated against and controlled.
Just leave people the fuck alone. What some other asshole thinks about anything becomes a whole lot less meaningful when they don’t have the power to enforce their beliefs on others.
Democracy-ing is hard
But Steyer spent more than $200 million running for governor this year, only to stumble alongside liberal firebrand Katie Porter. Instead, it was a moderate, Xavier Becerra, who advanced from the state’s June primary. Meanwhile, a host of other progressive candidates for statewide and legislative office faltered after tech- and business-aligned megadonors drowned them in a torrent of negative ads.
It’s a trend that emanates from the state’s most famously liberal city. While New York City has Zohran Mamdani as a standardbearer for the left, San Francisco is led by Daniel Lurie, an heir to the billion-dollar Levi Strauss fortune and a moderate Democrat who avoids referencing Donald Trump’s name in public. Lurie, with a sky-high public approval rating, recently rallied voters to defeat a ballot measure to raise taxes on large corporations with “overpaid CEOs.”
Here’s a crazy idea. What if the voters are capable of looking past the ad spending and expert political analysis and making their decisions based on the candidate or the idea?
What if Californians really are just sick to fucking death of envy based redistributionism and mudslinging?
Trump was drastically outspent in three elections. He won two of them. 99% of the coverage of him is negative in the mainstream left wing press.
Money clearly isn’t the overwhelming factor people pretend it is in elections. It does, however, mean that a lot of people get their bread buttered by the campaign. Political operatives make their money through politics. So the money being spent very much does matter to them.
They are so lucky!
WTF is wrong with California that they aren’t swooning at the thought of destroying their economy just to stick it to the fatcats? I can’t even.
“moderate, Xavier Becerra”
Excuse me if I giggle insanely.
He’s no more a moderate than I am a real wizard.
Unfortunately his loss means he has more time on his hands to tear down a house that my grandfather built. https://sfist.com/2025/01/21/local-billionaire-and-onetime-presidential-candidate-tom-steyer-plans-to-build-stunning
On the other hand, the fact that he’s spending so much money at that location indicates he’s not really concerned about sea level rise due to climate change.
Man of the people, that one. 🙄
I know we have some series fans in here, but honestly, I’ve never met a more mentally ill fandom in the aggregate than HP. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of delusional perma-children in their goddamn 40s still visiting theme parks, purchasing tchotchkes, and going to public parks to throw balls through hoops with broomsticks tucked between their legs. You should have grown out of that by your freshman year of high school if your classmates hadn’t the good sense to have already bullied or beaten it out of you.
They’re not even memorable books. I do not understand these people.
I’ll watch the movies for light entertainment now and then but yeah. I am not fanatic about those stories or much of anything, really.
I only ever tried to read the first book (after having seen at least some of the movies,) but I don’t even remember whether I finished it. I suspect that like The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, and the entire Lord of the Rings series, the movies were better than the books.
The movies are absolutely better than the books (I read most of them except the last couple).
I thought the movies were awful. Finished reading the entire series but was more of just completing at the end.
Agreed. My sister, BiL, their kids and friends are all in on the series. Seen the movies umpteen times, read the books, geegaws and whatsits with house symbols on them, and they think I’m strange for tossing the first novel aside before Harry even left London. And I’m a swords and sorcery fan, but I grew out of the Xanth series decades prior to Harry Potter being a thing.
“We avoided Dobby’s grave”
When fantasy gets mistaken for reality.
And that is why the purveyors of insane political promises are getting into power. It’s heads they win, tails they win, they will always blame their unfulfilled promises on saboteurs, and the fanboys and fangirls believe them.
The books are great, *if* you’re the right age. I was 10 when Harry was 10 and was the same age as him for the first three books. Then publishing slowed down, but I kept up. They’re not tremendous literature with a ‘point’ or notable ‘thesis’, and they were highly entertaining page-turners.
Much plus to Rowling for making it big, and keeping up her trans/etc thoughts with her Fuck You Money.
Oh, my main point: Rowling does very well, with her voice getting older with each year, with themes, etc, to match the age of the characters and of this reader.
They’re not even memorable books. I do not understand these people.
Harry Potter is the 21st century’s Odysseus.
My first instinct was to call bullshit before I saw the next link.
Back to California:
No other issue has illustrated California’s opposite approach quite like the proposed tax on the assets of billionaires, which has fractured Democrats into factions that echo their larger party’s struggle over economic policy. Leading Democrats like Newsom and Becerra, along with influential health care groups and labor unions, have opposed the measure on the grounds it could undercut the state’s finances and disproportionately benefit one union.
The measure has picked up significant support lately with endorsements from the California Labor Federation and the California Democratic Party, whose left-leaning activists are often a barometer of the base’s politics.
The thing most likely to sink the wealth tax is it’s lopsided distribution of the spoils. The other unions don’t get to wet their beaks.
And I can’t help but wonder if the lunatic fringe of Inner Party activists is a believable indicator of what “the base” is thinking.
a believable indicator of what “the base” is thinking
The base est moi!
Rant about Pokemon, but really about general gaming.
Shtick of Pokemon has always been you can keep them and bring them with you generation to generation. They’re your pocket monster friends bullshit. And they’ve done that for a very long time. They have an app on an old system they’re closing. They gave a lot of heads up. That’s less the issue here.
The real issue, as I noted the other night, is that these companies are all looking to resell the old games to you on the new hardware. Even when you purchased it directly from them in the past. So Pokemon just started to finally re-release old GBA games on the Switch. Nothing was changed about them. Not one quality of life update. Fans have done more than they did effort wise to make this stuff work with new hardware. For free. Out of passion.
But I digress…
They know you bought this game on the old e-shop for the 3DS. They have a record of it. It’s the same Nintendo account probably. Do you think they give two flying fucks when they re-release it on the Switch 2 at some point? Nah. You’ll buy it again and like it.
If subscriptions piss people off, this is like 10x times worse to me.
Backwards compatibility is easier than ever. Again, fans have made all the old games already playable on a modded Switch. Nintendo has already given an emulator for the old games, but they held on to Pokemon to sell off individually rather than through their subscription to access the old back catalogue of those games.
This shit is a scam. That whole owning nothing and liking it wasn’t just talking about houses.
And don’t you DARE mod their hardware that you paid hundreds of dollars for! They’ll fucking brick the thing! Is that even legal? Not really, but they reserve that right and whose really going to stop them? The fucking EU?
You could always not buy anything from Nintendo if you dislike their business practices so much.
All of the corporations are going in this direction so it’s less about Nintendo than it is the general trend for all media. Or really anything. Milk people for the same services they’d have bought before.
And calling a business practice a scam isn’t the same as saying there ought to be a law.
Being libertarian does not mean I have to be a corporate shill.
Precisely why I like to patronize GOG/CDPR when possible, but the concepts of moddable hardware and DRM-free ownership died in the mainstream 20 years ago and aren’t coming back.
I will hack the fuck out of the Switch 2 when they break it. And I may say eff it and just go to piracy because fuck’em.
Bricking a system is where Nintendo crosses the line from the normal antics. They have a right to restrict access to their online store/site I suppose. But they wanted to one-up that and they didn’t just write that disclaimer for nothing with the Switch 2. They are saying that once they detect a breach they’ll flip a kill switch if necessary to put a stop to it.
As expected, Yaz cancelled tonight’s movie date. Likely for the best. She rescheduled tomorrow, but I assuredly don’t think that’ll happen. She’s a kinda magnificently special nightmare. She could, and absolutely would be a fantastic puppet for Team Blue to unleash on the world. Born-here Egyptian, law at Northwestern, NYC tax lawyer. Online FinDom mistress. Much, much, much attractive. She’s get so many fucking votes, it’s fairly terrifying.
Very, predictably well spoken *about* her political nonsense, as a minion for Blue Overlords, she’d fuckin’ spit out any goddamn thing they wanted her to. Unless, of course, what she’s suckin’ needs to stay swallowed full. Her ability to flip men’s (not just my) arousal and interest in her is uncanny. *phew*
Is she Upstairs at Eric’s?
inorite?
Did you tell her to just move out?
Now we need photos.
As of this afternoon, I’m retired!
Not entirely sure how I feel about it.
But, currently sitting on the back deck with Mrs. Pioneer having a couple of NEIPAs enjoying the first of the late summer “it’s nice outside without being scorching hot” weather.
😲
Mazel tov! If you find yourself bored in retirement, you can always pick up gigs, and the great thing about it is that since you don’t need the work you can be more choosy.
Welcome to retired life! I made the decision 6 years ago and have never regretted it.
34 years ago and a lot of fishing time.
I worked for a couple friends as a favor, a day here and there but not much and not long. I didn’t want them to get in the habit of using me for a crutch.
I don’t do much now, though I would like to do more. The body rebels and ignoring it doesn’t work anymore.
Good that you younger fellers have a chance to relax but you’ll be busier than ever, not working.
Congrats! Coming soon here.
I can’t wait.
Congrats!
Congrats! This year I can retire (or even already perhaps) on paper but I’m too young to pull the trigger yet. Didn’t think I’d make it this far.
Welcome to the club.
According to our records, the Retiree club members have consistantly failed to pay their membership dues. You accounts are in arrears and need to be paid.
🥳
Congrats!
Congratulations!
*hand up* The idea of Charlie going to prison for turning a kid into a blueberry is clever. It *could* be good, I thought, but knew it would depend on the people making it. I really don’t trust Netflix. I predict much awful, but that could be a fun concept in a variety of ways, holding the Wonka estate liable for their bizarrely dangerous magical confections. Could be funny and or serious!
(Keep it one or the other, on this one. Mix those in one project? Yuck. That’s how Free Willy becomes a Human Rights Cetacean in Gaza.)
To be fair, if you made a gritty, realistic portrayal of a whimsical, quasi-magical candy factory trying to operate in the modern regulatory climate, it would rapidly descend into farce.
Go ahead and read the rest of the plot synopsis.
The trial would be entertaining, and I’m looking forward to Coyote vs. Acme.
I’m also very interested in Coyote vs Acme. An idea for a long time, so I’ve heard. Great idea. As always, execution is key.
Momentarily I thought Brett Easton Ellis was bringing American Psycho into the 21st century.
Earlier today I realized we already had a solution to the algorithm problem, but mainly discarded it. RSS feeds.
I miss those days, there was a great little extension for FireFox that would be a crawl either at the top or bottom of the browser window that you would set up with the RSS feeds you wanted updates from. You could configure it to only show the most recent, the last x days, the last x stories, and such.
I’m still a RSS dead ender. I use the RSSyl plugin for Claws. There’s a surprising number of sites that still offer feeds, although many of them now only give you a headline and link instead of full text since they can’t sell ads without clicks. morss.it solves the problem on some sites, but not all.
I still use an RSS reader. I have not found a better way to keep up with just the stuff I am interested in.
I’m surprised that Harvey Birdman didn’t already do it.
https://ocnjdaily.com/jersey-shore/cape-may-approves-stricter-curfew-backpack-ban-to-prevent-rowdy-teen-behavior/
Ban children! Oh, wait…good job!
This is what you get when parents don’t do their fucking job.
And threaten parents and others that would do so.
Breaking up a few of these ‘gatherings’ with axe handles and fire hoses would probably sort matters out…
Flame throwers and live ammo.
Too much collateral damage, both physically and spiritually.
Treating a bunch of borderline-retarded savages as an existential threat meriting an extreme response, just elevates them, both in the public mind and in their own.
It does make me wonder if the current shitheads are really any worse than the shitheads of my youth.
Extreme? That’s measured. Extreme would be a condemnation of nine exterminations.
The towns are basically constrained from arresting juveniles that cause problems by state law. OTH, the curfew is under their control.
Packing and prep day. Heading to the (real) woods tomorrow for the weekend.
Can hear distant neighbors rapid firing. Sound like a cash register ringing up.
Packing here too. Heading downstate for a few days Sunday to prepare for a move.
Tomorrow I guess I have to turn in my cable box. 😱
I guess tomorrow night will be all Pluto TV.
TOO LOCAL NEWS: Unions learning
A blue-collar candidate who began his work in the trades in the sixth grade was endorsed by a labor union on Thursday. Why is that news?
Because he’s a Republican candidate for Congress.
The State Employees’ Association, SEIU Local 1984, endorsed Republican Victor Orlando in the NH-02 GOP primary Thursday, as the public-sector union continues its outreach to a Republican Party increasingly powered by working-class voters.
Orlando, a Hollis business owner and construction trades professional, is competing against 2024 GOP nominee Lily Tang Williams in the Sept. 8 primary. The winner will likely face incumbent Democrat U.S. Rep. Maggie Goodlander, who was also endorsed in her primary Thursday.
Conservatives in the mist indeed.
Standing in that room, I realized it [MAGA] isn’t just a political rallying cry. It’s an expression of generational grief. It’s for people who look at the modern world and feel genuinely left behind, holding onto the memory of an era when they felt secure and relevant.
Oh fuck off. Yes, MAGA was born out of grief and loss of security and relevance. Yes, people embraced MAGA because they were so afraid of progress and the future! Those poor sad, pitiable people can’t grasp the relevance, inevitability, and hotness of the “center left” i.e., warmed over communism with a empathetic, caring facade.
No, your political opponents are not just sad, lost, and confused people struggling with the glorious future, they just have different ideas than you and think those ideas will “return” America to the status of the “shining beacon on the hill.” This tired old shibboleth of ‘conservatives’ just being afraid of the modern world is so tiresome – fuck off with your little pity parade that allows you to feed your need to fell like a caring, empathetic “good'” person.
Suppose I should go read the rest of it, but those first couple of paragraphs really don’t make me want to torture myself.
MAGA is the Tea Party rebranded.
You’ve read it before Putrid. We all have. When “conservatives” aren’t being skewered in media of any kind, that’s the most “understanding” take they get.