Saturday Morning I Love A Parade Links

by | Dec 10, 2022 | Daily Links | 145 comments

It was Parade Week. As a few of you know, I’ve been swamped with an urgent high-profile project to create medals for a big-deal Olympics-like event, using an exotic glass created by one of our graduate students; it’s a deep blue color, but lights up bright yellow-orange when exposed to UV light. I came into the project late and it was in disastrous condition. After successfully executing a coup, I took over the project management and have gotten it nearly to completion.

There’s a multiweek torch relay culminating with the last leg at the event to start the games, and the first leg was this past week at our little university, in recognition of our creative work on the medals project. Much was made of the special torch, which has no flame but instead has a molded glass fake flame lit by an LED. “The most sustainable winter games ever!” the committee officials crowed. “We’re doing this without creating carbon dioxide from a torch flame!” I said to the professor I was standing with, “How much CO2 was generated heating a furnace and melting the glass used for the torch?” He glared at me and responded, “You’re not supposed to say that out loud!”

So as we celebrate, there’s the usual quota of birthdays today including a guy who never spoke up; a guy who should have been the star of Hamilton; some overwrought chick; a guy who was always on the brink; a welcome addition to any road trip; a guy most famous for falling down a well; an actual pioneer of comedy; a guy who set an example for all Illinois politicians and hair weave distributors; and a fabulously overrated hack cook and asshole.

Let’s move on to the important stuff. Links.

 

I truly enjoy being lectured to by my moral and intellectual superiors.

 

No lies detected.

 

I can’t imagine why college is so fucking expensive.

 

The knives are soooooo out. It’s delightful.

 

Time to break out your talismans of obedience.

 

“After decades of grifting and enriching myself by stomping on your faces, I am outraged that people are mean to me.” I long for the return of public hangings.

 

This was an odd little tidbit I ran across. I always knew that Steve Howe was pretty terrific, but this really seals the deal. He does a PERFECT Les Paul imitation to get things going, then takes off on his own after Les actually starts up. Amazing, amazing.

About The Author

Old Man With Candy

Old Man With Candy

Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me. Wait, wrong book, I'll find something else.

145 Comments

  1. Count Potato

    Those are some hats. They must have strong necks.

  2. Count Potato

    It’s too early for the Guardian just yet.

    • Count Potato

      “There can be no more hiding, and no more denying. Global heating is supercharging extreme weather at an astonishing speed. Guardian analysis recently revealed how human-caused climate breakdown is accelerating the toll of extreme weather across the planet. People across the world are losing their lives and livelihoods due to more deadly and more frequent heatwaves, floods, wildfires and droughts triggered by the climate crisis.”

      Bullshit.

      • juris imprudent

        Guardian analysis = military intelligence.

      • rhywun

        That guy is peak Guardian. Throw a zillion lies at the wall in service to dreams of global communism and see what sticks.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Translation: “Give us your money.”
        Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and I’m willing to change my mind. Please provide it you grifter douchebag.

    • Timeloose

      Are we not using MoonBat anymore?

      • juris imprudent

        Perfect description of MoonBat.

        We feel confident in saying that not a single prediction of global warming catastrophe has occurred. The alarmists know their forecasts of doom have been comically wrong. But rather than admit their errors, they point to natural events as evidence that they’re not wrong and keep warning us that the end is near.

  3. Count Potato

    I think they should get to ride their administrator around piggy-back.

    • SDF-7

      That would actually create some value to the actual faculty and students.

      So we obviously can’t have that!

  4. Count Potato

    It’s December. Shouldn’t RSV be over by now?

    • Sean

      Narrator: “It will never be over.”

      • Count Potato

        I remember it being October. Also, if you hang a baby outside of a moving ambulance, the cold air shrink the inflammation in their airways. Don’t try this at home. Or do, I’m not your supervisor.

  5. Count Potato

    “I long for the return of public hangings.”

    They should bring back inexpensive barbiturates. Also, quaaludes.

    • Toxteth O'Grady

      Morning, Earl of Hasselback! Nah, I hear the former mostly causes headaches, literally.

      • Count Potato

        GM 🙂

        Butalbital is still used to treat headaches.

        Reds and yellows now cost a fortune. Pat wrote it’s because of capital punishment.

      • Pat

        Definitely true of secobarbital and pentobarbital, but those are really the only ones I’m familiar with, as my interest in barbiturates is mostly confined to their use as peaceful pills. Benzos were largely displacing barbiturates for safety reasons for a long while in therapeutic applications anyway. Rumors abound of veterinary supplies available in South America. Until about a decade ago you could obtain veterinary supplies in Mexico fairly easily, but that seems to no longer be the case.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Hey, yeah, I like the way you think…I wouldn’t mind getting hold of some ludes.

      • Pat

        Too safe, too pleasant. You’ll take black market Chinese fentanyl analogues masquerading as heroin and you’ll like it.

  6. Pat

    I truly enjoy being lectured to by my moral and intellectual superiors.

    China produces 3x more CO2 than the United States *and* has actual fucking slave labor camps composed of religious and ethnic minorities, but they learnt imperialism from us, I guess.

    • Strange Brew

      Why are you so racist?

    • SDF-7

      Because if there’s one thing China has never been… its imperial.

      (sotto voce) Pay no attention to those Terra Cotta warriors!

      And the millenia of oppressed peasants!

      (/sotto voce)

      ALL WESTERN CIVILIZATION’S FAULT, HERETIC!

      • rhywun

        I’m glad I got to see the Terra Cotta warriors back in the pre-Xi days. I wouldn’t set foot in that fucking place today.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Tibet has a sad but they’ll get over it once they’re bred out by Han Chinese.

  7. Pat

    I can’t imagine why college is so fucking expensive.

    To be fair, that’s a symptom rather than the underlying disease. Universities wouldn’t be pulling that shit if it weren’t for government-subsidized student loans funneling an unlimited supply of free money into their coffers to graduate tens of thousands of young adults with in fluff courses of study of no practical value of any possible kind.

    • Toxteth O'Grady

      Some of my silliest courses were the most useful (looking at you, film studies). It’s the PC*-ness I could have done without. Could have been done in half the time.

      *If anyone remembers that term…

      • juris imprudent

        Juris remembers and was fond of pointing out how he was IC at the time.

      • Pat

        Arguably, film studies has some practical value, if you plan to make, analyze and criticize films. Fine arts as a course of study would, rightly, constitute a pretty small department at most universities in the absence of the market distortions of government, but it would certainly still exist as it has for centuries. I’m not sure the same could be said for most of these micro-niche *-studies programs that the D students who got participation-trophy Cs in high school end up attending and then wondering why no one wants to hire them after they spent 6 years and $150k of uncle Sam’s cash to getting themselves “educated” to an undergraduate level.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        The university system is now being forced to confront their split mission statement. Are they a career readiness program for the masses or are they a refining program for the elites? It doesn’t work when you mix and match purposes and groups.

      • Pat

        Very true. Vocational and technical schools would be perfectly adequate for a lot of the education now being conducted in universities, including the business department that graduated me.

    • Count Potato

      It’s also caused by various government requirements, such as Title IX.

    • Semi-Spartan Dad

      I’d go deeper. The whole point is setting up indoctrination centers. That’s the reason for the rise of DEI courses. The increased bureaucracy and administrators are essentially Kommisars that enforce it.

      Student loans are used as a form of wealth transfer rather than having the government pay directly. Education is out of the free-market world. The point of universities aren’t to provide a product (useful education) at a fair market price. They are to indoctrinate. The government will just pay the bill directly if needed, just like many other countries do. The student loan waivers and writeoffs are an alternative to direct payments from the gov to the school, but there’s no fundamental difference.

      • rhywun

        The government will just pay the bill directly if needed, just like many other countries do.

        Those other countries generally don’t pretend that every human needs a university education.

        If the US operated its higher education system in the same manner as, say, Germany, the accusations of rAcIsM! would fly around faster than a supersonic.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        Those other countries generally don’t pretend that every human needs a university education.

        No, but those countries also have other forms of effective indoctrination. Such as withdrawal of healthcare on conditional obedience. And lack of firearms and a willing to use them among the populace.

        My point is that it’s a mistake to consider education in the US as a freemarket enterprise with the goal of providing a consumer-driven product at a competitive price. The goal is to indoctrinate. That goal is what ultimately drives the cost and not the easy availability of money. Money is made easily available precisely for the goal of implementing DEI and growing the Komissar class. That’s why the gov took over the loan market. And the government will happily pay that cost directly out of its own taxpayer pockets if needed.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        a willing to use them among the populace.

        To be fair, if covid taught me anything, it was that we’re not that different from other countries in that regard.

  8. Pat

    The nation’s leading infectious-disease expert, Anthony S. Fauci — a public face of the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic — is sharing his concern about the toll on his wife and children from abuse by “lowlife” trolls.

    Love that framing. Although I guess it’s accurate enough if we accept Niels Bohr’s definition of an expert:

    An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

  9. Old Man With Candy

    Hate to post’n’run, but I’m off to Buffalo to see NPR Lady. You cretins had best behave yourselves while I’m gone.

      • SDF-7

        Nice… I didn’t even think of that… and I should have. Obviously would have also accepted this.

    • SDF-7

      Watch out for her parents, but have fun!

      • Old Man With Candy

        Her mom is, remarkably, still alive and kicking. Like mine, pushing ninety.

        But really this was more my thought.

      • rhywun

        lol

        I finally saw this recently – good stuff.

  10. Fourscore

    Congrats, OM, on bailing out your contemporaries. Are there enough glass medals for everyone or will you have to revert to metal medals?

    • Old Man With Candy

      We made extras. And a bonus, but we’ll talk about that another time.

      • R C Dean

        “And a bonus“

        Not sure what the point is of a buttplug that lights up bright yellow-orange under UV light, but I’m not really the target market, so . . . .

  11. SDF-7

    ‘Orning ‘ordles before I slink back to replaying Fallout 3 for the hell of it — not great, but not terrible. Given I chumped yesterday (didn’t get around to posting scores), I’ll take it:

    Daily Duotrigordle #283
    Guesses: 36/37
    Time: 04:30.73
    https://duotrigordle.com/

    Daily Quordle 320
    8️⃣5️⃣
    4️⃣6️⃣
    quordle.com

    • Sean

      Daily Quordle 320
      4️⃣6️⃣
      5️⃣7️⃣
      quordle.com

    • Grumbletarian

      Daily Quordle 320
      8️⃣7️⃣
      4️⃣9️⃣

      So very close to Chumptown.

    • Pat

      Daily Quordle 320
      4️⃣7️⃣
      6️⃣5️⃣

    • rhywun

      Caught chasing BR.

      Daily Quordle 320
      9️⃣8️⃣
      3️⃣7️⃣

    • Tundra

      Daily Quordle 320
      6️⃣8️⃣
      5️⃣9️⃣

      Shitty.

      • kinnath

        Daily Quordle 320
        7️⃣5️⃣
        9️⃣6️⃣

        Agreed

    • Grosspatzer

      Daily Quordle 320
      8️⃣6️⃣
      4️⃣7️⃣
      quordle.com

  12. rhywun

    Time to break out your talismans of obedience.

    If yesterday’s out-and-about in town and across to New Jersey – for the first time in a year and a half – is any indication, almost nobody’s paying attention. Not on the street, not in trains, and not in restaurants. I saw a handful of people grimly following orders on the subways, that’s about it.

    • Pat

      We don’t even have a mandate here currently, and I see retards wearing their face nappies every time I go to the store. Usually it’s the dozen or so under-30s in this otherwise retiree-overrepresented town. The oldsters don’t give a shit. When the hysteria was reaching its first fever pitch 2 and a half years ago, some fucking Karen in Walmart was going around harassing random people like a street preacher telling them about how the “2nd wave” was coming and was going to kill us all. This was while we had a mask mandate, and she was harassing people who were wearing fucking masks. She pulled that shit on this tiny little old lady, had to be in her 80s, and go fucking told. The octogenarian shut her down and told her “You need to shut up and mind your own business!” Undeterred, she tried to keep the lecture going only to be told once again “Leave everyone alone! Mind your own business!” When she got it again after her third attempt she finally gave up.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        I’m out and about in downtown Dallas today and masks are present but not common, maybe 5%. In our californicated suburb, it hasn’t really dropped below 20% masking anywhere except church (which is around 10%). Some places are closer to 40%.

        The surprising ones to me are the families where nobody is masked except the tween. I’ve seen a lot of those. People! Beat your children more!

      • rhywun

        I can’t imagine the level of indoctrination the schoolchildren are getting.

    • DrOtto

      They’re not obeying new orders, they never stopped wearing them since the last go around.

  13. Pat

    Baby has surgery after parents lose fight to block ‘vaccinated blood’ transfusions

    Dec. 9 (UPI) — New Zealand’s 6-month-old “Baby W” is recovering in a hospital after a successful life-saving surgery was performed against the wishes of his parents, who wanted to block the use of blood from vaccinated donors, a lawyer for the family confirmed Friday.

    New Zealand’s High Court ruled against parental objections to blood transfusions from vaccinated people, giving health authorities temporary guardianship of the infant to allow for the procedure.

    […]

    Police took the baby from the parents Thursday night with legal authority from the High Court to have pre-operative checkups done. As police took the baby the emotional parents called them criminals and allegedly told doctors trying to treat the infant, “You touch our child and we will press criminal charges against you.”

    • Semi-Spartan Dad

      I lost any hope of seeing Commonwealth ghouls receive dirtnap justice from the parents after the case where the British government ordered the child to die instead of receiving treatment outside of the NHS.

      • juris imprudent

        “Everything within the state…”

  14. PieInTheSky

    Today i ate like a fat fuck. Stupid slovenian breakfast. Also sugary stuff for breakfast sucks calories with little satiety

      • Sean

        Not enough meat and cheese.

        What’s in the bottom right bowl?

      • PieInTheSky

        Yogurt and excesively sweet granola

      • PieInTheSky

        On the board besides meat and cheese there is a slice of pickled apple and butter and honey. In the basket there is a cheese pie.

      • PieInTheSky

        And yes, that is a glass of milk, apparently essential in a slovenian breakfast

      • rhywun

        Milk does a body good.

    • Timeloose

      That looks good to me. I’ll be eating lots of eggs and bacon with tatters later.

      • PieInTheSky

        As someone who does not eat sweet things the granola and apple pie were way too sweet and hence too high calories. Someone used to eat sweet maybe would have liked it more. I did not finish either. I would have preffered no granola and more cheese

      • Timeloose

        I’m more referring to the sausage and cheese. The cheese pie looks good too, is it sweet or savory?

      • PieInTheSky

        Savory

  15. PieInTheSky

    How do you know all these obscure actors

  16. Sensei

    I was standing with, “How much CO2 was generated heating a furnace and melting the glass used for the torch?”

    Thank you for this. I enjoy doing that in similar situations.

    • juris imprudent

      The hippie-idiots running Burning Man have pledged to be zero carbon by 2030, and yes even if that means not burning the eponymous feature. A cult run by bureaucrats.

      • Pat

        When I first learned about Burning Man as a freshman in high school, still nursing ambitions to become an economist, I was fascinated by it. Wanted to one day attend, and perhaps study its internal economy as an example of spontaneous order. By the time I had abandoned an economics track and graduated college it had already become East Coachella. Allowing normies on the internet was a mistake.

      • Count Potato

        That they closed an event that that is outdoors in a desert because covid is all you need to know.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Just what a every drug, alcohol, sex, and music fueled outdoor festival needs is a carbon reduction pledge. Sounds like a real blast.

  17. Timeloose

    “ but lights up bright yellow-orange when exposed to UV light. ”

    Neodymium doped?

    • Timeloose

      Why didn’t they make the medals out of a yellow green like glass. It would look more like gold and turn a bright green in UV light.

      It would also possibly keep their neck and chests warm.

  18. PieInTheSky

    Warm day today 12C. There is little wind and the water rat is swimming about. There are still.some leaves left on trees which is weird for december. And the roses are still going strong.

    • PieInTheSky

      Also while in summer the coots seem to outnumber the ducks, in winter there are more ducks visible on the lake. And a bynch of swan. The cormorants are still around but i do not see any gray herons, unlike summer.

  19. Pat

    Hospital apologises after hiding surgeon’s error for seven years

    A hospital trust has apologised to a woman for failing to admit a surgeon had been responsible for a massive haemorrhage that almost killed her after a Caesarean section.

    For seven years, East Kent Hospitals Trust maintained the size of Louise Dempster’s baby was to blame.

    “It was just continuous lies,” the 34-year-old told BBC News.

    Louise Dempster gave birth in May 2015 but the surgeon’s error only emerged during an inquiry into poor maternity care at East Kent Hospitals Trust which reported this year.

    […]

    Louise was left by staff in the recovery room with her family, but her mother, Linda, noticed she appeared to be losing consciousness: “I was talking to her and I just saw her drift away and her eyes roll back.”

    The 61-year-old lifted her daughter’s sheets and found “blood from head to toe”.

    Linda is a senior nurse who has worked nationally on quality and infection control. It didn’t require her level of expertise to realise her daughter was in serious trouble.

    “I tried to pull the emergency buzzer… but it didn’t work,” she remembers.

    Louise says she thought she was dying: “All I remember is my mum screaming for help. And her stroking my hair and telling me she loved me. I knew that something was wrong”.

    Louise was taken back to surgery. After her operation the surgeon told her the bleeding had happened because her uterus hadn’t shrunk back to its normal size after birth.

    He inserted an instrument called a Bakri balloon to stop the bleeding – but a few hours later Louise was rushed back to surgery after Linda again spotted she was still losing a lot of blood.

    […]

    In 2020 Louise and her mother gave evidence to the Kirkup inquiry.

    A few weeks before the findings were made public, inquiry chairman, Dr Bill Kirkup, asked to meet them.

    He said he had discovered a document that had not been disclosed to the family, which showed Louise’s bleeding had been caused by a surgical error, not by the size of her son as they had been led to believe.

    “Oops”

  20. The Late P Brooks

    “You’re not supposed to say that out loud!”

    The emperor, waving to the throngs below, muttered, “It seems rather drafty out here.”

    To which ll his ministers replied in unison, “You look resplendent, Sire!”

  21. Count Potato

    “White House DENIES being involved in Twitter censorship after Musk’s release of files: Karine Jean-Pierre insists there was no collusion with the ‘private company’ after suppression of Hunter Biden laptop story”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11522475/White-House-DENIES-involved-Twitter-censorship-Musks-release-files.html

    “New Twitter files dump reveal frenzied conversations before Trump was banned after the Capitol riot, how head of safety Yoel Roth met WEEKLY with FBI – and agency flagged election-related content for moderation”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11522891/Twitter-files-staffers-pushing-ban-Trump-based-historical-context.html

    But 2016 was hacked because Boris and Natasha bought $100K in Facebook ads.

    • Pat

      OLD NEWS! NOTHINGBURGER! EVERYBODY ALREADY KNEW THIS! MOVE ON!

      • Ownbestenemy

        Just the right-wing wanting to shame a mentally troubled person

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      I have a similar painting hanging on my wall that I bought at Goodwill for five bucks. I think his patrons are overpaying.

      • DrOtto

        “…but wait, there’s more.” It’s the after the sale service that counts more with those paintings.

      • rhywun

        *snaps jock-strap*

    • Pat

      Those aren’t terrible paintings for a crackhead.

      The 65 year old bored retiree from the adult learning annex who left them behind after the class should be proud.

      Berges added that the new paintings all have haikus on the back, hence the name of the gallery.

      One such haiku Berges shared was:

      Atoms bloom in my chest

      All the room is filled it is full

      I can see all the colors

      It appeared to break away from the standard 5-7-5 syllable structure of a typical haiku.

      So other than not being a haiku, it’s a haiku.

  22. Stinky Wizzleteats

    -Russian Media Laughs At US Government’s Woke Trade For Griner Instead Of Whelan
    https://youtu.be/3l2IgY9QYNw

    A brutal analysis, mostly right though.

  23. The Late P Brooks

    “These people who troll about, they harass my wife and my children. … I really think it’s so cowardly for people to harass people who are completely uninvolved in this,” he said, calling it “a manifestation of the lowlife that does that.”

    “I try my best not to let that distract me,” he continued, noting that his focus remains on his “responsibility to the American public.”

    Narcissistic sociopaths are so adorable.

  24. The Late P Brooks

    Outrage over the government’s attempts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, which has killed more than a million people in the United States, turned Fauci into a polarizing figure. Others hailed him as a hero.

    WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?

  25. The Late P Brooks

    Yet some US policymakers advocate handing out security guarantees rather like luxury hotels put chocolates on pillows, apparently assuming that Washington will never have to fulfill its promises. As former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said a couple years ago, “I think frankly if China understands that we’re serious about [it violating US red lines], China’s not going to do that. They may be a lot of things, they’re not dumb.” (Many in America’s foreign policy establishment also similarly dismiss Moscow’s threats to use nuclear weapons if it ends up in extremis while fighting Ukraine.)

    The same can no longer confidently be said about America’s foreign policy establishment.

  26. Pat

    Virginia Dems’ Ballot Harvesting Manual Instructs Going After Dead People, ‘Bad’ Addresses

    A pivotal tool Virginia Dems use to target voters for their ballot harvesting and get-out-the-vote efforts is VoteBuilder, an online database of all registered voters in Virginia operated by the Virginia Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee. In the words of the Virginia Democrats themselves, “this database contains the names and other important information about registered voters – information that we can use to target likely voters for Democratic campaigns.”

    Democrat activists who use VoteBuilder can look up specific information about each registered voter and group them into likely Democrat voter outreach lists, which they then use for GOTV outreach, including phone banking and ballot harvesting.

    On the Virginia Democrats’ VoteBuilder website, there are instructions for how activists can use the tool to generate voter contact lists for absentee ballot chasing, a.k.a., ballot harvesting. The website describes it as generating absentee ballot “labels,” a process which also functions to collect a list of voters’ addresses.

    In the instructions on the web page, however, there are screenshots of the VoteBuilder database that show activists can generate an expanded outreach list by adding voters (under “Suppressions”) with “bad” addresses, National Change of Address forwarding addresses (residents who have moved), and even those who have died to the baseline list of active and inactive registered voters with accurate addresses. From there, activists can create lists of these voters’ phone numbers and addresses so they can contact them and collect their mail-in ballots.

    These instructions vary from another place on the Virginia Democrats’ site that appear to be tips on how to use VoteBuilder from the DNC itself, saying the “Suppressions” filters are “the automatic settings to prevent bad addresses from showing up on your lists.”

    If the DNC itself is telling activists that the “Suppressions” filters are used to prevent “bad” addresses from being included in the voter contact lists, why is the Virginia Democratic Party instructing its users to include them?

    “I don’t know how you can in good conscience instruct your workers to solicit votes from people in those categories,” Clara Belle Wheeler, former vice-chair of the Virginia State Board of Elections and senior fellow at the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, told The Federalist. “They’re instructing people to solicit votes from people who are not legally eligible to vote — they’ve either moved, are not a citizen of the United States, or [are] dead.”

    This is why ballot harvesting should be illegal. If you’re too fucking lazy or stupid to even fill out a ballot that was mailed to your home, place it in an envelope, and stick it in a mailbox, perhaps you don’t need to be voting, and it neatly avoids any appearance of, or actual, impropriety.

    • Count Potato

      “and even those who have died to the baseline list of active and inactive registered voters with accurate addresses. From there, activists can create lists of these voters’ phone numbers and addresses so they can contact them and collect their mail-in ballots.”

      They can get dead people on the phone? That’s amazing. I’m not even mad.

    • Ted S.

      You’ve gone and lit the Juris Imprudent signal.

  27. The Late P Brooks

    Attention whores squabble amongst themselves

    Some left-leaning commentators have ascribed Sinema’s move to leave the party to yet another bid for attention, given her tendency to deliberately draw scrutiny to herself through her sartorial choices, dramatic rejection of Democratic legislation, and hard-to-pin-down ideological commitments

    She sounds like some sort of radical individualist who won’t tow the party lion. No wonder everybody hates her.

  28. The Late P Brooks

    This is why ballot harvesting should be illegal.

    VOTING IS A RIGHT, NOT A PRIVILEGE.

  29. Fatty Bolger

    20-year Army veteran arrested for going AWOL, sits in North Texas jail awaiting trial

    https://www.cbsnews.com/dfw/news/army-veteran-awol-arrest/

    I wonder what’s behind this, seems like it could have been easily resolved without going to this extreme. She’s not refusing to deploy or anything like that, but that seems to be how they are treating it. Makes me wonder if they’re having more AWOLs and are trying to make some examples.

    • Sean

      I’m willing to believe her claim of racism on this one.

      • Ownbestenemy

        The release valves for troops in disarray with homelife issues is the problem. This soldier clearly could not contribute in her capacity and was doing what she needed for herself and family. The armed forces should have let her out on retirement (forced if needed).

      • Ownbestenemy

        For instance, it took me 9 months, a captain who refused to push my request for hardship separation and 20k in debt for the military to realize I was less effective and it was in the governments best interests to grant the separation.

        If my captain didn’t sit on the paperwork, I would have only been in debt a couple thousand.

        The result was a stiller personnel file up to my last 6 months where my desire to fix my home situation overcame my sense of duty.

      • dbleagle

        It is called Permanent Change of Station (PCS) orders and not a suggestion. From what was presented in the article she is at least AWOL and probably desertion is valid (aka over 30 days absent w/o authority). The article suggests no communications from the Army were attempted, and from 30 tears in the army I am willing to throw the bullshit flag on that.

        Convict with no jail time and the American people save the retirement costs.

  30. Not Adahn

    A beautiful day! Clear, crisp 21 degrees, the dog park was full of Lily’s friends, now a delightful early lunch of tea, cheese, bread and grapes.

  31. MikeS

    [Fauci] said it was easy to forget that only a “small fraction” of his career has focused on the coronavirus, with the rest spent working to eradicate HIV/AIDS.

    Didn’t he completely bungle that, too?

    • rhywun

      IIRC, AZT was another novel treatment he cooked up and which didn’t work.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      If by “bungle” you mean “spent tens of billions of dollars, rewarded cronies, and got rich while doing it”, it was a total success.

    • Ownbestenemy

      “That may be far-fetched, in the sense that there have been no cases recognized as yet in which individuals have had merely casual contact… there have been no cases yet reported of hospital personnel who have fairly close contact with patients with AIDS, there have been no case reports of them getting AIDS, but the the jury is still out on that because the situation is constantly evolving.”

      Almost the same thing he said about coronavirus and “asymptomatic” carriers.

    • Raven Nation

      It’s unclear if Fauci was directly involved, but there were some pretty evil HIV/AIDS drug testing going on in NYC under his general watch.

    • MikeS

      The scariest difference between COVID and the early days of ADIS is that this time his mistakes turned into government mandates, and social media bans, and marching orders for Karens everywhere. He received a cult-like following from many. Imagine a replay of it all, but this time the person in his position actually has some personality and skills of persuasion.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Santo Fauci candles and bobbleheads do seem to make a cult.

  32. The Late P Brooks

    Headline:

    “Supreme Court to Consider Ban on Encouraging Illegal Immigration”

    OMG the controversy!

  33. Nephilium

    Getting ready to head out the door to punish my liver for the second day in a row. So I’ll drop the link for this evening’s Zoom/Happy Hour/Bitchfest here. It’ll kick off at 20:00 Eastern.

  34. Count Potato

    “27. Examining the entire election enforcement Slack, we didn’t see one reference to moderation requests from the Trump campaign, the Trump White House, or Republicans generally. We looked. They may exist: we were told they do. However, they were absent here.”

    https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601352083617505281

  35. The Late P Brooks

    Vox craves context

    Now, the “Twitter files,” a trove of internal Twitter documents, is providing new ammo for these conservatives. Twitter’s new CEO, Elon Musk, has released the files to journalists Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi, who, like him, are active critics of liberal “woke” culture,

    This past week, journalists Weiss and Taibbi shared details of some of the documents and their own analysis in two long Twitter threads. The revelations are ongoing, with plans to post more in the coming days. Their central accusation so far is that Twitter has long silenced conservative or contrarian voices, and they reference internal emails, Slack messages, and content moderation systems to show how Twitter limited the reach of popular right-wing accounts like Dan Bongino, Charlie Kirk, and Libs of TikTok.

    But these claims and the internal documents lack crucial context.

    We don’t have a full explanation, for example, of why Twitter limited the reach of these accounts — i.e., whether they were violating the platform’s rules on hate speech, health misinformation, or violent content. Without this information, we don’t know whether these rules were applied fairly or not. Twitter has long acknowledged that it sometimes downranks content that is violative of its rules instead of all-out banning it. It’s a strategy that Musk himself has advocated for by arguing that people should have “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach” on the platform.

    And while Weiss has surfaced specific examples of Twitter limiting the reach of conservative accounts known for spreading hateful content about the LGTBQ+ community or sharing the “big lie” about the US presidential elections, we don’t know if Twitter did the same for some far-left accounts that have also been known for pushing boundaries, such as some former Occupy movement leaders who have complained about Twitter’s content moderation in the past.

    “Right wing” speech is, by definition, hateful and untrue. Twatter had no choice but to muzzle those people.

    America, in these unsettled hyper-partisan times, needs truth.Truth will heal us and bring us together, but it must be a pure clear truth, untainted by doubt or confusion.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      But these claims and the internal documents lack crucial context.

      “Imma ‘splain it to ya so ya can understand it.” or “Don’t believe your lying eyes.”

      That people actually read Vox and take them seriously boggles my mind. The patronizing condescension is completely over the top. I guess if you like to intellectually led around by the nose then they’re great.

    • Not Adahn

      Well that’s a straight-up lie — they have the internal coms specifically stating that LoTT did not break any rules but they were shutting her account down for a week anyway. And it also included an imperative to find a rules violation so they could permaban her.

      Of course, this is Vox. The rag that not only criticized the Jews for closing the bridge between the West Bank and Gaza, but refused to fire the person who wrote the story or the editor who approved it.

    • R C Dean

      “But these claims and the internal documents lack crucial context.”

      There it is.

      “conservative accounts known for spreading hateful content about the LGTBQ+ community or sharing the “big lie” about the US presidential elections”

      Asserted without evidence. Also, no explanation of how these accounts violated Twitter rules.

      “we don’t know if Twitter did the same for some far-left accounts that have also been known for pushing boundaries”

      We know of many such accounts who actually violated Twitter rules (antifa, misc. Middle Eastern terror groups) who were left unmolested.

  36. Raven Nation

    We’re on the cusp of a tragedy in journalism.

    *spoiler alert*

    If Morocco hold on, I assume the entire football department at BBC Sport is going to stroke out with the first African team reaching the WC s-f.

    • Ted S.

      On the other hand, it’s good to see Cristiano the Prick go out.

  37. The Late P Brooks

    Musk, Weiss, and Taibbi are also assuming these decisions were made with explicit political motivation. Historically, most Twitter employees — like the rest of Big Tech — lean liberal. Twitter’s conservative critics argue that this presents an inherent bias in the company’s content moderation decisions. Former Twitter employees Recode spoke with this week insisted that content moderation teams operate in good faith to execute on Twitter’s policy rules, regardless of personal politics.

    Stop it. You’re killing me.

    • Ownbestenemy

      It reads that the policy team was applying a somewhat neutral approach while the top execs and their internal cabal were actively suppressing in hopes the policy teams would provide cover

      • R C Dean

        And that’s if you believe a policy team packed with “By Any Means Necessary” leftists parked all that at the office door.

        Let’s not forget, also, that the rules are also hopelessly subjective when it comes to what counts as “hate” and “offensive”.

  38. UnCivilServant

    I swear, these Civil Service Exams get easier the higher the title they’re for.

    • UnCivilServant

      Can I take the Governor Exam? I’m sure I’d get a better score than Kathy.

      • Not Adahn

        Taking it is an instant fail. A prime qualification for the job is to know and act like the rules don’t apply to you.

  39. Count Potato

    “20. This post about the Hunter Biden laptop situation shows that Roth not only met weekly with the FBI and DHS, but with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI):”

    https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601364807831425025

  40. The Late P Brooks

    Twitter defined shadow banning in a company blog post in 2018 as “deliberately making someone’s content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the original poster.”

    One source who used to work in content moderation at Twitter told Recode that the examples Weiss reported on isn’t true shadow banning because those tweets were still visible to other people.

    It’s prissy quibbling douchebags, all the way down.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Look we only suppressed the tweets 80% of the time so….we cool bro?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      “Your mom could still read your posts. Shut your pie hole and be happy about it.”

  41. The Late P Brooks

    The scariest difference between COVID and the early days of ADIS is that this time his mistakes turned into government mandates, and social media bans, and marching orders for Karens everywhere. He received a cult-like following from many. Imagine a replay of it all, but this time the person in his position actually has some personality and skills of persuasion.

    Unlike the AIDS “epidemic”, the “No one is safe!!!!!” fearmongering for the Chinee Plague was a success.

    Despite clear evidence to the contrary.

  42. Evan from Evansville

    Still around?

    I think I’m gonna crash/join my bro’s Secret Santa affair tonight, as neither a giver nor recipient of gifts. I haven’t been able to hang with him sans my nephews since returning.

    An evening party with him and Rach, who are both True Blue, “trust The Science” folk, and their friends may be a way of injecting myself into the crew. This will be especially helpful if there are other young, single, nubile folk present in my bro’s circle.