TOTALLY BRILLIANT ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN: Wherein media digitization house Legacybox (credit where due, yo) has discovered how to get the public to boost their advertising on social media. Every time they post one of these ads, there are like a zillion comments along the lines of “oh no, you don’t LOL.” I did some digging to see if the company offered a “stuff you don’t want to see” option whereby they would report that tapes containing footage of your parents’ homemade sex tapes were blank. They don’t. The closest they come to acknowledging that possibility is: You’d be surprised at how many tapes we see with footage on the first 5 minutes, footage on the last 5 minutes, and nothing in between!
SMOKE AND MIRRORS: [Link to archive because Daily Mail walls] A secret gay sex scandal has rocked the Republican Party as married men and a sitting member of Congress have been accused of sleeping with male escorts — even as their party thunders about traditional family values. So, yeah, they allege one unnamed “sitting Midwestern congressman,” and then pad out the list with “state lawmakers and high-powered lobbyists to federal government staffers.” Then there’s the claim about how the GOP “thunders about traditional family values.” [Private to James Reinl, DM’s US Senior Reporter — “trumpets” would have been far more clever, since elephants and all.] Sure, maybe in the past, but this is not the GOP of Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, this is the party of (then-candidate) JD Vance going out of his way to offer an olive branch to the “normal gays.” This is the party of President Trump appointing gays and lesbians to cabinet posts, ambassadorships, etc, as well as causing the GOP to remove explicitly anti-gay marriage language from the party platform. [Link to archive because that site got pissy about my ad blocker.]
ONE EVENT, TWO VASTLY DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES: On one hand the NYT has a (surprisingly) hopeful article [link to archive, because NYT] covering how “philanthropists are banding together in hopes of staving off that worst-case scenario by providing an emergency $26.5 million cash injection to stabilize the stations most at risk.” OTOH, Politico (predictably) covers the same event in the hand-wringing, pants-shitting manner we have come to expect from them: “local public media stations on the brink of collapse.”
THE KINDNESS TRAP: For the past couple of years I’ve been kicking around an article about what I call the kindness trap, the weaponization of the the concept of “kindness” to attack non-progressives and accuse them of cruelty. Turns out I’m not the only one who noticed this. Stuckey and Rigney come at the question from a different angle than me, but their perspective is useful.
FIRED USAID EMPLOYEES SUE MUSK, DOGE: US Agency for International Development employees who will lose their jobs when the agency shuts down may pursue their claims against Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency as a class action, a federal court said. This lawfare was inevitable but will hopefully settle questions about executive power and so-called independent agencies.
WHITE HOUSE PLANS SPACE DEREGULATION: A good explainer piece about how many different federal agencies have their fingers in the pie, as it were.
SHAMELESS PLUG: Beloved commenter KK has designed some really cool t-shirts.
A PLEA FOR MORE ARTICLES: Swiss asked me to wheedle some more articles out of you good people. You know what to do. I know I’ve been sitting on that one article for weeks, as always my apologies.
Everyone needs more mental scars.
I’d be surprised if I saw it once.
Mental scars build mental blocks.
That requires using the blasted new masochist designed WordPress editor, doesn’t it? However, I’ll try to take one for team…
I write in Google Docs, including pictures, and then copy and paste into WordPress. Works pretty well.
I’ll give that a shot. I’ve used the new native editor a couple of times now and while the old one sucked the new one managed to improve on the suckiness.
More than once I resorted to editing the html itself.
I write them out in LibreOffice and copy-paste, then add my own img tags by hand.
Does LibreOffice have a spellcheck function?
Of course not, I turned it off.
Well, that would explain some things.
It’s obvious that you did.
*sigh* fine, I’ll finish watching fallout.
I might even do some articles unrelated to media reviews.
If anyone needs help formatting please email me. Here to help.
Tonio truly leans into helping
Worked for Nixon.
I’ve got another dispatch from flyover country in the hopper.
Outside of GlibFlicks I have several ideas. I talked to DEG about a GlibCar crossover where he identifies the guns used in the Speed Racer cartoon. Also the second chapter of Cadillac Blues is under construction.
I talked to DEG about a GlibCar crossover where he identifies the guns used in the Speed Racer cartoon.
It should involve a betting pool on how many I get wrong.
Ooo! I like that. I have been collecting stills. Some of them are unfathomably stylized.
For the sake of my sanity I had to tap out of that article. Just a pile of twaddle that completely misses the point that their party has been captured by radicals and that is why people are fleeing it in droves.
“Vance’s remarks highlight the GOP’s seemingly contradictory relationship to queer citizenship.”
Case in point. I’ll spell it out for the brain-damaged writer. “Queer” means radical leftist. That may be why the GOP wants nothing to do with you.
Well, it is the New Republic, after all. I deliberately linked to a leftist article on that to show how nothing is ever good enough for the QUILTBAG.
Even if it were, the fact that the Democrats’ strongest defense against their team’s sex scandals is that they have no respect for family values so they can’t be held to basic moral standards like “it’s wrong to cheat on your spouse” may not be the dunk they think it is.
I bought a whiskey glass from that KK person.
TONIO! It is nice to see that potty fire every week. Good to have you back.
I’m not so worried about my parents, but a few months ago we were cleaning out the basement and found a camera bag. It had unprocessed film in it. We realized that camera bag belonged to my father in law, and at that point I saved us all a horrific experience and tossed the film. He has always been notorious for such things.
I’ve been sitting on mine for months. By that I mean articles of course.
I dated a girl throughout highschool and some years later, after getting out of the military we hooked up.
Her mom said “you know I found film in my daughters bedroom and lets say, you might want to get that mole checked out”
Pics or gtfo!
Thanks.
Ha! Good story.
Many guys got into photography back in the day for just that reason. Later, porn was the killer app for home video cameras as explored in the movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_Focus.
That didn’t slow him down much. I remember when I was first married to Mrs. TOK, I was over at his house to help him with something on his computer, and thanks to his desktop background I found out his then-girlfriend was a real redhead.
I saw that on a date.
Lets just say it didn’t work out the way I was hoping.
Ya know, the local college mascot are beavers. I might just go get an old camera, take some pictures of said furry creatures, and leave the film undeveloped for my son to find post mortem.
Then he can show his grandchildren ” great-granpas collection of beaver pics.”
If you really care about women, you’ll support their right to choose
I support their right to choose not to be foolish and self destructive. Does that count?
What? Be responsible for their own actions?!
Sorry, I don’t really care about your consequence-free fucking.
If Trump doesnt put on some aviators and walk around D.C. saying “Respect my authoritah” in a badly done Cartman voice, I am done voting for the man.
Mirrored aviators and a MAGA hat.
Obviously a possibility for the next H&H episode.
The Hat & the Hair & Tha Hat & The Glasses?
Although Biden was known for his aviators, which made him look like a douchebag.
Biden made me hate RayBan.
The glasses didn’t make Biden look like a douchebag, Biden was a douchebag.
I don’t think I’ll be voting for him in the future.
There won’t be any more elections.
“Historian Susan Lanzoni traced a century of empathy’s uses and definitions in her 2018 book “Empathy: A History.” Though it’s had its critics, she has never seen the aspirational term so derided as it is now.”
Maybe Susan and her friends shouldn’t have established as a baseline that the U.S. and its inhabitants are inherently wicked, and that the only way to salvation is to loudly claim allegiance to a boutique and ever-changing ideology that often defies common sense. People are getting tired of this shit after 15-ish years of bullying.
“For the past couple of years I’ve been kicking around an article about what I call the kindness trap, the weaponization of the the concept of “kindness” to attack non-progressives and accuse them of cruelty.”
It’s a topic ripe for discussion, as fear of being branded some flavor of “bad person” has been a powerful tool for keeping people in line.
The left’s “kindness” is entirely fake.
The yknow they are being fake so they just assume the right’s “empathy” is fake too.
I don’t agree with your second point. I think they attempt to use the right’s beliefs against them.
There’s also an underlying assumption about the outcome of empathy. The ability to identify with another’s circumstance doesn’t mandate any particular action after that. I can empathize with, say, a hopeless drug addict who keeps fucking up their life because they have a compulsion that’s difficult to control, and still think they’re a piece of shit.
Charitable donations and volunteering have shown that for as long as I remember seeing studies about it.
Progressives (in general) want to offload the personal responsibility for charity to the government, and wrap theft up in virtue. My personal favorite is when they quote a Bible to back up their stance.
“I think they attempt to use the right’s beliefs against them.”
Yes, they do. That has been noticed, too.
Many people on all sides of the political aisle misunderstand what empathy means. It has nothing to do with being nice.
In fact it is probably essential if you want to be seriously cruel.
“The yknow they are being fake …”
Maybe the higher-ups, sure. But the average Democrat voter? Useful idiots. They sincerely believe they’re saving the world from sinners and nasty syllables.
“Independent public media” is an oxymoron, Politico.
I’m not wasting time reading farther than the image you chose to highlight.
Lol, Elon Musk had no official role in DOGE from my understanding. What’s the tort for which they’re going to seek relief, noticing things?
The process and hopes through judge shopping they win?
Suing is basically playing the lottery now, just on our dime
This is the correct hot take.
working on signage
no lives matter
human rights are negative rights
borders matter
science is falsifiable
love is like oxygen
kindness is not blindness
suggestions welcomed
My son’s sign beat up your kid’s sign
In this house, we believe it’s pharisaically narcissistic to put out signs letting your neighbors know what you believe.
You talk real purty, Pat.
It’s a solid sign that you are an NPC if your deeply held beliefs are expressed by a mass produced poster.
This cannot be stated enough.
But I think I have mentioned that I find such things useful as a means of discovering whom not to engage under any circumstances.
You get too much, you get too high
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRgWvvkSvfk
Sweeeeeeet!
Damnit, Sensei!
https://www.glibertarians.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/in-this-house-we-believe-3.jpg
I like this one best.
https://www.glibertarians.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/in-this-house-we-believe-2.png
https://www.glibertarians.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/in-this-house-we-believe-bigfoot.jpg
Hmmm. Might repel leftists, but attract STEVE SMITH. That may not be a great plan…
https://www.glibertarians.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/selfrighteouspumpkin.png
We are getting a female technician next week. A cute fiery little redhead that defies maintence field women stereotypes.
Lets just say no one will be bantering much in the ready room anymore
Pics or gtfo
Im not big on doxxing bro
I don’t want to see her face or name. I kid. I kid.
“If empathy is a sin, sin boldly,” he proposed it say, a catchphrase that borrows its last clause from the Protestant reformer Martin Luther.
Yes, emotionalism and pretentious selfgratification are truly the way to heaven.
That is also not what “sin boldly” means, at least as I was taught it. It means if you’re going to sin, you should do it with thought and action, not through inaction or apathy. Don’t make excuses for your sin to try to minimize them, but own the sins, as they were your actions and you need to atone for them.
That’s more or less it. Luther was a grace expansionist, and the context of the quip is that you should accept that your sins are great, but grace is greater. The full quotation is:
It’s often… I won’t say misinterpreted, since it unquestionably skates the line, but “over-interpreted” as violating Paul’s admonition in Romans:
Most attention is focused on Part 450, which licenses rocket launches and spacecraft reentries. Those rules were written by the first Trump administration at the behest of industry, but failed to actually streamline the process when implemented.
“Failed to actually streamline” – why am I not surprised?
The moustached neo-Nazi in a women’s prison
Father Guido? Is that you, Father?
I don’t know how that is puzzling. Damn near any intelligent male will do the same thing if faced with prison. Women’s prisons will get overrun by Klingers.
We really need to turn Klinger into a pejorative.
“Look at all those Klingers over there”
Speaking of weaponized empathy, there is that NPR thing about a vanishingly small population of “stateless” people who have been living in the shadows for decades and can’t work or do anything because they are in citizenship limbo.
why won’t that big meanie Trump just grant them all citizenship?
Generally, the term ‘stateless’ is used to describe the legal condition where a person’s country of citizenship no longer exists, usually due to war. I’m guessing that this is not what NPR means?
I don’t need no citizenship, man. I just roll up to a company, get a contract, and work until somebody says “what is that fat green alien with a Brussels sprout for head doing here? Does anyone else see this?”
Then I vanish and move to the next company.
Nothing to see here. Another Biden advisor.
Vance’s speculation that there was a gay GOP vote to be had was jolting to liberals, who see the Democratic Party as the home of LGBT rights.
“Those are our votes. How dare he?”
Please ignore the Log Cabin Republicans.
It’s time to dispel that stereotype, with a lavish musical number!
“Lavish musical number”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NGy1yKy3qyI
Watch.. Me.. Faggots!
Lavish musical number courtesy of Mel Brooks:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NGy1yKy3qyI
Watch.. Me.. Faggots!
“It’s like steam escaping”
Generally, the term ‘stateless’ is used to describe the legal condition where a person’s country of citizenship no longer exists, usually due to war. I’m guessing that this is not what NPR means?
Link
They are talking about people with no legal citizenship, here or at their point of origin. The examples were from the collapse of the Soviet Union, and some weird thing about an Arab country.
The obvious question (to me) is why hasn’t Congress fixed or at least clarified immigration law at some point in the last fifty years? But Trump is making their lives difficulter.
No different from every other sob story they push with the intention of subverting existing laws.
Seems weird that these people have lived in the US for decades but never applied for citizenship, especially the ones who are married to US citizens.
Why? They’d just fail the citizenship exam, and nobody was doing anything to send them back.
If for no other reason than not having to deal with the INS or ICE every couple years. A passport might come in handy too. Now maybe there are bureaucratic reasons why they couldn’t apply, but I would expect a good journalist to explain why that is. But of course the goal of the article wasn’t to inform.
Cracker Barrel stock takes a digger after logo change:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cracker-barrel-cbrl-stock-down-200-million-loss-new-logo-change/
“It’s unusual for a company’s share price to plunge dramatically due to a logo redesign, although marketing missteps can cause investors to question a company’ strategy. Cracker Barrel’s overhaul has been overseen by CEO Julie Felss Masino, who last year described the chain as “not as relevant as we once were,” and announced plans to update its down-home menu.”
I can’t wait to try their avocado toast.
“Conservative commentators took issue with the rebrand, with right-wing podcaster Matt Walsh calling it “more generic” on social media.”
Man, that’s some harsh far-right rhetoric.
Sure. It’s the logo change. Nothing to do with changes to the restaurant, store or menu.
Also the market is 1.5% week to date. So knock that off the top.
They dont need to update their menu, they just need to make their breakfast not suck.
We used to love going there when I was a kid and we were on vacation. These days I avoid it, the food is greasy and gross. I agree, if they were looking for something to do, take a page from Dominoes and admit your food sucks.
I fondly remember their chicken fried chicken with white gravy, the mash potatoes, and steak fries.
It’s no wonder I’m chunky.
As far as I can tell they were making money. You don’t completely rebrand a company that’s still making money, but you can tweak things and try to aim for the future.
^^ this
They were making money from icky old people with traditional views…they need some of that government funded trans monies
I’m running into this conundrum with trying to market my books. It’s not a “me” thing. Fewer and fewer people are reading, and the ones who do are going to die soon.
“Fewer and fewer people are reading, and the ones who do are going to die soon.”
Fuck sake! My condolences to the “What are we reading ” regulars, It was nice knowing you.
I can’t wait for them to update their store with more tranny clothing.
Speaking of content: My next is kinda simple, but not. I’m just gonna describe what my job is actually like. What I do, how I do it and to explain an average day. It’s straight-up factory work and I find it fascinating, just the mechanics behind it.
I’m sure you’ve seen folk like me in the aisles at Walmart, Kroger, Meijer, [insert your local, likely big one]. Any moments with My Folk strike you as odd, annoying, or helpful? Do any of you order your groceries online? Our department does delivery and pick-up.
The actual grocery-factory process is fascinating and remarkably efficient. Good gears. I think it’ll interest y’all in several ways, and I’m trying to see what y’all *already* think about the job to help me sort the structure and focus. I’m taking pics to show how the Bay functions and feels.
I think the future of grocery stores is the past of grocery stores.
You order online and come pick it up (or have it delivered). The ability to actually enter the store doesn’t exist, no going behind the counter. This sucks for produce, so I would expect produce and butchers to survive, or be operated on the side of the other. Sort of like the states that have the liquor stores semi-detached.
People buying produce and poultry/meat online? OK, sure, I s’pose. But I’m fucking (semi) picky about what I choose for you. Uh. The other “pickers”? They just grab the first thing they find that works with the handheld.
And put every purchase into its own bag. Cuz laziness. But speed!
I don’t really get why people trust strangers to do such for them. But then I remember General Stores and monthly orders for customers, but really, that we’re remarkably trusting social primates, as long as affluence and full bellies continue.
I suspect you’re probably right. Even here in small town West Bumblefuck Texas, people make extensive use of online ordering and pick up at both Walmart and Brookshire’s – I was surprised at just how much, considering I hardly ever saw anyone using it in southern Nevada, even in Las Vegas.
We just started using pick up at Meijer because it’s free if you spend over a certain amount. It is pretty convenient, but we’d rather run into the store if the shopping list is short.
I don’t really notice your Folk, to me they just blend in with the people stocking the shelves, and they are all part of the scenery unless I can’t find something.
We do use Flash Food a ton, and the women behind the service desk know me on sight, which I appreciate.
@Kevin: Do you ask them for help? Several folk have started by asking me if I spoke English, cuz that is a roadblock for a couple other pickers.
I’ve been criticized for my slow speed, or it was mentioned, and that was a part of my professional rebuttal. I take time out to make sure shoppers are unimpeded by me, and more often, I actively help them.
A point that’ll be brought up: I’m proud I never even *thought* of wearing headphones at work. Uh. I have that shit. This shit walking by me, the stories I hear snips of, personalities I see, the sought talent roaming, uh. I have my entertainment.
Shorter Ev: Other people not seeing the inherent fun in it are fucking boring. People watching on a level of intimacy one peg down from boning.
I do that at the local Safeway. It is best.
THE PICKERS AT ALDI ARE ALWAYS IN MY WAY!
THIS IS THE SHIT I WANNA HEAR!
(Or a part of it.) I’ve been praised for staying out of the way of customers. “Oh, no! I’m in *your* way! Not the other way around!” <– Kinda a catchphrase of mine.
I found out today that the workers in the back, loading/ unloading, etc, are Ethiopian. I'd say 40% Spanish in our bay, a few Indian, many old-timers working as widowers, etc, and a few young folk making money for family or school. Odd mix.
See also: My fascination. I don't know what questions y'all might have about the mechanics of it. It's more complicated than one may think, and I also don't know anything about the customer's experience or how our 'freelance' (90% ethic, no-little English) drivers deliver this shit.
An English-speaker told me they get something like $10 a drive and they mostly rely on tips. Similar to DoorDash pay, but I don't know how that works. Several work both. It's so strange.
As a vendor/merchandiser, I’m dodging the store’s customers and the employees, so I get it coming and going. “If that’s in your way, just let me know” being my catchphrase (“that” typically being either a top stock cart or the in-progress parts of the display I’m putting up).
Having never worked retail previously, it’s definitely a little slice of life, and has its charms, but I’ve been ready to quit for a year. Having moved into an utterly pointless middle management position that really shouldn’t even exist, I’m supposed to be due for my first non-trivial raise at my full-time job during my semiannual review in a couple of months. If the increase equals the extra income from the merchandising, I’ll be tendering my resignation.
It’s Giant Eagle where the pickers will block aisles at times, with one going in each direction.
To all: All of your shit is the shit I wanna hear, not just PON’s.
And thank you. That’ll be my project tomorrow. Have some pics but need more.
I haven’t been in a Cracker Barrel in at least fifteen years. Of the times I went only once or twice did I not have breakfast. I liked the sourdough french toast.
Cracker Barrel is a restaurant I go out of my way to avoid, but haven’t been able to far too many times. I had ONE good side dish there ONCE. Every other visit was a complete disaster, food-wise.
How does that song go? ‘The links are on feyerrrrrr, the links are on feyerrrrrr’
Something like dat.
Appeals court throws out massive civil fraud penalty against President Donald Trump
And so he danced.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TfNyJky6EUc
That wasn’t the finding, IIRC. The finding was that he had misstated asset values to secure a loan, in spite of his creditors having performed their own analysis and due diligence, been paid back, and having no quibble about the asset values or amount of the loan. And the basis for the finding was that the stipulated market value of the assets was not identical to the tax appraisal…
Those values are never the same. My house’s tax appraisal is half the market price last paid for it.
I ❤️ Tonio links!
Don’t we all. The Burning Toilets of Despair let me know my work day is almost done.
Go read my brain vomit. Or not. I’m not your supervisor.
I wasn’t even aware that was a thing. Sometimes I think the communists had a point about capitalist decadence.
Nobody needs 18 different books of dinosaur erotica.
True. I need at least 24. One for each hour of the day.
NH Right to Try law expanded
Gov. Kelly Ayotte on Wednesday signed sweeping new legislation expanding New Hampshire’s “Right to Try” policy, aimed at making the Granite State the nation’s leading location for terminally ill patients seeking access to cures and treatments for terminal illnesses and rare diseases.
The bill, formally titled the John Lewicke and Michael Yakubovich Right to Try Act, honors two state legislators battling life-threatening illnesses. It builds on the original law signed in 2016 by then-Gov. Maggie Hassan by removing liability barriers that have discouraged doctors and manufacturers from making experimental treatments available.
Root out Free Staters!
New Hampshire gardeners and outdoor enthusiasts are familiar with highly invasive vines like knotweed and bittersweet. They climb all over power poles and fences, smothering and killing trees and shrubs. These invaders are very much like the plague of outside money and anti-democratic ideology that came to New Hampshire 20 years ago as the Free State Project. It has entwined itself around what once was our Grand Old Party and made alarming progress in pulling down our cherished public institutions.
The FSP isn’t a political party that respects our Constitution or seeks to influence policy as part of our representative government. It’s a movement aimed at destroying government by
defunding public institutions and creating what Jason Sorens, its founder, calls an anarcho-
capitalist state. In this vision of a “free state,” all goods and services are privately held by a few wealthy people who free themselves from regulation and oversight. Everyone else is on their own.
How a grown adult could write such an article rife with illogical statements is beyond me. Maybe AI wrote it?
AI writes better than that.
Looks like too much exposure to her students caused brain damage.
Our cherished public institutions can kiss every square millimetre of my cherished private ass.
She says that like it’s a bad thing.
Tedium sells cuz most folk don’t think.
‘Thinking’ is hard and ya might be wrong. *I think those that don’t think are far happier. More servile, but happier. (Fuck.))