Still pinch hitting for SF. you’ll have to excuse me if I repeat links. I’ve been going to meetings for a living for a while and it has impacted my ability to keep up. We managed to get all the sicknesses in my house. Flu, Wuhan Flu, sinus infections, its like we moved to a new state or something. Our immune system was completely out of date. Everyone is better now, but man did we get sick.
Luckily the little guys were for-real sick. Other parents will know what I mean. The hardest days of your life are when you and the little kid are both sick. You both take medicine, and they turn into little dynamos of energy and you turn in to a shambling zombie. Poor guys were just run down.
And now, some links…
Republicans threaten to strip NEA of federal charter. They appear to be the only union to hold one, so seems reasonable.
Quit teaching humanity’s future enemies to be more agile! We should have kept it so that robots could be defeated by walking on a grade of slightly uneven ground.
“Life? Whattya mean, life? I ain’t got a life!” would-be Trump assassin Florida Man gets the full ride.
Don Lemon has asked many to ask “what is a journalist?” — My answer, someone in a temporary job who should learn to code.
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons — probably the medical group most familiar with the American Plaintiff Lawyers Association — has issued a 9 page position statement counseling members against performing surgery for gender dysphoria in patients under the age of 19. I’m sure this is not at all in response to the first successful lawsuit against doctors who performed gender reassignment surgery on a minor.
Nice Megadeth reference,
Tall Cans!
My first rock show was Megadeth with Corrosion of Conformity.
I caught a Nick Menza drum stick.
Pretty damn cool night.
Even the Daleks eventually figured out how to deal with stairs… they would have gotten there on their own eventually.
Quit making threats like a little bitch. Let’s see some action!
You can apply that statement to just about everything “going on” in DC these days, ES. Just put it in your clipboard and paste it as needed.
Heh. Who says I haven’t already?
The National Education Association holds a rare distinction in Washington, D.C., as the only labor union granted a federal charter, a status it received from Congress in 1906, and critics have argued that the functions of the NEA then and now are much different.
I was surprised that it was that long ago. Teddy Roosevelt administration. Still unsure whyfor anyone would think these people needed or deserved a federal charter.
Yanking their federal charter won’t make them go away, but hopefully it will make it more difficult for them to operate.
That’s putting it mildly. I forget the exact details but I seem to remember someone got a hold of materials from a recent gathering and it was the most radical Marxist claptrap you could imagine.
No idea what this “federal charter” gets them but they are an extreme danger to actual education.
Turned into?
Always had been.
Pick the next one to yank!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_36_of_the_United_States_Code#Part_B:_Organizations
Thanks, Gus. JHTFC, that’s a lot of orgs. And each one is effectively immune from charter termination.
“Why do you hate the Girl Scouts, Tonio? Why do you hate the sweet little girls* in their darling little uniforms? Why do you hate cookies, Tonio?”
And I say this living in a town where a significant portion of GS cookies are produced.
(*) GSA apparently admits trans-identifying boys now.
Because of course it does.
Because the cookies aren’t made with real Girl Scouts… duh!
Former Members of Congress would be my next target.
Some would seem ripe for removal like United States Submarine Veterans of World War II and Pearl Harbor Survivors Association.
I think that so-called public education is too far gone at this point to be salvaged. We will never get true, universal backpack funding because the teachers unions have bored too deeply into our political system.
The only solution is private schools and the right (defined broadly) is going to have to find a way to privately subsidize those schools.
Eventually the pubsec unions and public schools will run out of other people’s money. Especially as they keep going for more levels of administration amid declining enrollment.
The college contraction will likely start the ripples.
Let’s hope that the “college contraction” turns into an implosion.
I used to love the academy. How it’s debased itself over wokeism is enough to wish the entire institution dead.
Homeschool and let me take a dollar for dollar tax write down for pulling my kids out.
Even Idaho’s home schooling tax credit is a total joke. They only let you apply if you make less than around $75k and then force you to spend the tax credit on their approved curriculum, online schools ect. It’s a complete joke.
Separation of Church and State is universally approved, I’d say. For normie understanding, I like adding Separation of Edu and State. I do get especially peeved that a large chunk of my paycheck goes to educating *other* people’s children, *poorly.*
Keeping the purposefully childless, or home schooling folk, paying the vig, is a huge, shitty finger right in our eyes. That burns my ass.
Before handing down the sentence, Cannon rebuked Routh’s actions and called him an “evil” man, West Palm Beach ABC affiliate WPBF reported.
Routh represented himself at trial and attempted to argue that he never intended to harm Trump or the Secret Service agent, framing his actions as a form of protest against the president’s policies. After he was found guilty, he attempted to harm himself in front of the jury by stabbing himself with a pen.
I’m guessing less “evil” and more “full suite of Cluster B traits and then some.” Same result, though. See you in Coleman, jagoff.
Alternate headline – ‘Homeless, Mentally Ill Derelict will Live on the Public Dime for the Rest of his Life.’
How is that different from any other of them?
I’m sure there are a few homeless mentally-ill derelicts out there who subsist exclusively by panhandling and turning tricks. Probably.
Not to be Debbie Downer, but he will certainly appeal his conviction and sentence. There is no longer parole or probation at the federal level so the best he could hope for is a sentence reduction so he can die a free man.
“you’ll have to excuse me if I repeat links”
Thanks, again, Brett. And don’t sweat the repeats. Happens all the time, even with our most prolific linksters.
If Miller’s legislation were to pass through Congress, she told Fox News Digital that it would “send a strong message that people and lawmakers are rising up to the NEA.”
That’s a big if.
Nineteen years old. Well, it’s an improvement. But if you can’t be trusted to have a beer at 19, how are you trusted to understand what chopping your dick off means?
I will be cynical for a moment and say many kids are still on their parent’s health insurance at age 19 and that’s how it became the magic number.
Obamacare requires insurance to provide family coverage up to age 26.
Kinnith, perpetual adolescence was their goal. Never leave the apron strings, go from mommy to Uncle Sam.
I blame Paul Hardcastle.
Do no harm.
It really is that simple. The entire justification for the barbarity is to supposedly prevent suicides and there is no evidence for that whatsoever.
We should have kept it so that robots could be defeated by walking on a grade of slightly uneven ground.
What about scattering tiny ball bearings in their path?
They seem to have a problem with mirrors too.
Can they go out during the day?
Fire. Particularly napalm. The electronics are heat sensitive and don’t recover once they fry.
WTF is with the blurred out faces in that article?
Those robots were victims on Epstein’s Island?
Apropos
Perhaps a garden hose?
Yeah. High pressure water from a fire hydrant would jack up almost anything electronic. And it is readily available.
It’s easy to waterproof electronics, guys. Just think about all the IP-65 waterproof cameras, including GoPro products, on the market.
Electronics, yes. Electro-mechanical devices, not quite as easy.
That episode of “Black Mirror” with the robot dogs fucked me up.
Old Glory Insurance – SNL
https://youtu.be/g4Gh_IcK8UM?si=Bh-McX2mDJvYsndo
The final results are in
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) announced on Wednesday that over 5,000 invasive green iguanas have been removed from Florida’s ecosystems after it issued an executive order allowing the removal of cold-stunned iguanas.
Executive Order 26-03, issued on Jan. 30, allowed people to remove live, cold-stunned iguanas from the wild without a permit and turn them into select offices from Feb. 1-2. They are no longer accepting live green iguanas as of Monday.
Unfortunately, five thousand iguanas is a drop in the bucket for south Florida. Now if they were able to collect 5K Burmese pythons….
Sssssssssssssssss
“This is the first time this particular machine has borne witness to cryogens. And how it breathes, and how it vents, and how it wants to leak is something we have to characterize,” Kshatriya said, and testing before the launch pad can only go so far.
Even with an “aggressive approach” to dealing with hydrogen leaks during Artemis 1, “we’re pretty limited as to how much realism we can put into the test,” said John Honeycutt, the chair of NASA’s Artemis Mission Management team. “We try to test like we fly, but this interface is a very complex interface, and when you’re dealing with hydrogen, it’s a small molecule, it’s highly energetic,” he said, admitting he and mission managers weren’t expecting these issues to crop up again.
“This one caught us off guard,” Honeycutt added. “The initial things that we were seeing in the technical team felt like we either had some sort of misalignment or some sort of deformation or debris on the seal.”
I find the absence of talk about how the fueling operation went during simulations to be rather refreshing.
Call me a luddite but I have serious doubts about the accuracy of computer simulations as a substitute for real world testing.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/02/nasa-finally-acknowledges-the-elephant-in-the-room-with-the-sls-rocket/
Even the space nuts at Ars know it’s awful.
Its an antiquated death trap, “we’ll just change the angle of entry” as the skip helplessly off the atmosphere, never to return.
The solid motor boosters are all from old shuttle flights.
Sections are like 30 plus years old. They are basically metal tubes, but really?
They are reusing shuttle boosters?!
You’re a luddite.
And you are a fool,
SpaceX went with liquid methane as a propellant because it’s easier to handle and store than liquid hydrogen. Once again we have dinosaur launch companies who “have always done it this way” vs innovative newcomers. And it’s not NASA per se, so much as the legacy companies.
I really hope they abort the manned part of Artemis II and just send it as another unmanned test if they send it at all. Otherwise, I fear we’re looking at some dead astronauts in the near future. No way would I sign off on the thing if I were an engineer in the project.
Needs
Another
Seven
Astronauts
Sssssss
There it is.
That movie scared the ever-loving shit out of li’l me one summer late nite.
Ah, the 1970s. When the movies were busy terrorizing us with piranha, killer bees, tarantulas, etc. Oh, and that one shark.
With Valentine’s Day coming up, maybe it’s time to let her in on the majik…
Spontaneous Order is a thing. It’s science, but no one knows exactly how it works.
Linked in the Iguana story, for some reason: https://www.gulfcoastnewsnow.com/article/deedra-irwin-trying-first-american-medal-olympic-biathlon/
Biathletes are cool. Bi athletes are even cooler, but I’m not so lucky…
https://www.npr.org/2026/02/04/nx-s1-5691890/supreme-court-california-redistricting-map
The Supreme Court is allowing California to use its new congressional map for this year’s midterm election, clearing the way for the state’s gerrymandered districts as Democrats and Republicans continue their fight for control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
The state’s voters approved the redistricting plan last year as a Democratic counterresponse to Texas’ new GOP-friendly map, which President Trump pushed for to help Republicans hold on to their narrow majority in the House.
And in a brief, unsigned order released Wednesday, the high court denied an emergency request by the California’s Republican Party to block the redistricting plan. The state’s GOP argued that the map violated the U.S. Constitution because its creation was mainly driven by race, not partisan politics. A lower federal court rejected that claim.
Where’s Lex Luther when you need him?
Probably secretly running WEF.
Ready the pass that Save act yet, Republicans? 🙄
The Roberts Court? Desperately trying to stay out of anything remotely controversial? Gasp! Shock!
Republicans will be lucky to have four seats (out of 53) after the next election. That’s 7.5% of the total.
And the Dems will still whine about Texas or other Red states that have more proportional representation.
Not to mention Mass/Conn with 14 seats, all Dem, even though Republicans get 30-40% of the vote in those states.
TOO LOCAL NEWS: Gordon-Darby, the company that sued NH over ending car inspections, loses its contract to administer the car emissions inspection program.
Nice!
Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of assholes.
Procedures were followed!
New Orleans police say recruit detained by ICE had been verified through agency’s system
https://apnews.com/article/new-orleans-police-recruit-ice-detained-beacbcb5a6e1393036f35302162d52ad
Which just reads to me as “New Orleans police verification agency system sucks donkey balls.”
Or, and bear with me here, ‘New Orleans police are a bunch of big fat liars…’
The verification system is just a guy named Leon that runs a magazine stand. They ask him to check out the new guy, Leon looks the recruit up and down, and says “he checks out.”
https://nypost.com/2026/02/04/world-news/china-teases-futuristic-star-wars-space-warship-that-would-deploy-jets-missiles-2/
It has one small unshielded exhaust port that makes it vulnerable.
Just spray it with a hose.
Not even China has enough rice to dry that thing out.
[golf clap]
Well…. given it is China, I assume they don’t give a shit about international norms and treaties that the Middle Kingdom didn’t set forth and that it is not “space” but rather high atmosphere, this might be what they have in mind. Just pull in surrounding air, heat it up and exhaust it. Makes about as much sense as anything else.
But honestly, I’d be surprised if that ever got off the ground — and find myself wondering what the Chinese is for White Elephant as a project name…
The Spruce Goose flew like 500 feet, right?
That looks an awful lot like the Indian moon lander
In personal news the wife and I passed the magic number in savings.
Now I’m back to work because inflation has gobbled 40-50% of it up in the last five or six years.
Magic number?
Which one?
Magic number used to be $1mm. Had that been invested in S&P Index fund in 2020, it would be worth $2mm today (not counting withdrawals which should run no more than 5% each year).
We started investing in April 2020.
House and business are debt free so that a plus.
Congrats on hitting the magic number! Sorry to hear about the additional work to be done. Hopefully there’s not too much more tunnel before you get to the light.
Im hoping to make it another 12 years of working and sell the business near the 10th or 11th year.
If it’s worth anything by that point. If my major customer were smart they would buy me out but each successive generation of the family that owns it seems to lose about 5% in the smarts category.
Don’t marry dumb but pretty in their youth.
How long has it been now, two years? Five?
I predicted a flood of suits over the child mutilation horrors…overdue but here they come.
All of those Mengele’s should also lose their license to practice.
They should get the same medical experiments as they inflicted on their cash cows.
Malpractice insurance will pay the lawsuits, and there will be no reckoning…
You nailed it RJ.
And only the lawyers will be fed.
Given the grotesque and irreversible nature of the, er, “care,” and the issues afflicting the victims, I always figured down the road some number of years a couple of the practitioners would end up shot or cut up in dumpsters. Maybe not.
I’m still anticipating some shit 10-15 years away, when these kids grow up and realize what’s been done to them by their parents. Those’ll be an interesting series of homicide trials. Vengeance like that should be something like Second Point-Fifth Degree, or something.
“Understandable” Degree Murder? (Were I on the jury, I’d be. *shrug*)
Me too.
Huh. So I applied yesterday and this morning I got a surprise call to interview for a gas station gig at Meijer, like five min away. They wouldn’t say before I got the offer, but said it paid more than the $14 I told ’em I got at Walmart. The young dude kinda had a chuckle, at that. Glad I noted.
So I got the offer! Background check, such n such, they suggest starting Mon, Feb 9. Um. $16.30. Life’s oddities. *grumbles at self*
Huh. Kinda want PT so I can more easily search for long-term work, and I’d really like to have a Fri or Sat off, cuz I’m getting cabin fucking fever kinda real hard. I also applied for the Curbside Pickup thing, and I presume I’d prefer that, but I doubt I really ‘prefer’ anything. Less walking in the station, but less observational fun, I imagine. (Fewer people, I should perhaps say.)
This is remarkably good news, though not scratching KKs in importance. Many thoughts a-swirlin’. I’d much rather not remain in these gigs. Will talk to MN Munchkin, who’s in the same sitch. *scratches much noggin*
**grateful, noggin doesn’t scratch back**
Hope you get it and the next one that’s at least that much better and up and onward from there.
Thanks! Minnesota Munchkin’s in the same sitch in Sauk Centre. She spends a lot of time venting to me about it, and we have talked about combining our forces.
That would be an epic sitcom. We’ll persevere, somehow and way.
I pumped gas at a full service station (remember those?) for a few months. Kinda of fun, laughing/joking with the customers because I didn’t care if I got fired. Maybe between semesters or something. I got layed off when Carter decided we were selling too much gas and reduced our supply.