We’re a little skinny on snow this year. And although the osprey haven’t returned to their nest along the river, Spring is speeding towards us. Farmers are going to have an issue with water.
Links?
I am dumber for having read this.
That’s just good product placement, right there.
How about you go fuck yourself, Ron?
Chris Van Hollen has to be one of the dumbest mfer’s in the Senate.
Long knives out for Kristi. And her husband’s a cuck.
So much for the vaunted “British Empire”.
Okay, that’s it for me. Time for some Mexican food and a beer. Peace out, Glibbies.
The IndyCar boys put on a pretty good show in Phoenix today.
This was fucking awesome. That’s not luck, that’s driving.
That’s phenomenal.
People all over the world enjoy eating watermelon.
Showing a black person eating watermelon is problematic.
Right.
Chris Thomas King wrote a song that I’m sure the author of that piece has never heard even once.
https://youtu.be/U_I27GHCRlE?si=i89IMhrLqeikBDiD
Tracy Byrd did one as well. Nice scenery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFPdX2TFiIE&list=RDBFPdX2TFiIE&start_radio=1
Tennessee Ernie Ford’s rendition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3VSMqVIRXA
Herbie Hancock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrmFJjmRIi4
Hype wins.
Fuck yeah! Take that losers!
That is so amazing from start to finish I don’t even know which sentence(s) to make fun of.
But in truth, none of us ever know the inner workings of anyone else’s marriage. That’s their business and nobody else’s.
But you won’t let that stop you.
Ah, so the climate chapter is a pack of lies. Imagine my surprise.
“the osprey haven’t returned to their nest along the river”
May you soon be graced by their presence. We have a year-round osprey population here.
Very cool. I look at their arrival as the arrival of Spring, and when they leave the arrival of Winter.
Great scene, Spud, from your house?
We use Swans for Spring Bringing. First migrators to return, as soon as there’s a little open water around the mouth of a creek or river. I don’t know if there is any back yet but I don’t spend a lot of time outside looking.
No. That’s at the base of the Sawtooth’s at 6,000’. I spend plenty of time in that area during the summer, though.
The world is okay. Its always on fire, there is always some asshat doing asshat things.
In that note. Skirt steak marinaded in chipolte adobo and spices, then dried and seared over aji amarillo black beans and cumin/corriander rice. A nice crema, avacado and pickled radish bowls for myslef and the missus tonight
A more boring dinner here: couple of fillets in the grill pan & finished in the oven, with roasted broccoli plus some mashed sweet potato for the missus, with a nice cab.
Sometimes the basics are great, given good product.
*looks at frozen taquitos*
*sighs*
We’re eating a lot more of the prepared frozen meals. Some things get tougher and tougher. Marie Callendar is my friend.
Frozen meals are great while I break in some new teeth.
Two very acceptable meals. I had chicken, onions and peppers braised in a chipotle sauce at a local Mexican place for lunch. I have leftover pasta with sausage, mushrooms and broccoli rabe for dinner.
As someone who enjoys food…i would never turn down some frozen taquitos.
Ditto.
Making homemade pizza and wings. It’s Saturday night.
I made my lamb with green beans in Georgian* spices last night, so, not sure what the wife is making tonight for date night.
*country
Ground beef tacos with a variety of white people toppings (cheese, sour cream, avocado, tomato), beans rice and homemade chips on the side, and margaritas.
Then sitting down to see which other F1 teams (besides Red Bull) vibe coded their power unit software.
Chicken bracciole will be on the menu here.
I love white trash tacos. I even use store bought shells.
Dad and I had hamburgers and fries. It’s what we have every Saturday night.
The new Young Sherlock has a Guy Ritchie problem. Entertaining but wtf is it?
The Guy Ritchie movies, especially the first one, were the most canon-accurate Sherlock Holmes story ever put to film. Fight me.
Sigh. Kids these days.
The truth hurts sometimes.
I believe it’s based on a series of books, by someone I don’t remember, not Spielberg s 80’s movie.
It does depart from canon, but the actors are quite good.
I’m only four episodes in, I like the actor playing Moriarty as well as the lady playing the Chinese princess.
So far, very little wokeness detected.
Holy Kow, that Kristi No’am article is dumber than the watermelon article.
I know nothing about anything about war or Iran or whateverthefuckisgoingonOverThere, but… I’mma say, IF it is necessary, definitive and utterly destructive one-time strikes are better than piddling around in an area for fifteen years and/or rattling sabers for forty.
This view may be a consequence of watching my mother do everything with seven more steps than is necessary. No, Mother, you do not need to have a bra on to go to the ER when you can’t move your arm. Do you know. I had to have an actual yelling argument with her about that and basically told her if she wanted her bra on, she could put it on herself because I wasn’t going to help her. FURTHERMORE. I said, “Do you think everybody is looking at your boobs to check and make sure you’re wearing a bra?” SHE SAID YES. omg.
Anyway.
That is all.
And yes, I did compare bombing Iran Because Reasons to fighting my mother over wearing a bra to the ER.
I’ll allow it.
Some of Iran’s propaganda videos are comically bad, but MSM are posting them uncritically. WTF?! I don’t expect John or Jane Couchsurfer to be able look at them and go “BS!” but I do expect professional defense journalists to be able to analyze what governments put out during a war.
That goes for coverage of US videos as well. Honest coverage of a complex situation is not too much to ask. (Yeah, I started day drinking before writing this.)
LOL @ ‘professional defense journalists.’
Makes you wonder how they would’ve covered Baghdad Bob.
Forgive me for laughing.
It’s funny, yes, until I have to deal with it in real time.
This is more of a point of contention than it should ever have been in the first place. When I go to the hospital for a procedure, I put on a house-hoodie and Birks. I also do this for the ER if I can.
My MOTHER has to GET DRESSED, which is a procedure. Magic underwear (that’s its own fight), regular underwear which includes a complicated bra, nice outfit. THE FUCK. It DOES NOT MATTER how bad she feels, she will do this. When she was so sick last year, she GOT DRESSED FIRST like she was going to a ladies’ lunch even though she was on death’s door, but she did that before we got to her house.
So I say, “Why do you think people are looking at you? Do you think you’re that interesting?” Well, I don’t know. “They aren’t. They are not looking at you.” I look at people. “Do you look to see if they’re wearing a bra?” Yes. “Why are you looking at people’s boobs?” To see if they’re wearing a bra. “WHY DO YOU CARE????” I don’t know.
Well, I know. Because HER mother cared and would judge and would gossip in that viciously delicate/delicately vicious way Southern women do, to say, “MY daughter better never do this because it’s trashy.”
BUT YOU’RE GOING TO THE HOSPITAL AND STOP LOOKING AT OTHER PEOPLE’S BOOBS.
I have been painfully self-conscious of my appearance my entire life but I am also a bit of a slob. So, “good enough” it always was.
Now, I have had so much experience in hospitals in the last few years that IDGAF anymore – all shyness has been completely worn down. It’s all out there now. As it should be because everyone there has seen everything.
I lost any pretense about going to the hospital when I had to be ass up in the air on all fours while a (male) nurse had to, uh, look there.
Once you’ve exposed your asshole to the world, you tend to give zero fucks about a little slobbiness.
It’s funny, yes, until I have to deal with it in real time.
Mo, I’m laughing because guys love to do this to each other.
Case in point. I was carp fishing with a buddy who lives a block away from me. I had something to do with the family so we drove separately. After a half day of fishing and a few beers, my buddy was pissed that I was going to leave and do the family thing.
We left at the same time, but my buddy drove like a madman and got to my house first. He rang the bell to return some fishing tackle I had supposedly forgot. My wife was confused and asked why he didn’t just give it to me directly. Buddy said “We’ve been done fishing for hours. I just thought I’d drop this off”.
I show up 10 minutes (and about 15 minutes late for the family thing) later and run into a wife buzz saw. “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!!?!”
I quickly figure out what my buddy has done. I start laughing and tell her that Buddy is fucking with us. She goes with “why would he do that?”.
Keep laughing and say “because he knows that I am having this conversation right now.”
To this day, you can wind Mrs. Holiness up with where exactly I was in those missing hours.
So my sorcerer-lawyer story. Now, I hang lanterns in my stories because to me, that’s showing respect for the reader and also sharing an inside joke with them. I know the trope about the “chosen one,” and I’m trying to distance my sorcerer from “chosen one” status, but I’ve written myself into a corner (mostly because he IS chosen because he’s afforded immortality if he chooses to renew it).
If your magic is based on physics and math, could you be considered a “chosen one” because it’s high-level abstract thinking that you can do? Everybody has something they’re good at. Is somebody a CHOSEN ONE because he can write symphonies (e.g., John Williams)? Does that make you chosen because you landed where your interests lie and you were able to exploit them to best effect?
I missed the earlier postings, but did you come across https://maxgladstone.com/series/the-craft-sequence/ ?
Wizard-lawyers. Very well done.
Oh, that’s neat! Thanks. I’ll read it.
So, my timeframe for this is about 2040, I think. Far enough in the future I can speculate without prophesying the future and close enough that tech and pop culture references may wear well in the future of the book.
MY sorcerer-lawyer is the stop-gap between “the Offs” (the magical demographic, because they’re a bit “off,” like the weird IT guy, but people don’t know what’s wrong with them so they’re kind of unemployable) and modern bureaucracy, law enforcement, and the IRS. However, the Offs see him as a plumber. Mortal (with mechanical longevity and vitality), so he’s beneath them but they depend on him for protection and employment. He’s at once the “patriarch” of the Off community and its doormat. He’s also far more powerful than they are but they don’t know that because they don’t pay attention to him until they need him.
He set up shop in the 30s in Kansas City because he came here for a shot of decent whiskey, got roped into law school and practicing law about the time health insurance and social security numbers became a thing, so he got stuck here. So KC is a locus for magical beings, myths, legends, fairy tales, because he’s here and he’s stuck with the responsibility.
Yes, he could leave. But he’s not an asshole.
That sounds excellent. Will read.
This is intriguing.
This sounds very interesting.
Now I want to go back and re-read The Boat of a Million Years a zillion years after the last time I read it.
As an aside, it’s a good example of how cover art matters.
I thought the sequel was a YA novel
https://maxgladstone.com/writing/wicked-problems/
He is also part of an interconnecting world with Krampus (also the Alpine goddess Perchta) (and thus, Santa), the queen of the godfae who became mortal to marry a man and is now a widow with two daughters from him and an irascible stepdaughter from her husband’s first marriage who thinks she’s Cinderella, and possibly a middle-aged post-menopausal hausfrau vampire.
But, no, straight up sequel.
That’s supposed to be the same character as this:
https://maxgladstone.com/writing/three-parts-dead/
Badass Tara, reduced to a cartoon…
And oh, his practice is named Warre & Locke, PC. He thought it was funny.
And every once in a while, when he’s feeling particularly abused and taken for granted, he calls a meeting and presents — in POWERPOINT — why they need to quit treating him like an ATM.
Now you’ve got me thinking about covers. Maybe put all four stories on the cover, with that book’s story characters as the main focus. And I don’t do cartoon covers.
I look forward to reading it, Mojeaux!
Ok I lol’d at this:
https://x.com/BunkiePerkins/status/2029996051738886560
It feels like that clip is LOL worthy even if you disagree with the tweet. “Choke him! Choke him!”. Classic Heenan.
Long live the weasel suit!
weasel!!!
I laughed, remembering the days when my kids were little. We would stay up late on Saturday nights to watch pro wrestling. ‘Course young kids haven’t figured out the theater. My daughter called pro wrestling “The Punching Game”.
My VN MIL also loved pro wrestling, she didn’t have to understand English. It was interesting times as well to watch the new kids adapt to life in the US. It wasn’t too long before the two older boys were throwing a football back and forth and watching the Sunday games.
Fourscore:
In high school my buddies and I would descend on one of their houses every Sunday morning.
We’d start with AWA wrestling and follow it up with Kung Fu theater.
My buddy’s dad would watch with us. All the time he’d be laughing at how dumb we were to watch that crap. Especially when we’d get in some argument about whether a suplex would work in real life and try it out on each other.
LMAO!
I’ll continue to be that guy who dregs this shit back up the surface I guess. You aren’t holding two views simultaneously. You are just blatantly hypocritical here. Gaddaffi was a shitty bad guy who had killed Americans along with brutalizing his own people. Somehow I don’t expect too many defenses of Hillary and Barrack on that one particularly with the hindsight of the absolute chaos it led to. But here we are waging a rather similar war against a far more bureaucratic state with far less chance of success whatever success actually looks like to any one of you. Where even if we win and overthrow the Iranian government, we have no fucking idea what takes its place. As of now they are rumored to be trying to replace Supreme Leader with, well, his hardline son who is basically the same. Only now he’ll have all this to back up his anti-American and anti-Western views.
This all stinks to me of I supported Trump. I support Israel. So I can’t just back down and admit that this entire second reign of Orange Man has been pretty much a categorical disaster on nearly every front. He’s been more Neocon Bush 2.0 with crazy tariff bullshit thrown in. I mean, where are the wins? His immigration crack down which he himself is now repudiating?
Regardless, I fail to see where Iran has really done much to threaten America unless we take plots to assassinate Trump at face value. The most serious transgressions were in Iraq and they were never really held to account for that. They assisted in the deaths of American military but we seem to take it more personally when they fund shit in Israel than against us in Iraq. Dead Jews > dead white Nasty Girls from Iowa, I guess. Like Hegseth said before getting the gig – Israel’s interests trump America and yet are somehow also America First or some such bullshit.
We supposedly destroyed their nuclear program back in that smashing success in, what, June? Yet we still get it trotted out as mealy mouthed explanations for what’s going on now.
Iran isn’t a great threat to America. This has been the case for decades. There’s really not and never has been any imminent threat of them getting nukes and it’s really pretty comical to play back the DECADES of fucking predictions from Netanyahu saying they’re weeks to months away.
So yea…Iran – bad guys. There are fucking bad guys everywhere across the globe. Not our fucking fight. Little Marco isn’t even pretending it’s really our fight and I was told earlier today I should listen to him and his justifications and not Trump’s.
Iran’s clear ability to send massive quantities of highly-precise, targeted missiles to US regional bases, Israel, and beyond, plus control the Strait of Hormuz suggest they are/were a great threat.
Shame on them for putting their country so close to our bases.
The war is troublesome for me as well. Iranians, Iranian trained and equipped militias, and Iranian manufactured weapons spent all of 2008 trying to kill me and my Soldiers. So those same Iranian leaders dying just gives me a grim smile. Fuck them all. That government has spent every year, with a small thaw Sep-Dec 2001, trying to kill Americans and Israelis. Not just in the region, but worldwide.
Engaged in nuclear negotiations? Don’t tell the American negotiating party you can build 11 nukes in short order. Was that BS? No, possibly, probably, certainly? IDK, but that is incredibly stupid, especially after we bombed your facilities a few months earlier. After the US and ISR start their side of the war you don’t threaten to nuke us- that is plain stupid. Especially with this President. He ain’t the Lightbringer or PPP who can easily be intimidated.
The people crying about the sunken Iranian frigate as just plain mendacious at best. The war was on, that class of FFG is normally armed anti-ship missiles, the FFG was steaming towards the major combat zone and was astride of the sea line of communication to the sub-continent and Asia after the Iranian government threatened to destroy tankers. To not sink it would be a criminally stupid risk for the US to take. After taking the stern off the FFG the US let Sri Lanka know so they, as a neutral, could attempt SAR. There is no requirement for a captain to risk his vessel to conduct SAR. Keep track of the media reports that two commercial vessels have left China for Iran carrying chemicals useful for the Iranian military. They shouldn’t get through either. Take or sink?
Same with the school. While it tragic that the civilians died, it is inevitable in war. If it was a US munition we will know soon enough. But it is also a distinct possibility that it was Iranian ordnance that malfunctioned.
BUT, and it is a BF but- I don’t trust OMB to conduct the war smartly and with utter ruthlessness. His history with conducting conflict, and most anything else, is he loses interest and/or listens to his critics. That and vomits his every thought to try to appear to be a YUGE Man. His “unconditional surrender” is one example. We didn’t even hold to that with Japan in WWII, a war the country was completely invested in winning. Something will go wrong, because in war something always goes wrong, and he’ll start changing the terms or just declare it over. The problem is that one side can start a war, but it takes both sides to agree to end one. Saying the US should approve the next government is completely incompatible with the ways and means we have brought to bear. More bluster that can’t be backed up. JUST SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH IN PUBLIC!!! Let arms and diplomacy perform their functions and maybe we can eke out a W.
As a retired ground pounder I don’t believe that distant ground missile fires and air power alone can compel surrender. That said, Iran is a large country with a larger population and our ground forces are very small. We can’t conquer and occupy Iran. Sending Israelis into Iran, except for SOF strikes, is a non-starter. The US is going to have to force the Straight and reopen it. I won’t be surprised to see limited coastal incursions to help force Iranian capabilities back from the Strait of Hormuz. I hope I am wrong about that because ground combat always go sideways- it is the nature of the beast.
I am kinds surprised that the MSM hasn’t latched onto the fact the six US KIAs, so far, are all Army Reservists. The American people realize that fighter pilots, special operations fighters, and submariners occasionally die. It is the price of joining those communities. “She just joined the Reserves (Guard) for college money and not to fight.” is a wrongheaded but not unusual American response to casualties.
So far only the Kuwaitis have shot down manned US/ISR aircraft. (They apologized and offered to pay for them.) This keeps going on then somebody is gonna get shot down and if they survive then we will go try and get them before the Iranians do. That will be messy.
We are only a week in. Let’s see what happens in the theater of operations, and back in the States.
Has any “expert” yet conjectured that perhaps the Iranians don’t have to build nucs, that they could acquire them from an existing nuclear power(e.g. North Korea)?
The people complaining about a sunken naval ship can lick sweaty asshole after a fresh shit. It’s war. Ships get sunk. There was no underhandedness involved. It’s an enemy ship, steaming towards a theater of war. Sink that motherfucker.
Any time you go to war, you should be willing to justify the mounds of dead women and children.
Any major war now will involve killing a shit ton of women and children. If you can’t live with that, you shouldn’t start the war in the first place.
The reason Germany and Japan were successful “nation building” exercises is because we killed shit tons of people. Including non combatants.
Like dieting, there is no “easy” way to succeed at war.
When the chief negotiator for Iran tells his US counterpart we have enough uranium to built 11 A-bombs and we are at 60% enrichment, yeah, I think they were pretty close to having nukes.
If he was lying, it was a pretty stupid thing to lie about, considering what happened to Saddam for boasting about his program.
My concern, and perhaps Trump’s as well, was he lying the other way? Did they ALREADY have a nuke or two ready to go, and were just waiting to get a ballistic missile capable of delivering it to Tel Aviv? Or Riyadh?
When someone tells you they want to kill you, and gives every indication they’re going to try to as soon as they can, believe them.
Israel has nukes, lots more than 11, I betcha. Mutually assured destruction, I don’t think so.
Another aircraft carrier headed to that region. Either the war isn’t going as planned or the plans have changed or both.
Big coverage of the US men’s sled hockey on now
Oof, US over Italy, 14-1
I’ve watched TOK and his team multiple times.
Don’t fuck with someone on a sled with a stick.
JFC. I just saw that anti-anti-semitism commerical where the black kid white-knights the Jewish kid with “I know what you’re going through.”
What fucking century is this? Did I fall asleep and wake up in 1940 or something?!
It’s worse than that considering those responsible for the ad are likely on the side of “From the river to the sea”, yet are projecting like it’s MAGA who are anti-Jew.
Naw, the ad is from Robert Kraft’s group. He’s sincere but that ad is cringe.
Yeah that ridiculous posturing is a definitely a product of clueless leftism.
I don’t know who that is.
It’s insulting trash either way.
My first thought was… if this is in any way reflective of current year happenings, then the damage wrought by the likes of Obama and Biden has been way more destructive that I would have imagined.
Because the posed situation is not anything that would have happened in my HS days. At all.
I hated that fucking thing. Israel is living proof that Jews are badasses. American Jews should be armed and willing to defend themselves, and many are.No thanks, we don’t need anyone’s pity, we would prefer people have the same caution around us as they would around an ill-humored pitbull.
Jews are badasses
Exactly why I didn’t confront you directly about the bike theft.
counterpoint:
https://www.adl.org/adl-tracker
Keeping track of every slight and posting it for the world to see does not scream toughness.
John Dillermand is a Danish children’s TV show about a man with a gigantic, striped, prehensile penis. He can use it as a whip, a rope, a pogo stick, and even a helicopter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3sGocnMP3A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A51mJjFyG_w
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Uffda. Seems pretty cool, but the second link is to John Oliver? Dude, just Rick Roll me instead!
Eh, John Oliver is tolerable in that clip. He has his moments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh9munYYoqQ
Arafat reportedly died a billionaire. Jackson was probably trying to pick up some tips on the grift game.
There are wars of necessity and wars of choice. For the US, WW2 was the last one of necessity. The Iran war is a war of choice, though possibly a war of necessity for Israel. I think Trump made a big mistake, and that the war will not turn out well given America’s unsuccessful history of wars in the Middle East. Hell, the war against the Barbary pirates ended with us paying them tribute.
***
America suffered another humiliation when it sent tribute carried by the large armed frigate “USS George Washington (1798)” to Algiers; Dey Mustapha Pasha forced U.S. commodore William Bainbridge to hoist an Ottoman Algerian flag over his warship before sailing to Constantinople carrying tribute to the Ottoman sultan in 1800.[32] As Lieutenant and consul William Eaton informed newly appointed Secretary of State John Marshall in 1800, “It is a maxim of the Barbary States, that ‘The Christians who would be on good terms with them must fight well or pay well.'”
***
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars#United_States_pays_tribute_to_Algiers
That chunk of Idaho is absolutely stunning.
It’s not high mountain Colorado but for Idaho it’s about as close as you can get.
Jordan Peterson sent a message to the Islamic world in 2023 calling for peace and dialog.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pd0HLeYKsE
We can see how well that worked out. I’m guessing it was uploaded before the October 7th attacks.
Odd that Trump met with Kim Jong Un but killed Khamenei. Or maybe not so odd if he genuinely believed Khamenei tried to have Trump assassinated. I’m skeptical of that claim.
It’s hard to have a positive relationship with a country when you overthrow their elected leader, replace him with a dictator, and then spend 26 years propping up his regime and secret police. For similar reasons, the ex-Soviet republics and eastern bloc states have had frosty relations with Russia.
Ukraine, Iran, Taiwan, elsewhere- the US gains nothing by getting involved in their conflicts.
Same mild and warm winter here. Already the fraidy cats are worrying themselves to death about summer fire season, thanks to the years of fear mongering.
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The site decided I was posting too often…