Everyone is going to restaurants on one of the two very worst days to go to a restaurant (the other being Valentine’s Day) Kitchens are slammed, lines are long, the food is rubberized from sitting under heat lamps. Coincidentally these are both Hallmark holidays. Well, we told WebDom, who is our principal line cook, to just stay home and drink. We’ll be open, but only for drinks, I’ll be pouring wine and mimosas, and if there was ever a day when you need a drink…
Birthdays today include a focused individual; an actor who was big in the #Resist movement; one of my favorite historians; a guy whose face smelled like ginger; a woman with a really shitty sense of direction; a guy who told tales of a lost continent; someone who got stuck in traffic; a secret crush of Jodie Foster; a statesman with a legendary name; and a mediocrity who was the butt of my all-time favorite joke (“Well, stop fookin’ doin’ that!”).
I will not fookin’ stop doing Links, though.
Total shock that the anti-democratic plan went off the rails. And a non-paywall version.
“This is fine,” British style.
I’ll believe this excuse when HR jobs are getting cut “due to AI.”
They’re getting ready to do it again.
Pure geekiness but fascinating. I actually used one of those about 40 years ago.
The Old Guy has few heroes but Junior Brown is one of them. How can someone be a stunningly excellent picker AND the best steel guitarist on the planet? All at once?
a woman with a really shitty sense of direction
Happy birthday Chantal Akerman!
Elaine May?
a woman with a really shitty sense of direction
Happy birthday Amelia Earhart?
I’ll believe this excuse when HR jobs are getting cut “due to AI.”
“I have people skills!”
That’s just crazy talk.
was the original guit-steel ever recovered?
I’ll believe this excuse when HR jobs are getting cut “due to AI.”
The idea that the Independent is only “leaning left” is risible.
Then I KNOW you’ll be having old lady fights before the day is over.
That’s the point.
They’re going to make a killing posting this stuff to social media. 🙂
We can’t hang all of those politicians from lampposts – we need to keep re-electing them! With much love, /America
What if we form competitive lamppost decorating teams, with colors and mascots, and turned politician improving into a tribal sport?
Probably easier, and certainly more productive, to start electing lampposts.
This is at least the fourth try at recapturing that COVID-19 magic. Monkeypox, the tripledemic, bird flu, probably others. I think we’re in a weird place where nobody trusts these assholes, even though somehow none of them have been fired.
This time around there’s an anti-Trump hook, so it’s getting more cycles. My question remains: what exactly can the public health establishment do to actually, meaningfully mitigate the impact of a real pandemic?
Who in government ever gets fired for being wrong – even spectacularly wrong?
I don’t trust the public health establishment because that establishment is rarely concerned with actual public health.
I can’t imagine how you could possibly come to such a conclusion.
I thought it’s M-pox because when you say monkey it makes democrats think of black people and for some reason that makes the speaker of the word racist or something?
It’s the dog whistles.
Old semi cognizant people are constantly scanning their friends/relatives for decline indicators. Every 2 weeks a group of classmates meet for coffee and evaluate one another discreetly. We discuss any other information that we’ve picked up about other classmates .
Biden’s decline was obvious. His searching for words, stumbling around, not knowing where he was, the blank look of his eyes. Old people know and see these things.
All of us complain about the physical challenges, we live them. We don’t recognize the mental slippages, other than the word searching. Politicians are not immune and making decisions that effect thousands of other people is too big of a risk. 60 and out, time to spend with the family.
He was gone long before he was VP.
60 and out.
I’ll be ready to run by 60. Before that I won’t have enough money to be independent. These guys that spend their entire lives as politicians are more of a problem. I would say we need more people at the end of their productive life becoming politicians tan starting out as young car salesmen types with big ideas of enslaving the masses.
Same with teachers.
You shouldn’t be able to become a teacher until you have raised a family, had a career, or run a business.
On Thursday night, Dan Helmer received a shipment of boxes with 1,000 yard signs that read: “Dan Helmer for Congress.”
By late Friday morning, Mr. Helmer no longer had a seat to run for.
Will those signs show up in Africa?
With the Rolling Stones Tour “76” t-shirts….
So, the guy who tried to fraudulently make an end-run around the state constitution by appealing directly to all those new voters in NOVA got slapped down in a “shock decision”.
I have to tap out. JFC this is pathetic even by NYC standards.
er, NYT
As a longtime Massachusetts resident and non-Democrat, go fuck yourself, lady.
(I mean, if she exists, which she surely does not)
Campaign signs make excellent target backers.
They are nice to make an improved CAD (cardboard aided design) mockups of fabrication projects.
The machines were so hot that years later they were used to heat a Cray facility during a cold Minnesota winter.
Efficient.
In Minnesota there is no such thing as waste heat.
One more reason to love incandescent light bulbs too.
I love America
I’m happy just knowing there is an event called the “Redneck Brawl”
Now I want to go attend the Redneck Brawl in formal evening wear, then go to the symphony in busted-out jeans and a flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off.
I went to a local place for brunch-ish for their salmon benedict, which was suboptimal. They have Sunday mimosa brunches. That is all.
If they have mimosas, non-LDS patrons (especially the matrons) don’t care about the food.
I have a pitcher of orange juice and an open bottle of a good Prosecco at the ready. Weirdly, in NY, we are not allowed to pre-mix the two, they must only be mixed at the point of purchase, i.e., glass by glass.
That seems weird. Let me guess, bartenders need state licensure and you could mix them if you had a licensed bartender and a full liquor license?
Their food is, as my mother put it, “too avant garde” for her, which, of course, made me curious and I was seduced by the pictures.
In short, I got catfished.
Premixing is a nono in many states, even with a liquor license. So is marrying liquor. They all do it anyway.
Here’s the rationale the State gives: if the drinks are pre-mixed, some of the alcohol might separate and drinks poured from the container might have different amounts of alcohol in them.
Having taught a senior course in thermodynamics with a strong emphasis on entropy of mixtures, this made me cry.
OMWC/DrOtto:
That’s not that uncommon. Quite a few states prohibit premixing of cocktails to (ostensibly) prevent watering down of drinks.
Meanwhile the state ignores the poor dissolution of gasoline and ethanol.
I guess you want 25-30% watery alcohol in your tank. Why wouldn’t you?
That’s unfortunate. Eggs Benedict should always be a transcendent experience.
Eggs Benedict made to the original recipe have the innate flaw of being made with poached eggs instead of fully cooked.
A fully cooked egg doesn’t give you anything to soak up with the English muffin.
Your opinion has been considered and rejected.
a. They put tomatoes on all their benedicts, which I hate.
b. It arrived on my table cold.
c. It had zero flavor. Salt/pepper would not have improved the situation.
Here’s the thing: When I make Hollandaise, I make it extra lemony and extra paprika-ey.
https://firstwatch.com/menu/smoked-salmon-benedict
Oh, First Watch. They have some good stuff, but their Hollandaise sauce ain’t it.
I also dislike tomatoes.
Considering my first experience with Hollandaise sauce was at Brennan’s…
Dude, that’s what the Hollandaise is for. Not disgusting yolk sludge.
We have a local bfast place called Big Biscuit. The last time I went, the yolks were hard. I didn’t go all Karen-y but I did make my displeasure known to the manager. I informed him that the recipe is poached, runny yolks. He said, “I don’t think my cook knows that.” “Okay, but please inform him and ask him to remake.”
Mind you, I NEVER send food back, but this was inexcusable.
You do know Hollandaise sauce is half emulsified runny egg yolks, right?
But it no longer tastes like yolk sludge, nor does it have the texture.
I’ve found both First Watch and Another Broken Egg Cafe to be overpriced compared to the much better local diners.
MO, I envy you having breakfast at Brennan’s. One of our bucket list goals is to eat our way across New Orleans.
Antoine’s also! Also Cafe du Monde.
Autistic food fight!!
So, my local gun club has re-opened after being shut down by the county these past five months.
I was worried there for a while.
Oops. Wrong thread.
@robodruid I sent an email, but my bcc came back marked as spam so maybe check your spam filters. I’m changing my black/white list on my webhost’s end.
When COVID-19 swept the globe,
Nope.
Hell no.
*racks AK*
Meanwhile, in Venice
Geopolitical tensions spilled over into the Venice Biennale contemporary art exhibition, which opens its most chaotic and contested edition in memory Saturday with no Golden Lions after the jury quit in protest of Israel’s and Russia’s participation and loud protests outside their pavilions.
The jury limited its action to countries under investigation by the International Criminal Court for human rights abuses, but some say the U.S. should have been included. British artist Anish Kapoor cited “the politics of hate and war and all that that’s been going on now for too long.”
Visitors to the Giardini and Arsenale venues will vote for the best national pavilion, from 100 participants, and best participant in the main curated show, “In Minor Keys,” in Eurovision style. The vote will be anonymous, and by email, the Biennale said Saturday. Winners will be announced closing day, Nov. 22.
Pretentious circle jerk is pretentious.
Is Venice full of wankers all the time, or just during these kinds of international dick-sucking competitions?
Wankers all the time. Wanker tourists, wanker film festival goer, wanker art critics.
Still a lovely place to visit, especially if you wander a few blocks away from tourist central. You can randomly point your camera down streets without lining up a shot and get frame quality pictures.
In the mid 80’s when I was at U of I, the CS department was so proud of their Cray they put it in the front of their building right in the lobby. I had no idea what it was. It looked like an airport couch from the 70’s. I think it was the X-MP model.
They were quite upset when I set the pizzas I was delivering on it.
Top shelf political analysis
The governing British Labour Party got clobbered in yesterday’s local elections, pretty much as expected. The final votes are still being counted, but as of this writing Labour is on track to lose as many as 2,000 municipal council seats out of about 5,000, an all-time record defeat, and lose its governing majority in at least 20 councils.
The big winners were the far-right Reform Party, with at least 600 pick-ups, and the left-populist Greens.
The Reform Party is the modern manifestation of Oswald Mosley’s gang of brown shirts. The Greens are moderate liberals, eager for broad bipartisan consensus and peaceful coexistence.
It’s stupid-town Brooks.
I’m slowly building a Mom purse. You know, the one with everything plus the kitchen sink in it. Why I didn’t do this when my kids weren’t 20, I don’t know, but anyway, these have been invaluable.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BRQRZGLH
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C2PXJD76
I will say, though, dragging all this shit around is not for the faint of heart.
“Army vet’s alleged close encounter with 9-foot-tall Bigfoot beasts changes his life”
https://nypost.com/2026/05/09/us-news/army-vets-alleged-close-encounter-with-9-foot-tall-bigfoot-beasts/
“I now have to wear adult diapers.”
“Jaclyn Skuce, 43, of Madison, was convicted of capital murder after hiring a man to kill the child’s father in order to prevent him from gaining custody or further visitation, the Morgan County District Attorney’s Office said.”
https://nypost.com/2026/05/10/us-news/alabama-mom-jaclyn-skuce-sentenced-to-life-for-hiring-hitman-to-kill-her-childs-father-over-custody-dispute/
Happy Mothers Day!
The problem is not just Starmer’s leaden personality, but his lame program. Starmer has sought to reassure Britain’s financial capitalists with fiscal conservatism rather than supplanting them with a bold program of reinvestment. He has also ducked what to do about Brexit.
Thanks to the fluke of the last general election, where Labour won only 33.7 percent of the popular vote but gained 411 out of 650 seats in the House of Commons, Labour has the power to enact a far-reaching progressive program—but lacks the will. And thanks to Britain’s electoral system, the government doesn’t need to call another election until August 2029, giving Labour plenty of time to recover. In short, Labour has everything going for it except leadership, vision, and nerve.
Now is the time to drop the hammer on the royalists and counterrevolutionaries, if only there were a brave committed disciple of Mao to lead the way.
“This puts the “toxic” in “toxic masculinity.”
It is scientifically proven that men are bad for the planet — or so a certain group of researchers says.
An international group of researchers has found that men are the superior sex when it comes to their impact on society and nature, per a politically skewed study in the International Journal for Masculinity Studies.An international group of researchers has found that men are the superior sex when it comes to their impact on society and nature, per a politically skewed study in the International Journal for Masculinity Studies.”
https://nypost.com/2026/05/10/science/men-are-worse-for-the-planet-study/
Why am I thinking no one at the International Journal for Masculinity Studies knows how to change a tire?
“Men consume more meat than women and are leaders of the animal–industrial complex,” the researchers write. “Meat consumption remains part of hegemonic masculinity across many contexts.”
Men have more body mass, including more muscle mass. The nutritional protein requirements are higher. Meat is an excellent source of protein. Plus it’s tasty.
Thes researchers need to be stripped of their grants and banished to a line of work more in line with their lack of ability.
“Per the study, these so-called masculine pastimes include “owning, managing, controlling heavy, chemical, carbon–based, industrialized agriculture, high environmental impact and extractive industries, and of course militarism, with its own devastating environmental effects.”
Men need to stop growing food.
“And while the scientists don’t single out any particular subset of men, they claim that the “destructive ecological and social processes” are largely driven by “privileged eurowestern countries, particularly elite white men.”
These processes, per the study, include “colonialism, extractivism and capitalism……
“Among vocal and influential masculinities, especially far–right political elites, climate denialism often combines with misogyny,” the researchers write.”
But of course.