Finally Friday Afternoon Links

by | Apr 24, 2020 | Daily Links | 365 comments

Damn but this week has been long. I am ready for a drink or two. Meeting up virtually with my old work team for a virtual happy hour tonight. I feel bad, everyone else got let go except me. I’m still hanging on for now. I went downstairs at lunch got just completely inundated by words. Its like the rest of my family just dumped their entire stream of consciousness buffers at once.  I noped out of that and headed back to the office. “Oh crap, got a meeting!” **smokebomb**

Oh man, this is going to be a clusterfuck of poor ideas and worse execution. Pinellas County discusses how to reopen beaches.

Kimspotting may be my new coronavirus hobby.

Was there ever a virus better tailored to the Slacker generation? Stay home, drink G&Ts, and smoke to reduce odds of death.

Trump signs next stimulus bill, resists additional funding for USPS, “which he called ‘a joke'”.

 

 

 

About The Author

Brett L

Brett L

Brett set out to find America, the real America, the America of strip malls and serial killers, of butthole waxing and kelp smoothies, of cocaine and maggots. He sought it in the most American part of America—Florida: swamp gas and fever dreams, where love arrives on a rickety boat and leaves when it doesn't have the money for its fourth abortion. Oh, where has Brett gone? He’s drinking at the neck of America’s wang, chewing its foreskin and working its shaft. Brett is becoming legend. Brett can never die. Brett can never die. Brett is America, facedown in his own patriotic puke: the red his blood, the white his stomach lining, and the cold, cold blue his gas station slushie, spiked with coconut rum and tetracycline.

365 Comments

  1. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Took the USPS a month to deliver my business license renewal fifteen miles away.

    It’s definitely a joke, a bad one.

    • Tonio

      Yet the left is so determined to keep the USPS running.

      They are buying postage stamps they’ll never use and having sweaty fantasies about universal vote-by-mail in November because only mean, icky COVID-19 denialists will come out to vote in person.

      • jesse.in.mb

        I’m fairly pro-USPS and have, due to the nature of my job, spent a too much time reading GOA reports related to their structural and managerial failings (some of which, but not all, are enforced by Congressional fiat) and their retiree healthcare prefunding mandate (which made a hell of a lot more sense in 2006 than it did in 2008) It’s pretty depressing that the few Congress-critters who seem to have a good sense of the broader issues at play and what steps need to be taken to get the USPS back on track are not able to get traction with either side.

      • bacon-magic

        Privatizing it the whole way should be the logical next step.

      • JaimeRoberto Delecto

        Yeah, while I worry about unfunded pensions that we will have to bail out some day for the states*, I have to wonder why the USPS has to prefund 75 years of benefits. That seems excessive. Maybe I’m missing something.

        *Yeah, I know we don’t *have* to, but we will anyway.

      • jesse.in.mb

        The very short version is that the 75 years of prefunding is a bit like the garbage patch the size of [insert random large land mass based on how densely you care to measure plastic particulate here].

        The longer version: In 2006 the Post Office was profitable. Congress realized that that may not always be the case due to increased digital communication and noted that the Post Office had a large unfunded liability because they were using a pay-as-you-go model for their retiree health benefits. Congress removed the requirement that USPS fund FERS for legacy retirees rolling everything into an OPM retirement program, and had them prefund for 10 years (2007-2017) while still paying into the pay-as-you-go model. After the 10 years OPM would be managing an interest bearing account and the Post Office would return to pay-as-you-go, but would be paying in the actuarial projection for 30 years in the future rather than for today.

        2008 happened and the Post Office became much less profitable as entities cut advertising and direct mail marketing costs and generally tightened their belts in unison. According to the GAO, the Post Office stopped paying into the OPM fund in 2010. In 2017, the retiree health benefit program started drawing off of the pay-as-you-go funding and began drawing off of the OPM fun, which quickly exceeded the interest accrual. If something isn’t changed by Congress, the OPM fund is projected to run dry in early 2030s and the USPS will have to pay-as-you-go, while also having a large deficit to the Treasury (which, honestly should just be wiped out as it’s just a paper debt to its own accounts at the point that they become liable for the healthcare costs in 2031, the Treasury wouldn’t be bearing that cost).

        In 2006 it was a GREAT idea to use some of the Postal surplus to protect workers who had entered into contracts with the entity with that as part of their benefits. In 2008, it was a disaster. In 2020, Congress has not restructured anything (this was all set out in a 2006 act of Congress and they’re the only ones who can fix it).

      • Mad Scientist

        The postal service is one of the few things that’s actually in the constitution.

      • Tonio

        But it has been spun-off into a quasi-governmental corporation, not the fully public agency envisioned by the founders. Postal inspectors still have federal law enforcement powers. You still can’t fire postal workers, no matter how egregious their conduct. Customer service still sucks. The most congress can do is change out the postal service board of directors. Postmaster general needs to be a direct-report to the president, and kept on a very short leash.

    • RAHeinlein

      Can’t wait to get this six-foot sub home.

      • Sensei

        Looks like somebody is dying for one.

    • Ted S.

      Florida Man.

    • westernsloper

      Cheapest funeral procession ever.

    • bacon-magic

      That heart attack was freaky fast.

    • C. Anacreon

      “Mom wanted me to use training wheels on my bike, but we compromised on this.”

    • C. Anacreon

      “Grandpa was lonely and asked if I could dig up one of his friends.”

      • westernsloper

        lol

    • Tres Cool

      Pie- the Romanian Uber driver

    • Enough About Palin

      It was in the alley, so it was free for the taking.

    • Charles Easterly

      “Caption Contest”

      “Shoes and shirt required.” – Restaurant signage.

      Delivery man without shirt on bike: “If it ain’t how long a body’s been around, now it’s what a driver is wearing. Dang anthropophagi!”
      Pa said ya never could trust ’em.”

    • Lady Z

      Undertaker fitness bootcamp.

    • KibbledKristen

      Wasn’t MI one of Hillary’s big old fails 4 years ago?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I’m Not Going to Sign Any Bill That Takes Authority Away From Me

      Hero of the Left

      • OBE #Learn2Essential

        In a republic I can see how Governors are enjoying this. I dont need legislators, judges are rubber stamping my every move….we should have done this years ago!

      • Mad Scientist

        “The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line.”

  2. KibbledKristen

    Are we Zooming this evening?

    • Unreconstructed

      I think Neph said he’d fire it up and hand it off – sounded like he has other plans.

      • KibbledKristen

        OK cool…

        Whoever is handling the Zoom, could you repost the link? I have a longtime friend/colleague that is bored and wanted to join.

      • Nephilium

        I’ve scheduled one. I’ll be handing the reins over to someone else tonight though. I’ll fire it up at 19:00 Eastern.

        I do have some other things I need to take care of tomorrow morning, and I know myself.

        /waves at Festus

      • Tonio

        Thanks, Nephi. Good luck tomorrow.

      • Nephilium

        Appreciate the thought. Nothing serious, I just can’t pull another all nighter.

      • westernsloper

        It only took me two days to recover from that night and I don’t remember half of it.

      • KibbledKristen

        Thanks Neph!

        I’ll sign on before my friend and let the host know

    • Tonio

      I cut my hair for you people in anticipation of Zooming.

      The ladies are hereby warned that they may swoon when I come on camera.

      • KibbledKristen

        My hair is almost longish at this point. I can do a full pony tail.

        I was gonna, like, put on makeup & shit, too.

      • Tonio

        Ooooh…. You go, girl.

      • C. Anacreon

        I was gonna, like, put on makeup & shit, too.

        It’s always a good idea to shit before a Zoom meet-up, good plan!

      • Mad Scientist

        Only the ladies?

      • bacon-magic

        they may swoon when I come on camera.

        “Things I’ve seen people say on pornhub and Glibs.”

      • kbolino

        I don’t think swoon is quite the right word for the reaction you’ll get.

      • DEG

        I need a black market haircut and am an ugly motherfucker.

        You can all thank me later for going on the Zoom meetings with audio only.

      • Gustave Lytton

        My clippers arrived and I cut my hair last night. Been years since I last did it myself. A few imperfections and unevenness in spots but I think I actually like it better than my longtime barber. Does make a hell of a mess though.

    • KibbledKristen

      If I weren’t single and on the prowl, I would shave the fuck out of my hair.

      • Mojeaux

        If I didn’t look so fucking ugly with a shaved head, I would shave mine again too.

        It FELT glorious. It LOOKED hideous.

        (I wore a head wrap out in public and made sure I had ginormous chandelier gypsy earrings everywhere I went. People were so NIIIIICE to me! Took me a while to figure out why.)

      • Tres Cool

        “Is this your 1st round of chemo?”

        /things I hear when Ive tried to grow a beard

      • Invisible BEAM of the comment stream

        Huh. Small world.

      • Rhywun

        I got that for a long time when I was younger. Now people just think I’m bald. (I’m not :P)

  3. invisible finger

    I’m not taking up smoking unless Trump tells me to.

    • westernsloper

      What did it say? I got pay walled.

  4. westernsloper

    Stay home, drink G

    • westernsloper

      Wtf? Squirrels done ate it.

    • SweatingGin

      Will do, but not because anyone told me to

  5. Suthenboy

    All this speculation and planning on how to re-open the country/economy. WTF?
    How, oh how on earth can that be done? It is such a mystery.

    • R C Dean

      It’s like repealing Obamacare. One. Fucking. Sentence. would do the job. We don’t need a new program or more orders or a new Dept. of Stopping Doing What We Were Doing.

    • RBS

      It’s like people have forgotten how to fucking live in two months.

  6. 23rd Century Temporal Boy

    In Kim’s Honor,,,,,,,,

  7. The Late P Brooks

    I noped out of that and headed back to the office. “Oh crap, got a meeting!” **smokebomb**

    Shot: zoom to Brett at wheel of James Bond’s Aston Martin.

    *burnout*

  8. The Late P Brooks

    Pinellas County discusses how to reopen beaches.

    NEEDZ MOAR PUBLIK INPUTZ

  9. westernsloper

    Lawmakers are looking toward the next bill in an unprecedented government response to the crisis.

    STOP HELPING!

  10. Drake

    How to re-open the beaches…

    Take down the “closed” signs?

    • Tonio

      [wild applause]

    • Suthenboy

      But how will people know what to do?

  11. Gustave Lytton

    Nice avatar Mr L.

  12. The Other Kevin

    One of my in-laws, in his early 20’s, is in the hospital with GI symptoms and pneumonia. They can’t keep his fever under control. He tested negative for flu, and negative for COVID – twice. As Mrs. TOK said, most of the people they test are sick, and they do a flu test first, so what the hell is making these people sick?

    • R C Dean

      There’s a whole universe of bugs, and an immune system we have only the slightest understanding of.

      • Suthenboy

        ^This^ X 1000

        Despite our vastly greater understanding of the universe we live in than even the recent past it still amounts to jack shit.
        It has only been about ten years since we learned how to do prostate surgery without cutting nerves and causing loss of sexual function. Get that? We still don’t have a full understanding of basic anatomy.
        In researching rheumatoid arthritis possible causes and treatments I discovered that some dude in Colorado had ground up ticks and discovered more than 17,000 different species of mycoplasma living in the tick’s gut. That was only a few years ago, and that fauna is different in every locale on the planet. What we call Lyme’s disease is most likely not one disease but several hundred different varieties that manifest in a similar manner.
        I could go on all day with this. We fool ourselves into thinking we know what we are doing.

      • JaimeRoberto Delecto

        I listened to a podcast many years ago about the flu vaccine, and they said one reason that the vaccine is perceived to be ineffective, in addition to the fact that the vaccine is simply a best guess of which strains will be common in six months, is that there’s a whole bunch of stuff that causes flu like symptoms that isn’t influenza.

    • The Other Kevin

      … further making ridiculous the assumption that someone who died with symptoms, but no test, was a Corona death.

    • RBS

      Despite what the media wants you to believe, there numerous diseases out there that did not take a break to make room for COVID-19.

      • Tonio

        Well-put.

    • jesse.in.mb

      The test for active cases of COVID has a high false negative rate apparently (~30%). An acquaintance of mine said that the hospital she works in started doing in-house testing, and based on the first round of results were instructed to start moving patients out of the COVID sections. A few hours later they were ordered to re-test EVERYONE which she thought was really unusual and they had to move some folks back into the COVID areas immediately afterward. That’s part of the reason for the presumptive positive even after rounds of testing.

      A friend of my BF is possibly in the same category. He was hospitalized with a rapid onset, really gnarly pneumonia in his early 30s but tests came back negative. They told him to behave like he was a risk of spreading it even though the tests showed negative.

      • jesse.in.mb

        I suppose it doesn’t go without saying, but the BF’s friend may also just have had really bad pneumonia from other causes. As RBS said it’s not like everything else takes a break just because COVID is taking up all the attention.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Also sample collection problems/errors and viral load at the sample site.

    • DEG

      Sorry. I hope your in-law recovers.

      • The Other Kevin

        Thanks. They moved him off the COVID floor. Not sure if that was a good idea or not. But, I’m not a doctor.

      • westernsloper

        Hope he gets better.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      GI, fever, and pneumonia does sound like COVID symptoms.

      I wish you and yours the best.

    • Grosspatzer

      That does not sound good. Whatever he’s got, hope he recovers soon.

    • Count Potato

      Sorry to hear that. Hope he gets well soon.

  13. The Late P Brooks

    I just came back from the Post Office. Just lit the fuse on a feud with the neighbors.

    I’m sick of their communitarian wet dream bullshit.

    • Sean

      Set up some claymores?

      • Tres Cool

        + Front Towards Enemy

    • Mojeaux

      *plops on floor and eagerly awaits a story*

      • Ted S.

        Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,
        A tale of a fateful trip….

    • Animal

      Well, drop the other shoe.

    • Tonio

      Return receipts with signatures required?

  14. Grosspatzer

    The team at La Pitié Salpêtrière hospital in Paris found that smokers appeared to have five times less chance of being infected than non-smokers

    /Puffs furiously on pipe (no, not THAT pipe)

    And thanks to SP and all the PTB for keeping this place going in these trying times.

    • 23rd Century Temporal Boy

      Why not Both?
      /Lights up a cigar

  15. grrizzly

    I liked the headline.

    Maybe the Experts Were Right About Covid-19 the First Time

    It’s time to confront an awful possibility about the lockdowns in which many of the world’s economies now find themselves: The experts might have been right the first time.

    “The first time” was not so long ago—February to mid-March—when official opinion on how best to grapple with the new coronavirus pandemic was very different. The distinguishing characteristic was modesty.

    The stated goal was not to vanquish the virus but merely to try to control its spread so as not to overwhelm health-care systems. Officials also understood public patience with draconian measures would wear thin quickly and demanded politicians exercise caution when asking the public to take on burdens.

    Those opinions now are widely derided, often in insulting terms. Yet subsequent events suggest they’re mainly correct.

    • R C Dean

      I was thinking just that yesterday.

    • The Other Kevin

      I’ve been thinking that all week. The goalposts have moved, but most people don’t seem to notice.

    • Gustave Lytton

      Oh, just like when those stupid rubes were buying facemasks that they didn’t need.

    • Suthenboy

      As I have pointed out before we don’t have civil unrest here because people have too much to lose. If they keep the economy in an induced coma that is going to change.
      It won’t be pretty.
      In Bananarepublic protesters wear masks and throw rocks. Here they wont wear masks and will be carrying rifles.

      • Dr. Fronkensteen

        In part but we’re more individualistic think of the book Bowling Alone and have no old fashioned militia system. It’s too easy for everyone to feel alone and just knuckle under. There’s bravery in numbers.

    • OBE #Learn2Essential

      NV isnt going to open until we have a 14 day drop in cases…not deaths or hospitalizations. Goal posts were definitely moved.

      Hell news isnt even bothered to ask what he is doing. Still silent from my state reps so effectively Nevada is ruled by the Governor.

  16. The Late P Brooks

    A trillion here, a trillion there… it’s only money, right?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      We’ve got lots of money trees

      • 23rd Century Temporal Boy

        +1 Trillion Simoleon tree,
        /Sim City 4

  17. DEG

    I feel bad, everyone else got let go except me.

    Sorry.

    While divided on beaches and businesses, the leaders are united in requiring people to maintain a 6-foot distance from one another and to avoid gathering in large groups, so they can limit a further spread of COVID-19. They also want to fall back under the county’s earlier safer-at-home order that required many businesses to close at 10 p.m. When residents return to beaches, it could only be for exercising under a phased plan, some suggested, and restaurant capacities should be reduced by 50 percent.

    Several municipal leaders also want the public to wear face masks, according to a review of records.

    Fuck you. Just open the fuck up.

    According to Newsis, movement has been observed among “dedicated vehicles” for Kim that suggest he may have been evacuated from Pyongyang. A special train for Kim’s use was stationed in Wonsan, but Kim’s private plane remained in Pyongyang, the report says.

    “Dedicated vehicles”, “special train”, “private plane”. While the people of North Korea starve. It’s good to be the king.

    On top of funds for state and local governments, Democrats want the next bill to include hazard pay for workers and money for the struggling U.S. Postal Service. The president has said he wants to provide relief for states and municipalities, revamp U.S. infrastructure, create incentives for restaurant and entertainment spending, and cut payroll taxes.

    Instead, how about incentives for frog-marching certain governors out of a job?

  18. Gustave Lytton

    Stupid hummingbird is stuck in the garage trying to exit through the skylight.

    • Ted S.

      Open the garage door.

      • 23rd Century Temporal Boy

        Too obvious….

      • Gustave Lytton

        The garage door is open. It won’t fly down to go out it.

      • 23rd Century Temporal Boy

        Light the garage on fire, when the sky lite melts, FREEDOM!

      • Gustave Lytton

        Avatar checks out.

      • 23rd Century Temporal Boy

        upside down, Gold plated Binos’

      • westernsloper

        Get on the roof and cover the skylight with the wife’s best table cloth.

      • Mad Scientist

        Or her wedding dress.

    • Mad Scientist

      It’ll die in there in just a few hours if you don’t provide it with an escape route. Their energy reserves are almost non-existent.

    • Gustave Lytton

      Ok, got it out. Used a rake and slowly moved it underneath until it perched on the tines, then took it outside and gave it a little shake. Flew off into the wild blue yonder.

      • Mad Scientist

        Hooray!

      • Gustave Lytton

        Thanks to you and a little Google foo! Normally we just leave the birds to find their own way out after they stop panicking. Glad I didn’t wait too long.

      • 23rd Century Temporal Boy

        Cool, I like hummingbirds..

      • westernsloper

        Good work!

      • Grosspatzer

        Excellent. Love those little buggers. In the odd years where my Delphiniums manage to bloom before being devoured by the various vermin inhabiting my property, they are frequent visitors.

    • dontreadonme

      I used to keep a butterfly net on a long ass pole in the barn for the exact same reason. If you can get on the roof put a cover over the skylight until it leaves.

    • Suthenboy

      Hummingbirds find the color red irresistible. Hang something red in the open garage door.

      *If. you like hummingbirds and want to get close to them buy yourself a Hawaiian shirt with big red flowers on it then stand still next to a feeder.
      Also, they tame easy.
      These exist: https://www.hummerring.com

      • B.P.

        They should probably figure out a different url for their website.

      • Count Potato

        LOL

  19. Q Continuum

    Friday Funbags proves once again that big tits are *objectively* the greatest thing in the history of existence. On this, there can be no debate.

    http://archive.is/YeBda

    • DEG

      That’s an excellent gallery. They’re all welcome at my house.

  20. The Late P Brooks

    In my dreams, I see hundreds of incumbent politicians, at every level, voted out of office in November.

    In my dreams.

  21. westernsloper

    Another article about the smoking study..

    • The Other Kevin

      Dear Lord, please don’t let Trump mention this. Things are bad enough what with the chloroquine and injecting bleach stories all over the Internet.

      • C. Anacreon

        Some lefty friends in a group text this morning were screaming that people were going to be injecting Lysol because of what Trump said.

        Progs really think everyone is stupid except for them, and believe Trump supporters are so excessively stupid they’ll do anything he says immediately (despite the fact the Trump supporters are probably much more likely to understand what Trump said in context, and not just believe what CNN told them to think.)

        One actually texted “he’s going to have a lot of blood on his hands for this one. Should already be arrested for attempted murder for saying it.”

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        No no no, he absolutely told people to drink bleach and inject lysol. Quit covering for him!!!

      • Nephilium

        Wait… I shouldn’t have done that?

      • westernsloper

        I dip my cigarettes in a bleach and fish tank cleaner mix prior to smoking. Have to let them dry first.

      • 23rd Century Temporal Boy

        Ahh, the old days of Angel dust dipped Sherman cigarettes,

      • Tres Cool

        + get wet

      • Mad Scientist

        That’s not the recommended delivery method. You’re supposed to directly inject the bleach under your skin. Why do you hate the children?

      • westernsloper

        I have been injecting 409 but only because I am out of Simple Green.

      • 23rd Century Temporal Boy

        I’m so broke I’m snorting Comet with Bleach…..

      • Tres Cool

        Accept no substitutes- dont fall for the Phantom 409.

      • Tres Cool

        errr…..309

        Never mind

    • Grosspatzer

      No time like the present, I guess..

      Smoking saved my life once already. On my way to work on the morning of 9/11 I was waiting for a bus and lit up a smoke while reading the Post. Bus came as soon as I lit up (as it always does), and I decided to skip that bus and finish my smoke. Got on the next bus, got off the subway at Fulton Street at 8:50 AM, looked up and saw flames and smoke just below my office on the 103rd floor in 1WTC. No one there got out alive.

      • Mojeaux

        Whoa. That gave me chills.

        Not the good ASMR type.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Damn.

      • DEG

        Wow.

      • westernsloper

        Ho. Lee. Shit.

      • Suthenboy

        That’s one hell of a story Grosspatzer. I will be re-telling that.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        It’s better to be lucky than good.

      • Grosspatzer

        You ain’t kidding. I’ve never seen this in the media, but we (eSpeed) were not doing well at the time. On 9/10 we let go 30 employees. Imagine, you get canned, you think this is the worst day of my life, maybe you get drunk, break some shit, whatever. Then you wake up the next morning to this. Made me realize that whatever happens, if you’re still breathing there is always tomorrow and that awful thing that happened may not be so bad as you think.

      • Dr. Fronkensteen

        Reminds me of the Chinese allegory.

        A Chinese farmer gets a horse, which soon runs away. A neighbor says, “That’s bad news.” The farmer replies, “Good news, bad news, who can say?”

        The horse comes back and brings another horse with him. Good news, you might say.
        The farmer gives the second horse to his son, who rides it, then is thrown and badly breaks his leg.

        “So sorry for your bad news,” says the concerned neighbor. “Good news, bad news, who can say?” the farmer replies.

        In a week or so, the emperor’s men come and take every able-bodied young man to fight in a war. The farmer’s son is spared.

        Good news, of course

      • Grosspatzer

        Nice, hadn’t heard that one.

      • Bill Door

        I like it, Fronkensteen. I am copying that down for later.

      • Sensei

        Having been in NYC at the same time I’ve heard a few of these. Yours is among the top. I did a quick Google and after I read that eSpeed was started by Cantor it made it all the more awful.

        My neighbor two doors down had the misfortune to witness the jumpers. He also had the privilege of getting covered in the “ash” and getting the hose after riding the ferry to NJ.

        I was fortunate to simply be in midtown and stuck in the city that day. Wasn’t until after that I got to figure out who I worked with and had as clients were no longer with us.

      • Grosspatzer

        Also, I normally worked a 7AM to 4PM shift (DBA early coverage) but on the previous afternoon had a hard disk crash on my workstation. Desktop tech was ghosting a new box that morning, I switched shifts with a colleague. I may have mentioned before that I loathe with the heat of a thousand suns the assholes who went to war and ratcheted up the surveillance state after this. The same assholes are doing the same thing now, and the worst part is that the vast majority is not merely acquiescent but actively supports this shit. The whole world has gone crazy.

      • Mojeaux

        The whole world has gone crazy

        No, I think the crazy part was from 1776 to about FDR.

        The rest is just normal human history and its relationship with the powers that be.

      • Tres Cool

        As I like to point out from one of Stanhope’s bits: “you were born free, got fucked out of half of it, and now you’re waving a flag celebrating it.”

      • Rhywun

        Wow.

        I was late to work too, so I was outside when I saw the 2nd plane hit from Broadway. So I got to walk back to Queens instead of being trapped in the office for hours.

      • Mojeaux

        Being late to a meeting in the Twin Towers that day was a plot point in one of my books.

      • Rhywun

        I should add I did NOT work in the Twin Towers, just a block away.

      • Grosspatzer

        As a fellow NYer, I think you’ll appreciate this one. There are two express trains on the Lexington avenue line (4 and 5). The southbound 4 continues to Brooklyn at all times, the 5 terminates at Bowling Green in downtown Manhattan except during rush hours when it too goes to Brooklyn. So about 9:30 I’m waiting in Bowling Green for a Brooklyn-bound train and a 5 pulls in. It is no longer rush hour, so this is the last stop and passengers are instructed to exit the train. Problem is, the train is full of panicked people trying to escape Manhattan and they are screaming at the motorman to “take this train to Brooklyn!”, which he cannot do. This goes on for a few minutes and thankfully the passengers eventually disembark and wait for the next train. That was scary, the nearest thing I’ve ever seen to a riot.

      • Rhywun

        I vaguely remember waiting for a northbound 6 at one of the local stations. Gave up after a half hour and continued walking to the Queensboro Bridge and home.

        Addendum: I finally watched “Cloverfield” the other day – these days I’m recording a lot of movies. Lots of obvious parallels. It was actually pretty good.

      • Sean

        Damn dude! Did ya buy a lottery ticket that day?

      • Grosspatzer

        Probably should have, but it didn’t occur to me at the time. /kicks self

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      “ fewer COVID-19 patients were smokers than they were expecting”

      I’m just spitballing here but isn’t it likely that smokers generally have more lung and heart problems, realize those are risk factors for a bad outcome, and are isolating and being careful about taking precautions?

      • 23rd Century Temporal Boy

        #METOO
        and don’t get hurt and have to go to the Hospital, whatever you do

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Yeah, don’t cower but definitely don’t take chances you don’t have to take. It’s the smart thing to do.

      • westernsloper

        Who knows. Could be us smokers develop coughs from time to time and ignore them, just like we ignore the fact we shouldn’t smoke, so they never went and got tested and either waited it out and got better or croaked. I developed a horrible cough in Dec so bad I thought I cracked a rib. It went away but now I cough a lot because my smoking has doubled.

      • 23rd Century Temporal Boy

        Maybe it’s the morning hack that helps with it, Nicotine is very poisonous, or we stink and no one gets within 6 feet anyway…..

  22. mikey

    “…have five times less chance of being infected than non-smokers.”
    When did “times” become the default for describing a fraction of something.

    Shouldn’t it read “one fifth the chance”? Five times less than makes no sense.

    • J. Frank Parnell

      It decreased the risk by 500%.

    • 23rd Century Temporal Boy

      New circular Math, I approached it in reverse and it kind of makes sense….

  23. Shpip

    The state recently made me get a new license plate, so I got one that you reprobates would approve of.

    For those of you who don’t quite grok and took Latin in school, it’s part of Horace’s Odes.

    If you didn’t waste your time on Latin, remember what the reply was at TOS whenever someone commented “For a magazine called Reason…”

    Tucking into a Monkey 47 martini, sans vermouth. The stuff’s phenomenally expensive, but a bottle is a couple-times-a-year treat for myself.

    • RAHeinlein

      Nice – cheers!

      • Shpip

        Dingdingding! Get that man a kewpie doll.

        Since this is the vehicle I use to tow the Porsche to Track Day, and it and the toy both wear Michelins, and I like to eat at Michelin-starred restaurants, and since Nunc est Bibendum is practically my life motto…

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Mine is SUSU, Semper Ubi Sub Ubi

    • Tonio

      Classy.

      So you like gin shaken with ice. Nothing wrong with that.

      • Shpip

        Shaken with ice? What kind of philistine do you take me for?

    • Nephilium

      My gift bottle to myself is the Midleton Very Rare. There is always a bottle on the shelf, and it will usually last for several years.

      I’m currently drinking a NEIPA called Millennial Hipster from a Cleveland brewery. Dinner has been ordered from another local brewery, with two 6-packs of their beer.

  24. The Other Kevin

    If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past month, it’s that there’s still no shortage of people who have no idea what’s going on but sure as hell think they do.

    • Suthenboy

      See RC and my reply at comment 14. They apply to more than biology.

      • C. Anacreon

        I”m amazed at all the people who are saying “we need to follow the SCIENCE!” and then blindly follow whatever the local news and politicians say they should do, which has almost no basis in science.

        Of course, all the people crying ‘science!” have zero science background, but it doesn’t stop them from being smug about it.

        I was conveying to a friend today that the recent studies are showing that the virus likely has a lethality rate less than 0.5%, or less than five in a thousand infected will die ( and actually, glibs, it will probably end up closer to 1-2 per 1,000). He responded, “you don’t mean people who are infected, though, right? You’re talking out of the overall population?”

        Sure, bud, that’s what we medical researchers do, figure out how many people die out of those who don’t get infected with a disease. Sheesh.

      • Suthenboy

        I don’t follow your friend’s logi….Oh.

        Ask those people to define the word science. I usually get gibberish as an answer. I gave up long ago as there is nothing whatsoever to be gained in those conversations.

      • JaimeRoberto Delecto

        I now cross myself when I hear someone say “follow the science”.

      • B.P.

        See also: “I believe in science!”

        My mayor said this today during a press conference to announce another couple of weeks of house arrest.

  25. The Late P Brooks

    They’ve got him, now!

    Trump owes tens of millions to the Bank of China — and the loan is due soon

    Donald Trump is warning “China will own the United States” if Joe Biden is elected president.

    But Trump himself is tens of millions of dollars in debt to China: In 2012, his real estate partner refinanced one of Trump’s most prized New York buildings for almost $1 billion. The debt includes $211 million from the state-owned Bank of China — its first loan of this kind in the U.S. — which matures in the middle of what could be Trump’s second term, financial records show.

    It’s the end of the road for President Cartoon Villain. He never should have tried to make the transition from private enterprise to public service. It can’t be done. He’s tainted forever.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Biden and Idiot Biden Jr. are up to their eyeballs in Chinese influence which they’d leverage against Biden like nobody’s business. He’s right about China owning the US if Biden wins (hyperbolically right I mean).

      • Tres Cool

        I heard Corey Lewandowski on the radio today, and he called Biden “Beijing Joe” for that very reason.

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      211 mil. So who has the problem. Trump or the bank?

      • Suthenboy

        That’s what I was thinking.

        Old saying: “If you owe the bank 100 bucks, they own you. If you owe them a million bucks, you own them.”

      • Grosspatzer

        AFAIK Trump’s career has been a series of failures and successes, and debt is a constant companion. Do people actually think it is possible to build skyscrapers without financing? And I’m constantly hearing how he is an idiot because he has failed multiple times, as if any businessman has a 100 50 20 percent success rate. No, whatever his personal failings may be he has the balls to try, fail, try again and again until he (maybe) gets it right. When did these pissants ever risk anything?

    • J. Frank Parnell

      It all makes sense now.

      Obviously Trump was planning on paying back the debt with windfall profits from his chloroquinine investments, but the #resistance foiled his nefarious plot, so now he’s pumping up his Chlorox and Lysol investments.

  26. Raven Nation

    Regarding mail-in ballots.

    Press briefing yesterday:

    Grant Schulte (AP): despite the increase in mail-in ballots, some Democrats are arguing that it’s irresponsible to allow in person voting in Nebraska in upcoming primary. They’re saying it’s only being done because Republicans don’t want to help Democrats. Can you address this?

    Governor Pete Ricketts: …we don’t want to disenfranchise voters who want to go to the polls…many Nebraskans prefer to vote through polling so we are not going to follow the Democrats’s plan to disenfranchise Nebraskans by closing polling…but we’re not going to follow the Democrats plan to disenfranchise voters.

    About 20 minutes in: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/jibguxil57mbngd/AADySA2xMufYcvqL89VT13Loa?dl=0&preview=Press+Conf+4.23.2020.mp4

    • Q Continuum

      Boy do they ever hate it when people use their tactics against them.

  27. Stinky Wizzleteats

    A truly excellent video on the various hydroxychloroquine studies, their validity and lack of validity, and the conclusions we should and should not draw from them:

    https://youtu.be/dLSYRqcg0wo

    The chloroquine talk begins at about 4 min in if interested.

  28. leon

    Can someone explain how only 6 senators is legal to pass a bill? And why the fuck Rand and Mike Lee went along with it?

    • 23rd Century Temporal Boy

      FYTW, is the correct answer, Bye Constitution, nice knowing ya!

    • Suthenboy

      Whut? What bill?

    • OBE #Learn2Essential

      Was it a committee vote? Looks like they are riding all this on the budget bill.

  29. The Late P Brooks

    A truly excellent video on the various hydroxychloroquine studies, their validity and lack of validity, and the conclusions we should and should not draw from them:

    Is “Don’t wait ’til the patient is already on a ventilator to start” in there?

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      One of the first things he says, also mentions the use of zinc in combination which none of the US studies seem to be doing.

  30. KibbledKristen

    I’ve been bingeing on 60 Days In. I would not last a second in jail. The social systems are incomprehensible to me.

    • Rufus the Monocled

      Ditto. I’m at the point I want to punch people in the face while cackling.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      You’ve got to establish your cred by cutting a bitch on the first day.

      Second day, you’ve got to get yourself a lackey, preferably heavily tattooed.

      Third day, cut another bitch and choke one out.

      It’s all gravy from that point on.

    • bacon-magic

      Even if you don’t smoke get all the cigarettes you can. It’s just like gold to a libertarian to those inmates.

  31. Suthenboy

    Re: Smoking and the Flu Manchu.

    Nicotine is a poison and a very powerful one. My old dentist told me “Don’t tell anyone I said this but smokers have far fewer problems with their teeth than non-smokers.”

    Nicotine kills bugs.

    • kinnath

      Sounds like chemo. Kill the disease before the meds kill you.

      • Suthenboy

        Essentially, yes.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      I’d make fun of you but I went out and bought a shit ton of ivermectin when I saw a study saying it might be effective for fighting this thing. At least at 20 bucks for enough to treat six 1200 pound horses I won’t go broke buying it (plus it’s apple flavored, yum).

  32. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Looks like the bull trap is set on the markets.

    I’m expecting a heavy down cycle next week.

  33. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Paging Q, Q to the flesh colored courtesy phone

    • Scruffy Nerfherder
      • 23rd Century Temporal Boy

        Jeez! she’s a Baby FFS!

      • Suthenboy

        If I had a tongue like that I would be king of the world.
        I am pretty sure I can still tie a cherry stem in a knot with my tongue but it has been a long time since I tried.

      • Count Potato

        Woah

    • Nephilium

      That’s not a phone!

    • Q Continuum

      Genetic engineering works!

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      She related to Gene Simmons?

    • SandMan

      Holy Moly!

  34. The Late P Brooks

    I”m amazed at all the people who are saying “we need to follow the SCIENCE!” and then blindly follow whatever the local news and politicians say they should do, which has almost no basis in science.

    Of course, all the people crying ‘science!” have zero science background, but it doesn’t stop them from being smug about it.

    Expert-ism. The Progressive Cult of Technocracy (ht Naptown Bill, I think).

    Why do you think Obama had the background extras dress in white lab coats when he talked about Obamacare? They look more SCIENCEy that way.

    • Suthenboy

      “…Obama had the background extras dress in white lab coats…”

      That was embarrassing. Of course almost everything he did was beyond cringe worthy.

  35. Derpetologist

    odds and ends

    I think people wouldn’t mind the stay at home order as much if it was enforced this way:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MvbkehQqOY

    I’ve been booze free for 3 days. I used non-alcoholic beer as a crutch. It tastes OK, especially the one from Bitburger. Supposedly, non-alcoholic beer is also bad for the liver, but I don’t see how it’s different than eating a slice of bread and drinking a glass of water.

    On the subject of kids getting socialized at school, I will note that just about everyone in prison is a product of public schools. I can’t recall any school shooters who were home-schooled or went to private schools.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Home schooling is dangerous for children.

      It increases their odds of being shot by by the FBI.

    • Suthenboy

      The ‘homeschooling is bad’ canard is complete horseshit drummed up by teacher’s unions.

      I remember when the Daleks were played by vacuum cleaners. That is the Dr. Who I remember.

    • Grosspatzer

      That video reminded me of this

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        +1 Peter “Gladiator Movies” Graves

  36. Derpetologist

    best plague masks

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QyrSMfZ6cY

    My favorite was the lady who used a child’s birthday hat; although the guy who went grocery shopping in scuba gear went above and beyond all the others.

    Also, no more 503/504 errors. Yay!

  37. hayeksplosives

    It’s 91 degrees in Northern San Diego. The “authorities” are going to have their hands full arresting beach goers.

    • 23rd Century Temporal Boy

      Ha! 89 in BhC, of course that won’t last….

    • KibbledKristen

      My parents used to live near Escondido!!

  38. Invisible BEAM of the comment stream

    Kim’s doing “field guidance” at a resort construction site? WTF?!?

  39. Q Continuum

    So this shit about the disinfectant… what’s the big deal? I read what Trump said, and it’s typical jumbled Trumpian stuff, but I couldn’t find a single place where he said “Go inject Lysol.” It was some muddled stuff about UV light and disinfectant.

    Seems as though, once again, they’re just making shit up out of whole cloth.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      It was stupid, and the response is even stupider.

      Welcome to the future.

    • Suthenboy

      “…they’re just making shit up out of whole cloth…”

      No. Way. Say it aint so.

    • Don Escaped a Landslide

      Whatever he said was dumb enough that he later said it was “sarcasm.”

      I don’t care: there is certainly no news on his intellectual capacity.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Well he does have some talents and speaking off the cuff ain’t really one of them, nor is knowing when to keep his mouth shut. Still, the reaction has only a tenuous basis of reality and is way overblown.

      • Don Escaped a Landslide

        I get the derp game; it’s not news to me that most media outlets have agendas. But there’s enough sin to go around: the partisan finger-pointing doesn’t satisfy any of my intellectual needs. I don’t fault anyone who enjoys identity politics 24/7: folks should jerk it to whatever they wish.

        But I’m infinity more interested in the bearing and behavior of the president. I don’t give the most powerful man in the universe a pass ever: I don’t give a fuck whether they fell out of a Red or a Blue clown car.

        This also doesn’t follow: a/ha ha the White House is a shit show! b/but let me hold some hack news outlet accountable on every point. I don’t mind B: knock yourself out, but why the pass in A?

        Anyway, this sort of thing is my least favorite 20% of Glibs; I can wade through it and wait for greatness because it does show up here over and over, sooner or later, from all corners.

      • Jarflax

        Some of that is because the relentless piling on of the media triggers an us vs. them mindset, but yeah it is hard to deny that Trump babbles some incoherent gibberish. I personally enjoy some of Trump’s willingness to call the media on their nonsense, but I really don’t enjoy his incoherent rambling, and when he goes full bore into the petty he said she said you are absolutely correct that it demeans the office.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        the relentless piling on of the media triggers an us vs. them mindset

        For me, it’s hard to shake the reflexive antipathy toward the media. Whatever Trump is, he’s not a decades’ long canker on the ass of society, taking every opportunity to make things worse…. Oh wait!

        Seriously though, Trump is good for two things only… Unhinging “respected” leftist institutions and occasionally bumbling into a good idea on the way to unhinging those institutions.

        Projecting anything else onto him (positive or not) is folly.

      • Not Adahn

        IMO it’s more important to foster scorn for the media than the president because:

        1) The president only is around for 8 years. The media as an entity is around forever and as individuals are around for decades
        2) The president only has as much power as the media gives him
        3) Approximately half the time there is no difference between the two. So when there is an opportunity to draw a distinction, I’ll come down on the side of bashing the fourth estate every time.

      • The Hyperbole

        Always my favorite part of the Trump says something stupid news cycle. When after his supporters spend 24 hours explaining how he didn’t say what he said he comes out and says “hell yes I said it.”

  40. Derpetologist

    Stossel on the lockdown

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuzPrhnaiYE

    Most of the stories have made the rounds already. The people being arrested for watching the sunsets from their *cars* made me [head desk].

    The Wyoming pics made me nostalgic for road trip last summer. I can picture myself living in a shack and fishing for food. Maybe a little bow hunting for variety.

    The best part about Wyoming is that any time you meet someone, they act like a castaway who just caught sight of passing ship. Their eyes say: Hey! Over Here!

    • Suthenboy

      I wonder how many lawsuits are going to come out of the blatantly unconstitutional govt actions this panic has inspired?

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Hopefully a lot, for once I hope a bunch of lawyers get freaking rich.

      • Gustave Lytton

        It’s not unconstitutional if the courts say it’s not.

        /Dred Scott, Plessey, Schenck, Korematsu, etc.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I can picture myself living in a shack and fishing for food.

      *FBI perks up*

      “Do you like to write letters too?”

      • Derpetologist

        Yes, sometimes quite angry ones, for I am concerned for industrial society and its future.

        [injects more colloidal silver]

        Ice cream, Scruffy. Children’s ice cream.

  41. Suthenboy

    Re: Trump is stupid

    In spite of his stupidity he managed to make himself multiple billions of dollars where the smart people did not. I wish I were stupid like that.

    • Grosspatzer

      This. Envy is a helluva drug.

      • Grosspatzer

        (not directed at Suthen!)

  42. The Late P Brooks

    I’m going to do shot of Clorox in the tanning booth. I’m gonna live forever!

    • Mad Scientist

      INJECT the Clorox. If you’re going to do a shot of something, it has to be something shines inside your body. Like radium.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      I hear it’s good with tonic water and a twist of lime.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      You’re supposed to bathe in it in order to reduce radiation and toxic metals.

      /Fredo’s wife

      • Suthenboy

        I must admit I bath in Clorox multiple times per year. It is a very effective way of ridding yourself of chiggers and one thing we have no shortage of in louisiana is chiggers.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Bet you didn’t know you were reducing your radiation load at the same time.

      • Suthenboy

        And increasing my energy flow? That explains my improved chakras and ….uh….what do you call that glow around your body that can only be seen by magic people?

        I wonder if I am not getting some kind of dementia. I find myself at a loss for words sometimes, common words I used to have no problem coming up with. Maybe I need to bath in bleach more often.

        Aura. I had to look it up. That is the word I was looking for.

      • Grosspatzer

        That loss of words – yeah, I’m gettin’ old too. Still at a loss as to how I landed my current gig, given that I had one of those brain-freeze episodes in the middle of an interview while demonstrating my firm grasp of multiple database concurrency models.

      • Mojeaux

        I’ve done that.

  43. Derpetologist

    real paleo-diets – not so great as it turns out

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL5VCs7scbU

    gist – fossilized bones from a hominid skeleton show a defect caused by excessive vitamin A; most likely from a liver-heavy diet. Polar bear livers contain toxic amounts of vitamin A. Eskimos don’t eat it for that reason. Rabbits contain too little fat. Hence deaths from so-called rabbit starvation.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      If I were an actual paleo human, I would probably eat whatever the fuck I could get my hairy hands on.

    • Suthenboy

      “Moderation in all things” – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

      I think I quoted that correctly.

      • Nephilium

        Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.

        — R. A. Heinlein

      • 23rd Century Temporal Boy

        Rehab is for Quitters,
        /Tony Montana

      • Spudalicious

        “including moderation.”

        – Spudalicious

  44. Derpetologist

    penultimate linky

    The thresher shark got its name long ago from sailors who told stories of its whipping tail.

    Turns out the shark does use its tail like a whip.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHoCCPsRuhg

    How did the sailors know? Maybe they caught one and saw it whipping its tail as it flopped on the deck.

    • Not Adahn

      The mermaids told them, obviously.

    • Suthenboy

      Or they sailed….on the ocean….where the thresher lives…and saw it.

      • Derpetologist

        but it hunts way underwater – how would they have seen?

        Maybe a few guys that got keel-hauled saw it? Or pearl divers?

      • Suthenboy

        If you spend your life on the water you will eventually see nearly everything there.

  45. Not Adahn

    Time to start drinking.

    Bourbon.

    And a mug of tea since my hands are cold.

    • 23rd Century Temporal Boy

      Where is this Magic place that is cold enough your hands get cold? Terra Incognita?

      • Not Adahn

        NY. It snowed four or five days last week.

  46. Derpetologist

    A medieval European talks about Turks and vice-versa:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x23G3uw4gR8

    How little things change. During WW2, the Japanese said victory was inevitable, because the Americans were a weak, mongrel race; afraid to die and unaccustomed to hardship of any sort.

    • 23rd Century Temporal Boy

      ” Make the other Bastard die for His Country!”
      ,GS Patton

    • Lady Z

      the Japanese said victory was inevitable, because the Americans were a weak, mongrel race; afraid to die and unaccustomed to hardship of any sort

      How prescient of them.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        If only they could have held off 75 years.

  47. The Late P Brooks

    During WW2, the Japanese said victory was inevitable, because the Americans were a weak, mongrel race; afraid to die and unaccustomed to hardship of any sort.

    Their timetable was just a little too optimistic. If they bombed Pearl Harbor now, America would surrender without firing a shot.

    • 23rd Century Temporal Boy

      Do you really believe that? I don’t…..
      We aren’t pussies, and won’t just roll over,

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        We do tend to have a blood thirsty streak when riled.

  48. The Late P Brooks

    Do you really believe that? I don’t…..

    Look around you. America has unconditionally surrendered to the sniffles.

    • Suthenboy

      In my traveling days I learned that in every group of humans you have the spineless that rule in times of peace but when the SHTF there are hard men that step up.
      You have good apples and bad apples. If we were attacked today like we were then the current crop of useless would be pushed aside and the people willing to do the real work would do what needs to be done.

      We are as undefeatable as we ever were. Maybe more so.

    • Not Adahn

      Not really.

      “America” has blindly done what their leaders have told them to do. If those leaders were mad at some furriners and wanted to kill them…

    • juris imprudent

      Worse than that, we have surrendered to the nannies.

  49. DEG

    Fuck Sununu

    Gov. Chris Sununu issued a number of new executive orders Friday and also extended the state of emergency in New Hampshire for another 21 days.

    The state of emergency, first issued on March 15, and extended again earlier this month, will run through May 15 — 11 days after the originally proposed May 4 reopening date, floated by the governor in March. The governor may or may not issue another 21 day extension at that time.

    Three other emergency orders as well as an exhibit to a previous order were also issued Friday.

    • Suthenboy

      I am wondering how this is going to work with some states locked down and others not. Outcomes for the sick don’t seem to be much different. Economic outcomes on the other hand….
      I think we are getting dangerously close to some form of open rebellion.

      • AlmightyJB

        Do they really want it on full display how little power they actually have? If they were smart they would back off. If they said in two weeks, we’re going to start opening things up they could at least still show some semblance of power because people will give them that much. If they want to play the screw you plebs game instead, they’re only screwing themselves.

    • westernsloper

      Looking at this, It’s time for businesses to just start reopening and tell him to fuck off. If the cops come, tell them to fuck off. Seriously 92 in the hospital and 51 deaths? There is no justification to continue a lock down.

      • Suthenboy

        Louisiana’s numbers are a lot worse but it still doesn’t justify putting everyone out of work.

      • westernsloper

        Well, as we all agree there was never a valid justification for any of this, but now that we have more #science, with numbers like that keeping people safe is not the reason a Gov is extending a lock down.

      • westernsloper

        And CO’s numbers are way worse and the commi Polis is lifting the stay at home order.

      • J. Frank Parnell

        I just looked up my local numbers.

        1800 cases and 36 deaths in a county of 3.3 million.

        So obviously lockdown is working and should continue indefinitely.

  50. The Late P Brooks

    We are as undefeatable as we ever were. Maybe more so.

    I’m having a really hard time believing that, anymore. Anything tougher than meme-ing and picking out a color for the ribbon pin is beyond the capability of the diversity uber alles brigades.

    • Suthenboy

      And yet we have Derpetologist and his kind.

      For some reason that I don’t remember I was recently telling my wife about a guy that tried to bully me in school. She mumbled under her breath to herself “I bet that didnt last very long”.

      They are still here, you just don’t hear from them as much as the wailing SJW’s. They are busy working jobs and holding marriages together. Remember that the American Revolution was carried out by 3% of the population.

  51. Derpetologist

    today’s language lesson

    Bahr means sea in Arabic. It comes from the verb bahara, meaning to sail. Bahaar means sailor. Bahrain means two seas. The name of that country refers to the fact that it borders the Persian Gulf (Arabs call it the Gulf) and the Indian Ocean. Al-Mashaat al-Bahriyyah means marines. The literal meaning is sea walkers. Bihar (different h sound) means condiment.

    The sand worms in Dune are called Shai Hulud. I’m pretty sure that’s garbled Arabic for shayy’ khulud, meaning immortal thing. There was a famous Arab general named Khalid ibn Walid. You could translate that name as Immortal, Son of One who Fathered Many. He was undefeated in 60 battles (Napoleon won 54 out of 60 battles). Mohamed called him the drawn sword of god (sayfallah al-maslul). Salil in Arabic means the sound of a sword being drawn. It is the first word in the ISIS anthem Salil as-Sawarim (The Clashing of the Swords). Youtube has scrubbed most versions of that song.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjFzkx2q5uY

    “The clashing of the swords is the song of the defiant. The path of fighting is the path of life.”

    • Suthenboy

      They are barbarians. An uncivilized people with a pre-industrial mentality.
      I may have said this before but the daily behavior of such people is what civilized people call ‘crime’.

      • Derpetologist

        Yes and no. At the extreme end, barbarians for sure- a nation of sheep-stealers; nasty, barbarous, and cruel. But more generally, a people with a great appreciation for poetry, calligraphy, philosophy, history, architecture, music, etc.

        The more you know about them, the harder it is to hate them. And the harder it is to forgive the worst of them.

      • Suthenboy

        “…a great appreciation for poetry, calligraphy, philosophy, history, architecture, music, etc.”

        I don’t see those as markers for civilization. I see civilized vs uncivilized as cultures where one can prosper by their own efforts vs cultures where one can only prosper by forcibly taking from others.

        The problem we face is that technology advances much faster than culture can keep up. That is the main problem we have here in the west.
        Look at the subcultures such as government and criminal organizations. They don’t produce anything. Everything they have is something they took from someone who is productive. In my opinion they are barbaric cultural hold-overs.

        The problem in most of the rest of the world is much worse.

      • juris imprudent

        Medieval Europe was barbaric too, and godlychristian as can be.

        Religious zealotry is unfortunately a deep part of human nature.

      • hayeksplosives

        I think their contributions on those points of art, math, and literature are over exaggerated. Much of that knowledge was preserved in Constantinople, then smuggled West when the Byzantine Empire was clearly on the way out due to Muslim invasion.

        Don’t forget the “noble savages” also set fire to the library of Alexandria because if Allah said it, it’s already recorded somewhere else, and if Allah didn’t say it, it’s useless.

      • Suthenboy

        I dated a black girl a year or two after high school.

        I was told I shouldn’t do that and it was carefully explained to me why black males would be threatened by my behavior blah blah blah and they might lash out.

        My response was “Stop making excuses for thugs.”

        In every population there are going to be unusual individuals. All of the middle easterners I know are first rate people and I know plenty of westerners that are real pieces of cheese. Derp is right, the more you know about them the more you find out that they are people and plenty of them are good ones. However, overall their culture is very backward.

    • Not Adahn

      I’m pretty sure that’s garbled Arabic for shayy’ khulud,

      Always an excellent guess. Herbert definitely used and garbled Arabic in Dune. Heck, one of the things I liked about the series is the way that language drifted across the millennia.

      Compare with Altered Carbon in which there hasn’t been any appreciable technological advancement in centuries to the point where 150 year old malware still works.

    • Ted S.

      Bahrain means two seas. The name of that country refers to the fact that it borders the Persian Gulf (Arabs call it the Gulf) and the Indian Ocean.

      It does?

      • Derpetologist

        Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor to present Sir Ted S., Knight of Wellackshully and Extraordinaire from the venerable House of No, That’s Not Quite Right.

        Long ago it was foretold that one day, a bold hero would emerge to banish typos, minor mistakes, and misunderstandings on his own part to the land of wind and ghosts.

        A Ted is sworn to valor!

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQXy84W2AZU

        *LIGHTEN UP, FRANCIS*

      • Ted S.

        I’m sorry I can’t be perfect and sinless like you, although I try. :-p

      • Jarflax

        Wait, you gave an impromptu lecture with a significant error and your response to someone calling that error out is this? I am not sure Ted is the Francis that needs to lighten up in this conversation.

      • Derpetologist

        Bahrain definitely means 2 seas. Now what are the 2 closest bodies of water to that country?

        [Carmen San Diego music]

      • UnCivilServant

        Which carmen sandiego iteration?

      • Suthenboy

        It probably has nothing to do with actual borders. I am guessing it is a tribal name and the area they inhabit borders both.
        Most other peoples don’t think of countries the way we do here.

  52. pistoffnick

    I didn’t get an email or a phone call from HR, so I think I still have a job.

    I guess I’ll know for sure if my badge still unlocks the door on Monday morning.

    Fuck China and their stupid virus!

    • Ted S.

      Same here.

    • Suthenboy

      Agreed. With a chainsaw.

      They do have to be punished for this. Severely.

  53. Crusty Juggler

    Man Who Died Ingesting Fish Tank Cleaner Remembered as Intelligent, Levelheaded Engineer

    Wanda would constantly berate Gary in public,” said a source who asked that all identifying information be withheld. “Everyone was embarrassed for him, but he outwardly did not seem to care much.”

    “In our opinion, their marriage was seen outwardly to be as one-sided as a marriage possibly could be: Gary worshiped Wanda,” this person said, adding that his wife “would routinely call him a ‘doofus'” and humiliate him in public.

    Lenius’s friend recalled Wanda Lenius destroying her husband’s aircraft model collection after he returned home late for a meal.

    “These planes take many dozens and sometimes hundreds of hours to complete,” said the friend. “Gary did not get angry, he simply junked the planes that were not repairable and fixed the rest. That is the Gary I knew, he would never get upset, he just accepted what happened and carried on.”

    In another recent instance, the same friend said Wanda Lenius broke her husband’s laptop screen, allegedly because she was angry he had updated the Windows software on her computer.

    “Gary just ordered up a new LCD screen from Dell and took it apart and replaced the screen himself,” said the friend. “He knew nothing about repairing laptops, but he was a smart guy, he learned how.”

    My God women are monsters.

    • hayeksplosives

      Well, that one is for sure.

      Poor guy probably just wanted out.

    • Gustave Lytton

      And Epstein killed himself.

    • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

      “These planes take many dozens and sometimes hundreds of hours to complete,” said the friend. “Gary did not get angry, he simply junked the planes that were not repairable and fixed the rest. That is the Gary I knew, he would never get upset, he just accepted what happened and carried on.”

      “he would never get upset” is another way of saying “he is so beaten down that he has nothing to live for”

      Even if it’s true that he OD’d on hydrochloroquine of his own doing, I’m certain that he did it knowing full well that choking on his own vomit would be less unpleasant than continuing on.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I’ve known that dude.

      Strangely enough, his name was also Gary.

      • Crusty Juggler

        FACT: ALL GARYS ARE CUCKS

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        It took me a few years to find my voice in my marriage, but I can’t imagine not blowing up if my wife treated me like that. It’s one thing to be patient, another thing to be a doormat.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        There are certain things I let slide, but I communicate what I consider to be red lines loud and clear. And my wife does the same.

        It works better that way.

  54. Crusty Juggler

    Any tips for how to ask out my liquor delivery woman?

    She brings me liquor mere minutes after an order.

    I love her.

    • Gustave Lytton

      Order Colt 45?

    • Ted S.

      Did you try wannafud?

    • Suthenboy

      Next time order an extra bottle and when she arrives give it to her in appreciation for her good work. A bottle of good liquor goes a long way to buy good will.

      Do I have to think of everything?

      • Crusty Juggler

        I just generously tip her and smile awkwardly like the sad fool I am. I mean I put pants on for her! That’s romance.

    • pistoffnick

      Answer the door dressed in nothing but cling wrap?

      Ask if she would like to go upstairs to view your etchings?

    • JaimeRoberto Delecto

      Order some Drambuie and ask her if she’d like to try a fancy liquor.

    • westernsloper

      Does this smell like chloroform?

      • dontreadonme

        LMFAO. Thanks.

    • salted earth

      Be direct and polite.
      Complement her on an aspect of her personality, let her know that you like her, offer her your phone number. And be prepared not to see her again, and to have someone less appealing bring you your liquor.

  55. Crusty Juggler

    Woman has a GRIM way of beating coronavirus – but doctors say it doesn’t work

    Tracey Kiss, 32, reckons ingesting her boyfriend’s sperm everyday – either “directly”, or as part of a smoothie will see her through the pandemic.

    And the personal trainer has also been putting the product on her skin, which she dubs “nature’s multivitamin”, as part of healthcare routine for more than three years.

    She reckons it’s packed with vitamin C, calcium and magnesium – so is urging people to use semen to keep healthy during the pandemic.
    Mum-of-two Tracey, from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, said: “The purity of it is just wonderful.

    “People are stocking up on pasta, but really it’s about looking at your health and looking at what goes in your body.

    …I’ve heard this works.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      “She reckons it’s packed with vitamin C, calcium and magnesium – so is urging people to use semen to keep healthy during the pandemic.”

      So is Centrum with Minerals so I reckon I’ll stick with that.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        So you’re into the geriatric stuff, that’s a little weird, but ok.

    • Rhywun

      Is she married to Fredo Cuomo?

    • mrfamous

      “really it’s about looking at your health and looking at what goes in your body.”

      Sperm, ink and silicone apparently are the secret to health and well-being.

    • Not Adahn

      Does grim mean something else in limeyland?

    • J. Frank Parnell

      Wear your “liquor in the front / poker in the rear” t-shirt.

    • Suthenboy

      That is some impressive Link Fu you have there.

  56. juris imprudent

    Praise be to TPTB for the tech upgrade. No more Five Oh Four!!!

    • Crusty Juggler

      ” Crusty isn’t gay”

      All: to be clear I am whatever you need me to be.

      Whatever.

      You need.

      Me.

      To.

      Be.

    • Not Adahn

      …Disco ball? That is waaaay gayer than having an all-male meth and viagra orgy/

  57. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Laying on the bathroom floor with my neck in a traction device is a hell of a way to spend Friday night.

    • Raven Nation

      WTH?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Cervicalgia from an irritated spinal cord. I have an old neck injury from a car accident and years of computer work.

        Take care of your neck kids. Bad posture will haunt you.

      • Grosspatzer

        Ouch, take care. Cervical stenosis here, not to the point I need traction, but I get it. Hope you feel better soon.

    • Spudalicious

      Come again?

      • westernsloper

        I imagine so. That is why he got the traction device.