Thursday Afternoon Links (06/04/20)

by | Jun 4, 2020 | Daily Links | 405 comments

Ok, kids. Today’s links are going to be kind of short. I’m six weeks into a maddening project to get us (work, not glibs) in compliance with government reporting requirements. Brett would do them, but seems to have imploded his current labor situation in a way that has nothing to do with neither illicit substances, nor Florida-ness, and it would be improper to try to gild the Brett lily by making up false adventures.

PSA: I’ve seen a bunch of pictures and videos of gabions used as decorative or structural elements in videos from both BLM and anti-antifa sources (or the White House Twitter feed) all claiming that the other side is conspiring to cause trouble. They’re just there to look nice and/or prevent cars from driving up on the curb to hit people at bus stops or synagogues or whatever. LA had a love affair with them as a decorative element 5-10 years ago and they’re up and down the Ballona Creek Nature Preserve, there’s also a bar with one facade done up almost entirely with them in Venice.

About The Author

jesse.in.mb

jesse.in.mb

Think Mark Twain without the wit or the wisdom.

405 Comments

  1. Winston

    When are the French not revolting?

  2. DEG

    USBCulprit runs stealthily at regular time intervals, monitoring for removable media, and looking for opportunities to replicate itself:

    I’m reminded of a trick used in a Tom Clancy novel. “Bear and the Dragon” I think?

    • UnCivilServant

      Why are the USB ports on an air-gapped system not filled with epoxy?

      • Nephilium

        But then how would I listen to my music when working on it?

      • CPRM

        They needed to copy over a new driver to get the wi-fi to work.

      • kbolino

        If the network is connected to computers, and those computers run software, then it needs to receive updates from the outside world from time to time. I don’t think a fully self-sufficient air-gapped network exists. Companies don’t distribute their own physical media anymore (and that was no guarantee against malware, anyway) so it’s either burnable media (getting rarer), a USB stick, or a data diode. A data diode is more secure and the right choice but it is also the most expensive and potentially inconvenient option.

      • Enough About Palin

        It does at our nuclear generation plants.

        I learned in a debriefing this afternoon that our security monitors the dark web. It’s how we learned that after we boarded up the broken windows at our campus with 3/4″ plywood, the anarchists were planning to come back with gasoline to start the boards on fire. We notified the cops who then secured the perimeter. Our security guards carry, thanks to me when I worked for the COO. Really nice HKs paid for by the company and they are required to go to the range on a regular basis. And because we are considered essential infrastructure, we also have security personnel who are armed with automatic rifles to protect our facilities. The rioters were fortunate that after shattering the windows, they didn’t try to come inside. There’d be piles of cadavers.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I’m coming to hide with EAP when it gets really bad. Do I need to wear a radiation suit?

      • Enough About Palin

        I’m at corporate, not a nuke plant. What really pisses me off is that we just replaced all of the windows in our building accross the street from mine.

        /pissed off shareholder

        BTW, our security guards are really decent people, comprised of a very diverse group of folks. None are remotely trigger-happy or wannabe cops.

    • Viking1865

      Yep. The virus in the Politburo computer.

    • kbolino

      I was honestly a bit surprised to learn that RTF files exist any more. I just checked and it turns out it is still the default save file format for WordPad, although it lists docx and other formats as options. It would probably behoove Microsoft to get rid of RTF altogether.

      • Count Potato

        Linux and Mac use rtf as well.

      • Rhywun

        Mac’s can read rtf but they don’t exactly “use” it. I’ve never encountered it in the last decade except for the occasional download that was intended for Windows.

      • Count Potato

        Plenty of Mac applications, including those that come with the OS such as TextEdit, can write rtf.

      • Rhywun

        Only for sharing with Windows users 🙂

        The Rich Text Format (often abbreviated RTF) is a proprietary document file format with published specification developed by Microsoft Corporation from 1987 until 2008 for cross-platform document interchange with Microsoft products.

      • Surly Knott

        It’s the default for Notes on the iPad. I’ve actually only ever encountered it on Apple systems, going back 20 years.

      • Count Potato

        It’s used for way more than that.

      • Rhywun

        Notes on Mac are stored in a Sqlite database. ?‍♂️

      • Surly Knott

        Save one to files or Dropbox, it’s .rtf.

      • jesse.in.mb

        Our EMR’s document generation system uses RTF. It’s obnoxious trying to figure out what content from a document I want to port into the EMR will go completely wrong when converting from something XML based, but once it’s done it’s adequate.

      • kbolino

        Doing it a bit of reading, it seems that RTF itself may be a red herring. According to Wikipedia, Word will open files with .RTF extension that contain non-RTF content which has been the source of some exploits (not sure about the current one). There’s an option to warn the user that the file doesn’t contain what was expected but it’s disabled by default (?!).

    • Rhywun

      I love the breathless tone of such articles. “Oh noes!”

  3. l0b0t

    Random TV shows on Plex just presented me with the C.H.i.P.s episode wherein John starts the dirtbike patrol. California was so nice in 1979. Can we just go back to 1979?

    • SDF-7

      Only if I get to remember future lottery numbers to make up for being a kid again.

      • Jarflax

        Remember to buy tech early and exit before the crash, then roll that money into apple at $1.60. then buy/mine bitcoin from 09- 12, but don’t use MT GOX. Who needs lottery?

      • Mojeaux

        don’t use MT GOX

        Excellent advice.

    • Bobarian LMD

      I moved to CA in ’78. While it was really nice, the air quality in that time frame was hugely worse back then. I remember living less than 10 miles from the base of Mt Baldy, and not being able to see it during the summer months.

      Eyes burning almost as bad as tear gas in basic.

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        Montclair High, class of 79, Huh

      • Bobarian LMD

        I lived pretty damn close, officially Pomona, but almost Upland.

        But only for 7-8 months. Moved to Rowland Hts.

  4. leon

    The French are rioting. Suck it, Georges-Eugène Haussmann!

    Rioting is Un-American. Who do you think we are? The French?

  5. juris imprudent

    Since these are sparish links, I don’t feel bad about throwing a little “smooches” in for the old-timers.

    • Count Potato

      “This should have given a dispassionate observer pause. Surely, one might have assumed, an autopsy would have revealed evidence of the injuries Floyd had suffered and that no further testing and investigation should be required. This first bit of equivocation from the medical examiner went all but unnoticed in the media as the protests and rioting in Minneapolis grew larger and spread across the country. Later came another press release, this one containing more — but far from complete — details on why Floyd died. The cause of death was listed as “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.” It went on to list “other significant conditions: Arteriosclerotic and hypertensive heart disease; fentanyl intoxication; recent methamphetamine use, and bitter divorce from Morgan Fairchild.”

      • Tonio

        [golf clap]

    • Tonio

      Aw, thanks buddy.

    • Viking1865

      Yeah, fuck Dunphy and all that, but Brother Keith X upping the charges seems to me to be stupid at best, and at worst a deliberate effort to foment more riots when he gets acquitted.

      • Idle Hands

        Pretty much what’s going to happen.

    • Rhywun

      Chopin or whatever his name is could be guilty AF and that still doesn’t justify worldwide riots let alone another goddamn “national conversation”.

      • Not Adahn

        Chav. You know, like Billie Piper.

      • SDF-7

        Now there’s a Brit I wouldn’t mind Potato asking about every day….

      • Rhywun

        I miss the good old days of nu Who.

      • Ted S.

        Hope you’re feeling well!

      • Rhywun

        Just peachy, thanks! Today was just a colonoscopy. If I had known I’d sleep through the whole thing, I would have been less nervous about it.

      • Florida Man

        Propofol sleep is the best sleep.

      • Rhywun

        A true wonder drug.

      • Enough About Palin

        I stayed awake and watched everything on the monitor. Fascinating procedure.

  6. Drake

    de Blasio booed while showboating at a memorial.

    • RAHeinlein

      That gives me hope.

      • Hyperion

        Read my reply below and give up all hope.

      • Bobarian LMD

        That the next guy will be even worse?

    • Hyperion

      Let me guess, they hate him because he’s not far left enough?

      • Rhywun

        That would be my guess. The article carefully refrained from speculating.

        He’s not bending the knee like many others. Yet.

    • cyto

      meh…. not much of a booing. No positive reaction either.

    • Mad Scientist

      They’re not booing. They’re saying “Boolasio.”

  7. grrizzly

    Suck it, Georges-Eugène Haussmann!

    They could still riot in the Latin Quarter. Haussmann hasn’t touched it.

      • grrizzly

        Thanks. Seems like an interesting study. The biggest problem with the BCG effect is actually Ireland. The BCG vaccine was mandatory in Ireland and the Irish press wrote about the BCG vaccine and COVID-19 in early April. However, later the Ireland numbers started to deteriorate and now it’s not any better than many European countries without BCG vaccination. This paper considers the data only until April 17th. I’d like to see their results with more recent data. But other than that, I’m not terribly surprised with the results.

      • Gustave Lytton

        My off the cuff guess is that it’s one factor among several (recent exposure to other corona viruses, rate and load of exposure to SARS-COV-2, genetics/preexisting conditions, something else) and none are fully preventative but added together, there’s enough there to move the numbers. Conversely, if another factor isn’t present or present enough, BCG by itself isn’t enough.

    • Don Escaped the Virus . . . remember the virus?

      Fromm is a dirty hillbilly and is excused.

      Brees grew up in a proper suburb and should have known better.

      • robc

        There is no excuse for ugaggers.

  8. Not Adahn

    PSA: I’ve seen a bunch of pictures and videos of gabions used as decorative or structural elements in videos from both BLM and anti-antifa sources (or the White House Twitter feed) all claiming that the other side is conspiring to cause trouble. They’re just there to look nice and/or prevent cars from driving up on the curb to hit people at bus stops or synagogues or whatever. LA had a love affair with them as a decorative element 5-10 years ago

    Soros has been planning these riots for TEN YEARS???? What a clever (((nazi))).

    • dbleagle

      I notice a difference in many of the photos that I have looked at. The decorative containers have the tops enclosed as well to prevent rocks from “walking away”. Many of the bricks pallets etc., bunches of rocks etc. are open on one or more sides.

  9. slumbrew

    You (slightly) freer Glibs may now laugh at my expense:

    In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, one must get permission in order to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights. How this has stood legal scrutiny, I dunno.

    It’s not _super_ onerous, but you must get a Firearms ID from the local po-po – curious to see what it would really take, I see:

    UPDATE AS OF 3/23/2020 – The XXXX Police Firearms licensing office is not currently processing new applications for firearms licenses or Firearms Identification cards.

    (they are doing renewals, at least)

    Cradle of Liberty, y’all

    • Drake

      I got a MA FID card in the early 80’s. Walked into the station and asked for one. The Chief looked at me and started filling it out while asking after my parents and grandparents. Five minutes later I was walking out with my permit.

      • Bobarian LMD

        That is how one goes about getting a concealed carry permit in California. Live somewhere away from the coast and have your Family know or be related to the local Sheriff.

      • SDF-7

        Ohhh…. I’m halfway there! (Ohhh! Living on a prayer…)

      • slumbrew

        It’s the same process for concealed as just getting the FID. Depends on your local police, I imagine.

        LICENSE APPLICATION TYPE (Check Only One):
        Firearms Identification Card – Restricted (self-defense spray)
        Firearms Identification Card
        License to Carry
        License to Possess a Machine Gun
        Gun Club License (Only the Colonel of the State Police can issue a club license)

        I’m going to guess the second to last item isn’t granted too often.

      • DEG

        Huh. I thought machine guns were completely banned in Massachusetts. Nope.

    • Suthenboy

      I walk into a gun store. I pick what I want and put my money down. I hand over my DL, fill out the 4473 and wait five minutes while they do a background check. I drink a cup of coffee and then walk out the door with my new gun.

      You need to start decorating lamp posts or get a U-haul and get the fuck out of there.

      • tarran

        As soon as my daughter graduates high school, and the custody agreement ceases to be operative, I will be out of this podunk state.

    • Brawndo

      I live in Mass as well, and was hoping to get a gun at some point (I didn’t grow up with guns and have never owned one). If I’m reading your comment correctly, at this time it is impossible for me to become a gun owner?

      • slumbrew

        It’s up to your local police – check your town’s site.

      • slumbrew

        You’ll need to take a safety course first anyway, so you can get that out of the way.

  10. mexican sharpshooter

    it would be improper to try to gild the Brett lily by making up false adventures.

    Are you implying we are peddling fake news about Brett?

    • slumbrew

      I briefly misread that as “geld the Brett”, which seemed a bit much.

    • jesse.in.mb

      The exact opposite, my dear friend. We only tell the truest tales of Brettness and I didn’t want to tarnish it with false ones.

    • Bobarian LMD

      I took it as a euphemism.

  11. Winston

    I am amused that my “George Floyd had corona” crack was right though I have wondered for some time if the virus was far more widespread but also less deadly than the media reports suggested.

    • mrfamous

      Does anyone know the likelihood/feasibility of him picking it up in the hospital/morgue after he was already dead? Seems like a hospital is a great place to catch this thing.

      • Winston

        That is a very interesting scenario…

      • one true athena

        There’s no respiration to draw the virus into the body though. And I would think they use the blood test result (not a nasal swab) so viral infection would have to already be present before death.

  12. Winston

    Should Minnesota just cancel the trial and have Chauvin and his friends publicly hanged from a tree while livestreaming it on YouTube? Would that be libertarian?

    • Viking1865

      Only if there are food trucks parked around the perimeter of the hanging.

    • Fatty Bolger

      Hell, no. PPV or GTFO.

    • CPRM

      Better get around to it before that bill makes Lynching a violation of human rights.

    • SDF-7

      Dude, seriously — asked and answered. No one here is advocating for mob justice. We have opinions (my own is that at least manslaughter is appropriate, murder in the second degree probably) but those are just opinions based on what we’ve seen/heard. No one I’ve seen here is saying “Just hang ’em already, Judge Fenton!” No one is saying that’s libertarian. Probably going to be tough to find a jury that hasn’t heard about the case (well, and that doesn’t have Alzheimer’s or something), but that’s a different problem.

      You’ve raised some good issues over the last few days on the protests/riots/etc, this ain’t one of ’em. Please move on.

      • Ayn Random Variation

        I heard they’re moving the trial to Simi Valley

      • Not Adahn

        *waxes nostalgic for a simpler time*

    • cyto

      If it makes you feel any better, my brother is a former prosecutor. He said the defense has plenty to work with here – before the new stuff about covid came in.

      Getting an unbiased jury might be impossible though….

      Still, they have leverage. An acquittal would burn the country down. But if they can delay it long enough, maybe they can win some sort of deal?

      I don’t know how you could handle a case like this – from either side. No way you can get a fair jury trial. Any judge who let him off would be lynched. What do you do? What if the case really is good… and it turns out that he’s likely not guilty? If you were the judge, what do you do? Hell, what does his own attorney do? You gotta go home at night – and people are crazy.

      I cannot believe they will hold a trial before next year. just too inflamed right now.

      • Hyperion

        “An acquittal would burn the country down.”

        Exactly as planned, right before the elections.

      • Winston

        Any timeline on the trial or is this just idle speculation?

      • cyto

        Complete speculation.

        If i was the defense, I’d want to delay 3 years.

        If I was the prosecutor, I’d probably either want a lynching tomorrow, or wait a year or two.

        So Hyperion is probably right…. the proggies will schedule the trial so it ends sometime in october, keeping things front and center for the election.

      • Fourscore

        He could ‘escape’, he has lots of contacts. Make his way to Mexico, cross over in the trunk of a car, become a syndicate boss, live a luxurious life style, have a movie made. Knowing Morgan Fairchild’s lover would be an asset.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      She’s like a character from a movie

      • Count Potato

        Gretchen Whitmer became Govenor of Michigan after a house fell on her sister.

      • Surly Knott

        ALOL

      • juris imprudent

        Nurse Ratched?

    • Suthenboy

      *rolls eyes*

      I am not qualified to tell you what you like.

      • cyto

        Why can’t everyone apply that same attitude to all of life. Just let the people who are in to chubbies be in to chubbies. Seems simple enough.

        Now repeat for pot, chicago style pizza, prostitution and everything else under the sun.

      • Suthenboy

        “Chicago style pizza”

        You go too far, sir!

      • Enough About Palin

        “Why can’t everyone apply that same attitude to all of life. Just let the people who are in to chubbies be in to chubbies. Seems simple enough.”
        Because one of them is John.*

        *I kid; I liked that guy.

    • Tres Cool

      Too small for my tastes. She needs a couple trips to Wendys and a stop @ Pizza Hut

    • Bobarian LMD

      Advertisement for bulk silicon sales and rental.

  13. kbolino

    Because absolutely every fucking thing has to be politicized. I mean, seriously, can nobody exercise rational discretion anymore? No, I don’t need to know about your politics in order to write a computer program, and shoving it in my face does not actually change my opinion on anything. What is supposed to be accomplished by this?

    Also, this is a bit rich:

    The Rust Core Team believes that tech is and always will be political

    Yet one of the guys who has mixed politics and tech since the early days, Eric S. Raymond (goes by ESR), has been persona non grata for some time. He has been vehemently opposed to the SJW types (whom he calls crybullies) and their rhetorical tactics (which he dubbed kafkatrapping 10 years ago). He’s also quite fond of guns. He’s not exactly a raving rightist though, so as far as I can tell he hasn’t been called a fascist yet. But that is really just a matter of time.

    Ultimately, I think, this is not about politics or being political, for politics involves discussion and compromise; rather, this is about control over people’s lives and livelihoods. Driving people out of society and employment over their skin color, sex, or political views is really just a disguised way to say “give us some of those steady* high-paying jobs whether we’re qualified or not”.

    * Sure, much of open source development isn’t directly remunerative, and I don’t even know if ESR has a steady job, but producing useful products does build professional reputation whether you fill out a W-4 for it or not.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      It’s like thanking God at an awards ceremony.

    • slumbrew

      Ask Brendan Eich about that. He created JavaScript but was unpersoned for having the wrong politics.

      • kbolino

        Eich’s firing was especially disgusting because as far as anyone had reported, he never said an ill word to anyone nor voiced his politics at work. He was removed because of a donation he made in private with his own money that the FEC rules made public and some shit-stirrer dug up.

      • Not Adahn

        Had the wrong politics. In the past.

      • Bobarian LMD

        He should have been unpersoned for Java.

      • DEG

        I think he was not involved with Java.

      • kbolino

        Correct. The father of Java is James Gosling, not Brendan Eich. Though JavaScript has at least as many warts.

      • slumbrew

        JavaScript, not Java.

        Java was James Gosling.

        I recall a quote: “JavaScript is related to Java in the same sense that the Trump Taj Mahal is related to the Taj Mahal”

      • Hyperion

        Javascript is not Java.

    • leon

      The Rust Core Team believes that tech is and always will be political

      I’ve played around with Rust, and my feelings was ‘This is a lot of hype for a system that is essentially C, but super annoying to try to compile.’

      • Hyperion

        “The Rust Core Team believes that tech is and always will be political”

        What the fuck rock have they been living under? I’ve worked in tech for 30 years and it’s the least political thing you can imagine. It’s about getting shit done, period.

        Now gaming, there’s a different thing. Because it’s entertainment and fun. And leftists hate fun because they are incapable of having any. So they want to wreck it like they do with anything fun.

      • kbolino

        Open source software has always been a bit avant-garde relative to the wider development profession. And Rust is under the wings of Mozilla, the same people who fired Eich. These people swim in the sewer water that is Twitter, so the laid-back get shit done’ism is foreign to some of them.

      • kbolino

        On the technical side, I like Rust a lot. It does away with a lot of C++’s warts and it is far less primitive than C. I don’t get to use it professionally, though. It has its faults, and the borrow checker is I think a huge impediment to new users, as well as the lack of good IDE support.

      • Rhywun

        I like it too. Just playing around with it, since I have no use for it professionally, but I like a lot of the higher-level, functional-like stuff. The IDE support is quite good on IDEA (with a plugin).

      • kbolino

        Ok, I’ll have to check IDEA out. Everything I’ve tried already is based around RLS which is nowhere near being a quality product yet.

      • Rhywun

        Yeah, JetBrains do tend to roll their own. Not sure if their plugin is based on RLS or not.

      • Rhywun

        PS. still no debugging though. I see there is some clunky workaround in VSCode but I haven’t tried it yet.

    • DEG

      I thought ESR worked for/was supported by the GNU Foundation?

      • kbolino

        He’s certainly contributed to a number of GNU projects. I don’t know how much support he gets from the foundation.

      • SDF-7

        MIT and Free Software Foundation (FSF). Which works on GNU/Hurd, I believe.

        And that’s definitely was. I think he was trying to be fair and even handed, but that’s one heck of a mine field to sashay into.

      • DEG

        I see. Thanks.

      • slumbrew

        That’s RMS, not ESR.

      • SDF-7

        Too many TLAs, sorry.

      • slumbrew

        JWZ is fine with ERS but hates RMS.

      • Not Adahn

        NBD/

      • Rhywun

        I always confuse those two. Also, I thought Stallman was a notorious lefty?

      • kbolino

        RMS is a dinosaur (not a judgment) and a bit of a beatnik, and so he was done in by having the views of a 1960s/1970s liberal about sex.

      • Gustave Lytton

        That’s dirty notorious lefty and jerk. He was unpersonning people years before it became popular.

    • Winston

      I find this a bit rich. These SJW wokesters have been around for decades and have been very open about their true goals but we here are constantly shocked that they are implementing their agenda like they said they would. Until recently it was mostly “shut up about the culture war” and “these kids won’t fit in the real world”. Turns out the culture war is coming for you and no one is there to defend you. And those Krazy Kids made the real world fit their world instead.

      • SDF-7

        We’re “constantly shocked”? Really? Have you missed all the “NO PEAK DERP” and “They all want cake” memes/links over the years?

        I think there’s a percentage of our misanthropes who still hoped most folks would see through the garbage, sure… but folks certainly talked about their agenda, where they had support, etc. Nothing shocking there.

      • kbolino

        There is no central coordinating committee to either empower or disenfranchise the SJWs (though there is a large nexus of interconnection). They took over in a distributed and organic fashion that nobody else quite anticipated but has nevertheless been quite successful so far. I don’t think most people from 10 years ago could realistically have predicted this outcome, never mind be more responsible for it than the SJWs themselves. At the end of the day, the zeitgeist is always dominated by a vocal but sizable minority and they have both loudness and numbers on their side.

    • juris imprudent

      Rust never sleeps?

    • Rhywun

      Sickening.

      I was just on the Angular site and they have a “Black Lives Matter” banner at the top.

      STOP. IT.

    • kbolino

      Did a bit more reading, and it seems like ESR has dipped his toes into the “race and intelligence” waters. Looking at the oeuvre myself, I see a number of borderline comments but nothing quite rising to the level of aspiring Nazi. Nevertheless, that topic is definitely verboten and it seems that that, rather than his anti-SJW stance per se, is why he gets hated on and unpersoned.

  14. Juvenile Bluster

    I’m not sure if y’all saw the news coming out of the hearing in the Ahmaud Aubrey case today, but holy shit:

    -The video we all saw was not the full video

    -William Bryan, who took the video, was also chasing Ahmaud and his pickup “made contact” with Ahmaud

    -G. McMichael used the gun he had from his time w/ Glynn County Police

    -The “struggle” we see between Ahmaud and T. McMichael comes AFTER Ahmaud had been shot in the chest by T. McMichael

    -Based off the statements made to Glynn County Police Officers (off of the police officer body cams): he admitted not knowing whether Ahmaud had stolen anything but was going on gut “instinct” [This would almost definitely take it out of a situation with a legitimate citizen’s arrest]

    -G. McMichael told Police that he told T. McMichael not to shoot [which seems like a lie based on the video evidence]

    -W. Bryan admits to joining the “pursuit” and to help “detain” Ahmaud

    – According to W. Bryan, T. McMichael stood over Ahmaud’s body and called him a “fucking n—–“

    • Viking1865

      Yeah so it was even worse than I thought. I assume Bryan is rolling on the the McMicheals? Two needles and a life behind bars?

      “he admitted not knowing whether Ahmaud had stolen anything but was going on gut “instinct””

      Stupid fucker forgot hes not a cop anymore. They don’t let civilians kill people because of gut instinct.

      • Juvenile Bluster

        Hasn’t been said officially, but it definitely sounds like Bryan is rolling on his co-defendants for a plea deal. It’s what I’d recommend to him if I was his attorney.

    • Urthona

      fuuuuuuuuuck

    • jesse.in.mb

      Oh shit, I saw mention that he’d bumped him with the car, but didn’t see the more expanded content. That’s certainly worthy of having gone in the links.

    • Donation Not Taxation

      Citation?

    • Winston

      called him a “fucking n—–“

      Ah, the real capital offence.

      • Not Adahn

        Finally. They found an acutal legitimate racist southern cracker.

      • jesse.in.mb

        The classiest of hot takes.

      • leon

        Well he seems to have already decided that a Guilty verdict for chauvin is tainted by fear of rioting.

      • Winston

        Well I’m not wrong am I? And plenty of black men where convicted in the past because of fear of rioting.

      • leon

        It’s happened in the past therefore it’s guaranteed to happen?

        Likewise plenty of white men have gotten off for murder because the jury refused to convict for the murder of a black man. If Chauvain is squirted does it mean the jurors were white supremacists?

      • leon

        *Acquitted damnit

      • Winston

        Nah, I just think it is a reasonable worry.

      • Not Adahn

        He’s not exactly wrong though. Racism is much “worse” than simple murder in the same way killing a kitten will enrage more people than killing a person.

      • Winston

        This. Not only is it a white man killing a black man in this climate but he uttered a racial slur that is pretty much the worse word in the English language.

      • Playa Manhattan

        It actually is worse. This wasn’t a personal dispute or heat of passion.

        He killed a guy for being black. It’s pretty fucking vile.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        We either try people for their actions and whether or not they intended to commit those actions or we don’t.

        His verbalized racism proves possible intent and provides evidence of motive, it does not make the crime more or less worse than any other asshole gunning down a jogger in the street after ramming them with their vehicle.

      • Viking1865

        Intent is in the homicide laws as is. As a matter of principle, I agree with you, but if we can have degrees of homicide based on intent, why can’t we have degrees based on the reason for it, I guess would be the argument. I am a not a lawyer though.

        I personally would prefer it if we treated it all like straight murder, because I think it takes the oxygen out of the room in terms of creating martyrs to the cause.

        “No Mumia, you were not Liberating the Downtrodden, you shot a cop in the back of the head while he wrote a parking ticket.”

        “No Cletus, you were not Preserving White Christian Civilization, you murdered a guy because he might have been the guy trespassing in a house under construction.”

        “No, Sean, you were not Freeing The Auld Saud From the Yoke of the Empire, you blew up a pub and killed three blokes having a pint. ”

        But prosecutors gotta make hay for their future political careers.

    • Chipwooder

      Well, that should end any debate about that one – not that there should have been any debate about it in the first place.

      The fuck is wrong with people?

    • Idle Hands

      Pretty definitive that was a textbook lynching from the jump. Real question to me is why this wasn’t the ignitor for the powder keg? Not enough time to plan?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      They obviously still had their cop GOOJF card paid up.

    • B.P.

      This new information should really lighten the nation’s mood.

    • cyto

      He definitely yelled at the kid from the back of the pickup to stop… repeatedly. “Travis! Stop” was one of the things I clearly heard in my first breakdown of the video…. this was before knowing the kid’s name.

      As for the instinct….

      Supposedly the police told the property owner to call him any time of day or night if his motion detector at the site went off. Apparently he had called out police 3 times for the same guy trespassing and they never caught him.

      Details that don’t really matter. The way they chased him put them in deep jeopardy. The way the kid got out with a shotgun and blocked his path sealed it. It was a clear deadly threat. Dude ended up dead as a result. They all go down as co-conspirators, even if the other two directly ordered him not to shoot his weapon… or even told him to leave it at home. Killed someone in the commission of a felony. By rule, you are all guilty.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Yup

        You cannot pursue unless there is a clear and present danger to yourself or others. The most generous thing you can say about it is that they royally fucked up and Arbery ended up dead.

    • Ted S.

      I don’t think I got the tweet you intended, but one about Mattis’ inanities.

      • bacon-magic

        He mentioned the hat. *puts pepper on Ted’s saltiness

      • bacon-magic

        Awesome.

  15. Brett L

    Wow, it has been YEARS since I crashed production. Maybe a decade. Still not a good feeling.

    • jesse.in.mb

      Oh, NOW you have time for Glibs.

    • DEG

      Sorry.

    • The Other Kevin

      Hey Brett! I was hoping today was better for you. But apparently not.

    • slumbrew

      Ah, that sinking pit in your stomach as you realize something has gone very wrong.

      “Wait, is… fuck. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!”

      (it’s been a while, but I have not forgotten)

      • cyto

        Oof.

        I hate that feeling….

        But worse …. much worse… is when you go “that can’t be. There is no way that what we changed could affect that!!”

        That dumbfounded feeling of hopelessness and terror…. you don’t even know where to begin… and the clock has already started ticking.

        Usually when something breaks in production, you instantly know where the screwup was. But when you really, sincerely don’t have a clue where to begin…. that’s the moment.

        Even better when that moment happens not immediately after a rollout… but days later, when rolling back is not an option.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        Usually when something breaks in production, you instantly know where the screwup was. But when you really, sincerely don’t have a clue where to begin…. that’s the moment.

        Had that happen with a patch for a customer’s telecom system. The bug was easy to resolve, single line of code. Sent them out the patch file and got a new error log that looked exactly the same as the old one, except with fresh timestamps.

        I followed the flow of the code, and it was executing the right branch, but the code that I had tested and confirmed worked wasn’t working on their system.

        A few hours into trying to figure this thing out, I noticed something peculiar. The last modified date on the patch file was about 4 hours too early. Turns out there was a transient error in the patch-building utility that caused it to not overwrite the prior patch I had made for a different customer (without the appropriate fix).

      • cyto

        Auuugh!! That is fantastic.

        I had a telecom bug that was even tougher….

        Our PBX was not properly connecting calls over the PRI lines. The logs looked perfect. Every instruction coming through, channel opened right…. but we had people answering dead air. At $35k per ad run, having calls not work was…. well, the boss wasn’t happy.

        So I open a terminal session and watch the real-time D channel while I make calls. The Connect signal is coming through …. but really late. So the PBX is waiting for connect, but the PRI voice channel is already open for a while before connect comes through.

        But if you look at a log file…it all looks fine. You could even match up the Telco side logs and everything looked perfect. It was only if you made calls and watched it in real time that you could see it.

        So imagine debugging that one!!

        Now… imagine getting the PBX manufacturer on the phone and the telco on the phone and trying to convince them of what you are seeing.

        Now imagine the next run through as you get AT&T on the phone to explain how the logs they are looking at don’t match what their equipment is doing.

        So now I’ve got the telco, the PBX VAR, the PBX manufacturer, and the telco equipment manufacturer all on the phone. This was long before everyone had internet videoconferencing, so I have them at the NOC sitting at the terminal and I’m sharing my desktop so they can see my end of the D channel from the PBX side.

        We make a couple of test calls…. and finally!! The ATT guys says “the connect signal is being sent late”.

        Welcome to the party, buddy. It is only what I’ve been saying for 2 weeks.

        A day or two later, they issue a patch and the problem is fixed.

        The only good thing that came out of that was that I added the level 3 guys at the NOC and at the PBX manufacturer to my Rolodex… so from that moment forward I could skip the script following tech and go right to the L3 guy.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        Wow… I can’t imagine! We had a pretty slick tool at Cisco for debugging issues with those media connections, but it was written in perl by a wunderkind who skipped out to play the startup game. It was terrible to update as time went on.

      • Ted S.

        but it was written in perl

        So you used a regex to debug it? 😉

      • Rhywun

        I refuse to learn perl.

        That is the correct decision.

      • cyto

        I thought you were going to say that you rewrote it in machine language tied to a particular variant of the 68030 processor used on the router.

        And documented your code with things like “optimize this later”, “fix for thing that Nancy wanted” and other helpful notes for the people who come behind you.

    • leon

      Fuck. That sucks.

      Here’s an anecdote to make you feel better (mabye?). Back when i worked on customer support, we had a spit where production would slow to unbearable levels 3 times a day, for the space of a few months. It was awful. Every day we’d get flooded with calls, until even the customers got used to it (even worse).

      Finally what they found out was that the task that was set to clear the logs was created on the cloud using the credentials of an employee who had been fired a few months before. So every day the logs would get filled up until the Engineering team had flushed all the systems. To say the least our (new) engineering manager, was pissed.

      • cyto

        That’s a good one!

        My favorite “unsolvable slowdown” was a couple of weeks after I rolled out a new report. Just a report.

        I just made a little quickie for the sales director of our largest division, because she had most of her floor in meetings or goofing off for huge chunks of time. This was screwing up the phone routing and costing her money. But I couldn’t get her to understand… so I made a little graph that showed each employee’s activity in 5 minute intervals throughout the day. Just a bar graph… one row for each employee… little black boxes showing if they had touched the system in that five minute window. You could easily see the meetings – as the entire page had gaps from top to bottom where everyone was in a meeting at the same time. And you could see lunch slowdowns, afternoon slowdowns.. etc.

        So… back to our story of failure.

        About two weeks after I showed her that report… the system started failing. It was on a brand new server that was beyond overpowered. It should have handled a thousand times as much load as we had on it. So what happened?

        Well, the director gave the link to the report to everyone on her sales team and told them she expected to see them working all day.

        So someone figured out that if you put a coffee cup on the F5 key to refresh the page, it would look like you were working all day, even if you got up and left.

        So instead of hitting the system once every minute or two, they were hitting the system hundreds of times per second. All of them.

        Well…. there’s your problem!

        It was a tough fix too… we had to get her to talk to her staff. We put throttles on their requests – which was not entirely obvious how to do at the time…

        All because she didn’t know how to use an activity report.

        As we always say in the business. You get what you measure. So be careful what you measure.

      • Rhywun

        LOL!

        the director gave the link to the report to everyone on her sales team

        I think I’ve spotted where things went wrong….

      • R C Dean

        Yeah. Sales teams, amirite?

      • cyto

        We always compared them to kindergartners.

      • Ted S.

        Not the FOUPA?

    • SDF-7

      Is “crashed production” like “losing all the backups” for the IRS with regards to those lawyers you were worried about yesterday?

    • Mojeaux

      I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, but it sounds awful. Virtual hugs for you.

      • Not Adahn

        “Production” means “the system people are actually using and need in order for work to happen.” The clone that’s not connected to anything that is used for experimentation is often called “Test.”

      • Mojeaux

        I was afraid that was what that meant. Yeouch.

    • bacon-magic

      Hang in there Brett. You can do it.

    • Rhywun

      Ouch. My sympathies – been there too.

    • Agent Cooper

      I’ve clogged the toilet a few times in my life. But a whole decade without? You sir, poop smally.

      • cyto

        I visited a lock box processing center for Wachovia bank. They had people processing checks for various companies. They would sit at a terminal and read the check image from a scanner on their screen. They did a “reverse e” scan, entering the amount, date, payee, text of amount and checking the signature. They had 5 seconds per check on average.

        As we were listening to the presentation, I was standing under a plaque with names of employees getting some award. I asked about it… it was the award for completing an entire year with no errors.

        Not a shift. Not a week. Not even a month. A whole year.

        Geez! I cannot imagine making it through 5 minutes without making a mistake at that clip. 12 per minute, every minute… keying all that in? No errors… for a year?

        People are amazing.

        The epitome of the “round peg, round hole” job.

    • Hyperion

      It said that ‘far right extremists’ are exempt from the bailout. I didn’t see it mention ‘far left left extremists’ who caused most of the rioting and looting. Huh, that’s odd.

      • Gustave Lytton

        The reporter also glossed over the pivot to those involved in “direct action”. Gee, that’s a strange term. How about asking them to explain that?

      • JaimeRoberto Delecto

        It’s amazing how incurious reporters can be.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      The organization plans to bail out all arrested demonstrators except those believed to be part of a known white supremacist, neo-Nazi or alt-right organization.

      “We follow the principle that people are innocent until proven guilty,” Cates said. “We’re not going to judge what people are charged with by exercising their First Amendment rights.”

      Reconcile those statements for me please.

      • Gustave Lytton

        ^^right wing white supremacist Nazi confirmed

  16. DEG

    NH unemployment numbers decreasing, but still at historic highs

    New Hampshire remains at historically high unemployment, even as the number of new claims filed decreased for the eighth week in a row.

    Employment officials said 6,036 filed new unemployment claims for the week ending May 30. That’s down from 39,202 the week of April 4, but still nearly 10 times the number who filed the week before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

    The number is about 1,200 lower than the week of May 23.

    “Eight straight weeks of decline in new claims, down about 85% from our peak week in early April,” said Richard Lavers, deputy commissioner of New Hampshire Employment Security.

    Lavers said a better picture of what’s happening now can be found in the weekly claims numbers, which are also trending lower. For the week ending May 23, 103,704 claims were paid out, compared to 109,184 the week before.

    Nearly 43 million Americans unemployed

    Millions of Americans again filed for unemployment benefits last week, as the coronavirus recession drags on.

    Another 1.9 million workers filed for initial unemployment aid last week, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. More than a quarter of the labor force — 42.6 million people — has now claimed benefits since the pandemic began ravaging the U.S. labor market.

    For 11 weeks in a row, jobless claims have been in the millions. Before the pandemic, the labor department had never recorded a single week of jobless claims over a million.

    Claims again fell from the previous week, a trend that has held for the past nine weeks, ever since first-time claims peaked at 6.9 million in the last week of March.

    • Idle Hands

      fucking classic.

    • Suthenboy

      So mission accomplished?

    • Hyperion

      Well, don’t worry, the new democratic supermajority is going to fix it all! Free everything, for everyone! Who doesn’t want free everything? See how easy?

    • blackjack

      I’m not saying it was aliens, but..

      Didn’t it seem like right after Trump was acquitted, everyone seemed to think that only a recession would prevent his re-election. And, shortly thereafter, the governors and mayors all caused a recession.

    • Idle Hands

      I’m not sure what we should do with these people. Voting them out of office doesn’t seem like nearly enough.

      • cyto

        Almost all of them are in locked-in one party electorates. so voting them out probably ain’t happening.

      • Idle Hands

        at this point I saw someone post it’s not even authoritarian vs libertarian or republican vs democrat it’s almost like sane vs insane.

      • cyto

        Almost?

        Actually to be fair… I’d say “insane” vs. “drawing on the walls with your own excrement level crazy”.

        We’ve spent an extra 8 trillion so far including QE. Maybe more. Who knows. They don’t even bother debating or planning any more. Just pass a bill and print some bucks.

      • Drake

        PA and Michigan may be the exception, but true for most. I’ll be interested in what happens with Murphy next year. The amount of hate I see directed towards him from people who are not usually political is stunning, but I live in a very red county.

    • Sean

      I loathe him with nuclear level intensity.

    • Not Adahn

      Potential good news for you (though in the future).

      TSMC is bulding a new fab in AZ. In-house trades in a semiconductor fab has got to be the cleanest, cushiest, best-paying version of any skilled labor.

      TSMC is a BIG player in the foundy market. Not so much an 800 lb gorilla as a herd of elephants on steroids with a body-building program.

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        Do you know what city? also I don’t know the acronym

      • Not Adahn

        TSMC is the actual name of the company. It used to stand for “Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation.”

        I don’t know that they’ve decided which city, but they haven’t announced it.

      • R C Dean

        *performs animal sacrifice and pleads to the gods for Tucson*

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        TSMC is a BIG player in the foundy market. Not so much an 800 lb gorilla as a herd of elephants on steroids with a body-building program

        *nods knowingly, having done business with them in the past*

  17. Mojeaux

    @Winston from dedthred:

    Hasn’t Paypal been getting woke?

    Sort of. When they’re leaned on hard they respond. The “no processing payments for porn and erotica” episode was epic and awful (I was not affected by that).

    Though they have sent out COVID-related concern letters as everyone else has, they have sent out nothing about the current climate. I doubt Paypal would suspend me for not saying ANYTHING since THEY haven’t said anything either.

    • cyto

      I think they also declined to process payments for several prominent right-wing personalities.

      • dontreadonme

        When they went anti-2A is when I cancelled my account.

  18. Idle Hands

    In case you weren’t absolutely positive everything you see is a completely constructed lie designed to inspire during an election year.

    https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1268621525344645120

    The republicans are fucking pieces of shit. But there is no question to me which side is willing to destroy the nation we live in to gain power. Republicans may topple other nations and loot this one from time to time but jfc for the most part at least actively try to fucking burn this one to the fucking ground.

    • Idle Hands

      *attempt not to

    • Ayn Random Variation

      That video in that string of comments with the black woman in front of her destroyed store saying “tell ME black lives matter ” is powerful stuff and should be on our TVs.
      I guess as much contempt I have for social media it’s a blessing that we have it

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I’m going to be wearing about ten rolls of tinfoil by the time the election rolls around.

  19. Ayn Random Variation

    They’ve locked our offices until July. They’ve cut our pay. They can’t collect on our bills.
    But the good news is that today they have created a BLM subcommittee of our Diversity and Inclusion committee.
    I have no words.
    Well I will say that the rona lockdown is probably saving my job as nobody can see my eye rolls and I don’t have deal with being asked to take a knee in person.

    • Idle Hands

      Pretty sure that’s a passage from lord of the rings.

    • slumbrew

      More social signaling from work today but, thankfully, it’s still being phrased as “for those who wish to participate”, etc.

    • DEG

      Sorry.

    • Hyperion

      Glad I’m closer to retirement. I’d never make it in the new woke world in most organizations. I wish I had more saved for retirement and I’m quite a ways off from receiving SS, but it is what it is, they try to make me do anything or even say anything against my own beliefs and they’re getting a big ‘eat shit’ and I guess I’m retiring anyway.

    • Suthenboy

      I have words but they would likely get me fired.

  20. cyto

    I heard them talking about the Drew Breeze thing on sports talk radio.

    They all mentioned how great a person he is, how much he has done for the community, both in time and money… over a period of more than a decade.

    And they all said that they lost respect, trust was broken, etc.

    One lady was talking about how he needs to know that he must be a part of it, be supportive, and work toward the solution.. .but he is not allowed to share his opinion.

    They talked about the work he has to do to regain the trust of teammates who thought he was their friend..

    Funny…. I had the exact opposite reaction. If you can honestly say that someone has demonstrated to be a good person and a good leader, has been a true friend to you and your community for many, many years, has donated time and money to the community in excess….. and then 1 sentence saying “I don’t support disrespecting the flag” makes you turn on him and demand that he earn your friendship and trust back?

    Yeah, you were never worthy of his friendship, trust or respect. How do you expect to earn his trust back? If you are such a weak and venal person that a disagreement so petty makes you call your friendship into question, why should anyone ever count you as a friend?

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      Well said,

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      If you aren’t one hundred percent in lockstep with the applicable narrative then you’re a loathsome sack of shit, all the good works of your past be damned.

      Fuck these people.

    • Raven Nation

      I remember Christopher Hitchens making a similar comment about himself. I don’t remember all the details now but I think it came after he publicly supported the Iraq War* and started denouncing a lot of his leftist friends as supporters of totalitarianism for not supporting it. Most of his friends did the standard “well Christopher is a smart guy and we like him and he’s been right about a lot in his life, but he’s wrong here.”

      But one leftist commented along the lines of “wouldn’t it be more logical to assume Hitchens has always been an asshole?”

      Hitchens, being Hitchens, wrote that the latter person was much more intellectually consistent than all the others.

      *Support of, or opposition to, the war not important for this story.

      • kbolino

        I recall Hitchens later in his life and so, when I saw a debate video between him and William F. Buckley on YouTube, I was like “that should be good”. It wasn’t. Hitchens was an ass of the highest order, didn’t even really understand what Buckley was saying, and presented ideas like the Vietnam War being the U.S. trying to preserve the French colonial empire as completely uncontroversial truths. I stopped watching after a few minutes.

      • Jarflax

        Intellectual consistency across issues may be a sign of a well integrated world view. Intellectual consistency across time is a sign that one is not examining one’s beliefs.

      • Don Escaped the Virus . . . remember the virus?

        I know what you mean.

        I’m guilty of not having changed much, but I could have been a Glib at 16. Should I have changed in the meanwhile?

        The other thing that changes is data. The government can be covering up something, or you might be ignorant of the actual happenings in some circumstance. Your philosophy might not change over time, but your calculations on certain things (eg: whether Nixon was a good guy) might move.

      • Jarflax

        Even within the universe of Glibs I think there is room for examination. Various kneejerk attitudes creep in because we don’t generally (outside the pure emirical disciplines) deal with data, we deal with narrative. For example, take the WMDs that were the excuse for the Iraq war. To a leftist, or to most libertarians, they are a running joke. The very symbol of the Government lying to start a war. To a neocon, or even a traditional conservative they are a concrete reality and were obviously spirited acroos the border into Syria as the inspectors/troops drew near. None of us (correct me if I am wrong) has actual data on this. We have reports, and we choose which reports we believe because those reports fit our internal narrative. I think it is important to periodically recalibrate your mind a bit by considering the possibility that your narrative might be inaccurate in some respects. Principles are different. The axioms of a world view should be examined but not casually changed.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Everyone has a tendency to a closed mind. Some fight that tendency more than others. Like in this place.

        Facebook? Jesus, it’s god awful. Everyone is scared, moral cowards.

      • Viking1865

        My data for the Iraqi WMDs is the dead Kurds in Halajabah. Saddam had nerve gas because the Reagan administration, with Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney thoroughly involved, that arranged for them to have it. They needed it, at the time, to gas Iranian human wave attacks.

        Iraq having nerve gas posed a threat to the United States, a threat that could and should have been dealt with by spending the trillions of dollars we spend on defense on defending the actual United States, not the fucking Saudi oil fields, and by making sure that Saddam Hussein understood that the policy of the United States with regards to WMD remained that there is no difference between nerve gas and nuclear weapons, and if he thought he could put some nerve gas in a deniable terrorists group hands, that he would be privileged to watch a new sun rise in Baghdad, courtesy of the US Navy.

        But how on Earth would Halliburton and KBR get 10 years of government contracts out of that?

      • Jarflax

        Not disputing your conclusion, nor am I agreeing with it, but the fact that you started “My data for the Iraqi WMDs is” completely proves my point. Every thing after those words is inference and narrative. Again, not necesarily wrong, or necessarily right, but it is obviously a product of your beliefs and not knowledge.

    • Urthona

      Don’t I recall reading that most Americans polled were against Kaepernick’s protest? Is there not a single person in the media who thinks differently?

      • cyto

        They addressed this directly.

        Now is not the time for you to offer your opinions. Now is not the time for you to offer ideas. That time is not now. Now is the time for you to shut up and show solidarity.

        I’m not embellishing at all. There was complete agreement. This was in the context of “we should be able to discuss ideas without cancelling people who have differing opinions. ” The answer was that this is a specious argument, and nobody is ever doing that. The very next sentence was “now is not the time….”

  21. Gustave Lytton

    Day two of er, my friend pocket carrying. Xer likes the Nemesis better than the Superfly. The flap cover seems good but conforms too much. Just not stiff enough but adds unnecessary bulk to the pocket.

    Nemesis with a rolled handkerchief in the dead zone between the under barrel/grip breaks up the profile well and looks like a bunch of pens or a glue stick or anything but what it is.

  22. Hyperion

    So, is there going to be some serious blowback against all the complete insanity that’s been going on for months now, almost all of it perpetrated by democrats, or are we doomed?

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      I guess we’ll find out in November. See you in the camps!

      • Drake

        Avenge Me!

      • Suthenboy

        You wont see me in the camps. At least I will take a dozen or so with me.

    • The Other Kevin

      For a hot second it looked like everyone was in agreement, that the police murdered someone and should be held accountable. But then it magically became a race issue and everyone was divided again.

      So to answer your question, as long as they keep everyone divided there will be zero blowback.

    • Idle Hands

      Novembers a long way away and I don’t think it’s dawned on anyone how bad the economy is yet. That won’t happen till the unemployment runs out I guess. I still figure this being the ultimate incumbent out election. Anyone that was in charge during the lockdown that wasn’t explicitly against it is going to be gone.

      • Suthenboy

        Your lips to God’s ear.

      • Idle Hands

        It’s going to be it’s the economy stupid like nothing we’ve ever seen before.

      • Ayn Random Variation

        The unemployment payoffs won’t end this year. Remember during the 2007-08 meltdown people were getting UE for 1.5 years.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        But the federal add-on won’t last forever.

        I hope.

    • Urthona

      Well however you think of polls they do indicate that The Donald’s popularity has been in steady decline for months. So this is totally working most likely.

      • Don Escaped the Virus . . . remember the virus?

        other than April, it comes as close to being a

        straight line

        as anything you’ll ever see in politics straight line

        That’s the call sign of identity politics.

      • Suthenboy

        And the asses are going to put Creepy Joe up with a shadow president (likely Warren).

        Before my Grandfather went off to play checkers with Hitler he told me that he would not see the end of the United States but I would.
        I hope he was wrong.

      • RAHeinlein

        Stop using math! It’s like you work for USAFacts.

      • Drake

        But Biden Has No Good Options. He can keep kissing up to the people who organized the riots and slowly lose most middle class support. He can try a “law and order” approach, which is already Trump’s turf and get laughed at.

        And senile Joe either agrees to debate Trump – and gets annihilated – or he refuses and gets relentlessly mocked for the last 3 months of the campaign.

      • creech

        “Would you debate Hitler? There’s nothing to debate; the guy is pure evil and I refuse to breath the same air as him.”
        /prog justification

      • Drake

        A couple weeks of “Senile Joe is chicken” ads and the old guy agrees to a debate by accident.

      • SDF-7

        Look fat, I was whipping guys like Trump behind the gym back in high school!

        Speaking of which — what did you get on that algebra mid term? I hope Sarah Lee doesn’t have a date for the prom yet… her hair smells so good…

      • Drake

        Sneaky Fox Reporter: “So you are going to debate him? Or are you scared?”

        Biden: “Hell yeah I’ll debate him! Anytime anywhere!”

        Campaign managers spend the next two weeks explaining why they can’t agree to a debate, rinse and repeat.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Joe will be replaced after the convention. For some reason or another he will be unable to proceed.

        He’s there to stop the Bernie Bots. After that, his utility is gone.

      • Drake

        Can he be replaced after the convention? They’ve pulled that stunt in NJ with Bob Torricelli, but in federal court with real judges that might not work.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Sure he can be replaced if he’s medically unfit to proceed or has suddenly reached room temperature.

      • Drake

        Dead maybe, alive probably not. They spend the last month of the campaign in courts trying to get the right names on the ballots and failing in half.

        They have to do the switchero at the convention.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        It’s possible, but the Bernie Bros are going to go ballistic if they do. That will be entertaining.

      • Raven Nation

        Five thirty-eight actually has a pretty good summary of most of the scenarios: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-happens-if-a-presidential-nominee-can-no-longer-run-for-office/

        Two cuts:

        “If something happened after the conventions but before the election, the national party committees would pick another nominee. Under Republican rules, the Republican National Committee could reconvene the national convention, although Pildes told me it’s hard to imagine that being feasible. So in both parties, national committee members would vote to elect a new nominee.2 Pence would once again be the obvious choice for Republicans, although the GOP would also have to pick a new vice presidential nominee (as would the Democrats if this situation arose for them). And while Democrats could try to back a former candidate or an outsider who didn’t run — say, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — Brown said a crisis like this would likely push the Democratic National Committee to put the vice presidential nominee at the top of the ticket. “I assume that the Democrats would attempt to follow that same pattern [as the GOP],” she said.” (The Dems actually had to do this in 1972).

        Here’s one piece: “And what if something happens very close to Election Day? It’d probably be really hard to pick a replacement in time to update ballots, as most deadlines to certify state ballots would have passed by early October — not to mention other logistical hurdles that could pose problems, such as mailing ballots for overseas military service members in time, or making last-minute adjustments to absentee ballots. It’s entirely possible that if the candidate died only a few days before Nov. 3, voters might not know who the party’s nominee was when they go to the polls.”

      • Jarflax

        Doesn’t anyone read Allen Drury any more?

      • Ted S.

        Betty White as a Senator from Kansas.

    • Winston

      There will be blowback of course, maybe not the blowback you wanted though…

    • Ayn Random Variation

      One difference between now and 4 years ago is that I can’t find anybody to say anything positive about Biden. At least 4 years ago there was the Imwithher /first woman president/ most qualified candidate ever stuff.
      Now it is 100% about hating Trump from my lefty friends.
      I have no idea how this will play out. All possible outcomes are in play.

    • Raven Nation

      Well, we’re doomed either way, maybe a little slower with Trump.

      But, Trump’s going to get stuck with the economy (regardless of whose fault it is). And, as Don Escaped has pointed out on numerous occasions, Trump pulled off one of the unlikeliest wins in history with fairly narrow wins in a handful of important EC states. It was going to be hard to do that again anyway, and recent events make it harder.

      Regardless of whether Biden is competent or not, he’s going to be the candidate barring him actually stroking out in public. And he will appeal to a lot of Dems who didn’t like Hilary for any number of reasons.

      If I was a betting man and I was betting today, I’d put money on Biden winning, although probably not in a landslide. The bigger issue is how many blocking seats remain in the Senate.

      • Viking1865

        If Biden is the nominee, they have to find a way to avoid the debates, and I just don’t see how that flies. I don’t see how even this media can accept that a POTUS candidate can duck the debates. If only because the media desperately needs the ad revenue the debates and the analysis afterwards provide.

        Unless Biden has just been pretending about being senile and he comes out on stage and knocks Trump around? I don’t know. I just don’t see how the Joe Biden we have seen video clips up can get up on stage with Trump not once, not twice, but three times and not be completely exposed as the kind of man whos kids are ready to take his car keys away.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Stack the audience with lots of geese.

      • mrfamous

        Well they certainly could play shenanigans with the debate format so that Biden can do absolutely nothing but read off his cards in front of him.

      • Raven Nation

        “The current crisis/crises demand attention from everyone in politics rather than empty words on a stage.”

        “The President of the United States of America is an inveterate liar and a purveyor of fake news. I refuse to give credence to his words by appearing on stage with him.”

        “With the Covid-19 crisis still in full swing, I think gathering a large number of people together for a debate is a health risk – particularly since both the president and I are in a high-risk category. I would support a series of debates where each candidate appears on video from a remote location.”

        “This is CNN. Since most of the president’s words need to be fact-checked in real time, we have decided that debates are not productive.”

      • Viking1865

        Honestly, if the American people fall for that, then it is what it is. I still think that the basic competence of the President is something that matters to people, and I am using competence in the sense of “would his lawyer update his will based on the word of his 30 years younger new wife from Moldova” competence.

      • Raven Nation

        “Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerves* give to wisdom.”

        Bernard DeVoto

        Not suggesting you have weak nerves. I just like the quote.

      • Raven Nation

        Here’s a few more while I’m trying to cheer everyone up:

        Better to assume the worst and be wrong than assume the best and be wrong. Pessimism will keep you alive, optimism won’t.

        LAURELL K. HAMILTON, Obsidian Butterfly

        A pessimist is simply an optimist in full possession of the facts.

        EDWARD ABBEY, Hayduke Lives

        I like pessimists. They’re always the ones who bring life jackets for the boat.

        LISA KLEYPAS, Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor

      • Viking1865

        No I get what you’re saying, and I do consider myself a pessimist, but goddamn I just cannot imagine the majority of the American voters saying

        “Well, we should totally put the country in the hands of a guy who is unable to debate Donald Trump three times.”

      • R C Dean

        “Its not who votes that counts. Its who counts the votes.”

  23. RAHeinlein

    Steve Wozniak was interviewed on Squawk Alley this morning regarding tech’s role in the “crisis” – typical, nerdy, Woz for the most part, then became agitated because of those places in the country that AREN’T like Silicon Valley with NO DIVERSITY and REAL BIGOTRY, those places are just awful. Jon Fortt jumped on that and asked about discrepancies between Palo Alto schools and adjacent, less-affluent schools – Woz said, “you’re proving my point, we have all kinds of people here.” Woz pointed out that it’s really the “low-classes” where we have problems and that’s easily solved with redistribution.

    Woz also said he supports affirmative action – that one kind of hung out there. I was hoping Woz would say ” Jon – you’re a great example”

    • Gustave Lytton

      Woz has lead a charmed life, a lot due to his achievements which isn’t wrong but he’s also be very insulated from the childlike feels it allows. His feelings about affirmative action might be a little different if he’d stayed at HP and gotten fucked in the career ass by it.

      • kbolino

        Maybe he thinks Poles are a protected class.

      • R C Dean

        That would have been a good reply:

        “Uh, you realize Polish people get the short end of affirmative action, right?”

  24. SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

    The latest in Trashy’s company going full orwellian leftist:

    Just received a meeting invite titled “How to be an ally”

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Hopefully, when your company starts to run out of money, they’ll get rid of HR first.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Lol

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      Like Vichy France kind of ally? of Islamist wait til your back is turned ally?

  25. Pope Jimbo

    Uffda. I had a squirrel riot in my backyard today at lunch.

    We had 10-12 young squirrels (they look like younger juveniles) roaring around my yard and chasing each other up and down trees. I think it was two different families of young squirrels ran into each other and decided to duke it out for territory.

    My wife and I spent an hour watching the little bastards chase each other around. At least they didn’t light any fires.

    • RAHeinlein

      Similar with young ground squirrels. We cut down a medium shrub a few days ago, and I was picking-up the branches when I see several little ones looking up at me like “WTF – that was my house.” Too young to be frightened so I shooed them under the fence and called-out to the neighbor kids – they had a great time watching them run around.

    • Raven Nation

      We have squirrel-squirrel wars AND squirrel-rabbit wars.

      • Raven Nation

        Nice. We’re far too close to neighbors to shoot at squirrels.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        It’s like Enemy At The Gates in my backyard.

    • Hyperion

      Squirrel Riot?

      No Problem!

    • Mojeaux

      Here, the squirrels fight with the dive-bombing jays. Well, they did before the cardinals moved in. They do not have any truck with jays, no sirree.

      • BakedPenguin

        Jays? Cardinals? Insert bad baseball joke.

  26. Homple

    “Outrage over George Floyd’s death in the United States has rippled throughout the world, prompting messages of solidarity from far-flung countries and people to reflect on racial injustice and police violence in their own societies.”

    Bullsh!

    • Hyperion

      Bullshit, yet, they just wanted to go outside again, and got an excuse.

      • Hyperion

        Also, a lot of Eurotards hate America because they’re jealous as fuck. So that plays in as well. If something similar happened there, you wouldn’t hear a peep.

      • Tulip

        Not true. You don’t hear about it here, but the French riots are, in part, about the death kid a black man in police custody.

  27. Pope Jimbo

    Minnesoda is still woke as hell

    After many months of COVID, amid a recession, and the eruption of nationwide protests over Minneapolis Police’s slaying of George Floyd, the Minnesota State Board of Investments passed a hard-fought resolution to divest the state’s public pension funds from companies that make more than 25 percent of their revenue from thermal coal mining.

    I wonder if I could get a resolution on the ballot for the next election that states that any pension fund that gets involved in social justice issues when deciding how to invest pension funds will not be eligible for any bail outs if the fund runs out of money.

    I’d get so much pleasure watching the faces of all the pubsec pensioners when they were told that there would be no more payments next month, but don’t they feel good because they really stuck it to those evil coal barons.

    • Suthenboy

      Dont most power plants now run on methane?
      This looks like more empty signaling.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        That’s the best kind since it carries the lowest overhead costs.

    • Rhywun

      OFFS.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Minneapolis Police’s slaying

      I think you mean Derek Chauvin’s slaying of George Floyd.

  28. peachy rex

    The average person might mouth the words, but they don’t really care about justice, or equality, or freedom. They don’t like radical change; they’re not real keen on even incremental change. They fear uncertainty; they’re terrified by chaos.

    They want stability and predictability. Order.

    The last time the Democratic Party was openly pro-riot, the direct result was Richard Nixon winning 49 states. A blowout like that won’t happen again… but being pro-riot has *never* been a vote-winner with the general electorate.

    • Drake

      On a smaller scale – In 1992 LA had a pro-riot Mayor. In 1993 they elected a Republican Mayor. Los Angeles!

      • Rhywun

        NYC was a basket-case around that time and we got Giuliani out of it (FWIW). I wonder who we’ll get next time. Key difference now is that the GOP is all but dead now. The only viable candidates recently are small-fry like the lady who is/was my state assembly-creature.

      • Viking1865

        Well the GOP is dead because the NYC Democrats adopted the Rudy program wholeheartedly. There’s no oxygen for the GOP if the city’s Democratic powers that be keep the streets in decent shape, and keep the violence in the ghetto. Bloomberg and Rudy are basically the exact same creature, politically speaking.

      • Rhywun

        Today’s Democrats are actively cheering on the rioting in nice neighborhoods. There is substantial room for someone to come in and say “No”.

      • Viking1865

        Yeah that’s what I mean. If you deliver services decently, and keep the crime in the ghetto, NYCers will keep voting Democrat. If you can’t do that, they will vote Republican, but only for enough time to get the streets safe again.

      • Rhywun

        True enough. But Deblasio has been anti-cop his entire reign – he has been very, very fortunate to rule during a period of declining crime (and a decent economy), because all of his instincts lead to promoting the opposite outcome.

  29. DEG

    The roof is done. It looks pretty good. I’m going out for a bit.

    • Florida Man

      Are they looking at the median family’s net worth or income? What is Bezos actually income?

    • Hyperion

      All of it. He drank the proggie lion koolaid and the brain damage is irreversible.

    • Rhywun

      Oh, fuck off.

  30. Ownbestenemy

    I am not sure the signalling from NYC and LA to slash their police budgets will do what they think it will do…

    The rioters dont give AF.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      No they don’t.

      That will be interpreted as capitulation. I’m not saying that their budgets shouldn’t be cut for many reasons, but the message is “We surrender. Do what you want.”

      • cyto

        Right?

        People are being lawless! I know! Let’s make sure we have less police! That’ll fix it!

    • Drake

      Defund them. It’ll be great. The move destroy the cities and then wipe out the rich inner suburbs. Once the get further out the real shooting starts.

  31. Scruffy Nerfherder

    This guy has some very strong legs to be carrying around those huge balls. Open defiance of the cultural narrative is not good for your academic career these days.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/florida-professor-cites-black-privilege-amid-george-floyd-protests-prompting-n1224751

    “Sincere question: If Afr. Americans as a group, had the same behavioral profile as Asian Americans (on average, performing the best academically, having the highest income, committing the lowest crime, etc.), would we still be proclaiming “systematic racism” exists?” said another tweet the same day.

    Charles Negy
    @CharlesNegy
    Here’s a suggestion to those who think they are being “screwed” and oppressed in the U.S.: Stay in school. Be the best student possible. Avoid crime. Avoid gangs. Avoid unwanted pregnancy. Avoid drugs and alcohol. Amazing what a little common sense can do you for your destiny

    • Rhywun

      “We are aware of Charles Negy’s recent personal Twitter posts, which are completely counter to UCF’s values.”

      So, your university is intellectually bankrupt and this guy’s career is likely over. Progress!

      • Florida Man

        I’d compile a list of every other professor that had things like cancel white people and weren’t fired and post that in response to UCF.

      • R C Dean

        “Stay in school. Be the best student possible. Avoid crime. Avoid gangs. Avoid unwanted pregnancy. Avoid drugs and alcohol.”

        That is contrary to their values? Oy.

    • Suthenboy

      What does it say about our society when telling the truth takes balls?

      • Lachowsky

        We are a ballsless society. Infantantilized by the PC police. 2+2=5 suthen. Property is violence. Up is down. Water is dry, and words are agression.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        It says we’re fucked.

      • leon

        Telling the truth has ever been an unpopular act

      • straffinrun

        This.

      • Drake

        Orwell was right.

    • commodious spittoon

      would we still be proclaiming “systematic racism” exists

      Well, yes.

    • UnCivilServant

      I don’t get it.

      The current $100 is so ugly why would you want to use it as wallpaper?

      • Lachowsky

        Being right is the best decoration.

    • Suthenboy

      I brought 1,000,000 pesos in 1K bills back from Bolivia back in the day. They were first class bills….the paper worth much more than the face value. Very nice paper and printing. I intended to use them for wall paper. Unfortunately a couple of knuckleheads burgled my house and stole them.
      I wish I could have seen the morons faces when they took those to the bank.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      That group needs to be singled out and destroyed. They’re the worst of the worst.

      • Urthona

        the democrat talking point now is that they’re not a group or organization. it’s just independent people with the same cause.

      • cyto

        They are definitely coordinated via one of the moveon type think tanks. They are coordinated far and wide…. not just ideology, but tactics and timing. Someone is coordinating between local politicians, press, and these internet groups of anarcho-comunists.

      • Viking1865

        Yeah I’m not saying Soros is sitting there in a lair issuing direct orders, but there’s got to be some kind of Discord, or slack channel, or something that the movers and shakers are in.

        Hell, we know the press has a private listserv, and you can tell its in big use because they all hit the same phrases at the same time.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        It would be the producers and editors that are using it. The talking heads just say what they’re told to.

      • Viking1865

        It was. Back in 2010. It was 400 or so left leaning journalists, academics, and commentators who had been posting together since 2007. Highlights included the coordinated hit job on Sarah Palin, and burying the Jeremiah Wright story.

        It was news for a couple weeks, they moved to a new private listserv, and nothing else happened. Imagine if Glibs was private, and we were, all of us, reporters, editors, pundits, and analysts spread all over the media landscape. Imagine what the national conversation would be about every day. Imagine the kind of questions we could ask politicans, the kinds of stories we could beam into the eyes of the normies.

        When I was in high school I did American Legion Boys State, which might be the most conservative thing I ever did in my life. It was honestly more than a bit creepy in the degree of right wingatude. You spend a week setting up a model society. Your dorm is a town, you elect mayors and sheriffs, then theres a statewide election. The two parties are the Federalists and the Nationalists. It’s supposed to be all about civics and politics.

        Every boy there that was political that I talked to was a Republican or a conservative or a libertarian. Except for this tiny group. A very small minority, that were leftist. Every single one of them chose to go to the newspaper, and the newspaper every day was full of articles about the lack of political diversity. Every single leftist in Boys State, right hand to god, was on the newspaper. They didn’t try to persuade the other boys. They didn’t try to directly mobilize the apolitical ones who were there because it was a good look for college apps. They immediately took over the single media organ and created a narrative to lay over reality.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Fucking disgusting

      Complete with Che T-Shirt

    • BakedPenguin

      They just squeal that they’re actually white supremacists doing a false flag op.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        White supremacists from Portland OR

  32. Mojeaux

    Update on mulch-getting-for-my-mom:

    XY TD had requested we go to Harbor Freight to get this thing. I was dubious, but okay, we can try. If it get us out of unloading 2 loads of mulch by hand, I guess I can spare $40.

    It worked. The fucking thing actually worked. I am completely blown away, and then I find out XY was also dubious. Heh.

    Took him to Sonic and loaded him up with anything he wanted.

    • Gustave Lytton

      I was dubious as soon as it said HF. Now I’m interested.

      • Mojeaux

        I have video proof. I won’t post it because XY doesn’t want me to.

      • Mojeaux

        It was 1 yd3 each load. I don’t know how much that weighs. My truck can’t haul 2 yd3, but I didn’t do 1.5 yd3 today, as I do sometimes.

    • UnCivilServant

      I can see how too much weight can make it impossible to get the load moving, so I understand the doubts.

    • commodious spittoon

      Now I have a gift idea for dad. Thanks!

      • Mojeaux

        It was XY’s idea. Half the time his ideas are fantastical, inefficient, or downright undoable, but the other half– When he’s right, he’s right.

    • straffinrun

      Would that work for a corpse?

      • Mojeaux

        Yes. I’m sure you’re asking for a friend.

      • straffinrun

        My buddy Gosnelll.

      • Mojeaux

        A load of dead babies? Is that where we are now?

      • straffinrun

        His F 150 is a head count.

      • Bobarian LMD

        Whadda ya mean, ‘now’?

      • Mojeaux

        LOL

    • DEG

      Excellent.

  33. Ozymandias

    Regarding the current mess we’re seeing in cities. I managed to stumble upon this article from the New Yorker two years ago (April 2018). I would encourage everyone to read it. All I can say is that I know the subject of the article; he’s a good man.

    What you are seeing in cities is the culmination – and complete failure – of decades of Progressive policies, mixed with big city corruption, including from the police unions, contract awards, to the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, etc. and on and on. God Bless Pat Skinner.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I heard an interview with him recently. Neighborhood policing needs to come back, badly. He certainly sounds like a good man to have on the job.

  34. straffinrun

    How did you go retarded, America?

    Two ways. Gradually then suddenly.

  35. Ayn Random Variation

    Since Vegas is opening this weekend and since I haven’t spent any money since March and since I am possibly losing my mind, i have scheduled a 4 day Vegas Vacation for myself from Sat to Tuesday.
    If anyone wants to have a drink in Vegas during those days I’ll be at the Flamingo playing blackjack or video poker at the bar.

    • UnCivilServant

      I’m afraid I won’t be in the area until November.

    • Ayn Random Variation

      It’s also pretty cheap for a weekend as well..

    • straffinrun

      Enjoy. For some reason the casinos didn’t get burned to the ground.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Because Vegas doesn’t tolerate that shit. It’s not Portland.

    • Sean

      Are you sure you want to fly? I heard the Ebola is making a come back.

  36. quincy

    Weird sentences I’ve said in the past week that make me think: 1) this is either the 21st century Sci-fi warned me about, or 2) I’m speaking the nonsense phrases spies tell each to know they are on the same side. Namely:

    “Enjoy your Phase 1 illegal haircut.”

    “Watch Korean baseball tomorrow morning. You will see the teddy bears.”

    • Sean

      I asked my ffl if he’d like me to wear a mask. ?

  37. Sean

    https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/kanye-west-launches-college-fund-184447983.html

    “Today the rapper revealed via a representative that he has donated $2 million so far to charities associated with Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and has set up a college fund to cover tuition for Floyd’s 6-year-old daughter Gianna. In addition, the rapper has pledged to cover legal costs for the Arbery and Taylor families. And in his hometown of Chicago, he’ll also be aiding black-owned businesses with financial contributions.”

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Hey, a productive and worthwhile effort!

      But not enough whites kneeling and groveling involved.

      • Ted S.

        Oh, the white liberals were pissed when he and Kim went to the White House to discuss criminal justice reform.

      • Hyperion

        They’ll be pissed about this as well, not enough blame whitey and needz some communism shit. Did he mention reparations? What a Trumptard.

  38. Hyperion

    Damnit I hate night work, but at least it’s work. Nice thundershower going on outside right now. All peaceful here and stuff. Beer drankin, half day off tomorrow morn, then back to work until th e weekend.

    Then maybe some of this?

    Plinking Squirrel fer fun

    Bwhahhahhhaaa!

    Sorry about the double post, but I need some distraction. Silencer maybe… hmm…

  39. IntraveneousWoodChipper

    “ George Floyd’s death has reignited anger over the death of Adama Traoré, a black man who died in police custody in France four years ago.”

    Why would French people, even if they shared the same skin color, care about a murder in the United States?

    I love how the Prog media is acting like these riots aren’t also heavily predicated on tons of people pissed about having their jobs taken away from them by the government and forced isolation AND the fact that we are all being taken advantage of by Commie pukes stirring up trouble.