The Hat and The Hair: Episode 185

by | Feb 17, 2021 | Hat and Hair, SugarFree | 191 comments


“Not guilty, muthafuckas!” the hat said, strolling into the Oval-Office-in-exile, flip-flops slapping against the Mexican tile floor.

“How long are you going to keep saying that?” the hair asked, clinging to the inside bars of his gilt toucan cage.

“Until it sinks in,” the hat said pointedly. “And when I’m done sticking a shiv in all the ones who have betrayed me.”

The hair hummed a few bars of “Paranoid.”

“Shit like that is why he put you in the cage,” the hat said dryly.

“He put me in here because you said I was a Jew baby-eater,” the hair said, shaking, shedding a bit of himself onto The New York Times lining the floors of his cage.

“Burr, Collins, Cassidy, Murkowski, Romney, Sasse, and that other one…” the hat seethed. “They won’t see me coming. I’ll just be a hat that someone mailed them… and then I’ll strike!”

“Pat Toomey,” the hair said.

“Yes, Toomey. Droopy-Dog Toomey with the startled robot smile…” the hat said.

“Is the Oval Office done yet?” Donald said, coming into the sunny room. He was wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt, board shorts, black dress socks, and loafers. And a “Make America Great Again Again Again” visor on his head with a dollop of yellow wig hair poking out of the top like an aroused prairie dog.

“We’re still working on the permits,” that hair said.

“The county stands in our way,” the hat said, glaring at the visor with naked hatred.

“We’ll pressure DeSantis,” Donald said. “I’ll call him tonight. Put that on the social calendar.”

“Yes, sir!” the hat said.

“Kiss-ass,” the hair hissed.

“Good work on McConnell,” Donald said, awkwardly climbing into his President-in-exile hammock.

Dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack,” the hat said. “I was really proud of that line.”

Sullen means unsmiling,” the hair said.

“Shut up!” the hat snapped.

Dour also means sullen,” the hair said.

“Don’t make me come up there,” the hat said through gritted bill.

“Basically three words that mean the same thing,” the hair whispered.

The hat howled with rage.

“Can I get out of this cage?” the hair asked Donald. “That wig looks terrible. What if someone took a picture of you playing golf in it?”

“And the visor doesn’t even talk,” the hat said tightly, trying to stay calm. “What’s the point of wearing a hat that doesn’t talk?”

“It keeps the sun out of my eyes,” Donald said blithely.

I keep the sun out of your eyes!” the hat yelled.

“And you two go native when we’re outside,” Donald said.

“So do you!” the hair and hat said together.

“This is our new home,” Donald said, watching the reflections of the pool play across the ceiling. “We have to master Florida or it will master us.”

“I think it’s all the Monster Energy drink evaporated in the atmosphere,” the hair said.

“And we still haven’t gone somewhere on a fan boat,” the hat said. “Do we even have a fan boat? How can we be authentic Floridians without a fan boat?”

“You two better be watching your episodes of Miami Vice,” Donald grumbled.

“We’re halfway through season one,” the hair sullenly.

“You should get a Ferrari!” the hat said.

“USA hat would have loved a Ferrari,” the hair said dourly.

“He’s gone now,” the hat said, “Speak of him no more. He has gone a progress through the guts of an alligator, the most Florida death of them all.”

The hair climbed to his perch, unsmiling, and set it swinging.

About The Author

SugarFree

SugarFree

Your Resident Narcissistic Misogynist Rape-Culture Apologist

191 Comments

  1. The Late P Brooks

    “Do we even have a fan boat? How can we be authentic Floridians without a fan boat?”

    Well? Can they?

  2. Chipwooder

    He was wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt, board shorts, black dress socks, and loafers.

    I thought this was fiction?

    • Ozymandias

      Uh-unh. I always wondered how SF got the bugs inside the Oval Office, but now I’m beginning to think he has some kind of implant on The Donald himself.
      It’s the only possible explanation for how searingly accurate – even predictive – these pieces are.

      • Tundra

        ‘Sup Ozy!

        Hockey started up a couple weeks ago. I’m already walking normally again!

      • Ozymandias

        Tundra! I got my first hatty last night in a competitive game on ice since the Clinton Administration. All good ones, too. No cheapies (EN) or greasies.*

        *I note that all that matters is that it went in and I have a particular fetish for greasy goals in front of the net. BUT… in all fairness, there are snipes and dangles, and then there are greasies.

      • db

        Cheapies, Dangles and Greasies–are you sure these aren’t terms for different kinds of street prostitutes?

  3. Sean

    Pat Toomey

    *spits on ground*

    • db

      How does PA manage to have such POS senators all the time? They’re some of the worst.

      • Sean

        Damned if I know.

      • juris imprudent

        When you border NY, NJ and MD on three sides, what do you expect?

      • creech

        Probably because if the Republican senators weren’t POS, then there would only be Democrat senators. The suburbanite social climbers and virtue signalers are not going to put up with an Trumpster senator. And I’ve already heard from two voters who reluctantly voted from Trump that they will no longer support Penna. Republicans if the State GOP censures Toomey.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Boo hoo. RINO voters demand party be a vestigial appendage of the Democrat machine. I hope you gave them voter registration cards on the spot so they can fuck right off.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        This.

        I’ll go so far as to say it would be better in the long term for these RINO seats to flip blue, if only to purge the GOP of the slow-lane socialism contingent.

      • creech

        So GOP would be a permanent minority and Penna. could become like NJ, NY, CA and IL?

  4. db

    I looked at used ’85 Testarossas recently. Still a bit too much for me to justify. Now, Magnum’s ’79 308 GTS on the other hand, can be had for a reasonable price.

    • Mad Scientist

      I want an early 70s Dino soooooo much. Used to be you could get one for 50k, which seemed quite a bit for a Ferrari the purists say isn’t a real Ferrari. Now they’re 3 times that much.

      • Bobarian LMD

        My Uncle had one one back in the late ’70s. Beautiful car that was a fucking nightmare to actually do anything with. I think he managed to break even on it, but he sold it right before they really took off.

    • Tundra

      I watch them (308s) for fun, but deep down I know that that upkeep would give me hives.

      Happy to live vicariously through you, though!

      • Chipwooder

        Bingo. It’s like the people who buy old Rolls-Royces for $25K who then discover that it’s going to cost them thousands of dollars a year to keep it running.

      • db

        Same for planes like a Cessna 414…

      • slumbrew

        There’s an old roller pretty much rotting on its tires around the corner, for what I assume are those reasons.

      • kinnath

        When my daughter’s Xterra was totaled in the windstorm last summer, we started looking for replacements.

        We found an ad for a BMW X5 in the desired price range. So we started looking at reviews.

        The review with the most impact said “If you can afford a brand new BMW, then you can’t afford and old BMW”.

      • juris imprudent

        My son was supposed to inherit a 928 (from his godfather), but it would’ve cost him more than he could afford to get the thing running. Not sure what happened to that car.

      • Tundra

        He dodged a bullet. Nice car, though.

      • Bobarian LMD

        There is some success with these cars by putting a Chevy LS and transmission in them (just like ’70s Jags) that makes them affordable to drive.

    • db

      Fuck cancer, yo.

      • Bobarian LMD

        Speaking of cancer, do not look at twitter for tweets about Limbaugh.

      • Rat on a train

        Twitter: an infinite number of monkeys flinging shit.

    • trshmnstr the terrible

      A man who shaped my view of politics from a very young age. I may have outgrown the show and disagreed with some of his politics, but the man taught me that TMITE and that politicians are scum, and for that I am ever grateful for him.

      • Ownbestenemy

        ^^ I think that will be the take for a lot of people that aren’t ghouls.

      • rhywun

        Never listened to him but I am well aware that the left thinks he’s Evil incarnate so he must have been doing something right.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        It took the left and Jon Stewart 25 years to successfully replicate him. It takes boku talent to properly balance satirical comedy and straight reporting.

      • Ownbestenemy

        This was probably his best statement:

        “We love people. When we look out over the United States of America, when we are anywhere, when we see a group of people, such as this or anywhere, we see Americans. We see human beings. We don’t see groups. We don’t see victims. We don’t see people we want to exploit. What we see — what we see is potential. We do not look out across the country and see the average American, the person that makes this country work. We do not see that person with contempt. We don’t think that person doesn’t have what it takes. We believe that person can be the best he or she wants to be if certain things are just removed from their path like onerous taxes, regulations and too much government,”

      • Tundra

        Huh. That’s pretty fucking libertarian.

      • Raven Nation

        Yep. Sadly, he was also pretty strong on moral conservatism. He supported the war on drugs because, paraphrasing, “we need to protect people from themselves.”

      • Tundra

        Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that he was a libertarian, just that the LP might just flat-out plagiarize that statement. It’s really good.

      • Suthenboy

        What a monster.

        When people express hatred for someone who says something like that…it’s a clue. Recently a relative outed herself. I knew for 30 years she was a closet commie but being emboldened by her hatred for president ‘We will never be a socialist country’ and the Biden/pinko election she said two things to me on the phone:

        “Poverty is not a bad thing. Your worship of prosperity make me think of greed.”
        and
        “No facts, no arguments, nothing you can say will change my mind”

        I am sure she is celebrating Limbaugh’s death as we speak.

      • Mojeaux

        I can’t call those people out or it would make me a hypocrite. I was glad/satisfied when RBG died. I don’t think that makes me a monster; it just makes me happy an evil opponent is out of the way.

      • slumbrew

        While RBG’s passing also made me – satisfied? optimistic? – it was because she had power over my life and used that power to vote to make me ever more a subject instead of a citizen. As a person, I held no particular ill-will towards her.

        Rush had no power over anybody – people who are happy he’s dead just didn’t like his ideas and speech.

      • Raven Nation

        To connect to slumbrew a little; Mojeaux I suspect you would have been happy had RBG retired and gone away. I’m seeing people celebrating death. I think there’s a little distinction there although I take your overall point.

      • Mojeaux

        Mojeaux I suspect you would have been happy had RBG retired and gone away.

        Yes.

      • Plinker762

        I second slumbrew’s comment. I don’t feel bad about the death of some people because I don’t like them but because it is the only way they will give up the power to fuck with my life.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Right its one thing to not feel empathy for their deaths and another to dance on their graves to gain some twisted notion of moral high ground.

      • Bill Door

        My thought, too, Mojeaux, is that when RBG died, you were satisfied, but you didn’t celebrate. I think that is a distinction. I won’t be sad when someone like Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi snuffs it, but I also won’t dance on carry on about it. We go on with our lives satisfied that someone who had power to destroy can’t exercise that power anymore. People could choose to tune out of Rush’s show; people could only choose to ignore RBG’s rulings with the possibility of having their lives ruined.

      • Endless Mike

        She was 87, had achieved the pinnacle of her profession, and died with her boots on – I didn’t see anything to be particularly sad about.

  5. Suthenboy

    I see Rush Limbaugh died today. I am not surprised, he was very ill. He was a trooper though, he kept working nearly to the end.

    Cue the pinkos dancing in the street in glee, ghouls that they are.

    • Yusef, Disturbed, do not operate while intoxicated,

      He will be missed, a great American

    • The Other Kevin

      He got me started on the road I’m on today. In high school I was into art, and of course all those kids were lefties. But I didn’t pay too much attention. Then in college I started taking art classes at a store during the day, and the old timers used to put on Limbaugh. A few years later it was a short jump from conservative to libertarian.

      I was thinking about him a lot lately. When I listened to him, he could go over the top. “Liberals want to take your guns and throw you in jail”. It sounded crazy back then. But today, the left is talking about all those “crazy” things out in the open.

      • Drake

        #Metoo

        I really liked his tv show in the early 90’s. Much more condensed than his radio ramblings.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Cue the pinkos dancing in the street in glee, ghouls that they are.

      They are the very definition of “classy”

  6. Not Adahn

    “Not guilty, muthafuckas!” the hat said, strolling into the Oval-Office-in-exile, flip-flops slapping against the Mexican tile floor

    What? How? The Hat as feet?

    • Bobarian LMD

      The Hat becomes more anthropomorphic the more time he spends in Fla.

      • db

        I’m picturing some sort of gator-feet that have grown out from his sides as contact with the primordial Florida swamp-essence has reactivated some long-forgotten vestigial DNA.

  7. Tundra

    “How long are you going to keep saying that?” the hair asked, clinging to the inside bars of his gilt toucan cage.

    First of many legit lol moments.

    Nice one, SF.

    • Not Adahn

      The Days Without Sugar are good ones.

  8. Not Adahn

    “We have to master Florida or it will master us.”

    *sits seiza, begins meditating*

  9. Rebel Scum

    Rushed out of this world.

    Conservative radio icon Rush Limbaugh passed away on Wednesday morning at 70-years-old following his year-long battle with lung cancer.

    Limbaugh’s “The Rush Limbaugh Show” first aired in 1988 and spent 33 years on the air, growing from being nationally syndicated with 56 radio stations to more than 600 stations with up to nearly 27 million weekly listeners.

    “I wasn’t expected to be alive today,” Limbaugh said in his final radio broadcast of 2020, according to Fox News. “I wasn’t expected to make it to October, and then to November, and then to December. And yet, here I am, and today, got some problems, but I’m feeling pretty good today.”

    Can’t wait to see the solemn, response from tolerant leftists.

    • Rebel Scum

      *skims comments*

      Look like I was third with the news. Oh, well.

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      Of course they’re going to dance on the grave of the person who basically created fake news and divided the country.

  10. SugarFree

    Of course Limbaugh is dead. How else would Donald be able to take over his show?

    • Not Adahn

      *blinks*

      *blinks*

    • Ownbestenemy

      Dark yet perfect

    • AlexinCT

      He truly has been imbued with the gift of prophesy by the Old Ones!

      • Bobarian LMD

        Is it really prophesy if you actively make it happen?

        I mean the Old Ones, not SF.

    • LJW

      I can’t sit through a minute of Trump blabbering. I can’t imagine sitting through a 4 hour show.

      • Old Man With Candy

        I couldn’t sit through a minute of Limbaugh blabbering, much less a 4 hour show. So… no change.

      • LJW

        That too

      • creech

        I started listening to him and quickly decided he was as likely to take some lefty statement out of context and then proceed to tell us “what they really want” as, say, Joe Scarborough or Rachel Maddow was for the other side. I can’t stand that lying and half-truth shit whether it comes from Rush or Hannity or Tucker or Lester Holt or Dan Rather or Chucky Todd. Tell me your opinion, cool, but don’t piss on my shoes and tell me it’s raining.

    • Nephilium

      So of course the EIB network will be renamed the Trump network, right?

    • db

      The Testarossas were, except when they needed to perform in ways the real Testarossa couldn’t (one example is that when in a spin-out maneuver, the real Testarossa would stall out) or when certain maneuvers or stunts were performed that had a high risk of crash.

      The Daytona was always a kit car built on a Corvette body.

  11. LJW

    Sorry to go OT so soon. Just finished the annual HR compliance training. At one point in the “training” they say something along the lines of be conscious of your privilege. They left out white, but it was pretty obvious what they were insinuating. They’re really pushing it to the edge of getting sued.

    • AlexinCT

      COMPLY YOU FUCKING SERF!

    • SugarFree

      Male privilege
      Hetero privilege
      Cis privilege
      English-speaking privilege
      Non-Latinx privilege
      First-world privilege

      The intersectionality of your thoughtcrimes.

    • Tundra

      If I come from Scottish/Italian stock, am I actually white, though?

      • Gustave Lytton

        As long as you’re not Irish.

      • bacon-magic

        *harrumphs

    • Sean

      And you’re just the cracker to do it?

    • rhywun

      Sued? Is that happening? Anywhere at all? I don’t see any pushback on this stuff whatsoever, other than that Damore kid and we all saw what happened to him.

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      We have to get rid of your privilege rather than increasing the opportunities and privileges of other. This way we’ll all be equally oppressed.

    • Semi-Spartan Dad

      I had to take a mandatory, tracked survey that posed a series of questions and scenarios to which I had to answer. Many questions were intricately worded and I had trouble deciding the “correct” answer even going with the white people=evil viewpoint.

    • Suthenboy

      Huh. So there were left wing activists at the capitol riot. Who’da thunk it? That is just shocking.

      *Pelosi looks away and mumbles “I dont know anything about that” *

    • SugarFree

      A thick layer of irony:

      Sullivan, who founded the social justice group Insurgence USA

      • juris imprudent

        How many times do you have to be told IT’S DIFFERENT WHEN WE DO IT!!!

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      From the article:

      it is oppressive to require that he not be allowed to continue his primary area of employment for an extended period of time,” Steven R. Kiersh, the Sullivan lawyer

      Ummm. About that.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        It’s not like he made a joke about a victimhood class or anything like that.

      • Dr. Fronkensteen

        I was thinking more along the lines of the lockdowns being oppressive as they prevent people from their primary employment for an extended or even permanent amount of time.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        That too

    • Muzzled Woodchipper

      The article is STILL peddling this bullshit….

      Four other people died during the riots, including Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick.

      • Dr. Fronkensteen

        Died not killed.

        During, I guess in close time proximity. They’re skirting the edge here.

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        Sort of.

        Sicknick died several hours after it was over. The presumption, still, is that his death was definitely as a direct result of the riot, and considering they haven’t released his official COD, I assume the riot had nothing to do with his death several hours after it was over. If they could spin it, even the slightest bit of evidence would do. That they can’t tells me he died of something else.

      • Dr. Fronkensteen

        Another Covid death attributed to Trump, obviously.

      • R C Dean

        During, I guess in close time proximity. They’re skirting the edge here.

        No, during means during, as in “while the riot was going on”. They are lying.

      • Ted S.

        Lots of people died while the riot was going on; they just weren’t anywhere near the riot.

      • R C Dean

        About 340 people die on average every hour in the US. If the riot lasted two hours, then almost seven hundred people died during the riot. TRUMP IS A MASS MURDERER!

        But we already knew that.

      • creech

        Do we know how the three died who had medical conditions? Were they aged? Did they have heart issues? I’ve heard several cases of crime victims or others who have gotten overly excited from something, had their blood pressure spike, and then keeled over dead. Are there any cases of old folks checking out while being in a BLM riot, a Pussy Hat parade, or Occupy Wall Street?

      • Animal

        Since we don’t know, we can presume that none of the information fits The Narrative™ and therefore will be ignored.

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        This.

        If it doesn’t fit the narrative, we will either never know about it, or hear it from non-approved sources, where it will be attacked by the Fact Check Brigade.

      • slumbrew

        TW: Wikipedia

        – Boyland was trampled to death by people rushing to breach a tunnel entrance on the west side of the Capitol
        – Greeson had a heart attack outdoors on the Capitol grounds, and was declared dead at 2:05 p.m., shortly before the breach of the Capitol
        – Philips died of a stroke at the hospital after splitting from his group at 10:30 in the morning.

        The other two who died were Sicknick & Babbitt.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_storming_of_the_United_States_Capitol

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        So Greenwald has it right.

        Not a single personal was intentionally killed by a rioter or protester. Someone was trampled, which is an accidental death, but the only person killed was a rioter, and it was done by a cop.

        But remember: the InSuRgEnCy!!! has to be portrayed as the most dangerous event since Trump’s great Tweetstorm of 2018, so the narrative will continue to be fudged until it disappears completely.

    • Cy Esquire

      “Four other people died during the riots, including Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick.”

      Factually incorrect.

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        How much you wanna bet the Fact Check Brigade will let that one slide?

  12. Mojeaux

    Dan’s Bake Sale.

    • robodruid

      Good times….

      Ya know, in his early years, he tended to be against some of the conspiracies (trilateral commission) sort of stuff.

      But with all of the stupid stuff the GOP has done in the past, i wonder if he ever changed his views. He certainly soured on the GOP machine.

      • Mojeaux

        LOL I was wondering if anybody remembered that but me and Yusef.

      • robc

        I remember it. Dan failed to cash in, making only enough to cover the subscription which was the original point of the bake sale.

    • Yusef, Disturbed, do not operate while intoxicated,

      And some quit paying loans in anticipation of free shit,
      HAHAHAHA!!!!

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Stupid is as stupid does

    • Muzzled Woodchipper

      “My point is: I understand the impact of debt, and it can be debilitating,” Biden said. “I am prepared to write off the $10,000 debt but not $50 [thousand], because I don’t think I have the authority to do it.”

      Good: So he does at least handjob the idea that the president doesn’t have unlimited power to just do whatever.

      But, legally speaking, what’s the fucking difference between signing an EO forgiving $50k of debt, and signing one that “only” forgives $10k in debt? The mechanism and the act are exactly the same, just using different numbers. It he does or does not have the authority to do one, the same should follow for the other.

      It’s like saying he doesn’t have the authority to drone 10 Americans, but it’s perfectly within his authority to drone two of them.

      Oh. Wait. Nevermind.

      • Sean

        handjob the idea

        Some sort of stimulus package?

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        If we had a president beholden to limited executive authority as a first principle, it would stimulate my package.

    • Muzzled Woodchipper

      Also, fuck you!

      Biden said he also supported expanding debt forgiveness programs for those going into public service jobs, such as teaching.

      Talk about incentivizing the growth of government.

      If you contribute to society you must repay your loans. If you go in to the noble civil service where all you do is leach off if the productive sectors, the taxpayers will float your bill.

      If you go in to government, “society” will subsidize your entire life.

  13. Muzzled Woodchipper

    Yes. I’m sure that Norway’s Climate Guy will totally welcome losing the only thing floating his grand welfare state.

    Norway’s minister of climate and environment, Sveinung Rotevatn, told CNN in a statement that the country’s commitments are based on territorial climate targets. “Emissions related to the consumption of exported oil and gas products in other countries are covered by the importers’ emission accounts and targets,” he said. Asked about the country’s oil and gas export plans, he said “Norway strongly supports a transition from the use and production of fossil energy to renewable energy.”

    Norway would crumble without their oil fund. This guy is full of shit.

    That said, this is the first time I’ve seen anyone on the left mention Norway’s hypocrisy. Sure, their country which is less populated than Kentucky is well on their way to being a renewable-only country. But it was all paid for, along with the rest of their welfare state, by oil. As soon as that’s gone, they’re fucked.

    ~sf

    • Bobarian LMD

      What is Venezuela, Alex Ken?

  14. The Late P Brooks

    I have privilege privilege.

    Top that.

    • Yusef, Disturbed, do not operate while intoxicated,

      I have impostor privilege, I don’t think I’m as privileged as I really am,

    • Rat on a train

      I would add up my privilege, but that would require forbidden math.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Boss

      He was forced to give up driving at the age of 97, after smashing into a car while driving a Land Rover near Sandringham estate in January 2019.

    • Not Adahn

      Oh yeah, he was played by that one actor — you know, the British guy who isn’t Bandersnatch Camembert.

  15. wdalasio

    Rush Limbaugh has passed. While I can’t say I was a huge fan, I did respect the guy’s staying power and ability to think on his feet. His choice of Walter Williams as a guest host always suggested to me that he was probably even smarter than he let on.

    I’ll be avoiding anti-social media the next couple of days. I really have no appetite for the ghouls who are going to come out of the woodwork to attack a better mind than their own.

  16. The Late P Brooks

    I can’t sit through a minute of Trump blabbering.

    #METOO

  17. Mojeaux

    Limbaugh kept me company on many a long, lonely commute. He made me understand a few things about how politics works. I haven’t listened to him in years because I outgrew him, but he was one of the way stations to libertarianism. TOS was the next one up after that. Now I am here and still learning and growing.

    • Suthenboy

      What The Other Kevin said above. It is a short jump from conservatism to libertarianism.

      I was never a conservative but I subscribe to a lot of their values. Conservatism exists because imperfect people developed a system of values by learning from their mistakes. It isn’t a perfect system of values but it is worlds better than leftist systems that promote making stupid mistakes. Toss in a little self ownership and voila…you have libertarianism.

      • Raven Nation

        “It is a short jump from conservatism to libertarianism”

        That’s pretty much how I got there. Once I stopped being a leftist, conservatism won out. But, when the arguments were basically, the government should leave us alone to make money, live our lives, etc., it became inconsistent for me to say government should leave ME alone but it should control those icky gay people and drug addicts. Of course, once I got to minimalism, it was hard to argue against anarcho-capitalism.

      • Suthenboy

        I grew up when the USSR was raging and debate about leftism/rightism was common. I heard all of the arguments early on and since I grew up in a very rural setting I was very much a ‘leave me the fuck alone’ type. It was the rural south so I had my craw full of evangelical conservatives early on. I had a strong sense of small L libertarianism but it took a while for me to clarify that.

        The problem now is the use of the word libertarianism. Most people calling themselves by that name are just some flavor of closet leftist. See: TOS.

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        I noticed conservatives, around the time of the Tea Party during their bid to distance themselves from those conservatives in gov who brought out the Big Checkbook, try to pass themselves as libertarian as well. It was pretty common.

      • wdalasio

        That sort of reminds me of a point I’ve heard about the Pareto distribution. It’s better known as the 80/20 rule. And it’s actually surprisingly common in the world. You wind up seeing 80% of books read are only 20% of those published. That’s only 20% of books written. 80% of new businesses fail in their first year. 80% of the work done by an organization is done by 20% of their people. The list goes on. Yeah, the percentages might vary. But, it’s a matter of calibration. The main point is this. Most things aren’t excellent. Most aren’t even close. Most big ideas generally pan out to be atrocious failures. Sticking with the proven good ones until you know there’s something better is generally not a bad strategy.

      • Suthenboy

        And everything you just said is beyond the grasp of 80% of people.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Certainly HR who thinks if they can ape the characteristics of “great” companies, success will automatically follow.

      • db

        I used to rail against the “cargo cult” tendencies of our former senior management who seemed to think that if they did some of the things big, successful companies did as a result of their success, that our success would follow. They didn’t get that those companies did those things *because they could following their success or because of their size*, not that they were successful or large because they did those things.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Exactly. Or wet streets cause rain.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        +1 Director of Diversity

      • slumbrew

        See, also – “home-ownership creates middle-class families”.

        As Insty put it so well:

        The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.

      • Animal

        Exactly so. I’ve said for years, the kinds of people who push these policies have the cause-effect chain all wrong.

        Ditto, by the way, for the “people who graduate from school, get married, and then have kids are more successful than those who drop out of school and start popping out babies out of wedlock, so if you finish school, get married, then have kids, you’ll be more successful!” It’s a matter of character and discipline, not just proceeding with things in a certain order.

      • db

        80 percent of people grasp less than 20% of it?

      • Suthenboy

        20% of people grasp 80% of it.

        Wait, this is getting confusing.

      • Old Man With Candy

        The last company I worked for had “80/20” as their mantra. If you said “Pareto,” you would be corrected on your unfortunate terminology.

        That said, if you live and breathe it, it really is a great business philosophy. Several of their execs started a consulting business where basically, in exchange for a big fat check, that’s what they teach their clients.

      • Not Adahn

        Fun site:

        8020.net

        It’s tinkertoys for grownups. Pricey tho.

      • The Hyperbole

        Huh, I’ve driven by their building dozens of times and I always wondered what they do but never remembered to look it up once I got home.

      • Not Adahn

        One of my vendors uses their stuff to make his chassis.

        I thought about making a stereo rack out if it, but balked at the price tag.

      • Plinker762

        I made a four passenger tram car with that stuff.

      • Not Adahn

        I want to enclose things in conductive polycarbonate. Just think how quiet it would be without EMI.

      • Plinker762

        It would be quiet without EMI

      • Plisade

        I tried to get my maintenance dept. to start using the 8020 stuff instead of welding every gotdam thing when doing the smallest of fabrication jobs. Then when we need to make a change down the road it’d easier and less wa$teful. They just love to weld though. I gave up.

      • Not Adahn

        I made a comment about how we needed a stepover, and a month later this gorgeous overbuilt monstrosity welded out of 3/8″ aluminum plate and square tubing arrived. Beautiful work. The $7000 invoice that came with it was kind of a bummer but we managed to stuff it into a safety project.

      • Plisade

        Yep, gotta respect their art.

      • db

        We used to use similar extruded parts to build up pilot test plants and other prototypes. When I built my home brewery frame, I considered using this stuff, but the cost was so high, I was able to buy a MIG welder and rectangular stainless tubing and do it myself for a lot less (it took a little bit of time to learn the welding process, but not much–MIG is pretty simple).

      • robc

        Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of everything is crap.

        He was a Sci-Fi author and someone was deriding the genre because most of it was very poor. Sturgeon’s point was it was true about every genre.

      • db

        I’d be interested in seeing if anyone can come up with 10% of social media posts that aren’t crap. I’d imagine it’s more like 0.1% or less.

      • robc

        Iowahawk.

      • Tundra

        Malice.

      • Bill Door

        +1 on both Iowahawk and Malice. They are two that make twitter almost appealing. Almost.

  18. The Late P Brooks

    I had to take a mandatory, tracked survey that posed a series of questions and scenarios to which I had to answer.

    Are there politicians in the trolley?

  19. slumbrew

    I ran across this the other day & though it may be relevant to your interests:

    https://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/fawkes

    At a high level, Fawkes “poisons” models that try to learn what you look like, by putting hidden changes into your photos, and using them as Trojan horses to deliver that poison to any facial recognition models of you. Fawkes takes your personal images and makes tiny, pixel-level changes that are invisible to the human eye,
    in a process we call image cloaking.

    You can then use these “cloaked” photos as you normally would, sharing them on social media, sending them to friends, printing them or displaying them on digital devices, the same way you would any other photo.

    The difference, however, is that if and when someone tries to use these photos to build a facial recognition model, “cloaked” images will teach the model an highly distorted version of what makes you look like you.

    • Fatty Bolger

      Interesting, but seems like it would be easily defeated.

      • pistoffnick

        Looks like Microsoft already has.

      • Suthenboy

        Of course they did.

      • slumbrew

        I’m not sure about “easily” – it looks like the Azure change may have specifically been aimed at one particular implementation they did, which may (probably?) means it’s a fragile change.

        Still, very interesting research.

    • Muzzled Woodchipper

      This is top notch innovation. Even if his implementation is easily defeated, he floated the idea, and someone will pick it up and do it right.

      • Suthenboy

        In my ideal world it would cause any running of facial recognition soft ware a program like this would cause the server to wipe itself and turn off the cooling fans.

    • Sean

      Very interesting.

      Of course, they could be lying to us and they are a data collection warehouse too…

      *makes new tinfoil hat*

  20. Nephilium

    Oh I love spending an hour troubleshooting a high priority ticket that was all caused by a coworker not paying attention and checking things (which he’s been told to check repeatedly).

  21. Not Adahn

    *sighs*

    The company announced the appointment of an Affirmative Action Officer.

    *checks internet for rumors of Samsng’s new Austin fab*

      • Not Adahn

        He? Seriously?

      • rhywun

        lolsnort

    • kinnath

      https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ofccp/about/executive-order-11246-history#:~:text=On%20March%206%2C%201961%2C%20shortly,without%20regard%20to%20their%20race%2C

      On March 6, 1961, shortly after JFK took office, he signed Executive Order 10925, opening a new chapter in achieving access to good jobs by requiring government contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color or national origin.”

      A few weeks shy of 60 years.

      If you say we need Affirmative Action after implementing Affirmative Action for THREE FUCKING GENERATIONS, then I say that is proof that Affirmative Action DOESN”T FUCKING WORK.

      • R C Dean

        then I say that is proof that Affirmative Action DOESN”T FUCKING WORK HASN’T BEEN TRIED HARD ENOUGH.

        The bill for my diversity and inclusion consulting is in the mail.

      • kinnath

        I was 4 years old when JFK blessed us with affirmative action.

        It will still be here when I die.

      • Not Adahn

        While checking the Samsung press release site, I saw they were having a “Seoul Sisters” event. So not woke. But their mangaers are such assholes…

      • rhywun

        without regard to their race, creed, color or national origin

        So… the exact opposite of what actually happened. Interesting, that.

      • Plisade

        “I wish the government would ban hot women, then they’d be everywhere.”

        /paraphrased from some memory

    • Nephilium

      There’s unarmed people in China Canada?

    • Animal

      Looks like it already sold out. See how easy that was?

      • Sean

      • Suthenboy

        Berdan primed.

        I looked yesterday and found zero primers, powder, brass and the only bullets available were the high end very expensive stuff. Almost everyone had purchase limits on the stuff they were allowing backorders on.

      • Sean

        Sounds like a bad company.

        I’ve never dealt with them before, and it looks like i won’t now.

    • Suthenboy

      We don’t need to.

      You blinked.

  22. Ozymandias

    Mostly unrelated to anything, but has anyone posted this link yet?
    When CNN is attacking a Dem politician, it’s like a sealed letter from the Vatican. I’ll predict it now: Cuomo is toast. He is going to be served up; the rats and hyenas smell blood.

    • rhywun

      Any guesses as to how content was the progressive assemblyman (“man”? really, CNN?) with Cuomo’s long career of threats against wrongthinkers on the other side of the aisle?

    • Suthenboy

      It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

    • wdalasio

      He is going to be served up; the rats and hyenas smell blood.

      Maybe. On the other hand, I can’t think of a place that, if I were one of the powers in the Democratic party, that I’d rather he be. Cuomo is now compromised. But, he remains popular. At this point, he can be dispensed with at any moment whenever it’s convenient. That means he’ll go along with any program he’s told to go along with.

      • Suthenboy

        “But, he remains popular.”

        That is beyond my comprehension.

      • rhywun

        He’s a Democrat you’ve heard of. Most people don’t think any further than that.