Wednesday Afternoon SugarLinks – YoUr BrAiN oN dRuGs

by | Apr 28, 2021 | Daily Links | 344 comments


 

Netflix’s Latest Hit Continues an Argument Sci-Fi Fans Have Been Having for Decades

Embedded in the narrative DNA of the new Netflix movie Stowaway is one of the most iconic and controversial science-fiction short stories ever published, “The Cold Equations,” by Tom Godwin. Like “The Cold Equations,” Stowaway is the story of a spaceship journey that hits a snag when an additional passenger is discovered onboard. The ship can’t complete its trip with the extra drain on its resources, so somebody has to go out the airlock.

“The Cold Equations” first appeared in the August 1954 edition of Astounding magazine, whose editor, John W. Campbell Jr., played a major role in defining the genre of “hard science fiction”—that is, stories fundamentally concerned with the accurate depiction of science and technology. According to legend, Campbell sent the story back to Godwin several times because the author kept trying to find a way for the characters to wriggle out of the story’s central dilemma and achieve a happy ending. Campbell refused to accept anything but the bleakest conclusion.

An opinion piece grounded in deep ignorance, of the story, the genre, the history of same and the underlying stories long popularity. And there’s this:

“But I think the friend who first told me about “The Cold Equations” put it best when he described the story as an elaborate excuse to toss a girl out the airlock and then feel sorry for yourself afterward. As is sometimes the case with genre fiction, it is a fantasy about being forced to do what you secretly want to do so that you can disclaim your own desires even as you indulge in them. It’s both sadistic, as it lingers over Marilyn’s despair, and masochistic, as it wallows in Barton’s helpless stoicism.”

As Heroic Mulatto put it: “If you read ‘The Cold Equations’ and got ‘snuff film’ out of it, that’s a ‘you’ problem.”


 

YES!

Randy Quaid says he’s ‘seriously considering’ running for governor of California

Randy Quaid may be joining the race for governor of California.

After months of sharp criticism, the state’s current governor, Gavin Newsom, will face a recall election, as it was announced on Monday that the signature threshold to trigger such an election has been met.

Reality star Caitlyn Jenner has already announced her own candidacy for the position, and now, Quaid has said that he’s interested in tossing his hat into the ring.

The “Christmas Vacation” star, 70, took to Twitter on Tuesday to share his thoughts on the matter.

“I’m seriously considering running for governor,” he revealed. “The prosecutorial corruption in California (esp Santa Barbara & the Bell scandal) is rampant; and I promise that if elected I will clean up the District Attorney Offices throughout the state.”

Christmas Vacation star? Way to slight his turn in Independence Day, you bastards.


 

COVID Cringe Round-Up

 

 


 

 


 

And join me on the night shift for an All-New Subaru Horror Theatre.

About The Author

SugarFree

SugarFree

Your Resident Narcissistic Misogynist Rape-Culture Apologist

344 Comments

  1. Tres Cool

    whaddup doh ?

    • Tres Cool

      I sing Ton Loc when I feed The Dozer….”its Chunky, Cold, Purina..”

  2. Shpip

    Reality star Caitlyn Jenner has already announced her own candidacy for the position, and now, Quaid has said that he’s interested in tossing his hat into the ring.

    Shitter’s full!

    • db

      dammit, I made that joke this morning, then again down below, not seeing yours

    • Master JaimeRoberto (royal we/us)

      That’s a pretty good metaphor for California.

      • The Wanderer

        Oh, it says right in the article I linked to. There were 135! candidates in the last California gubernatorial recall election.

  3. Count Potato

    “As Heroic Mulatto put it: “If you read ‘The Cold Equations’ and got ‘snuff film’ out of it, that’s a ‘you’ problem.””

    I don’t read fiction. Just SugarFree.

    • Ted S.

      Whoever got into the spacecraft who wasn’t supposed to be there is the one who should have to forfeit his/her life. It isn’t that complicated.

      • Mojeaux

        ^^^That.

      • Dr. Fronkensteen

        Always hating on illegal immigrants. Racist.

      • PutridMeat

        UNDOCUMENTED SPACECRAFT RESIDENTS YOU BIGOT!!!!

      • TARDis

        You people are awesome. LOL^^^^^

      • Pope Jimbo

        PEOPLE DON’T NEED DOCUMENTS TO EXIST!

        New Spacecraft Residents is the term you are looking for.

        p.s. Think of the vapors that the Red Shirted Ensigns would have when attacked by “aliens”.

      • UnCivilServant

        Think of the vapors that the Red Shirted Ensigns would have become when attacked by “aliens”.

        Fixed it.

        /stereotype

      • pan fried wylie

        mist != vapor

        /state of matter pedantry

      • UnCivilServant

        They weren’t misted, they were vaporized.

        Sheesh.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Who wins?

        It’s just past midnight in the industrial section of Los Angeles. The sounds of a window being shattered roll across the mostly empty streets, adding a burglar alarm to the several car alarms already going off. Steam rises from a manhole cover as Ensign Jackson, Ensign Johnson, and Ensign Smith walk down a dark alleyway. A cat scurries away from them, momentarily masking an eerie humming noise coming from behind them. Ensign Jackson turns to stare directly into a hovercraft full of stormtroopers!! “Monochromes!” The others turn, but it’s too late for Ensign Johnson, who takes a laser shot right in the chest. Ensign Smith gets one in the leg but is O.K. They dive behind some garbage cans (which guard them from the laser fire) and fire back. After one stormtrooper is wounded, they drive off, considering their drive-by shooting a success. But it’s only the beginning…`

        An all out turf war between the “Reds” and the “Monochromes” breaks out. Considering their propensity for dying, not to mention their bad aim, who comes out on top in this gang war to end all gang wars? (No back up from the Empire or the Federation is allowed.)

      • UnCivilServant

        Fun fact, the per capita death rate of redshirts was the lowest of all shirt colors. The had a higher absolute number because they were the largest congtingent on screen.

        Also, the stormtroopers were better shots than the rebels in all scenes where the effectiveness could be measures, with no named characters whose plot armor might skew the values.

      • hate_speech

        That one got me.

      • Fatty Bolger

        What if a mistake was made, and they’re all legitimate passengers?

      • The Wanderer

        What if the stowaway is way more useful to have around than one of the others?

  4. kinnath

    Subaru Horror Theatre.

    I can hardly wait.

    • juris imprudent

      I was going to say as long as it doesn’t reprise the SJW kids, but then again, that could be grossly entertaining.

      • Tonio

        I’m thinking about a sequel. Thanks for the love.

      • The Hyperbole

        Do you think you have a series worth of ideas, should I start on an official cover/header illo for all future Buttle Kids adventures?

      • Tonio

        OMG Squee! Yes, please.

        There are like eleven “Tuttle Twins” books and I’m trying to do rough parodies of them from the POV of what the commie punks at “Current Affairs” magazine wish they could have said in their shoddy little takedown of Boyack’s work. “The Deplorable Neighbor” was based on “The Law.”

        I may skip around since Boyack’s second book covers “I, Pencil” and that’s kind of a snoozefest. But I may pull something out. Give me a couple of days. Still working on that print project I mentioned in my email to you.

        Thank you.

      • Tulip

        This is the internet at its best. You two collaborating on a creative project. Brought together by the internet. I love it! And, yes please, more.

      • The Hyperbole

        You don’t say that when Straff and I use the internet to collaborate on projects.

      • UnCivilServant

        Neither you nor Straf can edit our comments.

  5. Tres Cool

    As Heroic Mulatto put it: “If you read ‘The Cold Equations’ and got ‘snuff film’ out of it, that’s a ‘you’ problem.”

    I have the strangest erection right now.

  6. Stinky Wizzleteats

    Randy Quaid? Oh hell yes, he always plays a kook but I’d imagine he’s pretty straightlaced in real life, right?

    • Tres Cool

      “This time, why not the worst?”

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        thbbft!

  7. Count Potato

    I almost posted that yesterday, but after the Hilary breastfeeding pic, I thought Libs of Tik Tok might have been over doing it.

  8. Scruffy Nerfherder

    That Pfizer Girl video, holy fuck….

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      videos…

    • Tres Cool

      Lord knows I prefer the ‘larger ladies’, but the smartest thing that could come out of her mouth is my dick.
      #Woodnt

      • hayeksplosives

        I know it’s a dead thread already, but I laughed for 3 minutes straight at:

        the smartest thing that could come out of her mouth is my dick.

    • Tres Cool

      That better be the Gong Show where Jaye P. Morgan shows her tits.

    • Toxteth O'Grady

      Moderated by Kennedy??

  9. The Late P Brooks

    Campbell refused to accept anything but the bleakest conclusion.

    What if they kill the stowaway and eat him?

  10. Hyperion

    Geez, y’all. I missed the first links today, the Joemala episode, and now I’m going to miss the afternoon links, because some of us have to work! And now I’m off for a walk…

  11. db

    From what I can tell, as far as the burgeoning field for the CA governor’s race is concerned, the Shitter’s Full.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Marxism is here … gear up you dummies.

      QFT

    • trshmnstr the terrible

      The answer here is simple. If you’re in charge of hiring and firing and your organization is being attacked by these people, document the hell out of their attempts to undermine your authority and then fire their asses.

  12. The Late P Brooks

    it is a fantasy about being forced to do what you secretly want to do so that you can disclaim your own desires even as you indulge in them

    Somebody has dreams about biker gangs, I’d say.

    Rode hard and put away wet.

    • Tonio

      I mean, who doesn’t?

  13. KromulentKristen

    (wondering when SF stopped by my house to take that pic)

    • KromulentKristen

      (also downloaded the pic for future usage)

    • Tonio

      Yeah, I love that pic.

  14. Drake

    a fantasy about being forced to do what you secretly want to do so that you can disclaim your own desires even as you indulge in them

    Hey, if everyone I don’t like is turned into a zombie by the vaccines, I will put a .22 through their heads with only the greatest of regrets.

  15. Count Potato

    “ANOTHER ex-Trump lawyer’s home is raided in connection with the Rudy Giuliani probe: Former NY mayor’s lawyer accuses DOJ of ‘thuggery’ for ‘unnecessary searches’

    Federal investigators executed a search warrant Wednesday on Rudy Giuliani’s New York City apartment and office, stepping up their investigation of his dealings in the Ukraine.

    Additionally, FBI agents raided Washington-area home of Victoria Toensing, a lawyer close to Giuliani who also had dealings with Ukrainians, The New York Times reported.

    The federal investigation centers on whether Giuliani, who was Donald Trump’s personal attorney, acted as an unregistered federal agent and lobbied the Trump administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs.

    Those were the same group of people who were helping Giuliani search for dirt on Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who sat on the board of Ukrainian gas company, during the 2020 election in an effort to help Trump politically.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9521931/DOJ-executes-search-warrant-Rudy-Giulianis-Manhattan-apartment.html

    OFFS!!

    • Drake

      The clean-up crew is at work. When they are done they’ll get right on investigating voter fraud and Antifa violence.

  16. Drake

    Tone loc wasn’t very woke when it came to banging trannies.

  17. KromulentKristen

    Anyone use a dashcam? What features & brands should I look for? Will my insurance give me a discount?

    And, in my forthcoming RV, I will have a sign in the bathroom that says “Shitter’s Full”. And another one on the side that says “Tenement On Wheels”

    • Animal

      I’m too old to dash anywhere, so no need for a dashcam. Now, if someone makes a plodcam, I might be interested.

      • db

        I thought she was doing a cooking show focusing on alternate seasonings, sort of a “Mrs. Dashcam.”

    • Mojeaux

      Hey, did you see my comment last night about all the RVs I saw on the road?

      • KromulentKristen

        No – I missed that!

      • Mojeaux

        Traveling to Charlotte from KC and back, I saw way more RVs than I ever have on any road trip ever and I’ve been on a lot of road trips.

        One thing I observed was the difference between dually pickups hauling fifth wheels and single-wheel pickups hauling fifth wheels and how well they got up mountain passes. The duallies did just fine, but the non-duallies did not do so well on the grades. Make sure you get a pickup that can actually tow whatever you buy with ease.

        After all, the Smoky Mountains are a helluva lot shorter than the Rockies.

      • KromulentKristen

        I anticipate a LOT of those RVs will be up for sale by next year 😉

        I’m leaning toward Class A at this time. But altitude is definitely something to consider with the motor of anything I buy. Good pointer!!

      • db

        Just FYI in PA you can get a “commercial” DL that lets you drive the big RVs but not have to take the CDL test. I have a couple friends who did that.

    • Master JaimeRoberto (royal we/us)

      I have dashcams in 3 of my cars. I use Apeman. I’ve never had the need to review any of the footage, so for all I know they are recording nothing.

    • The Hyperbole

      Someone was singing the praises of Thinkware F800 Pro with dual cameras a few days ago, I forget who or why but I still had the link in my recently viewed list.

      • CatchTheCarp

        I forgot to mention I installed a Street Guardian dash cam in my son’s car. Both brands have been trouble free for 3+ years. Dash cams have a wide variety of features and like anything else the more features the more it costs. I have mine hard wired to the fuse box which means no dangling cords and it starts up when the car is started. It is also connected to Cellink Neo battery backup (fits in the glove box) which will power the camera in parking mode for 18 – 36 hours (depends on how often the motion sensor is tripped). Not everyone needs parking mode – if you drive an old beater you man not care if someone door dings your car or backs into it. A dash cam can also help show who was at fault in the event of accident…. unless you believe people would never lie about such things.

      • KromulentKristen

        I would want one for my RV, but I thought I could test one out on my car before I move out of here.

        I don’t mind dangly bits, so hard wiring won’t be necessary.

        That, my nerds, is how you euphemism.

      • CatchTheCarp

        I found this site useful when I trying to decide which one to get.

    • Rat on a train

      I have a Crosstour CR900. I wanted a low profile front and rear. I don’t need GPS, wireless downloads or a phone app. I haven’t tried to get an insurance discount.

    • slumbrew

      I thought of your plans when I saw this RV. Not a 5th-wheel, but cool AF.

      • KromulentKristen

        The washer/dryer gave me a semi

        (I’m fighting with my Pa about whether to have W/D hookups on whatever I buy. I keep trying to remind him that this will be my home, not an extended vacation)

      • UnCivilServant

        Ask if he’ll supply all the quarters and do the runs to the laundromats.

      • Tonio

        You want your own W/D. No waiting around, nobody messing with your loads because you’re not there the exact moment the machine stops, no knicker-knicking by random perverts, and most important of all NO FUCKING DIAPERS. Seriously, I grew up in apartments during the seventies when cloth diapers were still a thing, and not just for hippies. You never, ever want your stuff going through a machine that has laundered cloth diapers. I always change out the washer when I buy a house for that reason.

    • Rat on a train

      Features:
      front only or front and rear
      resolution (some use lower resolution for the rear camera)
      plugin or hardwired (so can record with car off)
      motion detection (good for hardwired)
      GPS tagging of video
      WiFI or wired connection for download
      low-light quality
      probably more I can’t think of

      • Animal

        front only or front and rear

        A question mankind has struggled with for eons.

      • Plisade

        …until the Eiffel Tower was erected.

      • Tonio

        Your avatar; I love it. I had one of those as a kid. It was a fake bazooka that you racked to work an air piston and made a hollow boom. Grumpy old neighbors hated it!

      • Plisade

        I use it in a leadership training presentation to represent something that’s really fucked up. I imagined it was some Hitler youth kid or something ? Joke’s on me!

      • The Bearded Hobbit

        Yeah, but did you have a Johnny Seven OMA?

      • blackjack

        I had a beautiful ’66 Chevelle and got hit by a douchebag lawyer in his Lexus Rx. He walked around my car as I was stuck waiting in a parking lot, got into his car and put it in reverse. Then, he mashed the throttle and t-boned me, right where i sat. i never moved at all. He claimed that I hit him. The damage was to his rear bumper and my b pillar/drivers door. I messed up and admitted I had no injuries. The insurance company knew that I would never find a lawyer for less than I would recover anyway, so they denied it. There was nothing I could do. I was so pissed that i sold the car for next to nothing just to move on. A dash cam would have proven I never moved and caught him walking to his car. This was in ’98 when they weren’t around anyway, though.

      • UnCivilServant

        No mysterious tire iron injuries to the lawyer’s skull?

      • blackjack

        I’m really not as outlaw as I sometimes appear. Or, maybe as I should be.

      • UnCivilServant

        Oh, no, you wouldn’t have inflicted them.

        They’re Mysterious.

      • blackjack

        There’s actually a crazy story behind how I came to be in that parking lot too. I got a ticket, for basically nothing or course, and had to do community service. I had a buddy who ran the coffee desk at a sober club in Hollywood and he just signed the whole thing off for me. Wen I went to submit my proof, the court was surrounded by emergency vehicles. I knew all the ways in and found one they hadn’t cordoned off. I walked up to the door and a swat team intercepted me. They told me the court was closed and it was an emergency, I had to leave. I looked it up later and it turned out some guy didn’t want to appear so he phoned in an anthrax threat.

        They rescheduled everyone for a few months later. I had to actually appear in court and present my signatures to the judge. When I returned, the line was all the way around the building. When I finally got to the courtroom, the doors were locked so they could play the admonishment of rights tape. I waited until the door opened to see if they’d let me in. Eventually, a baliff ledy opened the door and told us that the only people who could come in were those who had already heard the admonishment. I got in line. When I got the front, she asked me what I was here for.

        i started to explain that I merely had to provide proof of completion and had already heard my right and finished my case other than this. She interrupted me and said, “NO! You cannot come in, go and reschedule downstairs. Next!” I tried to explain that I had a really simple task, but she interrupted me again and told me to shut up and go away. So, I told her, “you don’t have to be a bitch about it.” and I left to the elevator.

        I waited forever for the elevator to arrive. When it finally did, 6 huge cops rushed out and pushed against the wall. They were asking me what did I do to the female officer? Did I touch her? Why did I think I could do that? et cetera.

        I tried to tell them I called her a bitch because she was being a bitch, but they kept up their bully charade. They finally allowed me to get into the elevator and all got in with me. The whole down they talked about how bad they would beat me if I had touched her and I should never come back here, blah, blah, blah. I told them the only reason I’m here is they forced me to be. Then, I told them that they were all bitches too.

        Long story still long, we got the bottom and I got in line to reschedule. the cops all stood in a line watching me. When I got to the front, the lady got a call and looked at me as she listened and nodded. Then, she gave me a date verbally. I asked her for the date in writing and she got all agro. I thought I should just let it slide because the wall of thugs was still watching me. The lady insisted that she could not give the date in writing. To avoid a further encounter with the punks, I just wrote the date down and left.

        After I left the courthouse was when the asshole wrecked my Chevelle.

        6 weeks later the court date arrived. I showed up and, of course, there was no record of my asking for a new date. I had a warrant and got chewed out by the judge. He finally revoked the warrant and accepted my proof and that was that. This happened in 1999.

      • UnCivilServant

        You have the patience of a saint.

      • Ask your doctor if BEAM is right for you

        Jesus P. Murphy, d00d. Is everybody working for the justice system where you live either incompetent, lazy or a member of the Brute Squad?

        Why the Hell are you still living there? I buggered off from LotusLand™ for a lot less.

  18. DEG

    I watched all the Covid Cringe videos.

    The Tone Loc video was a welcome bit of eye and ear bleach.

    • westernsloper

      Amen! *Does the dead chicken across the chest

  19. The Late P Brooks

    Rudy “perp walk” Giuliani?

    Fuck him.

    • wdalasio

      Sure Giuliani sucks. That doesn’t make what they’re doing acceptable.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Same goes for Roger Stone.

        The FBI has a very nasty vengeful streak.

      • Tonio

        Just doing what J Edgar Hoover taught them.

    • KromulentKristen

      LITERALLY this guy is targeting black people with gun control and tobacco control and health control and Trump was the racist and Puddin Cup is the unifying healer. It is George Orwell’s world, and we’re just living in it.

      • mock-star

        “It is George Orwell’s world, and we’re just living in it.”

        I realized this was 100% true when dictionaries were updated in real time in order to prove that Amy Coney Barrett had engaged in wrong-think.

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      Those poor black people. What would they do without the beneficent hand of the white progressive?

      • Tulip

        It’s a beneficent back hand

    • Hyperion

      I’m sure black folk are going to appreciate old joe’s token gesture.

    • Master JaimeRoberto (royal we/us)

      The Great White Father is only trying to help.

  20. Count Potato

    “The U.S. Postal Service admitted during a Wednesday meeting to spying on citizens with its law enforcement arm, claiming it worked with other agencies to track Americans’ social media posts.

    Chief Postal Inspector Gary Barksdale briefed lawmakers on the Oversight Committee regarding the program known as iCOP, or Internet Covert Operations Program, but could not provide a date for when it was initiated.

    ‘The Chief Postal Inspector was wildly unprepared for this briefing,’ GOP Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina told DailyMail.com following the meeting with Barksdale.

    The inspector was called for a briefing after iCOP was first made public in a report last week.

    Yahoo obtained and published documents related to iCOP, which includes an operation where analysts page through social media sites to look for ‘inflammatory’ posts, including messages about planned protests.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9522303/USPS-admits-spying-Americans-monitoring-social-media-wont-reveal-details.html

    Because 17 spy agencies wasn’t enough?

    • Hyperion

      Shovel ready jobs.

    • wdalasio

      I remember when they used to tell us about those awful countries where the government used to spy on your mail.

  21. Mojeaux

    As is sometimes the case with genre fiction, it is a fantasy about being forced to do what you secretly want to do so that you can disclaim your own desires even as you indulge in them.

    This used to be (may still be, I don’t know) the foundation of most bodice ripper tropes of the romance genre and I believe it’s still a thing in m/m romance. It’s a real thing. Virginal ingenue has sex out of wedlock with a dude she’s hot for, but he sorta kinda pushes the issue (“forced seduction”), which absolves her from the act while enabling her to enjoy herself because a) she wants him anyway and b) he makes it good for her.

    I don’t read much scifi/fantasy/mystery/whatevergenre, so I don’t know if it is or was a staple.

    • blackjack

      +1 “you know you want it!”

    • KromulentKristen

      This used to be (may still be, I don’t know) the foundation of most bodice ripper tropes of the romance genre and I believe it’s still a thing in m/m romance.

      I can’t think of a single sexual fantasy or fetish that doesn’t involve exploring power dynamics.

      • Tonio

        “I believe it’s still a thing in m/m romance.”

        It’s true, it’s true. But needs scare quotes around “romance.”

    • DEG

      Good, no face diapers.

      I had to do a double take with #34. She looks a bit like someone I used to know.

    • prolefeed

      #2 is a smoking hot exception to my general rule of not being attracted to blondes.

  22. KromulentKristen

    So when is “Critical Race Theory” going to come up against the brick wall of human evolution? I mean, when is the first wokester going to realize CRT and evolution do not work & play well together, and will said wokester and followers choose science or religion? My money is on “evolution doesn’t matter” and the Wokes & Racists will have yet more in common.

    • Hyperion

      Never, the commies will never let it die if they have to spend every last dime of your money to keep it alive.

    • KromulentKristen

      Evolution is also incompatible with environmental fascism, too. Environmental fascism acts as if humans are an invasive species that didn’t grow & evolve on this planet just like every other species.

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      The religious can twist themselves into pretty amazing logic pretzels explaining things that don’t comport with their scriptures. Some of these religions have been around for thousands of years. I wouldn’t place much stock in this new religion being any more susceptible to logic than the old ones.

      • KromulentKristen

        Difference is, these people purport to “believe science”, while religion is generally placed in opposition to science, culturally. So it is definitely a new religion with very little factual information (if any) behind it, but it’s also a religion that specifically says it embraces science.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Scientism

      • juris imprudent

        Ah yes.

      • KromulentKristen

        Sooner or later these people will have to -out-and-out say they don’t believe in evolution

      • Tonio

        No, they will continue to officially believe in that so as to bludgeon the religious and their creation myths. But their policies are always designed to thwart natural selection.

    • Count Potato

      “Wokes & Racists will have yet more in common”

      Remember when Sargon did “Stormfront or SJW?”

      • DEG

        Remember when Sargon did “Stormfront or SJW?”

        Yes. I remember it being amusing.

  23. Winston

    Soviet Canuckistan is no longer a joke:

    https://katewand.substack.com/p/canadas-covid-coup?r=8somb&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy

    And authoritarian is what Canada’s leadership has become. The totalitarian two-step has turned into a sprint, with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms getting trampled on. The most basic tenants of the charter have been usurped by the police state. Canadians are living in a never ending cycle of lockdowns and Covid restrictions, ever increasing in length and severity. The eastern provinces have been indefinitely shut off from the rest of the country, and every other country, for the duration of this manufactured crisis, driven by a Zero Covid delusion dreamed up by Canada’s scientific advisors without them ever admitting that this is what is taking place.

    Likewise, Ontario, Canada’s largest and most populated province, has become one of the most despotic places in North America, with a shield of police officers surrounding its provincial borders, again, at the behest of the public health officials, with zero transparency.

    • Hyperion

      “The eastern provinces have been indefinitely shut off from the rest of the country”

      Weren’t they already tryin to separate out the Newfies?

    • Drake

      Meanwhile my kid has been living mask-free in South Carolina for months.

      • Winston

        A Yankee moving to South Carolina to be free. Oh the irony of it all…

      • wdalasio

        Funny thing is, it’s more than the masks.

      • Drake

        Hell yes. Guns, taxes, you name it. I literally feel different when I’m down there.

    • blackjack

      Canadian cops have always been jack booted thugs. I’ve been jacked by them a half dozen times. Fuck them, but this ain’t new. They don’t even have the constitution to disregard there. Some oddly worded “charter” instead. At least our cops have a clear law they are violating, even if nobody seems to care.

      • Winston

        Who is supposed to enforce that peace and order after all?

        Oh and our charter rights are subject to “reasonable and justifiable limitations in a democratic society”

    • R C Dean

      The most basic tenants of the charter

      Just because spellcheck doesn’t object doesn’t mean its right.

      • blackjack

        The typos are living rent free in your head!

  24. DEG

    NC Senate votes to limit Governor’s emergency powers

    North Carolina’s governor would face a new 10-day limit on unchecked use of emergency powers, under a bill approved Tuesday on a party-line vote in the state Senate.

    Senate Bill 346 spells out that executive orders lasting longer than 10 days would require approval from the 10-member Council of State. After 45 days, those orders would require support from the General Assembly.

    Senators approved the measure, 28-21. Republicans supported the idea, and Democrats opposed it. The measure fell two votes short of the three-fifths standard the Senate would need to withstand a veto from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.

    New restrictions on the governor’s authority would take effect Sept. 1. Senators amended the original bill, which would have restricted the governor’s emergency powers immediately.

    • Drake

      7 states stopped counting votes on election night. Biden won 6 of them, Roy Cooper won the other.

  25. Rebel Scum

    You anti-maskers are just gasping at straws.

    What does insanity look like? It was on display Wednesday at the Summit High School track in Bend, Oregon where the mask police — the Oregon Health Authority — forced athletes to wear masks during competition.

    That includes the 800-meter race — two laps around a track — where a runner named Maggie Williams was well on her way to crushing a school record in the event and, according to the Bend Bulletin, well on her way to a win when she started to fall just meters from the finish line.

    “I was pushing so hard and everything went blurry and I just fell,” Williams told the newspaper. “But luckily I fell at the right spot and crossed the line with my head.”

    The mask police will say she just pushed herself too far. Her coach, Dave Turnbull, thinks the mask rule is a ticking time bomb.

    “I am concerned with the mask rule,” he told Bulletin reporter Brian Rathbone. “This is what I am worried about, and I said this at the beginning of the season. You get a kid running the 800 with a mask on, it is actually dangerous. They don’t get the oxygen that they need. This rule needs to change.”

    Silver lining?

    • db

      Surely, one could look at the data on this and see if recent times were falling behind past numbers, controlling for some other factors, to see if there is a noticeable decrease in athletic performance that could be laid at the door of hypothetical reduced blood oxygenation due to greater resistance to convective flow through the mouth due to filtration.

      Or one could take the air filter out of their car and document performance before and after.

    • Master JaimeRoberto (royal we/us)

      Looks like I’ll be scratching Bend off the list of places to retire to.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Thank you!

        /stuck in Bend traffic

    • blackjack

      It’s Oregon. It’s literally illegal to stop people from burning down buildings there. They make California seem sane.

    • UnCivilServant

      Miles.

      Yes, I am tired.

      Luckily, it wasn’t raining.

      • Gender Traitor

        ?

      • UnCivilServant

        How goes things in your neck of the woods?

      • Gender Traitor

        Well, thanks! Reliable Co-worker is back tomorrow.

      • UnCivilServant

        Good for you.

        Hope RCW had a nice vacation.

      • Gender Traitor

        He went to FL. We’ll see if he comes back brown or pink.

  26. Raven Nation

    “As Heroic Mulatto put it: “If you read ‘The Cold Equations’ and got ‘snuff film’ out of it, that’s a ‘you’ problem.”

    HM and I also agree that the Syfy channel’s made-for-tv version of the story was an abomination.

  27. Rebel Scum

    Rid us of this child-abusing garden gnome.

    “Well, yeah,” Fauci stated. “What you’re pointing out — what you’re referring to, Savannah is the top two not fully vaccinated, that people can go out without masks, if you walk, run, with members of your household, attend a small outdoor gathering, fully vaccinated with friends. Then after that, everything has a mask on it, as you’re showing correctly now on the screen. So, what you’re asking, if you are on the left-hand part and you see un-vaccinated people, walk outdoors with members of your household. And you’re asking now if your child is a member of your household, can you walk outdoors with your child without a mask? According to that chart, the answer is yes.”

    “But the child can’t?” she wondered. “Not to beat it to death.”

    Fauci responded, “Yes, yes.”

    • Sean

      No one is wearing masks in our development, and, much to my dismay, all the children are playing in the street.

  28. Winston

    I am awaiting the glorious future where the Sensible Republicans and Cosmotarians telling me I am a reactionary racist hick for not wanting to wear a mask, fly an airplane, eat something other than bugs or go anywhere without internal pasports because hey at least I can smoke weed.

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      I may have to finally try the stuff. Does it help with coping with all of the insanity?

  29. Winston

    Turns out creating a society with a significant number of influential people who are collectivists who can’t handle any hardship or dissent might be bad for freedom. Who would have guessed?

    • Winston

      Also they are germaphobes obsessed with safety. The irony is that only modern tech and prosperity allowed this to happen.

    • Ted S.

      Turns out you’re just as tedious as you were in yesterday’s PM links.

  30. The Late P Brooks

    my general rule of not being attracted to blondes.

    Incomprehensible.

    • Rebel Scum

      I, for one, do not discriminate.

  31. Rebel Scum

    You people are insane.

    Reid said that the relaxed CDC guidelines are proof that vaccinations are working.

    She later added, “I am among the fully vaccinated, joined team Pfizer, and I did go jogging today in the park. And I did — this was the mask that I wore with a doctor’s mask under it. And most of the people that I saw that were in the park — the park was packed — I would say like 95% of the people still had masks on.”

    Reid then stated that when she’s jogging, she’s in people’s “backdraft” and “if I’m going to run behind a lot of people, I do it.”

    • Pope Jimbo

      If she is really that concerned about the amount of other people’s respiration in the outdoor air, she must run screaming in horror at the thought of ever getting in a pool.

      Rona ppm in the outdoors has to be a pale shadow compared to piss ppm in any pool.

      If you wear a mask to keep the Rona out, would you wear depends when you go swimming as protection against piss?

    • invisible finger

      Sounds like they are admitting they didn’t prove the vaccines work before jabbing the genpop.

  32. The Late P Brooks

    “Well, yeah,” Fauci stated. “What you’re pointing out — what you’re referring to, Savannah is the top two not fully vaccinated, that people can go out without masks, if you walk, run, with members of your household, attend a small outdoor gathering, fully vaccinated with friends. Then after that, everything has a mask on it, as you’re showing correctly now on the screen. So, what you’re asking, if you are on the left-hand part and you see un-vaccinated people, walk outdoors with members of your household. And you’re asking now if your child is a member of your household, can you walk outdoors with your child without a mask? According to that chart, the answer is yes.”

    He’s a senile quack who can’t formulate a coherent sentence.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      It gets hard to do when you’re trying to reconcile two opposing ideas.

      In his prime, Biden was a master of it. Now he can’t rub two brain cells together.

      • Pope Jimbo

        That is a total lie!

        Biden may have sniffed a few brain cells but he never touched them, much less rubbed them.

  33. Rebel Scum

    She seems nice.

    A suspected drunk driver who streamed herself on Facebook Live saying ‘f**k the police’ while downing shots hours before she killed a veteran cop in a hit-and-run in New York City boasted about carrying a knife ‘everywhere I go’, it has been revealed.

    Jessica Beauvais, 32, posted a 1 hour and 51 minute livestream on her Facebook page Monday evening as part of her Face the Reality radio show where she addressed the trial of white ex-cop Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, slammed police officers and the justice system and played N.W.A song ‘F**k Tha Police’.

    In the rambling post, she told her social media followers she likes guns because ‘they’re pretty’ and ranted about being pro capital punishment, while she said ‘potential death’ is just ‘part of the job’ for cops.

    Throughout the video, Beauvais is seen vaping and drinking an unknown dark liquid from a plastic cup and, at one point, washes down the contents of a red shot glass with a bottle of Snapple. Police sources claim she later confessed to guzzling vodka, wine and smoking weed before the deadly incident.

    Hours later, Beauvais allegedly got behind the wheel of her Volkswagen and plowed into NYPD Highway Officer Anastasios Tsakos, 43, on the Long Island Expressway around 2am Tuesday morning.

    • creech

      Such a tragedy; she was in the process of turning her life around and was thinking of applying to college.

      • Count Potato

        Also, nice rack.

      • KromulentKristen

        -every episode of The First 48

    • Hank

      Good thing she was white; if she were black she wouldn’t have been allowed to surrender.

    • Agent Cooper

      Should I not have done that? Was that wrong?

  34. Winston

    https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/why-is-everything-liberal

    In an evenly divided country, if one side simply cares more, it’s going to exert a disproportionate influence on all institutions, and be more likely to see its preferences enacted in the time between elections when most people aren’t paying much attention.

    The idea is again disturbing: totalitarians have the advantage that they are the most willing to gain power to use it to there advantage while advocates of freedom want to be left alone so are therefore unlikely to try to gain power.

    But sometimes political parties can run on an explicitly anti-elite platform. In theory this sounds good – nobody wants to be elitist. In practice, this gets really nasty quickly. Democracy is a pure numbers game, so it’s hard for the elites to control – the populace can genuinely seize the reins of a democracy if it really wants. But if that happens, the government will be arrayed against every other institution in the nation. Elites naturally rise to the top of everything – media, academia, culture – so all of those institutions will hate the new government and be hated by it in turn. Since all natural organic processes favor elites, if the government wants to win, it will have to destroy everything natural and organic – for example, shut down the regular media and replace it with a government-controlled media run by its supporters.

    So we should just up and allow the elites to rule us lest tyranny occurs?

    • Spartacus

      Elites naturally rise to the top of everything

      Somebody has their cause and effect all backwards.

    • prolefeed

      The totalitarians have a huge advantage in being more motivated to seize power, no matter the personal cost. Individualists have, as their main defense, running away and, from a distance, watching every totalitarian society eventually collapse because Top Men ruling Top Down blows donkey dicks, result-wise.

      Hence, stuff like the Berlin Wall to put a stop to the running away thing.

      • Winston

        That’s why the totalitarian’s are so obsessed with systemic racism, climate crisis and Covid as they require controlling everyone everywhere.

    • blackjack

      A: not a democracy and b: the fucking lowlife republicans are only really equipped to play defense on the losing team. They lack the skills to implement policies and make decisions on their own, mainly because mostly the would make the exact same decisions as the dems just with their side in charge. C: we are not evenly divided, most people are totally deceived and have no idea what’s really going on. The power players in the realm of information switched gears into straight propaganda and most people don’t pay close enough attention to understand that. Therefore, CNN/NYT/NBC/ABC et al. are the real deal to them. All they need is the headline.

  35. Scruffy Nerfherder

    So I found out today that outlook.com maintains a super secret email block list that just dumps your email if it’s flagged. No bounce, no error, just dumped.

    Getting off of it should be a fun exercise.

  36. Rebel Scum

    Rounding up the dissidents.

    The Biden administration’s Justice Department obtained a search warrant for Rudy Giuliani and used it to search his New York City apartment and office, seizing records and electronic devices. Giuliani has been a private attorney for President Trump in his election cases and was instrumental in getting Hunter Biden’s laptop into the news before the 2020 presidential election. Giuliani is reportedly being investigated over his alleged lobbying efforts in 2019 regarding Ukraine when he was investigating allegations of corruption involving Joe and Hunter Biden and Ukraine. …

    The federal authorities have been largely focused on whether Mr. Giuliani illegally lobbied the Trump administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs, who at the same time were helping Mr. Giuliani search for dirt on Mr. Trump’s political rivals, including President Biden, who was then a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

    • leon

      One of the things that i think irks me about the Normies is the complete lack of empathy. I understand you can see Rudy as a bad guy, but you can’t, at all, see how this could look to anyone who is on the otherside? No to the normies, this is justice because they know Rudy was a bad guy for cavorting with Trump, and so anything that happens to him is justice, not political prosecution meant to silence the other side.

      • wdalasio

        And these same pricks will tell you ad infinitum about their empathy. There’s part of me that’s really starting to think, “Just let it slide back to barbarism”. It’s what it looks like they want. And I have no kids. And I’m out of the cities. I want better than that. But, is there really a point?

      • Winston

        I sometimes wonder if the decline of religion is causing this in some part. Thanks to the Wars of Religion every Religious group in Western Europe had experience with being oppressed by the state and being the oppressor too so everyone had reason to fear if the shoe was on the other foot. However this fear is no more and many people think that they can form a tyrannical state that will keep the bad people from power.

      • Rebel Scum

        We are supposed to have separation of church and state. But what happens when the state becomes a religion…?

      • The Hyperbole

        I have been told that the separation of church and state is a liberal myth and no such thing actually exists.

  37. Stillhunter

    @ egould310:

    I’d like to discuss lumber industry analysis if you’re willing. Email me at black jack forestry at the evil tech company. All one word obviously.

    • Pope Jimbo

      Ooooh, look at this!

      Stillhunter and egould are going to form a mutual admiration society of each other’s wood.

  38. KromulentKristen

    My Uber Eats driver is named Phat.

    • slumbrew

      Last name, Hong, no doubt.

      • slumbrew

        Phat Hong was, in fact, the name of a guy a worked with for a bunch of years.

    • TARDis

      Well if you’re uber eating, that’s how you end up.

    • pan fried wylie

      Sum Phat Gai was my nickname in Siamese School.

  39. Pope Jimbo

    Grass roots stupidity hits big corporate coffee giant.

    Known to some as “Snarshall,” the four-year-old Starbucks coffee shop at Snelling and Marshall avenues in St. Paul shut-down its perpetually-congested drive-through lanes on Monday. The coffee shop itself remains open after a brief closure over the weekend.

    Most workers at the site, which is believed to be one of the busiest Starbucks in the state, have declined to open the store if a St. Paul Police officer remains on duty directing drive-through traffic, a condition the city imposed as a result of notorious traffic back-ups onto Snelling Avenue.

    “We basically gave an ultimatum to our district manager and our regional vice president,” said a Starbucks employee, who asked not to be identified as workers have been instructed to direct media inquiries to a corporate office.

    The workers have identified themselves as mostly “queer” women in their 20s, many of them women of color who began organizing among themselves last June. Among their concerns were interactions between the six or seven off-duty officers hired by Starbucks to direct traffic off Marshall Avenue — all of them white males, according to workers — and the coffee shop’s many Black and Somali customers. The death of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer last May proved to be a catalyst.

    “After the murder of George Floyd, we decided we needed immediate divestment from the St. Paul Police Department,” the worker said.

    I can hardly wait for the followup interview after the store closes because of the loss of drive-thru revenue and all the workers are fired. I doubt the mostly queer totes unemployed workers will have learned anything though.

    • Animal

      This is what a Gender Studies degree gets ya.

    • R C Dean

      To: Staff at Snelling and Marshall Starbucks

      From: Starbucks

      You’re fired.

      That is all.

      • Sean

        Followed by discrimination complaints being filed and boycotts.

      • R C Dean

        EEOC complaints are easy to beat. I’ve never lost one. This one would be stupidly easy to win. “Staff refused to open the drive-thru, which is a high-revenue part of this location. They were fired for not doing their jobs and costing us money. The end.”

        Boycotts? Sure. The Starbucks-addicted aren’t going anywhere.

      • Sean

        We’re in a new age of wokeness and social justice equity, I’m not confident in correct outcomes anymore.

      • Pope Jimbo

        You forgot:

        p.s. We will contest any attempt by you to collect unemployment.

      • R C Dean

        Good thought. I think I’d save that one. Let it be a surprise, later.

        I might add one thing:

        “Since you are being fired for cause, your file will be noted as “Do Not Rehire”.

    • J. Frank Parnell

      Yeah, drive-thru is a huge moneymaker for Sbux. Even if they don’t close the store, they’ll either let people go or cut everyone’s hours by 2/3 at least.

      Also, the manager and district manager hate everyone at the store because this is fucking up their quarterly bonuses.

      • Gender Traitor

        The drive-thru at the nearest SB to us is rivaled in traffic only by Chik-Fil-A – and I only see it on weekday evenings or weekend afternoons. Since I don’t like Starbucks, I don’t get it, unless their business has increased since we lost several local Tim Horton’s.

      • The Bearded Hobbit

        I don’t understand the love for Starbucks. I’ve had two cups. Or tastes from two cups. After the first sip I spit out the vile, bitter, burned, swill. I thought it might be a fluke so I tried it again the next day. Same reaction. I can’t see the appeal of a $6 cup of warm engine oil over a decent cup of coffee.

        Seattle’s Best, however, is very good.

      • Ask your doctor if BEAM is right for you

        As a Canuck, I can say that yes, since I was a teenager, Starbucks’ coffees (even their light roasts) tasted “burned” or over-roasted.

        Seattle’s Best is very good coffee, but the best I’ve ever had in the States was Peet’s. That coffee’s the bomb. Especially their Major Dickason’s Blend, which is sublime.

      • juris imprudent

        Major Dickason’s is standard in the coffee maker of JI.

      • Ask your doctor if BEAM is right for you

        You, sir, are a man of rare taste and discernment.

      • Ask your doctor if BEAM is right for you

        And I really wish that Costco would dump Starbucks and start carrying Peet’s, especially if they started carrying Major Dickason’s.

  40. Hank

    “The Cold Equations” first appeared in the August 1954 edition of Astounding magazine”

    Interesting…

    [SPOILERS]

    “Explorers on the Moon (French: On a marché sur la Lune; literally: We walked on the Moon) is the seventeenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was serialised weekly in Belgium’s Tintin magazine from October 1952 to December 1953 before being published in a collected volume by Casterman in 1954….

    “When it is revealed that there will not be enough oxygen aboard for the crew to survive the journey, Wolff sacrifices himself by opening the airlock and floating out into space to his apparent death.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorers_on_the_Moon

    • UnCivilServant

      What I remember most about “Cold Equations” was the number of solutions presented that did not result in fatalities. They had to keep editing each reprint of the story to make it more contrived and force the death because of all of the reader resolutions.

      • prolefeed

        It’s almost like people motivated to not die keep coming up with creative ways of preventing that outcome.

        Also why, despite rising world population, prosperity is at an all time high, rather than running out of resources like the zero sum thinkers keep predicting.

    • LCDR_Fish

      Was just about to post that one – it was a great two-parter.

      • LCDR_Fish

        Thought it was early 60s though, not that early. Very cool.

  41. Winston

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aier.org/article/the-desperate-loneliness-of-social-media/amp/

    Other-directed personalities are inherently flexible because their views of themselves and others come to them from others. Neither tradition nor reason bind them. They seek approval and applause rather than respect and are the best adapted to the modern economy, which demands rapid adaptability regarding car and clothes styles and workplace roles.

    ….
    But once that prosperity has been achieved, then “increasingly, other people are the problem, not the material environment. And as people mix more widely and become more sensitive to each other, the surviving traditions and “gyroscopic control is no longer sufficiently flexible, and a new psychological mechanism is called for”
    ….

    Meanwhile, other-directed voters go on social media to try to figure out which politicians and policy proposals will earn them the most plaudits from assorted avatars and social influencers. They value fitting in over logic or consistency and many seem genuinely puzzled when the inconsistencies in their expressed opinions are pointed out to them.

    Huh the idea that prosperity turns us into unthinking sheep that can’t think consistently might be a bit of a flaw don’t you think?

  42. wdalasio

    “But the child can’t?” she wondered. “Not to beat it to death.”

    Fauci responded, “Yes, yes.”

    That’s simply idiotic. We’ve known for months that children are the least susceptible to catching COVID. At this point, I’m starting to find the “uneducated” outpace the the ostensibly educated at basic critical thinking by an order of magnitude. This isn’t science. It doesn’t even look to me like it’s even pretending to be science.

    • Pope Jimbo

      by an order of magnitude

      I think is see your problem. The very people you are trying to warn are not going to understand that term.

      “Order of Magnitude? Sounds like some secret white male masonic club to me”

      • blackjack

        I thought that was Lena Dunham’s Mcdonald’s order?

  43. Count Potato

    Imagine, if you will, being this asshole:

    ““We don’t talk about politics at work” sounds like a great way to end up with a bunch of Nazis on your payroll”

    https://twitter.com/jjg/status/1386811470734786565

    • prolefeed

      If your viewpoint is that anyone who dissents from any viewpoint you have must be a literal Nazi, you’ll want to screen out all the wrongthinkers.

      And then be puzzled why you keep getting fubared by groupthink.

    • LJW

      There are probably thousands of people with the same mindset who are in positions with the power to hire employees. Let that sink in.

    • KromulentKristen

      I’m increasingly alarmed at how many people want to turn work (especially office work) into summer camp.

      My workplace is full of do-gooder white savior down-in-the-mouth racists that love to sit in meetings and talk about feelings rather than when that web content is going to be cleared by management.

      • UnCivilServant

        I am so glad I am not stuck in meetings like that.

        All the more so when I’m running the meeting and can keep things on point. It has been noticed that meetings I run are shorter than those of other managers.

      • Pope Jimbo

        I’m semi-famous for declining meeting requests when there is no agenda.

        And then when they do provide an agenda, I have been known to shut down chatter because it isn’t part of the agenda.

        I also imposed a 1 hour maximum meeting time where I am know. Not because I have any real power, but simply because I said out loud what everyone else thinks: After an hour nothing is getting done. Better to break and reconvene.

      • R C Dean

        I’ve taken a more passive-aggressive approach.

        I show up, and reply to any question (except the most basic) with “I don’t know. Coming in, I had no idea what this meeting was about, so I couldn’t prepare.”

      • Pope Jimbo

        I give most people a mulligan or two. And if they run their meetings well, I won’t push it.

        But after a few nudges I go straight into “DECLINED”

      • Master JaimeRoberto (royal we/us)

        One of my previous companies had one rule: No agenda, no meeting. The office was in an old palace next to a strip club in Budapest. I wish more companies were like that.

      • R C Dean

        To be fair, there’s only so many offices in old palaces next to strip clubs in Budapest.

      • Master JaimeRoberto (royal we/us)

        That’s a fact.

      • rhywun

        I have a co-worker who just drops off a call at 5PM without a word.

        I need to be more like my co-worker.

      • Ask your doctor if BEAM is right for you

        The Spousal Unit, back in the Before Times™, used to answer her phone two to three minutes before the end of her workday. It was invariably some co-worker phoning from another time-zone who wanted to talk her ear off for an hour or so. I did everything in my power to get her to STOP DOING THAT, but it took an act of God (well, a close female friend of hers, anyways, who offered to drive her home after work) to get her to finally say “no more” to those doofuses.

        Worked a treat. She came home to a crisp glass of cold white wine and a properly-cooked meal every single evening after that.

    • Pope Jimbo

      A Nazi workforce? Sure there are some downsides, but efficiency has skyrocketed!

      • blackjack

        Those TPS forms? Filled out perfectly and right on time!

      • rhywun

        And what snappy dressers!

    • Pope Jimbo

      The dude is a “Design leadership coach at large.”

      One of my pet theories is that a lot of the woke people are the ones who are incompetent (or barely competent) and are just self-aware enough to realize that.

      They understand that they will be the first to walk the plank during the next downsizing and won’t get promoted. So they invent bullshit jobs and use woke as a tool to keep anyone from bothering them. Wokeism is their way of deflecting any talk about their lack of ability into other channels.

      You know that if you get invited to a meeting with a design leadership coach who is a loony wokester and somehow the meeting is canceled your relief will be so great, you won’t ever stop to think whether you actually needed the design leadership coach in the first place.

      • Endless Mike

        They’ve sure come up with some purdy ways to say “unemployed”

    • Rebel Scum

      The only times I have ever had political conversations (bc it is current events and as much as I dislike it, government action is still part of our lives) have been perfectly cordial. It’s the idiots I went to school with that, while arguing in bad faith and committing every logical fallacy in the book, fancy themselves wonks and political philosophers that I have to worry about.

  44. The Late P Brooks

    Taxes good. Republikkkins bad.

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended President Joe Biden’s proposed tax increases amid GOP criticism Wednesday, slamming Republicans for their 2017 tax cuts.

    “We’re on a better path for the people. What he is talking about is exactly just to reverse some of what the Republicans did in their tax scam where they added almost $2 trillion to the national debt, if you include the cost and the interest on the debt, to give tax breaks to the top, top, wealthiest people in the country,” Pelosi said Wednesday afternoon in an interview on MSNBC.

    ——-

    Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts that Pelosi referenced had a $1.5 trillion price tag over 10 years. Pelosi defended Biden’s proposed tax hikes, saying they don’t come from “any resentment against anybody for their success” and that Biden is “rewarding work” and meeting people’s needs.

    Whatever. Take your meds, granny.

    • Pope Jimbo

      So “rewarding work” means taking more of the hard worker’s money?

      • Grumbletarian

        You’ve worked so hard, let me lighten your wallet to take pressure off your back.

    • Rebel Scum

      I saved hundreds in taxes every month thanks to the Trump tax regime and I am definably middle class. This dishonest cunte can fuck the hell off.

  45. The Late P Brooks

    A Nazi workforce? Sure there are some downsides, but efficiency has skyrocketed!

    And the record keeping? Fastidious!

    • Pope Jimbo

      And the number of workers with visible tattoos has plummeted.

      • slumbrew

        Such snappy dressers!

      • J. Frank Parnell

        Well there’s some underpaid workers with tattoos, but apparently work will set them free.

    • wdalasio

      And when it comes to problem-solving, management is always great at coming up with a final solution!

  46. KromulentKristen

    The vaccine marketing campaign by Fauci & his toadies has been so god awful, I can’t help but think they are actively trying to discourage people from getting it.

    • Sean

      They are just that incompetent.

      • juris imprudent

        You don’t get to the top of a federal bureaucracy by anything other than being a good bureaucratic operator. It is the ONLY thing at which such a person is competent.

    • Count Potato

      Maybe they know it doesn’t work?

    • blackjack

      They certainly have discouraged me from taking it. Not that I wouldn’t have my own reasons to avoid it. Experimental drug that prevents an illness that only has a .5% chance of affecting me at all and an even less chance of seriously affecting me? Yeah, I’m going to pass.

    • KromulentKristen

      Try to imagine any other product being marketed this way.

      McDonald’s: “Eat our burgers. They’re not going to satiate your hunger. But yeah. You should eat our burgers.”

      • Ed Wuncler

        LOL

      • Pope Jimbo

        Finally! The Catholic Condom is here.

        No longer will you have to endure the shame of being the only kid in school who doesn’t have the unmistakeable condom ring embossed in your wallet.

        The Catholic Condom is God approved because it probably doesn’t work. But God does like that the new condom reduces sensation and makes sex less enjoyable.

        Wear the Catholic Condom!

    • KromulentKristen

      (I’m posing this thought irrespective of how you feel about the vaxx. It’s just piss poor marketing.)

      • R C Dean

        The bureaucrats were in a brand new situation: they actually had a solution to the problem they were getting paid to “fix”. That never happens, so they had no idea how to act.

  47. Tonio

    Campbell had a grim, Lovecraft-adjacent, outlook on Things, and is therefore one of my favorite authors.

    Yeah, the solutions where nobody goes out the airlock is just too pat.

  48. The Late P Brooks

    So “rewarding work” means taking more of the hard worker’s money?

    When you do what you love, money is of no consequence.

    Like teachers; it’s not about the money. They just love to be with their students.

    • Pope Jimbo

      Teachers don’t have jobs, they have a calling. Like priests.

      But if you think a teacher’s calling is going to involve any vows of poverty (or silence or celibacy) you have another thing coming!

      • Ed Wuncler

        I used to hold teachers on this pedestal until I got to college and hung out with Education majors and realized that you didn’t need to be that intelligent to become a teacher. Also, teachers (with a few exceptions of course) are probably the most entitled assholes I’ve ever encountered and always expect you to give them globs of complements and appreciation for doing their jobs.

      • Pope Jimbo

        When I started at Memphis State, I lived in the dorm for a semester because I didn’t know anyone. My roommate was a education major and a nice guy, but uneducated as fuck. He wanted to be a music teacher(he was an insanely good musician) and I was envious of his future students because they were all sure to get A’s, B’s and C’s. I don’t think my roommate had gotten far enough along in the alphabet to give D’s or F’s.

        He asked me to proofread a paper he was going to turn in and it was horrible. I swear he had some sentences in it that didn’t have a verb. It was one of those deals, where if you start changing one thing, you will end up having to rewrite everything. So I just pointed out a few misspellings.

        I sweated it out for a couple weeks wondering what he was going to say when he got that paper back. One day he came in and thanked me for my help because he got a B-. I was amazed.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        *sigh*

        I shouldn’t be disappointed at the ending, but I can’t help it.

      • Gender Traitor

        I hope that paper was for one of his music education classes (as opposed to, say, English.) That way, we know it was graded by a former music education major.

      • creech

        I’ll bet his vote cancels yours out, no matter what g.p.a. or degree he may have received.

      • Ted S.

        My sister was an actual music major to become a music teacher.

      • Don Escaped Texas

        where was dude from?

        DISCLAIMER: I never took any liberal arts classes at Tiger High

      • Master JaimeRoberto (royal we/us)

        Teachers are the new clergy. Thou shalt not question them.

  49. Sean

    My Fenix ammo arrived today.

    • UnCivilServant

      Did it come with a chainsaw bayonet?

    • TARDis

      #ammoprivilege

    • R C Dean

      I got a shipment from them yesterday. And last week.

      Also picked up Mrs. Dean’s Tavor X95 today. I can hardly wait to get it home and figure out exactly how to work a bullpup assault rifle modern sporting weapon.

      • UnCivilServant

        Did it come with a chainsaw bayonet?

      • Sean

        Hope she likes it. ?

      • R C Dean

        If she doesn’t, there’s a kit to make it right-handed. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.

        The chainsaw bayonet is backordered. The Jews put in that “cutlass” handguard instead of a regular trigger guard so you can bash someone with it if you need to/feel like it, so there’s that.

        The regular pistol grip with a trigger guard is, wait for it, backordered.

      • UnCivilServant

        “Is there a trigger?”

        “It’s on backorder.”

        “What about the barrel?”

        “Backorder.”

      • DEG

        Excellent.

      • DEG

        I like my Tavor. I have the x95. I need to shoot it more.

    • DEG

      Excellent.

    • KromulentKristen

      Insanity is to be celebrated, not treated!

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      COVID causes mental illness

    • Master JaimeRoberto (royal we/us)

      I suspect a lot of it is performance art.

      • blackjack

        Forgive me Fauchi, for I have sinned. I let my mask slip low once and I stood closer than 6 feet to a stranger. Oh, and I touched a surface outside of my home.

  50. Shpip

    Michael Collins upon his appearance at the Pearly Gates: “I am the second member of the Apollo 11 crew to arrive here. Neil before me.”

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Boooooooo!!!!!!!

      I approve.

  51. Rebel Scum

    Where might one find one of these orphan trains?

    • Pope Jimbo

      They aren’t that hard to track.

      • Animal

        Tie it all together, or it will go off the rails.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Swiss is going to be steamed.

      • Animal

        He’ll have to chew chew on it for a while first.

      • juris imprudent

        I’m sure he will gauge his response narrowly.

    • Gender Traitor

      What a great idea! Another example of American enginuity!

      (Geez, that long-winded shill for Nordpass early in that vid was a PITA!)

  52. R C Dean

    That’s weird. I was just looking at MapQuest online, and I noticed that they never name El Paso, only Ciudad Juarez. Even if you zoom in, it will show names of suburbs, Ft. Bliss, etc. but never El Paso itself.

    • UnCivilServant

      MapQuest.

      That is a name I’ve not heard in a long time.

      A long time.

      • Gender Traitor

        I’ve been leery of Google maps ever since its directions to Maumee Bay State Park led us right into the middle of a Toledo scrapyard. (And yes, I’m sure that was NOT the park.)

      • UnCivilServant

        I really only use it to find what city is about 6-8 hours along the intended route. Once I know the town, other sources help me figure out more detailed plans.

        For directions, I tend to just use the Garmin on my dashboard.

      • Gender Traitor

        As we made our way out of the muddy, rutted scrapyard, we fired up the seldom-used Garmin we’d bought for our trip to CO/NM. For some reason, it thought we were starting from South Bend, IN. We finally found our way to the park despite the wonders of technology.

      • UnCivilServant

        Did you previous turn it off in South Bend?

      • Gender Traitor

        No – we’d never been in South Bend. Maybe our satellite was drunk?

        I suppose if we used the Garmin more often, it might have a better sense of its surroundings. It’s usually stashed away in the console.

      • UnCivilServant

        *shrug*

        I’ve only ever had it mistake my location when I’d left it off and it started thinking I was at the last known, but soon figured it out.

      • Agent Cooper

        “(And yes, I’m sure that was NOT the park.)”

        It was Toldeo, though. I can’t blame them.

  53. Rebel Scum

    Cue riots?

    Three men have been arrested in connection with Tuesday’s shooting at The Belt Atlantic apartments on Midlothian Turnpike that claimed the life of a young mother and her 3-month-old daughter, and sent three additional victims to the hospital.

    On Wednesday, City of Richmond Police charged Donald Hemmings, 22, Shyheem Martin, 23, and Shamondrick Perry, 19, with conspiracy to commit murder. Additional charges are pending.

    Earlier in the day, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney and the city’s Police Chief Gerald Smith provided an update on the mass shooting that happened on the city’s southside.

    Police identified the victim who was killed during the shooting as 30-year-old Sharnez Hill. Her 3-month-old daughter was also shot and died later at the hospital. Donte McCutchen, Hill’s cousin and Pastor at Love Cathedral Community Church, identified the child as Neziah Hill. …

    “At this time we do not believe that they were the target of these shootings,” Chief Smith said.

    Richmond Police officers responded to the mass shooting around 6:30 p.m. at the apartment complex which used to be called the Midlothian Village apartments.

    Authorities believe the gunmen were targeting a single apartment but ended up striking two adult women, two teenage girls and the 3-month-old girl.

    No, wait. The circumstantial skin pigmentation and profession is wrong.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Shamondrick is an Irish name I’m not familiar with.

    • Shpip

      Richmond Police recovered three guns at the scene, an assault rifle and two handguns.

      How does a kid that age get the scratch to buy a full-auto?

      Or is “assault rifle” just journo-speak for “scary black gun?”

      • UnCivilServant

        I suspect journo-speak.

        Though in the right markets, Kalashnikovs are actually rather reasonable.

    • Rebel Scum

      CWAA.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        A dumb one at that

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Any position with “diversity” in the title is by definition useless and probably staffed by a middling halfwit with an axe to grind.

      • Fatty Bolger

        They should Just be honest and call them “commissars.”

    • robodruid

      Is this some sort of Babylon bee crossover?

  54. DEG

    Is the Sun still rising in the East? Because I agree with Chris Christie.

    While he had no comment about a possible presidential run in 2024, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was explicit about what his party’s strategy should be today: Take the fight to Joe Biden.

    “[Biden] has lied about the voting bill and Georgia in order, and I want everyone to understand this: The motivation for doing this is to stoke racial divisions in our country to his political benefit,” Christie said. “We need to say that out loud and directly, that’s exactly what he’s doing.”

    The 2016 presidential candidate made his comments during a call with New Hampshire conservative leaders and activists on Wednesday, where Christie came out guns blazing in a wide-ranging discussion on how to best oppose President Biden and the Democrats’ agenda in Washington.

    “We have lie after lie after lie from Joe Biden, and here’s what I don’t understand. The rules have changed,” Christie said. “And I said this to George Stephanopoulos two weeks ago, when he stopped me and said, ‘Do you really want to say it’s a lie?’

    “I said, well, you all use the term ‘lie’ and ‘liar’ about President Trump over and over again. And now, because it’s good old Joe Biden, we’re not going to use the same word for conduct that is clearly untrue?”

    Christie also criticized Biden for using what he sees as charged phrases such as “Jim Crow on steroids” to describe Georgia’s new voting law. Christie noted that law is much more generous than the laws in Biden’s home state of Delaware. Georgia’s new laws expanded the number of early voting days to 17, while mandating early voting to one additional Saturday, with the option for counties to open up early Sunday voting.

    • DEG

      To elaborate, I know what Chris Christie is. I’m commenting on what this article says he said.

      • UnCivilServant

        The walking adipose tumor from the jersey wastes said something sensible?

      • DEG

        Yeah.

        I read the article twice. It looks to me like he did say something sensible.

  55. Count Potato

    “How many of these video compilations — where CNN and MSNBC hosts invite corporate journalists on to spew deceit and debunked propaganda on major stories — do you need to see before admitting that these are major disinformation organs? Just watch and judge for yourself:”

    https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1387529197439143938

    The problem is most people are too busy to pay attention.

  56. DEG

    Sununu asks why aren’t Biden and Harris on Covid calls?

    It’s not the first time Sununu has called out the Biden administration for poor communication with the states. “Communication from this administration is inconsistent and rare,” Sununu said after the administration suddenly pulled the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. He reiterated those complaints about the Biden White House to RCP on Monday.

    “They didn’t even pick up the phone, and say, ‘Hey, by the way, you might see this in the news. We’ll explain it on the call,’” Sununu said. “Nothing.”

    Sununu has made bashing the Biden administration a staple of his pandemic messaging. Complaints about poor performance by federal bureaucrats in the DC bubble are a regular feature of his weekly COVID-19 pressers, inspiring some to see it as a hint he plans to challenge first-term U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan next year. Sununu has repeatedly said he won’t be making any decision about his political future until after the state budget is in the books this summer.

    Regardless of the governor’s motives, his complaints about the Biden administration’s treatment of state governments appear legit. RCP reports that during that Trump administration, the White House hosted a total of 40 COVID conference calls. Pence led 39 of them, and President Trump participated in eight.

    According to Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, “President Biden hasn’t been on any of them and Vice President Harris has only been on one, but that was for about five minutes and she didn’t take any questions.”

    • UnCivilServant

      Well, Gropey Joe doesn’t have the cognitive ability for that sort of venue, and Cackling Kamala doesn’t care.

      • Rebel Scum

        Kuntey Kackling Kamala…

    • blackjack

      That’s the beauty of hiding through the whole campaign. He made no promises, therefore he can’t break any.

      • Master JaimeRoberto (royal we/us)

        I’m amazed how the media just accepted his BS answer on court packing. I thought they would at least have enough pride to push for an answer on that.

  57. Aloysious

    Wasn’t it Voltaire that said, “It is dangerous to be right on matters in which established authorities are wrong.”

    Makes a guy think, that does.

  58. westernsloper

    Sure Randy Quaid saved the world in Independence Day But Christmas Vacation was still his best role. One must not underestimate the number of people who think that. That number would be every hillbilly in the USA.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      He’s a criminally underrated comedic actor but his best role was the head of the carnival in the movie “Freaked.” If you like weird but funny shit give that movie which also stars Alex Winter, Keanu Reeves, and Mr. T a watch.

      • westernsloper

        Will do thanks teats!

    • The Hyperbole

      Only because the Amish aren’t allowed to watch movies, elsewise Kingpin would be the greatest Randy Quaid film ever. Fucking Englishmen!

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Forgot about that one. I like lowbrow humor and Quaid taking a dump in a urinal while reading a newspaper is about as lowbrow as it gets.

      • The Hyperbole

        And getting the beers out of the fridge after what’s her name got the beers out of the fridge.

      • westernsloper

        I have never seen Kingpin. I must remedy this. Thanks Hype! Randy Quaid is the awesome.

      • The Hyperbole

        Kee-rist man It’s Quaid, Woody Harrelson, Bill Murry, Chris Elliot. What, were you busy “liberating” foreign countries in ’96 or something?

      • Ask your doctor if BEAM is right for you

        Shhhhh! Ixnay on the “iberating-lay” talk!

  59. Aloysious

    The gray mass of people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one. – A. Hitler

    • Ask your doctor if BEAM is right for you

      We’re not worthy.

      . . .

      OK, I’m not worthy.

    • KromulentKristen

      It’s too hot for clothes, so despite any possible protestations that it is clothing-optional, I’m going to have to pass.

      • Mojeaux

        Party pooper.

    • westernsloper

      Am I being screened? Who is in charge there?