The first thing Jen sees when she opens her eyes is Finnegan, the President’s aide and granddaughter.
“What is it?” she mumbles to the earnest young woman. She realizes she slept at work again. She shifts and farts and it briefly inflates her tactical pantyhose.
“It’s Grandpa,” Finnegan says. “He’s been reading the Twitter again.”
“How does he keep getting a phone?” Jen asks, knowing Finnegan will not have an answer. She sits up and rubs her eyes.
“You’re the slay queen,” Finnegan says. “Have your simp army on Twitter figure it out.”
“Coffee,” Jen croaks.
“I don’t think any of your press interns are here yet,” Finnegan says as she leaves.
“I should chain them to their fucking desks.”
—
Jen strips down in her private bathroom and has a whore’s bath in the sink, washing armpits and neck and crotch and dabbing Joe’s favorite perfume on her pulse points. She scrubs her face until her freckles come through and moisturizes the aging skin on her neck. Frowning at the dark roots showing in her part, she brushes her hair roughly. Jen brushes her teeth until she spits blood into the sink and then puts on a fresh set of clothes.
“Goddammit,” she says to the Jen in the mirror.
There is a timid knock on her door.
“What?”
“Your coffee, ma’am.”
The Korean press intern takes a step back when Jen opens the door.
“You’re the only one I like,” Jens mumbles as she takes the giant tumbler of coffee from her.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Jen drinks off half the coffee and grumbles, begins to leave the bathroom.
“Eyeliner, ma’am,” the intern says.
“What?”
“Eyeliner, ma’am. You said for us to remind you when you are going to talk to the President.”
Jen backs into the bathroom and sits down heavily on her toilet lid.
“Can you just do it for me?” she asks around sips of coffee.
“Yes, ma’am,” the intern says and begins to look over Jen’s makeup selection.
“Sorry about my coffee breath,” Jen murmurs as the intern comes at her with the eyeliner pencil.
“It’s OK, ma’am.”
“Please just call me Jen.” She glances down to read her security pass, blanking completely on her name. Instead, she sees down her shirt as she leans in, taking in a horribly white and utilitarian bra covering small breasts.
“That contradicts the memo from 2/23, ma’am,” the intern said, moving onto the left eye.
“My first boyfriend was about your size,” Jen whispers. “I liked that he was small enough to throw around.”
“All done,” the intern says backing away.
“I have prepared my face to meet the faces I meet,” Jen says into the mirror.
“There will be time to murder and create,” the intern replies.
“What?”
“That’s the next line. You were quoting ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,’ ma’am.”
“Oh, was I?” Jen asks, turning, her breasts brushing against the intern in the close confines of the bathroom.
—
“Strawberry!” Joe says excitedly.
“Good morning, Mr. President,” Jen replies, the poem now sour in her mouth.
These aren’t fiction are they?
Read right out of intern’s entrails.
The truthiest truth in the world.
He infiltrated the Trump White House and managed to go undetected for all of that time.
“Have your simp army on Twitter figure it out.”
Feisty,
In my mind, this is the background music playing during this scene.
Perfect.
A beautifully restrained picture of self-loathing. Really nice.
Favorite line. Although the intern finishing the poem brought that SF darkness.
“brought that SF darkness”
So much this.
I am seriously cheesed off right now, software-wise. Yesterday I spent several hours modeling a process in Aspen (a chemical process simulator package). I took a previous simulation, modified it heavily, and then did a “save as” a new file name.
The way Aspen works is it has to contact a central server to get “coins” to run certain parts of the software. Your organization buys a set of “coins” that can get distributed among the various users of the software. These coins aren’t used up, but they can’t be used simultanously. If the company has 100 coins, and users try to use features that require, say, 105 coins, someone’s job isn’t going to work until some coins get freed up. Since I work in an international company, people can use coins in Asia and North America and usually there’s no conflict because we’re working at different times of day. Sometimes someone (I’m guilty of this all the time) leaves their process simulator open overnight. If the number of coins is exceeded, there seems to be some functionality by which an idle client can be shut down remotely. This happens all the time and generally hasn’t caused any problems.
Now, I’m *certain* I saved my simulation, and I’m pretty sure I know the name (or part of the name) of the file I saved it in. But what appears to have happened is that when my client got shut down last night, somehow all the files I created and saved yesterday went up in smoke. I have no idea how this happened because I absolutely know I saved the file.
What a bunch of crap.
Really.
I get a license that restricts the amount of concurrent users, but further restricting functionality based on the amount of processes required is a nice FU.
Heads they win tails you lose.
Vendor: “We’ll gladly increase your coin allocation for… One Million Dollars!”
::insert Dr Evil gif::
I agree it’s pretty shitty. I think it came out of companies saying “there’s no way we’ll pay $50k per license for 100 of our employees to have this software,” and the vendor saying “ok, here’s our solution.” If 100 people want to use 1 coin worth of features simultaneously, that’s do-able, but if someone needs 10 or 20 occasionally, then the company still gets to roll out the software to everyone who might need to use it occasionally.
You lost your recipe for making super meth?
Ugh, that totally sucks.
“Good morning, Mr. President,” Jen replies, the poem now sour in her mouth.
Excellent.
Tactical Pantyhose?
Are they made of canvas? Can they carry ballistic plate? Maybe inserts for knee pads and groin protector?
Inquiring minds…
I could really have used a pair or two of those – whatever they are – before we went full jeans-and-corporate-logo-wear at work last year. 🙁
Incredibly, a Bing of “tactical pantyhose” doesn’t show a single such product on the market.
Market opportunity!
Maybe with strategically placed pockets for CCW without the constriction of a garter holster?
Just a strip of velcro to attach a morale patch.
The canvas models suffered from crotch rot in tropical environments.
That’s why the commando version is crotchless.
inserts for knee pads
Kamala’s are carbon/kevlar.
This is Sorkin level writing, you should be ashamed.
Wednesdays are good days. Thanks, SF
In preparation for the 4th of July Weekend I rewatched the first two episodes of HBO’s John Adams. Still holds up, even though you can see the authoritarian sneaking through in the choice of quotes. But my biggest take away, Abigail got one of her kids killed because she got them vaxxed! #Don’tPrickMeBro! Am I right?!
Wow…
Robinhood Agrees to Pay $70 Million to Settle Regulatory Investigation
Pay your recompense to the crown, and suffer no consequence.
That, but they also just took advantage of stupid too. That said people should be free to do so.
Problem is that most everyone else in the industry didn’t want to get anywhere near as close to the line as Robinhood did. This fine was a signal to everyone else including the big boys that this was the correct response.
Robinhood pays $70 million. How much do the customers get?
The warm glow of knowing an evildoer payed “their fair share”!
“Finra said it would launch a $30 million campaign to educate new investors who use apps like Robinhood’s to trade a variety of risky assets.”
Customers get nothing. It’s going to a slush fund.
As. Fucking. Usual.
Don’t you mean how much do the customers owe? Robin Saved them from wasting their money on shitty stock. Consumer protection FTW!
-$0.03
I’m still waiting for my Equifax settlement.
I refused to give them the satisfaction of 1 year of “free” credit monitoring. So I actually put in an itemized claim.
That one was something like a settlement of $380m of which $30m went to the people that were actually impacted.
She shifts and farts and it briefly inflates her tactical pantyhose.
Theres always one or two lines in every one of these that makes me wonder—how does he think of shit like this?
Are you sure you want to know? When you look into the abyss…
So I got back my T-Cell test results for Covid-19. I do not have any detectable T-cells for the virus. This means I do not have any effective immunity either due to it’s been too long since I was sick thus no detectable t-cell immunity, I was never infected with Covid and it was something else, or the drugs I take weakened my immune system enough to make the T-cells undetectable.
In either case I don’t have any acquired immunity and I have to make a decision on getting the vaccine. My work place has made this essentially a requirement to work like a normal person without masking.
Great times we live in.
Your inconvenience is temporary, COVID is forever. The vaccine, unfortunately, is also temporary.
The vaccine, unfortunately, is also temporary
Except for the unknown side effects. Those may or may not be forever.
And the inconvenience might be forever, until it is no longer politically useful of course.
Other options include finding a new job, suing them, making them fire you, sabotaging the business, fucking your boss’s wife, etc.
Also, sorry…that sucks no matter what you decide.
Ask them if by requiring vaccinations, they are assuming liability for any injury it may cause.
They are not making it mandatory, but they are making it very uncomfortable for you and obvious to everyone if you don’t get it. There is a signal for all to see.
“Why won’t you wear the ribbon?”
Hostile workplace.
Sue them.
“This means I do not have any effective immunity”
I do not think this is true. You don’t need extant T-Cells ‘against’ covid to have effective immunity. The immune system will recognize the virus and ramp up protection rapidly. Long term immunity doesn’t require continuous presence of T-Cells, but rather immune ‘memory’ for a given pathogen.
Covid ran through a friend’s entire family. When it was over, he and his wife tested positive for the antibodies, the young kids negative. He was worried and asked the doctor about. The doctor said not to worry – it was so little threat to kids’ immune systems that they don’t bother keeping the antibodies active.
I’m convinced that when my son tested positive for Covid it was a false positive. Because whatever he had was so mild it basically had no effect on him. But it very well could have been Covid.
I thought that memory T-cells and their copies were what kept you immune after being exposed to a new pathogen?
My understanding, such as it is is that, upon infection, naive T-cells will activate and differentiate in response to the pathogen and express receptors to bind to affected cells and eliminate them. Those T-cells rapidly decrease/disappear after the infection, within weeks/month time scale, and essentially none of the antigen specific T-cells remain. But memory T-cells (whether helper or cytotoxic) should. In fact, that was probably a significant pathway of immunity to sars-cov-2, the presence of memory t-cell immunity from e.g. SARS or the myriad of other corona viruses in circulation over the last many decades. In general, I think those memory cells are expected to stick around for decades. If the test is specific to *memory* t-cells, I would think you probably never got infected and don’t have natural immunity beyond the general level of natural immunity we generally have. Was it a blood draw test? While t-cells circulate in the blood, I think that memory t-cells are resident in the lymph system, so a blood draw might not see any active t-cells but you would still have the memory t-cells.
My work has that too. So far, about 1/3 of people are still wearing masks, either because they haven’t taken the Fauci Prick or because they’re “being extra careful”. But effective yesterday, they dropped the requirement that we fill out this stupid COVID questionnaire every day, so maybe they’re letting up a little bit.
I had considered the chance that they would mandate vaccination as a condition of employment, and decided that if it comes to that I’m going to pack my shit and walk. Plenty of jobs out there, I have plenty in savings, I have a couple avenues of freelance work I could do until I land a full-time job, and I want to get out of that line of work anyway.
Sorry.
“There will be time to murder and create”
I am a bit afraid now.
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Speaking of, I read Little Slaughterhouse on the Prairie last night. Some real messed up stuff happened down the road from the Ingalls homestead. Corpses in the garden type stuff.
Do I dare to eat a peach?
I will wear white flannel trousers and walk along the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I never read the poem before, but that line made me look it up. See I’m learning while uncomfortable.
I am a total Eliot fanboi.
Eliot Page?
Don’t piss of Number 7, I kinda like my planet where it is.
It really is a great poem.
Favorite single line of all poetry (from The Wasteland):
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
I’m a Kipling fan, but I need to re-read some Eliot.
Cruelty has a Human Heart
And Jealousy a Human Face
Terror the Human Form Divine
And Secrecy, the Human Dress
The Human Dress, is forged Iron
The Human Form, a fiery Forge.
The Human Face, a Furnace seal’d
The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.
William Blake, A Divine Image
I was and still am a huge fan of the Romantics.
Evelyn Waugh concurs, NA.
They will sing until/unless you wear the white flannel after September.
Patty Hearst was killed for wearing white shoes after Labor Day.
Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland’s Thompson gun, and bought it.
Probably my favorite Zevon tune…thanks for bringing it up!
It’s Top 5 for me at least.
Thereby sparking years and years of Hearst/Turner MILFy action fantasies.
Absolute hotness – https://youtu.be/LAm6bnBYbJE
+ >2 coffee spoons
I once developed a crush on a coworker for scribbling during a too-long phone call, “I grow old / I grow old / I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
For Swiss:
Maybe your Swiss masters can get you a discount:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO-GJCtjEM0
Thanks SF.
I appreciate that none in this universe are happy or enjoy their job of supporting or serving Joe and the Camel Toe. It is all drudgery, pain and burden as it should be. I cant imagine the reality of people pursuing power is much different.
I have heard stories that GW Bush was very nice to the people that worked for him. Same with Trump. I can’t imagine any of those stories coming from this administration. They just seem like terrible people.
I’ve observed a general trend that the people who scream the loudest about helping the working class are very rude to subordinates and front-line service workers.
How you treat the weak is your true nature calling
I’ve heard kinda the same thing – Trump is awful to work with, but great to work for.
What I’ve heard and observed is that alcoholism is the baseline of their pathologies (not just for this administration).
Imagine what it must be like to be those people and realizing, deep into a career in politics, that you’ll never be the top dog, or even a second or third tier dog, and that all the wheeling and dealing, selling your soul, lies and deceit, treachery and backstabbing have been for nothing.
Then take that really nice big, cheery smile that thought gave you, because you’re not one of them, and brighten up the days of those around you!
“the wheeling and dealing, selling your soul, lies and deceit, treachery and backstabbing have been for nothing.”
…and then you die…
It must be the same experience as guys who join the Mafia, do all the dirty work, buy into the stuff about it being a “family” that will always take care of you, then realizing that the second you’re perceived as a liability, you’ll end up in five different dumpsters all over the city.
Agreed DB, I try to keep those around me as bright as I can. It doesn’t have to be the big smile unless you are a smiler, sometimes it’s just acknowledging someone by saying hello or remembering their name the second time you meet them.
…and brighten up the days of those around you!
Always good advice!
You’re the greatest, db!
It’s like they get to live in hell on Earth.
It feels very “monkeys paw”-esque, and I like those stories.
PSA: gunmagwarehouse.com is having a one day sale on Magpul & Glock mags.
GoodSheldon – “No! Finish your existing gun projects before buying anything else!”
EvilSheldon – whips out credit card
EvilSheldon appears to have Evildb on speed dial.
Well I think this can settle it once and for all on who’s the evil one. Who spends more money on guns robc or I?
/looks over purchases from gun auctions
/looks over collectible guns with deferred maintenance
/looks over guns that haven’t been shot yet
hmm…
I’m downsizing, 1/2 way there. Sort of got a few more (in my mind) promised. My kids are not hunters, 2 of my grand daughters are limited interest but maybe if they get some fun things they’d learn to have more.
I’m not sure what generation 20 year olds are but with no guidance growing up (re: shooting/hunting). Not too late
They are Gen Z, and from what I can tell are hungry for the old ways.
K.
I knew Niel DeGrasse Tyson was arrogant. I didn’t realize the depth of his vacuous Mind.
https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1410224152104116226?s=20
Some of his anti-Religious “gotchas” are so poor i’d hope they would make atheists feel ashamed.
I also love his shtick:
“Scientifically speaking [completely unscientific drivel]”
So a third rate former scientist who hasn’t actually done any science in decades is lecturing us about science.
Yes, vacuous is the appropriate adjective.
This has to be a parody site right? Some of the tweets sound like they were created by a 15 year old.
this
I would suggest saving this stuff to embarrass him later, but it seems he has a ton of stuff out there that didn’t age well and he just keeps going.
People who FUCKING LOVE SCIENCE tend to have very short attention spans and a completely inability to think things through to their likely conclusions.
Perfect feeding ground for a charlatan like Neil.
What’s the deal with the old Dresden photo?
I dunno, “Allies were the real monsters”?
I mean scientifically speaking the sky isnt blue…I am thinking he letting a kid post all this or he is on some fantastic drugs.
“My first boyfriend was about your size,” Jen whispers. “I liked that he was small enough to throw around.”
Hah!
We just adopted a pair of cats, littermates in fact. My wife named them J. Alfred Prufrock and Gilbert K. Chesterton.
This is an augery.
What does your vet know them as? What do you call them to summon* them?
*cats coming when called: it is to laugh
Al and Chesty.
One of them is a former cat of Qs?
Alfie and Chunky.
And they are so young that all they can do is rough play and scatter when you look at them.
You mean it drills holes?
Pics from inside my fab. Unfortunately you can only see the lowest cable tray. It’s nice that they show you how all of our PFA piping has a PC pipe around it so you can visually inspect it for leaks without having to rely on smoking pits in the concrete.
And yes, there are some factual inaccuracies. Although I find it fascinating that Chris Belfi is now media relations, I knew him when he was an ops engineer.
https://time.com/6075425/semiconductor-chip-shortage/
Nice.
Some nice cable porn here: https://www.r-ccs.riken.jp/en/fugaku/3d-models/
Wow, my browser does not like Time’s site..
Neat-o. I wondered about the descriptions, but in fairness it all looks like magic to outsiders.
yup, typical overwrought descriptions from a
creative writingjournalism major.“A typical new car includes more than 1000 chips”
That’s insane, and not in a good way.
Right? My Spitfire only has two FUSES!
Imagine how much a basic auto would cost if it had most of that crud stripped away. Might even be affordable!
Comparing Tesla, Ford, & VW’s Electrical Architectures
Most telling slide of the video here:
https://cdn.motor1.com/images/custom/comparing-tesla-ford-vws-electrical-architectures-source-munro-live.png
Legacy guys have a bunch of single function modules and controllers. Tesla was clean sheet so they consolidated a boatload.
Sorta related.
/buffs fingernails on t-shirt
Well, I just solved a problem that was vexing the client for several months. And my original suggestion was the right track. Just needed some tweaking (and me digging out some old call scripting tricks) to get working as expected.
On the plus side, the quarterly bonus/review check-in is still ongoing.
I’m sorry, but my coffee maker and toaster do not rely on microchips. Nor do all but one of my cars.
i will be King of the Waste Land.
/looks at French Press and cold brew pitcher
Microchips? Shit… they don’t even need electricity.
We got one of those pressure coffee makers..I really dont know what else to call it. Grounds in the top and water in the bottom and a bit of heat and presto!
Moka.
Could be a vacuum coffee maker as well.
Scrurries out of my office to the kitchen and sees that it is indeed a Moka
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/06/30/former-defense-secretary-donald-rumsfeld-dies-at-88/
Too little, too late. May you experience an eternity as an 18 year old invading countries and dying each day.
…while addled on aspertame.
all the wheeling and dealing, selling your soul, lies and deceit, treachery and backstabbing have been for nothing.
Unless the wheeling and dealing, selling your soul, lies and deceit, treachery and backstabbing is the point. I think politics attracts people who are fundamentally maladjusted. For a certain sort of malignant personality, the knowledge that you can or did screw someone over is a validation of your worth or talent.
“Strawberry!” Joe says excitedly.
FINGERBANG!