Saturday Morning Bare Bones Links

by | Nov 27, 2021 | Daily Links | 203 comments

Sorry, three straight days of double shifts, plus loud raucous laughter late at night from SP and Tulip have sapped me of energy. So this is the Lite version of OMWC Links. Maybe by tomorrow I can tell a Tale Of The Woke.

Birthday Lite, too. Bare bones. But we mustn’t forget a guy who could count to 100; a guy who looked like the cartoon image of Emmanuel Goldstein; one of my childhood heroes who knew how to pull the strings; King of the breathless non-sequiturs; a guy who did the economic equivalent of the captain of the Titanic (“What iceberg?”); co-star of a crappy TV show; a guy who inspired one of Spinal Tap’s drummers; the quintessence of pretentious and ignorant bullshit for fun and profit; and easily the hottest world leader of my lifetime. I skipped a bunch more. Fuck, I’m tired.

A few Links, though.

 

Why aren’t we using Version and Rev Numbers? Covid 19.3.4?

 

PANIC HARDER!

 

I do like how they’re restocking for the next wave.

 

Learn a lesson: when you say something stupid, don’t apologize, double down.

 

Kinky!

 

It’s a (((PLOT)))!

 

I guess now that Trump Baby has been retired…

 

Bet you thought I was going to do Hendrix for OGM today. Wrong. Sonny was so casually complex. Enjoyed seeing him half a dozen times.

About The Author

Old Man With Candy

Old Man With Candy

Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me. Wait, wrong book, I'll find something else.

203 Comments

  1. Stinky Wizzleteats

    When the first wave of this nonsense was building I was more concerned about the disease, now I’m much more worried about how badly our government and others going to overreact to the disease. Supposedly the symptom presentation is relatively mild with this variant but they’ll try to make hay of it regardless.

    • Semi-Spartan Dad

      I’m much more worried about how badly our government and others going to overreact to the disease

      Overreacting implies the government has good intentions… or at least intentions with the goal of combating the disease… but are just fucking up. But I don’t think the government is reacting at all to the disease. Their actions are deliberately conducted to reduce liberty and train citizens to accept government domination over the enactment of curfews, banning of private gatherings, restrictions on travel/commerce, and forcible injections. Coronavirus is simply the paper-thin justification.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        This. There are entirely too many inconvenient facts being ignored for this to be about a virus anymore. It’s about control. Any half-serious virus response would have declared victory when the HCQ and ivermectin treatments were first validated.

      • ElspethFlashman

        Power and control cycle = government are the abusers, we are the victims. Right now it seems that the majority are victims, who are thick in the Stockholm syndrome. Speaking out against the abuser will precipitate more abuse = no one speaks out.

  2. Old Man With Candy

    Quote of the day, from Tulip: “I slapped a pig, so it squeals.”

    • SDF-7

      Something about that doesn’t sound kosher to me….

    • The Gunslinger

      Euphemism?

      • Tulip

        Video game

    • Ted S.

      She’s doing her best Ned Beatty impression?

      • Rat on a train

        +2 banjoes

      • Ozymandias

        …. and +1 purty mouth… (boy)

      • Animal

        I think the plural of banjo is banjii.

      • Tulip

        Beatty wasn’t doing the slapping. Do you even Deliverance?

      • Ozymandias

        “SQUEEEEEEAL like a pig!!”
        Oh- what? I’m sorry, you were saying something?

    • Festus

      “Oh That Tulip!” should have been an early 80’s sit-com.

  3. Stinky Wizzleteats

    “Kinky!”
    Gross!

  4. The Late P Brooks

    Omar, who is Muslim and wears a hijab, immediately criticized the video Thursday as “bigotry,” adding that Boebert’s description of the two members of Congress riding an elevator together never occurred.

    “I would never ride an elevator with that pig eating infidel.”

  5. The Late P Brooks

    “Fact, this buffoon looks down when she sees me at the Capitol, this whole story is made up,” Omar wrote. “Sad she thinks bigotry gets her clout.”

    “Anti-Muslim bigotry isn’t funny & shouldn’t be normalized,” she added. “Congress can’t be a place where hateful and dangerous Muslims tropes get no condemnation.”

    Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., also condemned the video on Twitter, writing that it will lead to more threats of violence against Omar.

    “The continued silence & inaction towards this hate-filled colleague and others is enabling violence. It must stop,” Tlaib wrote.

    Fucking children.

    And not in the good way.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      The public face of the House has become competing clique groups of eighth grade catty girls.
      Sad!!!

      • l0b0t

        Make Congress great again.

        “Representative Preston Brooks… later said that he intended to challenge Sumner to a duel, and consulted with fellow South Carolina Representative Laurence M. Keitt on dueling etiquette. Keitt told him that dueling was for gentlemen of equal social standing, and that Sumner was no better than a drunkard, due to the supposedly coarse language he had used during his speech. Brooks said that he concluded that since Sumner was no gentleman, he did not merit honorable treatment; to Keitt and Brooks, it was more appropriate to humiliate Sumner by beating him with a cane in a public setting.”

      • Ozymandias

        That. is. awesome.

      • MikeS

        Yeah, the only thing new with the childish wars of words in Congress is Twitter.

    • rhywun

      If there is anyone who knows “hateful”, it is Omar and Tlaib.

  6. The Late P Brooks

    Boebert used the “jihad squad” phrase recently, during a debate over censuring Gosar. The phrase stereotypically conjures images of a holy war while playing off the “Squad” nickname that Omar, Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and other progressives have embraced for themselves.

    No kidding? I could never have figured that out on my own.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Dude, let them explain it to you. They’re the experts.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Gotta spell it out so the sub 90 IQs get it too.

      • MikeS

        It wouldn’t’ be fair if they didn’t get to share in the outrage.

      • Fourscore

        I always laugh at your jokes

      • Animal

        In other words, the Democrats’ base.

  7. The Late P Brooks

    As the world grapples with the emergence of the new highly transmissible variant of COVID-19, worried scientists in South Africa — where omicron was first identified — are scrambling to combat its lightning spread across the country.

    Like wildfire, leaving millions of victims in its wake. Nothing to do but bulldoze the decomposing corpses into giant mounds and torch them. Pray for a swift and relatively painless release.

  8. Rat on a train

    Why aren’t we using Version and Rev Numbers? Covid 19.3.4?
    19.3.4-rc4+20211127

    • UnCivilServant

      The source code still says “Property of Wuhan Labs”.

      • SDF-7

        Damned package dependencies dragging in `dictate-3.5.0` and `karenplusplus-35.6`….

      • UnCivilServant

        Sounds like someone tried to switch from marxcore-7 to the maocore fork.

      • Rat on a train

        The license says the public is free to use and modify.

      • UnCivilServant

        You’re reading too fast, it says the public is free to be used and modified.

    • rhywun

      This beta has been going on forever.

  9. The Late P Brooks

    Studying the surge, scientists identified the new variant that diagnostic tests indicate is likely responsible for as many as 90% of the new cases, according to South Africa’s health officials. Early studies show that it has a reproduction rate of 2 — meaning that every person infected by it is likely to spread it to two other people.

    SCIENCE!

    • Nephilium

      So, do you get to count your downstream infections as your line or is this a different MLM scam now?

  10. rhywun

    Learn a lesson: when you say something stupid, don’t apologize, double down.

    Republicans should know by now that that only works for Democrats.

  11. The Late P Brooks

    “It’s a huge concern. We all are terribly concerned about this virus,” Professor Willem Hanekom, director of the Africa Health Research Institute, told The Associated Press.

    Yeah, okay, we get it. There are monsters in your closet, and under your bed, too. Why can’t you just fret about an alien invasion, and leave the rest of us alone?

  12. PieInTheSky

    I opened the bottle of wine OMWC insulted and it is not that bad. So what is everyone drinking?

    • SDF-7

      Coffee. Alcohol tastes like crap in all forms.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        That Chianti I had last night begs to differ.

      • SDF-7

        Yeah, I’ve had supposedly “good” wine before. Tasted as bad as the God awful Blue Nun my parents got for Thanksgiving when I was a kid. All tastes like two buck chuck to me.

      • UnCivilServant

        Wine is rancid. I have yet to find one that even rates a drinkable.

        Hard alcohol is a different story, so long as they don’t do something stupid like soak it in wood for a couple of years, there’s a chance of it being drinkable.

      • Old Man With Candy

        Yeah, it has flavor, I can see why it would bother you.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        Rum is versatile and a bit underrated.

      • PieInTheSky

        Do you like tquila ucs?

      • UnCivilServant

        So far, not really. But I’ve not gone too far into that type.

      • MikeS

        There is so very much wrong with this comment. I feel like flagging it as a hateful comment.

      • PieInTheSky

        I cannot trust someone who does not drink

      • Chafed

        That’s a deep cut.

    • Old Man With Candy

      We’re going out with Tulip to taste Rieslings and Rkatsetelis.

      • PieInTheSky

        Sounds like cultural appropriation to me

    • Gender Traitor

      Chai latte because I’m a chick.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        Ooh, sounds good, and autumnal. Cardamom, yum.

    • Rat on a train

      Genmaicha. It is 0905 American Standard Time.

    • ElspethFlashman

      Smirnoff in cans. Only 4.5 alcohol and zero sugar. Not bad.

  13. The Late P Brooks

    Drinking? Coffee.

    It’s not even light out yet.

  14. PieInTheSky

    It’s a (((PLOT)))! – if it like the beyond stuff more garbage

  15. SDF-7

    Light birthdays — but I’m kind of bummed… I had a very different guess for the string puller…

  16. PieInTheSky

    The romanian wave seems to be winding down and it looks like any other irrespective of vaccination…

  17. Festus

    OMWC links are my favoritest links!

    • PieInTheSky

      Stop kissing (((butt)))

      • Festus

        Ha!

  18. PieInTheSky

    The company portal which shows the bonus changed this year from the typical romanian way of showing the after tax sum to showing the gross sum. I had forgotten and for a moment was happy that my bonus was higher than expected then i was like goddamnit i have to shave 40% off that

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I gave my orphans an extra bread roll at Thanksgiving this year. I was feeling generous.

      • PieInTheSky

        Stale?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I threw it on the coal furnace to warm it up a little first.

    • Ted S.

      I got a whopping 2% raise this year.

      • PieInTheSky

        Good thing there is no inflation

      • Dr. Fronkensteen

        #metoo

  19. Festus

    Boebert has spunk and that milfy attitude that just screams out “I Am the manager!” She’s alright. Probably a lightweight but certainly would. A good counterweight to AOC.

  20. The Late P Brooks

    Boebert has spunk and that milfy attitude that just screams out “I Am the manager!” She’s alright. Probably a lightweight but certainly would. A good counterweight to AOC.

    You can’t trust her. She bares her arms.

  21. The Late P Brooks

    for a moment was happy that my bonus was higher than expected then i was like goddamnit i have to shave 40% off that

    Fair share!

    FAIR SHARE!for a moment was happy that my bonus was higher than expected then i was like goddamnit i have to shave 40% off that

  22. The Late P Brooks

    This computer can be a little glitchy sometimes.

    Like when I mouseclick, and it inserts whatever is on the clipboard whether I want it to or not.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Yeah, sure… that’s like when I tell my wife that the mouse has a computer virus and opens porn sites all by itself.

      • Ozymandias

        Yours, too??

      • TARDis

        Wife: “Why are you looking at naked women on your computer?

        Me: “Because some guy named ‘Q’ posted a link, and it would be rude not to click on it. Also, I don’t have the training to program a sex simulation for my VR headset. Plus, I’m a cis-het dude. Any more questions?”

      • Ozymandias

        I have had to have almost that identical explanation… I threw Q under the bus so fast he went back in time.

      • Ghostpatzer

        Is that the virus with 32 mutations? My laptop is also infected, it’s a pandemic I tell ya.

      • Festus

        And that’s when the Wife walked into the room…

  23. Stinky Wizzleteats

    So my Windows 10 machine is informing me that I’m one of the lucky ones and it’s compatible with a free upgrade to Windows 11. So, do it or not?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      The general rule of thumb is if your current OS is working, don’t do it.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        That’s what I was thinking: if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

      • SDF-7

        Everything I’ve read says that’s very true for this case. Minor upgrade at best to Win10 and some known issues — so not worth the risk.

    • Ghostpatzer

      Nope, nope, and nope. Beta testing is best done on someone else’s machine.

    • Deplorableme

      DeplorableMe observation: “No update goes unpunished”

      • ElspethFlashman

        I ran a phone update weeks ago. For no reason the google voice # started being the “default” for certain contacts, I am still confused.

    • Tonio

      Never install version 1.0 of anything you want to work reliably. Always wait for version 1.1, which is the fix pack for the things that were broke in the initial release.

      • Gender Traitor

        That’s one of the three rules I learned from the Rev. GT: Never buy a car in its first model year, never eat in a restaurant during its first month, and never buy version 1.0.

      • Rat on a train

        Be ware of any *.0 release.

    • MikeS

      I’m going to ride 10 as long as I can, just like I did with XP and 7. It’s tradition!

  24. The Late P Brooks

    Overreacting implies the government has good intentions… or at least intentions with the goal of combating the disease… but are just fucking up. But I don’t think the government is reacting at all to the disease. Their actions are deliberately conducted to reduce liberty and train citizens to accept government domination over the enactment of curfews, banning of private gatherings, restrictions on travel/commerce, and forcible injections. Coronavirus is simply the paper-thin justification.

    Puritanism- The nagging fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun.

  25. Ozymandias

    Is it… the beginning of the pushback?
    I’m proud to be in Missouri as I type this. God bless that judge. He went straight Glib

    “Plaintiffs produced ample evidence that health agency directors throughout Missouri have used the power granted to them by 19 CSR 20-20.040 to exercise unbridled and unfettered personal authority to in effect, legislate. Local health directors have created generally applicable orders, both in writing and verbally, requiring individuals within their jurisdictions to wear masks, limiting gathering sizes in peoples’ own homes, creating capacity restrictions, limiting usage of school and business facilities including tables, desks, and even lockers, mandating spacing between people, ordering students be excluded from school via quarantine and isolation rules created by health directors based on masking or other criteria not adequately set forth in either by the state legislature or by DHSS rules, among other generally applicable orders.

    This impermissible power to independently create new laws is purportedly delegated to them by 19 CSR 20-20.040(2)(G) -(I), 19 CSR 20-20.040(6) but Mo. CONST. art. II,§ 1 simply and clearly prohibits, without question, such lawmaking.”

    The whole order is linked at the Brownstone article; reading it is like seeing fresh sunlight at the end of sunless February.

    • Ozymandias

      More snippets for the self-pleasuring of freedom-lovers everywhere.

      A local health agency director is constitutionally prohibited from exercising discretion to issue generally applicable rules prohibiting or requiring certain conduct and disciplinary consequences for violations of the director’s unilaterally created rules. Yet, this has been happening across the state for over 18 months, thanks to unconstitutional language buried in state Regulations. DHSS regulations that permit an agency health director to create and enforce orders and take other discretionary “control measures,” which are predominantly set forth in 19 CSR 20-20.040(2) (G)-(1) and (6), are unconstitutional and are therefore invalid….

      A health agency director with the authority to shut down a school or assembly wields incredible power to coerce his subjects into submission. DHSS’s permissive closure regulation effectively converts the recommendations, and even whims, of a health agency director into enforceable law. If the health agency director holds the “opinion” that a school is not doing enough, he can close it. And according to the regulation, he is the only one who can permit it to be reopened. This incredible power cannot lawfully be placed in the hands of one bureaucrat….

      • Dr. Fronkensteen

        This incredible power cannot lawfully be placed in the hands of one bureaucrat

        Look over there Omicron. You just want people to die.

      • Ted S.

        Who doesn’t want Anthony Fauci to die a horrible death?

      • UnCivilServant

        Maybe the evil gnome himself.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I want him to be humiliated before dying a horrible death.

      • MikeS

        ^ this ^

      • The Last American Hero

        Hordes of NPR listeners, anybody who votes “D”, Gens Y and Z.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        That is kind of hot.

      • Ozymandias

        The Money Shot:

        Schools and places of public assemblies should no longer fear arbitrary closure based on the whims of public health bureaucrats. This system is entirely inconsistent with representative government and separation of powers and makes a mockery of our Missouri Constitution and the concept of separation of powers. The DHSS regulation set forth at 19 CSR 20-20.050(3) is unconstitutional and is therefore invalid.

        I just had a Constitoo-gasm.

      • SDF-7

        Now if we could just get the Nazgul to wake up to the same realization. Not that Biden would — but one has to wonder how long Judge Green could serve if we could kick him upstairs…

      • prolefeed

        This judge needs to be on SCOTUS. That entire opinion was awesome, including “and” and “the”.

    • rhywun

      It’s like you don’t even EmErGeNcY!!1!

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      What’s going to happen to these directors that overstepped their bounds and should reasonably have known they were doing just that?

      • Dr. Fronkensteen

        Get promoted?

      • prolefeed

        Well, get raised high up. In the air. Hemp might be used.

    • Ghostpatzer

      Nice. Need a few clones of this judge

    • Aloysious

      Words of beauty, and long overdue.

    • Festus

      I just got a chubby!

      • Festus

        It’s been awhile.

  26. The Late P Brooks

    Poor Joe

    President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden descended on the island of Nantucket this week looking to preserve the sense of normalcy that the nation was so looking forward to over this holiday season.

    The President and first lady brought a brood of children, grandchildren and their significant others to their island Thanksgiving getaway — along with the Secret Service apparatus, small flock of staff and gaggle of reporters that travels with the president — looking to send a signal to the rest of the country that it was time to return to traditions that had been skipped in 2020.
    They went through their Thanksgiving routine: They had their feast with family on Thursday before walking through Nantucket on Friday, dining at a local restaurant and shopping at stores they have visited for decades before attending the lighting of the town’s Christmas tree. The President tweeted in support of small businesses and restaurants Friday, making good on his pledge to shop small during that afternoon stroll.
    But as has happened so often in the past year and a half, the pandemic is never far away for the President, as he — like other Americans — woke up to new worries over a concerning variant of the coronavirus spreading abroad.

    He works so hard for us. He wants nothing more than to make America a better, happier, wealthier, safer place.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      *barf*

      That’s Pravda level hagiography. Just needs some faith healing from Uncle Joe.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      *staring off into the distance while tearing up*
      He’s such a good and decent man.

    • Ted S.

      If travel is so dangerous due to Omicron, they should lead by example and stay at the White House.

    • SDF-7

      King Louis retreated to Versailles, where he toured the salons and his wife worked with the cooks on her favorite cakes…..

  27. Ozymandias

    One step at a time, Stinky.
    With good kindling, all it takes is a spark to start a fire.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Hopefully, hopefully…maybe I’ve become too cynical.

      • Ozymandias

        Nope – I’d say you’re right where you need to be given the circumstances. I just like to enjoy the rare “Liberty ‘W'” when it shows up. When the intermediate appellate court overturns it, I’ll be here talking about woodchippers, too. But for now, that’s the first opinion I’ve read in all of this shitshow where a judge finally had the balls to curbstomp the medical autocracy. Maybe he can start a judicial trend.

      • TARDis

        IANAD but I recommend a high dose Glib Rx taken 4 times per day… perhaps with an adult beverage of your choice.

      • Tonio

        We’ve seen this happen recently. I was prepared for McAuliffe to win in Virginia, and for the statehouse to stay blue. But there was the perfectly-timed storm of the Loudoun school bathroom incident and Dems overplayed their hand big-time. They got caught lying and then trying to coverup their lies, and worst of all had former president Obama insultingly lecture parents about how they were all ignorant and paranoid.

      • Ozymandias

        Brother Tonio! Just wanted to say hi ? . Happy Turkey Day!
        Thanks for all you do here.

  28. The Late P Brooks

    If travel is so dangerous due to Omicron, they should lead by example and stay at the White House.

    No. They should seal themselves up in that mine shaft bunker in West Virginia(?) until we give them the All Clear.

    Because abundance of caution.

    • Ozymandias

      STEVE SMITH ‘SEAL SHAFT’ OF SILLY HOOMANS…

  29. The Late P Brooks

    Wife: “Why are you looking at naked women on your computer?

    Because they won’t come to the house?

    • TARDis

      Best answer!

      *golf clap*

    • Ozymandias

      …because strip clubs are skanky and smell of desperation?

  30. The Late P Brooks

    God bless that judge. He went straight Glib

    Put him on the short list for SCOTUS, with the guy from the Fifth Circuit.

    • Ozymandias

      Yep. And add in Don Willetts. That’s the SCOTUS we need.

  31. The Late P Brooks

    What are the odds that Missouri judge has a law degree from a school other than Harvard?

    • Ozymandias

      University of Missouri Law – and he’s an elected judge.

  32. The Late P Brooks

    worst of all had former president Obama insultingly lecture parents about how they were all ignorant and paranoid.

    He’s pretty much incapable of doing anything else.

  33. The Late P Brooks

    Oppression and despair

    The day she turns 21, Parvathinathan will no longer be protected by the work visa that allowed her parents to immigrate to the United States from India. And she may face deportation.
    It’s known as “aging out,” and experts estimate that about 200,000 people like Parvathinathan are living in a similar limbo. Brought legally to the United States as children, many are scrambling to find ways to stay in the country they love. Some are forced to leave the US when they run out of options.

    ——-

    Another factor: some families who come to the United States on certain temporary work visas aren’t ever eligible to apply to become permanent residents.

    For being such a shithole, not many people seem to want to leave, once they get a foot in the door.

    Is immigration a gigantic clusterfuck? Of course it is. Am I going to mourn because rules previously known to these people are going to be enforced? No. I am not.

    Go home to India, or Timbuktu, and make it a better place to live and work. You’re welcome.

    • rhywun

      And it will stay a giant clusterfuck for as long as it is being used as a political football by one side or the other.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Another factor: some families who come to the United States on certain temporary work visas aren’t ever eligible to apply to become permanent residents.

      Ummm… I don’t think anybody made you apply for that certain temporary work visa.

      While I don’t approve of our current system, I don’t see why accommodating every bad choice is a moral imperative.

    • PieInTheSky

      make it a better place to live and work – that is not really a possibility

    • Gustave Lytton

      the work visa that allowed her parents to immigrate

      A visa doesn’t do that at all. It’s a temporary permission slip that allows them to work in this country. They have not immigrated nor do they have a right to be in this country. And their children, no matter how much they like this place, remain citizens of a foreign country and unless they take steps to either get education/work visas themselves or apply for permanent residency, go back to that country they are a citizen of.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      That’s a lot of people. It’s about time the Aussies woke up because what’s been happening there is ridiculous.

  34. Ozymandias

    I was expecting this, Mexi.
    …Which would be a lot closer to reality.

  35. The Late P Brooks

    It’s a dilemma Erin Crosbie knows all too well. After living in Florida for nearly 17 years and getting a nursing degree from the University of South Florida, she says she had no other choice but to move back to Northern Ireland over the summer when she couldn’t find a way to remain in the United States.

    I think Northern Ireland has hospitals. You’ll survive, somehow.

  36. The Late P Brooks

    Now the 24-year-old is trying to start her life over in another country — more than 4,000 miles away from her closest friends and family. The pain of having to leave them behind still stings. She hasn’t been able to bring herself to update her social media profiles yet with her new location.

    OH

    MY

    GOD!

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Now THAT’S a first world problem.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Aw come on, it doesn’t actually say that does it?

      *checks*

      OFFS

    • Ownbestenemy

      Some fun ones in there. Thanks Yusef!

      • hayeksplosives

        I liked the response to Maria Shriver’s tweet.

  37. rhywun

    We need more heroes like this one.

    A teenager sucker-punched a woman on a Brooklyn street after the girl was asked wear a face mask, police said.

  38. Festus

    Bringing over from dead thread : Pro-Tip Don’t start a fight with Corporate when you are half in the bag at 6:00 in the morning. At 9:00 they will find you and you will answer for your words. Just got tucked into bed and a flurry of calls ensued. Had to writhe my way through the convo pretending I wasn’t drunk. Not fun! I got my way but it was highly unpleasant, to say the least.

    • Festus

      Sooo many things that I wanted to blurt out, so few politic ways to say them… I was chewing gravel but I won.

    • Nephilium

      There’s a reason I let calls go to VM on a regular basis.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        “When called by a panther…”

  39. rhywun

    I was wrong – they skipped nu in addition to xi and of course Ted Cruz is all over it.

    Calmer heads put him in his place, thank goodness.

    Wall Street Journal language columnist Ben Zimmer had a different take.

    “Kudos to the WHO for skipping over the potentially confusing Nu and Xi names and going straight to Omicron,” he wrote.

    ??

    • Festus

      They’re just fucking with us at this point, aren’t they?

      • Rat on a train

        Would you like some Covid pie?

    • Gustave Lytton

      And XI because it’s a common surname

      I doubt Ξ is a common last name at all.

      • rhywun

        Be quiet and let the science do the talking.

    • Toxteth O'Grady

      “Schwartz committed a slight breach of etiquette by skipping the triple-dare-you and going right for the throat.”

  40. The Late P Brooks

    If it’s not one thing it’s another

    The term “tipping point” is often applied to a moment of critical change in human history. In ecology, tipping points describe small changes that, over time, force an irreversible change. Yearly lows of sea ice and a startling increase in permafrost thaw in a warming climate signal that the tipping point has already been crossed. We have already lost the frozen Arctic.

    At this critical moment of loss, we must use the Arctic tipping point as a hard lesson — as ecosystems worldwide approach tipping points.

    Spoiler Alert!

    I’ve got some bad news for you, Chicken Little.

    Nobody gets out of here alive.

  41. The Late P Brooks

    A teenager sucker-punched a woman on a Brooklyn street after the girl was asked wear a face mask, police said.

    Some suckers need punchin’.

    • Toxteth O'Grady

      Yeah, maybe in Park Slope one can kibitz freely.

  42. DEG

    Tom Woods on Somalia

    To this day I find myself replying on Twitter to people who genuinely think this is a devastating argument:

    “If you want to live in your libertarian paradise, you should move to Somalia.”

    Whenever I see this, I know I am not dealing with the sharpest knife in the drawer, as they say.

    • Festus

      *Santa* Get off my lap!

    • rhywun

      Those has-beens are still around?!

  43. MikeS

    Apologies if drugs are about to fall out of my ass, but I just saw Matt Walsh’s Thanksgiving day tweet. Excellent trolling

    Matt Walsh
    @MattWalshBlog
    17h
    Feeling very grateful this weekend for the men who conquered this beautiful land. We all owe them a great debt of gratitude.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      LOL

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Dad needs a particular set of skills.

      • Ownbestenemy

        At least enough skills to have to repeat if necessary

    • l0b0t

      Wait? She’s been missing since 1998 and is supposedly on the Caribbean island of Curacao. The whole island is only is 171 square miles, you could probably cover that pretty thoroughly in 25 years.

      • MikeS

        Yeah. That took me aback, too. The entire story is scant on details. I mean, they were emailed pictures of a woman who could be their daughter, but we’re not told who sent this email. If I didn’t have shit to do today, it might be an interesting rabbit hole to fall down.

  44. Ownbestenemy

    I found it interesting that articles were hitting about how everyone was baffled that Africa was sparred rampant covid and then the Decepticon variant emerged in Africa.

    • Grummun

      Is that not strange? I haven’t been closely following what’s going on in Africa, but I think I’ve heard the vaccination rates there are low. If the new variants are the result of evolutionary pressure driven by the leaky vaccines, then why would mutations that work around the current vaccines arise in Africa?

      • Ownbestenemy

        Granted it supposedly emerged in South Africa.

  45. The Late P Brooks

    Just like when we stormed the beaches of Normandy

    Catching COVID-19 still seemed like a fairly unlikely possibility when Charlotte and her old schoolfriends caught up over dinner in Melbourne’s CBD recently, chatting, drinking and laughing together for the first time in many months.

    Despite living through the city’s lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, the 23-year-old didn’t know anyone who had caught COVID.

    The group of 13 was fully vaccinated, and they wore masks when they left the table where they spent about four hours together.

    They had followed the rules, but a few days after their joyous reunion, 11 of them came down with COVID, making their dinner what one epidemiologist described as a “superspreader” event.

    For Ms Webster, confronting the fear and stigma attached to catching the virus was almost more challenging than the mild symptoms she experienced.

    ——-

    She said after the initial shock of testing positive had sunk in, a sense of camaraderie developed in the group and they supported one another through a group chat.

    They organised a Zoom chat a week after they had been at the restaurant, where one of her friends who had tested positive encouraged the group not to feel embarrassed about catching COVID-19.

    “She said, ‘Guys there is nothing to be ashamed of, this is going to keep happening and it’s something we should talk about,'” she said.

    “If it was just one of us who had tested positive I think maybe I would have felt more maybe embarrassed.”

    Not nearly as bad as we feared. This could be good news, but it’s not.

    • EvilSheldon

      Is there anything else you want to whine about, Ms. Webster?

    • rhywun

      It’s almost like masking and jabbing doesn’t do shit.

  46. The Late P Brooks

    Dr Gibney said research had shown that in some cases, perceived stigma attached to getting COVID had played a role in people waiting to get tested.

    Stigma? What could possibly lead people to believe they might be stigmatized?

    Only bad people, only the unclean and unmutual, get the plague. If you’ve got the plague, it’s because you are of the Unclean caste. That’s SCIENCE! plain and simple.

    • Toxteth O'Grady

      Dr. Chasuble: Charity, dear Miss Prism, charity! None of us are perfect. I myself am peculiarly susceptible to draughts.