390 Comments

  1. AlexinCT

    UN expert predicts global food crisis may be 10 weeks away

    We need lockdowns and ballot harvesting in the next election cycle?

    • waffles

      To prevent a total wipeout of our democracy? Yes, most definitely.

      • AlexinCT

        You know they are desperately looking for the next panic mongering excuse – to help us be safer – that can be turned into a crisis they can use, right?

      • AlexinCT

        The IRS should be the second US government agency to be dismantled. Right after the FBI. After the IRS, they should dismantle the dept of education.

      • pistoffnick

        Do you have a newsletter? I wish to subscribe.

    • juris imprudent

      Democracy deserts!

  2. AlexinCT

    We are already in one.

    And if the guy in the WH had an (R) next to his name the usual suspects would be telling us that fact 24/7.

    • Fatty Bolger

      Yep.

  3. Tres Cool

    whaddup doh’

    • cavalier973

      Greetings.

      What are your plans for the next ten weeks, before the “oh, we found some extra wheat” festival?

    • rhywun

      The world is still stupid. Surprise!

    • pistoffnick

      whaddup doh’

      I spent the weekend with a Tres-esque lady. We had so much fun!

      I made her Eggs Benedict with low carb English muffins and Tulip and KK’s hollandaise

      • Fourscore

        Lucky guy, Nick. Hope she’s local and more fun on the way

      • pistoffnick

        She’s an Airn Ranger

  4. AlexinCT

    Democrats’ Gerrymandering Efforts Have Proven Ineffective

    While I see this as a ray of sunshine in a serious storm, I am far more worried about the shenanigans around our census taking efforts and how that was fucked over again.

  5. AlexinCT

    IRS destroys 30 million tax documents, insists ‘no negative taxpayer consequences’

    IRS destroys 30 million tax documents, insists ‘no negative team blue friends taxpayer consequences’

    • Certified Public Asshat

      If we destroyed the IRS, there would also be no negative taxpayer consequences.

      • AlexinCT

        For some reason this posted above: The IRS should be the second US government agency to be dismantled. Right after the FBI. After the IRS, they should dismantle the dept of education.

  6. Swiss Servator

    “RNC outraises DNC in month of April by over $1 million”

    Be better to give that money to something worthwhile…local charity, church, etc. Heck, even burning it potlach style would be better than giving to politicians.

    • kbolino

      Besides, if they were any good at being politicians, they’d have siphoned far more from the public purse than they could ever get in donations.

      • Not Adahn

        Yes, but they shouldn’t have to pay for their elections out of their own pockets! If that becomes normalized, only billionaires like OMB will be able to be president!

  7. Certified Public Asshat

    Democrats’ Gerrymandering Efforts Have Proven Ineffective

    The problem in MD-1 though is my congressman is still Andy Harris.

    • kbolino

      As far as blue-state Republicans go, I’ve certainly seen worse. I’m in MD-3 (amazingly, still will be after the new map) and get to enjoy “representation” by John Sarbanes instead.

      • Rat on a train

        MD-3 the gerrymanderist of all the gerrymandered Maryland districts.

  8. Brawndo

    Is monkeypox fatal? I’ve not paid much attention but none of the stories I’ve read say anything about how likely you are to die with it, what the progression of the disease is like, etc.

    • WTF

      Not typically, no. Especially in the West. And for those old enough to have had it, the Smallpox vaccine provides protection. Also, Monkey pox is transmitted by direct contact with bodily fluids, it’s not like a respiratory virus where it’s transmitted by particulates through the air.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Most variants have a IFR of 1% or less. There is a variant with a IFR of 10% but it is not circulating.

      It’s spread by close contact and droplets, ie not aerosolized.

      • Certified Public Asshat

        Masks round 2, they might work this time?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        There would be some basis for it in the case of monkey pox.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I’ll add a qualifier to that.

        It depends totally on when monkeypox is contagious and whether you can spread it while asymptomatic. If not, standard quarantine rules should be sufficient.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Not blowing or having anal sex with people with open weeping lesions would probably go a long way to taking care of this thing too. Wasn’t ground zero a fetish festival?

      • Certified Public Asshat

        No kink shaming.

      • waffles

        No. Kink Shaming.

      • R.J.

        No kink? Shaming.

      • kbolino

        As we learned in COVID-19, we can’t have targeted responses because those would be bigoted. We can only ever take action in a way that affects everyone (except the connected) even though that makes no sense.

      • Tundra

        That’s assuming it wasn’t GOF’d.

    • Not Adahn

      ISTR it’s 10x as lethal as the coof.

  9. The Late P Brooks

    “The problem is Big Oil is keeping supply artificially low so prices and profits stay high,” Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a hearing last week. “Now I think that when the market is broken, that’s when Congress has to step in to protect American consumers. And that’s what this bill does: It empowers the FTC to go after the gougers and empowers the agency to effectively monitor and report on market manipulation.”

    But the price gouging bill becoming law could lead to “the situation in the 1970s with gas lines” when the administration of Jimmy Carter attempted to combat “rampant inflation” with gas price controls, Taxpayers Protection Alliance Executive Director Patrick Hedger told Just the News.

    “It is a thinly veiled attempt to institute price controls,” said Hedger. “This is a bill that the Democrats, some of the most progressive Democrats, have pushed to essentially give the president and some regulatory agencies authority to cap gasoline prices.

    It’ll be different this time!

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      He’s not even correct on the basic claim. The bottleneck is in refining.

      • Fatty Bolger

        Hasn’t it been something like 40 years since we built a new one? I remember Obama approving one a few days before the election (just a coincidence, I’m sure) a decade ago, but it was put on pause and I don’t think it was ever completed.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        There were multiple refineries that were shut down during COVID.

        They have not been restarted. I imagine it’s a combination of economic outlook, capital requirements, loss of grandfathered environmental exemptions, etc…

        And yes, the environmental regs for a new refinery are obscenely prohibitive. Not to mention the inevitable lawsuits from the Southern Environmental Law Center et al.

      • juris imprudent

        I remember Obama approving one

        I think I see a big part of the problem right there. Fuck the fuck off with presidential approvals.

    • WTF

      “The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”

      ― Thomas Sowell

    • rhywun

      Big Oil is keeping supply artificially low

      A situation your team has been cheering on for decades.

      How stupid do they think we are?

      • SDF-7

        Narrator: “Very, very stupid unfortunately.”

      • juris imprudent

        That’s the part that really gets me – ok, you might be stupid enough to believe that yourself dear politician, but I am not. You really need to learn that I am not that stupid, because repeatedly assuming I am is going to make me go berserk.

      • WTF

        They only care about the bulk of their supporters who actually are that stupid.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        That particular bell curve is why democracy and similar is ultimately doomed to failure.

      • AlexinCT

        ^^^THIS^^^

        The people that get it are too small in numbers to actually make them feel the consequences of their bullshit.

      • juris imprudent

        Oh, we could make them feel the consequences, we’re just too morally inhibited to do so.

      • AlexinCT

        Well, that is part of the problem with not being an immoral evil hack: it is harder to fight immoral evil hacks and they shit they do..

      • Rat on a train

        Then: Gas should be $8 or more to discourage use.
        Now: Greedy corporate gougers.

  10. Not Adahn

    Evil Sheldon:

    Would you be interested writing an article about practical shooting? I’d like to evangelize for the game, but you’re more qualified than I am to write it.

  11. Certified Public Asshat

    It’s early in the week, but the dumbest tweet and accompanying thread has already been won:

    capitalism is so wild that 4 companies control all baby formula & the stuff they make overseas is not allowed to be sold here (even tho eu standards are higher) so when one plant is shut down to avoid an fda investigation, everything collapses & the govt has to fly the formula in https://t.co/DU6VMhnnYP— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) May 22, 2022

    I also learned recently that Hasan is Cenk Uygur’s nephew.

    • WTF

      Government control and regulation = “capitalism”.
      These people are too stupid to breathe.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Hasan is a retard. Dave Smith regularly makes fun of his inanity.

      • PieInTheSky

        and yet he makes a fuckton of cold hard cash so who am I to judge

      • AlexinCT

        Idiots are easily parted from their money, and leftists idiots are the worst on that..

      • Certified Public Asshat

        Ignore my lame snark below. It should still be a white pill that a moron like Hasan can still figure out how to make a lot of money.

    • Swiss Servator

      So the whole family is dumb as stumps.

      • Certified Public Asshat

        It is a black eye on “capitalism” that a twitch streamer can earn enough to buy a mansion in West Hollywood and a lambo (or whatever it was) and still not piss off his core audience.

      • Zwak, who counted all his blessings, and counted only one.

        Uygur? Please.

    • kbolino

      Public choice theory > capitalism or socialism

      Hasan’s ilk demand regulation, bureaucrats supply regulation, Hasan & co leave happy, bureaucrats stick around, gov’t rewards incompetence and blind loyalty, bureaucrats get promotions not responsibility, authority gets outsourced to “experts”, expertise mechanism gets captured, rules get altered to favor established players, most people don’t notice or care until media tells them to or exogenous factors force them to.

      No amount of “socialism” will stop Hasan’s like from having attention deficit disorder or being more interested in appearances than substance. They’re just not very bright people, and they’ve been raised and conditioned to believe that such a characteristic is no impediment. Honestly, the only difference under “socialism” is that Hasan would be poorer.

      Europe is just as “capitalist” as the U.S., and some industries there have stupider regulations than here (e.g. RoHS on electronics). It’s just a crapshoot which side of the pond gets the shorter end of the stick, because there’s no strong incentive arrow pointing toward consistent competence or accountability.

      • AlexinCT

        People that believe the system we have today, where government uses its centralization power to pick winners & losers, is “capitalism” and that socialism is a better choice tend to be people that feel nobody should suffer consequences for making anything but the perfect choices, and most importantly, that when bad or real bad choices, whit serious consequences, are made, the system can mitigate that impact by letting someone better prepared to bear the brunt of the ill effects, be the one to be impacted. It’s the ultimate move to avoid being adults.

      • juris imprudent

        centralization power to pick winners & losers

        And they further assume that power will always be under their control and not their political opponents.

      • AlexinCT

        What good is centralized power if you don’t exercise it to make sure you keep it?

      • kbolino

        So far they’ve been proven right at nearly every turn. Their great boogeymen, like Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Trump, barely got to wield power, and did so clumsily and ineffectively. The left retains the initiative because their people sit at the levers and decide whether they get pulled or not. They are not very smart but they have impeccable IFF. If a friend enters the arena, they’ll pull the levers earnestly But if an enemy does, they will pull them when absolutely forced or out of spite.

      • kbolino

        where government uses its centralization power to pick winners & losers

        You see, to them, this is not the situation. And they are partly correct. The government is not sovereign. Yes, it excludes foreign nations’ armies from our soil. But that is just one aspect of sovereignty. The government does not make its own decisions. All decision-making is, practically speaking, done outside the formal government. When Congress passes a law, the bureaucracy gets to decide what it means. But the bureaucrats, like the bureaucrat-enablers, are not very bright. They wield slivers of power, but they do not have concentrated power, and they bear no responsibility for the exercise of power. So, they are just cowards and knaves, backstabbing and lying their way up a massive, unaccountable, and pointless hierarchy, and they let all of their ideas come from somewhere else.

        To Hasan & co, that somewhere else is supposed to be the universities. The knowledge-elite, whose beneficence and competence is proven by having degrees and sitting on academic committees, is supposed to decide what the right thing for the bureaucrats to do even is. But academics are by and large the same kind of people who inhabit the government and other bureaucracies. So you have yet another place that is supposed to exercise concentrated power competently but shirks its duty. This allows, yet again, the interjection of external forces. It just so happens that, along the way, sometimes a company or a cartel becomes aware of how this works, and interjects itself. “Well, I think, if we’re going to have these regulations, then they should look like X, Y, and Z” and this trickles its way down, with many changes and bastardizations, like a giant game of telephone, to the government bureaucracy. So “capitalism” has “corrupted” the noble institution of regulating.

        But so what? They built this system, or rather allowed it to accrete like a festering fungus, how exactly did they think this was going to work? Oh right, they’re too dim to conceive of something so complex, too narcissistic to consider anything other than their own intentions, and too suffused with self-righteousness to admit fault.

      • AlexinCT

        The point is that the power of government is used by the puppet masters to pick the winners & losers. The problem isn’t the power of government per se, although limiting that would be the solution, but the evil the people pulling the strings perpetrate using that power..

      • kbolino

        Practical results are better explained by delegation and contrivance than by central design. The puppet masters only intervene when it affects them. They don’t feed their babies formula to begin with so don’t care how that works out. Whereas, we’ll likely never learn more about Epstein Island.

      • juris imprudent

        the puppet masters

        I love that belief that someone must be in control. What if no one is actually in control? What if the stupid is just the pretty natural outcome of groupthink?

      • AlexinCT

        When I say there is someone in control, I don’t mean that there is just one person or one group. it is a cabal of various entities, each with their own desires & agendas, but agreeing overall on the things they foist on the rest of us. The problem (for us, and to some extent, them) is that the things they disagree on is where execution goes haywire and then looks to be beyond stupid. Ineptitude couldn’t be as inept as these people are. They have to be doing something to exacerbate that.

      • kbolino

        Think of it more like a veto than a command. The oligarchy can’t possibly set the agenda everywhere. That’s not how oligarchy functions. It would take a monarchy for that. So yes, in practical effect, the default course of action is set by groupthink, which converges on ideas that are drawn from cultural conditioning. However, as with the President’s veto power, the oligarchy doesn’t veto ideas often, but when it does, the course changes pretty decisively. It also controls the mechanism of cultural conditioning, again with the same general level of indirection as elsewhere, so its most potent power, but measured over decades, is to shape the culture.

      • juris imprudent

        You both are still positing organized behavior. What if this is just what a bunch of stupid apes do? What if it is purely natural?

      • AlexinCT

        It’s both JI. The people that have the power to pull the strings are certainly pulling them and hoping for some result. The fact they pull against each other, and the fact that the machine itself is now inept, is why shit happens. This level of ineptitude can’t happen naturally.

      • kbolino

        What you are presenting is a false dichotomy. In between strong organization and a total lack of organization is weak organization.

        What was JournoList? Was it the central cabal that decides everything? Or was it the place where many journalists coordinated when and how they felt like it? Just because it didn’t control every decision does not mean it could not affect any decisions.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        RoHS on electronics

        Don’t get me started.

  12. The Late P Brooks

    “It’s just history repeating itself in such an unfortunate kind of shameless way,” Hedger said in an interview. “No economist worth their weight and salt will tell you that [a price cap] is a good idea. It’s a pure distraction from the fact that the Biden administration has been canceling oil and gas leases, has been antagonizing the industry since day one with canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, and that Washington has been printing and spending money with reckless abandon that’s inflating the currency.”

    Disinformation. Why doesn’t the government do something?

    • Fourscore

      Somehow the magic of electricity will solve all the energy problems.

      Let me count the ways. Chain saw, lawn tractor, tiller, snow blower, tractor, pick up truck, propane heat. I’m gonna need some long extension cords.

      • WTF

        Good thing electricity comes from the wall socket and we don’t need any additional infrastructure.

      • Rat on a train

        Also don’t forget that the price of electricity must “necessarily skyrocket”.

    • Brawndo

      “worth their weight and salt”

      Isn’t it “weight *in* salt”

  13. AlexinCT

    Russiagate investigator believes Durham cracked ‘insurance policy’ mystery

    had a discussion about this shit this past weekend with some libs, and they kept downplaying the whole thing and avoiding the implications, but once I asked them how they would be responding if the story had been the inverse and they had been able to prove the bad perp was the orange guy that lives rent free in their head, you should have seen the reactions. Needless to say they all started looking for anything to change the topic then.

    My take is that most of them already knew that Hillary was behind this shit but had plausible deniability. They also knew/know Obama sanctioned it all and had the 3 letter agencies work to propagate the lies – making what Nixon did look like child’s play – in order to undermine the incoming loose cannon admin they knew was going to see how corrupt Obama’s admin had been and was going to torpedo all their globalist shit. They knew/know that the media also knew (or at a minimum could have figured it out real quick), but spent 3 plus years carrying water for these criminals. But they will justify it in their warped brains by telling themselves they were fighting a Nazi and dictatorship.

    I still have people that have seen the hoaxes they believed in, the “Fine people” hoax, the “Drink/inject bleach” hoax, the “Russia collusion” hoax, and the “Bad orange man is a Putin KGB plant” hoax, all be proven lies, that will not let go of them. Especially in the circles where the bad orange guy lives rent free in their heads, so I expect many of them will play this information about the Clintons & Obamas basically destroying the legal system of this country for personal reasons the same way, but those of us not in these camps should realize how existential this fight is when you are fighting Marquis of Queensbury rules vs. these criminals that fight back using prison rules.

    • SDF-7

      Narrator: “And this is why they think we’re so stupid.”

  14. Plisade

    TPTB, I submitted an article but the formatting didn’t take (looks right in editor but not in the preview). Can you make it editable again? Please? The formatting is necessary.

    • Swiss Servator

      It is back in Draft status.

      • Plisade

        Thank you, sir.

  15. The Late P Brooks

    Getting somewhere

    President Joe Biden launched a new trade deal with 12 Indo-Pacific nations Monday aimed at strengthening their economies as he warned Americans worried about high inflation that it is “going to be a haul” before they feel relief. The president said he does not believe an economic recession is inevitable in the U.S.

    Biden, speaking at a news conference after holding talks with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, acknowledged the U.S. economy has “problems” but said they were “less consequential than the rest of the world has.”

    He added: “This is going to be a haul. This is going to take some time.” In answer to a question, he rejected the idea a recession in the U.S. is inevitable.

    His comments came just before Biden’s launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. His administration says the trade deal is designed to signal U.S. dedication to the contested economic sphere and to address the need for stability in commerce after disruptions caused by the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    Nations joining the U.S. in the pact are: Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Along with the United States, they represent 40% of world GDP.

    The countries said in a joint statement that the pact will help them collectively “prepare our economies for the future” after the fallout from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

    Free trade!

    • AlexinCT

      For China. Not the US….

    • Fourscore

      Biden is the second coming of Washington/Jefferson but with the foreign entanglements

  16. The Late P Brooks

    Dear Taxpayer:

    The dog ate your homework. This probably won’t affect your grade, maybe. We’ll let you know.

    • SDF-7

      Right up there with whoever is the Charlie Foxtrot group that’s supposed to be “managing” the HSAs for my employer. Lazy slugs sent out a “Here’s a mandatory IRS reporting on your contributions this past *Thursday* (as in late in May) with a “This may affect your filing — talk to your tax adviser” (in other words, tough crap, we don’t care to do our jobs and get these documents out in January or anything…).

      Yay.

  17. SDF-7

    To keep the start of the week nice and depressing — worst possible Quordle score without full-on failure. Yay. My gift for coming up with words that *could* be what they want but aren’t continues apace — burned too many guesses on lower left because “Surely this is it and it will show other letters in the other words, right?”:
    Daily Quordle 119
    8️⃣7️⃣
    9️⃣6️⃣
    quordle.com
    ⬜?⬜⬜⬜ ⬜?⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜??? ⬜⬜⬜??
    ⬜⬜⬜?? ?⬜⬜??
    ⬜⬜⬜?? ⬜⬜???
    ⬜?⬜⬜? ⬜?⬜??
    ??⬜⬜? ??⬜??
    ⬜⬜??? ?????
    ????? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛

    ⬜??⬜⬜ ⬜?⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜?⬜?? ⬜⬜⬜??
    ??⬜?? ⬜⬜⬜??
    ⬜???? ⬜⬜⬜??
    ⬜?⬜?? ⬜????
    ⬜?⬜?? ?????
    ??⬜?? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
    ⬜⬜?⬜? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
    ????? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛

    • Sean

      #waffle122 4/5

      ?????
      ?⭐?⭐?
      ?????
      ?⭐?⭐?
      ?????

      ? streak: 27
      ? #wafflesilverteam
      wafflegame.net

    • Tundra

      Daily Quordle 119
      4️⃣6️⃣
      9️⃣7️⃣

      A couple dumb guesses and I was headed to the Chumptown exit.

      • Ozymandias

        Daily Quordle 119
        3️⃣7️⃣
        8️⃣5️⃣
        quordle.com
        Started out so well, so promising… Then I three-putted the bottom right from on the green – and did it again on the top right.

      • Not Adahn

        I know that UR has been a word

    • db

      4 6
      X 9

    • trshmnstr the terrible

      Ugh, awful day today for me.

      Daily Quordle 119
      3️⃣7️⃣
      ?6️⃣
      quordle.com

      QuordleBot did even worse. We both wasted multiple guesses trying to get the first letter of bottom left.

      7️⃣8️⃣
      ?6️⃣

    • Grumbletarian

      Nothing more fun than trying to guess the final letter of a word with many options.

      Daily Quordle 119
      3️⃣4️⃣
      ?7️⃣
      quordle.com
      ??⬜?? ⬜?⬜??
      ?⬜??? ?⬜?⬜?
      ????? ?⬜?⬜?
      ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????

      ⬜⬜??? ⬜?⬜??
      ?⬜⬜⬜? ?⬜?⬜?
      ⬜⬜?⬜? ?⬜?⬜?
      ??⬜?? ⬜????
      ????⬜ ?⬜⬜?⬜
      ⬜???? ?⬜⬜??
      ⬜?⬜?? ?????
      ⬜???? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
      ⬜???? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛

    • MikeS

      I made one stupid mistake missing a letter and it cost me three points.

      4️⃣6️⃣
      8️⃣7️⃣

    • kinnath

      Daily Quordle 119
      3️⃣4️⃣
      ?6️⃣

      Both wordle and quordle fucked me over to day with words where I had the last four letters and just ran out of fucking guesses.

    • whiz

      Daily Quordle 119
      3️⃣4️⃣
      7️⃣5️⃣

    • Mojeaux

      For some reason, I was without my usual midnight zest for Wordle and Quordle and have lost that lovin’ feeling.

    • ScoobaSteve

      Daily Quordle 119
      4️⃣5️⃣
      6️⃣7️⃣

    • grrizzly

      4️⃣7️⃣
      8️⃣6️⃣

  18. The Late P Brooks

    The White House said the framework will help the United States and Asian economies work more closely on issues including supply chains, digital trade, clean energy, worker protections and anticorruption efforts. The details still need to be negotiated among the member countries, making it difficult for the administration to say how this agreement would fulfill the promise of helping U.S. workers and businesses while also meeting global needs.

    “Don’t worry, it will. Trust us.”

    • AlexinCT

      My take is that the same people that benefit massively from previous deals that obliterated the middle class and sent manufacturing to their world nations will again stand to make bank. The middle class will find itself again grabbing its ankles as the deal our betters put together siphons wealth from the productive into their pockets.

    • AlexinCT

      Was that the movie with Will Smith? Not the one where he bitchslapped some comedian to prove to the woman that cucks him he is a good guy…

    • WTF

      Do you want Reavers? Because this is how you get Reavers.

      • juris imprudent

        The pax was added to the atmosphere, so that it didn’t miss anyone.

  19. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Looks like the DOD may be winning the internal war over Ukraine.

    https://original.antiwar.com/john-v-walsh/2022/05/22/new-york-times-repudiates-drive-for-decisive-military-victory-in-ukraine-calls-for-peace-negotiations/

    The (NY) Times May editorial dictum contain the following key passages:

    “In March, this board argued that the message from the United States and its allies to Ukrainians and Russians alike must be: No matter how long it takes, Ukraine will be free. …”

    “That goal cannot shift, but in the end, it is still not in America’s best interest to plunge into an all-out war with Russia, even if a negotiated peace may require Ukraine to make some hard decisions (emphasis, jw).”

    To ensure that there is no ambiguity, the editorial declares that:

    “A decisive military victory for Ukraine over Russia, in which Ukraine regains all the territory Russia has seized since 2014, is not a realistic goal. … Russia remains too strong…”

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      The Russians can and will annex additional Ukrainian territory and they won’t be pushed out. Additionally, they won’t negotiate on key points as doing so would be admitting failure, a failure they don’t have to go through because, despite all of the ridiculous propaganda, they’re winning. Viewing it in any other way is just a dangerous fantasy.

      • Fatty Bolger

        Maybe, maybe not. I don’t think any of it is a given. A lot of people called it propaganda when it was reported that the Ukrainians were holding off the Russians in their attempt to decapitate the country, turns out it was true.

      • Drake

        Russia has won the war. The open questions now are how much of the east will they annex and/or form into client states, and will the Ukrainians goad them into invading and occupying the western half of the Ukraine.
        https://www.theburningplatform.com/2022/05/20/war-is-over-but-they-wont-tell-you/

        The bulk of the Ukrainian army is trapped in the east and is in the process of being slowly annihilated. Any rational leader would be negotiating an end to this unnecessary slaughter of his nation’s army for no purpose.

  20. The Late P Brooks

    As long as business “owners” are nominally “private” we’re mired in a world of dog-eat-dog kkkapitalism. Government regulations are all that stand between us and mass enslavement.

  21. db

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/russiagate-investigator-believes-durham-cracked-insurance-policy-mystery

    That was a rather disappointing article:

    “And I think John Durham knows what that ‘insurance plan’ is. I know we figured it out during Russiagate, and we have tried to educate the American public on it, but it remains classified, partly,” Patel told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo on her Fox News program Sunday Morning Futures.

    So, they figured it all out, but it’s “partly classified,” so they can’t do anything about it? That’s weak sauce.

    No one of consequence will ever face any charges in this. No one will ever know if it’s a cover-up or if Hillary is innocent as the new-fallen snow.

    • rhywun

      Narrator: Hillary is not innocent as the new-fallen snow.

    • Grummun

      Durham is never going to charge anyone from the FBI, regardless if they were fired in disgrace. Maybe Duham will pick a little more around the edges of the Clinton campaign, but herself will never face charges.

  22. db

    UN expert predicts global food crisis may be 10 weeks away

    The world only has 10 weeks worth of grain left,

    Menker told the UN, “It is important to note that the lowest grain inventory levels the world has ever seen are now occurring while access to fertilizers is highly constrained, and drought in wheat growing regions around the world is the most extreme it’s been in over 20 years.”

    Keto evangelists rejoice!

    Oh, wait, animals eat grain, too?

    Insect Burgers for All!

    • WTF

      Insect Burgers for All!

      Pretty much their stated goal.

      • db

        I wonder what insects eat?

      • AlexinCT

        All the people they hope dies from the calamity they foisted on us. After all, they have told us repeatedly they feel most of the serfs are no different than parasites sucking the life blood of Gaia…

      • Count Potato

        Grain.

      • Not Adahn

        Considering the current gypsy moth infestation going on now, leaves apparently.

        It’s a bad one — where you can hear the larva chomping and their poop sounds like rain hitting the ground. The dog park being next to an endangered butterfly habitat undoubtedly makes it difficult to eradicate the vermin.

  23. Tundra

    Good morning, Banjos!

    Wow, those are some, um, interesting lynx.

    RNC outraises DNC in month of April by over $1 million

    A fool and his money…

    Speaking of fools and money:

    Rivian, another American automobile manufacturer specializing in electric vehicles, announced in March that prices for their R1T pickup and R1S SUV would increase in prices effective immediately.
    The RT1 jumped 18 percent to $79,500, with the R1S jumping 21 percent to $84,500.

    That’s for base models. It climbs quickly after that. Unreal.

    During the golf yesterday, Jeep was running commercials for their new Grand Wagoneer. Fucking $91K starting price.

    Good luck out there, kids. It’s getting weird.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      That Jeep commercial… it has a charging station sitting out in the middle of nowhere.

      Yeah…. right

    • db

      I saw one of those on the road the other day. I had no idea they cost that much. yikes.

    • SDF-7

      Gas rationing and trying to drive us to only vehicles with starting ranges where housing prices should be.

      Almost like Tonio had an article on an underlying principle or something….

    • Rat on a train

      $50,000 buys a lot of gas, even at today’s prices.

  24. The Late P Brooks

    Top Men

    The last time top politicians, CEOs and billionaires gathered in a Swiss mountain village to discuss society’s biggest problems and pitch their solutions, the coronavirus outbreak in China was little more than a remote threat. The economy was humming, and a major armed conflict in Europe was on nobody’s list of major risks.

    More than two years later, the world has been upended by the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But for the rich and powerful arriving in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum, very little has changed.

    “Davos is the epitome of one of the greatest challenges to society right now, which is self-congratulatory elites,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale management professor who speaks regularly with many well-known executives.

    ——-

    “The last two years have dramatized and clarified what has been true for some time now, which is an elite plutocratic class is not just leaving the rest of the world behind, but is thriving precisely by stepping on the necks of everybody else,” said Anand Giridharadas, author of the book “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.”

    Obviously, we should turn the tiller over to poor but highly educated academic elites. They’ll get us out of this ditch. Their intentions are good.

    • juris imprudent

      Is there really a good reason not to nuke Davos when they are all there?

      • slumbrew

        I hear Davos is lovely and a nuke would make it uninhabitable.

        Thermobaric should be sufficient; still a lot of clean-up, but do-able.

      • grrizzly

        Not before I return from Switzerland in July.

    • The Other Kevin

      Did they notice? Of course they’ve noticed. Much like Fauci, they’ve been planning for this situation for years (if not actively causing these problems), and now they’re ready to swoop in and be heroes.

      The governor of Indiana is there this time. Looks like I won’t be voting for him again.

  25. Scruffy Nerfherder

    *considers move to Azores*

    Before the yacht arrived, locals had seen little cocaine on the island. It was more common to find heroin or hashish. “Cocaine was a drug of the elite,” Jose Lopes, one of the leading inspectors from Portugal’s judicial police, told me. “It was expensive.” There was really only one previous case of trafficking that people remembered with any clarity. In 1995, an Italian named Marco Morotti was caught in the port of Ponta Delgada, São Miguel’s largest town, transporting large quantities of cocaine dissolved in petrol containers. But Morotti’s product had been seized by the police before it reached the islanders.

    Now, two types of cocaine were circulating on São Miguel: one was the sort of fine white powder familiar from film and TV shows. The other was in yellowish crystals. Most users snorted the powder, but dissolved the crystals in water and then injected it into their veins. Both methods were potent. “It was euphoria,” Costa said. “You were floating.” One recovering drug user from Rabo de Peixe told me that he and a family member consumed more than a kilo in a month. A police officer told me the story of a man nicknamed Joaninha, or Ladybird, who had hooked himself up to a drip of cocaine and water and sat in his house getting high for days.

    A product so valuable in the rest of the world was rendered almost worthless through abundance. “They had gold, but they didn’t know how to work with it,” Ruben Frias, the head of the local fishermen’s association in Rabo de Peixe, told me. There were rumours that housewives were frying mackerel in cocaine, thinking it was flour, and that old fishermen were pouring it into their coffees like sugar. No one knew how much of the stuff was still out there.

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/10/blow-up-how-half-a-tonne-of-cocaine-transformed-the-life-of-an-island

    • Sensei

      In the 24 hours after he had arrived on São Miguel, the man on the yacht had barely ventured out of his cabin. He had pored over maps and made several phone calls to find out how he could fix his boat’s damaged rudder, but he didn’t speak Portuguese and couldn’t afford to draw any more attention to himself than was absolutely necessary. As he lay in his narrow bunk on the night of 7 June, he didn’t know that police officers were already watching him.

      Dude has fake Spanish and Italian passports. Given that cover I’m sure that Portuguese was completely incomprehensible to him.

      There are other questionable reporting choices by the Guardian, but it is still a fun tale. I’d just like to know how much reporting here is true and how much is hearsay.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I’m just here for the camaraos cocainas fritas.

      • Not Adahn

        Too bitter for my tastes.

  26. Semi-Spartan Dad

    So with the new Supreme Court decision potentially being released today on RvW, I was wondering if a state that outlaws abortion can criminally charge a state resident who travels to a different state for an abortion. Any thoughts on this?

    I thought one approach might be if a state considers abortion to be murder and codifies it as such, then could a resident of that state be charged with conspiracy to commit murder if planning an out of state abortion?

    I don’t intend to stir up the abortion pot but that’s coming regardless with the SC decision and am curious about this.

    • kbolino

      For a crime against State X’s laws committed in State Y’s territory, how would State X hold a trial and convene a jury in such a way that complies with the Sixth Amendment’s requirement that the trial be held and jury be drawn from the state and district in which the crime occurred?

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        Is not conspiracy to commit murder a crime, regardless of whether the murder actually occurs? If a wife in Alabama is planning to have her husband killed on an out of state business trip and law enforcement finds out before the scheduled trip (not an unusual scenario where the wife hires an informant hitman), wouldn’t Alabama law enforcement arrest and charge her?

      • kbolino

        Seems like there’d be an easy out there: I just happened to travel to a legal-abortion state and, while there, happened to get an abortion. Never planned a thing!

      • Rat on a train

        Conspiracy crimes normally require more than one person, so the woman can plan but it is only a conspiracy if another person is involved in the planning.

      • Count Potato

        As it stands now, the law in Alabama prohibits performing an abortion after 22 weeks, and prohibits anyone besides a doctor with hospital admitting privileges from performing one. The doctor breaking those laws could face fines, prison, and loss of license, but afaik ianal, would not face murder charges.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        I understand the laws as they stand now.I expect that we will see a great flurry of activity in rewriting laws in every state across the country if RvW is overturned.

        I imagine some states legalize late-term abortions with no reason needed or at best a token explanation. On the other side, there are millions of Americans who consider abortion to be murder… no different than putting a pistol to a post-natal infant’s head and pulling the trigger. I would be very surprised if abortion wasn’t codified into murder in at least a few states. The other states will fall into some sort of spectrum between the two positions.

      • AlexinCT

        I expect some states will try to create laws prohibiting residents from getting abortions elsewhere, but I also suspect those laws will crash & burn when they are challenged.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        I think probably this too. The question is who be granted standing and who wants to be the test case facing murder charges. Just thinking back to some of the extremely restrictive gun laws and the shenanigans the courts have played with standing to challenge. The court wouldn’t allow a challenge by the VCDL over some clearly illegal gun control shit here in VA because a gun rights organization was the one challenging and not someone who was hurt under the new law. And then there is NYC rescinding their transportation ordinance preventing firearms from being taken out of NYC before it could be struck down by the court.

        That rescinding the ordinance/law sleight of hand so that there is no standing to proceed with the challenge is ridiculous.

      • EvilSheldon

        “On the other side, there are millions of Americans who consider abortion to be murder… no different than putting a pistol to a post-natal infant’s head and pulling the trigger.”

        While there are certainly millions of people who say this, I don’t think for a second that there are millions of people who believe it. Certainly not sincerely enough to follow through with the practical end of their beliefs.

      • EvilSheldon

        Damnit.

      • Count Potato

        This is Alabama’s pending law if Roe is overturned:

        “Any person who willfully administers to any pregnant woman any drug or substance or uses or employs any instrument or other means to induce an abortion, miscarriage or premature delivery or aids, abets or prescribes for the same, unless the same is necessary to preserve her life or health and done for that purpose, shall on conviction be fined not less than $100.00 nor more than $1,000.00 and may also be imprisoned in the county jail or sentenced to hard labor for the county for not more than 12 months.”

        So again, it does not punish the pregnant woman.

      • Rat on a train

        +1 Yellowstone Zone Of Death

    • Count Potato

      “I was wondering if a state that outlaws abortion can criminally charge a state resident who travels to a different state for an abortion. Any thoughts on this?”

      I doubt it. Afaik, the laws are against providing abortions, not getting abortions.

    • juris imprudent

      Why not, the feds assert that U.S. law applies any where in the world (when it suits them). Straight out of the FYTW clause.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        This is what originally led me down this path. Specifically being able to charge Americans for bribery and kickbacks even in countries where such is legal and expected.

      • juris imprudent

        OK, so that’s the feds. The feds are pretty likely to put the kibosh on a state attempting to imitate them, and have the power to do so.

        I don’t see the federal courts allowing the states to play that game.

    • Not Adahn

      That would seem to be an interstate commerce violation.

    • juris imprudent

      On the other hand, Apple is showing a small degree of concern for privacy, unlike the don’t be evil team.

    • Pope Jimbo

      I loved my macbook pros, but the last time I bought a new laptop, it was a windoze box.

      What really soured me on Macs was the fact that they are now soldering in hard drives and memory to force you to pay their inflated upgrade charges. No more buying the minimum specs and then buying a bigger hard drive or more memory on your own.

      Not being able to swap batteries also sucks.

      Apple – without Jobs – is on a slow decline in relevancy.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        My new iPhone with the Face ID that doesn’t work more than half the fucking time concurs.

      • PieInTheSky

        My pixel 5a has no face id that is why I wanted the physical fingerprint sensor

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        The Face ID works fine for me but I do not use it for unlocking the phone, just for apps.

        Cops can’t make you give up your passcode.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        It worked fine for me up until the most recent update. Now it’s broken and I’m kinda pissed.

      • The Last American Hero

        Yep, and now that you can get a subscription to Spotify or Pandora for a reasonable price you aren’t chained to the Itunes Store any more. The only thing keeping me with the iPhone is how straight up fucking evil Google is.

      • Count Potato

        “Not being able to swap batteries also sucks.”

        That does suck.

    • Tundra

      Good one today.

      Thanks, Holiness!

    • Fourscore

      Life at the Fourscores

  27. The Late P Brooks

    Cuddly

    A couple was attacked by a bear inside their northern Wisconsin home Friday night after the animal broke through their window, authorities said.

    The husband and wife were both injured, but their children – who were asleep in their bedrooms at the time of the attack – were unharmed, the Taylor County Sheriff’s Office (TCSO) said in a news release. The husband shot and killed the bear.

    The couple first saw the bear outside eating from a bird feeder, so they opened their window and yelled at it to try to get it to leave, TCSO said.

    “The bear immediately turned and charged at the house, breaking through the window and into the house and immediately attacked,” TCSO said.

    Both the husband and wife sustained several bites and injuries as they tried to fend off the attack, at one point stabbing the bear with a kitchen knife, authorities said. Eventually, the husband was able to get a firearm and shot and killed the bear.

    The pair was treated for their injuries at a hospital and have since been released, TCSO said.

    The bear, identified by authorities as an adult female, appeared to have a cub, which was seen running off as the bear charged the house.

    That poor bear.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      *pours one out for Tonio*

    • PieInTheSky

      This would not happen in civilized Europe. Our bears respect property.

      • AlexinCT

        Ask the Ukrainians how respectful the bear next door was to their property, Pie…

    • Pope Jimbo

      I bet those racists wouldn’t have even made a peep about a polar bear raiding their bird feeder, much less shot it for bursting into their home.

    • AlexinCT

      A monkey-pox on their houses!

    • Tres Cool

      and since it’s just relevant

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      There’s a theory that they’re hyping it because the symptoms of long-term COVID vaccine illness overlap nicely with monkeypox.

      Seems a bit too overly cunning for me, but they’ve done weirder things.

      • Tres Cool

        I didnt know that ‘vid had skin issues like the M-Pox. But Ill report in as necessary- Im just a 6-month CoVid “long hauler”.

      • Grummun

        I was thinking the hype over monkeypox coincided nicely with the FDA approval of Pfizer’s new monkeypox treatment drug.

    • Pope Jimbo

      So people have been getting the Monkey Pox from question liaisons made in Monkey Bars for a long time?

      • Not Adahn

        Monkey bars are illegal and racist.

    • PieInTheSky

      Is it that hard to stop blowing monkeys?

      • Pope Jimbo

        It sure fucking is! Those bastards have bionic kung-fu grips.

        *goes back to rubbing ointment on his sore ears*

      • AlexinCT

        Yeah, I am sure it is your ears that are sore…

  28. AlexinCT

    What political gain would tackling inflation get them? Cause that’s why they don’t care to fix it. Their efforts will all be in convincing you that there is no inflation.

    • Tres Cool

      Flooding the market with trilions of (worthless) currency and diluting said currency has nothing at all to do with this….

    • The Other Kevin

      This is why they think it’s all a messaging problem. They’ve got their true believers brainwashed and can’t figure out why they can’t do the save for everyone else.

      • AlexinCT

        They will invest more time, money, and effort in controlling the narrative than in ever doing things that fix problems, even when the effort to control the narrative is far higher than doing the fix. Things they want to “fix” will get the effort to fix them (and usually still fail).

    • kbolino

      For me, it’s the “unmet minimum” charge that does it.

      • Fatty Bolger

        $30. That made me laugh.

    • db

      I like the “Unmet Minimum” line item for $30 that brings the subtotal up to $120,000.

      • UnCivilServant

        Sounds like a venue rental. Probably has a rule that “Our minimum charge is $120k.”

    • PieInTheSky

      I cannot think what amount of money I would need to have in order to spend that sort of scratch on mediocre crap at an overpriced event.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        There’s no bigger rube than American QE nouveau rich.

    • Tres Cool

      10% for the Big Guy

    • pistoffnick

      Those people know how to party!

      • Fourscore

        Not potluck?

  29. PieInTheSky

    HSBC has suspended a senior banker after he referred to climate crisis warnings as “unsubstantiated” and “shrill” during a conference speech that has since been denounced by the lender’s chief executive.

    Stuart Kirk, who has been HSBC’s head of responsible investing since last July, will remain suspended until the bank completes an internal investigation into the matter.

    HSBC came under pressure to fire Kirk after he gave a presentation in London entitled “why investors need not worry about climate risk”, in which he made light of major flooding risks, and complained about having to spend time “looking at something that’s going to happen in 20 or 30 years”.

    HSBC declined to comment on Kirk’s suspension, which was first reported by the Financial Times. Kirk did not respond to requests to comment sent via LinkedIn or Twitter.

    Kirk’s presentation controversially included slides that said “Unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings are ALWAYS wrong”, while referring to comments made by officials at the UN and Bank of England, who have tried to raise the alarm over global heating.

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/may/22/hsbc-suspends-head-of-responsible-investing-who-called-climate-warnings-shrill

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      There’s a price to be paid for shitting all over your bosses’ business plans.

    • WTF

      He fucked up, he spoke the truth.

  30. Count Potato

    “Former Fox News reporter calls out Tucker Carlson and says police should monitor the network to stop hosts from LYING on air – with violators sent to jail or ‘something worse’

    Fox News’ former chief political correspondent has joined a chorus of voices calling for serious repercussions against Tucker Carlson – one of the network’s most prominent voices.

    Carl Cameron was asked: ‘Do you think the Murdoch family in charge of Fox will ever pull the plug on Tucker?’ during an interview with CNN’s Jim Acosta on Saturday.

    Cameron, 60, went on to compare Carlson’s broadcasts to falsely shouting fire in a crowded movie theater.

    ‘The fact of the matter is, if you disturb the peace by starting a riot in a movie theater, cops are going to arrest you and you might end up in jail or you might end up in something worse.’

    Cameron went on to challenge President Joe Biden to take serious action against Carlson and social media.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10843881/Former-Fox-reporter-says-police-monitor-Fox-News-Tucker-Carlson.html

    CWAA

    • kbolino

      The greatest case of projection ever seen outside an IMAX theater

    • PieInTheSky

      I want to job of arbiter of who is lying. 1 million a year and I can work from home

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      How drunk was Carl when he said that?

    • Tres Cool

      You can’t just call us out on our policies you dick!

    • The Last American Hero

      A reporter calling for censorship.

      • Count Potato

        Many such cases!

    • Pope Jimbo

      What if all you said in the theater was “Hey, that old politician from Deleware has his hands all over your 12 year-old daughter”?

      Would the riot still cause you to go to jail? Are you saying you should have kept quiet?

    • Tres Cool

      Great…..Sharkpox is next.

      • Pope Jimbo

        We’re gonna need a bigger lockdown

      • Fourscore

        Has there been a tick up in chigger infestations?

      • pistoffnick

        Chigger please.

  31. The Late P Brooks

    Good intentions

    Abbott, Reckett Benkiser and Nestle produce the United States’ top five formula brands — Enfamil, Similac, Gerber, PediaSure and Isomil — according to market research firm Euromonitor International.

    Why haven’t new companies broken through in such a critical industry? There are just too many barriers to entry.

    ——-

    “Infant formula is — appropriately — the most regulated food in the world. The road to providing babies with sole source nutrition should be met with the highest rigor,” said Belldegrun. “But for the benefit of babies, and their parents, there need to be more incentives for new brands to rise to the challenge. We need more support for infant formula manufacturing and product innovation at the state and federal levels.”

    Right. It’s all about safety.

    • PieInTheSky

      Infant formula is — appropriately — the most regulated food in the world – and yet I hear it is utter crap.

    • kbolino

      “Infant formula is — appropriately — the most regulated food in the world.”

      Always steal the base upfront.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Yep, a qualification of the reasons why it’s appropriate would be nice.

    • juris imprudent

      It wasn’t a matter of safety that was keeping European manufactured formula out of the U.S. – it was the FDA didn’t like what was said on the packaging.

      • Fourscore

        The government is going to milk this formula shortage for all it’s worth

      • db

        There’s a lot of bottled up anger in this country about this sensitive topic.

      • juris imprudent

        Don’t even get me started on how sour so much of it is.

      • Zwak, who counted all his blessings, and counted only one.

        Some people will suck it down anyway.

  32. PieInTheSky

    [8K] 모델 조애라

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdnJ44NZwms

    I have noticed multiple of these youtube videos which use squiggly lines instead of proper letter are rotated 90% and I have no idea why

    • AlexinCT

      Some people claim vaginas in that part of the world are also rotate 90 degrees. Me, I can tell you they are not…

    • db

      They’re rotated 324 degrees?

    • whiz

      The pictures are taken in portrait mode (as is appropriate for photographing a full human who is standing), but to show on the full computer screen they must be turned sideways. Just rotate your laptop. (Oh, you have a desktop? Too bad.)

  33. PieInTheSky

    A long-term Swedish study looked at the effect of dairy fat on heart health. People who eat more dairy fat—plentiful in whole milk, yogurt, and cheese—may be less likely to develop #heart disease than people who eat smaller amounts of dairy

    https://twitter.com/HarvardHealth/status/1527997734992723973

    good European cheese not the US stuff

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      How about Velveeta?

    • Rat on a train

      What about Mexican cheese?

      • PieInTheSky

        Don’t be gross

      • Pope Jimbo

        Mexican taco cheese is the worst!

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Did you mean the Wurst?

      • Pope Jimbo

        Admittedly it is cheddar than nothing, but that is it.

      • Fourscore

        Fromage I know, Velveeta is the shits.

      • MikeS

        Fromage I know, Velveeta is gives the shits.

        FIFY

      • R.J.

        No need to brie like that. Some people enjoy Velveeta.

    • AlexinCT

      Do you get a lot of FromUnda cheese out there?

    • pistoffnick

      good European cheese not the US stuff

      I have yet to find a cheese (European or American) that I don’t like.

      • juris imprudent

        No one has yet served you some casu martzu?

      • pistoffnick

        I’ll try anything once. The things I like, I’ll try ’em twice.

  34. The Other Kevin

    * checks news *
    Crud. I was hoping at the World Economic Forum they decided to finally do something useful and reduce carbon emissions by passing around cups of Flavor Aid. Oh well, there’s always next year.

    • Rat on a train

      They bought indulgences so it is fine.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Anthony Scaramucci, founder of the hedge-fund investment firm SkyBridge Capital and onetime communications director for the Trump administration, normally wears Timberland boots at Davos cocktail parties and events. This year, he said, he is bringing three pairs of dress shoes, one for each day he plans to attend: Prada loafers, Alden lace-ups and handcrafted Barker shoes from London. He is throwing in some $1,100 Christian Dior sneakers because he considers them “very Bitcoinish” for meetings with cryptocurrency people.

        But of course that shithead is there.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        These people are just self-obsessed assholes with tendencies towards megalomania.

        Tiffany Harnsongkram, a founder of three companies tied to global sustainability goals, plans to wear her “fish flops,” colorful shoes that look like fish right off the hook, with a gaping mouth at the toe. The shoes can be found in Thailand’s night markets and help celebrate diversity, she said.

        “They are a part of me and how I want to show up in the world—in humor, comfort and, most of all, feeling fully alive,” said Ms. Harnsongkram, who said she has lived in France, Thailand and the U.S.

        She has avoided Davos in the past partly because she dreaded the cold weather and walking in dress shoes strapped with cleats. “Even though it is a VIP event, it sounded really unpleasant,” she said.

      • Sensei

        Welcome to Wall St and VC.

    • AlexinCT

      She’s a vampire too?

      • Pope Jimbo

        After Pie’s visit she is.

      • Not Adahn

        Maybe she’s a Hare Krishna?

    • The Last American Hero

      Too easy.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Disliking garlic is a sure sign of a sick mind and a rotten soul.

  35. PieInTheSky

    The chair of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission says a federal bill would give it power to regulate user-generated content, such as homemade videos posted on YouTube.

    But Ian Scott predicted at a House of Commons committee that this would never happen as the broadcast regulator has no interest in overseeing content produced by individuals.

    Even so, critics of the online-streaming bill have seized on his remarks, saying they contradict assurances by Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez that it would not give the regulator power over homemade content, such as cat or cooking videos.

    https://ottawa.citynews.ca/local-news/bill-c-11-would-give-crtc-power-over-user-generated-content-but-it-wont-use-it-chair-5394143

    • kbolino

      [Canadian] Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez

      You just cannot make this shit up. Pablo Rodriguez, is that Anglo-Canadian, Franco-Canadian, or “First Nations”?

      • Count Potato

        Canada can have Puerto Rico.

      • PieInTheSky

        US should get Alberta or something in return or that bit by Alaska

    • MikeS

      Yes, but what about cat cooking videos?

  36. Scruffy Nerfherder

    It’s COVID Ukraine White Supremacist Monkeypox Season

  37. Scruffy Nerfherder

    They’re still hammering on Elon. Tesla down another 3% in early trading.

    • Brawndo

      Other major car companies are breaking into the EV market.

  38. Fatty Bolger

    Wife and I watched Return to Space on Netflix last night, and it was very enjoyable if you’re into this stuff.

  39. Pope Jimbo

    We had our traditional May BBQ this weekend. It went off pretty well.

    The only time I had to bite my tongue was when my aunt told a story about one of her buddies seeing the writing on the wall in 2020, took off and went to New Zealand. I laughed and said “boy did she fuck up” and then had aunt and sister lecture me on how wonderful NZ was on the Rona. Those draconian lockdowns totes worked! Etc. Etc.

    Since they were on their way out the door by that time, I just smiled and stopped talking.

    • kbolino

      I know several weak old frail people who lived through COVID in the US just fine and none who died of it or even with it.

      • kinnath

        My cousin and her husband died from covid long before there was a vaccine and while the mainstream media was actively suppressing news of a promising treatment involving a malaria drug in combination with zinc and a generic antibiotic because the bad orange man spoke well of it. I may be a bit bitter.

      • Drake

        I got that exact treatment 3 weeks ago – started getting better about a day later.

      • AlexinCT

        I have a coworker and a couple of acquaintances that died from with the Kung Flu. The coworker had a sever heart problem and was on a list for a triple bypass. One acquaintance had a compromised immune system (battling cancer) while the other had lung & heart problems. Neither acquaintance would have lived much longer IMO, and the coworker was still gonna have serious issue despite the bypass because of his lack of healthy habits.

        What many of the people furiously scared of the Kung Flu won’t admit is that they expect they have created the conditions that would make the Kung Flu life-threatening for them, and they now want others to mitigate that self induced risk for them. I am sure some people just have the wrong genes, but most of the people the Kung Flu took were people already with one foot across Death’s Door’s threshold.

      • Fourscore

        Funeral Saturday. A classmate and nurse knew I was a vaccine resister. Of course she had to ask. When I told her neither the Mrs nor I were the proud recipients she just rolled her eyes. They never give up and never admit defeat.

        Oh yeah, the deceased had been vaxxed and boosted. Same age .

    • AlexinCT

      Sounds like a variation of don’t stick it in crazy to me, your holiness… well played.

  40. The Late P Brooks

    METOO!

    After 15 years operating in Russia, Starbucks will exit the market, joining companies like McDonald’s, Exxon Mobil and British American Tobacco in withdrawing from the country completely.

    The coffee giant announced Monday that it will no longer have a brand presence in Russia. Starbucks has 130 locations in the country, which account for less than 1% of the company’s annual revenue. They are all licensed locations, so the Seattle-based company itself doesn’t operate them.

    Starbucks said it will pay its nearly 2,000 Russian workers for six months and help them transition to new opportunities outside of the coffee chain.

    Both consumers and investors pressured Western companies like Starbucks to cut ties with Russia to show opposition to the Kremlin’s war with Ukraine, but unwinding licensing deals takes time. Starbucks has suspended all business activity with the country since March 8. The pause included shipping all Starbucks products and temporarily shuttering cafes.

    Stay with the herd, no matter what. Right off the cliff, if need be.

    • kbolino

      At this point, I’m starting to suspect that they want Russia to win, I just can’t figure out why.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        When you have politicians writing editorials like this, one begins to wonder if they want the apocalypse to happen.

        https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2022/05/21/mitt-romney-west-must/

        Some will conclude that to avoid provoking Russia — and thus avoid the prospect of a possible Russian nuclear strike — we should pre-emptively restrain Ukraine from routing the Russian military. We could limit the weapons we send, hold back on intelligence and pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky to settle.

        I disagree. Free nations must continue to support Ukrainians’ brave and necessary defense of their country. Failing to continue to support Ukraine would be like paying the cannibal to eat us last. If Putin, or any other nuclear power, can invade and subjugate with near impunity, then Ukraine would be only the first of such conquests. Inevitably, our friends and allies would be devoured by brazen, authoritarian nuclear powers, the implications of which would drastically alter the world order.

        The right answer is to continue to give Ukraine all the support it needs to defend itself and to win. Its military successes may force Putin to exit Ukraine or to agree to a cease-fire acceptable to the Ukrainian people. Perhaps his control of Russian media would enable him to spin a loss into a face-saving narrative at home. These are the outcomes he would be smart to take. But if a cornered and delusional Putin were to instead use a nuclear weapon — whether via a tactical strike or by weaponizing one of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants — we would have several options.

    • PieInTheSky

      Starbucks has bad coffee though. Who the hell keeps buying it? It aint cheap either

      • slumbrew

        The espresso is solid enough. Quad-shot iced Americano fueled many an office visit.

      • PieInTheSky

        The espresso is solid enough – except not really not compared to any decent specialty coffee shop.

      • slumbrew

        Hit rate on “good espresso” at the independent places is shocking low, in my experience. I prefer to give them my business, but if your espresso is just constantly a bitter mess, I’m gonna pass.

        Cold brew tends to be more successful, so I’ll give them my business when I’m drinking that.

      • The Other Kevin

        Nitro cold brew. Mmmm.

      • Drake

        Twenty + years ago Starbucks was putting out a fairly wide variety of coffee in their stores. I used to stop and get my thermos cup refilled for $1 on the way to work. Today regular coffee is an afterthought there and always the same crappy brews. (Fat) People are lined up at Starbucks for fancy $6 milkshakes. There are many local coffee shops that make far better coffee.

      • Zwak, who counted all his blessings, and counted only one.

        Compared to gas station coffee, it isn’t bad.

        Finding a decent coffee house, with parking and a barista who isn’t a complete idiot? Starbucks isn’t that bad.

      • Ownbestenemy

        We calculated the costs and got us a Breville…

        Wife was getting 1-2/Starbucks or Dutch Bros a day at 5-6/drink. I usually have two cups in the morning of either drip or Ill break down and get some from either of those. That is ~24/day.

        Plus this machine makes better coffee cause we control the beans.

      • slumbrew

        I got a Nespresso machine; half the cost of Starbucks, at least.

        I was gonna go whole-hog and get a fancy espresso machine but (counter-space aside), what pushed me to the Nespresso was a comment from a guy along the lines of:

        “I have two high-end espresso machines – like $1,200 machines – and, after a lot of practice I can make a cup of espresso that’s better than what my sister’s Nespresso makes – about every other time I try.”

        Consistently “good” plus small footprint is a win. To the point that I bought a tiny little Nespresso machine for when we’re traveling (e.g., I’m going to bring it when we go to Block Island for a week in July).

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Whatever will the Rooskies do without their overpriced overroasted overhyped pick me up?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Both consumers and investors pressured Western companies like Starbucks to cut ties with Russia

      The Vanguard Group, Inc. 8.41%
      BlackRock Fund Advisors 4.46%

      Consumers don’t give a shit.

  41. Brawndo

    Completely unrelated to the food crisis story I swear, but the wife and I have contemplated trying to grow some of our own food, and I’ve been having a hard time figuring out how to start and when. One thing I’m reading is that I should prep my soil first and make sure the pH is correct and start a composting pile. Soil prep can take about a year if I have to change the acidity, so if I work to get the plots I want cleared and the soil prepped by late summer or early autumn, I’ll be ready to plant next spring. Does this sound about right? Anything else I should try to figure out beforehand.

    • slumbrew

      You can often(?) have a soil sample analyzed by local universities; that’s probably worth doing.

      We’ve got lots of lead (former light commercial area), so all food planting has to be raised-bed.

    • Count Potato

      Dig deep (some plants such as tomatoes have very long roots) and get the consistency right (remove stones, add sand, pete moss, whatever), then you can plant now and correct the chemistry as you go.

      • Count Potato

        Oh, and except things that are toxic, like slumbrew mentioned.

    • MikeS

      If you need the year to do soil prep (as slumbrew said, a soil sample will tell you a lot…check with your county extension office) you could container garden to get things going. Lots of plants will grow well in containers as long as you don’t let them dry out.

      • MikeS

        That said, I’d think you’d have to be on especially bad soil to not be able to just put it in the ground and go. Like Count said, plant now and correct the soil as you go.

      • Count Potato

        Right, if the soil can support forest, meadow, or whatever is growing on it now, how bad can it be?

      • Count Potato

        People clear land and immediately start planting all the time.

      • MikeS

        I wholeheartedly agree. Unless there is something wrong with the soil he has, there’s no reason why he couldn’t start today.

      • Fourscore

        If it’s acid your tomatoes and peppers will suffer (blossom end rot) but not too much. Next year add a little lime with each plant.
        I’ve rarely added lime, just suffer a few losses. Plow and plant.

      • Count Potato

        Blossom end rot is usually due to a lack of calcium. Bone meal also adds nitrogen. You can lime nightshades after they are already growing. People do it all the time. It’s fairly common practice with eggplant.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Depends on soil but generally, especially for indigenous plants to the area, plant and give some TLC. My soil is too acidic in my raised bed, so tomatoes suffered last year. I have been working to bring up one of the boxes to the proper soil for them.

      • Ozymandias

        My wife loves to garden and plant; she grew up on a farm in rural Missouri.
        Our favorite “gardening” tips (in jest) are always the stories from her father about “what the old timers say…”
        He’s got a million of ’em from his childhood and my wife just shakes her head, but I love hearing ’em.
        e.g. Regarding the timing of planting seeds: “Well, the old timers’d say just throw the seeds right on the snow…”

    • The Hyperbole

      Just make sure to give the plants plenty of electrolytes.

      • Brawndo

        That’s covered, don’t worry about that ?

    • pistoffnick

      No need to wait. Flowers can grow in the concrete jungle.

      Growing up, Our garden was mostly sand but we managed to grow lots of stuff.

    • AlexinCT

      Start shitting in a bucket so you have some natural fertilizer?

      • db

        Start?

      • Mojeaux

        “We’re all just 5 bad decisions away from shitting in a bucket.” –Matt Paxton

    • Brawndo

      Forgot to mention, I’m in central Massachusetts so my growing season will be a bit shorter.

      • Drake

        I grew up in central MA (Westborough) back when it had a lot of farms. Of all the places I’ve lived, it had the best soil I’ve ever seen. We could grow anything in our garden as long as the critters didn’t eat it.

    • Semi-Spartan Dad

      You can use agricultural lime to raise the PH or your soil. Use powdered to work more quickly and pelleted if you’re waiting six months or a year. A $5 bag from a farm or hardware store will be enough for your whole garden. If you have a small garden, get composted manure like Black Kow. I have a 1k sq ft garden so use 10-10-10 fertilizer pellets instead of composted manure would be cost-prohibitive.

      Till or plow the garden your first year. You can rent a tiller for not much or hire someone with a tractor to plow for about the same. Permaculture frowns on tilling/plowing as it kills a lot of beneficial organisms, so I try to limit it.

      Cover the bed with black plastic sheeting and then put mulch on top. The plastic sheeting will prevent 95% of weeds and last a few seasons. Get an auger bit for your drill to plant with. Its about 20 bucks on Amazon. If you want to go the permaculture route, stack broken down carboard boxes instead of plastic sheeting. You’ll need to start this at least months in advance though.

      • Fourscore

        This guy gets it. I use leaves from the neighbors, 10-10-10 and and a long nose shovel.

      • Tulip

        You can do no dig if you put in raised beds. Put down in coated card board, cover it with soil and compost. Worms will take care of card board and it will suppress weeds. Search YouTube.

      • Tulip

        Uncoated. Ink is fine and remove tape.

      • Brawndo

        Fuckin saved. Thanks!

    • Drake

      Peas, beans, other legumes and potatoes will grow in pretty much any soil.

    • robodruid

      Something now, beats optimal later.

      • MikeS

        Right. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

      • Mojeaux

        “If you’re not embarrassed by your first iteration, you waited too long.” –some dude

  42. Ozymandias

    In news that’s likely only relevant to me, a Navy Board of Inquiry (this is a Board for officers to decide if you should be kicked out or not) found the military vax mandate order illegal by a 3-0 vote and to retain the officer.
    https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/navy-board-votes-unanimously-retain-officer-didnt-commit-misconduct
    There is some pants-pooping going on at the Pentagon and DoJ right now. This is their worst case scenario – that middle management in the military rebukes the leadership and says, “Naaaah. This isn’t legal.”

    • Sensei

      Hope it continues!

    • AlexinCT

      You bet they will not give up on wanting the troops to bend the knee… Fucking NAVY top brass is all shit these days. and I know the Airforce Academy is also giving the cadets there a good reason to sue the fuck out of Uncle Sam.

    • MikeS

      Huzzah!

    • PieInTheSky

      these antivaxxers want the Russians to win.

      • Ozymandias

        It’s the White Supremacy what done it.

      • juris imprudent

        Black Russians haz a sad.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Hoo-Rah!

    • robodruid

      As a Fed Gov Drone ™, that is good news. Thank you Ozy.

      • Ownbestenemy

        They keep threatening the ‘testing option’ but its become clear they would be singling out people who are not showing up on the ‘I have covid lists’

    • robc

      Was this one of your cases?

      • robc

        Congrats either way.

      • Ozymandias

        No, Rob. A former JAG by the name of R. Davis Younts was the attorney. I believe he and I are contemporaries.
        I do know the sailor involved.

    • Brawndo

      If this was related to your work, congratulations!

    • EvilSheldon

      Excellent!

  43. The Late P Brooks

    At this point, I’m starting to suspect that they want Russia to win, I just can’t figure out why.

    Their melodrama needs a supervillain. Only an existential threat can justify their takeover of society.

    Trillions for defense, not one cent for tribute.

    • whiz

      I bid a 100 quatloos on number 2.

  44. The Late P Brooks

    Navy Board of Inquiry (this is a Board for officers to decide if you should be kicked out or not) found the military vax mandate order illegal by a 3-0 vote and to retain the officer.

    Excellent.

    • AlexinCT

      he didn’t mean it anyway.. Xi owns him.

    • db

      Where’s Strawberry to walk that back?

    • Count Potato

      Meanwhile, we are sending more warships to the region.

      • rhywun

        The Pacific Theater is shaping up nicely.

  45. robc

    Just an FYI, the main page is still updating sporadically. No big deal for me, but I know not everyone has a backdoor login.

    “Walking” is still the last article for me on the main page.

    • Pine_Tree

      Was for me too until logging out and then back in just a few moments ago.

      I’m not cool enough to know a backdoor login.

      • AlexinCT

        Euphemism?

      • Pine_Tree

        I was 100% sure that this would be the immediate reply.

      • robc

        You should submit an article or three, then you can get the double secret log in.

      • Pine_Tree

        I want to. There are a few bouncing around in my mind. Just need to sit down and draft one of them and figure out how to submit it.

  46. Threedoor

    My dads been sitting on last years crop. I told him it’s going to be record wheat prices before harvest this year and probably after. He was right to sit on it.

  47. robc

    Maybe the Ds would get behind my idea of STV House races in each state. The advantage is that everyone is “properly” represented.

    I mean sure, Arrow is still true, so it is still a gameable system, but less so than the current district system. New York is a great example, you would need to win less than 4% of the vote to get a rep. The NYLP might even be able to pull that off. Probably not, but its possible!

    Of course, NY would also elect some flat out communists, but whats new?

  48. AlexinCT

    This makes total fucking sense….

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      WPATH referenced stories of self-castration shared on the site to argue that healthcare providers must castrate individuals for their own safety if they believe a person will likely chemically or surgically castrate themselves outside of the formal medical setting otherwise.

      In other news, doctors are arguing for the euthanization of people that might be considering suicide outside of a medical setting for their own safety.

    • db

      Did they use the Fix-a-Flat manual for M-F top surgery?

  49. Not Adahn

    Fun articles on gov’t sponsored radio:

    A long form article from BBC about the history of castration. I can only assume it’s somehow relevant to trans.

    Today NPR had not one but TWO articles bashing Christians — an interview with some bishop who wouldn’t admit that Jesus approved of abortion and one about a kiddy-diddler scandal in the SBC featuring NPR’s favorite Christian publication Christianity Today.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      some bishop who wouldn’t admit that Jesus approved of abortion

      I got nothing.

      • Tundra

        Meh. Christianity has survived many, many attempts to kill it.

      • Not Adahn

        It had the reporterette spout the current talking points of “is the Catholic church going to provide free prenatal care and child care? Will it give jobs to those who can’t afford to raise a child?”

      • rhywun

        I dunno but there’s a Catholic Charities on my corner. Maybe she can go ask them.

  50. hayeksplosives

    Food crisis? Recession? Civil unrest?

    Looks like I picked the wrong decade to move to a desert.

    • PieInTheSky

      is it a food desert?

      • robc

        Aren’t all deserts food deserts.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Some are desserts

      • juris imprudent

        Vegas isn’t.

      • creech

        Not unless 1 in 5 residents are dying of starvation because “they don’t know where their next meal is coming from.” Oh wait, that’s true of entire U.S., not just the deserts.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Just wait till the giant carnivorous worms show up.

    • Ownbestenemy

      We are actively prepping our departure – T-1.5 years. You are in a good location for civil unrest though.

      • hayeksplosives

        In Soviet Russia, walipini cultivates YOU!

        /Smirnoff off

    • R.J.

      Lizards are a great source of protein.

    • R.J.

      Lizards are a great source of protein.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Doubly so!

      • hayeksplosives

        Gotta switch up the diet from squirrels once in a while.

  51. creech

    Re: Baby Formula. From today’s AP story by a Michael Conroy: “U.S. regulators and Abbott Nutrition hope to have its Michigan plant reopened this week, but it will take about two months before product is ready for delivery.” I’m guessing many of you have worked in some kind of manufacturing facility, and that you had a maintenance shutdown (not a fire, or something else that destroyed machinery). Did any of you experience a two fucking month delay in getting product through the production machinery and out on trucks to warehouse distribution centers? How freaking incompetent are Abbott’s plant managers and logistics people? Or is it the FDA examining every fucking can with a fine toothed comb before it can leave the loading dock? Mr. Conroy apparently didn’t ask a follow up about why it would take two months to ship stuff. That’s what passes for “journalism” these days.

      • Ownbestenemy

        That photo in there that limits non-WIC customers to just 2, while handing it out willy-nilly to WIC users is infuriating. If it is a shortage, its a shortage. People secure in their finances are no less impacted.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Two months does seem a tad long.

    • The Other Kevin

      I still don’t understand how there’s this huge bottleneck (no pun) through one factory. Aren’t there other brands? Does this one have a huge market share? Maybe this factory makes it and it’s just packed under different brand names?

      Just like we all found out at the beginning of COVID that everything was too reliant on China, it seems like a bad idea to have something this critical dependent on just one point of failure.

      • juris imprudent

        to have something this critical dependent on just one point of failure.

        But enough about the FDA.

    • Pine_Tree

      It depends. (The Engineering answer for everything.) But 2 months doesn’t sound unrealistic.

      Their raw materials are perishable. So they gotta get that coming. And it’s not one, it’s a lot of them. And all of it has lots of regulatory stuff around it that slows things down. And then once they have it, the restart of major process systems is a big deal. And probably re-qualifying and re-validating everything (internal Engineering processes and regulatory stuff). And then actually running enough to get the pipeline going in earnest.

      So yeah, 2 months sounds pretty fast to me, actually.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Interesting that the FDA is looking to loosen the regulatory process for the overseas formula but I didn’t see anything mentioned about cutting some of the red tape for domestic production. Maybe I missed that.

      • Sensei

        Supposedly the FDA has sped up its inspections and review of the closed plant.

        The infuriating thing is that the odds favor the contamination didn’t happen at the plant, but somewhere else such as by the consumers. They were unable to match the contaminated bacteria to any bacteria found at the manufacturer.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Even more infuriating. I think I heard it was an anonymous complaint? Though, that might be a BS claim.

      • Tundra

        Concur.

        I used to work in the medical nutrition industry and nothing ever happened quickly. Our QA people were always held hostage by the FDA.

  52. DEG

    The world only has 10 weeks worth of grain left, the lowest levels ever seen, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is creating a “seismic” threat to global food supplies, Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker told the United Nations Security Council.

    Doommongers are often wrong, but I’m worried this time they might be right.

    The Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act is currently being considered by the 50-50 Senate after passing the House on Thursday 217-207 with all Republicans voting against the measure.

    Urgh. I want to road trip across the country for FreedomFest. This might put a damper in my plans.

  53. one true athena

    Daily Quordle 119
    9️⃣6️⃣
    4️⃣8️⃣

    damn I knew there was a trick to lower left, go it, but that didn’t really help all that much. lol

    • Ted S.

      Daily Quordle 119
      3️⃣4️⃣
      9️⃣6️⃣
      quordle.com
      ?⬜⬜?⬜ ?⬜⬜?⬜
      ?⬜?⬜⬜ ⬜⬜?⬜⬜
      ????? ?⬜?⬜?
      ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????

      ??⬜?⬜ ?⬜⬜?⬜
      ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜?⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜?⬜? ?⬜?⬜?
      ??⬜?? ⬜????
      ⬜???? ?⬜⬜??
      ⬜?⬜?? ?????
      ⬜???? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
      ⬜???? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
      ????? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛

      I screwed up the lower left because I wasn’t thinking.

    • TARDis

      I forfeit today, cause I cheated. I saw my wife’s play and could not unsee it. I still only got an 18. Give me whatever score is appropriate.