Sunday Morning Gangsta Links

by | Oct 2, 2022 | Daily Links | 234 comments

So after my adventures in Buffalo, I went down to Baltimore last weekend to visit my mom. When I got there, we had a problem. She’s in a “progressive memory care” facility because of her Alzheimer’s. They called us. “We had a little problem here…” It turns out she tried to shiv one of the other inmates. With a butter knife. A guy in a wheelchair. Now, to be fair, she felt threatened and warned him off; “Stay back or you’ll be staring at your intestines in your lap!” And apparently, this was the second such incident between her and this guy, not that she remembered the first one. After some discussion, we were able to convince them not to kick her out, but she went from gen pop to lockdown. Not that she noticed, but still.

How was YOUR week?

Birthdays usually come after the intro, and today is no exception. And they include a hero of mine and likely yours; a guy whose name will forever be linked to New Jersey; a guy who presaged Humbert Humbert’s desire to sleep with 12 year old girls; a guy whose persona I have attempted to adopt; a guy who inspired the best supporting character on Seinfeld;  an SF writer who was a bit more visionary than most about the possibilities of cyberspace; a guy who really only had one song in him, and a vastly overrated one at that; Elizabeth Warren’s spirit animal; a totally humorless midget; and a woman who has absolutely mastered the art of racial grift.

I hear the sound of “Farmer In The Dell” being whistled. “Grandma comin’.” Let’s Link before she comes calling.

 

This reminds me of my last visit to Taco Time.

 

They misspelled “hope.”

 

“Culinary racism.” So many idiots, so few bullets.

 

What do you mean “we,” white man?

 

So much for that next grant.

 

MIGA.

 

Enjoy your new shackles, Chuckie.

 

Old Guy Music is a fun and unexpected cover.

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.

234 Comments

  1. Count Potato

    Wow. Sorry 🙁

    • Ted S.

      Yeah, during the two months my mom was in a nursing home, everybody was in double rooms, which I’d think you wouldn’t want to do with dementia patients.

      • Lackadaisical

        And at several thousand a month, you’d think would be possible to afford for the facility…

      • Zwak. who's suit is as ragged as his nerves.

        We were really lucky that my dad’s wife wanted him at home the whole time.

    • SDF-7

      Yeah… not much else to say on that. Fortunate that both of my parents are still active, though Dad had a major stroke a few years back and isn’t 100% anymore (and that frustrates the hell out of him because he knows it and can’t always articulate things).

      Dementia, Alzheimers and debilitating strokes are very much on my “stop trying to keep me around” personal list. (Entirely *personal*, not making value judgements for anyone else). As far as I’m concerned, if I’m not around to know things one way or another, don’t let me tie things up. Don’t kill me, but I don’t see the point in prolonging things either. We’ll see if my wife agrees if and when the time comes since statistically she’ll outlive me.

      Anyway — all I can offer is my sympathy and limited understanding, so believe me OMWC (and anyone else facing such issues), you have those. All the best, hope things go as well as they can.

    • PieInTheSky

      Not much to say but alzheimers is an awful thing

  2. Shpip

    Sixty-four percent of Democrats said they were worried about divided government and gridlock, compared to 51 percent of Republicans and 44 percent of Independents, according to the poll.

    Translated: Oh no! We won’t be able to print up money to shovel to our pet causes and grifts!

    However, nearly half of Americans are also concerned about unified control of Congress, with 49 percent saying they would be worried if Democrats maintained both chambers and 46 percent saying they would be worried if Republicans held both.

    See, the *other guys* might do to us what we’ve been doing to the American people. Can’t have that!

    • Rat on a train

      Oh no! We won’t be able to print up money to shovel to our pet causes and grifts!
      Brandon still has a pen and phone.

      • SDF-7

        Yup… might as well go for broke on unconstitutional spending and usurpation of immigration law at this point. Sigh.

      • Rat on a train

        Even if challenged it can take years for the courts to overturn, but the money is already spent.

  3. Cowboy

    Bom dia,

    Dead aoouth are pretty good. Whats not good is how I’m feeling after breaking out the Wellers special reserve last night. Keto just destroys my tolerance and I should have known better.

    Sorry to hear about the troubles hope this coming week is better.

  4. Count Potato

    “MIGA”

    I wonder what it is in Italian?

    • Ozymandias

      “Fuhgeddaboutit.”

    • Shiny Nerfherder

      Whatever it is, you probably can’t communicate it without some hand and arm waving.

    • Zwak. who's suit is as ragged as his nerves.

      Basta cosi, stronzo!

  5. UnCivilServant

    So they didn’t attain room temperature superconductivity?

    • Lackadaisical

      No word yet on the perpetual motion machine.

  6. juris imprudent

    Breaking news – voters are idiots.

    However, nearly half of Americans are also concerned about unified control of Congress, with 49 percent saying they would be worried if Democrats maintained both chambers and 46 percent saying they would be worried if Republicans held both.

  7. Ted S.

    a guy who presaged Humbert Humbert’s desire to sleep with 12 year old girls;

    I immediately thought of this, even before seeing OMWC’s other descriptions of birthday people.

  8. Gender Traitor

    “Stay back or you’ll be staring at your intestines in your lap!”

    Baltimore native status confirmed?

    You have my understanding sympathy. We were extremely lucky not to have adventures of that nature with my mother…especially given her increasing animosity toward males as the “filters” disintegrated. (Thanks, Dad!)

    • Ted S.

      I know the feeling too. I do have to say, however, that this is the sort of scene that if we all saw it in a movie, most people would be laughing at the absurdity of it.

  9. Shpip

    “I don’t want to hear a word from those members of Congress, you notice, whose families got 10s of thousands of dollars and several-million dollars in pandemic relief loan forgiveness, same ones criticizing. Give me a break. Come on.”

    They still going with this little non sequitur?

    • SDF-7

      Joe is. IIRC, as of last week he’s still trotting out the “good people on both sides” smear, so that should be no surprise. Once he gets a smear in his head, facts are irrelevant. Like most of his life stories, for that matter.

      • rhywun

        Joe and his friends.

        “Five cops were murdered on J6” is still being pushed at every opportunity, for example.

  10. Ted S.

    “Culinary racism.” So many idiots, so few bullets.

    To be fair, who doesn’t hate Madison Square Garden?

  11. Ted S.

    Enjoy your new shackles, Chuckie.

    I was hoping “Chuckie” would refer to *uck Schumer.

    • rhywun

      inorite?

      But yes, the king isn’t supposed to be pushing a political agenda and that is exactly what meetings over “climate” hooey are. This should not be “news”.

      • Zwak. who's suit is as ragged as his nerves.

        It is nice to see pushback over the false crisis.

    • Chafed

      Everyone was.

  12. Lackadaisical

    ‘What do you mean “we,” white man?’

    Look, we just need to print a few more trillion dollar coins and we can afford whatever we want.

    • SDF-7

      It’s the 21st Century, Jack! We’re in a new economic paradigm — with the digital economy, we won’t need the wheelbarrows like Germany or the CSA! Progress!

      • slumbrew

        Funny, I haven’t heard much about “Modern Monetary Theory” recently.

  13. PieInTheSky

    Stopped at a craf beer tap.room to have a couple and i am the only customer. Makes me feel like an alcoholic. Then again it is 3 pm on a sunday. Bars should not be empty

    • UnCivilServant

      If the staff doesn’t know your name, you should be fine.

      • Ted S.

        And they’re not glad you came.

      • SDF-7

        He’s visiting Jeers?

      • l0b0t

        Uptwinkles for that one!

    • PieInTheSky

      Half the taps are 10% or more beers. I dont get it. It is not winter yet. One pilsner on like 20 taps.

    • Sean

      Everyone’s dead from the ‘vid.

      • SDF-7

        Or (being Romania) they’re rather late risers. Children of the night, one might say.

    • PieInTheSky

      I got a porter called hot smoke and heavy blues

      • PieInTheSky

        Although the music that just started is babay got back so not blues

  14. The Late P Brooks

    For Democrats, whose party currently controls both chambers of Congress, this is a slightly more pressing concern. Sixty-four percent of Democrats said they were worried about divided government and gridlock, compared to 51 percent of Republicans and 44 percent of Independents, according to the poll.

    However, nearly half of Americans are also concerned about unified control of Congress, with 49 percent saying they would be worried if Democrats maintained both chambers and 46 percent saying they would be worried if Republicans held both.

    In other words, most Americans fear and distrust the government.

  15. Gender Traitor

    A song from one of the birthday boys. This one has been much on my mind lately, as I now have a coworker by that name. Delightfully, even at her tender age she shares my love of retro music and knows the song! (If she sports any such dermal designs, they are well disguised by her dark complexion.)

  16. rhywun

    I’ve never heard of “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” but yeah, MSG have been vilified my entire life.

    Which I found amusing when I noticed that Goya sells bottles of the stuff at the supermarket. Tried it out, didn’t care for it.

    • UnCivilServant

      Bottles? MSG is a powder used like salt to cause the flavors in the food to be amplified.

      • Tres Cool

        I keep Accent! (MSG) in my cupboard in case of emergency. Its like duct-tape for the kitchen.

      • UnCivilServant

        I have a bag of MSG in the cabinet for similar reasons.

      • rhywun

        Yes, it comes in a plastic bottle like their other condiments.

      • slumbrew

        I’ve seen gallon bottles of it pulled out in Chinese restaurants.

        So it comes as a liquid (suspension?) too.

      • DrOtto

        They call that soy sauce.

  17. Shiny Nerfherder

    That article on Milfoni is dripping with bullshit, but it is the Guardian after all.

  18. Sean

    ABORTION!
    ABORTION!
    ABORTION!

    /PA election campaign commercials.

    • PieInTheSky

      I dont get it. Falling down the stairs is not that difficult.

    • Shiny Nerfherder

      Is Fetterman going to abort Kuato from his neck?

    • rhywun

      Same in NY.

      TIL that Lee Zeldin is too dangerous! to elect.

      • Ted S.

        ABORTION! from the left, and BAIL REFORM! from the right.

    • creech

      Dr. Oz is going to murder health care workers!

    • DEG

      NH Democrats are largely taking the same playbook. The deviations are taking from the Republicans – “truly drain the swamp”, “We actually funded the police!”

  19. Shiny Nerfherder

    Give your mom a real knife FFS.

    You shouldn’t be leaving her there with sub-standard weapons.

    • Sean

      #HotTake

    • Old Man With Candy

      I can always count on you guys for terrific life advice.

  20. The Late P Brooks

    “I don’t want to hear a word from those members of Congress, you notice, whose families got 10s of thousands of dollars and several-million dollars in pandemic relief loan forgiveness, same ones criticizing. Give me a break. Come on.”

    Nice non sequitur.

  21. PieInTheSky

    There ia a protest in Bucharest by the local right wing christian nationalist populist party. Fucking up traffic

    • Shiny Nerfherder

      What are they protesting?

      • PieInTheSky

        Mostly inflation cost of living things. What they say they want is to have early elections.

      • Old Man With Candy

        Whaddaya got?

      • Zwak. who's suit is as ragged as his nerves.

        They are protesting James Dean?

  22. SDF-7

    ;Orning ‘ordles — slept in this morning, so rushed to do these before coffee imbibing. Totally the reason for a poor showing in DuoTri, yeah… that’s totally it. 😉 Was rushing a little and made some haphazard guesses… but survived, so I’ll take it. Main event went surprisingly well. Sure y’all will do better, but for me — not a bad day. Seize that Daily Fish, all.

    Daily Duotrigordle #214
    Guesses: 37/37
    Time: 07:14.09
    https://duotrigordle.com/

    Daily Quordle 251
    5️⃣3️⃣
    4️⃣7️⃣
    quordle.com

    • Sean

      Daily Quordle 251
      8️⃣7️⃣
      4️⃣6️⃣

    • rhywun

      AYFKM, LL?

      Daily Quordle 251
      8️⃣6️⃣
      5️⃣7️⃣

    • The Hyperbole

      Daily Duotrigordle #214
      Guesses: X/37
      Time: 04:27.59
      Ugh!

      Daily Quordle 251
      5️⃣6️⃣
      4️⃣3️⃣
      That’s more like it.

    • Grumbletarian

      Daily Quordle 251
      8️⃣6️⃣
      4️⃣3️⃣

    • Cowboy

      Daily Quordle 251
      7️⃣5️⃣
      3️⃣4️⃣
      quordle.com

    • Tundra

      Daily Quordle 251
      8️⃣9️⃣
      7️⃣6️⃣

      Yikes.

    • kinnath

      Daily Quordle 251
      6️⃣7️⃣
      4️⃣5️⃣

  23. Tres Cool

    “Now, to be fair, she felt threatened and warned him off”

    I’ll have the soup.

  24. l0b0t

    The guy in the wheelchair sounds like a masher. Your mother should have stuck with a hat pin while shouting “FRESH!”

    Don McLean is awesome, although my favorite song of his is a cover – https://youtu.be/6s975wLCvK4
    Also, the best American Pie is the cover by Killdozer – https://youtu.be/nnsam_sHbpU

    I hope everyone is well this morning. It’s a nice day, I don’t have to work at the café today, I think I might take a drive out to the Indian Reservation at Salamanca to visit one or more of the dozens of marijuana dispensaries the red man is utilizing to profit off of the vice of the white man.

    • Don escaped Texas

      Frameless heads on nameless walls
      With eyes that watch the world and can’t forget

  25. Rat on a train

    New Maryland laws
    Attention minor attracted persons, the legal age for marriage increased from 15 to 17 and requires a guardian’s permission. But rejoice, you will not get 12 weeks paid leave when your minor give birth to a new minor.

  26. PieInTheSky

    “Culinary racism.” – uncle roger would say whatever amount of msg is used it is not enough

  27. Ted S.

    It’s been a half hour, so I’m going to go off topic with a relatively story I could have sworn I saw last fall. Come to think of it, though, I think last year’s story was from Poughkeepsie.

      • Grosspatzer

        Oh, goody. I’ll be sure to share this with Mrs. Patzer’s cousin, who currently lives in Newburgh, at my godson’s engagement dinner this afternoon. His reaction to this should make for an entertaining afternoon (he is a retired corrections officer and MAGA zealot). The dinner will be much better than I was expecting.

      • Shiny Nerfherder

        “Children under the age of 18 who arrive at the southwest border without a parent or legal guardian are placed in the care of vetted sponsors by the Office of Refugee Resettlement while they await their immigration proceedings. This is done in close coordination with each vetted sponsor who is agreeing to care for the child and is mandated by long-standing legal requirements that have existed under multiple administrations to provide safe, appropriate care to unaccompanied children during the time they are in our care,” a government agency official said.

        I would be very surprised if a percentage of them aren’t immediately trafficked right back into prostitution by these “vetted sponsors.”

  28. Shiny Nerfherder

    There are rumblings about a major default incoming, possibly Credit Suisse. If it’s true, then the pressure will be on for the Fed to return to QE.

    It’s Great Depression 2 versus Weimar Republic 2. Hold on to your shorts.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Lessee, one gave us the Three Stooges and the Little Rascals while the other gave us aggressive guys in admittedly spiffy uniforms. I know which one I’d rather see (neither is best of course).

    • Shiny Nerfherder

      Coincidentally, there’s a closed door Fed meeting tomorrow.

      There’s also talk about bail-ins, ie orderly bank collapsing where the shareholders and debtors get slaughtered first, depositors last (but notably not excluded). Seems the Vatican move to pull all their assets back to Rome was timely.

      • Chafed

        Before the bullshit bank bailouts, it was always shareholders first, bondholders next. Whether depositors got hurt depended on the bank and federal law.

      • Shiny Nerfherder

        It’s so novel now that they had to give it a new name.

  29. Stinky Wizzleteats

    I love MSG because it makes shitty food taste good. Case in point: KFC, those greasy and anemic birds would probably taste like roadkill crow without it.

  30. The Late P Brooks

    She emerged from a week of closed-door meetings with allies and the outgoing government following the vote on 25 September that is poised to give Italy its first far-right-led government since the second world war.

    Get the cattle cars ready.

  31. PieInTheSky

    I did not book a wine tour in Mallorca and am not sure is I should have. I dont generally like tours but i dont want to drive there. Though i think there are a bunch of vineyards within a few kilometers of a bus stop so i can walk. Seems there might be rain though. The forecast got worse over the last week…

    • PieInTheSky

      binissalem seem a center of wine industry and there is a train there from Palma i think

    • Ted S.

      I didn’t think you can drive to Mallorca from Romania.

      • PieInTheSky

        You can drive from anywhere to anywhere if you take the ferry

      • SDF-7

        For some definition of ferry, natch. (A LHD can be a ferry, after all…)

  32. Grosspatzer

    Sorry about your mom, Old Man. I pray that the Lord Devil takes me before my kids have to deal with that.

  33. Gender Traitor

    Because I have posted photos there, Imgur now helpfully(?) informs me via my mobile phone of certain special occasions. Today, they assure me, is World Farm Animals Day, which I imagine is observed…observantly in the old ANZAC nations (and possibly Montana?)

    • SDF-7

      I was thinking Scotland besides the obvious NZ, yeah.

      Just imaging the greeting cards! “Happy World Farm Animals Day! Thinking of ewe….”

      • Grosspatzer

        Oh boy, here comes another pun thread. The horse is out of the barn.

      • Gender Traitor

        We will not be cowed by Swissy’s narrowed gaze!

      • Ted S.

        Q: What’s the difference between the Rolling Stones and the Scottish?

        A: The Rolling Stones say, “Hey, you, get off of my cloud,” while the Scottish say, “Hey, MacLeod, get off of my ewe.”

      • SandMan

        Hah, had not heard that one.

      • Tres Cool

        Oh, its not so baaaaaaaad

    • Grosspatzer

      Two legs good, four legs better!

  34. The Late P Brooks

    Since starting the war in Ukraine in February, Russia has cut back supplies of natural gas sent to Europe to heat homes, generate electricity and run factories.

    I thought the noble Europeans were boycotting Russian gas in solidarity with the plucky freedom loving democrats of the Ukraine.

  35. Grosspatzer

    I found this curious.

    The controversy surrounding MSG can be traced back to a letter sent to the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968 by a Dr. Ho Man Kwok. According to a 2019 episode of NPR’s This American Life, the letter read:

    “For several years since I have been in this country, I have experienced a strange syndrome whenever I have eaten out in a Chinese restaurant.

    Ho Man eats out at a Chinese restaurant? Kinky.

    • Chafed

      That sounds like a parody.

  36. UnCivilServant

    Anyone have any experience cooking Jaegerschnitzel? Can it be shallow pan-fried?

    • PieInTheSky

      Everything can be shallow oan fried. But should it?

      • UnCivilServant

        I don’t want to deal with a pan full of oil. I was figured a stick of butter for cooking the piece of pork, and turning whatever’s left in the pan into gravy, since I don’t have the ingredients for the traditional mushroom sauce.

    • SDF-7

      No, but I expect if you switch to double heat sinks or from energy weapons to autocannon, you’ll not cook up as often.

      What? Not a mech? Oh… don’t know then… This implies you can, so I’d say go for it.

      • UnCivilServant

        Apparently it’s an umlaut transliteration question. That’s just dotty.

      • Rat on a train

        Don’t be so diacritical.

      • Rat on a train

        Made in Czechia?

      • DEG

        No, but I expect if you switch to double heat sinks or from energy weapons to autocannon, you’ll not cook up as often.

        🙂

    • DEG

      I have not cooked Jägerschnitzel, but I have eaten many, many schnitzels.

      Make sure the pan and oil are hot. The schnitzel should be in the pan just long enough to cook it and not absorb too much of the oil.

      • UnCivilServant

        What? You don’t like cold grease-soaked breading?

      • rhywun

        I luv chicken schnitzel. There was a great food truck at work, in the before times when I commuted and food trucks existed there. (All the food trucks were gone the last time I went in, last summer.)

    • Zwak. who's suit is as ragged as his nerves.

      You don’t cook Jaegerschnitzel. You eat it like salami.

  37. Fourscore

    Sad to hear about your Mom, OM, it’s one of my greater worries. Right now breakfast is my biggest worry.

    You know, of course, that many of the clowns making our lives miserable are probably suffering from the same delusions. I’m convinced that ALL elected officials should be automatically booted at age 60, no exceptions. No finishing out the rest of their term, nada, nothing, 60 and out they go. The Pelosis, Feinsteins, Schumers, etc have caused us enough grief.

  38. The Late P Brooks

    *fills out subscription form for Fourscore’s newsletter*

  39. Fourscore

    I see the lady with the UTexas hand shake is about a dangerous as old people come. Then I remember that next month I’ll be trusted with a gun to hide out in the woods for a few days. I’m not sure if trusted is the right word but at least not illegalized as of yet.

    • Don escaped Texas

      my son got season tickets at Darrell Royal

      otherwise I remain incredibly proud of him

    • Zwak. who's suit is as ragged as his nerves.

      Well, my grandfather was still driving at 93.

  40. The Late P Brooks

    I’m not gonna lie. Most of your old guy music links are really not my bag, man.

    But that one- muy bueno.

  41. Grosspatzer

    Missed a 50/50 on LR.

    Daily Quordle 251
    7️⃣3️⃣
    4️⃣6️⃣
    quordle.com

    • Shiny Nerfherder

      Yep, this is already a World Currency War. I’ve gotten into cash where I can and need to move a portion into physical metal.

      What the Fed decides shortly, hold course or back off, will determine a lot. I believe the situation is worse than we think.

  42. KK the Porcine Pearl-Eater

    Skol!

    • Tundra

      Weird having the TV on so early!

      • Tundra

        And Cousins is terrible.

  43. The Late P Brooks

    Pigheaded

    British Prime Minister Liz Truss admitted mistakes had been made with her government’s controversial “mini-budget” announced last week – which sent the pound to historic lows and sparked market chaos – but stood by her policies.

    Speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday morning Truss said: “I do accept we should have laid the ground better and I’ve learned from that, and I’ll make sure I’ll do a better job of laying the ground in the future.”

    She said that she wanted “to tell people I understand their worries about what happened this week and I stand by the package we announced and I stand by the fact we announced it quickly.”

    Last week, Truss’ government announced that they would cut taxes by £45 billion ($48 billion) in a bid to get the UK economy moving again, with a package that includes scrapping the highest rate of income tax for top earners from 45% to 40% and a big increase in government borrowing to slash energy prices for millions of households and businesses this winter.

    Many leading economists described the unorthodox measures as a reckless gamble, noting that the measures came a day after the Bank of England warned that the country was already likely in a recession.

    Experts agree. The very notion of leaving money in the hands of individuals instead of hoovering it all out of their pockets in order that it can be spent by the government is really too fantastical for words.

    • Shiny Nerfherder

      The issue was that they didn’t cut spending at the same time which creates a huge supply of gilts (their equivalent of Treasuries) going into a market without much demand for them. The yield had to go up in order to sell the damn things.

      It was a foreshadowing of what’s going to happen here if we don’t do the same.

      • Shiny Nerfherder

        if we don’t do the same cut the budget.

        Fixed

  44. The Late P Brooks

    What the Fed decides shortly, hold course or back off, will determine a lot. I believe the situation is worse than we think.

    I think they’ll capitulate when Yellin comes mewling to them about how the budget is getting crushed by interest payments. They’ll find a way to give it a pretty name.

    Modern Monetary Theory, FTW!

    • Grumbletarian

      Post-Financial Economics!

  45. The Late P Brooks

    Truss defended her government’s policies to the BBC as the Conservative party’s annual conference kicked off in in Birmingham.

    The party is bitterly divided, with its poll ratings sinking lower than they were even under the disgraced leadership of Boris Johnson.

    On Sunday, that chill was evident, as Nadine Dorries, the former culture secretary who backed Truss to be prime minister, accused Truss of throwing Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng “under a bus” in her BBC interview, when she said the tax cut decision were made by him and not the Cabinet.

    “One of @BorisJohnson faults was that he could sometimes be too loyal and he got that. However, there is a balance and throwing your Chancellor under a bus on the first day of conference really isn’t it. [Hope] things improve and settle down from now,” Dorries said on Twitter.

    Like cornered rats, lashing out at anything.

  46. The Late P Brooks

    I can always count on you guys for terrific life advice.

    All of us are wiser than any of us.

  47. The Late P Brooks

    Conservative members of parliament fear the combination of tax cuts along with huge public spending to help people cope with energy bills, rising inflation, rising interest rates and a falling pound are going to make winning the next general election impossible.

    Raise taxes, and see what happens.

    • Shiny Nerfherder

      Cutting spending is the only real option here, but it means abandoning the Ukraine insanity in order to stabilize the energy markets which would remove the need for subsidies to the public.

      • Q Continuum

        Not to mention abandoning absurd obsessions with wind and solar based completely on wishful thinking. Cutting spending + no more money printing + drill, drill, drill + build nuke plants would have a positive impact. I can see this administration doing exactly zero of those things.

      • Shiny Nerfherder

        Fracking was what truly saved us in 2008. Without cheap energy we would have been fucked no matter what the Fed did.

      • rhywun

        It’s all grift. The “green” horseshit is more expensive and more harmful to the environment, but… it sure makes a lot of the right kind of people wealthy.

        Therefore it will take nothing less than lamp posts as Tundra posits below to make DC and friends abandon this path.

  48. Tundra

    Good morning, Old Man.

    Sorry to hear about mom. I’m glad she didn’t get kicked out. Such a horrible disease.

    News comes amid suspicion that the government may water down or abandon its environmental target.

    Reality is starting to settle over Europe. When a couple politicians are decorating lamp posts I predict every country will abandon this madness.

    • Shiny Nerfherder

      If you can believe polling, the US public is not up for more Ukraine spending and definitely not a war.

      The question is whether DC cares.

      • Q Continuum

        “The question is whether DC cares”

        BWAHAHAHAHAHA

    • creech

      Except here. We have to wait until 2025 when Gaia-killing greedy politicians regain control of all branches of the federal government. (Yes, I have no confidence GOP will take the Senate in November.)

  49. Shiny Nerfherder

    Delving into even more conspiratorial territory…

    There’s a theory out there that we have hit peak oil and that’s driving a lot of the insanity. I can believe the Saudis have peaked out (they’re notoriously tight-lipped about it), but I’m not certain about other fields in the US and Russia.

    • Q Continuum

      I thought the US had enough dinosaur fuel for eleventy zillion years or something.

      • Shiny Nerfherder

        Who the fuck knows? All I can tell is that the central banks are at war with each other and we’re just ants trying not to get stomped on during the scuffle.

    • Tundra

      My neighbor is a geologist and has been in that world for thirty years. He said supply isn’t remotely close to exhausted, but it’s simply a matter of extraction costs. He was in SA for a few years and said that they identified several fields that were just too expensive to develop at that point.

      • Shiny Nerfherder

        And I think that’s the crux of it, energy costs are going up and that drives everything else. The governments seem hell-bent on making it worse,

      • Don escaped Texas

        extraction costs

        Kinda, but I’d encourage you to think of it in wider and more basic economic terms. Peak oil is about supply vs demand, but the focus ever since the coining of that phrase has been overly supply-focused. What was a known reserve 40 years ago when I was taught that we have “40 years’ old left” has been added to through discovery and better extraction technology (new oil from old holes). Meanwhile, even though burning carbon must be be a major factor in our supply for the foreseeable future, other sources are slowly adding to our base; that’s not a political goal of mine…it’s just a simple but tiny fact. I don’t approve of the subsidies or manipulations, but, renewables will (cannot help but) continue to be a growing part of the supply.

        Who cares? I don’t care about renewables so much as that I see that for every point of supply found elsewhere, the quads left to cover with oil decrease and the political math of years of oil left extend. The less oil we use, the more years of oil at fixed consumption we have left.

        Of course, energy demand doubled in the past four decades. Wonder where that curve goes.

        Another idea I’m not accusing anyone of believing is “running out of oil.” We will never run out of oil ever ever ever. Think of gold: we keep looking, it’s hard to find and expensive to deliver, and yet it’s out there if you’re willing to pay for it…at some crazy price well above the cost of production. The question is not when oil can no longer satisfy huge parts of our transportation energy needs; it’s what a barrel will cost and who will be able to pay for one. At some point, even unsubsidized renewables become truly competitive. I only wonder when that is and what the energy cost for a ton*mile will be.

    • Shiny Nerfherder

      There’s going to be a lot of that going around or there’s going to be a whole new generation of pimps.

      https://www.commonsense.news/p/the-sugar-babies-of-stanford-university

      As the money started flowing in, so did messages from men interested in more than just a public video. From here, this side-hustle—which it had accidentally become—naturally expanded. Cassie, now twenty-one-years-old, started sexting with various men in exchange for money, and eventually gifts: cash, flowers, lingerie, a television, a tennis bracelet, a diamond ring. Her main sugar daddy, Pat, sent around $600 just to get her attention. When men asked for pictures of her feet, Cassie declined, and brought in a new friend, Lainey, who was in the same year at Stanford, to take her “overflow customers.”

    • PieInTheSky

      I still cannot understand all this only fans stuff. Or digital sugar daddies. I thought the whole point was fucking not just looking. Then again i dont get strip clubs either

      • EvilSheldon

        The children-in-adult-bodies that populate the media are too anxious and insecure to have sex.

      • Mustang

        Well, they’ve made navigating sexual encounters and relationships so absurd that it stands to reason the market would deliver an alternative. When every intimate encounter or flirtatious gesture is fraught with potentially damning rape accusations, then people will avoid those things and turn to online anonymity for something resembling intimacy.

      • PieInTheSky

        there already was an alternative. full service escorts.

  50. The Late P Brooks

    Why can’t the peasants just stay in their favelas?

    Indeed, during a four-day trip through the Amazon, an NPR journalist did not come across a single police officer or government official enforcing environmental regulations. Fires dotted the landscape. At times, massive clouds of gray smoke partially obscured the sun. Black specks of ash fluttered down from the sky.

    Meanwhile, highway maintenance crews were busy smoothing out the main road running from Manaus southwest through the Amazon, making it easier for newcomers to gain access to the jungle.

    The neverending horror of third world countries trying to climb out of the crab poverty bucket.

    • Shiny Nerfherder

      Look man, the job of third world countries is to be a vacation retreat for first-worlders. Without the viewshed and the zoo, it’s just not worth it to visit.

    • Mojeaux

      I posted this meme on Facebook. My brother’s loaded lefty boyfriend said something like, “You don’t think that was even a little bit tongue in cheek?” I said, “Nope,” but didn’t explain why I thought that. My brother piped up and said, “Of course it is, and it’s hilarious!” Neither of them asked me WHY I didn’t think it was tongue in cheek.

      Now, I could be persuaded that it could be tongue in cheek if people with lots of money and people who don’t want to be considered icky didn’t think that non-rich, icky people were stupid.

      “Why don’t you think it’s tongue in cheek, Mojo?”

      “Because people like you think everybody else is stupid and rush to explain things because you think you’re smart, never realizing that you didn’t get the joke.”

      This is why the left can’t meme.

    • rhywun

      The left sure is obsessed with the Amazon. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      • Tundra

        They don’t know history. The Amazon was a heavily managed agricultural area before the Spanish showed up.

      • UnCivilServant

        Oh come on, it’s not as if the black soil was anything but gifts of Gaia.

    • EvilSheldon

      Okay, so how many environmental police officers and government regulators does Ms. NPR think are out there? Compared to the area of the Amazon?

      Moj, you’re absolutely right. These are very stupid people who are desperate to be perceived as smart.

      • Mojeaux

        That happened days ago and it’s still sticking in my craw.

      • UnCivilServant

        Is there a craw cleaner? Seems like a market niche that’s unfullfilled.

      • Zwak. who's suit is as ragged as his nerves.

        That is why we need Craw Dads!

  51. Mustang

    “Sunday Morning Gangsta Links”

    MIGA please.

    • Mojeaux

      *snortle*

  52. The Late P Brooks

    Cutting spending + no more money printing + drill, drill, drill + build nuke plants would have a positive impact.

    Crazy talk!

    • Shiny Nerfherder

      Depends, does it include several course of antibiotics?

    • PieInTheSky

      That is rather risky in dubai. Go back to the carribean

  53. The Late P Brooks

    Weren’t they talking about massive oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico, not so long ago?

  54. Timeloose

    I was excited initially about the room temp superconducting paper. I got a chance to read it a year ago, but it did feel like they had relied on secondary measurements quite a bit. I didn’t have enough experience in their methods to notice it as a potential source of error. I do have some experience with the previous “hot” area of superconductors the Cuprates like YBCO. I was more interested in the deposition and fabrication methods and techniques more than the measurement of the effects.

    We had it relatively easy as we could measure conductivity and magnetic properties directly as long as you kept them at liquid N temps.

  55. DEG

    And apparently, this was the second such incident between her and this guy, not that she remembered the first one.

    Sorry.

    Old Guy Music is good.

    • Timeloose

      I also liked the old guy music quite a lot. My one gripe is the garb of any band with a banjo player. We get it you are playing old tymie music, you don’t need to all wear suspenders, vests, and white button downs. Rant over, I’ve been similarly guilty in my past. I had some costumes I’ve worn based on the band I might be seeing.

      • Shiny Nerfherder

        We get it you are playing old tymie music, you don’t need to all wear suspenders, vests, and white button downs.

        Overalls and fake beards or GTFO.

      • Gender Traitor

        Knew it before I clicked it! 😃

      • Mojeaux

        Durn it!

      • Gender Traitor

        Love that movie and all the music in it! 😁

  56. R.J.

    I sympathize, OMWC.
    When my dad was alive and in an Alzheimer’s ward, he disabled the alarm system and escaped with a sack of quarters (looted from a vending machine.) He was found miles away, at a bar, telling everyone he was “going back to Texas.”

    • Shiny Nerfherder

      Your dad was cool.

    • Zwak. who's suit is as ragged as his nerves.

      Mad props.

    • Madhatter

      My Mom figured out the fire door. She got all her jewelry and money, and she and a friend took off for my Mom’s house. They were caught as the fire door had an alarm.

  57. Ozymandias

    Happy Sunday, fellow Glibs!

    OMWC – I for one am glad to hear your mom is standing up for herself! My mom started her professional career as a nurse’s aide in a nursing home (at 33 in 1980 or so), a place called Briarcliffe Manor in Johnston, RI. My sister worked there, too. We eventually lived behind the place, so I spent a considerable amount of time around elderly folks in nursing homes.

    One trenchant observation: old men don’t get any less “dirty” as they get older (as I’m sure you well know!). It seems like a day didn’t go by without some old man fondling his junk in the cafeteria, or in the hallway, or in some elderly female patient’s room, etc. The (attempted) sexcapades in the old folks home would have made Ron Jeremy blush.

    In any event, I think you need to teach GrandMama Candy how to sharpen that plastic knife into a proper prison shiv! Teach that other guy to back off and keep it in his pants.

  58. The Late P Brooks

    I don’t really pay attention, so I’m probably behind the curve. Have the (formerly great) American explorers and frontiersmen been cursed for their villainous depredations yet?

    Lewis and Clark, Davy Crockett, Fremont, Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, every homesteader and sodbuster who swarmed the Atlantic harbors and headed west, and the vast panoply of despoilers of the virgin soil; are they all on History’s Shit List now?

    • Gender Traitor

      …every homesteader and sodbuster who swarmed the Atlantic harbors and headed west…

      As I’ve mentioned here before, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name was removed from the children’s literature award that had been created in her honor, mainly, as I recall, because her Nineteenth Century mother was depicted as having Nineteenth Century attitudes toward the noble “indigenous” (so what’s the current status of the “land bridge” theory that was said to allow them to migrate from Asia?) peoples of North America.

      (Note to self: acquire hardback copies of more of the “Little House” books.)

      • UnCivilServant

        I don’t know if the precolumbian dominant population came via the land bridge wave of migration.

      • Zwak. who's suit is as ragged as his nerves.

        Well, it is obvious that Gaia had them spring up out of peapods, birthed by the trees.

      • Mojeaux

        I was about to type that I don’t think They would expurgate Ma’s comments, but then, They’ve been able to do a lot of things I didn’t think They would be able to do. Have you gotten the Prairie Girl books yet? I want to read them but they’re just so damned BEAUTIFUL I can’t bear to touch them.

      • Gender Traitor

        No, I don’t have the Prairie Girl books. Looking at B&N’s site, I just see an LIW bio by that title. Linky, plz?

        I have a “75th Anniversary Edition” of LHOTPrairie. I’ll see if I can find the most “egregious” lines from Ma re: Indians cited online and check to see if they’ve been expurgated from this version.

      • Gender Traitor

        Thank you! Also available from B&N, which I like to support to try to help my Nook stay non-obsolete. 🙄 The “Revised Texts” book is pricey from them though – $50! I may save that for later. Currently in cart: LH books 4-6, PG (and you’re right – the cover illo is gorgeous!) and PG Perspectives. All hardback, so $118 pretax. I think I’ll show a modicum of restraint and quit while I’m ahead for the time being.

    • creech

      They all must go. Surely there is a historical drag queen or trans-something that could be thrust forth as hero? Some theorize that Queen Elizabeth I was really a man in drag, but then he/she wasn’t exactly the most noble of beings.

      • Gender Traitor

        If Liz I had been male, Hank wouldn’t have had to chop off Annie’s head.

      • UnCivilServant

        The old story was that QueenE I was born a girl, but died a few years later and panicked staff substituted the closest looking child they could find, who turned out to be a boy. It’s one of the old tales told about why she never married.

        The more realistic excuse was that she didn’t want to be demoted and play second fiddle to the new husband.

      • Gender Traitor

        Yes, the latter seems much more plausible.

  59. The Late P Brooks

    Did somebody say Banjo?

    • Mojeaux

      Also relevant.

      I never really liked Steve Martin’s comedy. Then I found out what an accomplished banjo player he is. What an awesome thing, to have such an “out of character”* avocation!

      *Not what I really mean, but I can’t think of what I’m trying to say. Non sequitur?

    • PieInTheSky

      but it is one of those pieces that make me thing did I really need to read all that to know MMT is horse hockey (and can you even get skates on a horse?)

  60. The Late P Brooks

    But it did dash my hope that printing money would lead to utopia

    [insert indignant splutter]

  61. The Late P Brooks

    Modern Monetary Theory: a synthesis of “We’re not broke; we’ve still got checks” and “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping”.

    • Mustang

      “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping”.

      I see you’re on the same gun forums I’m on.

  62. Michael Bluth

    Any time is Taco Time.

    I haven’t worked there in 15 years and I still have dreams about it.

    • rhywun

      I still have nightmares of working hotel front desks – which I got out of 25 years ago.

    • Shiny Nerfherder

      I like the riff, but I kept waiting for it to go somewhere.

  63. Shiny Nerfherder

    Things I didn’t know. Puts the NordStream attack in a much different light,

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British%E2%80%93Polish%E2%80%93Ukrainian_trilateral_pact

    All of this is looking more and more like the run up to WW1 and 2, and the Brits are up to their eyeballs in it. They would love to be able to blame the US for the NS attacks. The US neocons are looking like the useful idiots here. The Ukrainians are going to get hung out to dry like the Poles were in ’39. The Brits get what they want, which is a neutered Germany and Russian economic ties out of Europe.

    It also explains why Boris went to Kiev to torpedo the peace deal.

    • creech

      Well, we know one thing: this will inspire James Patterson, and about a dozen other spy fiction thriller writers, to sit down at their terminals and pound out another book.

  64. kinnath

    Don

  65. The Late P Brooks

    I like the riff, but I kept waiting for it to go somewhere.

    Exactly. It’s just an excuse for the video.