Saturday Morning Landmine Links

by | Feb 11, 2023 | Daily Links | 234 comments

Now I know I’m really back in academia. I’m doing a project to help promote the university and its technology and needed some resources from another department (in the form of about one square foot in their work area for three nights). So I talked to one of the professors I worked with there on another project and whose students use our lab routinely. The shitstorm that resulted from this request was epic- I have a 27 email long string that includes two deans, three department heads, and five professors all telling me that I completely did this wrong and I did not follow procedures (not that there actually are any). When I saw one of the other department’s profs out in the parking lot and asked her if she had a minute to talk, she stared icily at me and intoned, “All communication needs to go through the department chair.” And there’s going to be a faculty-wide meeting next week to discuss the absolutely inappropriate and unreasonable request from me. I guess what they say about academia (“It’s vicious because there’s so little at stake”) is true.

Also true: it’s an amazingly packed day for birthdays, so I’ll have to skip many that I’d usually comment on, but will not skip one of the most prescient, brilliant, influential, and not generally known scientists of the past few centuries; the older version of Mickey Rooney; a guy who cursed us with several more generations of imbeciles; my favorite Martian; Jethro’s dad; a guy whose fame was a dead end; a guy who thought he was Jack Kennedy; a guy who actually gave me some culinary training; a guy whose name wasn’t Shirley; the least interesting castaway; a guy who proved that pineapple =/= swinger; an actor who was actually an interesting human; frontman for one of my favorite prog bands; one of the dumbest people in the Senate, where there’s a lot of competition; someone you shouldn’t shake hands with; Animal’s favorite politician; a chick with famous nipples; and a guy who really walks the fine line between hilariously entertaining and stark raving nuts.

With that, we move (carefully!) on to Links.

 

This really should have been one of Riven’s links.

 

Balloongate was not on my 2023 checklist.

 

Local News: Strip and cavity searches of teenage girls is now officially a perk of the job. I may change careers.

 

More Local News: We’re Number One!

 

“How dare he? Jew-hate is the property of OUR party!”

 

Coincidentally, I used to play in a band called The Hallucinating Chatbots.

 

Old Guy Music features a birthday boy and it’s a fucking awesome song, as most of theirs were.

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

    HAPPY ALEX JONES DAY!!

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Are the freaking frogs gay yet?

      • Scruffyy Nerfherder

        *checks pants*

        Nope, not yet.

      • Shirley Knott

        I didn’t realize you were French.

    • DEG

      ALIENZ!!!!!!!!11111!!!!1

  2. Scruffyy Nerfherder

    And there’s going to be a faculty-wide meeting next week to discuss the absolutely inappropriate and unreasonable request from me.

    And this is why I decided to avoid academia. Even as an undergrad lab assistant, I couldn’t stand the political bullshit.

    • Gender Traitor

      Added to my list, along with K-12 public education, of “Roads I’m SO Glad Weren’t Taken.”

      I may be woefully underemployed for the level of education I completed, but at least I don’t have to deal with as much life-sucking nonsense.

    • Fourscore

      “You gotta go through channels”

      /Often heard in an earlier career

    • Zwak says Your Husband is a Polar Bear, Skinny.

      Yeah. It’s the family trade, and I am sooooooo glad I dodged that bullet.

    • Spartacus

      I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that this was triggered by some combination of:
      a. accessing labs at night, especially someone else’s lab, which is probably shared,
      b. some other professor and/or dept head going “Hey! That is partly MY square foot!”
      c. campus cops getting their panties in a wad over unauthorized nocturnal activities on campus, and
      d. the general fact that academia has the world’s highest concentration of passive-aggressive assholes who say shit on email that they would not dare to say in person.

      Also, re Gibbs: part of the reason he is not better known is that he was on the wrong side of the quaternion/vector divide for some time, and specifically because he made the mistake of saying something conciliatory to Heaviside, which would have been seen as blood in the water and an invitation to personal abuse. On the other hand, the main invited lecture at the American Mathematical Society’s annual meeting is the Gibbs Lecture, so he isn’t that obscure.

  3. Sean

    “Home to Alfred State College and Alfred University, Alfred is ranked No. 1 in a nationwide survey to determine the Ultimate College Town.”

    congrats on your first

    • Rat on a train

      Alfred, No. 1 by a significant margin in the survey — about 85% of the area’s population of 4,500 are students — was called by Van Dam “the collegiest,” his term.

      Doesn’t sound like a good place to live.

      • Old Man With Candy

        Depends on your priorities. Other than the inconvenience of multi-hour drives for dating, it’s ideal for me. Cheap, beautiful, hilly, close to wine country, and massively uncrowded.

      • Fourscore

        “Alfred U’s purpose is to help its students identify and realize their purpose”

        I dunno know, Man, I’m just looking for myself

      • Trigger Hippie

        Navin R. Johnson : Well, when I was a kid my mom told me THAT was my special purpose! And someday I’d find out what my special purpose was! Patty Bernstein : Today’s the day! [Whole trailer shaking as Patty “deflowers” Navin] Navin R. Johnson : Hey, this is like a ride!

  4. Shpip

    “With this direct and heightened environment in mind, how will you work with other stakeholders to combat the rise of antisemitism on Twitter?” he (Mowskowitz) added.

    Uhh, it’s Twitter. You write stupid shit, and trolls write stupid shit back. Either shut up and deal with it, or just shut up.

  5. Count Potato

    “Mowkositz, who is Jewish,”

    Who could have guessed?

    • Count Potato

      “In his letter Thursday, Moskowitz cited a statistic from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)”

      There is a reliable source.

    • Pat

      You can never be sure until you check the Early Life section.

  6. RBS

    “And given Rowling’s transphobic statements and views in the past, people feel they are standing in solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community by boycotting the game.?

    The two gayest dudes I know have been raving about the game.

    • SDF-7

      I’ve vaguely considered it a few times and trawled the Steam discussions… don’t like the part in the EULA about “We can monitor anything and everything from your PC as we see fit” — yeah, it is probably “We also put out online games and use the same EULA” crap, but I don’t like giving that permission if I can see it and avoid it. Plus, there’s a LOT of performance complaints / issues. Combined with not really having all that strong of an urge to play in the Potter-verse (I like the books okay, but I’m no raving fan), I probably won’t bother with it.

      • Pat

        There hasn’t been a game released in probably at least 15 years that doesn’t monitor every other running executable on your machine to prevent, cheating, modding, or generally owning the game you bought.

      • Rat on a train

        I play RPG and strategy games from vendors that support modding.

      • Pat

        As we all should. Sadly, I only really play FPS games where anti-cheat is unavoidable. Maybe I’ll grow out of it when I hit 40.

      • rhywun

        $59.99 😮

        That’s a no from me, dawg.

      • SDF-7

        AAA titles were all in the 59 / 69 range already. With inflation, I’m expecting F1 2023 to come out at $89 or $99 and other titles to be in that range soon. And people will apparently pay it.

      • Ownbestenemy

        I had some FO money so purchased it. Performance issues look like they are in the default upscal8ng setting. Turned that off and runs fine. Enjoy the game play though weird playing as a 12 year old girl…maybe I’ll have to break my standard of playing female characters for this.

    • Pat

      Weirdly, not every member of the LGBTQ+ community believes that their attraction to members of the same sex means they are, in fact, the opposite sex, and don’t really give a shit about the people who do.

      • Count Potato

        ” not every member of the LGBTQ+ community believes that their attraction to members of the same sex means they are, in fact, the opposite sex”

        I don’t think anyone believes that.

      • Pat

        I know you don’t, but I’ll take their word for it.

      • Count Potato

        I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that.

      • Shirley Knott

        Okay, I’ll say it. I’m a gay man who is glad to be a man, and who is only interested in other (masculine) genetic males.

      • juris imprudent

        BIGOT!

      • Shirley Knott

        So?
        I didn’t, and wouldn’t, claim there are no gay men who fantasize about, wish, or think they are women. I know a few mtf transsexuals, and one of personal heroes is (Wendy Carlos). But I refuse the blanket fallacy that some == all.

      • juris imprudent

        The personal [sexual] is political thanks to our leftist culture-setters. You are free to be exactly what we say you are.

      • Pat

        Fair cop, that’s not the language the trans folx would use, but it’s a reductio ad absurdum of the logic of the activist class.

    • rhywun

      I couldn’t roll my eyes any further after that statement.

      God damn… people are shit.

      • Old Man With Candy

        That’s because in reality, “LGBTQIA+” or other quiltbag acronyms doesn’t really include normal, average homos.

      • Pat

        At the rate we’re going, the trannies will have accomplished in the next 20-30 years what the dreaded religious right could never seem to pull off: the end of homosexuality. Any expression thereof is ipso facto proof that the poor soul is actually trans and will need immediate hormone therapy and surgery to become the correct sex for their orientation.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        He likes dudes…quick, cut off his dick!

      • The Last American Hero

        I so want to believe, that, but the gay people I interact with (yes anecdotal small subset in one of the most team blue areas of the country) are all in on the crazy, and believe anyone who doesn’t tow the line is a raging bigot. I have yet to see one group, or even sorta high profile individual speak out against the groomer allegations, and the LGBA;FLJ;TKLHE;ARWNAF;LVJ

      • The Last American Hero

        movement gives more momentum to the arguments of the actual bigots every day.

      • Count Potato

        It’s worse than that

        “Anti-Hogwarts Legacy site tracking Twitch streamers playing closes down

        A site that allowed users to track which Twitch streamers were playing Hogwarts Legacy on stream gave people a way to find out who was playing the game. However, less than 24 hours after the title’s release, the site has been closed.

        This website was used as a way for boycotters to track which streamers were playing the game on their channel, so they could unfollow them.”

        https://www.dexerto.com/hogwarts-legacy/anti-hogwarts-legacy-site-tracking-twitch-streamers-playing-closes-down-2054960/

      • Pat

        This website was used as a way for boycotters to track which streamers were playing the game on their channel, so they could unfollow them.

        Yeah, that’s what it used for. Definitely not to doxx and harass them.

  7. Pat

    What’s the point of having a little fiefdom if any schmo off the street can just speak to your serfs without permission?

    • juris imprudent

      Tenure – even better than fealty to the suzerain for promoting being an asshole for no reason.

  8. Gender Traitor

    the least interesting castaway

    I guess that tells us your answer to THAT eternal question.

    • SDF-7

      They were obviously both way too old for him anyway.

    • Pat

      Selecting Ginger over Mary Ann should be grounds for involuntary commitment.

  9. Scruffyy Nerfherder

    White House says latest object discovered in US airspace the size of a ‘small car’

    Maybe it was a small car

    • SDF-7

      Or someone was a little off from 2015 again, yeah… run for it Marty!

  10. Pat

    “This then expresses itself in such a way that a machine provides a convincing but completely made-up answer,”

    Our next president will be a chat bot?

    • Gender Traitor

      Let’s try it out in the press secretary position first. It’s bound to be an improvement.

  11. The Late P Brooks

    Kelly’s Heroes, in the mine field:

    Crapgame: Hey, I found one!

    Big Joe: What kind is it?

    Crapgame: The kind that blows up!

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      The poor will be just fine without raccoons, possums, coyotes, and rats I’d think.

      • SDF-7

        Cuts down on the protein available for the gumbo, though.

      • rhywun

        Yeah… I live in the city because I don’t want to be surrounded by “wildlife”.

      • Fourscore

        The city, town, village has way too much wildlife for me.

        “The cattle are lowing, the coyotes are howling” are the sounds that cause sugar plums to dance in my head

    • whiz

      They identified the effect, but just made up the cause.

      FTA:The authors explain that various factors, such as densely populated areas, the presence of roads and railways, nighttime lights, and increased human land use, may contribute to the lower diversity of wildlife in non-white neighborhoods.

      And these are due to racism? Citation needed.

      • Count Potato

        You know who else built roads and railways?

  12. R C Dean

    “All communication needs to go through the department chair.”

    By speaking to you directly, didn’t she just break that rule?

  13. The Late P Brooks

    “This kind of artificial intelligence we’re talking about right now can sometimes lead to something we call hallucination,” Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice president at Google and head of Google Search, told Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

    Bizarre delusions about personal autonomy and self-ownership?

    • Scruffyy Nerfherder

      Hey, that sounds like my diagnosis!

  14. SDF-7

    Too Local News: Conflict of Interest? We laugh at your petty bourgeois concerns!

    • Fourscore

      A quid something…

  15. The Late P Brooks

    she stared icily at me and intoned, “All communication needs to go through the department chair.”

    No more NPR Ladies for you. You’ll have to seek companionship down at the farm implement dealer, or the truck stop.

    • SDF-7

      So his van will have to both track her and trail her?

    • Old Man With Candy

      Date tonight is with the gerontologist I met last week. So far, she hasn’t mentioned NPR. Fingers crossed.

      The girls at the farm implement store are very nice, but the missing teeth and extra toes are a bit offputting.

      • Fourscore

        I don’t know, remembering the Girls of FFA and 4H. They knew some things that retread city boys still had to learn

  16. SDF-7

    ‘Orning ‘Ordles… who ordered February to instead be a month of “Meh” anyway?

    Daily Duotrigordle #346
    Guesses: 36/37
    Time: 06:44.74
    https://duotrigordle.com/

    Daily Quordle 383
    4️⃣5️⃣
    6️⃣8️⃣
    quordle.com

    • Tundra

      Daily Quordle 383
      4️⃣7️⃣
      6️⃣8️⃣

      Bleh

    • rhywun

      OFFS. Who knew there were so many words ending in those 4 letters.

      Daily Quordle 383
      🟥9️⃣
      4️⃣8️⃣

      • SDF-7

        Yeah, I burned a guess expressly using as many letters as I could think of that could be the other letter once I realized I was looking at that.

    • Pat

      Daily Quordle 383
      8️⃣6️⃣
      7️⃣5️⃣

      An inglorious return to quordle.

    • Ted S.

      Haven’t done it in a while, but:

      Daily Quordle 383
      3️⃣4️⃣
      7️⃣8️⃣
      quordle.com
      🟩🟨⬜🟨⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟩🟨⬜⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜🟨🟩⬜
      ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      🟩⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
      ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜🟩🟨⬜⬜
      🟩⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟨🟩⬜⬜⬜
      🟩⬜🟨⬜🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
      ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    • Penguin

      Daily Quordle 383
      7️⃣6️⃣
      8️⃣5️⃣
      quordle.com

      Bucketful of meh.

    • kinnath

      Daily Quordle 383
      7️⃣6️⃣
      8️⃣4️⃣

      What stupid collection of words that was.

      • Penguin

        Three of them ended in vowels, which is inconsistent with typical English

  17. Count Potato

    “NY park ranger loses job, denied law enforcement positions over text to wife about medical pot: lawsuit

    Aponte says he was unfairly forced out of his job as an Islip park ranger — which he held for less than a year — and denied jobs as an NYPD cop and a state trooper simply because of his association with his mother-in-law, who had a medical marijuana license, according to a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit from Thursday.”

    https://nypost.com/2023/02/10/ny-park-ranger-loses-job-denied-law-enforcement-positions-over-pot-text/

    There has to be more to this story?

    • Tres Cool

      “The investigator went through Aponte’s text messages and found one of him telling his wife Maria Aponte not to smoke too much weed with her mother, Maria Marro.”
      “Aponte said he handed his phone over thinking, “I have nothing to hide.”

      Dude! You gave them your phone?

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more to the story certainly. Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t, there are some seriously uptight douchebags out there.

  18. Tres Cool

    Teds’S:
    I had to look up that movie, and was thinking “why there’s no Ilse or Marta in this”….then I saw the dog’s name.
    Prolly wont go over well.

  19. Ted S.

    Remember that idiot truck driver I posted about the other day?

    It turns out the idiot was blindly following his GPS:

    Following the directions on his GPS, Brooks was guided to Platte Cove Road, a narrow two-lane highway cut through a mountainous ravine leading from West Saugerties to Hunter.

    […]

    “The driver made a series of bad decisions to reinforce the bad advice he had from his GPS,” [Town Supervisor] Costello said. “It was an epic fail from the moment the GPS directed him that way. “It should not have happened.”

    [Police Chief] Sinagra said that even though Brooks was following the GPS directions, once he saw the signs indicating the road was closed he should have found an alternative route.

    “It’s only a seasonal road,” Sinagra said. “It just comes down to ignorance. If the sign says the road’s closed, the road’s closed.

    “They believe their GPS over what they’re actually seeing with their own two eyes,” Sinagra said. “They’ll see signs that say ‘road closed’ but they’ll continue to move forward.”

      • Pat

        I was hoping that was the clip it was going to be.

    • Tres Cool

      No need to get all pissy.

      • juris imprudent

        Gotta take a stand for something!

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      I identify as someone with an urge to piss in the sink.

    • rhywun

      Who had “America falls to its knees during the Bathroom Wars” on their 21st century bingo card?

      I can’t even make head or tails out of what’s going on that article, it’s all so goddamn tedious.

      • Pat

        It sounds like basically a trans kid wanted to use the bathroom/locker room that matches their feelings instead of their naughty bits, the school board was happy to accommodate that because it’s 2023 so of course they are, but other parents objected, so they decided to compromise by making everybody change in the bathroom stalls, only the boys lavatories had few stalls and lots of urinals, so logic dictated that urinals be banned. Really, it was the only sensible solution.

      • DEG

        Yep.

        I’m surprised the school didn’t tell the kid to piss off. Milford is a heavily Republican town.

      • Q Continuum

        This really is some late-empire decadence shit.

        I’d better start learning Mandarin…

      • Zwak says Your Husband is a Polar Bear, Skinny.

        Mandarin is sooo 20th. Urdu, that is where the action is.

    • Pat

      He said he and other queer students just want to be treated the same as cisgender high school students.

      Is that not what was happening under the old system where you use the bathroom that corresponds to your genitalia?

      • juris imprudent

        “You keep trying to make it simple and my life IS COMPLEX – why are you DENYING ME?”

      • rhywun

        Wheeler’s proposal would have offered separate, gender-neutral single-stall restrooms, effectively ending the district’s current policy of allowing students to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with.

        And note that it’s not good enough to have private stalls. She must be validated in a bathroom with a urinal (!) where she can pretend to be just one of the boys.

      • The Last American Hero

        I eagerly await the statement from the local triangle organizations talking about how this isn’t part of their agenda and how a few individuals are giving the rest a bad name.

  20. The Late P Brooks

    Alphabet, which is still conducting user testing on Bard, has not yet indicated when the app could go public.

    “We obviously feel the urgency, but we also feel the great responsibility,” Raghavan said. “We certainly don’t want to mislead the public.”

    *guffaws, slaps knee*

  21. Grosspatzer

    Mornin’, reprobates.

    Lovely time you are having with your “colleagues”, OMWC. I find it amusing that the cohort who preach diversity, inclusion, and kumbayya invariably turn out to be complete assholes in their personal encounters with actual human beings.

    • Old Man With Candy

      Interestingly, the people in the Engineering departments are, by and large, excellent and helpful folks. I had a “moment” a few days ago; I saw something odd in my experimental results. Within a day, I had two of the very top people in the field sitting in my office in a deep discussion with each other (and me) on what it could mean. A few hours later, another senior professor dropped in, took a look, thought my results were an experimental problem rather than something in the physics of the material, and suggested three or four control experiments I could do to pin things down. And of course she was right, it WAS an experimental issue, and I now know something new to look for in the future.

      All in all, despite the stupid politics, this has been a remarkable experience.

      • Grosspatzer

        That’s how it should be, isn’t it? Makes the background noise from the peanut gallery easier to take.

      • R C Dean

        All those communications, and none of them went through the department chair?

        Problematic.

        Next time you are in a meeting with icy professor, I suggest you completely ignore her, and address all of your comments to the department chair.

        “I understand Prof. Icy would like to use the lab on Wednesday mornings. I think that’s doable, if you could let Prof. Icy know that we will have overnight experiments on Bench 4 that need to be resulted that morning.”

    • DEG

      Someone I used to know through Swing dancing had been a librarian at Harvard. He was a Democrat until he held that job. Afterwards, he was a Republican.

      Why?

      All the liberals, Progressives, and other Democrats were shitty people. The handful of conservatives and Republicans at Harvard were all nice to him. There were no exceptions.

  22. The Late P Brooks

    Doesn’t sound like a good place to live.

    In a few weeks it will be Sundress City, I bet.

  23. Tundra

    Good morning, Old Man!

    Sorry to read about your adventures. At least you are keeping them on their toes.

    And for bringing us the news of the day, I give you orchid bees!

    • Grosspatzer

      Nice! Even the bees are going green.

      • Fourscore

        I’m envious

    • rhywun

      It’s “queer” now, get with the new English.

  24. The Late P Brooks

    Unfair

    From pesky fees charged by big retail banks to deep, structural imbalances in the U.S. tax system that favor wealthy people and large corporations, Biden’s speech hit on a perennial frustration in American economic life: how the deck feels stacked by big companies and institutions against ordinary taxpayers and consumers.

    “If we – the poorer people, the middle class – pay tax, the big companies are supposed to do the same. This is right. So I think the President [said] something that is true. We need more tax to be paid by the big companies and then that money can go back to the poorer people to help people,” Jean-Michel Dossous, a New York City cab driver who watched the State of the Union on his phone, told The Hill.

    Returning to the notion of economic fairness again and again, Biden touted numerous initiatives to bring down prices after a year of high inflation that has harassed American pocketbooks and that fiscal authorities, like Congress and the president, have limited powers to fight.

    They could always try not creating money out of thin air. But that don’t buy no votes.

    • rhywun

      We need more tax to be paid by the big companies

      Who wants to tell him…?

      • Fourscore

        “Cabbies Prefer Cash” bumper sticker

      • Pat

        She’s had more than 20 facial piercings and 12 scarifications – and she doesn’t care what people think

        I, too, draw as much attention to myself as humanly possible to demonstrate how little I care about what others think.

      • Zwak says Your Husband is a Polar Bear, Skinny.

        By the way, what the everlasting fuck is up with people getting facial tattoos? I see at least one person a day with some idiotic thing scrawled across his noggin, from Thor’s hammer to some jackass who seems to have Wilberine claw scars in purple etched indelibly. I have a couple tattoos, but they can be covered when the situation requires it. But this is getting ridiculous!

      • rhywun

        The country is going Mad Max – they are the vanguard.

    • RBS

      “A man whose life goal was to look as similar to a cat as humanly possible lived a life darker than one would imagine.”

      Sure.

      • rhywun

        I think I’ll pass on clicking either of links.

        Squick!

    • juris imprudent

      I assume it took him nine tries.

  25. Rebel Scum

    I don’t understand why you want your people removed from modern culture.

    LeValdo and other Native Americans will be pushing again for the Chiefs to abandon the team’s name, mascot and fan-driven “tomahawk chop.” It’s the same goal they had in 2021 when the Chiefs were vying for a second-consecutive Super Bowl win in Tampa, Florida.

    “People are trying to be really positive about Kansas City and what it does and how like ‘Yes, sports binds us all together,’” LeValdo, founder of the Kansas City-based Indigenous activist group Not In Our Honor, said at a news conference Thursday. “It’s not bringing our people into this celebration together. Really, it’s hurting us more because now it’s the bigger spotlight where you’re seeing this all over the world.” …

    “The anti-Native mascot movement has always been about the betterment of our Native people, not hatred towards others who are football fans,” said Amanda Blackhorse, who is Diné. “We want to live in a world where our children can attend school and feel included and not met with reenactments of fake war dances on the football field.”

    I guess you have no reservations about removing natives from view.

    • Grosspatzer

      Cleveland’s baseball team already changed their name, creating an untenable sutuation. All Chiefs, no Indians.

    • The Gunslinger

      Man, I don’t have time to read through long posts like this. I’ve got a Tonto do today.

      • The Gunslinger

        Some days I just feel like a Lone Ranger out here.

      • Grosspatzer

        Cheer up, there’s always a Silver lining.

    • Trigger Hippie

      On behalf of the vast majority of Kansas Citians I’d like to say: Go fuck yourself. Team isn’t even named in honor of native americans. I personally find the Tomahawk Chop a little tacky. Not because of any cultural insensitivity, mind you, but because we stole that shit from the Florida State Seminoles.

      • Count Potato

        “Team isn’t even named in honor of native americans.”

        It isn’t?

      • Trigger Hippie

        They’re named after former mayor Harold “Chief” Bartle. Did they adopt NA iconography? Sure. Then again, hundreds of streets(Hell, the city of Independence has a road named after every tribe on the continent) and at least a dozen local area schools, and dozens of towns are named after the tribes so it’s not like it just sprung up from a vacuum. Plenty of NA tradition, art, and culture still lingers here and many people enjoy it regardless their race.

      • Mojeaux

        It’s not THAT he was called “Chief.” It’s WHY he was called “Chief,” and it wasn’t just because he was in charge.

      • Mojeaux

        In a roundabout way, it is.

        H. Roe Bartle was a big-wig around here, and called Chief. Thing is, he was also a Boy Scouter who was in the “tribe of Mic-O-Say” in Boy Scouts, which is a) a Big Deal in Boy Scouting around this region and b) most definitely built on Indian cultural touchstones. Source: Dad was tribe of Mic-O-Say and had LOTS of Indian-representing things around the house. It’s a huge status thing in scouting, back when scouting was a huge status thing (because it took lots of $$$).

        Bartle was called “Chief” because he was in Mic-O-Say, so, yeah. It is.

      • Mojeaux

        Tangentially: My dad grew up very poor and would never have had a chance to be in Scouts were it not for a neighborhood mentor who brought him in and paid for the lot. (I don’t know if he knew Bartle or not.) He always credits Charlie (don’t know his last name) for getting him out of the ‘hood and teaching him something better was out there for him. Then my great-uncle joined the church. My grandparents followed suit, and then the church sent him to Holland on his mission, where he found out that people who had money weren’t necessarily smarter than he was, so he ended up in college after one summer spent laying asphalt.

        My son loved Scouting, but the church took it away and we couldn’t afford to send him go to another Troop, much less have my daughter go to Scouts (which she wanted to do). It is INSANELY expensive.

      • Count Potato

        OK, Thanks 🙂

      • Old Man With Candy

        Interesting- I thought the nickname came from his habit of chasing after fire trucks.

      • Tundra

        I was in the Indian Guides when I was a kid. We appropriated the shit out of native culture. It was a blast.

      • Fourscore

        Gen Custer hardest hit

    • rhywun

      The anti-Native mascot movement has always been about the betterment of our Native people

      Uh huh.

    • Zwak says Your Husband is a Polar Bear, Skinny.

      Wahoo! I am glad someone gets it!

    • Mojeaux

      One thing’s for sure, though. If they DO end up changing the name of the Chiefs, the tomahawk chop will not be going away and nobody will ever say anything but “Arrowhead Stadium.”

      • Trigger Hippie

        If they change the name and move to Kansas I won’t even acknowledge their existence. I only watch a handful of games anymore as is. I’ve really soured on the NFL in general over the last several years, to put it mildly.

      • Mojeaux

        I would like to think that if they move to Kansas, the fallout will be epic, but I doubt it. People will just drive to Kansas and bitch about it the whole way.

        Bread and circuses. We must have our gladiators.

      • Trigger Hippie

        I doubt it as well. Seems like Johnson County residents make up a huge chunk of the crowd nowadays anyway.

    • The Last American Hero

      Please please please change the name to the Settlers.

      • Mojeaux

        Better: colonizers

  26. Ownbestenemy

    Run on gasoline in Vegas due to that pipeline leak…. Costco was probably 100 cars long line. Every gas station is full at 6am…

    • Ownbestenemy

      Ugh because of the NEVCAL pipeline shutdown gas shot up a $1/gallon.

  27. Rebel Scum

    This really should have been one of Riven’s links.

    It would have improved the magic of Friday evening.

  28. Rebel Scum

    Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) penned a letter to Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Thursday asking how he plans to combat the rise of antisemitism on the social media platform after the congressman was the target of a barrage of antisemitic comments this week.

    “Grow a thicker skin.”

    • Grosspatzer

      I dunno, that’s not really an option, is it? Early life decisions are not easily undone.

      • SDF-7

        Don’t many politicians go to DC for the graft?

      • juris imprudent

        Have to be flexible though, otherwise inflation can hit you really hard.

      • Penguin

        Sad but true.

    • Zwak says Your Husband is a Polar Bear, Skinny.

      Elon: “clean up your own back yard first.”

  29. Ted S.

    Surprise, surprise: An Irish freedom of information request (or whatever the Irish equivalent is officially called) reveals that the upper-class areas where the goodthinkful live aren’t taking in asylum seekers.

    Of course, this being RTE, the report doesn’t present the idea that the rich, not having been flooded with asylum seekers like the poor, haven’t seen the negative effects. Instead, they talk to a Social Democrat TD who says that everybody he knows in his district wants more asylum seekers, not like those icky people on the right.

      • Ted S.

        I thought Fine Gael and Fianna Fail were both right of center. It’s Sinn Fein who are the extreme leftists.

    • rhywun

      “Shocking” video

    • Count Potato

      That just seems stupid. Sell the bottled water at a discount.

  30. Shpip

    This looks like operator error on someone’s part, but I’ll be damned if I can tell whom it is.

    An Oklahoma man says he stopped by Starbucks for a couple of cups of coffee and it wound up costing his family nearly $4,500.

    • creech

      Given inflation rates, Starbucks is just instituting its 2033 prices a decade early.

  31. The Late P Brooks

    Of all the mentions of unfairness in the economy in Biden’s State of the Union, perhaps the point he hammered home the most was about unfairness in the tax code.

    “I think a lot of you at home agree with me that our present tax system is simply unfair. The idea that in 2020, 55 of the biggest companies in America made $40 billion in profits and paid zero in federal income taxes? That’s simply not fair,” Biden said.

    Steve Taylor, an adjunct English professor at the City University of New York, said he felt the same way, arguing that rich people and corporations need to be paying more.

    “I think they should pay their fair share. They’re getting away with murder. These guys are not paying any taxes. I mean, come on. I pay taxes. What’s the median for working people, like 25 percent? Come on. What’s going on?” he said in an interview.

    Critics of corporate tax hikes argue that big businesses still pay billions in other types of taxes outside of taxed income.

    The views of Taylor and Jean-Michel Doussos on the tax system are held by a majority of Americans, according to a variety of public opinion polls.

    Communism will fix unfairness and make everyone happy.

    • Spartacus

      When I want advice on tax policy, I always consult an adjunct professor of English. It’s just common sense.

      • creech

        Maybe Biden should consult that senator from Delaware who voted for all the loopholes that big corporations such as duPont use to lower their taxes?

      • Ownbestenemy

        I’m sure those conversations happen daily, he just doesn’t know who it is he is talking to in the mirror and keeps claiming there is a doppelganger in the WH to his dogs.

    • juris imprudent

      What’s the median for working people, like 25 percent?

      Now we know why he majored in English – no math skills at all. He would be shocked to discover just how progressive the income tax actually is.

      • Ted S.

        I’m in the 12% federal income tax bracket, but by the time you add federal, state, FICA, and the “paid family leave” tax, each marginal extra dollar I earn has 26% or so taken out of it.

    • Ownbestenemy

      The unhappiness about the tax code isn’t on the corporate side, which he knows.

  32. The Late P Brooks

    Ugh because of the NEVCAL pipeline shutdown gas shot up a $1/gallon.

    Gas went up .20/gal here yesterday. That makes about .40 in the past two weeks or so.

    Profiteers, I sez!

  33. Penguin

    My brother sent me a link to a ticket site for a high priced Skinny Puppy concert ($100+), which I linked for rhywun last night. He, understandably, recoiled at the price. I checked a few other things, including the SuperBowl. The SB ticket prices basically start at $4,000. $4,000 for something you can see for free on your TV set. Cheap Trick is $56. Even that’s a tad much for nostalgia.

    • Count Potato

      “The SB ticket prices basically start at $4,000.”

      Wow.

    • PieInTheSky

      SB ticket prices basically start at $4,000 – do you bang a cheerleader in that price? otherwise seems expensive. Actually even if you bang a cheerleader seem expensive

  34. The Late P Brooks

    Free money

    Most taxpayers in the 21 states that sent out stimulus checks or tax rebates in 2022 don’t need to pay taxes on those payments on this year’s federal tax return, the Internal Revenue Service announced Friday evening.

    The guidance clarifies how taxpayers should treat these payments and allows those waiting to file to move forward. It also means, for the most part, those living in the affected states who already filed their taxes don’t have to amend their returns.

    —–

    “The IRS appreciates the patience of taxpayers, tax professionals, software companies and state tax administrators as the IRS and Treasury worked to resolve this unique and complex situation,” the IRS release said.

    On to the next manufactured crisis.

    • PieInTheSky

      i want some free moneys

  35. Ownbestenemy

    I’m hoping we shot down one of own drones that is operated in secrecy from one of the 18+ alphabet agencies. Will confirm when no information is given after recovery.

    • juris imprudent

      Which will justify an increase in those alphabet agencies secret budgets to arm up their drones. Spy v. spy in our own govt!

      • Ownbestenemy

        Spy v. Spy was so great. Even the video game was fun.

      • rhywun

        Yeah Spy v. Spy on C-64 was awesome.

      • Ownbestenemy

        That’s the one…though I think we had it for NES too

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      For all I know we just unwittingly declared war on the Klingons or something. Maybe the criticism has made them a little too trigger happy.

      • Count Potato

        I’m not saying it was aliens.

  36. PieInTheSky

    I have purchased some of your American beef, which is not that common here.it was okay. Probably not the best, I remember reading one you dont even export the best, but don’t know if true. Also reasonably priced for non EU beef at 9 of your american dollars for 10 of you american ounces. Or the best cut for grilling. Salt pepper 3 hours in advance 1.5 minutes per side flipping 4 times, rest 10 minute. Somewhat overcooked. But overall tasted good. with a nice glass of Balla Geza Stonewine feteasca neagra.

      • Ted S.

        Where’s the gun?

      • PieInTheSky

        outside the law mostly

    • Count Potato

      “Also reasonably priced for non EU beef at 9 of your american dollars for 10 of you american ounces.”

      That’s reasonable?

      You only have to flip it once. You can give it a quarter turn if you are one of those grill marks people.

      • PieInTheSky

        That’s reasonable? – yes, for beef from outside the EU in bucharest supermarkets

        You only have to flip it once – you can flip whatever but theoretically more is better

      • Count Potato

        Theoretically?

      • PieInTheSky

        if you flip more the temperature is more even in the meat

  37. The Late P Brooks

    Now we know why he majored in English – no math skills at all. He would be shocked to discover just how progressive the income tax actually is.

    I did a quick look for a chart showing tax revenue by income segment, but couldn’t find one. 20% of a million is a lot more than 20% of sixty grand.

  38. The Late P Brooks

    The eagle is a well known symbol of white supremacy and totalitarianism. Why isn’t anybody protesting that Philadelphia team?

    • PieInTheSky

      being from Philadelphia is punishment enough? Also in Romania Philadelphia is a type if cream cheese in stores.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Here too, when it comes to cream cheese Philadelphia is the crème de la crème…when it comes to cities not so much.

      • creech

        Was in center city yesterday for first time in several years. Fairly clean but half the pedestrians I recall before COVID. Still the same number of crazies and bums, however.

    • Scruffyy Nerfherder

      It’s really more about making cash transactions a pain in the ass by increasing the reporting requirements.

      There’s not that much money to be raised by going after tips, but they have a huge motivation to kill the cash economy.

  39. The Late P Brooks

    Gibberish in…

    Angel died on Thursday from injuries she suffered following a car break-in near Wells Fargo Bank in Downtown Oakland on Monday. She was dragged 50 feet by a getaway car after she tried to chase down the suspects.

    “We are really trying to orient towards her brilliant life, and that actually, she is not a person who would support the policing and imprisonment of the people who harmed her,” Harris said.

    Family and friends say that Angel saw many instances of violence and theft as related to larger systemic issues around poverty and racism. In her passing, they are focusing on restorative justice, which they say was central to Angel’s teachings.

    “Feels like absolutely an opportunity to stand in her values, and support the world that she wants. By actually showing that something different than actual policing and prosecution is possible, and is how we can have accountability,” Harris said.

    “It definitely had an impact,” said Nenna Joiner, owner of Feelmore in Oakland. “As a female body, going to work every day, how is it to own a business in the city of Oakland with some of the difficulties. It won’t stop you, but it will make you pause and think about your own mortality.”

    Joiner knew Angel from Oakland’s small business collective. She says she’s troubled by yet another violent death in Oakland, but was encouraged by Angel’s commitment to the city.

    “Being in the city of Oakland, as an entrepreneur, as a small business owner, you have to know why you are there. And a lot of us are doing activist work as we are doing small business work at the same time,” Joiner said.

    ——-

    On Friday night, the community is hosting a fundraiser, with the proceeds going toward a GoFundMe set up in Angel’s honor.

    “If anything, maybe the positive that comes out of that, is that she reignites some of that spark and more of a spotlight on the work that needs to be done,” Stacionis said.

    I think I can appreciate the underlying sentiment, but wrapping it up in SJW-speak just makes me assume all those people are morons.

    A gofundme? If it’s to feed and care for her cats, I’m all for it. Something tells me it will be used to support a bunch of grievance mongering activist parasites.

    • rhywun

      By all means keep practicing “restorative justice” and see how that continues to work out. Let’s crank those murder statistics back up to ca. 1990 levels. We can do this.

      • Zwak says Your Husband is a Polar Bear, Skinny.

        The city across the bay:
        “San Franciscans face about a 1-in-16 chance each year of being a victim of property or violent crime, which makes the city more dangerous than 98 percent of US cities, both small and large. To put this in perspective, Compton, California, the infamous home of drug gang turf wars, and which today remains more dangerous than 90 percent of all US cities, is almost twice as safe as San Francisco.”

        https://www.hoover.org/research/why-san-francisco-nearly-most-crime-ridden-city-us

      • KSuellington

        Ess Eff is property crime central, but it actually is pretty good for relatively low violent crime incidence. That has been changing back to a more 1970’s level as the proggies have taken complete control and especially since the Floyd reduction in policing.

      • rhywun

        Yikes. One thing I noticed when I lived there is that, unlike NYC, it is nearly impossible to avoid the worst parts of town because you have to go through them to get anywhere.

    • KSuellington

      I know someone else who was killed in exactly the same way in Oakland. Had his laptop grabbed from a cafe, he ran out to try and stop them and got caught in the getaway car and dragged a distance to his death. We have an underincarceration problem in this country. The left is trying (and succeeding) in doing what they accomplished from the late 60’s onward through to the 80’s when they shifted blame from the individual to society for criminal acts. Those criminals that did that to this very naive woman will be back out there today creating more victims as they have likely done hundreds of times before.

  40. The Late P Brooks

    There’s not that much money to be raised by going after tips, but they have a huge motivation to kill the cash economy.

    We are well on the way to redefining cash transactions as illicit black marketeering.

  41. DrOtto

    Sometimes the birthday guesses are easy “whose name wasn’t Shirley”. Others are a wild crapshoot “one of the dumbest people in the Senate”

    • Fourscore

      It’s a toughly contested title but maybe they come in blocks of 5 or so

  42. The Late P Brooks

    War on Medicine

    South Dakota is set to prohibit nearly all forms of gender-affirming treatment for transgender minors after a proposed law gained sweeping approval through its state legislature.

    The state Senate passed a House bill banning surgical and non-surgical gender-affirming treatment for minors on Thursday in a 30-4 vote, advancing the legislation to Gov. Kristi Noem’s desk. Noem will sign the bill into law, a spokesperson for the Republican governor told CNN on Friday.

    The legislation bars puberty blocking medication in patients under the age of 18, as well as sex hormones and surgery related to gender transition.

    Opponents of the measure say it would be harmful to transgender children and is an intrusion by the government into medical decisions.

    Utah Gov. Spencer Cox speaks during a news conference at the Utah State Capitol, Friday, Feb. 18, 2022, in Salt Lake City.
    Utah governor signs bill banning gender-affirming hormone treatment and surgery for minors

    “Surgeries-gone-wrong are simply not happening in South Dakota,” said Democratic state Sen. Liz Larson while announcing her opposition. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t need the state Legislature when I’m in the doctor’s office.”

    Susan Williams, who heads of the transgender advocacy group Transformation Project Advocacy Network in South Dakota, decried the measure.

    “Our community is sad. Our community is angry. Worst of all, our community is scared,” Williams wrote in a post on her group’s Facebook page. “I feel betrayed by the elected officials who are supposed to protect my family that just voted against us.”

    Why do Republicans want to force people to live in the bodies they were born in? It’s inhumane.

  43. DEG

    The shitstorm that resulted from this request was epic- I have a 27 email long string that includes two deans, three department heads, and five professors all telling me that I completely did this wrong and I did not follow procedures (not that there actually are any). When I saw one of the other department’s profs out in the parking lot and asked her if she had a minute to talk, she stared icily at me and intoned, “All communication needs to go through the department chair.” And there’s going to be a faculty-wide meeting next week to discuss the absolutely inappropriate and unreasonable request from me. I guess what they say about academia (“It’s vicious because there’s so little at stake”) is true.

    WTF?

    As investigators review material recovered from the Chinese aircraft, US officials added six Chinese entities to an export blacklist in connection with Beijing’s suspected surveillance operation.

    I’m not saying it was aliens….

    “Students make up an astonishing 85% of the town’s population” when semesters are in session, he writes. “If you go left at the town’s only stoplight, you’re on one campus. Turn right, you’re on the other. Now that’s a college town.”

    I hear there is also a nice cafe there.

    A few parts of Old Guy Music makes me wonder if the band was channeling Jethro Tull… or vice versa.

    This week’s Powerline fun.

  44. The Late P Brooks

    South Dakota is among several Republican-led states that have been proposing – and advancing – anti-trans measures in recent years. Last February, South Dakota became the first state to disallow transgender women and girls from competing on sports teams consistent with their gender at accredited schools and colleges.

    Where’s my Newspeak dictionary?

    • rhywun

      Hicks stick it to chicks with dicks.

    • Ted S.

      South Dakota became the first state to disallow transgender women and girls from competing on sports teams consistent with their gender

      So bevulvaed people have to compete on the boys’ team if they claim trans?

    • PieInTheSky

      cool

    • Penguin

      Awesome, Tundra.

    • Fourscore

      Now another book to find/read

  45. The Late P Brooks

    Cataclysmic what-if-ing

    Though no one died in the accident, the catastrophe serves as a wake-up call to the potential for more deadly freight rail derailments, public health advocates warn. By one estimate, 25 million Americans live in an oil train blast zone, and had the derailment occurred just a few miles east, it would be burning in downtown Pittsburgh, with tens of thousands of residents in immediate danger.

    Ineffective oversight and a largely self-monitoring industry that has cut the nation’s rail workforce to the bone in recent years as it puts record profits over safety is responsible for the wreck, said Ron Kaminkow, an Amtrak locomotive engineer and former Norfolk Southern freight engineer.

    “The Palestine wreck is the tip of the iceberg and a red flag,” said Kaminkow, who is secretary for the Railroad Workers United, a non-profit labor group that coordinates with the nation’s rail unions. “If something is not done, then it’s going to get worse, and the next derailment could be cataclysmic.”

    You don’t say.

    Ban chemistry.

    • rhywun

      Union hack advocates for moar union hacks. Film at 11.

    • Gender Traitor

      News flash: trains carrying toxic chemicals have been derailing since long before these workforce cuts he’s bewailing.

    • R C Dean

      Golly gee, if only there was another way to move petroleum products in bulk. Maybe even underground would be safer.