Monday, Monday Afternoon Links

by | Jul 24, 2023 | Daily Links | 282 comments

Here we are again on Monday, and I’ve got a dead hot water heater and a bunch of shit at work that needs 3-4 hours of uninterrupted thinking time, and an afternoon full of meetings. Plus side, the thing that needs thinking about is actual code, and I don’t get to do that all the time today. What I need is a script, but if I hand that off to my developers, they’ll want to overthink it, and add it three sprints out. I just need to automate something because I spent an hour doing it by hand on Friday, and it was a complete pile of “why in the fuck isn’t there a script for this”?

Anyhow, enjoy the picture of my oldest molesting a donut and here’s some links

A famous house near me is for sale, aliens not included. If I found a powerball ticket on the ground and it was the winner, I’d totally buy it.

“we love taking risks and blurring the lines between shows and sponsorship” — I think this is known as the Hasbro model.

This isn’t a bad way to go if you’re terminal.

Maybe of use to some of you here.

 

This will probably make a few of you tingly in your bathing suit area.

About The Author

Brett L

Brett L

Brett set out to find America, the real America, the America of strip malls and serial killers, of butthole waxing and kelp smoothies, of cocaine and maggots. He sought it in the most American part of America—Florida: swamp gas and fever dreams, where love arrives on a rickety boat and leaves when it doesn't have the money for its fourth abortion. Oh, where has Brett gone? He’s drinking at the neck of America’s wang, chewing its foreskin and working its shaft. Brett is becoming legend. Brett can never die. Brett can never die. Brett is America, facedown in his own patriotic puke: the red his blood, the white his stomach lining, and the cold, cold blue his gas station slushie, spiked with coconut rum and tetracycline.

282 Comments

  1. Common Tater

    That pic is huge.

    • R.J.

      The facial mess….
      I have had to clean it up too much.

      • UnCivilServant

        Why is that child eating a turd?

    • Sean

      Your screen is small.

      • Common Tater

        A bigger screen would make it even bigger.

      • Pat

        Depends on the pixel density

      • R.J.

        I don’t even have HD. Kid’s face is 15″ across on this laptop.

      • rhywun

        The pixels on phones today are ridiculous. I have to shrink anything down about 10x before sending it anywhere.

  2. Common Tater

    “I’ve got a dead hot water heater”

    Gas or electric?

    • Bobarian LMD

      Or euphemism?

    • Ted S.

      Nobody’s asked if he checked the thermostat.

      • MikeS

        Or why he’s heating his hot water.

      • Pat

        Such a waste of money, he must be a human ATM machine.

    • Brett L

      Electric. The upper thermostat housing has rusted out and is leaking. I’m less pissed now that I know it was 17 years old. But still not excited to pay a bunch of money to get one that will only run 10 years.

      • Bobarian LMD

        If you swap out your anode at 5ish year mark, you can get a longer life out of it.

      • Common Tater

        “Electric. The upper thermostat housing has rusted out and is leaking.”

        Yeah, sorry, you’ll have to replace it.

  3. Common Tater

    “The pool house did not exist at the time of filming. Production built a temporary structure over the outdoor pool. The Babats later erected the pool house based on the movie design.”

    Huh

    • Annoyed Nomad

      There’s a house a couple blocks from me that has a big pool house building behind the house. it’s not like I live in a “rich” neighborhood. The house itself apparently started as a modest brick Cap Code story-and-a half (similar to our house), but has additions to it. They have a large piece of property – probably an acre, whereas most of the lots in the neighborhood are half or a quarter that size. We walk by it all the time.

      • cyto

        Have they put out the pink flamingos yet?

      • Annoyed Nomad

        Lol. I’ll have to check next time we walk by.

  4. Pat

    I think this is known as the Hasbro model.

    Ryan Reynolds trying to beat Paul Rudd at his own game?

    • R.J.

      Alf and Reynolds do have the same hair.

    • rhywun

      Reynolds seems to be on his way to owning everything but Alf?! JFC that was the worst fucking sitcom of the decade.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        Aw, I liked it, she said sheepishly. There was a lot worse. Remember Small Wonder (et alia)?

      • Bobarian LMD

        Hello Larry.

      • Bobarian LMD

        NBC Sitcoms : “Here’s Boomer” and “Breaking Away”.

        Carson (as Karnak): “What are two bad names for a laxative?”

      • Pat

        I was going to mention Dinosaurs, but that was the next decade, I guess. My step-brother loved ALF.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        I liked Dinosaurs too. Jim Henson ties. Mr. Lizard, “Looks like we’re going to need another Timmy!”

      • rhywun

        To be fair, Full House also aired during the 80s.

      • MikeS

        +1 “How Rude!”

      • Rat on a train

        Joanie Loves Chachi?

      • robc

        I liked ALF. My freshman year, I always did my calculus homework during ALF.

    • John Nerfherder

      I think that’s cultural appropriation from teh gheys.

      • Nephilium

        And the punks.

    • Drake

      Yikes! My neighborhood has a Flamingo. On Friday night we drink beers in the driveway of the house with the flamingo. Pretty sure that’s all it means here.

      • Lackadaisical

        They’re just trying to ply you with drink before making their move.

    • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

      Sounded like a rainbow party to me.

    • Shpip

      Exactly. One old bint puts a colored loofah on top of her white CUV to distinguish it from the 224 other white CUVs in the Publix parking lot. Others follow suit, and some wag jokes that the different colors represent various kinks.

      Now there are rubes who insist that The Villages is filled with randy retirees hosting orgies nightly after Happy Hour and the Early Bird Specials.

      • Gender Traitor

        It isn’t? 😧

        ::revises retirement plans::

  5. Zwak , “There is infinite amount of hope in the universe… just not for us.”

    So, between the hot water heater and your work, you aren’t…

    (puts on sunglasses)

    Up to code.

    • The Other Kevin

      If he doesn’t get them both finished, he’s going to be in hot water.

  6. Common Tater

    “The spots will begin airing during an ALF marathon July 29, dubbed “Caturday.””

    Because 4chan?

  7. kinnath

    I posted that video a couple of weeks ago. Awesome

    • Grummun

      About a third of the way through it, I hear someone say “rawwr”. Absolutely.

  8. Nephilium

    The pink flamingo means the person is from Parma.

    • R.J.

      More likely.

      • rhywun

        Yeah, I think the author of that article has been punk’d.

      • rhywun

        Or pink’d. (dammit)

      • Nephilium

        Well, I’ve got one of these that I put up some years for Halloween. The problem is that it doesn’t stand very well.

  9. John Nerfherder

    my oldest molesting a donut

    Careful now… this site is family friendly

  10. DEG

    Is that kid eating a shit sandwich?

    “The crew was notified by his traveling companion late in the afternoon about his missing status after he had not been seen all day,” a Carnival release said. “Sadly, after an exhaustive on-board search and a review of security camera video it was determined that he jumped.”

    Jumped rather than go to Florida. Huh.

    And, it seems like swinging is for people of all ages — in February, The Post reported that residents from the Florida retirement complex the Villages were using different colored loofahs to distinguish their different swinging preferences.

    Kids today and their loofahs.

    • R.J.

      Shit sandwich in, shit sandwich out. There is no winning for parents.

    • Lackadaisical

      ‘Jumped rather than go to Florida. Huh.’

      He heard from the NAACP how dangerous it was and figured he was safe taking his chances with the sharks.

  11. Zwak , “There is infinite amount of hope in the universe… just not for us.”

    By the way, if you purchase that house, you have to remember that children don’t rule the night. They just don’t, nobody does. And they don’t run in packs. While they may not be as strong as apes, don’t lock eyes with them. It puts them on edge. It might put them on bezerker mode.

    Now, who wants cake?

  12. Tundra

    Hi Brett!

    This will probably make a few of you tingly in your bathing suit area.

    Susanna is still a 10.

    • Zwak , “There is infinite amount of hope in the universe… just not for us.”

      Bingo.

  13. KK, Non-Man

    I need to find out about Elon’s deep-seated loathing of birds. I mean, I know they’re not real and all, but…

    • R.J.

      That’s great.

    • Pat

      Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and roboticist Julie Shah said people often have expertise and flexibility machines can’t match. She recalled an aerospace company asking whether it could automate the work of an employee who had decades of experience heat-treating components in precise and varied ways.

      “You dig into it and you’re like, ‘No, that is an extremely computationally complex problem,’ ” she said. “It’s really easy to undervalue the judgment and experience that someone brings to what seems to be like a fairly simple task.”

      Something something, non-linear, 150-pound servomechanical system which can be mass produced by unskilled labor…

      • R.J.

        Somehow, Harbor Freight succeeds.

      • Pat

        When your tolerances can be within the diameter of a 12 year old Asian kid’s index finger…

      • Pat

        I bought a couple sets of Tekton sockets and ratchets a couple years ago that serve my needs pretty well at their price point.

    • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

      “Stanley’s plan for the Craftsman plant centered on automating much of that process, as seen in a YouTube video uploaded by a Belarusian company that supplied some of the machinery.”

      I think I found the problem.

      • rhywun

        Yeah… WTF?

        Can we not build one single fucking thing ourselves anymore?

    • Homple

      I got “server not found” when I clicked the link. Obviously others did not. A mystery.

      • MikeS
      • Stillhunter

        I can’t view any archive links in Brave or safari on my iPad.

    • rhywun

      Fascinating.

      I would have thought all that was 100% automated by now, or near enough.

      Trying to compete with China on the low end… oof, I’m not a big business brain but even I would nope out of that.

  14. John Nerfherder

    Always live like there’s no tomorrow, because… you’re a dipshit.

    • Fatty Bolger

      Apparently he was uninjured. Very, very lucky.

      • Bobarian LMD

        Mountain Dew Commercial.

        The new “Shit Mah Pants!” flavor.

  15. cyto

    There has been a development in the Barbie movie saga.

    So,13 year old XX wanted to go so bad… And now 16 year old XY’s girlfriend is going with her friends.

    So XY says he will take XX tonight. He and his buddy are going to dress up in all pink so they can embarrass the girlfriends. Because of course they are.

    So much for the boycott. But at least XY is being nice to his little sister.

    • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

      My wife and kids are going tomorrow. She’s ignoring the warnings about the woke, because we heard it all before the Indian Jones movie, and the warnings turned out to be overblown.

      • Pat

        Keep that in mind the next time you ask yourself “Why does Hollywood keep putting out this woke shit?”

        Because you’re making them billionaires, 15 bucks at a time.

      • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

        Or maybe those that claim everything is woke should be more discerning with their labels. Otherwise woke will become another meaningless word like racist or homophobic.

      • Pat

        To be fair, the definition isn’t necessarily precise, and some are going to be more sensitive to it than others. Because Neiman Marxist Hollywood didacticism has been subtlely embedded into movies for 30 years or so, it really has to be bludgeoningly blunt for a lot of people to even take notice, while activist types are going to hang on every Trump joke or reference to the patriarchy. Without having read a single review or seen a single trailer, I can pretty well guarantee you no Barbie-themed moving releasing in 2023 is going to be anything less than a gender studies shit fest.

      • rhywun

        I read the plot summary. It’s a gender studies shit fest.

      • Raven Nation

        So, IJ was OK? I hadn’t read much about the woke stuff (although I knew it was there) – I just heard it wasn’t a great movie and didn’t do the title character justice.

      • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

        The move was ok. I was expecting it to be woke, but I didn’t really see anything.

      • cyto

        So, the results of the Barbie sojourn are in.

        First: thr reviewers: the boy is 16, he wore a hot pink shirt, neon pink board shorts with pineapples on them and white crocks to go with his shoulder length blonde mullet (a holdover from lacrosse). His girlfriend, also 16, is a quiet, stunning, lean, brown haired dancer. The third wheel is my 13 year old daughter, sporty spice, not yet interested in boys, never was into dolls. They went with other girls and one other couple. They all hit Taco Bell on the way home because the girlfriend wanted taco bell.

        So, a diverse crew.

        They walked in laughing, having long settled the dispute over my daughter’s blanket that sent the wife dozens of texts during the previews.

        How was the movie?

        “It sucked!” exclaimed my daughter.

        I raised my eyebrows at the girlfriend, questioningly. “It was terrible”, she said.

        “It was the worst movie, ever.” added the boy.

        They laughed and walked to the boy’s room. Apparently he was desperate to play a video game to get the stink off. The girls were giggling profusely as my daughter tried to convince my mom to let the girlfriend have a sleepover with my daughter… “she’ll sleep on the couch with me!” … yeah, that is always going to be a flat “No!” The daughter really likes her because she has an easy laugh, and there is nothing she loves more than an audience that appreciates her humor.

        “So, what was so bad?” I ask the room.

        “It was all feminist crap”, answered the boy without pause.

        The girls giggled their agreement as my daughter continued to work on getting the girlfriend to hyperventilate from giggling about her mom being fine with her sleeping over.

        The wife offered that there was going to be a Barbie drinking game… you have to take a shot every time they say the word “patriarchy”.

        The unanimous concensus of the 3 carloads of kids was that it was unfunny crap.

        Caveate… they are the gifted kids. The kind of kids where the boys dressed up in pink for a laugh and the girls didn’t. Only a couple of minorities were represented. They are still too young to be political, and too teenager to be politically correct.

        But the over-the-top man-hating was neither lost on them, nor was it appreciated.

    • Mojeaux

      I’m going to see the Barbie movie as soon as it hits streaming. I’m not interested in it enough to go to the theater to see it, but I’d rather see that than Indiana Jones, which my husband wants to see. So he’s going to wait for streaming also, for that.

      It’s not often we diverge so greatly on movies, but Indiana Jones is old and tired and dark, and the Barbie movie is new and different and sunny. I mean, I love “Walking on Sunshine” and “Perfect Day,” so yeah, I’mma watch the Barbie movie. (Point of order: Yellow is my favorite color [sometimes red]).

      • rhywun

        So girlie.

        There is probably no movie made in last generation that I have less desire to see, and that’s before I read anything about it.

      • Mojeaux

        So girlie.

        Let me show you my craft supplies.

    • Zwak , “There is infinite amount of hope in the universe… just not for us.”

      I am not going to see Indian jones, Barby, or anything else for that matter. Going to the movies is expensive enough, and I don’t want to watch stupid. Woke or not, they all look stupid.

  16. Common Tater

    “Trump recently appeared on the “Full Send” podcast, whose YouTube page counts more than 2 million subscribers.

    The “Full Send” interview with Trump generated millions of views, though the YouTube video of it was removed by parent company Alphabet because the former president repeated his claims that the 2020 presidential election was fixed.”

    https://nypost.com/2023/07/24/joe-rogan-keeps-turning-down-donald-trumps-requests-for-podcast-interview-report/

    OFFS!

    • rhywun

      LOL… proof that the 2020 presidential election was fixed.

  17. JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

    Not to sound all snobby, but would you really want to swing with someone in a trailer park? They don’t send their best.

    • John Nerfherder

      There are those among the glibs who prefer a double-wide.

    • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

      “I’ve known Kanye for a very long time. He’s a great, great friend. Of all the blacks, he’s one of my favorite. A really, really talented guy. So when I saw that all these shoes were available, I said ‘I have to help a brother out’ as they say. They all say that. They are all saying it’s a great thing for me to do. And they really go well with my hats and my hair. Everyone says so. I’m going to take those shoes out of their boxes and store them at Mar a Lago, and with the empty boxes I’ll build a wall on the border. A big, beautiful Adidas wall. That’s the art of the deal.”

      • R.J.

        Bravo!

    • rhywun

      It’s almost like people don’t care about the shit celebrities say when it comes to overpriced sneakers with the right name attached.

  18. grrizzly

    A month ago my mom broke a bone in her foot on the way to visit me. She went to urgent care where an X-ray was taken, a fracture discovered, a splint was placed and crutches given. My mom has no insurance in the US. Since then I’ve received three bills for more than $1100 including $49 for crutches. Is this something what a visit to urgent care costs without insurance? I honestly have very limited experience with urgent care in this country. Plus, I’ve always had insurance. Seems too high to me. And presumably I haven’t yet received a bill from the doctor’s office that my mom visited three days later. I’m kind of tempted to tell them that my mom has returned to Russia. Call her there.

    • John Nerfherder

      Seems a little bit high for urgent care, but not significantly so. Was the clinic associated with a hospital? Because that would explain it.

      • grrizzly

        Yes, the clinic was associated with a hospital.

      • John Nerfherder

        That’s your explanation.

        Billing the living shit out of you is what hospitals do best.

        Just had to argue one recently where four doctors got their billings in while my wife was in the ER and she saw none of them.

      • Rat on a train

        They saw her as the walked by.

      • Fatty Bolger

        Good catch. Also, they don’t expect that people without insurance will pay, so they jack the prices up to the max to maximize the write-off.

      • Bobarian LMD

        Call to negotiate.

        If you’re willing to pay something.

        The insurance company never pays what they charge, why should you?

      • Pat

        The insurance company never pays what they charge, why should you?

        The 3 weeks my dad spent in the hospital dying from sepsis were billed to Medicaid at around $550k. This was back in 2015. All said and done, I think the actual repayment was something like $40k.

      • juris imprudent

        Billing the living shit out of you is what hospitals do best.

        I firmly believe that once they find someone who will pay, they make shit up and continue to milk that teat for all it is worth.

    • R.J.

      Yes. It is a jillion dollars without insurance. Sometimes you can call and negotiate down the bills. Huge, huge pain in the ass perpetrated by career bureaucrats who twisted our healthcare into the shit show it is today.

    • Mojeaux

      That sounds right for urgent care in my neck of the woods. I don’t really like urgent care, tbh. They do a little more than a doctor’s office and you can get in quicker. But they don’t do nearly as much as an ER. If they say, “Go to the ER,” then you’re stuck with their bill AND the ER bill.

    • UnCivilServant

      Last time I got an X-Ray at urgent care, the x-ray was $66. I didn’t have a fracture, so no splint or crutches.

      $50 for crutches sounds almost cheap.

      So where’d most of the $1000 come from?

      • Drake

        Obamacare? (You paying for everyone who can’t / won’t)

      • grrizzly

        The most suspicious is the bill for $700. I called the customer service today to complain, they said that this bill is for doctor’s (professional) services. Perhaps, some sort of doctor examined the X-rays while we were waiting.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Yeah I would have them go through each of the billed codes. I had a children’s hospital try to bill my insurance for $750 for children’s Motrin they administered to my son.

    • Pat

      The physician I used to see operates on a walk-in basis with on-site X-ray, ultrasound, and EKG available. I haven’t been in for a few years, but the office visit was around $200, which included EKG. X-rays $150. Ultrasound the same. Lab work was steeply discounted. Think it cost me about 80 bucks for the full annual physical workup. I’d imagine everything is probably around 50% more now. That’s still around $675. Plus $50 for the crutches, I guess.

    • The Other Kevin

      Without insurance? That’s what we paid WITH insurance for my kid. We have a high deductible plan. A few months ago she twisted her ankle, and despite us telling her to wait a few days, she decided to go to urgent care. The visit + crutches + x rays were about $3000 and we’re still paying it off slowly. And her ankle was fine 3 days later.

      The upside was I broke a crutch the other day, and I was able to use hers until my new set came in.

      • Fatty Bolger

        That seems really high. Was it out of their network or something?

      • The Other Kevin

        Maybe it was 2k? I just know it was expensive, and we are having to make payments.

    • cyto

      Our urgent care here put over a grand on the bill to take a fish hook out of my son’s thumb. Used novacaine and a pair of pliers.

      They have a cap of $500, so that is what they ended up charging me (without insurance). I suppose they would have billed insurance the $1,200 and then insurance would have paid $137.50.

      • cyto

        The $500 cap was a couple of years back, so they have probably doubled that.

    • R.J.

      This one is not so egregious. But it still pisses me off. Put solar, wind and even “other” above your primary generation resources. Either put your damn chart in order of capacity, or in alphabetical order. The current order is simply stupid.

      https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/fuelmix

      • John Nerfherder

        The color choices are also shite.

    • R.J.

      This one is not so egregious. But it still pisses me off. Put solar, wind and even “other” above your primary generation resources. Either put your damn chart in order of capacity, or in alphabetical order. The current order is simply stupid.

      https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/fuelmix

      • Ted S.

        Are the squirrels the first item on the list?

    • Pat

      I would have been flunked out of high school statistics for pulling that shit.

  19. Common Tater

    “The deputy added he stopped Brock after he noticed an air freshener on the Honda Civic’s rear-view mirror, which he said was obstructing Brock’s view of the road.

    “His rejection of my traffic detention and his apparent intent to distance himself from his vehicle further raised safety concerns,” Benza wrote in an 11-page report. “I know from my training and experience that those who possess contraband items inside vehicles commonly attempt to disassociate themselves from their vehicles when law enforcement is present.””

    https://nypost.com/2023/07/24/transg-man-claims-los-angeles-deputy-beat-him-after-he-flipped-him-off/

    CWAA

  20. The Late P Brooks

    Is that her Joe Cocker impression?

    • Fatty Bolger

      That is weird.

      • John Nerfherder

        We Red Lectroids are a bit… different

  21. slumbrew

    I’m a bit of a skeptic, but ChatGPT has been decent at producing scripts if you can specify your task correctly.

    It’s been good when I need to do something in Bash for some reason but I can’t remember the exact syntax – much easier than wading through the man page or Stackexchange.

    • Brett L

      It’s M$, so the hardest part is finding the CLI to use for the script.

      • slumbrew

        Ewwwww.

        /teen girl

    • Fatty Bolger

      Yeah, I use it for that kind of thing all the time.

      • rhywun

        Huh. I’ll have to try that next time the urge strikes.

    • Ownbestenemy

      I had ChatGPT, Bard and Bing do a code-off. They all came up with varying answers and then had each make the other’s more efficient. Quite fun.

      • cyto

        Actually, that would be worth a writeup. That is really fun.

        Takes me back to my youth. Working on variations of recursive sort algorithms and binary tree data structures, I began testing binary sort against trinary sort against quaternary sort…

        This was on a 3 machine Sun unix cluster. So after testing on 10k items,I made a 10 million item random data set to sortand turned it loose.

        The next morning I got a call from the system administrator. I brought the entire cluster down, spawning millions of threads across the entire cluster. It took him a good 5 minutes to even pull up the process tree to see what was happening. Ooops.

      • rhywun

        lol good times

  22. UnCivilServant

    I’m really tired of these cooking show contestants who go “I’m here to prove that [Identity Group] can cook/hold our own in the kitchen/etc”.

    Unless you’re having serious physiological issues with your senses and/or motor control of course you can cook. The only cook who’d prove anything would be the blind amputee who has only a finger and thumb to work with.

    • Ownbestenemy

      My wife and I laugh when that happens. Especially any newer ones after watching a slew of female minorities win Hells Kitchen

      • UnCivilServant

        Over the course of two shows, no less than four contestants pull this crap. I’m going to turn it off and cook dinner.

    • KK, Non-Man

      I once saw a dude on Top Chef talk about “gay representation on the professional kitchen”

      I thought “isn’t that, like, 1/2 of the people in culinary arts?”

      It’s like talking about gay representation among airline stewards or female athletes.

      • rhywun

        There are probably fewer gay chefs you’ve heard of than you might think.

        Sure, the kitchens are full of them but not so much at the highest levels. Not that I give a fuck.

      • juris imprudent

        Well see – they are being denied STATUS!!!

    • Pat

      The only cook who’d prove anything would be the blind amputee who has only a finger and thumb to work with.

      IIRC, they actually had a blind woman win one of the US MasterChef seasons.

      • KK, Non-Man

        Yep. And it wasn’t tokenism, either. She was really good.

      • Ownbestenemy

        She was fun to watch and even more fun to watch our stupid media claim Ramsey was shaming her and calling her a liar or some shit.

      • rhywun

        Wat? That didn’t happen.

        Good season. That chick was great.

        The ones I hate are when a vegetarian complains about a meat challenge. Or a Muslim complains about a pork challenge. There are lots of things I won’t eat which is one reason I don’t go on cooking shows.

      • UnCivilServant

        Whenever they throw bugs in the required ingredients I keep hoping one of the contestants just throws them away and says “I only serve food.”

        Since they don’t, I typically skip those episodes entirely. I will not be propragandized so blatantly.

      • rhywun

        That sounds like something Chopped would pull. I don’t like that show because they do that sort of thing.

        Ramsey doesn’t pull that, thank goodness.

      • Zwak , “There is infinite amount of hope in the universe… just not for us.”

        I think I saw something like that on Fear Factor! Someone basically said “no, I ain’t doing that” and walked off. I lOLed.

      • Mojeaux

        LOL My first year at my church’s girls camp, I was 13. Hazing and pranks were attempted. I said, “Yeah, no. Not participating.” Hazing and pranks did not ensue. Much fun was not had by the older girls.

      • UnCivilServant

        Now there’s someone who proved something.

    • B.P.

      I like the cooking shows that aren’t contests, but rather a little bit of travelogue, history, how to actually cook the dish, etc.

      • UnCivilServant

        That format relies heavily on having a presenter I can listen to for the duration.

        Those are in short supply. The contests at least have oddities, and if there’s an annoying contestant, they won’t be back later.

      • KK, Non-Man

        I can’t watch that fucking Zimmern because he doesn’t turn off the fucking mic when he’s fucking eating. It’s an instant channel-changer

      • rhywun

        LOL I don’t remember that. I used to watch him ages ago.

      • KK, Non-Man

        Yeah, it’s his earlier stuff with the ASMR chewing. I seriously wanted to damage my TV

      • Pat

        The Great British Bake Off used to combine travelogue/history/how to cook the dish segments with the competition part of the show, but they changed the format years ago, even before it changed networks and hosts. MasterChef Australia also used to have “MasterClass” segments where the hosts and celebrity guest chefs would put on classes and demonstrations, but that also disappeared years ago (and the show turned into yet another grievance olympics). While looking that up, I also just found out Jock Zonfrillo dropped dead at 46 right as the current season of MasterChef Australia started airing.

      • rhywun

        Ramsey does brief demos during some of his shows but man, I’m drained from that stuff. I’ve seen probably dozens of seasons all told and they don’t change all that much. I tapped out after a few episodes of the latest Master Chef – I just can’t take it any more.

      • Pat

        I watched the first few seasons of the US MasterChef with my parents, then started watching the Aussie version, which at the time was much more entertaining. But the format does wear thin fairly quickly. Especially when they start doing the “cast for every stereotype” thing.

      • rhywun

        I also dropped Top Chef – got wayyy too woke.
        And most of the others I used to watch.

        I might watch the upcoming Hell’s Kitchen – those can be fun.

      • slumbrew

        Last season of Top Chef was pretty damn good – World All-Stars, winners or runners-up from the various worldwide franchises.

        Some amusing bits, like the fact that Top Chef France never had less than 2 hours to prepare something 😀

      • rhywun

        I like the concept. It would have to be spectacular to make me sit through a season of Padma. Gawd she is insufferable.

  23. KK, Non-Man

    Chadwick the 9lb Chihuahua mix apparently thinks he can take on deer

    • Toxteth O'Grady

      I knew one who bit a coyote on the heel.

    • Common Tater

      Well, he thinks he’s a moose.

  24. The Late P Brooks

    Maybe Craftsman could use “We might not suck as much as you think” as a motto.

  25. Pat

    The great flight from heterosexuality

    For centuries people were ashamed to be gay. Now they’re ashamed to be straight. To the switched-on Gen Z’er there is no curse more twisted than heterosexuality. No blight more undesired than that most vanilla and normative of sexual identities. Straight – even the word is drab, literally meaning ‘to move uniformly in one direction only’. And so they hide their straightness. They’re getting into the straight closet. ‘I’m queer, I swear!’, they protest, convincing no one except their fellow blue-haired pansexual pretenders. Welcome to the great flight from heterosexuality.

    More and more youths are identifying as LGBTQ. It’s especially crazy on campuses. A recent survey found that a whopping 38 per cent of students at Brown University in the US claim to be ‘not straight’. Just over a decade ago it was only 13 per cent. This weird 25 percentage-point hike in queerness is not down to the fact that more youths are happy to come out as homosexual. Indeed, homosexuals are a minority now among Brown’s LGBTQ student body: only 23 per cent of those ‘not straight’ students are old-fashioned gays and lesbians. The rest? They’re bisexual, pansexual, asexual, queer, questioning or ‘other’. ‘I’m not straight!’ is the defensive cry of every one of these pseudo-exotic neo-sexualities.

    In youthful circles in the US, the number of young people swimming in the alphabet soup of LGBTQIA+ is soaring. In just four years, between 2017 and 2021, the proportion of American Gen Z’ers who say they are not heterosexual – perish the thought – rose from 10.5 per cent to 20.8 per cent. In Britain, too, there’s a ‘decreasing trend’, in the sober words of the Office for National Statistics, in people identifying as straight. In 2020, eight per cent of Brits aged 16 to 24 said they were something other than heterosexual, a sharp rise on the 4.1 per cent who said the same in 2016.

    Either Alex Jones is right that there’s something in the water turning people ‘queer’ or there’s some serious social contagion going on here. You see it in the celebrity world, too. We’re a long way from the days of Tab Hunter and Rock Hudson. Now celebs dread being outed as straight, as yet another dreary pursuer of the opposite sex. Asked about his sexuality recently, famed woman-bedder Harry Styles clammed up. Why do we have to ‘label everything’, he asked? Model / actress Lily Rose Depp insists her sexuality is on a ‘vast spectrum’. She’s ‘sexually fluid’, apparently. ‘You could think peanut butter is your favourite food for 5,000 years and then be like, “I actually like burgers better”, you know?’, she says. I bet those Stonewall rioters would never have bothered if they had known we’d end up in a world where rich nepo babies compare dabbling with ‘queerness’ to going off peanut butter.

    • UnCivilServant

      Actual gays are less than 3% of the population. Most of these people will end up with an opposite sex partner when they drop the effort to appease their abusive teachers.

      Also, Brown university has long has a severely abusive Political Lesbian culture.

    • slumbrew

      I recently mentioned a friend’s youngest has declared he is trans and is now a she. “I’m gay” would have been the least shocking thing to hear from him and his parents would have been fine with it, but I suspect that’s part of the appeal. I just hope that he-now-she doesn’t go down a medical route anytime soon.

      • The Other Kevin

        There is some push back from gay groups that say that as soon as a kid says they’re attracted to the same sex, they’re declared “trans”. So the T is trying to erase the LGB.

      • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

        They’re all Queer now.

      • rhywun

        You don’t even have to be any flavor of “gay” to be “queer” now. It’s just a cool label.

      • cyto

        True… “I like a little light bondage” seems to count as queer now.

    • John Nerfherder

      It’s social currency

    • juris imprudent

      Brown University

      Talk about unrepresentative sampling of that demographic.

  26. The Late P Brooks

    My shop vac has been sitting with water and who-knows-what-else in it for, like, a while. I dumped it out in the driveway, and now it smells like a sewer out there. I hope I didn’t inhale any flesh eating bacteria.

    • UnCivilServant

      Don’t worry, the flesh eating bacteria infects the subdermal fascia. So it’ll start on your limbs, not your lungs.

      • slumbrew

        So you got that going for you.

      • MikeS

        Which is nice.

    • Zwak , “There is infinite amount of hope in the universe… just not for us.”

      legionairs disease.

  27. The Late P Brooks

    A bar of steel called a billet was sliced from a coil by a guillotine-like device, then carried by conveyor belt through a heater. A machine rolled the glowing red billet into a shape resembling a lollipop and a robot placed it onto a press, where mechanical fingers moved it through several stations until it was pounded into a fully formed ratchet.

    If you watch a few videos of men working at forges, there are a lot of subtle complex adjustments made between strikes. The sort of thing it would take years to get really good at. I don’t think a machine would be better at it.

    • The Last American Hero

      Can it forge a wrench 90% as good for a tiny fraction of the cost?

    • Zwak , “There is infinite amount of hope in the universe… just not for us.”

      Mmm, tool makers have been using trip hammers for over a century. Hand forged tools went the way of the Dodo, and I think Cornwell was the last biggie to do it.

  28. The Late P Brooks

    “Sometimes the ease of installing automation is a little bit overestimated,” he said. “Where that comes from is, people don’t really understand how the product is made in the first place.”

    No shit, Shirley?

  29. Pat

    Can anyone here help me understand the psychology of people who respond to online classified ads, ask a series of questions that were answered in the body text of the ad, then disappear never to be heard from again? The scammers I can understand. At least they’re spending the time on a productive grift.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Phishing maybe? Confirm a valid email (for those that use their normal email to post classified ads; which you shouldn’t)

      • Pat

        This would mostly be Facebook Marketplace. I found the login for my dad’s old account, so I’ve been using it to offload some stuff before my move.

      • Mojeaux

        I don’t bother to try to understand it. I just want to get rid of shit.

        I’m having a helluva time selling an antique bed. Had it appraised at $150 because nobody wants to buy antique beds anymore (especially full/double). People are “minimalists” with regard to beds. I have that much money wrapped up in its repairs and the tarps/blankets I had to buy to wrap it in.

      • Pat

        People are “minimalists” with regard to beds.

        That’s pretty much me. I’m debating whether to take my crappy, 10 year old, $200 mattress-in-a-box with me. It’s not the best mattress I’ve ever slept on, but not the worst either. I could replace it for $250-$300, but it would just be with another crappy mattress-in-a-box, and it seems like for the cost I might as well stick with the devil I know. I’m retaining the conveniently-collapsible metal frame with its gloriously utilitarian 14 inches of under-bed storage though.

      • Mojeaux

        My husband brought an expensive cal king mattress to the marriage, so we had a captain’s bed specially built. It’s about 18″ high (not including the mattress), with 3 drawers on each side, 12″H x 18″W x 24″ deep. When XX was born, I made a little mattress, mattress pad, sheets, and bumpers for one of the drawers and she slept in that for the first 3 months of her life (XY outgrew it in a month). Then husband won a Saatva mattress, which is, by the way, sublime.

      • UnCivilServant

        Saatva sounds like a name for a brand of artificial sweetener

      • rhywun

        They didn’t have mattress-in-a-boxes when I got mine. It’s sixteen years old and that POS is going on the donate truck when I move.

        I don’t know what I’m going to do – not sure if I should mail order or just go to a bed store. It’s been so long I don’t know what’s the best option these days.

      • Sean

        Bed store. Take your time. Wear comfy clothes.

      • slumbrew

        To whoever posted this relevant link a few weeks ago, I think you.

        So great.

      • John Nerfherder

        Knew what it was before I clicked.

        This is still my favorite though.

        https://youtu.be/bmTNBVeThhE

      • rhywun

        si, papi

        LOL

      • rhywun

        Bed store. Take your time. Wear comfy clothes.

        Bed store it is.

        I’m taking the week off so I have plenty of time to looks through the two or three or four shops in town.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        I like foam + no springs, but maybe not right for sweaty sleepers.

      • rhywun

        I’m just afraid of getting ripped off at a store. They’re like used car dealers, aren’t they?

        I am sweaty. Maybe a shop would ask me stuff I wouldn’t think of like that.

      • Tundra

        Ours is natural latex and actually sleeps pretty cool. Heavy MF’er though.

      • rhywun

        Ours is natural latex and actually sleeps pretty cool.

        That is news I can use!

    • UnCivilServant

      Can anyone here help me understand the psychology of people who respond to online classified ads

      Nope, sorry.

  30. The Late P Brooks

    Trained professional

    The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) and Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) held a press conference Monday afternoon to give an update on the self-inflicted shooting of Miami-Dade Police Director Alfredo “Freddy” Ramirez.

    Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Mark Glass confirmed Ramirez suffered from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. “No one else was injured in the shooting.”

    He needs more range time.

  31. B.P.

    Drugs win a battle in the War on Drugs…

    https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/next/next-with-kyle-clark/kansas-highway-patrol-two-step-tactic-unconstitutional/73-75515d1f-7424-476e-9bb5-debae7c8bf0b

    “A tactic known as the “Kansas Two-Step” that’s been used by the state Highway Patrol for years to detain out-of-state motorists long enough to find a reason to search their vehicles for illegal drugs violates motorists’ constitutional right against unreasonable searches, a federal judge declared Friday.”

    ———————————————–

    “With the “Two-Step,” troopers finish the initial traffic stop, issuing a ticket or a warning, and start to walk away, then turn back to talk more to the motorist. That allows them to keep looking for grounds for a vehicle search or to buy time to get drug-sniffing dogs to the scene.”

  32. Brochettaward

    It’s like some of you people have no idea what a Sloppy Joe is (not the president, the sandwich!). That’s a Sloppy Joe extra sloppy.

    • Mojeaux

      Eh, I don’t really. My mom used to make “sloppy joes” which were just hamburger mixed with ketchup. Not bad, but I don’t think that’s really a sloppy joe.

      • Gender Traitor

        Get it while you still can before it’s cancelled because patriarchy or some non-binary nonsense. [Disclaimer: Not made with real men.]

      • UnCivilServant

        isn’t a man-witch just a warlock?

      • UnCivilServant

        Like they can even get their terminology right.

      • Mojeaux

        I see green pepper. Nope. Nope nope nope.

      • Gender Traitor

        The Bourbon BBQ variety does not appear to contain bell pepper in any form.

        Potential downside for you: it contains an eensy weensy tiny little bit of bourbon. I imagine any trace alcohol – if there’s even any left by the time it’s canned – would cook out during preparation.

      • Pat

        When I was a kid we ate Manwich-based sloppy joes at my aunt’s house, and I ended up puking like a geyser. Made me queasy just looking at one for years after. I can’t recall having eaten one since then, although I wouldn’t be opposed to it anymore.

      • slumbrew

        You get weird associations if you get sick after eating something as a kid, even if it was unrelated.

        It was corned beef for me – got super pukey after eating some but I was most assuredly already ill before I ate it. But still, no corned beef for me for years and years.

      • John Nerfherder

        I still can’t eat a French Dip sandwich.

        *stomach gurgles*

      • slumbrew

        That’s a damn shame.

      • Annoyed Nomad

        Cream of chicken soup for me.

      • rhywun

        Sloppy joes were frequent at home and school. I must not like them cuz I forgot about that.

      • cyto

        Oof. Too bad. I make some fabulous sloppy joes, areal favorite when we do group vacations.

        I have the same issue with watermelon. I was 3. I still remember the watermelon, my first. It was a birthday party. I ate a ton of watermelon. I puked so hard….

        And to this day I cannot eat any melon relatives. No watermelon. No cantelope. No honeydew. Not even fresh cucumber. It really sucks, because that is a lot of goodnessto miss out on.

      • rhywun

        Huh. I wonder if I had a melon incident cuz I don’t like any of ’em.

        Especially the orange one – honeydew? Blech.

        Oh and cucumbers are a major gag reflex. Which is weird cuz I love pickles.

    • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

      I thought it was something like a Dirty Sanchez.

  33. Evan from Evansville

    HOLY MOTHERFUCKING SHIT.

    I just got out of a week in medical jail. A lovely one.

    Is anyone still around? I’ve got a story to write. But not today. Celebration time is on. With no booze at all. And I’m happy to have it out of my life.

    • UnCivilServant

      Welcome back.

      And please do keep off the sauce.

      • Evan from Evansville

        Yep. Weed, yes. Booze, no.

        It’s remarkable how much more clean my daily brain is. Freedom felt so strange and wondrous.

        I’ve still got outpatient and I have to see my neurologist pretty badly. Now and to every doc/nurse/etc I saw, I’ve truthfully described my mood and outlook as “chipper.”

        My life is many things. Boring and uneventful, it is not.

        Onward. Upward. Always.

    • Pat

      Congrats! Glad you made it out.

    • Ted S.

      Nope. Nobody’s left.

      • Evan from Evansville

        These hallucinations are getting more intense.

      • R.J.

        It’s just TedS. And now me. I am not a hallucination, as much as my coworkers wished I was.

      • John Nerfherder

        Stop imagining me!

        I never asked for this!

      • Evan from Evansville

        You’re a figment of your own imagination.

    • slumbrew

      Congrats! Easy does it, one day at a time, etc. etc.

      Hope you’re able to make it stick.

    • Sean

      Congrats! 🎉

    • Toxteth O'Grady

      Evan! Some recent local wondering about you.

  34. Mojeaux

    Ope! I see Twitter turned its bird into an X now.

    • Pat

      I heard scuttlebutt Musk was going to rebrand it. I remember when X.com was still the beta version of PayPal…

      I wonder if X.org will see a traffic bump.

      • Pat

        Huh. It actually does look a lot like the X.org logo too.

    • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

      Exene Cervenka hardest hit.

    • rhywun

      Musk says tweets will eventually be called Xs.

      I’m a business r-tard so contrary to my first instinct, watch this move be wildly successful.

      • cyto

        Yeah… Twitter/tweet kinda rolls off the tongue.

        X? Not really anywhere to go with that as a messaging label.

        I get that the intent is to become a media juggernaut and a payment processor and, and, and…

        But still. Tweet works pretty well.

    • cyto

      32 round magazine. Detachable shoulder stock. German army….. He is just asking to get the death penalty in NY state.

  35. B.P.

    Probably already covered, but the behavior of the U.S. women’s soccer team during the national anthem the other day apparently didn’t comport to the expectations of some…

    https://nypost.com/2023/07/21/uswnt-players-largely-silent-during-national-anthem-in-world-cup-opener/

    Back when I was coming up, if you stood respectfully still and faced the flag, you were good to go. The more enthusiastic ones, maybe a majority, sang or mouthed the words. Somewhere along the way (9/11?) the hand-over-heart thing came in to fashion, although I know its history goes back to WW II. The Vietnamese seem to have done better…

    “All 11 Vietnam players passionately sang along to the anthem in unison, with their right arms held over their hearts.”

    The Gulag really does inspire fits of patriotism.

    On the other hand, Megan Rapinoe can continue to kiss my ass.

    • rhywun

      It’s been hand-over-heart my entire life, including grade school (long before 9/11).

      But… ugh. I hate that this is a thing that people write about.

      On the other hand, Megan Rapinoe can continue to kiss my ass.

      Same. At least she isn’t kneeling anymore. I’m fine with absence of displays of patriotism, but disrespect is too far.

      • cyto

        Agree on hand over heart. At some point just standing at attention became OK.

        But Rapinoe is the one who made this an issue. She said she would never sing the anthem or stand for the anthem again… So that out a bullseye in their behavior.

    • slumbrew

      “That’s a cancelin’”

  36. Tundra
    • B.P.

      Looking at the World Health Organization slide, I’m definitely not getting a camel.

      • Tundra

        It appears that if you don’t fuck it you should be fine.

      • John Nerfherder

        Well… shit

    • slumbrew

      Panic

      (I had to)

    • cyto

      Best reply: “Still too early for an election year pandemic virus. Wait until Jan-Feb to worry”

  37. Derpetologist

    Suggested attack ad #1

    A split screen of this and
    this.

  38. Derpetologist

    Suggested attack ad #2

    A split screen of this and this.

    • slumbrew

      Wow.

      “Damn good job”. Two movies, one screen.

  39. B.P.

    The youtube algorithm seems to think I want to see beleaguered UK motorists smacking around Just Stop Oil protestors.

    It’s not wrong.

    • slumbrew

      No, it’s not wrong.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        Oi, me barnet! 👱🏻‍♀️

  40. Shpip

    I don’t have a spare $12M for the Cocoon house, but I think I’d try every avenue to finance it if the place came with 23-year old Tahnee Welch. (mildly NSFW)

    • slumbrew

      Damn, those are some good genes.

      Surprised she didn’t end up doing more.

    • rhywun

      Li’l rhywun did appreciate Guttenberg’s dopey charms and nice bod. But damn, I think I have only seen that movie once and it was in the early 90s.

    • Derpetologist

      Well, good on him for saying something smart for once. Maybe someday he will apply the same logic to so-called hate speech.

  41. Derpetologist

    Suggested attack #3

    This song playing while this clip is slowed down by 50%.

    OK, I’ll stop for now.

  42. Derpetologist

    The original title of my novella was I, Rambo. I meant it as an homage to I, Robot, which in turn was a nod to I, Claudius. I wrote to David Morrell, creator of Rambo for permission to use his character and he was kind enough to respond. He said fan fiction is OK, but since Rambo is copyrighted, I can’t publish a story with that name. OK, no problem. I re-wrote the story to remove any mention of Rambo, though a brief portion of the story was similar to the First Blood movie. The new title is I, Soldier.

    He said I wrote the story not because I liked the name, but because I liked the character. It was cool to get free writing advice from a best-selling novelist.

    In my last email to him, I asked if he thought Hercule Poirot was a rip-off of Sherlock Holmes or if Jack Reacher is a rip-off of John Rambo (both are loner Army vets with violent tendencies and even have the same initials). My point was that when writing fiction, it’s inevitable you will create a character or plot similar to something that already exists. Picasso said: mediocre artists imitate; great artists steal. I’m sure he meant that as a joke, but there is truth to it.

    Anyway, I got some writing practice. The story is about 45,000 words long. It’s the longest piece of fiction I’ve ever written. I take some pride in that.

    My new writing project is a kind of rambling memoir. I wrote my autobiography last year. The feedback has been interesting.

  43. R.J.

    Just watched an ACLU commercial. They can screw off. “Constitutional rights” my ass. Not a damn thing spoken was an actual constitutional right.

    • Toxteth O'Grady

      The 1787 Project.

  44. Mojeaux

    I have ordered craft supplies twice from Temu and been happy with both orders. Also returned something and am happy with that process. You get lots for cheap if you’re willing to wait.

    • KK, Non-Man

      I keep seeing ads for that

      • Mojeaux

        Yeah, they are all over the place and frequent, too. I finally went on YouTube for some unboxings and everybody was happy, so I decided to give it a whirl, and what do you know. I like the stuff. I like the price (cheap!). And I’m willing to wait a few days.

        Shit, I pay for Prime and can’t get anything overnight anymore.