Sunday Morning Progs In The Mist Links

by | Jul 9, 2023 | Daily Links | 189 comments

Well, being immersed in an NPR universe was certainly… an experience. The teen boys had badges with their pronouns (and they needed them). There was a remarkably ugly tranny trying to prove that, yes, you can do worse than Richard Levine or that bald freakshow who steals luggage. Badges and banners honoring unions who, as you know, brought us the weekend. Much tut-tutting about Trump and white supremacy. In the meantime, the theme of this festival was Morris dancing, traditionally done in blackface, and there was not a single black or brown face in the crowd or on any of the various dance teams. NPR Lady (one of the organizers) was stressed about everything running smoothly, to the point where she forgot to worry about what I might say to people in conversations. She’ll likely get an earful this week.

Birthdays today include a guy who was creative but not a singer; a physicist who had his own ideas about relativity; a cartoonist whose portraiture is… classic; a guy whose roster of PhD students pretty much defined modern physics; a famous hatchet man; a now-dead warmonger; a guy who may have accidentally impregnated a hat; an impish fellow who was a real cut-up; the first female senator from South Carolina; an actor whose presence in a film is a slam-dunk guarantee that it will suck; proof that Amish chicks have amazing breasts; proof that fucking your way to the top is a viable strategy; and the star of the best cartoon show ever made.

Onward and outward, to Links we go.

 

I intend to use this link to piss off the next NPR person who is shocked by my lack of support for the poor besieged Ukrainians. 

 

“This message brought to you by the DNC.”

 

I’d be less uneasy if they fucking paid for them.

 

I’m sure this was white supremacists.

 

Lift a glass of sparkling Mtsvane.

 

In case you wonder where SugarFree gets his inspiration.

 

One of the various dance teams was called Jack In The Green. Shockingly, no-one seemed aware of this song.

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.

189 Comments

  1. Don escaped Texas

    Her paternal ancestry is Scots-Irish, and her maternal ancestry is German; she also has Welsh ancestry.

    erm?

    • Not Adahn

      A lot of people pretending they’re not really English, and a German.

  2. SDF-7

    Birthdays today include a guy who was creative but not a singer;

    Huh… I was expecting the master of speaking musically. Drat.

    • SDF-7

      the first female senator from South Carolina

      Heh… I know it was a gimmie.. but at least I got that one…

      • Don escaped Texas

        His family is of Scots-Irish descent.

        it SC, so it’s that or Senegal

        speaking of ScotsIrish Carolinians, we don’t know which colony Andrew Jackson was born in

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Teeth of Jimmy Carter, morals of Doctor Strangelove- happy birthday asshole.

      • SDF-7

        I suppose I never really thought about being a fan of PSB and My Fair Lady… but there’s a logic to it….

  3. Don escaped Texas

    famous hatchet man

    “mingo” simply means “chief” in Muskegon languages

    probably dreamed up by the same guys who gave us Tonto

    • Not Adahn

      It’s the major street Between Sheridan and Garnet in Tulsa.

      • Not Adahn

        Er, Garnet and Memorial.

      • Don escaped Texas

        Tishomingo is one of the original counties in Mississippi: war chief

        I think “Tulsa” is Cherokee

        OK is surreal for me: seeing the same place names with maybe different spellings but very recognizable

      • SDF-7

        Presumably Cherokee for “Fuck Andrew Jackson”

    • Gender Traitor

      Also the name of a very sweet doggie (and a similarly sweet wine) of my acquaintance.

  4. Sean

    “bomblets” just sounds so adorable!

    Like we should be putting little googly eyes on them.

  5. SDF-7

    The teen boys had badges with their pronouns (and they needed them).

    Because otherwise you couldn’t tell? Or because they’d be excommunicated from The Body otherwise… ?

    • Old Man With Candy

      It was a difficult visual call. If we took all the testosterone in the area and turned it to gasoline, there wouldn’t be enough to run a piss-ant’s go-kart around the inside of a Cheerio.

      • Sean

        😂😂

      • SDF-7

        Damn those forever chemicals!

        Alternate take… Fodder for future Q links to Dear Diedre, I suppose…

  6. Ted S.

    proof that fucking your way to the top is a viable strategy;

    Happy birthday Kamala Harris!

    • SDF-7

      (restrains himself from making a tasteless joke about Kamala using a shotgun to stage a promotion…. mostly because I don’t think Courtney actually wanted that… but still thought it)

  7. Gender Traitor

    If (((NPR Lady))) is not herself of British ancestry, was she not guilty of cultural appropriation of England’s cultural appropriation?

    Also – pronoun badges??? 🙄🤮

    Also also re: Jack in the Green – Songs from the Wood is the only Tull album I’ve ever owned. 👍🏼👍🏼

    • Mojeaux

      This one is (((not))). This one is Catholic.

      • Gender Traitor

        Thanks! I can’t keep the NPR ladies straight. 😄

      • Old Man With Candy

        Frankly, neither can I.

      • Sean

        You’re turning them lesbian?

      • Old Man With Candy

        In my younger days, I actually did that.

        Twice.

  8. Common Tater

    “an actor whose presence in a film is a slam-dunk guarantee that it will suck”

    Bachelor Party was great.

    • Don escaped Texas

      Hanks is often compared to James Stewart

      Hanks couldn’t carry Stewart’s jock strap

      Despite having a degree from Princeton and hundreds of hours behind the stick of an aircraft, Stewart was so ready to serve in World War II, he enlisted as a private before the United States entered the war.

    • SDF-7

      Toy Story and Toy Story 2 were above average. They lost me around Toy Story 3: The Apocalypse

    • Ted S.

      That was because of Tawny Kitaen, right?

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        Adrian Zmed.

      • Chafed

        That movie had something for everyone.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        Nick! 🌭

    • hayeksplosives

      I liked “Joe vs the Volcano” but it was before Hanks was considered a _serious_ actor.

      • Grummun

        The ‘Burbs is my wife’s favorite movie. I like it well enough to sit through it when she watches it.

  9. Gender Traitor

    the best cartoon show ever made

    There’s a NASCAR Xfinity Series driver named Austin Hill, and every time we see/hear about him, we pronounce his name a la Kahn.

    However, I would assert that The Oblongs > Bob’s Burgers > King of the Hill.

    • cyto

      Heretic!!

    • Old Man With Candy

      You’re a monster. KotH was the greatest television show in history.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Mike Judge is the man we need in these times but do not deserve.

    • Grumbletarian

      The list starts at Futurama.

      • Common Tater

        The Simpsons would be up there if they didn’t run it into the ground.

  10. rhywun

    what I might say to people in conversations

    “Hi, I’m drunk.”

    /me dealing with a weekend of all of that

    • cyto

      Hi, Drunk! I’m …. I’m pleasssss…. I’m pleassssst tuh meet you. …

  11. Grosspatzer

    Mornin’, reprobates.

    I intend to use this link to piss off the next NPR person who is shocked by my lack of support for the poor besieged Ukrainians.

    I don’t know any actual NPR persons, but I have plenty of other acquaintances who need to be pissed off by this.

    If Russia did not want to be the enemy, Russia would be forced to become the enemy. The pimps of war recruited former Soviet republics into NATO by painting Russia as a threat. Countries that joined NATO, which now include Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia, reconfigured their militaries, often through tens of millions in western loans, to become compatible with NATO military hardware. This made the weapons manufacturers billions in profits.

    The ghouls don’t care if there is anything left worth ruling after they’re done, as long as they are the rulers.

    • Gender Traitor

      Good morning, ‘patzie!

      I don’t know any actual NPR persons

      You’re lucky. I know at least two, in the form of my oldest sister and my BIL. 🙄 I dropped by to see her on her birthday this past week. She expressed dismay when I happened to mention buying some fabric at Hobby Lobby.

      • Grosspatzer

        She expressed dismay when I happened to mention buying some fabric at Hobby Lobby.

        I made my first, and possibly last, visit to a Hobby Lobby while cisiting the youngest Patzer in Scranton. I was quite disappointed – there were no obvious signs of white supremacy, and staff did not interrogate me on my religious beliefs before agreeing to do business with me. On the other hand, there was nothing I cared to purchase in that store.

      • rhywun

        Cissing the kids? I can’t even.

      • Grosspatzer

        LOL. Needz moar edit buttons.

      • Gender Traitor

        I seem to recall that The Left’s biggest gripe with Hobby Lobby is that they don’t hand out free birth control with every purchase. Or no purchase necessary or something.

    • Ted S.

      To be fair, countries that had spent 40 years being subjugated by Soviet Russia didn’t need convincing that Russia remained a threat to them.

      • R C Dean

        Yeah, you can easily hold the position that we should keep it zipped up as far as Ukraine goes, without Russian apologetics. This, however, appears very difficult for pundits. I mean, it’s perfectly reasonable to say both (a) we shouldn’t be involved and (b) Russia is the aggressor with no good justification for invading a neighboring sovereign country.

  12. rhywun

    We naively swallow the bait and embrace the flag — this time blue and yellow — to become unwitting agents in our self-immolation.

    Getting the entire west to fly the blue and yellow might be biggest the propaganda coup in history, with the possible exception of “Black Lives Matter”.

    • Fourscore

      But at least we kicked ass in The Dominican Republic (31 American KIAs), Panama (23 American KIAs), and Grenada (19 American KIAs).

      I’m sure the parents and loved ones won’t forget those wars…

      • Fourscore

        “After the failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the construction of the Berlin Wall, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy believed that another failure on the part of the United States to gain control and stop communist expansion would fatally damage U.S. credibility with its allies and his own reputation. Kennedy was thus determined to “draw a line in the sand” and prevent a communist victory in the Vietnam War. He told James Reston of The New York Times immediately after his Vienna meeting with Khrushchev, “Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place.” Wiki

        Where have all the flowers gone?

    • Nerfherder (Non-Non-Man)

      It took them all of 48 hours to switch the outrage machine from COVID to Ukraine.

      It was amazingly impressive and totally terrifying.

    • rhywun

      I’m starting to think that TikTok is run by sadistic assholes who get their kicks out of starting another dope-geared “challenge” every few weeks.

      • Ownbestenemy

        We went from “if a friend told you to jump off a bridge would you?” — to — “Why aren’t you jumping off the bridge like everyone else, loser”

      • cyto

        I actually worry about this with my kids.. they have a strong sense of self and tend to lead rather than follow… And overt pressure would never work to make them do something they don’t want to do….

        But…

        They are also fearless adrenaline junkies who would do such thing of their own accord and don’t need anyone providing more stupid ideas.

        (The boy goes to a local park after heavy rains with friends… There is a big water retention area that is nominally a lightly wooded field, but fills with water a foot or two deep after storms. They drive a golf cart around the perimeter of the puddle and use a ski rope and skim boards to ski behind the cart. Idiots. Looks like a blast. )

      • Ownbestenemy

        There is a fine line of being a teen and fearless to doing absolutely stupid shit on purpose. On accident is how you become legend if you live.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        ThickTok.

      • rhywun

        ThiccTok?

      • Ownbestenemy

        I am sure Q has the receipts on that.

    • Sensei

      The mind boggles.

      This long time sailor and boater really has no desire to be treading water while the boat slows down comes around and does an open water pickup.

      Of course I never liked water skiing either…

  13. LCDR_Fish

    Currently 3hr delay for my SD flight from Dulles….not so bad when you factor in the time change – yet.

    • R C Dean

      Since we don’t know what causes Alzheimer’s, how can there be a vaccine against it?

      • Gender Traitor

        Aren’t the amyloid plaques in the brain still considered the most likely suspect (per this and Tater’s articles?)

      • cyto

        I believe the proteins in those plaques are the target of the vaccines they are working on.

        As to whether they know what makes the plaques start forming, I do not know.

      • PutridMeat

        Maybe “still considered”; however, the ‘foundational research’ implicating amyloid plaques was recently found to be based partially on faked data.

        Many people develop amyloid plaques as they age and never develop Alzheimer’s.

        The amyloid plaque cascade hypothesis may be correct; but it’s also possible (likely in my mind, pun intended) that it’s another in a long line hypotheses that have become accepted truth based on very flimsy evidence and, in some cases, outright deception. I suspect they are, at most, potentially downstream, a symptom of the underlying issue, rather than causative.

      • cyto

        Oh, for crying out loud….

      • cyto

        I had not read that before. A super-interesting read. Starting out with the framing that the chief debunker was working for short sellers is an interesting choice.

        It did raise one very obvious question. Pubpeer is touted as commonly using image analysis to look for faked data on western blots that used image editing to fake bands.

        Now, if I was going to fake my results, I would not cut and paste a band from the same image in Photoshop. That sounds silly. I might use Photoshop to enhance an image and bring out faint bands… But copy-paste faking?

        Why on earth would you do that? One western looks like another. One PAGE looks like another.

        If you were actually faking it, just say “this lane is the experimental subject” when it is actually a control. Or simply add a squirt of your target protein to the experimental well.

        Copy pasting the image really doesn’t make sense as a fraud mechanism, particularly not a commonly used one.

        It would be impossible to detect faked data if you simply lied about what was in each lane. Nobody could check it.

        Plus, gel results are often cut out in publications.. meaning the image just shows one lane, separate from the rest, so you can magnify it for clarity. That would be a good way to fake it if you were going the fake picture rout.

        I dunno. That whole area sounds weird.

      • Don escaped Texas

        I don’t get faked data in any regard: it all falls apart during replication

      • cyto

        Replication is much more rare than it should be. Unless you are directly following the work using the same model, you have little incentive to recreate the original experiment. We should do more funding of this sort of work.

      • Don escaped Texas

        @cyto

        no doubt; my comment is high theory

        in reality, there’s little money in replication, so few are doing it; there’s plenty of money in “proving” that a new drug is effective, so those guys will always have the longest lever and the first say in things

        then there’s orthogonality: the second round can tease out “new” degrees of freedom uncontrolled in the original design of experiment; don’t always know if those were known or suspected or deliberately ignored or quietly manipulated

      • cyto

        Incentives are wierd, but effective. In business I always say, you get what you measure.

        I had never suspected the short-seller angle. In fact, that seems like a very lucrative business model. Spend a 2 year car lease worth of consultant fees getting doubts cast on that new drug… And your shorts net you tens of millions.

        I see the replication problem as related to our forensics problem. The incentives are wrong, and could be fixed by applying a little bit of extra money to do things independently with verification.

        One of the rare moments when “throwing money at the problem” would actually help.

        We have open access journals now.. so a fund for independent replication would go a long way… The “they won’t publish it” problem is diminished. Heck, funding a journal wouldn’t be that much either.

      • cyto

        I personally tried to follow some work on immune system memory and vitamin A derivatives. I tried replicating some work and ran into all sorts of trouble. My results were shakey, because I had trouble implementing the protocol (and my controls were more extensive, requiring more mice and more work)… But my results were negative across the board.

        My lab boss assumed my results were unreliable and I agreed… But it could have been that the original was just a mistake too.

        The lead got cancer and I had to find another home shortly after that. Which led me to find another career path, so I never found out the answer.

      • R C Dean

        I thought that hypothesis was based on a now-debunked study. Could be having my scientific fraud wires crossed, though.

        And how a treatment targetting a protein deposit is a “vaccine”, I have no clue. But I’m one of those old fogies who thinks words should have meanings.

      • cyto

        Vaccine using protein pieces in the proper conformation should create antibodies to the proteins folded in the plaques, preventing their formation or growth, or perhaps removing them.

      • Nerfherder (Non-Non-Man)

        Or it will create another unwanted and unexpected immune reaction leading to a different type of disease…

        The relative immunity to criticism (and legal repercussions) that vaccines have enjoyed for so long has led to calling things vaccines that don’t qualify for the moniker. Alzheimer’s is not contagious, therefore this is a prophylactic treatment.

        Maybe it will work without side effects, but who can trust their data anymore? I certainly don’t.

      • cyto

        Yeah, “,or create lethal inflammation in the brain” is definitely one plausible outcome.

        That was one of the big consequences of the immune based cancer treatments and virus based cancer treatments…. They killed the cancer but the flood of inflammation and immune response killed the host.

        (I hope they get that worked out soon.. it seemed really promising and I am getting older…)

      • rhywun

        Both of you are going to hell.

    • Grosspatzer

      It sounds like more than one person is on drugs.

      The entire staff is likely on drugs. If I worked in that circus, I’d need drugs – heavy drugs – to keep some semblance of sanity.

  14. Common Tater

    “Next week, Mi Familia Vota and Free Speech for People are expected to start holding rallies and drop banners in the states of California, Oregon, Colorado and Georgia, according to The Hill.

    The groups say that the January 6 riot disqualifies Trump from running for office again, under the 14th Amendment. They cite Section 3 of the Amendment, which bars people from certain offices who “having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.”

    https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/activists-seek-keep-trump-2024-ballot-using-14th-amendment

    Democrats care about the Constitution.

    • cyto

      And the definitions of words.

      • cyto

        And election integrity

      • Sean

        And women and babies.

      • rhywun

        And minorities.

  15. Q Continuum

    Not sure what would happen to me in the aftermath but what the heck; Finnegan: would.

    • Ownbestenemy

      She’s a solid 6. There are worse fates *eyes Chelsea Clinton*

      She has a beach bag and then she has grandpa’s medical bag in one of those photos. SF may have been a prophet that she is his actual caregiver

  16. Tonio

    “Many I speak with honestly care about the president and want the best for Joe Biden, the human being.”

    I love the obligatory statement of obeisance and piety.

    • Q Continuum

      “Please rule me daddy!”

    • cyto

      We are living in times where such statements of fealty are not just puffery. Virtue signaling might be your only hope for avoiding actual professional and personal ruin.

      I actually have a hard time imagining the early Soviet years being any worse.

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

      That statement isn’t saying anyone loves his politics and what he has done for the country. It simply implys the humanity of those spoken to. I don’t want JB to be medically tortured, just like I don’t want any asshole tortured. I also don’t want the country tortured, so I hate his politics. I don’t want torture.

      The second doesn’t preclude the first.

  17. Tres Cool

    Hey from the ass end of a 777. Cheap ass Amex concur stuck me in steerage again with the commoners. I’ll have to make sure it doesn’t happen on my return flight. Whenever that is.

    Allons-y!

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

        “Passengers, this is your penis speaking…”

      • cyto

        Can’t you just, you know, not leave your air drop open to the public?

    • LCDR_Fish

      Maintenance issues delaying my 777 but sounds like they’ve resolved it and if we manage to board fast enough we’ll just get ahead of the flight attendants time out situation….

      • Ownbestenemy

        I was flying on company time and forgot to tuck my badge away. Now, I am not that part of the FAA that inspects planes, but they (crew and maintenance) don’t know that. Always a weird fix going on and delaying the flight when that happens. Weirdest one was ‘front lavatory latch’ was broken and delayed us two hours.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Not that weird when anything that won’t latch properly or return to the required position needs a certified A&P mechanic to fix or temp it, paperwork to document what was wrong and what was done, maintenance supervisor to sign off on it, captain to review and accept,…

      • Ownbestenemy

        Well front lavatory made sense on why that grounded us because its the one pilots use. Just was funny weird, not weird weird.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Was delayed due to (common) bin not latching. Nearly an hour all in to put duct on it.

      • Rat on a train

        Racing against the daily thunderstorms?

  18. The Late P Brooks

    potential candidates like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg or even Michelle Obama

    I laughed, I cried, I threw up.

    • The Gunslinger

      You prefer Big Gretch?

  19. The Late P Brooks

    You went to the rag pickers’ jamboree?

  20. cyto

    The NPR folks being rife with pronouns and low-effort transgender folk…. This is interesting and familiar territory.

    These things do tend to aggregate. When the articles about debate judging came around, I talked about volunteering with them and the high concentration of pronouns and loudly alphabet people. Not s much gay and lesbian folk, although there was that, but lots of folk Iumped into the “genderqueer” bucket. The kind of folk you might see one or two of in a thousand person corporate office… But there are 15 of them in the 23 school system employees working on the debate organization.

    When I worked at NPR in college, this was true as well, although genderqueer was not a thing and pronouns were not a thing…. But the same physical types were present…. Lots of pudgy folks who are halfway between effeminate and masculine, etc. The guy who hired me was a great guy… Worked with lots of university students and was super nice. I assumed he was gay, but today would probably wear some combination of alternate pronoun and queer identity. At the time I didn’t really figure it out, but near the end of my tenure there I began to notice that a bunch of the guys who worked for him or who hung around were my physical type… Tall, thin, blond or brown hair… All kind of “nice guy” types, many needing money….. And I began noticing the extra attention he paid to one of the guys. I suspected he was kinda sweet on the quite straight kid…

    Only later did I suspect that he was gathering around potential targets. Today we might say “groomer”. I never saw any such thing… But it sure did seem like there was some desire there. Lots of touching, shoulder massaging …

    I can’t really think of any other such clusters, outside of retail space, restaurants or the theater. Other than that, the aggregations I have noticed are at social events.

    Interesting. I hadn’t really thought about that before.. those events are separated by 3+ decades.

    • Common Tater

      “The NPR folks being rife with pronouns and low-effort transgender folk”

      Transtrenders. If someone is white, they have to be some non-binary or some other bullshit.

      • rhywun

        Yeah, I’d guess about 90% of them are play-acting. Some of them would have just been gay, before that became passé. The rest are attention whores.

      • Common Tater

        Tumblr became real life.

      • Nerfherder (Non-Non-Man)

        White people need some social currency. This is the easiest way to get it.

  21. Common Tater

    “Then there are those who are misusing the drug—they either had a prescription that ran out long ago, or never had one and are obtaining it from friends or the black market. According to a 2020 national survey, more than 5 million people are estimated to misuse prescription stimulants. In the face of the shortage, they are occasionally trying alternatives such as psychedelic mushrooms. But many are also buying counterfeit versions of Adderall that the DEA warned might contain “potentially life-threatening hidden ingredients, such as fentanyl or methamphetamine.” The threat is real. Last year, two students at Ohio State died after taking fake Adderall laced with fentanyl.”

    https://www.thefp.com/p/america-addicted-to-adderall-shortage

    How did we reach the point where there is fentanyl in everything?

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

      Hitler.

      I answer is always Hitler.

      • Common Tater

        That’s meth.

    • cyto

      Yeah. Putting fentanyl in Adderall makes zero sense..

      Also…what is the deal with this shortage? Is this all FDA created? The supply chain for these drugs cannot be that constricted. Multiple companies were making generics, and they are super cheap.

      • Nerfherder (Non-Non-Man)

        It may not be the supply side, but the demand.

        We’ve got an entire generation raised on ADHD drugs. God knows what the long term fallout from that is going to be.

      • cyto

        I doubt that demand can outstrip run the reactor for an extra shift”. They make these chemicals by the tanker load.

        Nobody ever said “demand for potato chips is causing a shortage”…. At least, not for longer thant he time it takes to put in another fryer.

      • Don escaped Texas

        Nobody ever said

        That’s a good point. I continue to observe that people won’t characterize human endeavor in the simple economic language that it deserves. Color me Austrian: the facts and the relationships are right there, but other characterizations are sexier. For me, markets are a first principle and the rest is distraction.

        So they like to say “we will run out of oil in 40 years” even though we will never run out of oil; we will run out of oil at a price that most wish to pay, as has been the case with, say, gold for several thousands of years: it’s around if you really really want some.

        I get in trouble here because I don’t care about the unpersoning (what’s the correct term for the contemporary version of this?) culture because I see that as merely dodging the economic judgment accountability we all have to markets: people are weighing us and voting with their dollars all the time. Markets rule, always will out. People leave continents and families to find new markets; starting all over and retreating from a public are frankly very very old hat, but others want to paint it in secondary colors.

        For me there is no such thing as a shortage; some equilibria are merely less quasi- than others.

      • Common Tater

        The DEA puts a cap on the amount of controlled substances manufactured.

      • cyto

        Which they are so wise to be able to know what is needed.

        Idiots.

  22. The Late P Brooks

    Backlash

    Up to 2,000 anti-LGBT protesters stormed a gay pride festival in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi on Saturday, forcing its cancellation.

    The right-wing protesters, who included Orthodox Christian clergy, scuffled with police, rushed the stage and burned rainbow flags.

    The organisers and Georgia’s president blamed anti-LGBT hate speech that preceded the event, and said the police had failed to protect festival-goers.

    Homophobia remains rife in Georgia.

    Lacks context.

    • rhywun

      Yeah, reeks of deliberate vagueness and possible misdirection.

    • Ted S.

      I guess we know who doesn’t read the links.

  23. Mojeaux

    So tired of this conversation: https://twitter.com/bookconvos/status/1677576719446818817?s=61&t=0EbLCoXZObzh_-wEj8uNCA

    WRITERS/READERS~

    Heard a debate tonight between readers

    one was saying a male author should not write a first person MC that is female,especially YA, and vice versa with female author, then extended it to people writing characters of a different race or religion

    Thoughts?

    I got a lot of flak for writing an Indian hero who never got harassed, so I had to make him be harassed. (That book’s got a lot of other problems, but still.) (And the hell of it was, I based him on a real person.)

    • Don escaped Texas

      it’s best to simply ignore bad faith arguments that aren’t based on first principles

      otherwise it’s all just opinions, preference, unending culture war

      • Ownbestenemy

        Also sounds like people who enjoy a character and then look into the author and get their panties in a twist cause their politics/culture doesn’t match up. See also: actors should only play make believe characters that are exactly like themselves in real life.

      • Mojeaux

        I will say that generally, male authors have a super hard time writing female characters from the female’s point of view.

      • Ownbestenemy

        I can see that. You people are wily creatures that after thousands of years, we still cannot understand.

      • Mojeaux

        As for females writing men, I have had a lot of exposure to men and their socializing habits and I’m observant. I take that and go on the assumption that men are himans too and have the same feelings women do, but just suppress or sublimate or channel them differently. For instance, women often turn their rage into some different emotion (and suffer for it), but men will express it more easily (and may or may not be able to let it go that way).

      • Not Adahn

        Carrie-Ann Moss’s portrayal of a lesbian in Jessica Jones was her acting like a man.

      • Mojeaux

        I wondered who’d pop up with that. 😂

      • The Bearded Hobbit

        male authors have a super hard time writing female characters from the female’s point of view.

        I’ve heard that Tom Robbins does this well.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        👍

      • dontreadonme

        See also; Wendell Berry

      • prolefeed

        Re this: “I will say that generally, male authors have a super hard time writing female characters from the female’s point of view. ”

        I’m skeptical of this assertion. Can you give an example or two of a major male author who writes well from the male’s POV, but is terrible at writing from the female’s POV?

        It doesn’t seem like the internal lives of women are this indecipherable thing that guys flat out can’t understand. All you gotta do is get people talking, and then listen carefully.

      • Common Tater

        “I imagine a man, then remove reason and accountability.”

      • Mojeaux

        Dr. Fronkensteen beat you to it.

      • Mojeaux

        Can you give an example or two of a major male author who writes well from the male’s POV, but is terrible at writing from the female’s POV?

        Not off the top of my head; however, I do think that may make a good Glibs article, so I will do my best.

      • The Hyperbole

        Adrian Mckinty went broke writing crime/detective novels with male MCs, his breakout novel The Chain and it’s follow up The Island bath had female MCs. I don’t know if that means he writes female characters better or if there’s a larger market for them.

      • Old Man With Candy

        Heinlein.

    • Common Tater

      MC?

      • Mojeaux

        Main character.

    • Nerfherder (Non-Non-Man)

      I am so glad I do not have to interact with any of those people.

    • The Hyperbole

      Females make lousy main characters whether written by a man or woman.

    • Mojeaux

      It annoys me when non-Mormons try to write Mormons, because they don’t know the lingo and it’s a dead giveaway, but that’s all it is, annoyance. Few Mormons are going to read that, they won’t know, but somebody cared enough to write a Mormon character and tried to get it right. Example: “Amy is going to temple.” I can tell immediately that was not written by a Mormon. We don’t say that. Jews do. We say, “Amy is going to THE temple.” So that’s an annoyance.

      But that’s what beta readers are for.

      Creosote Achilles said about 1520, “I think you should take out when Trey does [X]. It goes too far.” So I took it out because he’s a dude and I’m not and I’m a heroine-centric writer and he was right. A woman might not have made that observation.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Shibboleths are real, yo.

      • Don escaped Texas

        Two Corinthians !

      • Common Tater

        He was writing to both of them.

      • Rat on a train

        Will Amy take the 405 to the temple?

  24. The Late P Brooks

    “Many I speak with honestly care about the president and want the best for Joe Biden, the human being.”

    To be sure.

    • Fourscore

      The best that we can hope for is to die in our sleep.

    • R C Dean

      “Poor Joe. He got in over his head, and I’m sure he feels terrible about it. He only did it because so many nice people asked him to.”

    • Nerfherder (Non-Non-Man)

      I don’t.

  25. Nerfherder (Non-Non-Man)

    The teen boys had badges with their pronouns

    The feminization of the populace continues apace.

      • Don escaped Texas

        I have continued to find more women who want men who are men than there are men who are men. It’s a shortage, even!

        This reminds me of my parents sniffing at my sister’s finicky eating habits: more collard greens for us!

      • Ted S.

        I get a registration block.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        You can click past that.

      • Ted S.

        I got an error message after that.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        Hm. Sorry!

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        (An Adam Carolla polemic I haven’t read.)

    • R C Dean

      I wonder: Did any of the teen girls have badges?

      • Old Man With Candy

        There was only one and no, she didn’t.

  26. The Late P Brooks

    According to my model, weather is climate when it suits our purposes

    Earth’s average temperature hit an unofficial record high on Tuesday, according to the University of Maine’s climate data website Climate Reanalyzer: 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit (17.18 degrees Celsius). It wasn’t a fluke. The temperature hit the same reading on Wednesday.

    Then on Thursday, the average surpassed the brand new record, hitting 63 degrees Fahrenheit.

    Until last week, no single day over the Climate Reanalyzer’s 44 years of records has had an average temperature higher than 62.6 degrees Fahrenheit. But the the seven-day stretch ending Thursday averaged that much.

    It’s impossible to say for sure what average temperatures the Earth reached before the advent of modern temperature-measuring instruments, but scientists have found ways to estimate temperatures from much earlier ages based on evidence such as tree rings. “These data tell us that it hasn’t been this warm since at least 125,000 years ago, which was the previous interglacial [period of warmth between two ice ages],” Paulo Ceppi, a climate scientist at London’s Grantham Institute, told the Washington Post.

    ——-

    “If we persist in delaying key measures that are needed, I think we are moving into a catastrophic situation, as the last two records in temperature demonstrates,” United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said.

    Are these temperature readings coming from the “weather stations” people have been saying are compromised by local effects, for decades?

    • Ownbestenemy

      “These data tell us that it hasn’t been this warm since at least 125,000 years ago, which was the previous interglacial [period of warmth between two ice ages],”

      I mean…its right there.

      • prolefeed

        How exactly do they come up with this average for the earth, when vast swaths of the globe (the oceans, the tundra, Antarctica, etc.) have sparse or no monitoring stations, and the stations near major cities are worthless because of the urban heat effects?

        I’m calling bullshit.

      • Don escaped Texas

        I’m shocked at how frenetic the curve is: a substantial data-set would likely be very smooth

    • rhywun

      There is that plus outright lying and making shit up. The whole thing is a fucking hoax but the global elite hate you and want you to die.

    • Common Tater

      Climate change will be back next Summer.

  27. The Late P Brooks

    For many people around the globe, the catastrophe has already arrived. Mexican officials said in late June that at least 100 people have died from heat-related causes in 2023—nearly triple the figures from 2022, and the year is not yet over. In northern India, at least 160 people died from heat-related causes in mid-June alone.

    How many died from infections?

  28. The Late P Brooks

    If you guys would just surrender, the culture war will be over and we can go back to the way things were

    Three Southern California school board members backed by a far-right pastor narrowly won election last fall in campaigns fueled by pandemic rage.

    Then they banned critical race theory and rejected social studies materials that included LGBTQ rights hero Harvey Milk.

    Now, they’re fighting for their political lives.

    After just six months in office, those officials face a recall effort on top of a civil rights investigation launched by the state’s Democratic-led education department. Students have held protests, and irate parents and teachers are swarming the board’s meetings, feeling that their town — the fast-growing, politically diverse suburb of Temecula in Riverside County — has become consumed by partisan warfare.

    “We don’t want culture wars. We don’t want Fox News appearances,” Alex Douvas, a parent of two kids in the district who previously worked for two Republican congressmembers in Orange County, told the board recently. “Our schools are not ideological battlegrounds. They’re not platforms for religious evangelism. These are institutions for learning and growth.”

    ” LGBTQ rights hero Harvey Milk.”?

    Drop your weapons and come out with your hands up. Let the teachers’ unions do their jobs.

    • Nerfherder (Non-Non-Man)

      “ Our schools are not ideological battlegrounds.”

      LOL. Talk about living in fantasy land.

      • Don escaped Texas

        Our schools

        the scope of the public sector is our main problem, maybe 70% of what is wrong with this country

    • milo

      If you resist us , you are a warmonger. Got it.

    • rhywun

      In an alternate reality, that disinformation chick’s head exploded after reading that article.

  29. Ownbestenemy

    Hispanic? Unless that is a wig, I am thinking some race-bending is happening here.

    • Grosspatzer

      Hispanics come in many hues. There are many who would be surprised to find out that they are “people of color”, my late mother being one of them. When eight-year-old-me innocently inquired about our Puerto Rican heritage (both maternal grandparents were born there), her reply was “We’re not Puerto Rican, we’re WHITE!!!” Did I mention that Hispanic and racist are not mutually exclusive?

      • rhywun

        Well, she did say she’s white. Ergo….

  30. The Late P Brooks

    “ Our schools are not ideological battlegrounds.”

    They wouldn’t be, if those evil rethuglitard bible thumpers would just STFU.

  31. The Late P Brooks

    “If there was a single factor that was the final push for me to go to Temecula, it was seeing the statement made calling Harvey Milk a pedophile,” Thurmond said in an interview. The state Department of Education is now investigating a civil rights complaint against the district.

    “Oops. Sorry, I meant to say ‘pederast’.”

    • KSuellington

      Next thing someone is going to call Harvey Milk a Jim Jones supporter.

  32. The Late P Brooks

    Hispanics come in many hues.

    I was thinking Dominican Republic