My visit to Georgia was interesting- I’m doing some work for a large Turkish company, and their CEO and owners flew in to meet me and witness the testing of the new products I helped them with. It’s always fun watching Middle Easterners and southern state Americans try to come to agreements. In this case, the Turks wanted to get their product certified, the Georgia folks were a certification lab, and you’d think it would be straightforward. Ha! The Turks cut a lot of corners and skipped a lot of mandatory documentation for traceability, but were convinced they could talk the lab into issuing a certification anyway, doing the culturally expected haggling. I watched the interaction for at least 30 minutes with great amusement. No, they didn’t get a certification, but they got a test report, which clearly they were going to try to represent to their customers as a certification… Americans just don’t understand how the Middle East works.
They were insistent on bringing me over to Turkey for a visit. “You can bring your girlfriend, two or three days of work, then a week of vacation.” Yeah, I know how THAT would work out. No matter, I made a chunk of money, they gifted me a high end Montblanc pen, and a box of Turkish Delight they had smuggled in. I didn’t have much experience with the last beyond reading about it in CS Lewis, but after tasting it, I am truly baffled at why the Pevensie kid would sell out his family for this crap. Kid, there’s a world of Reese’s and Almond Joy out there.
Anyway, we do need to get to birthdays, and today’s are unusually numerous and include a guy who lost something-or-other; a guy who was the model of equilibrium; one of our great spiritual fathers; a guy with a problematic uncle; a guy who hit for the cycle; a guy who apparently liked skinny chicks; the ice man who cometh; a guy who had trouble with packing tape; one of my all-time favorite non-porn actresses; a woman who actually did learn to code; a guy who, collaborating with one of our worst presidents and fueled by copious amounts of ethanol, did incalculable harm to the US; the guy who gave Swiss his chin; one of my personal heroes who taught me the difference between nido, closo, and arachno; a delightfully filthy comic who (sadly) cleaned it up for TV; absolutely the best part of Saturday Night Live during its glory days (and that was the LEAST of his accomplishments); a guy who made a brilliant argument for intellectual property; a guy who was as Chicago as Ditka; a guy who set the tone for modern television; an actor so good he had a movie named after him; a guy whose sister learned about oral sex from me; a guy who was an embodiment of the TMBG song “We Want A Rock”; a woman who exists solely to show that Chuck Schumer isn’t the dumbest human from New York; and a fatter and uglier Michael Strahan.
Now we can sigh, take a breath, and move on to Links.
Nice folks, those Red Cross people.
Thank god, our long national nightmare is finally over.
This is twice in a row. Did he suddenly change handlers?
Why does anyone pretend that any of this actually matters?
As a native Baltimorean, this kind of thing pisses me off.
The slowest part of grift is determining the flow path.
I mentioned this song in Birthdays and suddenly got a hankering to listen to it. The Old Man always appreciates surrealism.
Whaddup doh’
what’s goody yo
I’ve not tried to haggle with Georgian Certification companies, but I have had to try to negotiate with German Engineers. For some reason, I imagine it was similar. I donno why.
Oh, and agreed, Turkish “delight” sucks. I admit I’ve only had Rosewater flavor, and there might be a combination that works better.
The ones they gave me were pistachio. I’m trying Tomb Raider on them today and see if her reaction is similar.
Well, I’m not a fan of Pistachio in of itself, so I wouldn’t give it a good rating.
I shouldn’t find that suprising, but I do.
It chaps your ass?
It asslesses your chaps?
A lagniappe from the nice Lebanese restaurateurs! Bless their hearts.
There’s no time to negotiate with German engineers after you use all their honorifics.
German engineers are easy to deal with once you accept that they are incapable of making mistakes or should, God forbid, be questioned.
And use the correct titles.
The negotiations fell apart at the policy of not allowing remote root access from outside the continental US.
They wouldn’t even accept working with someone local who had the access to do the work.
So we’re no longer using their product and bought something overpriced from Oracle.
A friend of mines father was an Austrian Computer Science prof with a doctorate in math. And you wonder why my friend is weird.
Because he’s friends with you? ::runs away::
Run away? You can do the home run trot and touch ’em all – it was a hanging curve, begging to be swung on.
I predict some footage will surface someday. Green makeup and all.
*Walks into room, looks around shiftily*
First
*Slowly backs out of room*
For some reason, I’m picturing Rip Taylor tossing confetti in celebration.
lol I have been confusing that guy with Rip Torn for decades. I never know which one I’m going to get.
“Americans just don’t understand how the Middle East works.“
And, conversely, Middle Easterners don’t understand how America works.
When you look at how much graft Middle Easterners are able to extract from America, I’d argue at least their leaders seem to understand enough how things work.
Our leadership is just dumb.
America, not America’s ruling class. Not the same thing.
“a guy whose sister learned about oral sex from me”
Part of me says “OK, I want to hear that backstory”, and part of me says “No, I really don’t”.
OMWC is a soldier of love.
Instead of this soldier using a swiftboat, I envision a man in a canoe.
So, brown water navy?
Up a creek, without a paddle?
OFFS, they found it inside and that’s news?! I was expecting it orbiting the sun or something.
I thought it was some kind of inside joke/euphemism.
“Hey, looks like he finally found the tomato.”
“Well, he better make sure he cleans it up, then.”
The Dems still pretending that there is no difference between legal and illegal immigration would get their asses handed to them absent the fortification that is sure to come next year.
True and fucking depressing.
I’m still following the trainwreck that is developing in NYC. The mayor is almost supernaturally incompetent, the governor makes some noises but no real support coming from that direction, and the president is out to lunch.
Adams trip to DC didn’t produce a bailout. What will he do now?
Pray? There are no good options there. The seventies are arriving faster than I expected.
Brace yourselves, you’re finally going to get some good Mexican restaurants.
Courtesy of Guatemalans and Venezuelans?
And Africans and Chinese.
That Congressional Republicans saying “Enforce the laws as written — you know… what you swore an oath to do!” is portrayed as “Extreme right-wing MAGA” and the media going along / providing cover for it is pretty damned depressing, I have to say.
But I’d be impeaching the lot of them for refusing to actually enforce the laws in the first place. Legislative Branch really needs to recover its respective genitalia.
Fortification on the backend. They will run on abortion. It saved them in 2022 and I’m sure they will roll out the message that the GOP will put you back in
chainsalleys with coat hangers.I have to admit I am confused by Fetterman.
Don’t get your hopes up. It’s all a game – where we lose.
Well, Fetterman and confusion are like peanut butter and jelly.
Fetterman is confused by himself.
Did you ever see the movie “Regarding Henry”? Henry gets shot in the head and goes from being a ruthless, cutthroat attorney to being a kind hearted ignoramus. Maybe Fetterlump’s stroke reset some brain circuitry.
I’m still waiting for the Lump and the Jacket MMA fight.
I think he’s recovered from his stroke, and realizes PA is close enough to a swing state that he needs to do a Manchin – aka try to peel off some non-Democrats by occasionally doing something sensible.
I played https://squaredle.com 12/09:
*34/34 words (+1 bonus word)
⏱️ In the top 18% by speed
🔥 Solve streak: 76
I played https://squaredle.com/xp 12/09:
*25/25 words (+8 bonus words)
📖 In the top 4% by bonus words
I played https://squaredle.com/xp 12/09:
*25/25 words (+2 bonus words)
🎯 Perfect accuracy
I played https://squaredle.com 12/09:
*34/34 words (+1 bonus word)
🎯 In the top 9% by accuracy
🔥 Solve streak: 136
I played https://squaredle.com 12/09:
*34/34 words (+11 bonus words)
🎯 Perfect accuracy
The main event was much easier than the opening round again.
I played https://squaredle.com/xp 12/09:
*25/25 words (+5 bonus words)
📖 In the top 34% by bonus words
I played https://squaredle.com 12/09:
*34/34 words (+4 bonus words)
📖 In the top 15% by bonus words
🔥 Solve streak: 100
Imagine the job safety.
safetysecurityWTF, me?
Rhy, did you get your antenna sorted out? Wouldn’t want you to miss Saturday cartoons!
Nah. Liverpool is on anyway.
Last Saturday came my lowest round ever: four over par, a two-stroke improvement over the old record from three months ago.
* Driver dug no deep holes, nothing OB or lost, no big misses.
* Irons were dead on: only had two birdies, but a couple more were barely missed.
* Putting is not my strong suit, but I had no three-putts…and no jerks or pushes.
Often one of these three is working, sometimes two, but it’s a special day to be hitting on all cylinders. I’ve been playing weekly for ten years and am longer and more accurate than ever.
Rain sends us to the range today. EDC is 45 and needs revisiting. I’m old; the muscle is….well….I’m half the made I was; the eyes and nerves are greatly faded, but I started out well above average there…most 40-year-olds would trade with me on those points. As I’ve suggested here before, I need to trade off some accuracy for speed.
Congratulations! I usually go around in the 70s. Any hotter than that and I don’t go out.
Sounds like your golf game went much better than this guy’s did
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/12/the-week-in-pictures-context-edition.php
I’m not even supposed to be here today!
So much for my link,
Cheers!
Just hope you don’t get the bad ending there, Dante.
Oh, I don’t know. Maybe someone will bring me lasagne*.
*Italian pedantry
“
Nice!
I’ve always secretly craved one, hoping that someone in my professional/personal circle would realize that it’s exactly the type of “uncreative” gift type that I would love. Like, “oh well-diamonds.! How boring that would be.” 🙄
I got one for my 5 year mark at a mutual fund company. I keep it in the gun safe.
At 5 years, I got a Tiffany desk clock with a message engraved on the back.
At 15 I got a gift card.
The evolution of the American corporate world in a nutshell.
At Ten years, I brought in a cake with just “10 Years” on it. No one knew what it was for, and since I was the first in the office in the morning, no one saw me bring it.
I got a book mark at 5 years.
I keep it in the gun safe.
Well it is mightier than the sword.
The “pen is mightier than the sword” may be true. I’ve found that pussy trumps them both.
Ooh! Fountain or ballpoint?
Reading comprehension for the loss.
Fountain.
I always liked Cross pens but they’ve been coasting, like so many brands*, for a while.
*”brands” = companies and their products is a big part of the problem. Fuck B schools.
People want cheap. They got cheap.
I want quality, but I keep finding cheap.
Pisses me off.
there’s a world of Reese’s and Almond Joy
Good lord. 🤦♂️
I wasn’t going to say it.
I kinda doubt how relevant Kropotkin is to us. Maybe as a cautionary tale more than anything – he was a Romanticist about the peasant class/culture. And he was cautiously respected by the Bolsheviks (even as they were prone to repeating some of his mistakes – peasant glorification in particular).
Soviets of all stripes love them some romanticists. See how Gorky is elevated to great writer status.
The whole facade of communism is based on romanticism of the peasant.
I’d expect some disagreement regarding this piece, but I agree with the majority of it given the specific context. Pasting the entire thing from behind the paywall.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/12/making-students-feel-safe-is-an-arbitrary-standard-on-which-to-police-speech/
Exactly.
And all the “believe all women”, “fatphobia”, “transphobia”, etc, etc stuff the last decade has been exactly that…Dunno if that Halloween costume thing was at Harvard or Yale, but we’ve seen this pattern so frequently, it’s just ridiculous.
This. I can almost excuse many of the students who are just repeating dopey slogans to look cool. It’s the professors who have been filling their heads with rotten mush for whom I have the utmost contempt.
To fix it, these institutions would have to enforce rules that allow the maximum amount of free speech – i.e., absent a specific threat against a specific person or people on campus, the default is all other speech, no matter how asshole, is permitted.
Getting rid of one bobblehead and replacing them with another useful idiot ain’t gonna change anything.
I agreed with pretty much the entire article.
Meanwhile, intimidation gets you 8 years in jail in New Jersey.
We really do have mob rule.
Fuck the Red Cross and double fuck the Palestinians.
I doubt anything sensible will come out of AI.
Shit. All of the suspense built up and just like that they dont tell us where they found it? What a rip-off man!
How is this for reasonable? Start machine-gunning anyone trying to get across the border. Before anyone starts tearing up…fuck the invaders, fuck the Ukrainians, fuck the Palestinians and fuck the Democrats. While we are at it, fuck the children too.
Why? Because they have to pretend just as hard as the Dems that the ruling class is not corrupt, incompetent and wildly unpopular. OMB won’t win, he just cant!
Let me guess…if Baltimore gets money to build shitters they are just going to piss it away.
Another guess…no one can find the money or account for where it went. Noooobody knows anything about it.
Obviously we just give them more.
Gonna need more lampposts in DC. Which is why it won’t happen.
While we are at it, fuck the children too.
That’s MY shtick.
children dont listen to NPR though
Oh, that’s gonna leave a mark.
The lack of self awareness is chuckling.
Silicone Saturday bounces in to the rescue!
https://archive.is/xOXLv
Too much ink.
i could bring myself to nail no2
Too little melanin for my taste. Nice boobage, tho.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/dear-deidre/24986896/gay-woman-fallen-in-love-man/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNTV8A3i8TE
i knew the youtube before clicking
How empty does a person have to be that their sexual preference is the central part of their life?
That is really sad.
Also, the letter is as they alway are, fake.
i did a blind wine tasting Romanian vs foreign wines for 50 euros a bottle. a non Romanian wine won the night for me, but it was sort of unfair as it was a 2010 wile all others were 2019
Sounds expensive. How many bottles did you go through?
8
https://photos.app.goo.gl/LhRJwMgJGETcHope8
“Up Grape” and “Innuendo”?
Interesting names.
both romanian… Innuendo is specially made for the owner of the wine bar where the tasting was, it is not really a major brand name like 500 bottles were made total.
both wines are made in Romania but the wine makers are not romanian, nor the grape varieties
Are they at least grown there?
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1733075627731730869
today in maps
Good morning Glibs.
The Old Man links are great as always.
“it was six months after she had a baby I was like ‘hey we should try an open relationship again’, once her vagina was healed and everything like that. But I guess her hormones from having a baby and there is some s*** I don’t understand as a man. She was like ‘no I just want to be a family’ but I was like ‘well I still want to have sex with other people’.”
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/love-sex/i-wanted-bonk-women-months-31391104
OK….
Turkish Delight , called rahat locally, is appreciated by many Romanians but i cant stand the stuff
a high end Montblanc pen, – this was an example in a training in my company as a gift that is too expensive to be acceptable
At $1,000, I would say, yeah, that’s out of range.
ZWAK, filling in for the Pope, giving out the Daily Ray of Sunshine, Seventies Edition:
https://twitter.com/Super70sSports/status/1732811554905526390?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1733225714168602908%7Ctwgr%5Eaf2d79aa8751c36608e48fa66c8ae16874b52a5a%7Ctwcon%5Es3_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Finstapundit.com%2F621154%2F
The beauty of that – someone caught it all on Super8.
LOL
In today’s version, the mom is in jail and the kid is shuffled off to a foster home.
Thanks for the help ZWAK-sy!
Now I can start day drinking.
So close. 9 he would have made. Needed just a little more elevation.
Where’s Ronnie now?
Keanu Reeves’ Los Angeles home ‘burglarized by multiple men wearing ski masks’ who smashed his windows, stole a firearm and fled the scene
https://twitter.com/MailOnline/status/1733159571873583294
Good thing they didn’t kill his dog.
The sluggish rollout could undermine President Joe Biden’s reelection messaging promoting electric vehicles.
That might be as far as I can make it.
*chuckles*
“Not only is such an endeavor not the federal government’s responsibility, this program doesn’t work, won’t work and will end up wasting massive amounts of federal money,” Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) argued on the House floor.
How droll.
Which part of that is she objecting to? Not enough spending in Wyoming?
Researchers have identified new elements of whale vocalizations that they propose are analogous to human speech, including vowels and pitch.
Researchers have identified previously unknown elements of whale vocalizations that may be analogous to human speech, a new study reports.
Sperm whales are giants of the deep, with healthy adults having no known predators. Scientists studying their vocalizations have already picked out key elements of their communication, namely clicks, sequences of which are called codas. Now, researchers led by Gašper Beuš from the University of California, Berkeley report the discovery that the acoustic properties of these clicks—for example, pitch—are “on many levels analogous to human vowels and diphthongs,” which is when one vowel sound morphs into another such as in the word “coin.” The researchers even identify two unique “coda vowels” that are “actively exchanged” in conversation between whales, which they term the a-vowel and i-vowel.
https://twitter.com/OwenGregorian/status/1733475127159849094
The Biden administration is expecting a deluge of chargers funded by the law to break ground in early 2024. A senior administration official granted anonymity to speak on the specifics of the rollout said the pace is to be expected, given that the goal is to create a “convenient, affordable, reliable, made-in-America equitable network.”
Equitable? Does that mean there will be separate chargers designated “blacks only”?
It means the chargers will be placed in neighborhoods where few if any people drive an EV and the chargers will be stripped of copper.
I hear people on the “Right” (whatever that means anymore) freaking out about the university presidents and how awful they are from the testimony. If I look at the testimony in a vacuum, it actually wasn’t so bad; the stuff about free speech is exactly what they *should* be saying. What people should be mad about is how inconsistently applied these supposed sacred principles are to other viewpoints. It makes the “Right” exactly the same as the “Left” in that the argument essentially boils down to “you’re not suppressing the right kind of speech!” Which is why there is no other support for free speech other than free speech absolutism; once you create guardrails of any kind, the reasoning behind where those guardrails go will be subjective and, therefore, inconsistently applied. Of course that won’t happen; it’ll just mean we get even more restrictive speech codes on campus.
PS: To all the donors and chattering class members who are so “shocked” and “outraged” at how fascistic universities are; what cave have you been living in for the past 20 years?
That’s some nice newspeak Lou
State budget office released a report on budget projections. We had a $17B surplus. A crumb was refunded to the citizens (I’m not going to say taxpayers because of course most of it went to the “poor” who didn’t pay any taxes). Now we are arguing about deficit vs. structural imbalance.
Of course King Walz is taking a victory lap:
I’m sure the budget written next year will be fiscally prudent. After all the progressives are in power!
I don’t know how many of you are familiar with “Cleetus McFarland”. He’s a youtube motorhead goofball. To me, he’s interesting as a concept even though I see little appeal in what he actually does (kind of like the Grateful dead). He bought a decrepit racetrack in Florida and renamed it the “Freedom Factory” and they do all kinds of goofball youtube motorhead stuff there.
Anyway, he is being rapidly engulfed by development, and he did an explanatory video the other day. It’s interesting. He’s smart and articulate, and he’s realistic about what might happen. He recognizes that Florida being a place where lots of people want to live is a good thing.
Anyway, a few of you might find it worth a watch.
Hail Brandon
“Joe Biden has now created more jobs in less than three years than any president created in four, cleaning up the economic disaster [Trump] left behind,” Biden-Harris 2024 spokesperson Seth Schuster said in a statement.
“There’s more work to be done, but his record shows Americans can’t trust Trump to do it. Instead of standing up to corporate greed to lower costs and raise wages for working people, Trump would double down on the same failed policies that gave massive tax cuts to the rich and big corporations, while creating incentives to ship American jobs overseas,” he added.
The campaign also claimed Trump, who is leading the GOP field for the presidential nomination, put the economy “in ruin” as president.
Joe has supercharged the economy by partnering with the unions and forward thinking business leaders to bring us into a green energy future.
That feeling when you get a $1,000 check out of nowhere from a hospital where you had a procedure done almost two years ago … 😵💫
You overpaid?
I hope you weren’t as concerned as I was when the IRS randomly refunded me $400 my records didn’t account for.
My neighbor is mowing the lawn . . . . in Iowa . . . . . in December.
Thank god for AGW.
Cosmetic or harvest?
The grass is still green which is usual for this late in the year. But it ain’t growing. So I have no idea what he’s doing out there.
Getting away from his wife?
I’m in Iowa and mowed for the final time two days ago. It hadn’t been mowed for a month, so it kind of needed it, and now it’s ready for winter.
BTW…any handy tool recommendations for deep cleaning hard corners in a shower? I have some good scrub brushes but they just don’t fit very well. Do I need to go small with a toothbrush or is there a good middle ground option that I’m not thinking of?