Sunday Morning Links of Abandon

by | May 19, 2024 | Daily Links | 89 comments

 

Summer is officially here. You wouldn’t know it from the cool, gray, moist weather, but you would know it from the lack of students. Which means that the town is absolutely empty. There’s pluses and minuses to that, the major minus being the lack of traffic to our capitalistic establishment. At least WebDom can get off her feet from time to time.

And speaking of establishment, some people were established on this date, including a guy who set up shop (conveniently) in the worst neighborhood in Baltimore; Escoffier’s total crush; a guy who was certainly no Erdogan; a guy who was not good but was better than LBJ; his buddy, who was not good, period; a guy who was juuuust starting to get it when he got it; a vastly underrated guitarist and songwriter whom you’ll see shortly; and a guy who’s resting well and dreaming of large women.

I am dreaming of other women, but Links are more of a nightmare.

 

Eating their own. It’s delicious.

 

I man, what else could you want? We banned (((singers)))!

 

“Cheese curd sales plummet.”

 

She could use some famine.

 

Cry harder, pussy.

 

News in my geeky world.

 

“We don’t know anything but had a 2000 word column to fill.”

 

John Entwistle was not only one of the best bass players in rock, he could, every once in a while, write a delightful song. And do a credible job singing it. Roger got to go pee or something.

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.

89 Comments

  1. Sean

    Mmmm….cheese curds…

    • juris imprudent

      “Man, I told you to plant them with poppies, not tulips”.

  2. The Gunslinger

    – “since the outbreak of the conflict with Israel.”

    It’s like COVID-19. The origins of the outbreak are a mystery.

    • Chafed

      It’s really hard for the little people to understand. Better to brush it aside.

  3. juris imprudent

    The Who is one of those bands that if you don’t know their really early stuff, you wouldn’t think it was the same band as their best known stuff.

  4. juris imprudent

    Ethnic cleansing my ass – or is Hamas all of Gaza or it’s own ethnicity?

    • ZWAK came for the two-fisted tentacle-fighting, stayed for the crushing existential nihilism.

      When two tribes go to war…

      But, seriously, that is what this is all about, and everyone trying to stick their dick in that knothole is just asking for the trouble to spread to them. See; every college campus that allows encampments.

  5. Ted S.

    and a guy who’s resting well and dreaming of large women.

    I hope Tres is getting a good night’s sleep.

  6. juris imprudent

    I predict Trump gets a more moderated and tolerant audience at the Libertarian convention than Biden does at Morehouse.

    • R C Dean

      I’m trying to figure out why Trump agreed to debates (a) on CNN (b) “moderated” by two rabid Trump-haters.

      • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

        a) Nobody watches CNN and b) “I can take on anyone. I don’t need to be coddled like Sleepy Joe.”

      • slumbrew

        Also, no audience and mics off when the other guy is speaking. That robs Trump of his greatest strengths (“You’d be in jail”)

      • Suthenboy

        Given’ ’em more rope? That is my guess.

    • Old Man With Candy

      The authors acknowledge funding from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Great Lakes National Program Office.

      That says it all. The ACS is all about sucking the government tit. My department chair has asked me several times why I am not a member…

      • Sensei

        I was MIA yesterday. How did your audio retrieval mission go?

      • Old Man With Candy

        Heading there tomorrow.

        On the bright side, yesterday I did some in-room measurements of my sub-woofed Quads and was delighted that it almost perfectly matched the Harman curves before any correction.

      • Sensei

        But does it “feel enveloping”?

        Be curious how it turns out. Keep us posted!

      • Rufus the Monocled

        It’s all garbage.

  7. LCDR_Fish

    Re: the ultra cold article- does that concept envision reactions that would happen in the vacuum of space being conducted planetside or is it a separate concept? I know orbital labs/factories for various projects that can’t be conducted in normal gravity/Temps have been discussed for decades.

    • Tonio

      We can arrange both cold and vacuum here on Earth; it’s that pesky gravity we can’t make go away. There is a company called Varda Space that just manufactured a test batch of HIV/AIDS meds on orbit. Footnote: the feds delayed their landing permit but they were eventually able to bring them back.

      • LCDR_Fish

        Yeah, it was in my mind because I recently read the collected “Best of Pournelle” that had a number of related stories. The ultra-cold thing still stood out as something I hadn’t seen discussed before.

  8. Trigger Hippie

    I turned forty four today. Please do me the honor of insulting me. No happy birthday wishes or any such nonsense. Rip my nuts off. HK completely eviscerated me a few years ago…it was glorious. I wish for nothing less.

    • Gender Traitor

      Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries?

    • Tonio

      Get off my lawn, punk.

    • Sean

      You couldn’t get laid in a woman’s prison with a fist full of pardons.

    • ZWAK came for the two-fisted tentacle-fighting, stayed for the crushing existential nihilism.

      44? What are you, a child? Go back to the kiddie bar, no adult beer for you!

      And don’t tell us what to do!

    • Old Man With Candy

      Meh, I have underwear older than you.

    • robc

      You didnt even live in the 70s…not worth my time to insult.

    • Ted S.

      It’s too bad you weren’t born one week later so that I could link to this as the #1 song on the day you were born.

      • Chafed

        That’s the sort of abuse Trigger Hippie wanted.

    • Common Tater

      Get a haircut, white boy!

    • slumbrew

      You call that a penis?!

      (Sorry, that’s all I’ve got, haven’t had coffee yet)

    • KK, Plump & Unfiltered

      Filthy hippie! How did you even make it to 44??

  9. Gender Traitor

    Biden’s Morehouse commencement will be the latest in a series of efforts undertaken by the president this week to both acknowledge the nation’s historic racial shortcomings, while simultaneously addressing its next generation of Black leaders desperately cling to the African-American vote.

    • Sean

      There are brazenly Black targeted ads being run on the networks around here for Gropey Joe.

    • rhywun

      acknowledge the nation’s historic racial shortcomings

      Gosh, how come nobody thought of that before.

    • hayeksplosives

      It’s somewhat encouraging to see increasing numbers of blacks getting fed up with election year pandering without follow through, and realizing that they are being insulted routinely by the dems.

      Why pro-Palestine = pro black is more of a mystery.

      Also, every time I see a photo of Joe lately, I cringe. He looks awful—mean, tight, with squinty little beady eyes, and a thin-lipped mouth twisted in anger. What a hideous creature. I suppose that’s what a lifetime of being an evil parasite does to a person.

  10. rhywun

    a guy who set up shop (conveniently) in the worst neighborhood in Baltimore

    Was expecting Poe, after I saw once where his house is located.

    • Old Man With Candy

      Back in 1996, I went back to my old hometown with Spud in tow; he’d never been there before. He kept saying that he wanted to see the Poe House. I responded, “Dude, this is not a place you want to go.”
      “Look, I worked fire/EMT in Oakland, I know what a bad neighborhood is.”
      I shrugged and drove him over. There was a homeless junkie sprawled out across the steps (passed out or dead, hard to tell) and several groups of aspiring scholars standing nearby giving us stares.
      “OK, get out, I’ll swing by in an hour and pick you up.”
      “FUCK YOU! KEEP DRIVING!”

  11. Sean

    I played https://squaredle.com/xp 05/19:
    *20/20 words (+6 bonus words)
    ⏱️ In the top 3% by speed

    I played https://squaredle.com 05/19:
    73/73 words (+28 bonus words)
    📖 In the top 5% by bonus words
    🔥 Solve streak: 318

    • Ted S.

      I played https://squaredle.com 05/19:
      73/73 words (+31 bonus words)
      📖 In the top 3% by bonus words
      🔥 Solve streak: 1

  12. Grumbletarian

    The biggest question about this idiotic ‘hush money’ trial is “has the prosecution proven anything criminal happened?” Seems to be a hard ‘no.’

    • Sensei

      It’s the state. They will do what they always do. Make a laundry list of charges hoping one sticks and instead just confuse the shit out of the jury who then acquits.

      • Gender Traitor

        It’s NYC – Manhattan, no less. Are you sure about that acquittal?

      • hayeksplosives

        I’d like to see more publicity given to the fact that the prosecution has never told the accused what felony they are accusing him of.

        That’s pretty scary stuff.

      • Chafed

        It’s not clear they told anyone. Johnathan Turley has been all over it.

      • slumbrew

        As I understand it, he’s being charged with a process crime in service of a federal felony, which he hasn’t been charged with, never mind convicted of.

        In a non banana republic it would have been laughed out of court.

      • juris imprudent

        HE WON AND HE WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BECAUSE WE HATEZ HIM!!! /there’s your crime according to all the stupid fucks – Bragg and Merchan included.

    • Rufus the Monocled

      What did these sociopath addictive personalities replace it with?

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        They don’t drink alcohol or coffee, they nofap or nosex, they take cold plunges first thing in the morning…good for productivity? Who gives a shit because it sounds miserable.

      • Suthenboy

        Flagellation?

        The way to heaven is through suffering. I had that shit up to my eyeballs and past before I was 15.
        No dummies…suffering is what lies at the end of the road to hell.

    • Grumbletarian

      Psh, caffeine just parks itself in the same brain receptor that usually receives fatigue signals. Caffeine doesn’t give you energy, it just stops your body from letting you know it’s tired.

    • rhywun

      Supermodel Gisele Bündchen starts her mornings with room-temperature water with a bit of lemon and Celtic salt.

      😂🤣

      • ZWAK came for the two-fisted tentacle-fighting, stayed for the crushing existential nihilism.

        Celtic? She just had to Pict that over Himalayan.

    • Nephilium

      Meh. I remember when they were just called straitedge and were disliked already.

  13. rhywun

    she said advocating for Palestine carries risks in Hollywood

    She is so stunning and brave.

    I wonder if her “moral responsibility” extends to children suffering in many other countries.

  14. Sensei

    Ow my ass.

    “If you really take urushiol orally like that,” he said, “you’re going to absolutely get very bad anal dermatitis.”

    I Couldn’t Escape Poison Oak. So I Started Eating It.

    Interesting that big pharma had medication for exactly this until the FDA had its efficacy standards and nobody wanted to do the studies.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Umm, no…it’s hard to believe WSJ would actually publish this. Done correctly and carefully, fine; done by some shithead in a haphazard fashion and oh Lordy.

    • ZWAK came for the two-fisted tentacle-fighting, stayed for the crushing existential nihilism.

      Why do I think some “chef” is going to make Poison Oak Sushi at some point.

  15. Old Man With Candy

    This would have made Links if it happened a few hours ago…

    Happy landings!

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      And I figured it was the blue cock rocket

    • DrOtto

      (((Lightening)))?

    • hayeksplosives

      Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.

  16. The Late P Brooks

    Due to that backlash, and in anticipation of protests, the White House last week sent Stephen Benjamin, the director of its office of public engagement, to Morehouse to speak with some of the students.

    During a Thursday news briefing at the White House, Benjamin said he and the students had a wide-ranging conversation, including on the conflict in the Middle East.

    Ix-nay on the iots-ray.

    • rhywun

      I wonder if anyone brought up the certainty that 99% of the participants would really rather that the left not shit all over their commencement in that way they do.

  17. Common Tater

    “She continued: ‘Discrimination is real, and I don’t want anyBODY else to ever experience something like this.’ ”

    Well, you aren’t going to have to experience anything for long.

  18. Common Tater

    “Drake suffered another big-money gambling loss on Saturday night after the rapper bet $565,000 on Tyson Fury to beat Oleksandr Usyk….

    Fans on social media regularly joke that Drake is ‘cursed’ having previously lost a six-figure sum after Anthony Joshua’s knockout win over Francis Ngannou, and another $700,000 after Dricus Du Plessis beat Sean Strickland at UFC 297.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/boxing/article-13434281/Drake-loses-bet-Tyson-Fury-beat-Oleksandr-Usyk-curse.html

    And I thought you (((people))) were good with money?

  19. The Late P Brooks

    Unreliable witness

    But the prosecutors have a problem. Weisselberg also has credibility issues. Namely, he has been convicted for lying under oath. The DA’s office told Judge Juan Merchan outside the presence of the jury that they believe his “interests right now are very aligned with the Defendant’s,” implying that they don’t expect him to tell the truth on the stand. The DA is not allowed to impeach their own witness, so the safest thing for them to do is not call Weisselberg at all. It leaves a hole in the prosecution’s case, and that also could leave room for reasonable doubt.

    They can’t be sure he’ll tell the story they want him to tell. What a surprise.

  20. The Late P Brooks

    Madeleine Westerhout, Trump’s personal secretary in the Oval Office, gave the defense team its biggest gift: She testified that Trump sometimes multitasked and that she had seen him sign a bunch of checks while on the phone or engaging in other activities.

    The defense can easily argue that Trump was running the presidency in DC and no longer micromanaging what was going on in New York at the Trump Organization. If he signed checks put in front of him, they could have easily been part of a busy work pile to be FedExed back to the company with Trump barely paying attention. If so, there would have been no intent to falsify the business records. Without Weisselberg’s testimony about what Trump knew or intended, the prosecution only has Cohen to rely upon. That might not be enough for a conviction.

    Or maybe the case was a put-up job from the getgo.

    • Gender Traitor

      Hey now! I hardly ever do that! 😒

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      A friend bought a new car I asked how long before drives away with the nozzle,
      One day til she did it,
      Derp!

      • Fourscore

        My old female boss in TX pumped her own gas. Bought gas caps by the dozen.

  21. The Late P Brooks

    Looming menace

    The Democratic National Committee, for its part, had a mobile billboard in Dallas, attacking Trump’s NRA speech. The billboard cycled through headlines about the former president, his gun policies and past comments amid mass shootings. One screen showed the words “get over it” — a reference to Trump’s comments after a school shooting in Iowa earlier this year — while another highlighted the former president saying that mass shootings are not “a gun problem.”

    “Donald Trump puts the NRA above Americans’ safety,” the mobile billboard said.

    Why would you get over a tragedy when fear and self-pity are so politically useful?

    • Common Tater

      “while another highlighted the former president saying that mass shootings are not “a gun problem.””

      Well, they aren’t.

  22. The Late P Brooks

    Sentence first, trial afterward

    A federal judge has granted a motion to reopen the sentencing in the case against David DePape, the man convicted of the 2022 attack on House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, because he did not get a chance to speak during his sentencing hearing Friday.

    The judge will reopen the sentencing portion of the case on May 28 at 9:30 a.m.

    In a motion filed Saturday, the court admitted to the mistake, stating that federal rules require the “court, prior to imposing a sentence, to ‘address the defendant personally in order to permit the defendant to speak or present any information to mitigate the sentence.’ At the May 17, 2024 sentencing proceeding, no party brought to the Court’s attention that it had not done so. Nonetheless, it was the Court’s responsibility to personally ask Mr. DePape if he wanted to speak. As the Court did not do so, it committed clear error.”

    He attacked a member of the ruling class. Off with his head.

    • juris imprudent

      Got to love how they portray DePape as some right-wing fanatic when he’s not even a citizen (he’s Canadian), he’s an illegal immigrant (overstayed his visa), and can’t participate in American elections (until the Dems change that).

      • Chafed

        He’s also a nut.

  23. Gustave Lytton

    A toast to Melba’s bday!

  24. Evan from Evansville

    Ah, Pol Pot’s bday! My Cambodian trip included a visit to Prison S21. You’re welcomed by a 150′ pyramid of skulls, each with a bullet hole and different colored stickers to tell you if man, woman or child. I’m still not sure if that or Dachau freaked me out more. The orderly nature in Germany was overwhelmingly German. Wealth’ll do that. Cambodia’s scrape-by style wasn’t mechanical. Homo sapien madness crosses all.

    Chum Mey is one of three adults known to have survived the prison. His wiki has a pic of his cell. Each about 8′ x 4′ or so. S21s shows a floor of solitary cells, each with many deep fingernail scratches dug into the bricks of each one. And I’m sure you can find the pyramids if you wanna. When ya thinkin’ you’re having a Bad Day, almost always, it could be far worse.

    • KSuellington

      I went to Cambodia with a friend in 2001. Of all the places I’ve traveled to and lived in that was up there in the most extreme. The first day or so felt hallucinogenic. The only road that was paved in the country was the road in from the airport to Phenom Penh. We were warned not to go off any paths when hiking as there was still many unexplored land mines. The number of people we saw missing arms and legs was testament that this wasn’t exaggeration. Totally chaotic motorcycle and scooter traffic going in any and all directions. S21 was highly depressing and frightening in its proximity to human evil. I felt shell shocked walking out of that place. I remember on the scooter ride back into town the schools let out and all of a sudden there were hundreds of laughing kids around joking with us in their limited English. Ankor Wat was amazing, there wasn’t much tourist traffic at that time and we had some of the ruins completely to ourselves. We smoked a joint on top of some outlying temple and marveled at the beauty of the surrounding forest and rice paddies.

      You ever read “Off the Rails in Phenom Penh “? If not, I recommend it.

  25. The Late P Brooks

    Bringing back the V1

    As the conflict in Ukraine rages on, Russia is increasingly employing a weapon known as the glide bomb. These weapons, which take the form of kits added to Russia’s Soviet-era unguided high-explosive bombs, have played a role in Russia’s recent territorial gains, particularly in the eastern parts of Ukraine.

    Glide bombs are a type of precision-guided munition that combines the characteristics of a conventional bomb and a cruise missile. Unlike traditional bombs, which are dropped from aircraft and rely solely on a ballistic trajectory to reach their targets, glide bombs are equipped with wings and guidance systems that allow them to glide for extended distances, increasing their accuracy and range.

    Has anybody seen Werner von Braun lately?

  26. Evan from Evansville

    Thank you to WebDom and to TPTB! I appreciate everything you have done for me and all of us. It’s been a lonely sanctuary of sanity for folk like us to learn, share, chat and gab. Pretty much an oasis of respite for folk like us who, one way or another, tend to be and go against the grain; rub folk the wrong way; and frequently bite our tongues to remain in the social graces of those around or lives in Meat Space.

    Even those blessed at home and here have (the majority of) The Real World to ford across. Far too few lilies for this frog to rest upon. I trust what Paypal money I could send its way to y’all.