Monday Afternoon Links

by | Sep 23, 2024 | Daily Links | 143 comments

The Change of Season cold hit, right on time. I have pounded some Tylenol and will get these here links done, regardless! Take that, pesky virus.

  • Paging OMWC, OMWC to the Red Courtesy Phone.
  • You know who else promised to restore order?
  • OK, enough levity – now for the serious news we all deserve.
  • You people need to eat moar chocolate!

Music.

Comment section is yours.

About The Author

Swiss Servator

Swiss Servator

Currently serving at the pleasure of a Swiss multinational. Previously a Soldier, rugby player, lawyer, bouncer, bartender, substitute teacher, risk manager, and cubicle mushroom. Will work for raclette.

143 Comments

  1. MikeS

    Gunman Left Note for Failed Trump Assassination Attempt

    “Dear World, This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I am so sorry I failed you,” the handwritten note from Ryan Wesley Routh said. “I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster. It’s up to you to finish the job; and I will offer $150,000 to whomever can complete the job.”

    -insert Secret Service approved joke here-

    • Drake

      Thank you DOJ for helping put a bounty on Trump. Fine work there.

      • MikeS

        That was my first thought. They withhold evidence all the time for “security” reasons, but this is fine to broadcast to the world?

      • SDF-7

        Yup… that was the comment most places I read about this this morning — “You suppress the Tennessee trans shooter to avoid ‘copycats’… but you literally let a nutcase put a bounty on a Presidential candidate by publishing this? WTF?”

        If there was an encyclopedia entry for “Foreseeable consequences are not unintended” this would certainly look to be a good candidate.

      • Urthona

        This will no doubt appeal to the world’s dumbest hit man who likes to be paid for jobs afterwards by people in prison.

      • R C Dean

        Well, they’re prosecuting him. Why not?

      • rhywun

        They withhold evidence all the time for “security” reasons, but this is fine to broadcast to the world?

        Obvious conclusions are obvious.

      • Drake

        Still no sign of the visitor list to Epstein Island.

      • The Bearded Hobbit

        “Yes gentlemen, they are on their way in, and nobody can bring them back. For the sake of our country, and our way of life, I suggest you get the rest of SAC in after them. Otherwise, we will be totally destroyed by Red retaliation. My boys will give you the best kind of start, 1400 megatons worth, and you sure as hell won’t stop them now.” So let’s get going, there’s no other choice. God willing, we will prevail, in peace and freedom from fear, and in true health, through the purity and essence of our natural fluids. God bless you all.”

      • trshmnstr

        This will no doubt appeal to the world’s dumbest hit man who likes to be paid for jobs afterwards by people in prison.

        Or to the mentally unstable people susceptible to thinking that assassinating a president is a good idea in the first place.

      • juris imprudent

        assassinating a president is a good idea in the first place

        Well, it’s probably not a good idea, but heck, for $150grand – you sure this guy is good for that kind of money?

    • Nephilium

      Found scribbled at the end of the note in different handwriting was an addendum:

      “I totally did this all by myself with no assistance from any agency. Honest.”

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      gumption?

      Who talks like that these days?

      • Urthona

        I personally felt his assassination attempt was somewhere between the bees knees and groovy.

      • SDF-7

        That was pretty wizard, Urthona.

      • The Other Kevin

        About half the people here talk like that, you whippersnapper.

      • DrOtto

        Sounds like malarkey to me.

    • R C Dean

      I thought this guy was broke. Where’s he getting $150K* in cash?

      *oddly specific, no?

      • Suthenboy

        Where, oh where indeed. It is a mystery we may never solve.

      • Urthona

        So when you’re hiring a hit now there’s a button for “Affirm” financing which you can then pay off in monthly installments.

    • Gustave Lytton

      $150K? Trump is the biggest target ever. Even Jesus Christ got offed for only 30 pieces of silver.

  2. MikeS

    You know who else promised to restore order?

    Joe Biden?

    • Ted S.

      Henry Martyn Robert?

      • Tundra

        Melvil Dewey?

    • The Gunslinger

      Kenesaw Mountain Landis?

    • bacon-magic

      100,000,000 autists?

    • Suthenboy

      Mrs. Davidson in the 4th grade?

      • Sensei

        Will it “spark joy”?

    • Swiss Servator

      By God, there are several terrific answers here. Was not disappoint.

    • Pope Jimbo

      Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck?

  3. Dr. Fronkensteen

    You know who else promised to restore order?
    Khan Noonien Singh

    You people need to eat moar chocolate!
    What do you mean you people?

    • SDF-7

      Khan certainly works — but I was thinking of Anakin and his quest to address the dichotomy with his thesis.

  4. Tundra

    That cat video might be the best I’ve ever seen.

    “Call the cops! That fucking cat is back!”

  5. Shpip

    Nestlé, with a brand value of over 18.5 billion Swiss francs, remains the most valuable Swiss brand, according to the latest ranking by the London-based brand valuation consultancy Brand Finance. However, the multinational food giant has experienced a significant loss in brand value.

    Swiss’s corporate masters are sending the jet to whisk him off to Geneva so he can explain what’s going on.

    Call sign: Tobler One.

    • SDF-7

      He should be glad the rumored takeover by Musk didn’t pan out. He’d have to report to his superiors at the Mars bar.

      • Urthona

        Heyo!

      • The Other Kevin

        I heard about that on the news from one of those policy wonkas.

      • Bobarian LMD

        There’s gonna be Mounds of paperwork. And no Joy.

      • Gustave Lytton

        If he doesn’t show up, there’ll be a Bounty put out.

    • Bobarian LMD

      Does Nestle even make chocolate?

    • Swiss Servator

      *MASS NARROWED GAZE*

    • Grumbletarian

      Significant loss in value? They’re only worth a hundred grand now.

      • SDF-7

        You can’t even take out a hit on a President for that!

        Suggest it to a room full of nutty hitmen and all you’ll get are snickers.

  6. The Other Kevin

    So is this French government an improvement? I can’t tell with European elections, what with the conservative and the liberal and the labor and the whatnot.

    • Urthona

      They’re also just different degrees of socialist.

      Like American elections now.

      • The Other Kevin

        I figured that was the case, I didn’t see them hyperventilating about any politician in particular.

      • rhywun

        The hyperventilating comes when any politician expresses the mildest hesitation at letting in millions of brown people.

  7. Shpip

    Well, it was a nice run

    Kmart, once one of America’s leading discount retailers, is closing its last full-size store in the mainland United States.

    The store, in Bridgehampton, New York, on Long Island, is due to close October 20, according to an employee who answered the phone at the store Monday morning who did not want to give her name.

    Remember those Blue Light Specials? They were the bee’s knees.

    • Urthona

      I thought they were groovy in a far out way.

      • SDF-7

        By the time I was a shopper – there were few truly radical deals. It was just bogus, man.

    • CatchTheCarp

      I never knew that K-Mart was originally Kreske’s. Sorry to hear they will be joining Zayre’s and Venture stores on the dust heap.

      • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

        Don’t forget Sears, who put a lot of other businesses out of, well, business.

    • Pope Jimbo

      My first job out of college, I was working with a lot of guys who had just rotated off of a project with K-Mart. The stats they had about the clientele of K-Mart was astonishing.

      If you were a shoplifter or a bad check writer, K-Mart was your favorite store.

      I have to admit, Mrs. Holiness and I stretched the few dollars we had by going to some very sketchy K-Marts. I still have a soft spot for them.

    • Sean

      WOW.

      That’s way worse than I thought originally.

      FUCK.

      • Bobarian LMD

        Only imaginary Russian influence involving OMB is impeachable.

    • Drake

      He has to fly an unelected dictator to a swing state – for democracy.

    • Suthenboy

      Impeachable offenses and sedition seem to be all the rage in DC these days.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Milley and Brennan approved this message.

  8. The Late P Brooks

    Wrong

    veryone knows that electric vehicles are supposed to be better for the planet than gas cars. That’s the driving reason behind a global effort to transition toward batteries.

    But what about the harms caused by mining for battery minerals? And coal-fired power plants for the electricity to charge the cars? And battery waste? Is it really true that EVs are better?

    The answer is yes. But Americans are growing less convinced.

    ——-

    Put differently: The idea that his work shows EVs are worse for the environment would make sense only if you ignore the existence of climate change.

    Molden says the climate benefits of EVs are important. His work is about a specific trade-off.

    “Those people misusing it don’t bring out that tension,” he says. “They conflate and blur and obfuscate and play fast and loose with the definitions. And that’s completely wrong.”

    Once you plug this giant correction factor I pulled out of my ass into the equation, the benefits of EVs are astronomically higher than the costs.

    • Urthona

      I mean this has been going back and forth for years.

      I no longer have any idea if EVs are a net positive for the environment.

      Conservatives will fudge because they fear socialism.

      Left wingers will fudge because they want socialism.

      No one actually knows or cares whether EVs are a net benefit in the long run.

      But I can tell you one thing now. Without subsidies, the market for EVs looks vanishingly small.

      And that’s very telling.

    • SDF-7

      “My model is perfectly correct… according to my model! SCIENCE!”

      Brings this to mind from this morning… sure the goal is to return you to a life where you can’t afford power, food or transportation by driving up the costs through regulation…. but once all you peons are dead then the climate will be great!

    • The Other Kevin

      I looked around my neighborhood and saw no strip mines or kids dying from cancer.

      • Urthona

        Well la dee da.

        *queues Vivaldi’s Four Seasons*

      • Bobarian LMD

        Open mines? Pshaw!

        Did you even look into your own orphan mine?

        Those little bastards would run off if you let em have fresh air!

    • Suthenboy

      I thought CO2 emissions were the driver of global warming? So…burning 10x as much hydrocarbons to generate an equivalent amount of energy for electricity is…better?
      Can these grifters even hear themselves?

      “We need a fake global crisis and we have to get the scientific community on board (to dramatically reduce human population) ” – Margaret Mead, Paul Erlicht and pals at the ’76? environmental conference. It was so evil and insane I never dreamt they would get any traction.

    • R C Dean

      “The idea that his work shows EVs are worse for the environment would make sense only if you ignore the existence of climate change.”

      Sounds to me like an admission that EVs are, in fact, worse for the environment in the short and medium term. Their benefits depend entirely on climate change, which is a long term problem (if it is a problem at all, of course).

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        Bingo.

        Environmentalists have become a single ticket racket. It’s all climate change all the time. Of course huge strip mines in countries with virtual slave labor and a horrid track record of environmental catastrophes are no longer a big deal.

  9. The Late P Brooks

    Analysts say these are good arguments for smaller cars, cleaner grids, better mining, more recycling, more transit and walkable cities. They may support a case for plug-in hybrid vehicles; it depends how people use them.

    But they’re not an environmental case for traditional gas cars. EVs still beat gas.

    There is zero cost associated with a forced wholesale replacement of the transportation base.

    • Suthenboy

      “EVs still beat gas”

      Numbers and evidence says otherwise.

    • Fourscore

      “Analysts say these are good arguments for smaller cars”

      I’ll take a big ol’ truck. Ain’t no smaller car in my future. If an electric hearse shows up I ain’t gettin’ in.

  10. Suthenboy

    All of the breaking news! from the last 20 years has, without exception, been obvious shit we all already knew.

    Also, the Diddy thing, I saw the pics from the parties. He pissed someone off. Hollywood trash has always had drug fueled screwin’ parties.

    Linked on the chopstick page: ‘Bear wanders into middle school cafeteria in Colorado’
    It was breakfast and they were serving Honey Nut Cheerios. What did they expect?

    “…challenging macroeconomic conditions.” Is that what they are calling ‘deliberate destruction of the market’ these days? What happened to ‘Bidenomics’?

    • Urthona

      I don’t follow pop that much but I’m personally looking forward to finding out J Bieber was sodomized by P Diddy. I t involves a bet I made. long story.

      • bacon-magic

        I would normally not believe such a statement but you look like a seedy pickle so here we are.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Bacon with the sizzle.

    • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

      Drug Fueled Screwin’ Parties!

      Now that is a greatest hits album.

      • Urthona

        You know for libertarians we don’t have nearly enough of those.

        Wait.

        There’s women here right?

      • trshmnstr

        You know for libertarians we don’t have nearly enough of those.

        Where’s that article about that guy with a cucumber up his butt?

      • Urthona

        I totally just hit on this entire message board.

        But, you know, it’s cool if y’all aren’t into it.

      • juris imprudent

        There’s women here right?

        In a group where the number three priority is butt sex?

      • Mojeaux

        No homo.

  11. The Late P Brooks

    Spies on wheels

    The U.S. Commerce Department on Monday proposed prohibiting key Chinese software and hardware in connected vehicles on American roads due to national security concerns – a move that would effectively bar nearly all Chinese cars from entering the U.S. market.

    The planned regulation, first reported by Reuters, would also force American and other major automakers in the coming years to remove key Chinese software and hardware from vehicles in the United States.

    The Biden administration has raised serious concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on U.S. drivers and infrastructure through connected vehicles as well as about potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the internet and navigation systems. The White House ordered an investigation into the potential dangers in February.

    Did Biden invite Shawn Fain to the announcement?

    You can’t spy on American drivers. That’s our job.

    • Gustave Lytton

      How about commercial vehicle dash cams with cloud streaming? I’m sure there’s a foreign (already assume there’s multiple domestic) intelligence agency that is having a field day with the amount of streaming video they now have available.

      • LCDR_Fish

        I’ve seen a bunch of videos on twitter and on the ADV China podcast showing Chinese EVs just going out of control after getting rear-ended/tapped (small interactions) – running over people randomly and going the wrong direction down the road smashing into cars, motorcycles, pedestrians, etc.

        Unlike some of the COVID scare vids out of China before it got over here…I don’t see these ones directly benefiting the CCP or their lackeys.

      • Suthenboy

        It is impossible to overstate – everything the chinese do is a scam from stem to stern. They are the lowest trust society in the world for good reason. To enter into any kind of deal with them, allow them in your house in any way, etc is beyond foolish.

  12. The Late P Brooks

    The prohibitions would prevent testing of self-driving cars on U.S. roads by Chinese automakers and extend to vehicle software and hardware produced by other U.S. foreign adversaries including Russia.

    “When foreign adversaries build software to make a vehicle that means it can be used for surveillance, can be remotely controlled, which threatens the privacy and safety of Americans on the road,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told a briefing.

    “In an extreme situation, a foreign adversary could shut down or take control of all their vehicles operating in the United States all at the same time causing crashes, blocking roads.”

    Robot kamikaze kars!

  13. kinnath

    Back home from Honey Harvest. We were a few minutes late, and everyone had bailed out early. Very strange.

    But we had a pleasant afternoon with Fourscore, Mrs. Fourscore, and Threescore.

    • SDF-7

      Sweet!

    • Tundra

      Nice!

      How was Grandview?

      • kinnath

        Great. We were over on Roy Lake about 1/2 mile or so from the main lodge.

        Very quiet. The deck at the cabin sits about 3 feet back from the edge of the lake.

    • MikeS

      Threescore is a nice guy. I was glad to get to meet him.

      • Fourscore

        MikeS, Was it you that told him to get a haircut?

      • MikeS

        No, that was you.

      • Tundra

        LOL!

        Is this the cowboy son?

  14. LCDR_Fish

    https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/09/the-abortion-pill-killed-these-women-its-supporters-blamed-pro-lifers/

    …Goldberg acknowledges, as if this is a thing of little concern, that “in about 3 percent to 5 percent of cases, women end up needing either another dose of misoprostol, one of the two drugs in the regimen, or surgery.” That means that one woman out of 20 or 25 could bleed out if she isn’t fully informed and prepared for the consequences of a drug that Goldberg describes as “safer than penicillin or Viagra,” and which other enthusiasts regularly describe as “safer than Tylenol.” Surana calls it “a rare complication,” as if it’s an exotic disease rather than the completely predictable risk of a pill. A 3 to 5 percent chance of death from sepsis, if untreated, seems like a hazard that ought to be communicated to women by a doctor with some urgency.

    How rare is 3 to 5 percent? It’s much more common than the share of abortions that result from rape or incest. It’s much, much more common than the proportion of guns used in a violent crime, let alone a school shooting.

    This spring, the Supreme Court turned away lawsuits by pro-life physicians who argued that the FDA’s loosening of these rules was dumping more bleeding women into their emergency rooms. The narrow grounds for the ruling was, in effect, that it was no particular harm to the doctors if the pill killed their patients. The justices may sleep well at night, knowing it’s not their job to right every wrong if there’s no proper lawsuit. The people who wrote these rules, however, will have to live with the consequences of their choices. Do they care?…

    • MikeS

      The justices may sleep well at night, knowing it’s not their job to right every wrong if there’s no proper lawsuit.

      I’m confused The National Review; are you saying judicial activism is good if it’s the outcome you like?

      • Tundra

        Not the NR! They are the bastion of consistency and principle!

      • LCDR_Fish

        Not sure why I always have to point it out – but compared to a lot of sites/magazines – NR does actually feature a variety of opinions and writers – they have “editors” pieces fairly often, but most of the others are individual writers and/or news.

      • MikeS

        Not sure why I always have to point it out…

        Because you’re the only one here who reads it?

        Snark aside, this is obviously a conservative writing it. For McLaughlin to bemoan SCOTUS standing on principle is a little, well, unprincipled. Maybe he can/has made some kind of principled, conservative argument in favor of SCOTUS doing whatever he wants it to do, but I’m skeptical.

    • Urthona

      What’s more is this came out the EXACT SAME WEEKEND that Democrats were hyperventilating because Repubs were joking about Haitians eating cats.

      The spittle-flecked fact checks were everywhere. This was a HOAX. They were LIARS. this was SO RACIST.

      Meanwhile, every Democrat shared this story. The Kamala campaign announced it. They made ads for it. it began appearing in publications. Etc.

      And the story is obviously false. Doctors in Georgia were afraid of operating on women with an ALREADY DEAD fetus inside? Really? Who the fuck is dumb enough to believe this hysterical tripe?

      • MikeS

        Who the fuck is dumb enough to believe this hysterical tripe?

        People that want to believe it.

      • J. Frank Parnell

        Who the fuck is dumb enough to believe this hysterical tripe?

        The same people who think the Republicans are going to start data-mining period tracker apps and prosecute women who miss a period without having a baby?

      • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

        I did something crazy and actually read most of the Georgia abortion law. It’s not very long. There are exceptions: 1) “‘Medical emergency’ means a condition in which an abortion is necessary in order to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or the substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman” and 2) “‘Medically futile’ means that, in reasonable medical judgment, an unborn child has a profound and irremediable congenital or chromosomal anomaly that is incompatible with sustaining life after birth.”

        It seems both of those conditions would have allowed an abortion in the case they are trumpeting.

    • rhywun

      Narrator: They don’t care.

  15. Spudalicious

    So, the letter to the world that Routh wrote apologizing for failure, was written and dropped off at his friends house before he headed to the golf course.

    He had no intention of seeing this through.

    • Urthona

      I think more likely he just thought his prospects were slim.

    • rhywun

      ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      Supposedly he wrote it months ago and apparently there was a whole box of letters.

      I wonder if we will get to read the others.

      • Urthona

        They might just pocket the one where he comes out as transgender.

    • Spudalicious

      This guys whole schtick has been an attention grab. And he’s a nutter.

  16. KK, Plump & Unfiltered

    If it only costs a couple hundred thousand to mitigate instances of lead in the environment, why wasn’t the $15 million/year previously
    spent on lead mitigation sufficient, Samantha?

    Just had to get that off my chest

    • KK, Plump & Unfiltered

      Also, keep Ben Franklin out yo mouf

      • Ted S.

        The craft store, or $100 bills?

      • Spudalicious

        You really can’t fit a craft store in your mouth.

    • Suthenboy

      *facepalm*
      Most lead in ‘the environment’ is naturally occurring. All of the money in the world wont do a damned thing about it.

      • R.J.

        There’s a Yosemite Sam punch line in there somewhere.

  17. KK, Plump & Unfiltered

    The GFS has the heaviest rain to our east, but the Euro has us in the very heavy rain bands.

    It’s like IFLM

    • MikeS

      The old-timey language thread is up page a bit.

    • Tundra

      Yes.

      Also, he’s lying. And probably gay.

  18. Mojeaux

    So now dudes in dresses want into Daughters of the American Revolution and DAR is saying, “No fucking way.” I may get back into china patterns if I feel like they need help fighting the good fight. Yes, I am a DAR.

    • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

      Somewhere around here I have my grandmothers DAR number. My mother still doesn’t believe this.

    • rhywun

      Well, I do declare!

  19. Pope Jimbo

    If you want rocking animal tunes, Hatebeak is the only band to listen to.

    Of course with songs like “Hellbent for feathers” and “Pecking Crew” I can see why Swiss might be biased against their metal pun attitude.

  20. Evan from Evansville

    Dad turned 75 today. Great seafood dinner with the family. On the way home, he started musing and I (for the first time?) mused back, re: someone being so mindfucked to AKTSHUALLY ask “How is Trump bad?”

    He eventually said “I think [Trump] is literally on par with Hitler.” Dad is politically clueless, but I semi figured his RAH-RAH XY spirit would carry through. Sad, as I really kinda will have to be extra careful about if I mention I’ll be voting for him to specifically spite the DEMocratic lawfare. Mom will listen but never budge. Bro and SiL have a pink pro-Harris sign on the yard, with the intersex symbol highly featured. Yuh-huh.