No, despite the unrelenting snowfall (we have over a foot on the ground at the moment), the electricity has been fine here in Glibs Gulch. But I am foregoing a date with Prime in order to watch the debacle in Baltimore on TV (NB: Prime made it past the Spud filter, next will be SugarFree). The Browns have apparently given up on DTR and are starting a fellow named Zappe. On the Poe side, Henry and Jackson have been shattering records all season and they’ve finally gotten their defense together. And they need this game to clinch the division title. This is going to be brutal.
Speaking of brutal, childbirth can be quite so, and this brutal event happened on this date for some notable folks including a true genius on cosmological origins; a guy whose work was integral to modern thought, though it was certainly derivative; the SugarFree of his day; a guy who was all about feeling; the Robert Reich of his day; an interesting thinker who could even make humor dull; an oleaginous and amoral senator with an actual hit record; a guy who could out-tunnel Hamas; the Old Guy’s favorite shredder; and a guy I predict will light it up for his birthday today.
Let’s light up some Links.
The swamp always wins. And Massie is the only principled member of congress.
Note the difference between this and Ukraine; a SALE rather than freebies to further enrich a midget. Now if we can only get out of the bribe money to Israel and Egypt that Carter saddled us with…
We have a foot of snow on the ground and biting cold. Of course it’s because of the Climate Crisis.
Spot the hidden agenda. It’s easy. And here, it’s even more obvious.
Another celebrity endorsement of BBC.
Note that right at the start, they fucked up the cut-and-paste. Of course, this is a payoff to the union donors. Oops.
Team Blue city governments fuck up everything.
A long form piece on the long-awaited and blessed defenestration of the Obama machine.
Don Ellis did some of the most creative Big Band music of my lifetime. He also had some of the worst haircuts and clothes imaginable. It was said of him that the only song he’d play in 4/4 was Take Five. But here’s an example of how he could create rhythmic complexity on the rare occasions that 4/4 would appear.
What comes after that, trial by ordeal?
She gets to see his browser history.
After SF, the deluge?
I was told Steve Smith would be administering the final interview. Make of that what you will.
Happy birthday H. P. Lovecraft?
Happy birthday Jerry Maren?
Happy birthday Joaquín Guzmán?
I figured it would be Charles Bronson.
On old-people television, even. Was expecting pay streams.
“ Another celebrity endorsement of BBC.”
I am zero % surprised. Zero.
And I got new for you… that means ya gay
LOL
I wonder how this impacts his fan-base. I imagine a lot of them will drop away and he will gain a bunch of new ones.
So, Queer Eye for the Hit Guy?
I saw a security photo of the shooter with his mask on, where somebody pointed out that he doesn’t appear to have the, shall we say, distinctive eyebrows of the guy they arrested. Whether the pic had been altered, I couldn’t say (can’t be bothered to try and find one from another source).
Women like a fixer upper, this is just one more thing to fix.
It is good when one’s tastes match one’s future.
“Alcohol is a well-established, preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States,” Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned in his advisory issued Friday. “Yet the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk.”
100,000 in a country of about 330,000,000 people.
You need to be stone cold sober so you can appreciate physical decrepitude and senility to its fullest 🙄️
That’s why we need Canada – to take care of all of those disposables.
I don’t buy those numbers for a nanosecond.
OF COURSE we should trust the pronouncement about the dangers of alcohol! After all, the medical-industrial complex was so right about everything from the Food Pyramid to COVID-19.
Well…no…let’s have a look at the data and the hypotheses behind them. Verify, then trust. And that, skeptically.
I like Massie but it’s easy to have principles when they’re consequence free. If his vote was The Right Thing To Do but it’d maybe it’d hurt the Reps (and himself) politically he might be more pliable. Like most talented politicians he is very good at self-promotion, I’ll give him that.
If he suffers no loss then it wasn’t really a principled stand, something a little more grand.
I’m not necessarily saying he’s not principled, it’s just that it’s hard to tell. If he makes one of his stands and actually sways a vote at great political risk to himself then I’ll be more impressed.
Meh, he’s pretty much Ron Paul’s spiritual her in the house. Nobody’s perfect, but he’s pretty legit.
Hell, I still think he’s right more than he’s wrong, but there is no reason to say this was some grand or meaningful vote.
If he’s so good at self-promotion, why is his name almost never mentioned in the articles about Johnson’s win?
Ask 20 random people (outside of KY) who Massie is and you’d be lucky if two know. Same question about AOC and you’ll get a perfect 20. Now SHE is exceptionally good at self-promotion. A backbencher from a safe district, no actual power, yet almost no political story is complete without mentioning her.
That tells you more about the political media than it does anything else.
It is indeed about the political media. Skilled self-promoters understand it and how to manipulate it. AOC does, she is (not being ironic) an absolute genius at it. Massie… not so much. Super smart guy, but whether it’s a lack of talent in this regard or an unwillingness to prostitute himself in the way she does is a question beyond my dimwitted understanding.
It isn’t just the subject’s use of the media, but the media itself using the subject. Interesting dance.
It’s obvious to me why Massie resonates with us and she doesn’t – she loves the spotlight even when she is patently undeserving of it. We hate that kind of person and Massie is just the opposite. I’ve seen other thoughtful Congress-critters and they are always the exception. You have to wonder how they ever crawled into that pit of vipers in the first place.
They take the phrase “public service” seriously. Honestly, I think it’s just a matter of somebody getting fed up enough to do something, even if it’s to take a position they may find repugnant.
It also says the political media are willing to let people with AOC’s beliefs manipulate them, but not people with Massie’s beliefs.
Massie’s tits are not nearly as impressive.
A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money
You can trust the science as it is written down in The Guardian, denier.
The order, issued Friday, repeats language from a May executive order on Chinese Real Estate, beginning with “regarding the acquisition of certain real property of Cheyenne leads by MineOne cloud computing investment I L.P.,” according to an archived version of the executive order. It is the exact language used in the title of the president’s May executive order.
BEST AND BRIGHTEST
To be fair, it’s not like Biden remembers issuing the May order.
Allah knows I’ve done plenty of cut-n-paste, and even had a few artifacts from the original document slip through.
But never the title of the damn thing. Jeebus.
If you’ve already failed the class, why put any effort into the final paper?
It’s totally the same, just like how oil and gas exploration companies being able to use the same accelerated depreciation schedules that other high capex industries get to use is totally the same as the government writing checks to limousine liberals to purchase fashionable electric cars that they only take to the airfield where their private jet is hangared.
Defense Production Act my ass. I think we need to strike every cold war relic from 1946 to 55 – rip it all out and shut down everything based on that.
Blanket repeal of the CFR and US Code, start over with a page limit. It’s beyond editing at this point.
Well, the ones who manage to keep their jobs. Cuz this means a lot of them are going to get pink slips.
I’ll catch up on this whole piece later, because I’m interested, but that shopworn old chestnut is retarded and needs to die. Politics and culture interact in a much more complicated way, and politics unquestionably changes culture rather than it being exclusively the other way around. Obama’s ostensibly crumbling machine giving way to Trumpism would be an excellent example, as if American culture swung from leftist campus radical-chic in 2012 to butt-picking xenophobic provincialism in 2024, and was reflected in the Obama and Trump 2nd terms, respectively. Obama influenced culture and moved the Overton window his direction. Trump did the same, to a lesser extent.
“Politics and culture interact in a much more complicated way”
It’s twoo, it’s twoo.
I just finished the whole thing. I’d say my only problem is the light in which Lippman is held. As I recall, Lasch worked him over pretty well, and you can only “manufacture” so much consent/reality before natural reality reasserts itself. Often that happens with a bunch of bewildered people in its wake because they had become so invested in their artificial reality.
Yep. Salem witch trials all over again. Emperor has no clothes.
Perhaps both Axelrod and the author are too high on their own farts. Perhaps those icky upper class whites were never really buffoonish caricatures of a white plantation owner in the antebellum south, and the only real novelty of the Obama era was pitching politics to status-chasing upper middle class and “elite” individuals a positional good. And that’s the sense in which I meant that the old chestnut with which he opened the piece was too limited. If politics were truly downstream of culture, political change would be less rapid and more durable. Creating a fad isn’t exactly the same thing as changing the culture, and society collectively deciding to move on from a fad that’s run its course isn’t exactly the same thing as political realignment.
Which seems to be the case of the author, to me. I think he’s having his “everybody I know voted for McGovern” moment.
This is why we need the predictability of street cars and choo choos.
No right on red? It’s madness I tell ya!
(really it is, fuck that)
Trying to make DC traffic even worse?
I’ll bet you that right turns were banned in DC as some kind of retarded political statement.
Or kickback to sign-makers.
Right-on-red has been banned in NYC for decades and you don’t need to install a sign at every intersection.
They were talking about making it a statewide rule in MA. Not sure what became of that stupid idea.
It’s part of the Vision Zero non-sense. That’s why a bunch of cities came up with it at the same time.
Just get it over with and ban cars. Expand it to the beltway. I would love to see them live in their car-free utopia.
The commonwealth here has something I’ve never seen anywhere else – right turns without stopping at stop signs (where designated).
We have that in Oregon.
Oregon: where drivers are smart enough to handle an uncontrolled 4 way, but too stupid to pump their own gas.
We have that in Oregon.
Hmm, I don’t recall ever seeing such there. Just down in the valley?
I haven’t noticed any outside the valley, but I haven’t looked for them either. Most of the ones I know of are on my regular drives.
DC trying to force us to go left is nothing new.
Powerline
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/01/the-week-in-pictures-the-longest-17-days.php
a true genius on cosmological origins – a creationist and a monkey at the same time?
We have a foot of snow on the ground and biting cold. Of course it’s because of the Climate Crisis.
10C and sunny. Not a flake of snow on the horizon. Romania warmed a lot past 5 years, all things considered… Didn’t have a real winter since 2018
*haven’t had
The past probably 4 or 5 summers in Tucson have been unusually hot, to the point where probably half the landscape plants in our south-facing backyard have died and even the survivors (that aren’t cacti) have suffered. It’s interesting to look at the listing pics for the house when we bought it, and see how different the backyard looked. I am in the process of converting more of the landscaping to cactus.
I will say this: planting a cactus of any size is an interesting exercise.
Well! My inner bitchy old queen wants to know whether ‘uigi was paying for the cock or the ass. That he apparently couldn’t surf because of back injuries would lead to certain conclusions.
But, more importantly, he was pissed because insurance wouldn’t pay for surgery. IDK, maybe, just maybe, he could have forgone the rentbois, or gigolos, and saved that money up for surgery???
I find that hard to believe. The descriptions I read sounded like a pretty serious back problem.
He comes from a wealthy family. I know if it was my kid and I had the money I’d pay for him.
But not if he was “finding himself” and exploring surfing.
So, how can you have serious back problems and go surfing, anyway?
Unless by “surfing, you mean . . . .
SEA SMITH LOVE SURFING. AND BY SURFING MEAN…
I saw that episode of Absolutely Fabulous.
lol Dude is a walking cliche if any of that is true.
Posted for OMWC.
Mend It Mark The £25,000 Pre Amp that went Wrong Tom Evans Mastergroove SR mkIII
A brilliant example of the Streisand Effect. The original video was subject to a copyright strike and taken down in the UK. After that right to repair people have now hosted it on multiple channels.
More hysterical is what a POS this crazy expensive phono preamp is. The design as a DIY or low cost home built kit is no issue, but as a professional product this is the perfect audiophile theft.
Right turns on red are not a thing round here .
As of our most recent figures (Nov), Elon Musk was unpopular with 64% of the British public – and 61% of those who said they used Twitter/X on a daily basis
https://x.com/YouGov/status/1875216884309873038
a crushing blow. Elon will never recover from this.
He’s wiping away his tears with $100 bills.
How the grooming gangs scandal was covered up
The child victims of rape were denied justice and protection from the state to preserve the image of a successful multicultural society
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/04/grooming-gangs-scandal-cover-up-oldham-telford-rotherham/
al sorts of trial transcripts showed up and the fact that the English are not up in arms about this is a sign that there is no real hope of recovery for that country. Some of the things I read are literally sickening. Shame about the beer and whisky.
“[O]ne witness said, the council was “terrified of [the impact on] community cohesion”.
Across the town, pressure was put on people to “suppress, keep quiet or cover up” issues”
They aren’t up in arms because that would be hate speech, and that will put them in jail.
for those of us that did not RTFA, did you figure this part out? how does the norm evolve where a woman endures a culture that abuses her, where she hated and resented it, and so she just goes along when society sets its sights on her daughters? How is it that these girls are out in the world where anyone can get their hands on them? How is it that the mothers have not made clear to the fathers that if the daughters are not protected, they will be castrated in their sleep?
The State has already castrated the fathers – removing the drive to protect them in the first place.
Almost half of exploited girls were in the care of the government. The other did not always have fathers. Some fathers tried to do something about it but they were weak, unarmed, no help from the police etc… It is a failure on so many levels.
When this story erupted more than a decade ago, it was noted that most of victims were from broken families. The girls were easy prey.
Same as with the girls Epstein exploited I have to assume.
there was a case where a 14 year old girl groomed by a 30 year old Muslim was given in foster care by a social worker to the parent of the man. Who then “married” her in a unofficial Muslim religions ceremony. The social worker attended the ceremony.
There was a case where the presents of a girl who gave birth at 14 complained and they were all burned to death when their house was set on fire one night by the groomers.
there was a father who complained to the police that his 14 year old was being groomed and was told that it is fashionable for young english girls to have older asian boyfriend and she will grow out of it.
there are things that are worse than these.
The English have been up in arms about it for a decade. They’ve been jailed and threatened with harm if they raise a stink. They’ve been arrested and jailed for getting revenge for their daughters. They’ve been TRYING to get the world’s attention and do what they can, but they’re utterly toothless.
When you’ve got your police force willing to arrest you for retweeting someone’s marginally unfavorable-to-the-gummint, that ALSO lets these Pedos of Peace rape 300,000 girls, and a gummint that seems to sanction this, but you also are unarmed, outgunned, and outnumbered, the only things you can do will result in your death or the deaths of the rest of your family.
At this point, I’m not even sure there would be an American uprising and we ARE armed and our juries DO acquit people for killing people who needed killin’. I am quite sure Dearbornistan is not without such pedo gangs.
The English have been up in arms about it for a decade – not enough of them
I’m so proud that, when the needs arises, NATO commits our sons to die defending these worthy neighbors, their government, and their way of life; maybe they will let us bury them on a pretty hill in Lancashire
I honestly do not understand a wealthy, elite, white minority of politicians and rich people willingly handing their homeland over to 8th century barbarian savages and funding them. Do they not know they’re handing their own lives over? Don’t they wish to have something LEFT to rule when these locusts get finished chowing down? They either don’t see it because they’re too high on Olympus OR they think it can be contained once they’ve hollowed out the icky native people.
I always thought: where are the grandfathers? Like the old English fucks who wanted to go to the trenches in lieu of their sons’ generation? I might make another 20 years, but I’m old and mostly used up and would think it glorious to die sweeping a toddler out of traffic or flinging myself into some otherwise hopeless situation….this notion (urge?) feels as natural to me as hunger or lust.
they’re handing their own lives over
Of course they do – that’s why they sacrificed the lower orders, to assure peace for the elite.
Utopia takes many broken eggs.
I’ve read a few trial excerpts.
My belief that the death penalty needs to be applied more often is unchanged.
As for how broken the Brits are, they put the guy in charge of (not) prosecuting the rape gangs in charge of their whole government.
Labour won by losing less votes than the Tories. That kind of legitimacy won’t hold, something has to fill that vacuum.
Reform is starting to take over the Tories, much like Trump has taken over the Republicans. The same thing is happening across Europe, South America, and so on. The internationalists hate this, as it is what they think of as Fascism. Not withstanding all of the damage they have done in the name of fighting it.
Something, something Nietzsche quote something, something.
Elon Musk’s attack on the government’s handling of grooming gangs is “misjudged and certainly misinformed”, Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said.
Tech multi-billionaire Musk has posted a series of messages on his social media site X, accusing Sir Keir Starmer of failing to prosecute gangs that systematically groomed and raped young girls, and calling for safeguarding minister Jess Phillips to be jailed.
Asked about his comments, Streeting said “this government takes the issue of child sexual exploitation incredibly seriously”.
He invited Musk to “roll up his sleeves and work with us” against rape gangs.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czxdzng92lno
the Brits should start the lynching with Wes Streeting and move on from there
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has called for a full national public inquiry into the UK’s “rape gangs scandal”.
It comes after Home Office minister Jess Phillips rejected Oldham Council’s request for a government-led inquiry into historical child sexual exploitation – saying the council should lead it instead.
Her decision, taken in October, was reported by GB News on Wednesday and then picked up by Elon Musk on his social media platform X, and several senior Tories.
Shadow Home Office minister Chris Philp told the BBC the time had come for a national inquiry, with powers to “compel witnesses to come forward”, to get “to the truth”.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4xnv02nr0o
what were you fuckers doing the 12 years you were in power
That Pie is exactly why Labour was elected with less votes than they received in the previous election – the disgust with the Tories was absolute.
I honestly can’t imagine the Tories being a governing party again – they’ll go the way of the Liberals. Someone else has to stand up.
Yeah, I heard Musk was all over this yesterday.
And both Teams there are trying to weasel-word their way out of responsibility. Disgusting.
🍿
Why wokeness is ‘problematic’
I expect woke to double-down anywhere that is firmly controlled by the left.
Much like abortions post Roe v Wade.
a guy who was all about feeling
Happy birthday Morris Albert!
Nesta (Britain’s state-funded ‘innovation agency for social good’) has endorsed the creation of state-run restaurants to provide subsided healthy food.
Do you think this would be a good use of public money?
https://x.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1875183923472568688
Ah finally a solution for what ails the UK
I’m trying to decide adult beverages for this afternoon’s debacle. Mixed drinks a la Neph? Beer a la Mexican?
George T Stagg neat
I can tolerate brown goods but rarely seek them out. They all taste like medicine to me.
Muddled basil g&t.
More of a summer drink, for me.
Beer and football are a natural pairing.
I typically think of gin as more summer-y as well, but the herbaciousness with the basil makes it a bit more suitable to winter. I had one with my Christmas holiday meal, which also featured basil, sage, thyme and rosemary. But without the food pairing, it wouldn’t be quite the same.
Pork or chicken?
Pork tenderloin.
You added rosemary, so I knew it had to be one or the other.
I just noticed I misspelled herbaceousness and it pisses me off.
I also use rosemary (and garlic) when I sear tuna steaks (and finish in the oven), then fresh lemon squeezed over them at serving.
I’ll be up at the local commiserating with other fans as we watch ourselves wind up with an early draft pick to waste. While they ostensibly have cocktails on the menu, I’ll be sticking to their beers (and potentially whiskey).
A mix of mixed drinks in cold weather. You can adjust the booze amount to bridge until a nightcap.
We call heavy bridging the Mackinaw…
Israel is nowhere near the money (laundering) pit that is the Ukraine. Still a welfare queen living large on the American taxpayer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93United_States_relations
Every time I see Luigi Mangione’s name, I think of Chuck Mangione. Just like every time I hear the name of the corrupt New Jersey senator, I think of the patri/matricidal brothers.
Baker Street should be his perp walk music.
That was not Chuck.
Doesn’t feel so good, does it?
Even worse, that guy is from my hometown and Channel 8 played that damn song between every show.
Considering the first time I heard of Chuck Mangione was King of the Hill, in my head he’s a cartoon character who faked his death to hide out in the Megalo Mart.
LOL Went over to YouTube to remind myself of how awesome Chuck Mangione is, and the first comment is, “Is anyone else here for Luigi Mangione?”
Pat – Since you’re lurking about, a librewolf/mozilla question. I’ve poked around the net for an answer but haven’t found anything obvious.
Getting lots of font corruption on Librewolf (happens on firefox and thunderbird too, not on brave). See https://www.glibertarians.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/libre_fontcorupt.png
Highlight the affected text will sometimes clear it, clicking/scrolling does too sometimes, but it will come back on other text. Any thoughts? I haven’t seen any obvious bugs referring to this. On Fedora 41, latest libre, firefox, thunderbird.
What’s your DE/graphical environment? On Linux, FF/Librewolf defaults to GTK, so if you’re in a Qt environment, you may need to add a settings.ini file in ~/home/user/.config/{gtk2.0|gtk3.0|gtk4.0} specifying a font.
MATE; I could switch to cinamon (I think I have that installed, but avoid all things gnome3+) and see if that fixes it. Think is, it just sort of ‘happened’, haven’t tracked down which update caused it, but I’m skeptical of a local config issue when things appear without any local change to preference or config.
Another thought: if you’re on stock Fedora, you also may not have GTK3 installed, as the default is Gnome with GTK4. FF is still on GTK3, IIRC, and it may not be extracting the correct system font from gsettings. In which case, adding the gtk-3.0 config directory settings.ini and manually specifying the correct system font may also work.
Could also be Wayland-related. FF only added native Wayland support last year, and particularly with Hi-DPI displays, it may still have some kinks.
Sorry, I was composing that last message before your reply came through.
Under Settings > Language and Appearance, you can check to see if the listed font is the same as your system fonts; if not, you may need to install a font package or change the setting in FF. Possibly an update restored it to a default that doesn’t match your system font.
Stock in the sense of the MATE spin from Fedora, I don’t mess with the system that much beyond stock. There is GTK3 and 4 installed – maybe an updated pulled in 4 partially and updated some configuration.
Thanks – you’ve given me a few places to poke around! Not a euphemism.
Now off to delete that screen shot so I don’t clutter the storage up more than necessary.
Wish I could be of more help. Unfortunately, MATE is one of the few DEs I never dabbled in very much, and I switched to a WM with my own special snowflake configuration years ago.
You’d think we’d have 10 days of snow coming our way around here based on the ravaging of the supermarkets. TP nearly gone, bread all gone, water gone. We are expecting a out 18 hours of snow and probably ice the next Dat. That’s it.
Now, I will probably go into work a bit late Monday because we have a country road leading out of our area with some steep curves and I don’t feel like putting the 4Runner into a ditch.
“People are dumb, dangerous, panicky animals – and you know it”.
How one of the greatest quotes about humans came out of a marginally funny ‘sci-fi/fantasy’ movie escapes me.
Yeah, same with Heath Ledger’s Joker – Nobody panics when things go “according to plan.” Even if the plan is horrifying!
See, also, Loki’s speech in the Avengers movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g_niOqohcY
Gee, it’s not as if the local TV stations have an incentive to exaggerate the threat just because Kroger sponsors the weather report…🙄
On the other hand, Mrs OBE and I are looking forward to it.
Power should hold but we have a generator if we need for essentials and enough wood for fireplace for warmth too.
Dogs are finally getting used to the cold and snow under their feet but I’ll have to salt the driveway and deck later today.
My boss, supposedly on vacation, called me at the office yesterday in a semi-panic because having only moved into the Big Chair this past spring, he couldn’t remember how to access the system that sends a recorded message to all employees if we have to delay opening or close completely. I had to give him my log-in credentials (I maintain the list of employees’ phone numbers,) and he started asking about how to send announcements. I had to remind him that I’m not allowed to do that, darn the luck, and thus have never learned the process.
I don’t go out much. I’m probably some definition of “housebound” by now. I mean, I WOULD if I have to, but I don’t like going out and I have a husband who very much LOVES going out for any little thing. We are so Jack Sprat & Wife.
Anyway, yesterday was a madhouse of traffic. I dropped my husband off at the front door of the grocery store to pick up his laundered church shirt (yes, we have the laundry do his shirts). The parking lot was PACKED. I haven’t seen it this bad even pre-Chiefs game. He said the inside was worse. I’m like, “These people should know better. Stock up early and stay stocked up. WTF.” He said, “They do this every time. You don’t see it, but I do.”
Sheeeeeiiiiiittttt. I have never, in my life, had to go out the day before projected Snowpocalypse to stock up.
Also, I don’t/didn’t mind driving in snow anyway.
I also never minded Snowpocalypses, but now I have two children who have to drive a long way to work. XY is trying to get corporate to shut his store down this afternoon and tomorrow. XX doesn’t have to work until late Monday morning.
We call those people French toast zombies.
When I lived in Spokane, every damn year there’d be local news footage from one of the local tire shops with a 5 hour line of cars scrambling to get their snow tires put on after the season’s first snow. My dad, who would typically have ours on around 30 seconds after the local ordinance allowed, would always go “Have these people never heard of winter before?!”
January comes about this time most years
Jacobin
@jacobin
We can only change the world if we understand the actual forces around us. Marxism gives us the tools to do just that.
https://x.com/jacobin/status/1874976470331998214
Swift couldn’t have imagined it any better.
Demoralization is one of their core strategies.
Convincing oneself is not quite the same thing as knowing or understanding.
Séamus Mac an Bháird
@james_akw
New study on the fiscal impact of immigration on the Netherlands.
– Study, family & asylum migration are a net negative regardless of the age of arrival.
– If the parents make a net negative contribution, the second generation won’t be much different
https://x.com/james_akw/status/1874894273063330177
Geert Wilders trying to do something about it.
It is almost like culture and applied ideas matter.
I’ve often thought that “DO NOT TOUCH!” would be one of the scariest things to read in Braille.
Palmer Luckey
@PalmerLuckey
The phrase “Late-Stage Capitalism” dates to 1902, and was re-popularized by Ernest Mandel’s “Late Capitalism”, which argued the 1970s would be the pinnacle of human productivity.
People who believe it describes our current era of extraordinary opportunity are doomsday cultists.
College students will probably publish PhD dissertations on Late Stage Capitalism from their AI-built orbital palaces via MarsLink.
“Communism across the Solar System is inevitable if the 100 billion asteroid-belt dwelling rednecks stop voting against their own self-interest!”
https://x.com/PalmerLuckey/status/1875302654081167744
When you have a preferred conclusion everything is assumed a constant except the one factor that needs to be variable to arrive at that conclusion. Take any prediction of the day as an example.
If you gaze for long into the tits, the tits gaze also into you.
https://archive.is/EF7LF
Silicone Saturday.
Adrian Hilton
@Adrian_Hilton
I’ve just seen that people are attacking the noble Tom Holland – @holland_tom
– for saying that those who put good race relations above child safeguarding were acting nobly. He isn’t speaking about individual motives, but social virtue, and he is absolutely right: the King’s peace—pax regis—is a noble pursuit. You can cavil with his hierarchy of nobleness, but public order is indeed a noble pursuit. And so is child safeguarding.
https://x.com/Adrian_Hilton/status/1874889976850321547
Shut the fuck up Spider-Man.
Girls should just lay back and think of England.
Maintaining the King’s Peace by permitting crime and prohibiting complaints about crime, much less resistance is a
boldnoble strategy. They are so worried about encouraging racism they are setting the table for a Hitler.Yup. Same shit different day.
England is a bit further down this path but the same phenomenon is at play in leftist areas of the U.S.
My God they are broken.
Shorter Brit Shitbird: “Bow down and Obey.”
Dont blame us. We shot as many as we could.
Indeed, may the king rest in peace, and that right soon.
“Men think it’s really cool when they find out about it. They want to see it, touch it, feel it.”
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/real-life/woman-born-two-vaginas-shares-34198494
Men want to touch your pussy? Unpossible!
A double pleasure’s waiting for you!
Yeah well, like everything else these days the ’70’s version was better.
Since this is yet-again back in the news…
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/01/04/when-working-class-girls-were-sacrificed-to-ideology/
Woke/multi-culti/anti-Western, whatever you wanna call it, is a religion. That’s why it’s so tenacious and impervious to any counterarguments. There’s a slot in the human brain that basically says “insert something that makes me part of something bigger than myself”. Lack of universal ethics/traditional religion allowed pomo secular humanism to take its place and become wokitude. One possible optimistic thing to hope for is that apostates (whose numbers are growing considerably) are usually the most fervent opponents to their previous religion.
There is the added problem that once a person has engaged in something purely evil and done horrible damage that cannot be undone they cannot face it. They cannot live with that they have done and so they will defend their actions to the grave.
The people responsible for that unspeakable evil should all hang but I instead they turn into Adrian Hiltons.
See the tranny horrors.
pomo ?
Post-modernist.
This will be like the third or fourth time this scandal has popped up to international awareness.
I wonder if they will continue to ignore lack the balls to deal with it.
I’m still grinding through https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777 (it’s not bad or a slog, I’ve just been slacking on reading), and I’m at the point where he’s talking about group membership and religion.
He dubs the bit where we can flip into “belonging mode” as “the hive switch” and it’s a pretty compelling argument.
“We are 90 percent chump and 10 percent bee”
I read that a few years ago and enthusiastically recommended it to friends (and even bought a copy for a smart young man of my acquaintance, son of a friend, who, despite living in a homogeneous hive of “free-thinkers” AKA YS, OH, seemed to have an astute mind of his own.) 👍
Hah, just noticed I typo’d ‘chimp’ as ‘chump’.
Sadly, it still almost makes sense these days.
I thought that said “porno secular humanism” when reading in my phone. Which seems even more appropriate.
Oh, Lord, why hast Thou forsaken us?
Blah blah fucking blah. If Massie is so goddam principled, what’s he doing in Congress?
I’ve often thought that “DO NOT TOUCH!” would be one of the scariest things to read in Braille.
Awesome.
Just fucking with us now.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/outrage-biden-set-award-hillary-clinton-george-soros-presidential-medal-freedom
I think Joe wants to go out with all of the elan of Emperor Nero.
I hope Trump gives it to Alex Jones.
Well, he did give it to Rush Limbaugh
“Having made that unreasonable risk determination, [the Toxic Substances Control Act] requires EPA to issue a rule that fully eliminates formaldehyde’s unreasonable risks,” Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a senior attorney at environmental group Earthjustice, told The Hill.
Every single person associated with Earthjustice should be put in a vat of formaldehyde.
“EPA correctly found that formaldehyde presents unreasonable risk to human health,” he said, but he lamented that the agency “did not find unreasonable risk to fence line communities … it will result in a rule that fails to fully address formaldehyde’s unreasonable risks and leaves too many people exposed to serious harm.”
A risk too great for someone, somewhere, is too great for anyone, anywhere.
HAIL NANNY!
Big Brother wants to keep you safe and happy
Your car is spying on you.
That is one takeaway from the fast, detailed data that Tesla collected on the driver of one of its Cybertrucks that exploded in Las Vegas earlier this week. Privacy data experts say the deep dive by Elon Musk’s company was impressive, but also shines a spotlight on a difficult question as vehicles become less like cars and more like computers on wheels.
Is your car company violating your privacy rights?
“You might want law enforcement to have the data to crack down on criminals, but can anyone have access to it?” said Jodi Daniels, CEO of privacy consulting firm Red Clover Advisors. “Where is the line?”
Oh, come on. If you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about.
Perennially relevant
Ah yes, Mozilla.
They are like the pastor at the mega church preaching living the Christian life while living in a mansion, driving a Rolls and fucking a good number of the members of the church.
Doesn’t change the belief in the values espoused, but doesn’t let me take a single fucking thing they say with anything but skepticism.
They’re sellouts, but that doesn’t make them wrong; particularly when their sellout status would, if anything, be more inclined to sway them the opposite way. The entire western economy is dependent on data brokerage now. It’s no surprise automakers are in the same business as everyone else.
Tesla is very explicit what it collects and also claims the ability to completely opt out. No idea on how true part two is, however.
OTH, GM…
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driver-tracking-insurance.html
https://archive.fo/x54qO
Within hours of the New Year’s Day explosion that burned the driver beyond recognition and injured seven, Tesla was able to track Matthew Livelsberger’s movements in detail from Denver to Las Vegas, and also confirm that the problem was explosives in the truck, not the truck itself. Tesla used data collected from charging stations and from onboard software — and to great acclaim.
“I have to thank Elon Musk, specifically,” said Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill to reporters. “He gave us quite a bit of additional information.“
Some privacy experts were less enthusiastic.
Luddites. Total Information Awareness is the future.
burned the driver beyond recognition
Any explanation of how the ID was so well preserved given this? ID in the glove box or bag under the seat or something? No way (for some value of No. And way) it seems plausible it would be preserved – in just the right places – like that if it was around the neck of a ‘burned beyond recognition’ person. Of course, ‘burned beyond recognition’ might be the usual report-o-drone (The) hyperbole.
It’s like finding the 9/11 hijackers’ passports.
Complete and utter bullshit.
Needs more labels
“The cartoon … criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with … Trump,” Telnaes said. “While it isn’t uncommon for editorial page editors to object to visual metaphors within a cartoon if it strikes that editor as unclear or isn’t correctly conveying the message intended by the cartoonist, such editorial criticism was not the case regarding this cartoon.
“To be clear, there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a gamechanger … and dangerous for a free press.”
Telnaes announced her resignation less than three months after the Post and Bezos faced withering backlash over the outlet’s decision to prevent its editorial team from publishing an endorsement of Kamala Harris in the presidential election of 5 November. Soon-Shiong had also similarly refused to allow the LA Times’ editorial board to publish an endorsement of Harris.
Just like Joan of Arc on the pyre.
Infuriating!
Man glasses someone in a pub.
He had previously been spared jail after beating a man to the point the victim has permanent brain damage.
Total: 13 previous convictions, 26 offences.
Spared jail. Again.
https://x.com/pursuitofprog/status/1875505758105747773
seems it is not just Muslims. violent criminals are let off while tweets get you jail. Seem UK is indeed going the way of anarcho-tyranny
Oi! You got a loicense for that, uh, breed?
So Anthony Burgess was just a little ahead of the curve.
There it is…. Like clockwork.
It’s terrible when satire becomes reality.
“How do you do, fellow patriots?”
https://x.com/BowTiedRanger/status/1875574498751344954
that is probably referencing something I dont get
The Cybertruck guy’s “manifesto.”
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-do-you-do-fellow-kids
Er, or what Tundra posted.
Another good one:
https://x.com/MostlyPeacefull/status/1875374676874293328
Plot twist. It’s NOT the black Stellantis product.
Idiot in black car totals 3 cars
Hope the people in the car that rolled weren’t seriously hurt.
Christ, that was bad. And a good reminder to maintain good spacing. Shit happens fast.
and you people say I should come to your country. And DIE on the roads if I don’t get shot first.
Sooo….on car stuff…the pre-owned Rav4 I was hoping to buy does not appear to be available any longer. And there aren’t many other small SUVs available on the local market that meet my “standards” (such as they are).
It turns out that the Patriot Autos salesman also works as a Volvo Military Sales guy…and he does have a pretty hard line for me on a 2025 Volvo XC40 (being delivered this week). I’d never given them much consideration before, but looking at the XC60 and XC90 on the lot did give me a few ideas. The fact that he can get me a new one for less than the pre-owned models locally, with full maintenance coverage (a big deal for me overseas) for 3 years and no sales tax – is pretty appealing.
I still need to do the local drivers test at orientation this week, and check with Navy Fed about the loan process here – I’ve got enough on hand for a good down payment (I’d have a lot more if I could get my updated orders and get my travel pay processed to reimburse me for 2 1/2 months of hotel rooms in Norfolk). But the reviews for the 2025 Core Bright model – and the specs sound pretty good from what I’ve already been seeing on the roads here – safetywise, etc.
Any feedback from Volvo owners here? I’d literally given them no consideration before this morning – much less a brand new model.
I’ve owned many over the years. Excellent seats. Any new car is gonna be nice, really.
I rented one recently and really liked it with the exception of the driver assist nonsense. Hopefully you can turn that off.
I’m very sympathetic to the Swedish part of Volvo, but I would hate the idea that Li Shufu was getting any of my money.
Wiki says the U.S. spec is hybrid only.
Are you buying it to bring back?
Yes, it is hybrid – just like the original prius – engine cutoff at stop lights, etc. I clarified with the salesguy – he had an XC60 that had a plug-in hybrid, but this is just normal….which means about 27 mpg.
Plan to bring it back to the US. US spec requirements. Turns out they can sell EU specs on base Germany, but you can’t register them on base in Italy…
Heheh the Climate Crisis. I wonder how long they can milk it for? I was working the other day for a severely educated and well off man on one of his rental properties. He was hanging out watching me work, which I don’t mind as long as there is a conversation going on. So I started talking to him about his remodel and then it got round to the remodel I had just done. I mentioned that when we redid the gas line I made sure to have it for new range, furnace, water heater and laundry. He told me that was now illegal and I told him, no, I did it all with permits. He then said, “well maybe it is not illegal yet, but it soon will be and that’s a good thing.” I asked him why and he went off on an enviro rant about how much better it would be if it were all electric. I asked him, “where does the electricity come from that goes to those outlets right here?” He looked like he had never before considered the question. I asked in a more specific way. “What percentage of the electricity in California is made by natural gas?” He had no idea, but I did and I let him know that it is north of 80% with the next highest part from hydro dams that we are currently getting rid of. He changed the subject.
Retards in the wild. Nice!
He changed the subject.
No motherfucker, we aren’t changing the subject – you are opening up that closed little mind! But of course you can’t say such a thing to someone paying you.
Why would you care if some other car needs room to move over? What did he ever do for you?
I asked him, “where does the electricity come from that goes to those outlets right here?”
Electricity comes from the wall. It’s just science.