ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES. THE CHOSEN ONE KNOWN AS “SUGARFREE” HAS THINGS TO ATTEND TO. THUS, IT FALLS UPON ZARDOZ AND HIS COMPANION, STEVE SMITH, TO FILL IN. THEREFORE, RECEIVE THE ADVICE OF THE CRYPTIDS!
FIRST, THE BRUTAL KNOW AS “DEAR ABBY” IS PROVEN WRONG, AND ZARDOZ IS PROVEN CORRECT.
Q: I was married to a police officer for 20 years. It wasn’t a warm marriage. We divorced 20 years ago. Our one child is in his late 30s. I always put my son first and loved him with all my heart.
During the last year of my marriage, my ex was poisoning my coffee. After drinking my one cup of afternoon coffee, my heart rate would go as high as 200 beats a minute until I passed out. When I woke up, the rate would be back to normal. I set up a camcorder and captured him putting something in the well of the coffee pot. At the time, we had half a million dollars in life insurance on me. This poisoning had been happening on and off for about a year until I finally figured it out.
I didn’t confront my husband and moved out immediately. I told no one except my mother. I did not tell my son because I wanted to protect him from knowing something so horrible about his dad. My son has hated me ever since the divorce because I received half his dad’s pension. I never disclosed the physical and mental abuse I endured.
My son speaks to me only once or twice a year, and when he does, he is very unkind. My heart is broken over this. I believe I should have told him about this a long time ago, but I’m afraid even with the proof of the recording, no one would have believed a police officer would do such a thing. I didn’t want my son to have to live with the knowledge. That recording is in a safety deposit box at the bank. Should I destroy it? — SURVIVED IN THE EAST
A: FOOL OF A BRUTAL! YOU SHOULD SEND THE RECORDING TO YOUR SPAWN. THIS WILL DRIVE THEM TO A KILLING HATRED, AND HE CAN JOIN THE BRUTAL EXTERMINATORS.
“A new member!”
SINCE YOUR MISERABLE HUSBAND FAILED TO SLAY YOU, YOU ARE GIVEN OVER TO GRAIN SLAVERY IN THE SERVICE OF THE ETERNALS OF THE VORTEX. PERHAPS THIS WILL SPEED YOUR QUITTANCE AND THE SHADE OF YOUR EX CAN REST EASY.
ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN.
STEVE SMITH READY GIVE ADVICE. HIM JUST BACK FROM COURT. STEVE SMITH PROMINENT FOREST LAWYER! HIM GIVE GOODEST ADVICE. MUCH BETTER THAN OLD HOOMAN, MISS MANNERS.
Q: My teenage son had begun seeing a new neurologist, who is highly recommended and seems to be very skilled. We have had two appointments with this doctor, and both times, he used at least a half-dozen swear words in the 20-minute appointment.
He’s young, very friendly, very informal, and probably thinks it’s no big deal because my son is a teenager. He works for the pediatric hospital, and I’m hoping he doesn’t use the same language when giving medical care to young children!
But it’s very uncomfortable for me, and my son agrees that it seems strange. It seems so inappropriate for a professional person!
Of course I’ve heard all these words before, but I don’t enjoy hearing casual swearing. I missed my chance to say something in the appointment. We’ll see him again in six weeks. Is there a way to bring this up respectfully?
A: STEVE SMITH HAVE IDEA. HIM COME WITH NEXT APPOINTMENT. WHEN DOCTOR SAY BAD WORDS, STEVE SMITH SAY “WANT BE EDGY? STEVE SMITH GIVE YOU EDGY!” THEN STEVE SMITH GIVE HIM EDGY. BY GIVE HIM EDGY, MEAN RAPE. NEXT TIME HIM NO SAY BAD WORDS!
FREE CASCADIA!
“SUGARFREE” HAS THINGS TO ATTEND TO.
I don’t want to know.
“The Secret Life of SugarFree”
Coming soon to a theater near you.
“Rated NC-17”
NC-17 isn’t enough. They need “Rated SF”.
Rated Elder Gods only, no one younger then this Universe admitted unless accompanied by indescribable eldritch horror
I thought that was Hillary’s guest appearance.
I’m thinking Jarflax is right.
“Rated Pornhub”
“We have such sights to show you.”
Nope. Not going to start a Hellraiser rewatch. Not going to do it.
And if I do… I’m stopping after the third one. The fourth (and later) fall of in quality really quickly. I won’t even bring up the attempted reboot.
I feel adrift without my Sugarfree fix.
During the last year of my marriage, my ex was poisoning my coffee.
I was expecting the question to go downhill when I saw her ex is a cop. I wasn’t expecting this.
After drinking my one cup of afternoon coffee, my heart rate would go as high as 200 beats a minute until I passed out. When I woke up, the rate would be back to normal.
Is your ex-husband French?
I missed my chance to say something in the appointment. We’ll see him again in six weeks. Is there a way to bring this up respectfully?
Next time, give him a dose of pepper spray when he uses a bad word.
This is not hard.
“Doctor, I would appreciate it if you would refrain from swearing during our appointments. Thank you.”
What does STEVE SMITH consider ‘bad words?’ ‘Stop?’ ‘No?’ ‘Please, I have a family?’
CONSENT BAD WORD BECAUSE CAN NOT RAPE
What did the person who “wrote” the letter think are “bad words”?
Plot twist: the neurologist treating her son for his tremors is Samuel L. Jackson, MD FACN
“We’re gonna get these motherfucking shakes out of this motherfucking brain!”
They only got $40m out of Paul Weiss. Nice business you’ve got there shame if anything were to happen to it…
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/willkie-farr-becomes-the-latest-big-law-firm-to-strike-deal-with-trump-ff3f8026?st=kaDAzw&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
I’m not happy about it, but OTH the left was perfectly OK with this CFPB doing exactly this to businesses and funneling the cash to lefty causes.
Pandora’s box. You open it, you cannot be surprised when something you don’t like flies out.
That requires both sides to argue in good faith. They will not.
Just don’t let hope out of the box. Can’t have that out in the wild.
A lot of my friends on the Left stay quiet or even defend this kind of stuff like the CFPB using their extortion money to fund Left wing causes. I always asked, is this the kind of power you want Trump to have and they just handwaved that notion away. But now those chickens are coming home to roost and suddenly they can’t believe that the current administration would do this kind of thing.
Guarantee you, that billing code will become a billable hour sink, used by one and all to pad their timesheets.
I mean, it’s not like management will care. They want that number to be as big as possible.
I’m not happy about it, but OTH the left was perfectly OK with this CFPB doing exactly this to businesses and funneling the cash to lefty causes.
Yes. Maybe one of these firms will take on a pro bono suit against Foochy, Birx, Osterholm and the rest of the quacks who ran the plague panic.
Trigger warning: Futurism
It’s Never Been More Over For Tesla
Is Futurism staffed by smarmy girls who couldn’t make it at Teen Vogue?
“Blah blah blah BYD is eating Elon’s lunch and we’re positively giddy about it.”
BYD is the Shenzhen-based EV company quickly replacing Tesla as the world’s foremost seller of electric and hybrid vehicles. It just released its earnings results for the first quarter of 2025, showing sales up 58 percent sold in the same period of 2024, from around 400,000 vehicle sales to nearly a million.
Apparently, in some parts of the world there’s a demand for Chinese knockoff EVs. Let’s see if they can keep it going.
BYD makes quality products. They pass European crash tests well. They also make simple vehicles for developing countries that most certainly wouldn’t.
OTH, you could say they are flexible with regards to how they respect intellectual property…
Quality products which sponteneously combust.
So do ICE vehicles. If you’ve got real data that suggests BYD’s EVs have outsized fire risk I’d be interested.
There are plenty of good reasons to **** on EVs, but the “OMG fire” one is way overblown on tier one auto manufacturers in my opinion.
The frequency and scope of fire damage/risk in traditional vehicles is far smaller. Those can actually be extinguished. EV fires just keep going.
We won’t get real data out of China, for anything.
What I’ve read is the frequency is far lower on EV than ICE fires.
The “scope” what we’d called “severity” in insurance speak is a concern compared to ICE. So the actual costs and actual losses could be significantly lower because of the lower frequency.
If you’ve got data that says ICE far a less common than EV fires I’d again be interested.
err – far = fire!
Before moving goalposts, lets define what metrics are going to be used for commonality. You could do absolute instances, versus instances per vehicle, versus instances per million miles, and have three different results.
Insured loss occurrence.
Interesting:
https://www.blazestack.com/blog/how-many-ev-fires-in-2023-2024
You’re going to get swamped by the sheer number of traditional engine machines insured.
Nick, that makes me ask – what causes the hybrids to burn so much? that number is quire outsized.
UCS – you look at that as a percentage insured. You wouldn’t look at it on an absolute basis.
I dunno but don’t you drive a hybrid?
UCS:
In most hybrids perhaps it’s a combination of two systems that can have an issue, and you have the worst of both worlds. Especially in the case of a bad accident.
@Nick – I want to get rid of it, but I’ve had zero unplanned fires so far. But a data point of one is non-probitive.
Does that fire data include the severity of damages per incident?
Another question – what’s the distributions between models?
That would be interesting to know who the modern Pintos are.
“It just released its earnings results for the first quarter of 2025, showing sales up 58 percent sold in the same period of 2024, from around 400,000 vehicle sales to nearly a million”
You can take it to the bank. The Chinese would never report any kind of data that wasn’t rock-solid.
“Cheap shit sells. Film at 11.”
But this cheap shit has a habit of blowing up.
Our finest citizens are found in the political class
Disgraced ex-City Councilman Dan Halloran — who spent years in federal prison for a $200,000 bribery scheme to rig a mayoral election — has been arrested and charged for having hundreds of sickening child sex abuse videos on his phone, according to authorities.
Halloran, 54, was busted at Miami International Airport on Saturday as he arrived in the US for a layover flight from Cuba, according to a criminal complaint filed in the Southern District of Florida.
He was found with 1,362 child sex videos hidden on his iPhone
Very strange. I’m guessing that some of the images were flagged by the Center for Missing and Exploited Children and pinged this dude’s IP address, and that alerted the feds when he re-entered the country. Because I’ve been flying international for decades, and I’ve never had my phone searched upon my return.
I’m all for being a good sailor when the time is marginally appropriate, but a doc cursing in front of a patient is just not kosher.
Time and place, people. Time and place.
Just call him Dr. Tourette. Bonus that he wanted to specialize in pediatrics.
OK, that there is funny!
This.
It’s like your kids’ teachers cursing. No.
“Hi, I’m Doctor Lifshitz.”
Don’t. Stop. Come back.
But U.S.-based brokers who specialize in selling to Canadians, especially in Sun Belt markets popular with snowbirds and second home owners, have seen a significant increase in Canadians selling their property. Anger over Trump’s actions, anxiety over immigrants and travelers being detained, and fear of future restrictions and economic regulations have been driving transactions.
Sheri Dettman, who has been selling properties in Palm Springs, California, since 2007, and whose firm did $50 million in business last year, says typically, when it came to nice homes in the desert, buyers looked for an escape and didn’t discuss politics. But since the Trump administration’s talk of annexing Canada, sales and inquiries from Canadians looking to sell their homes have skyrocketed, and clients have been animated. She has had Canadians call to yell at her for being an American advertising in Canadian newspapers.
“Within the first two weeks of tariffs talks, I had sellers calling and saying, ‘we’re out of here, Trump has irrevocably damaged the relationship between Canada and the United States,’” she said. “They were very, very emotional. I had a couple this morning call and say they were afraid Trump would put some executive order on their property.”
The google nooz keeps puking up stories from Fast Company. Who reads that useless rag?
Isn’t it awful? Canadians are flooding the real estate market with inventory. Whatever shall we do?
Snowbirds…
Also, I don’t believe any of that.
Snowbirds tend to be snowflakes, so I believe that there are bubbles of freakouts who only talk to their like-minded kith
But imagine the damage to neighborhoods if a small stratum of hyper-emotional blabbermouths decided to remove themselves because of Trump’s bullshit theatrics.
Funny.
They were getting arrested in 2020 for wanting to come down here…
Yes, it is funny. Canadians and Europeans calling Trump a dictator.
“Whatever shall we do?”
I was thinking the same thing.
Morons leaving the country. Oh my.
There are plenty of good reasons to **** on EVs, but the “OMG fire” one is way overblown on tier one auto manufacturers in my opinion.
It might be interesting to see long term safety record of ultra-fast charging. That sort of energy transfer seems likely to generate a lot of heat. In that article they talk about a claimed BYD “five minute charge” system. Maybe it’s perfectly safe. I don’t know.
I’ll believe it when I see it and can test the actual energy levels rather than what is reported by the display.
No idea about BYD’s marketing info only fast charging.
For the other EV manufacturers they actually heat the battery pack under most conditions as the chemistry accepts a charge faster when the pack it is hot.
I am trying not to comment today as I accidentally took a double dose of black pills with my coffee this morning
You’ll appreciate this guy’s YouTube channel.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/diy-harbor-freight-hybrid-powertrain-saves-electric-golf-carts-with-gas
Jimbo is a retired automobile electrical engineer. He does all kinds of odd small engine videos. His current project is a “petroleum battery” powered electric golf cart. He is actually getting remarkable performance and surprising efficiency with having a cheap small ICE drive an alternator to runs a golf cart. The system is like 1/3rd the price of replacement lead acid batteries with much better range.
Aren’t you still losing power versus directly driving the cart off the engine?
But then again, the golf cart might not be designed in a manner in which wou could easily attach the motor to the drive train.
It probably lacks a transmission entirely, since electric motors are electrically throttled.
Throttled was the wrong word – but I doubt it has a gearbox is what I meant.
Jimbo would be the first person to tell you that this shouldn’t be efficient. He goes through the math on all the losses and they are significant.
But his real world testing gets 40 plus MPG running at like 25MPH versus the 15MPH or so that the cart runs with lead acid.
I think you are correct it avoids the need for gearing and a transmission with the added weight and complexity.
that guy is cool
Uncivil gets it.
That is truly hilarious.
Ok, I cant help it, I will comment.
The ELECTRIC ENGINEER is trying to make a point. The point is that electric cars are only marginally less dumb than the Chinese whitecolonialismiscausingglobalwarming lady’s book. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Want an electric car because it is a fun toy? Great. It’s your money, knock yourself out. I want a Hagn falling block in 375 winchester.
Electric cars are like the tranny thing. I never cared one way or the other until they started with the coercion. Now I fucking hate them.
Canadians want to sell. Burned-out Californians want to buy. It’s a sad state of affairs.
I Built a SHOTGUN AXE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_luBh6eFANU
I haven’t watched the video, but my thoughts keep revolving around the damage swinging sunch a device around is going to do to the shotgun part of the mechanism. Those forces can’t be good for it, no matter where you put the axe head.
You never saw the Tool Time episode where the husband builds a vacuum cleaner for his wife powered by a 4 cylinder car engine, did you?
I can’t say I have.
Looks like it vents the charge through ports in the axe head. The firing mechanism looks incredibly primitive – basically, the impact of the axe head drive a firing pin.
My question: who thinks this shit up?
“Who thinks this shit up?”
I made a bang-stick from plumbing parts back in my diving days. I also made a shotgun primer powered BB gun when I was about 12. The point is….it’s fun.
Hail ZARDOZ.
The gun is good. Especially miniguns.
I had the Nintendo Direct on for background noise, and kept getting distracted by the fact that the one guy’s suit jacket was far too big for him.
I hope the new Switch isn’t laggy on games that were designed for the old one. 🫤
🤞
But, I’m still likely to buy one.
😡
Conditions ii and iii mean I get pushed to the general population.
Wait, maybe not.
It doesn’t say I have to have had the 12 paid months before today, just that I’d paid for 12 months, which I had. And apparently I forgot to opt out of usage information sharing.
Of course I got to it hours after everyone else because I was at work.
I’m not in any hurry. I always buy near the end a cycle for whatever reason.
I am irrationally excited for this one, despite knowing better.
Aren’t you still losing power versus directly driving the cart off the engine?
He is very forthright about the inherent inefficiency, but it’s still pretty impressive.
Mayor Eric Adams’ case dismissed with prejudice despite Trump admin’s request to allow for later prosecution
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/mayor-eric-adams-case-dismissed-prejudice-despite-trump/story?id=120410419
Judge nicely sticks it to the DOJ.
They write as if it’s still not a win for Trump.
Cat. Laser pointer.
“If I ask to be able to prosecute later they will dismiss with prejudice.”
Am I getting this right?
And- his other projects have used what I call a snowmobile clutch; a belt drive cvt, which are not exactly lossless. I would be curious to see a side by side comparison. I suspect it would be pretty close.
But then again, the golf cart might not be designed in a manner in which wou could easily attach the motor to the drive train.
It probably lacks a transmission entirely, since electric motors are electrically throttled.
The electric motor is mated directly to the rear axle. “Throttle control” is by modulating the output of the alternator. The gas (or diesel) motor/alternator run at a steady optimal speed.
There are drones for refueling manned aircraft:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_MQ-25_Stingray
At some point, drones will be doing midair refueling for other drones. Maybe it’s happened already.
If I were designing a midair refueling drone, I’d want to test it against another drone before using humans.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/porsche-giveaway-winner-wrecks-free-911-gt3-rs-speeding-on-mountain-road
“I thought this was America!”
As a little kid, I’d watch the deer hunters pass the bottle around in the kitchen before setting out for deer hunting on a cold morning. It was what men did in the ’40s.
oof. I’ve always stuck to a strict rule: no (zip, zero, nada) alcohol before or while guns are uncased.
Tax Day was remarkably easy, despite having four employers in 2024. (Never married /no kids helps much.)
I made $18k last year and my refund is estimated at $1,400. It would have behooved me to make under $16k. I s’pose I shoulda tried that trick earlier, the one where I attempted to bribe that reprobate into silence when I fucked up a bit. (Not a needlework issue. I didn’t STAT the tubes properly. Much mess. I reacted poorly.) Then, I would’ve been fired earlier and earned less, oddly benefiting me.
Mostly because of having a ‘simple’ US life, I’ve never had an issue with tax complexity. Frankly, I don’t earn enough to even dream of pushing into the intricate realms of taxative thievery. I win.