Sunday Morning Punking Out Links

by | Aug 28, 2022 | Daily Links | 240 comments

There’s a certain pattern I’ve fallen into: an amusing anecdote, birthdays. Links, and Old Guy Music. Unfortunately, I was descended upon by an old buddy, one of our founders and an occasional poster, JW. We have the dining room table littered with a variety of now-empty bottles of intoxicating spirits. And I need to make coffee and breakfast for all of us. So this will be a bit more slipshod than usual.

On top of that, there’s a remarkable shortage of notable birthdays today. Well, there IS some Kraut scribbler; a guy who has been imitated almost as often as Ed Sullivan; a guy who might have been on the spectrum; a scifi guy whose work never really moved me; a cartoonist who ditto; a piece of shit who wasn’t one of (((us))); some pop singer chick whom SP assures me was famous; another chick in the same category;  and a guy whom I’ll always admire for killing Shirley MacLaine.

Let’s get to Links, albeit slipshod Links.

 

Welcome to America, where we don’t put up with tulip-sniffing chocolate-breathed clacking feet Euros.

 

“They’re not slackers. I’m the slacker.”

 

I can’t fucking believe that they’re still droning and pushing hard to go back in. It’s time to hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats.

 

Hillary’s legacy lives on.

 

United Airlines, lawyers, news media. It’s a perfect storm of ridiculous.

 

“This time, we’ve got him for sure!”

 

Team Blue’s youth movement.

 

The important thing is, will this get us closer to being able to make autonomous sexbots?

 

Old Guy Music, ahhhh. Lovely tune, great performer. Enjoy.

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.

240 Comments

  1. Count Potato

    A “coexist” raft?

  2. Count Potato

    Trust women? What kind of crazy ass advice is that?

    • Brawndo

      “I’m on birth control”

      • Tres Cool

        Oh, so you’ve met my kid’s mom.

  3. Count Potato

    “We exemplify two methods to automate the design on the basis of canonical Boolean functions and individual gate-switching assemblies.”

    It’s CMOS! It’s floor wax! It’s a dessert topping!

  4. Count Potato

    You know, if Trump didn’t win, Hillary might be President now.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Naw, we’d all be ash after starting a nuclear war over protecting who’s on her foundation donor list.

      • SDF-7

        Joe’s handlers still seem to be working on that.

      • Count Potato

        I wonder how involved she was with getting rid of the pro-Russia government in Ukraine? If the U.S. didn’t do that, there wouldn’t be a war there now.

  5. Lackadaisical

    ‘Dutch commandos wounded in shooting outside Indiana hotel’

    Okay, I feel like i shouldn’t laugh at this, but I definitely did.

    Are our rednecks/gangs more dangerous than Dutch special forces?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      You can always hear them coming in their wooden clogs.

      • SDF-7

        We should be careful, though — after the season is over they may send over all the Verstappen fans.

      • Pat

        Don’t fire until you see the whites of their… well, everything.

    • Sean

      #metoo

      Yes. Possibly even some boy scout troops too.

    • Gender Traitor

      Indy media describes the site of the shooting as “the heart of Indianapolis’ entertainment district.” My money’s on the Dutchmen trying to score some stuff that’s perfectly legal back home – or maybe some other form of “entertainment.” Is haggling part of Euro culture? Maybe they found out the hard way that it’s not so much a Hoosier thing outside of a car dealership.

      • rhywun

        Is haggling part of Euro culture?

        Not in Dutchland.

      • Name's BEAM. James BEAM.

        Yeah, that’s more a southern Europe thing — the closer you get to North Africa…

      • Not Adahn

        Their request for stroopwaffle was misinterpreted with tragic results.

    • Atanarjuat

      Asked who the commandos were training with and whether any U.S. personnel were involved in the incident, a Pentagon spokesperson referred questions to local civilian authorities, adding the situation remains under investigation.

      Generally when police are this tightlipped they did something truly embarrassing, and this wording is reminiscent.

      To answer your question, honestly I wouldn’t assume that Americans are uniquely dangerous, even compared to EuroDweebs. The organization they’re in probably selects for the toughest, and most Dutch I’ve been around at work were plenty masculine as well as a head taller than most of us.

    • The Last American Hero

      Orange Dawn.

    • Zwak. And once again, the mall is his Waterloo

      Orange Men Dead?

  6. Count Potato

    “I have finally seen enough. Donald Trump will be indicted by a federal grand jury.”

    No reasonable prosecutor….

    • SDF-7

      …. as will this ham sandwich. The FBI has assured us that the mustard is capable of revealing assets and methods….

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      The author

      https://mobile.twitter.com/BradMossEsq

      His bio reads “The most active national security lawyer on Twitter.”

      And that bio photo screams douche all the way from the jacket to the champagne.

      • Pat

        Going to a restaurant and bringing along a photographer to capture you looking at your phone should be grounds for summary execution. At least he didn’t take the meta-irony to the extent of having his photographer take a photo of him instagramming his food.

      • rhywun

        Yeah, that will stop them. 🙄

      • Atanarjuat

        If there’s one thing the Deep State has shown since 2015, it’s remarkable restraint and willingness to play by the rules when going after Trump.

      • Brawndo

        How can supposedly intelligent and accomplished people be so dumb?

      • Pat

        When you live in a very cloistered academic bubble you tend to mistake your experiences for reality.

      • R C Dean

        Which is why so many academics believe the country is rotten with racism, sexism, bigotry, sexual assault, etc. They think the whole place is as bad as their campuses.

      • Count Potato

        Except there is very little racism, sexism, bigotry, or sexual assault on college campuses. Which is why there are so many hate hoaxes.

      • Old Man With Candy

        Demand outstrips supply.

      • Atanarjuat

        I just hung out with an obnoxious lefty chick this weekend. She watched every minute of the 1/6 hearings, to give you an idea. Obviously I’m not ever getting into a relationship with her.

        Twice during various conversations she said something kind of edgy about blacks that she had to walk back with “I’m not racist, but”. I think there is a seriously untapped well of unconscious soft bigotry among people on the left. It’s the swastika-painting type that’s in short supply.

      • The Last American Hero

        It’s collectivism. She probably isn’t racist, but she collectivizes people. And probably doesn’t face much blowback because she votes the right way, hangs with the right crowd, puts Ukraine, BLM, and Pride flags on social media. So she isn’t used to having to walk on eggshells.

      • DrOtto

        Yeah, the wife has a friend who was a screaming liberal before she met her current husband. Her mom still is. Had an abortion debate with her once and her stance was “you realize we’re not talking about white babies, right?” And “blacks aren’t smart enough to control their emotions.” It was very eye opening.

      • Pat

        Conservative media guys routinely catch lefties in man on the street ambushes saying the most racist shit you can imagine. I think it was Crowder several years ago that did one on the topic of voter ID on a college campus. Bunch of lily white students speaking with utmost earnestness and sincerity about how black people are not capable of obtaining ID because they are poor, oppressed, and stupid. At what point does the soft bigotry of low expectations become the throbbing, turgid, granite-hard bigotry of white savior paternalism?

      • R C Dean

        “She probably isn’t racist”

        If she is indoctrinated into the CRT cult, she probably is. Between the “soft bigotry of low expectations” and the anti-white ideology, CRT manages to the seemingly impossible trick of being racist against everybody.

      • Zwak. And once again, the mall is his Waterloo

        Take up the White Man’s burden –
        Have done with childish days –
        The lightly proffered laurel,
        The easy, ungrudged praise.
        Comes now, to search your manhood
        Through all the thankless years,
        Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,
        The judgement of your peers.

    • cavalier973

      “Cue-anon” hinted that Trump would be arrested.

  7. Lackadaisical

    ‘Hillary’s legacy lives on.’

    Chicago says ‘hold my beer’.

  8. Tres Cool

    whaddup doh’
    yo whats goody yo

      • Tres Cool

        + Kinky Kelly

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I was certain that link would involve Germans

      • Chafed

        Where the hell do otters and an orangutan live together?

  9. Fourscore

    I thought the links would look better after a cup of coffee. I was wrong.

    I keep thinking the younger generation would grow up, I seem to be wrong about that too. We are reaping what we have sown.

    • Sean

      I know one youngling who claims to have 27 different personalities and wears tags to show who she currently identifies as.

      Yes, you are wrong and society is fucked.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        “Thanks for letting me know you’re batshit crazy.”

      • Tres Cool

        Sounds like that person has a promising career as a social worker.

      • Chafed

        That’s way too close to the truth.

      • Lackadaisical

        Family court judge.

      • Name's BEAM. James BEAM.

        Asymptotically approaching the truth!

  10. rhywun

    Team Blue’s youth movement.

    They do seem to have a fondness for mumblingly incoherent ancient white guys.

    • Atanarjuat

      Perfect comment.

      I wonder where Newsom ended up (the actual poll is paywalled). AOC was somewhere in the middle. I think those two rocket past mealymouthed mediocrities like Harris and Mayor Pete in the primaries.

  11. Pat

    some pop singer chick whom SP assures me was famous

    After having double checked to make sure I didn’t have her confused with Faith Hill since they’re basically interchangeable, I can assure you Shania Twain was, in fact, famous. In that charmingly quaint era when the internet was still 56k and kids weren’t shooting junk and addicted to fury porn by the time they reached 3rd grade, this was just the sort of thing that might titillate a 12 year old boy with the CMT channel…

    • Atanarjuat

      This is my favorite 90s country video chick.

    • Name's BEAM. James BEAM.

      A direct homage to Robert Plant’s “Simply Irresistible” video, with the sexes swapped.

      Nice.

      • slumbrew

        Are we to believe those fellas found her sexually attractive? I have some doubts.

  12. The Late P Brooks

    The party of granddaddy issues.

  13. The Late P Brooks

    In her youth, Shirley MacLaine was quite the babe.

    • Count Potato

      She aged very well too.

    • SDF-7

      Now now… we’ll have nun of that.

    • cavalier973

      She had unusual features that were almost pretty, almost space-alien-weirdness. The only movie I’ve seen her in was “The Apartment”.

    • Pat

      Spokane had to wait 60 years since Bing Crosby to produce anyone famous (I guess?) and it’s this?

      Also this strikes me as a lot like the people who lost their shit over Mark Knopfler saying “faggot” on Money For Nothing because they were too retarded to realize the point of the song was to mock blue collar labor types as a bunch of bigots. Putting a slogan on a red hat is meant to poke fun at Trump, dweebs.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Poor Bob, perpetually overshadowed and he actually was born in Spokane unlike Bing.

      • Pat

        Having grown up in Spokane I feel a little stupid for not realizing Bing wasn’t born there. The theater that now bears his name, and in which he performed when it was still known as the Clemmer Theater, is quite beautiful after… what is it now, 4 complete restorations? The Fox Theater just down the street is similar. Too bad you have to pay out the ass for parking and fight off the crack addict hobos to get to either of them.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Nothing stupid about that. He’s as Spokane as Mel Gibson or Nicole Kidman are Australian.

      • Pat

        True, I just always assumed he was native I guess.

        I also may have sold Spokane short on its celebrities. I had forgotten that Julie “It’s Pat!” Sweeney and Michael “Police Academy sound effects guy” Winslow were also from there.

      • Zwak. And once again, the mall is his Waterloo

        Hey! I am from Pullman, does that count? I am Glibs famous!

      • Pat

        Craig T Nelson too!

        Shit, I’m starting to think I don’t know my Spokane trivia as well as I thought I did. It’s a good thing I left or they may have kicked me out.

        Hey! I am from Pullman, does that count? I am Glibs famous!

        I’ll allow it.

        One of my buddies in high school got us a weekend job for $10 an hour cleaning out one of the frat houses at WSU (back when the min wage was something like $6.50). Friend of his mom’s was an alumnus. We were pretty hyped for it… until we got there. We knew it had a reputation as a party school, but yowza.

    • Tres Cool

      Where Im from, “hoedown” just means “that bitch fell”.

    • SDF-7

      1) Good to see buried way deep in the Daily Mail’s fashion, there’s a good chunk of people saying the obvious (Her politics may not be her family’s, the hats were birthday themed / parody, and it isn’t any of your business anyway!).

      2) Would it be all that surprising that a rural Idaho girl might lean that way anyway?

      3) Love the REEEEEEE!! and NOT OF THE BODY! from the party of unity, love and tolerance as always on display. Keep vilifying anyone and everyone who even slightly disagrees with you while pushing forward more and more into territory that would make priests of Moloch blush, folks. And have multiple politicians keep pushing to call them terrorists and use government force against them (IRS leaks starting up again, “domestic terrorist” watch lists for school board parents, etc.). That will always end well when you’re talking at least half the country, and that half tends to be much better armed…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfR3ZbU-oYM

      • Pat

        Would it be all that surprising that a rural Idaho girl might lean that way anyway?

        The article lists The Handmaid’s Tale among her credits, so most likely the same audience that believes it’s a documentary instead of chicklit can’t differentiate an actor from the role. Which to be fair is probably true. She’s an L.A. transplant, and wouldn’t have gotten a role on a production like that if anyone involved had even the slightest inkling she was right of Lenin.

    • cavalier973

      That thread provided a bountiful harvest for blocks.

  14. DEG

    One allegation brought against United to explain the reason for the claim of a supposed curfew in Tel Aviv is that it would have made them not liable for compensation to the passengers.

    United wouldn’t be the first airline to be dishonest about a flight delay to avoid compensation.

    You heard me right: I believe Trump will actually be indicted for a criminal offense. Even with all its redactions, the probable cause affidavit published today by the magistrate judge in Florida makes clear to me three essential points:

    I’ll believe Trump is indicted when I see it.

    • DEG

      I read the article.

      Civil lawsuit. Police investigation on going, no arrests. Police listened in on a phone call between Araiza and the now-18-year-old accuser where Araiza told the woman to get tested for STDs but hung up when pressed by the woman “Did we have sex?”.

      Hmm… I’m skeptical. The civil lawsuit being filed before the police investigation concludes has me thinking that no criminal charges will happen because the police haven’t and won’t find anything.

      • hayeksplosives

        Why the NFL (and colleges) feel the need to apply discipline when a player is accused of rape, which is a crime, is beyond me. A crime will be prosecuted, and the accused is innocent until proven guilty.

        Let the judicial system run its course; if the player is found guilty, then fire him.

      • rhywun

        feel the need to apply discipline when a player is accused of rape

        Image. Imagine the shitstorm if they didn’t.

      • hayeksplosives

        I was glad the Blackhawks didn’t immediately broom Patrick Kane when he was accused of rape. The legal process began, and very soon the “victim”’s legal team quit and the case fizzled out.

        Seems that the “victim’s” mother pushed the rape fiction in hope of cashing in. Didn’t happen.

      • R C Dean

        Few organizations will keep somebody accused of a violent crime on the payroll until the plea deal or the jury verdict comes back.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Yeah, off duty misconduct policies exist for a reason. Particularly so for sports leagues that are in the public spotlight.

      • Nephilium

        Would you like me to forward you all the op-ed pieces run in local press about Deshaun Watson? Even with the suspension, there’s pieces from “long time fans” who are saying they’re quitting the team (but have no issue with Hunt being on the team), pieces from massage therapists claiming that their entire profession has been sullied, and woman’s rights groups railing about the terrible treatment the league gives women.

      • Lackadaisical

        ‘pieces from massage therapists claiming that their entire profession has been sullied’

        That’s on the therapists involved and your professional board, not Watson.

        Responsibility how does it work?

      • Nephilium

        The people with the deep pockets are the responsible ones, right?

    • Brawndo

      Another reason why the *culture* of “innocent until proven guilty” is important, not just the legal doctrine… I’d like to think we wouldn’t be seeing so many of these over mere allegations if there was still a culture of “he’s a criminal? Ok prove it.”

      Maybe it’s always been this way

    • Ted S.

      Carl Nassib?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      *checks pixels*

      Yep, definitely shopped. I’ve seen a few in my time.

    • Atanarjuat

      It does, but another possibility is she’s wearing one of those really tight elastic fat redistribution girdling sleeves under her clothes. I would guess the ass is fake.

    • rhywun

      She looks like an alien. 🤮

      • Sean

        Part wasp. On her mother’s side.

      • SDF-7

        Oh hell… does that mean that god awful Agatha Christie Doctor Who episode was reality?

    • Tres Cool

      dem laigs doh’
      Those aren’t calves…more like steers

    • DEG

      WTF?

      • Atanarjuat

        There is an incredibly diversity of sizes and colors amongst Puerto Ricans, in my observation. One of the female archetypes is 5’0″ tall with inhumanly, almost incapacitatingly large breasts and asses. They are not unpopular with the menfolk of their tribe.

      • Atanarjuat

        This one, eager for even more male attention, got ass implants and has begun filming herself dressing provocatively in front of children and uploading it to the internet.

      • Pat

        De gustibus non est disputandum and all that, but I think of dudes who are attracted to those kind of grotesquely disproportionate features the way Mencken spoke about optimists who, upon noticing that a rose smells better than cabbage presumes it will also make better soup.

      • DEG

        I like hourglass figures. I even like exaggerated hourglass figures. But this? I don’t know.

      • Lackadaisical

        With you there brother. This is freakish proportions.

  15. The Late P Brooks

    “Thanks for letting me know you’re batshit crazy.”

    It was the fishing lure through the eyebrow that gave it away, wasn’t it?

    • Fourscore

      So, fell into my tackle box, eh? I was looking for some of the lures.

  16. SDF-7

    Started well… ended tolerably. Think I got lucky with my seed words relative to a couple of them:

    Daily Quordle 216
    6️⃣4️⃣
    3️⃣7️⃣
    quordle.com

    The Madness That Is Duotrigordle was pretty good today too:

    Daily Duotrigordle #179
    Guesses: 34/37
    Time: 07:58.56
    https://duotrigordle.com/

    • Grumbletarian

      Daily Quordle 216
      6️⃣3️⃣
      4️⃣8️⃣

    • Sean

      Daily Quordle 216
      5️⃣6️⃣
      7️⃣3️⃣
      quordle.com

    • Pat

      Daily Quordle 216
      4️⃣8️⃣
      6️⃣9️⃣

    • Tundra

      Daily Quordle 216
      6️⃣5️⃣
      4️⃣7️⃣

    • Grummun

      6 7
      3 5

    • whiz

      Daily Quordle 216
      5️⃣6️⃣
      2️⃣9️⃣

      Ugh, 22 the hard way. Great start, but missed a 1/2 and a 1/3.

    • Grosspatzer

      Daily Quordle 216
      5️⃣7️⃣
      4️⃣6️⃣
      quordle.com

  17. The Late P Brooks

    Good old NPR

    Forgiving loans would would effectively transfer hundreds of billions of dollars in debt from individuals and families to the federal government, and ultimately, the taxpayers.

    Some believe that transfer effectively penalizes people who scrimped and saved to pay for college, as well as the majority of Americans who don’t go to college.

    They might not mind subsidizing a newly minted social worker, making $25,000 a year. But they might bristle at underwriting debt relief for a business school graduate who’s about to go to Wall Street and earn six figures.

    Hmmm, let me think. Which of those examples is the parasite? The one facilitating value creation n the economy, or the one drawing a government paycheck?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I don’t want to subsidize either of them.

      • rhywun

        inorite?

      • Zwak. And once again, the mall is his Waterloo

        Maybe if we have to subsidize these things, they aren’t good in the slightest?

      • Chafed

        Exactly

    • Brawndo

      I mean, the Wall Street guy is probably a parasite too, just in a different way.

      And it might not be “penalizing” people who saved for college or paid their loans off, but it’s definitely making them out to be chumps. I remember an excellent article someone linked here about a year ago about that. I’ll try to find it.

    • Pat

      To be fair, the b-school twat will not be facilitating value creation any more than the social worker in better than 90% of cases.

      • cavalier973

        I have an MBA. I work as a delivery driver.

      • Pat

        I stopped at an undergrad degree in business management, so I just sell trinkets on the internet.

      • DEG

        I have not seen it yet.

        Taxing and sharing.

        Thanks!

  18. SDF-7

    Because it has been long enough we can go off topic and because I probably over share with all you other reprobates… just wanted to share that my Daily Ray of Sunshine equivalent lately has been re-watching The Chosen. While I guiltily worry it may be a little too close to “Buddy Christ” in some aspects, it seriously lightens my heart against all the black pills of the current state of the world. Well, that and nudging me to Clean My Room as it were.

    • Ted S.

      Robby Benson was a wooden actor.

      Although, for the ladies, you’ll get to see him in his tighty-whities if you watch the absurdly bad movie Ice Castles.

    • Pat

      I watched the first two episodes on the recommendation of… every Christian in the world. I’m going to try to get back into it eventually, but the guy playing Jesus was too goofy in the first couple episodes to take seriously as the Messiah. I get that the idea is to humanize him and tell the story of the interpersonal aspects of he and his closest followers, so maybe that’s good in this case, and maybe I’m just not the right audience. I feel like Christians are so accustomed to abject shit like The Omega Code (I got free tickets from church and still felt ripped off) that anything that doesn’t seem like a high school drama production shot on Super 8 in the basement of East Bumblefuck Church of Christ seems award-worthy.

      For my money you can’t beat Jesus of Nazareth as Jesus movies go. Watched it with my mom for the first in close to 20 years about 3 weeks before she died.

      inb4 Robert Powell is a sanitized honky version of Jesus. Yeah, he is. Who cares. He did a great job, as did the rest of the all-star cast.

      • hayeksplosives

        This one is my favorite: The Gospel of John (2003). It’s narrated by Christopher Plummer and has Christ portrayed by that guy from “Lost”.

        It’s the unedited word-for-word Gospel of John. It’s 3 hours long so you might want to watch in installments.

        I’ve given dozens of the DVDs away.

        Here it is on YouTube https://youtu.be/-k0D_qFPb4o

      • Pat

        I’ll bookmark it. I think I may have seen it years and years ago, but I’d have to see if it jogs my memory before I can be sure.

        Jesus of Nazareth was actually a miniseries when first broadcast, so the total runtime on that is something like 7 hours. It’s difficult to put together Jesus stories that neatly fit into standard movie time.

        While I’m here, The Passion of the Christ was also colossally overrated. After the first hour of torture porn when you realize the movie’s only halfway over, it really starts to lose whatever visceral impact it was supposed to have, and there’s really nothing else there.

      • hayeksplosives

        I agree completely on the Passion movie. Because it provides no context or explanation for why Christ was sacrificed and what it means to the human race, it was baffling and appalling to people who have no background on the greater story.

      • Pat

        Nailed it. Obviously not a lot of people in the West are totally unfamiliar with the Jesus story, but without any soteriological context within the movie there’s nothing to motivate the character and you’re just watching a glorified slasher flick. Maybe it’s because I spent too much of my youth on shock sites and LiveLeak, or maybe I’m just naturally not that squeamish about gore, but even the brutality didn’t grab me. There were reports at the time of people vomiting in the aisles and and this and that. I went and saw it in the theater and was like… really? It was so overdone that I just found it comical.

    • Ted S.

      It’s been going on at Toronto’s Skydome for decades.

    • Zwak. And once again, the mall is his Waterloo

      I guess that is the only thing illegal in that town.

      I mean, stolen cars, shoplifting, heroin, all off the table now for cop work.

  19. The Late P Brooks

    “I still think a lot of this benefit is going to go to doctors, lawyers, MBAs, other graduates that have very high earnings potential and may even have very high earnings this year already,” says Marc Goldwein senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

    Goldwein also complains that the loan forgiveness doesn’t address the larger problem of soaring college tuition costs.

    ——-

    But Goldwein says the government might encourage future students to take on even more debt, while doing little to instill cost discipline at schools.

    You don’t say.

    • rhywun

      It’s almost like that wasn’t the point.

      • Tres Cool

        Cash 4 Clunkers meets Academia

    • Zwak. And once again, the mall is his Waterloo

      Mmm… Moral hazard.

      • UnCivilServant

        I’d rather run across a morel hazard.

  20. Count Potato

    “Boston Children’s Hospital’s transgender insanity reveals how unhinged elites make money off our kids

    When activist “Billboard” Chris Elston broke the story of videos promoting “gender affirmation” for kids as young as 2 at the hospital, the outcry was immediate and immense. The progressive press has retaliated by calling this “right-wing harassment,” and of course any actual threats should be condemned.

    But frankly, outrage is the right response to medics promoting the idea that kids young enough to be in diapers have a clear enough sense of their own identity to justify far-reaching changes such as “social transition,” in which everyone around a child agrees to pretend he or she is the opposite sex. A hospital psychologist even insisted in one video that “a good portion of children do know as early as from the womb.”

    So when the US Justice Department came out in defense of the hospital last week, normal parents might be forgiven for thinking America’s rulers have taken leave of their senses. But what’s afoot isn’t insanity so much as a government-approved gold-rush. The “resource” these speculators are fighting over? The healthy bodies of American children.

    Data show that “socially transitioned” children are far more likely to go on to medical interventions. And perhaps this is the point: After all, transgender is big business. Gender-transition surgery can cost upward of $100,000. The US gender-surgery market was valued in 2021 at $1.9 billion, with predicted annual growth of more than 10%. And when hormone therapy costs $1,500 a year, for the rest of a patient’s life, no wonder entrepreneurial medics want kids on the treatment treadmill as young as possible. Clinics are popping up like mushrooms to take advantage of this new business opportunity: The first American pediatric gender clinic opened in 2007, and there are now more than 50 nationwide….”

    https://nypost.com/2022/08/24/boston-childrens-hospitals-transgender-insanity-elites-profit-from-kids/amp/

    • Pat

      Pretending psychology was a medical field instead of a slightly less accurate method of prognostication than astrology or phrenology was almost inevitably going to lead to the rest of the medical profession adopting those sloppy standards instead of psychology adopting the rigor of real science.

    • Gustave Lytton

      I remember when FGM was both an outrage and something that only savages from third world shitholes would do.

      • Atanarjuat

        Just like how almost everyone now knows that masks don’t work and Covid is similar to the flu, etc, the furor will pass soon and we will all remember that cutting a child’s genitals unnecessarily is a monstrous act.

      • DEG

        Define “almost everyone”.

    • Atanarjuat

      predicted annual growth of more than 10%

      *makes sign of the cross*

      These profiteers are every bit as evil as progressives make out men to be who freelance bringing ice, generators and plywood to hurricane-hit regions for an upcharge.

    • rhywun

      “The lunatics have taken over the asylum.”

      This, and in so many areas.

  21. The Late P Brooks

    Another voice crying in the wilderness

    And making mass forgiveness of student debt contingent on finishing one’s degree, or performing public service, or becoming gainfully employed — well, that’s too much to ask of likely voters.

    But going forward, graduation rates need to be part of the conversation as policymakers grapple with the cost of higher education, which is the core problem and which the Biden plan does nothing to resolve. There has been a growing casualness about the need for college students to finish what they start, ironically aided by businessman Peter Thiel’s program that offers young tech superstars $100,000 over two years to drop out of college, which Larry Summers rightly called “meretricious in its impact and the signals that it sends to a broader society.”

    Recipients of the Thiel Fellowship will never bear the stigma commonly associated with the word “dropout,” although many thousands of other college students who graduate without degrees will.

    Muh credentialism!

    “college students who graduate without degrees” Que?

    Not mentioned: the comparative utility of those degrees, completed or not. This guy sounds like he just might be a college administrator.

  22. The Late P Brooks

    I just had a flash of genius: a genitalia accessory kit for Mister/Missus/Other Potatohead.

    Kids can practice doing gender affirmation surgery. It gives meaning and purpose to “playing doctor”.

    And if the penis gets put on the forehead, who are we to judge?

    • Pat

      Operation is probably for a rework as well.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      *pulls hat down over forehead penis*

      • Tres Cool

        Such a dickhead.

      • cavalier973

        I can see what you’re thinking, perv.

      • Nephilium

        Herr Starr? Is that you?

  23. Rufus the Monocled

    So. Apparently another spin to this sordid, corrupted, unethical, psychotic and hysterical story and saga has it that Jared Kushner was key in bringing lockdowns to America.

    Little pieces of shit everywhere make for a big pile of dangerous shit.

    It was all politics from the get-go to this day.

    Yadda, yadda, yadda unvaccinated Canadians abroad have not seen family and friends in coming on three years and Novak can’t play tennis.

    May the perps rot in a hell hotter than hell itself.

    • hayeksplosives

      I’m convinced that Jared and Ivanka are committed Dems.

      • Gustave Lytton

        They’re not libertarians or principled conservatives, that’s for sure.

    • DEG

      Two things about Kushner I picked up from Scott Atlas’ book.

      Some or all of Trump’s tweets went through Kushner before going out twitter.

      Kushner seemed to have his own agenda which sometimes lined up with Trump, sometimes not. Sometimes it lined up with the bureaucrats (i.e. the Fauci/Brix/Redfield axis).

  24. The Late P Brooks

    Today, in “not my money”

    In December 1968, on Apollo 8, the first mission that flew astronauts to the moon, Bill Anders photographed Earth’s blue disc rising dramatically over the lunar terrain. His Earthrise image showed our planet not as continents or oceans but – for the first time – as an entire world, a single disc in the cosmic dark that gave no hint that help from elsewhere could ever save us from ourselves.

    Seven months later, in July 1969, Neil Armstrong was also struck by the sight of the Earth – “that tiny pea, pretty and blue” – hanging in the sky above his Apollo 11 Eagle lander craft. “I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth.” Did that make the first man on the moon feel like a giant? “No,” he later recalled. “I felt very, very small.”

    Anders, Armstrong and the other Apollo astronauts had a profound impact in changing our perspectives of our world. Their observations and experiences underlined the fragility of the Earth and played a key role in the birth of the environment movement in the late 1960s. From that perspective, lunar travel can be seen to have provided value for money and suggests there is still something to be gained from continuing to put men and women into space. Working out the exact price tag is more problematic but the placing of human beings on the surface of another world should be looked at as an act that is generally beneficial to our species.

    Greatness can be attained, if we just throw enough of somebody else’s money at it. Spend, spend, spend!

    I’m surprised he didn’t work something about global warming in there.

    • Pat

      Planet of the Apes also came out in 1968. Tthey’ve done multiple sequels and reboots with budgets dozens of multiples higher than original. And they’re all shit. Sometimes doing something over again 50 years later just because you have a huge wad of cash and a burning sense of nostalgia doesn’t quite recapture the magic.

      • R.J.

        Speak the truth, brother! Amen!

      • Ownbestenemy

        Chasing a high never ends well

      • Count Potato

        Some of the sequels are good.

    • SDF-7

      I personally do believe that getting humanity into space benefits the species (I joke about SMOD, but I’d rather we could weather it as a whole) — but that just means I’m rooting for Elon to sort things out these days. NASA is just a way to funnel money to defense contractors and spread the pork through the Congresscritter districts. (And probably various DIE stuff these days, as with all of the Fed). Expand the FAA if we must for near earth orbit lane / debris management, but otherwise – high time for the Feds to let the people do whatever they see fit.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Loo paper brand Cushelle has become the first company to remove the cardboard inner tube from its packaging in an attempt to reduce waste.

      But the former Blue Peter presenter said the innovation would stymie creative craftspeople.

      I got nuthin’. These people are so far removed from reality that further discussion seems pointless. Let’s bring on societal breakdown.

    • SDF-7

      Grrr.. AK, not AR dummy. Make that Animal maybe, sorry.

    • Pat

      Absolutely based. I always tip in cash for that reason, on the rare occasions when I go some place where tipping is expected, but I leave it up to the employee whether they want to declare it or not.

    • Atanarjuat

      Did he move to Alaska? Also, who drinks coffee, juice, and milk at the same time?

      • Ownbestenemy

        Remembers back to my yoot….that was typical beverage for the adults and minus coffee for kids on Sunday breakfast

    • kinnath

      I always pay cash in restaurants. The bill and the tip.

  25. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Canuckistan continues to slide into an abyss of authoritarian assholes. The lesson here being to not accept anything from the government.

    https://www.myprincegeorgenow.com/164551/news/unvaccinated-mothers-facing-up-to-50000-in-maternity-leave-repayment-to-bc-government/

    Mothers on maternity leave who are not fully vaccinated against COVID-19 working in the BC Public Service are not only at risk of losing their jobs but repaying the entirety of their maternity leave top-up benefit as well.

    Their stories all share similar key points:

    For these women, maternity leave started before October 2021, and before provincial vaccine mandates were announced for BC Public Service workers.
    They all decided to accept the government’s top-up benefit, which pays about 80% of the usual salary in a given position, expecting to go back to their job on their pre-determined return to work date. This is agreed to with the knowledge that if you quit, find another job, or otherwise miss your return to work date, you will be liable to pay back that amount. This return to work date cannot be postponed.
    The province instituted its vaccination policy for employees on November 8th, 2021, requiring employees to be vaccinated in order to be hired, or continue to work.
    If a mother on maternity leave is unvaccinated and is denied an exemption, they are in a position to miss their return to work date and be liable to have to pay back the entirety of the top-up benefit, from $20,000 all the way up to $50,000 in some cases. Or, they can prove vaccination and return to work without a problem.

    • SDF-7

      I’m still stuck on the fact that it is now widely acknowledged (even among Branch Covidians) that the vax does zero against transmission [so there’s nothing “helping” coworkers there]. Highly debatable on it cutting down symptoms any better than the tiger repellent rocks either… so why is Canada still trying to force this on their people? (I know, I know… Trudeau is happily stomping his boots since he knows he can / FYTW… just baffles me that anyone goes along with this….)

      • Ownbestenemy

        Because it is relatively unchallenged. Sure a truck rally and such made for a fun couple of weeks but the government didn’t have to budge in any meaningful way. Plus their populace has bought into it.

        Another point is people that were on the fence but got it will have that attitude of “I was forced to take it and so should you, even though we know it does jack all of nothing”

      • Rufus the Monocled

        Don’t.

        Get.

        Me.

        Going.

        About Canada.

      • UnCivilServant

        Why? Is ranting about the government on the list of conditions eligable for involuntary euthenasia?

      • Pat

        One of my dearest friends lives in Toronto. If you and he are any indicator, nobody hates Canada like sane Canadians.

      • Ted S.

        Floppy-headed muppets are sane?

      • Pat

        All things being relative.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        Bunch of Scott the Dicks here.

        Clown country for clown people.

      • Tres Cool

        “I was forced to take it and so should you…”

        Does that work for people that took out education loans and paid them back?

      • Ownbestenemy

        That is the route we are now taking it seems.

      • EvilSheldon

        Ah yes, the whole, ‘you being smarter than me is privileged and unfair’ school of Progressive pseudo-thought.

      • Ownbestenemy

        I’m educated damn it! Don’t you see all these pieces of paper!

  26. The Late P Brooks

    More regulation, please

    The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 states that dietary supplements aren’t required to undergo any testing to make sure they are safe before being sold. Instead of the Food and Drug Administration testing substances in advance for safety, supplements are assumed to be safe until shown otherwise. If your doctor wrote a prescription for a medication that may or may not have been tested for human safety, you’d probably think twice before you headed to the pharmacy. But that’s the very real position people find themselves in when they walk into an aisle full of vitamin extracts and weight-loss pills.

    Fortunately, THAT never happens.

    • Pat

      While I don’t want the FDA involved, the supplement industry really does need to get its collective shit together. Something like ANSI or UL. Even if a lot of supplements are snake oil, if you advertise 50 mg of snake oil per dose on the label and it’s actually anywhere from 5 mg to 5,000 mg depending on batch, you’ve gone from ripping people off to actually engaging in fraud.

  27. cavalier973

    I enjoyed “Eyes of the Overworld” much more than “The Dying Earth”. The former had quite a bit of humor—much of it dark. My favorite thing from the book was during the group’s desert pilgrimage, when the sun suddenly blinks, and they panic.

    Also, there’s an element of Vance revealed in the D&D rules beyond his magic system. Cugel can cast spells, but if he says the wrong word, or hesitates in his casting, then he gets an unexpected result. In D&D, tenth level thieves can cast spells from scrolls, but there is a 20% chance that they do it wrong.

    • R C Dean

      I can’t think of anything he wrote that I didn’t enjoy, and I’ve read nearly everything he wrote (except some of the early short stories, probably). He had a gift for creating atmosphere, and a kind of cynical world-weary thing that I enjoy. My fave may be the Green Pearl trilogy.

      • cavalier973

        Are all the stories set in this same setting?

        Also, have you read any of his mystery stories?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Saw that. Haven’t heard anything else since it happened.

      It’s either staged or they wanted to get to him before he left New York.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        He was planning on leaving NY?

      • Count Potato

        I think he was going to move down south.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        I’m always fascinated by people who have small kids and are anchored just pick up and leave. It’s not an easy thing to do. Or maybe it is? I’m in that position now but daughter is 17 and has her education path planned out so even if we want to we can’t.

      • Ownbestenemy

        We have the two 17 boys. Once graduated we are cutting them loose and moving. Either they can join us or venture out in life with further education/workforce.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        I would think that would be the ideal time.

      • R C Dean

        It used to be completely the norm. You want/need to move, you move, regardless of kids., young or teenaged. Not sure when/why it changed.

      • Pat

        I blame creeping credentialism. If your kid doesn’t get the right grades, and get into the right school, and mingle with the right people, you as the parent are personally responsible for destroying their lives. 100 years ago, hell, 50 years ago, that was far less important. People scrimp and save to buy a house in the right school district to set their kids up for success. Almost makes me glad I’m female repellent and have no children. Almost.

      • UnCivilServant

        You almost have no children?

        What’s the story behind that?

  28. Ownbestenemy

    Paver cutting didn’t go well. I think my batteries are a bit older and for use on angle grinding a cordless isn’t the best. Get through cutting one paver and battery drains. Off to buy a masonry blade for the miter saw instead. Should have went that route before.

    Tested the new firepit. There is something that reaches down to your primal state of fire, smoke and odor of burning wood.

    • UnCivilServant

      I’m going to agree with your lessons learned.

      • R.J.

        Lesson learned: Batteries are not sufficient for doing constant hard work, they decay rapidly. Apply this lesson to electric cars now.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        I’m pretty happy with the Bauer system from Harbor Freight. Two 5 amp batteries were sufficient to run an electric chainsaw and polesaw for hours while cutting up a monster of a fallen tree. I’ve used an angle grinder to cut through rebar and fencing… didn’t even make a dent in the 5 amp battery.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        err amp hours, not amps.

    • Gustave Lytton

      You’re going to die from siliconosis now! Will pray for you.

      • UnCivilServant

        This is a circumstance where a mask will provide protection.

    • Gender Traitor

      Do enjoy andouille-nee roasts over our makeshift-but-perfectly-functional fire pit on evenings that aren’t too hot. Love to sit & gaze at the last flickers and the embers afterward.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Do yourself a favor and go rent a wet masonry saw.

      • Ownbestenemy

        It’s about 10 pavers that I have to cut…I’ll just wear my ppe and wet the pavers before hand.

    • Ownbestenemy

      I might also just get a masonry blade for the jigsaw instead. Choices….choices

  29. The Late P Brooks
    • Pat

      In the year of my birth, earth’s population stood at ~5 billion. It’s now ~8 billion. “Civilization” extends past the borders of the 5 Eyes countries. The rest of the world isn’t a bunch of self-loathing Malthusians afraid of their own fertility. In 2100 there will probably be a lot more brown people than white people, and most of them will probably practice Islam, but population collapse? I’ll believe it when I see it.

      • UnCivilServant

        So what you’re saying is we should nuke the third world?

      • rhywun

        Yeah it won’t happen unless they get most of their women in the workforce and get themselves modern economies. That doesn’t seem to be happening.

      • Seguin

        Did a little sleuthing just now – Bahrain, the UAE, and Turkey all have birthrates below replacement. I guess it’s a factor of wealth or low infant mortality more than cultural rot.

    • Count Potato

      Unprecedented heat waves my ass.

  30. The Late P Brooks

    Fuck

    • whiz

      Given the Brooksian nature of your reply, what?

  31. The Late P Brooks

    I might also just get a masonry blade for the jigsaw instead. Choices….choices

    Wet saw.

  32. The Late P Brooks

    “I was forced to take it and so should you…”

    Sounds like a pornhub channel.

  33. The Late P Brooks

    Whoa, sick burn dood

    RE: Musk population tweet

    It took NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus to simply reply: “umm nope.”

    The hive mind has spoken.

    Take that, Musk.

    • cavalier973

      Those articles about the dangers of jazz age were interesting. Also, I got some good deals on men’s wear.

      • UnCivilServant

        The Jazz age caused a lot of damage to what came after.

      • cavalier973

        It was the first sexual revolution, I think.

        Still, it’s one of the eras I wouldn’t mind being accidentally time warped to. The other would be 1950’s California.

  34. Not Adahn

    Chicken fried steak and eggs for breakfast, with an extra side of bacon? Not everyone in the LP is a twit.

    • Toxteth O'Grady

      And hash browns. That’s a lot of food.

      • Not Adahn

        Yup. The diner here does that, but I only get it in the winter.

  35. The Late P Brooks

    Given the Brooksian nature of your reply, what?

    My tag fail.

  36. The Late P Brooks

    Nothing is more important than global warming and its accompanying academic industrial complex economic ecosystem.

    Pockets lined must be.

  37. Rat on a train

    U.S. Intervention In Libya: A Noble Use Of Force?

    “Make no mistake,” the president said. “Today we are part of a broad coalition. We are answering the calls of a threatened people. And we are acting in the interests of the United States and the world.”

    “More and more, we all confront difficult questions about how to prevent the slaughter of civilians by their own government, or to stop a civil war whose violence and suffering can engulf an entire region,” [Obama] said.
    ..
    Defense Secretary Robert Gates told ABC this weekend that while Libya itself might not be a vital national interest to the U.S., the prospect of turmoil spilling beyond its borders is worrisome.

    “We are supporting a mission through NATO that was very much initiated by European requests, joined by Arab requests,” Clinton said. “I think this is a watershed moment in international decision-making.”

    If you recall history, Libya had already given up pursuing NBC weapon research and renounced their past support of terrorism. They were not a threat.

  38. westernsloper

    I am Dutch Commando during every Zoom happy hour.