Where’s Sugarfree?

by | Jan 6, 2024 | Beer, Cryptids, Fitness, Food & Drink | 139 comments

“Be still laddie. For shall all be over soon.  When the wits of men no longer conquer the evil forthwith upon the precipice upon thine breasts.

PRECIPICE…”

The chamber suddenly erupted in the sound of Sugarfree vomiting at those words.

“No debí haber confiado en ese tipo peruano.” Don Brett lamented.

”What did you give him?”  I asked.

“Quería emprender un viaje espiritual.”  Don Brett began.  “El peruano me vendió algo para un viaje espiritual.”

“You have no idea.”

Don Brett shook his head no, presumably in Spanish.


-48 hours earlier-

“Hmm.  NOLA style milk stout with…chicory?  What the hell is chicory?”  I asked aloud to myself.  At some point the goofy Russian guy is going to ask why I mutter incoherently in front of the beer coolers in his store.

”Maybe I should try this mayonnaise beer, but why is it Hellman’s? I’m west of the Rockies.”

My phone buzzed in my jacket pocket.  Undisclosed number.  It could be anyone.  It could be a scam I thought.  I know too many people that make calls via their VPN.  Lets be real, I know exactly who is calling me.

”Hello?” I answered.

”At the end of the day, there is no sense in troubling ourselves over simple ideas passed down in ubiquity, these ideas are open source, there is no citation needed; case in point the treasure trove of narrow and mostly fake subjects prevalent in academia today…”  Sugarfree was on a roll.

”Its fake AND gay.  It can’t be one or the other anymore.  Thanks a lot 4Chan.”  I tried to interrupt.

”Yes, it’s not about plagiarism as much as the exhaustion of a narrow and mostly fake subject, but it is also a problem in academia, if you were to, more likely if I were to look up dissertations tagged as being about science fiction in a dissertation subject database, at least half of the dissertations are about Frankenstein another 15% were about The Last Man—Mary Shelley’s other science fiction novel, with the other half of the remaining being Margaret Atwood, an amazing body of work an enterprising mind could analyze, so many potential subjects, but writing a single book to death is what is acceptable.”

”See?  Fake and gay.”  I said

I pulled the phone from my ear when it sounded like Sugarfree began to vomit.  I dropped the mayonnaise beer on the floor to damage the can, and put back in the cooler.

“This is so abominable, I refuse to purchase it at full price.”  I said aloud to myself again.  “Chicory it is.”


-24 hours ago-

“I just want to make sure I have this right.”  Swiss began the Zoom call.  “Sugarfree asked to go on a spiritual journey, and now Sugarfree is missing…why does this only seem to happen during the holidays when engagement is low and we’re trying to find content?”

STEVE SMITH shrugged.

”What did he take?”  I asked.

”STEVE SMITH GET SUGARMAN TEA FROM DON BRETT.  STEVE SMITH PROMINENT FOREST SHAMAN.”

”Of course you are.”  I replied.

”STEVE SMITH NOT SEE SPIRIT JOURNEY LAST LONGER THAN FOUR HOURS.”

”If your spiritual journey lasts longer than four hours please seek immediate medical attention.”  Swiss quipped.

STEVE SMITH narrowed his gaze. “THIS SERIOUS CHEESE MAN.  SUGAR MAN CAN FALL INTO MADNESS.  WRONG SPIRITS NOT COOL.  RAPE MIND.  SUGAR MAN TALK TO WRONG SPIRIT, SUGAR MAN TURN TO X/1 MAN, 2X BUFFALO, X^2 SKUNK APE, 1/X MACHINE ELF”

”I can’t do that kind of math in my head.”  I said.

“Mein gott.” Swiss said.  “I can’t either, but think of the content that screwball will come up with.”

An ominous alert popped up in the Zoom..

Sugarfree has entered the Zoom

He stared into the camera with the pupils of his eyes revealing the depths of hell.  For some reason he was wearing a rain coat.

”We began our journey the same as any other, we walk to work, we enter the book suppositories and we take in the quiet calmness of absolutely nobody being in the building with us, the fetid stench of mothballs, the trash that should have been emptied by the Costa Rican immigrant slave to the university holding his student visa hostage, why he constantly forgets to throw out our trash is an indisputably vile act of spite upon us because he thought the visa system was not real communism.”

”COME BACK SUGAR MAN.  SUGAR MAN HEAR STEVE SMITH?”

“Then he thought his AntiFa troll would get the best of us when he walked through the book suppository and chose some random book, Margaret Atwood, he sat there tearing page after page of bile from the spawn of demons and Barbara Walters, we looked on our utility belt and found that we had a cattle prod, he stopped tearing pages after that.”

”WHY YOU DO THAT SUGAR MAN?”

”First edition, obviously university worshiping demons would have a first edition from the spawn of demons.”

”SUGAR MAN DANCE ON VEIL.  KEEP HIM PUT.  STEVE SMITH FIND SUGAR MAN”

STEVE SMITH LEAVE ZOOM

“Umm. How you holding up Sugarfree?”  Swiss asked.

”You send the skunk ape to capture us, we are ready for the skunk ape just as we were ready for AntiFa.”  Sugarfree held up the cattle prod to the camera.  “We will introduce the splorch.  Pretend the skunk ape was not warned at your own peril.”

”Umm. Your turn Mex.”

”Hey Sugarfree, what do you know about Chicory?”  I asked.  Swiss narrowed his gaze.

”The chicory plant, a perennial used to feed livestock, as a folk remedy, and as a vegetable in human diets, the root is often used as a coffee substitute and can be converted to alcohol, a few studies found that chicory root contains phytochemicals, including inulin, which is a prebiotic that supports healthy gut bacteria, in many cases it has antioxidant, anticancer, and anti-inflammatory properties, which is why some people use it as a medicinal herb; Chicory root coffee gained popularity toward the end of the 18th century, its use in coffee and as a coffee substitute is one of the most recognized uses of chicory root today, reasons people may choose chicory root coffee in lieu of regular coffee include it being a caffeine-free alternative, that it contains inulin, a prebiotic, which may help support a healthy gut, a source of flavonoids (a phytonutrient), tannins, and coumarins have antioxidant, anticancer, and anti-inflammatory properties, some hippies just put chicory root in regular coffee, thus offering the benefits of chicory root without sacrificing the coffee they love while also reducing the caffeine content depending on how much one may consume, researchers examined the effects of chicory root extract on blood glucose(blood sugar) and bowel movements and found that after four weeks of consuming chicory root, participants had improved hyperglycemia(high blood sugar) and bowel movements.”  He stopped to vomit on the keyboard.

”That’s impressive.”  I said.

”To avoid plagiarism charges from right wing media,” he gasped briefly, “we will leave a citation in the chatbox.”

Swiss looked up from his phone.  “It looks like Don Brett found him in his vault.”


“Before we ask any more relevant questions, why is STEVE SMITH weeping uncontrollably in the corner of a bank vault?”  Swiss asked.

”SUGAR MAN HAVE CATTLE PROD.”

”He wasn’t kidding.”  I said.

“Nada de armas. No podemos dispararle.”  Don Brett cautioned.

”That’s true, its not his fault he thinks we’re demons.”  Swiss replied.  Both looked at me.

”SUGAR MAN CONSUMED BY SPIRITS” He sat there sobbing. “HE DANCE ON PRECIPICE.”

”Okay, so that means you talk to him first.”  Swiss said to me.

”Fuck that, he has a cattle prod.”  I said.

”Sure, but this being your story we don’t have much of a choice.  You have to go in, it wouldn’t make sense to send Swiss or Brett into a vault to talk to Sugarfree on a psychedelic trip.”  Swiss explained.

“Come here.”  Sugarfree said.

I looked at Swiss.  “You should do as he says.”

“I SAID COME HERE.” Sugarfree said again.

Something compelled me to move across the dark, cold room to the throne upon which Sugarfree sat.

Swiss closed the steel vault door behind me.

Sugarfree held out the cattle prod to my ear.

”I hold a rancid Rabbit vibrator.  I’m sure you can hear the humming, wiggling sillyfoam dick spin and see the flashy lights in the corner of your eye.  I won this in an Ebay auction.  I don’t know who’s pussy this belonged.”

I winced a bit.  “I’m pretty sure that’s a cattle prod.”  I said.

”WHOM. TO WHOM THIS PUSSY IT BELONG”  STEVE SMITH bellowed from the other side of the vault door.

“SILENCE.  Now…put your hand in the box.”  Sugarfree said.

”What box?”

The box?  You know the box.  What’s in the box?”  Sugarfree commanded.  I did as he asked, and put my hand where I assumed Sugarfree left a box in his mind…



For the record:  chicory does taste like coffee.  Its not exactly the same though, a bit woodier if that is a word.  Luckily such flavors are normal for such a style.  Too bad it was a bit sweet.  Sort of like one of those iced lattes you find at Whole Foods or some other establishment selling fine products to hippies with too much goddamn money.  A healthy 7% ABV though is enough to help you forget about the whole thing entirely.  Coronado Brewing Co. Early Bird Milk Stout:  3.1/5

About The Author

mexican sharpshooter

mexican sharpshooter

WARNING: Glibertarians.com contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. https://youtu.be/qiAyX9q4GIQ?t=2m22s

139 Comments

  1. The Late P Brooks

    Relaxing on a beach somewhere?

  2. PieInTheSky

    i am not drunk enough for this

  3. juris imprudent

    What’s in the box?

    RM Mohiam: pain.

  4. juris imprudent

    The cilantro and lime on the label of the mayo beer is a nice touch.

    • Lackadaisical

      I didn’t even catch that. That’s hilarious.

      • mexican sharpshooter

        Its been on my iPad since December and that’s the first time I noticed it.

      • slumbrew

        I just noticed it reads “Band” instead of “Brand”. And that weird double-N. And what does that even read above “Mayonaise Beer”? And “mayonnaise” is misspelled…

        It’s like a fractal of weirdness. AI-generated?

      • mexican sharpshooter

        Its an AI image, for now.

  5. Ownbestenemy

    Kitchen demo! https://ibb.co/3BRNhR0

    She has some anger she is getting out

    • Gender Traitor

      Are you maintaining a safe distance?

      • Ownbestenemy

        I wanted to do just a small section…she has….gone crazy

    • PieInTheSky

      that is a fancy hat.

      • Don escaped Texas

        nice toque, eh

      • Lackadaisical

        Keeps the dust off your head.

      • juris imprudent

        Love the non-load-bearing section on the right.

      • Ownbestenemy

        The whole thing is a quarter wall minus the edge which most likely is a support down to the basement.

      • Lackadaisical

        Looking at that, I’m more glad than usual that I’m done renovating.

      • Ownbestenemy

        In terms of renovation this one is easy. Reciprocating saw incoming and will open up thr kitchen to the living room/dining room.

    • Mojeaux

      I don’t blame her. I hate those walls that don’t go to the ceiling.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Mrs OBE “right!”

      • Tres Cool

        Pink hat, pink hammer, pink insulation…

        Is it still October down there ?

      • R C Dean

        Eh, they can have a place. We’ve got one that works.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Agreed…it just closed off the room too much

  6. The Late P Brooks

    Speaking of horror fantasy

    New York Attorney General Letitia James is calling for a $370 million fine against former President Donald Trump and his companies and a lifetime ban on him and two of his former company executives from the real estate industry in the state.

    Attorneys from James’ office requested the punishment in post-trial motions filed Friday in the Trump fraud case. They said that Trump owes $168 million of interest allegedly saved through fraud; $152 million from the sale of the Old Post Office building in Washington, D.C., the site of one of Trump’s hotels; $60 million through the transfer of the Ferry Point Golf Course contract; and $2.5 million from severance agreements for former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Howard Weisselberg and ex-Trump Organization controller Jeff McConney.

    ——-

    James’ office said that Trump and the others committed illegal acts with the intention to defraud and reaped millions in ill-gotten gains. The sum she is seeking is well over the $250 million that she had initially estimated in 2022 that Trump and his business should pay in damages.

    Why wouldn’t she do for a 50% kicker? Interest rates have gone up.

    ” $152 million from the sale of the Old Post Office building in Washington, D.C., the site of one of Trump’s hotels”

    Obviously subject to “restitution” in the state of New York.

    • cyto

      Remember, he has already been found guilty by summary judgement… before even putting on any defense.

      The same judge gets to decide. Probably will double the ask. Might find a way to give the dewrh penalty.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Theft, straight up, and if they can do that to someone with his resources just think of what they could do to any one of us.

      • juris imprudent

        Resources sure, but Trump seems to be uniquely unable to find and hold onto competent legal counsel. Remember, Cohen was a long-time Trump attorney.

      • Lackadaisical

        All the smart attorneys know better

      • R C Dean

        They know better than to put themselves on the bullseye for our deranged Ruling Class.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Trump is an almost peerless non good underling picker, it is known.

      • Don escaped Texas

        so unfair….I’m calling a press conference right now!
        – Omarosa Manigault Newman

        whatevs
        – Anthony Scaramucci

    • R C Dean

      “$168 million of interest allegedly saved through fraud”

      I recall a banker testifying that the claimed values didn’t make any difference.

      • juris imprudent

        The AG of NY knows better than some dumbass commercial banker!!!

      • slumbrew

        It’s all so stupid.

        “This is worth $500 million”.

        “OK, we’ll take your word for it”, said no bank ever.

    • mexican sharpshooter

      I’m curious how they expect him to pay the fine if he cannot sell his NY based assets to cover it?

  7. The Late P Brooks

    A place for Pie to hang his hat

    Spoiler alert- it might be a little bit of a challenge, getting in and out of there this time of year.

    • PieInTheSky

      I don’t use antlers in my decorating

      • Don escaped Texas

        or these?

      • R C Dean

        I have elk and deer antlers in the house and three sets of deer antlers on the back porch. The surplus antlers are in the garage.

    • PieInTheSky

      looks good overall except the finish on most walls

  8. Stinky Wizzleteats

    Chicory sorta tastes like coffee but it has a kind of sickly sweet undertone that likes to stick to my uvula for a couple of hours afterard. Not a fan.

    • pistoffnick

      You sure got a pretty uvula…

    • Mojeaux

      Worked in an office with all dudes. My non-coffee-drinking self had to be taught how to make coffee because they went through that shit like wildfire. So, I go to New Orleans on vacation and bring back things for them. For my boss, I got a can of Cafe du Monde chicory coffee. He just looked at it and said, “Thanks” kind of flatly. I’m like, WTF?

      Later, I asked him about it. He said, “I had to drink chicory for years because I couldn’t afford real coffee. I’m not touching that.”

      Um. Okay then.

      • Don escaped Texas

        I’ve written the same here: none of my kin would touch the stuff*

        * The Surgeon General has found that agreeing with the choices and behaviors of Clan Escaped can cause cancer, death, retardation, poverty, and incarceration.

      • Mojeaux

        Well, it was hurtful. Just typing that out had me a little choked up and it happened almost 30 years ago.

      • Don escaped Texas

        maybe he should have gone with “thanks! I really get a hankering for a pot of this stuff every now and then”

        I think there are more varieties and brands of coffee available in the NO than anywheres

      • Fourscore

        I always mixed it half and half (Du Monde) with coffee. Asian food stores have it as well as VN coffee.

  9. Chafed

    I’m off to synagogue. I will be praying that mayonnaise beer isn’t real.

    • prolefeed

      It is real. Google “mayo beer”, and there’s a funny review of said beer. A one time limited edition, thankfully.

      • Nephilium

        /zoom in on the image

    • Nephilium

      We live in a world where there’s mustard beer, pastrami on rye beer, pizza beer (brewed with actual pizzas), beef heart beer, vaginal (and beard) yeast beer, pumpkin beers, oyster stouts, and testicle beers.

      At least I can still find good IPAs most of the time.

    • mexican sharpshooter

      Its an AI…for now.

  10. Aloysious

    Brilliant, and funny as well. Thank you for this.

    I don’t know which made me laugh harder, Sugar Free going all Captain Ahab, or Swiss’ response to being surrounded by mayonnaise beer and rapey cryptids… narrowed his gaze.

    • mexican sharpshooter

      Thank you

  11. The Late P Brooks

    I wanted to do just a small section…she has….gone crazy

    The kitchen should be the biggest room in the house. That’s where you spend your time.

  12. Shpip

    I hold a rancid Rabbit vibrator. I’m sure you can hear the humming, wiggling sillyfoam dick spin and see the flashy lights in the corner of your eye.

    Some Agile prose from Sugarfree, there.

    • mexican sharpshooter

      That’s high praise. Thank you.

  13. Nephilium

    Well damn. I haven’t seen a Coranado beer on the shelf (that I remember) for several years. Not a huge fan of milk stouts, but I’d probably give this one a go. I seem to recall Dogfish Head used to do a chicory stout that was solid.

    I’m happy that I found Bells has a solid mix pack out there that includes their Best Brown Ale.

    • Don escaped Texas

      is there anything Bells doesn’t do well?

      yankees are proof that doG loves us

      • Nephilium

        Yes. Their Cherry Stout is an abomination. They used Michigan sour cherries, which really didn’t work (at least for me) with the stout profile.

      • Don escaped Texas

        which beers have the least flavorings beyond what grain or hops add ?

      • Nephilium

        That would be most beers. Grain, hops, yeast, water. Those are the basic ingredients. You could look for a gruit if you wanted to drop the hops, but then it’s replaced with herbal blends.

        If you’re asking which beers would best showcase a grain/hop, those would be SMASH beers (Single Malt And Single Hop), they’re frequent in the homebrewing community, but rare in the distributed world. The closest I recall seeing to a nationally distributed SMASH was the year that Sam Adams did a IPA single hop mix pack. Same malt bill, 2 of the standard IPA, and then 2 each of variants with just a single hop type.

      • R C Dean

        That combo sounds interesting to me. Shame it didn’t work out.

  14. Don escaped Texas

    OT

    does FourScore turn four score and seven this year ?

    • Fourscore

      Yep, 5 more months

      • SDF-7

        Have to ask — were you conceived in liberty? (Or on liberty… or on a Liberty Ship…. 😉 )

  15. LCDR_Fish

    Had some great stuff at Coronado Brewing during a couple visits in August (hope to stay on North Island again sometime this year – nice to be within walking distance of bases). Any recommendations for [good] breweries near Port Hueneme in Ventura County?

    Currently waiting on a slow cooker pot of pasta sauce (beef, sausage and kielbasa, etc, etc) – should be nice for spaghetti dinner in about 6 hrs and may try and take leftovers to work each night this next week.

    Some great NRO articles this week:

    https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/claudine-gays-defenders-have-it-all-backwards/ (Charlie cooke)

    I have spent a good amount of time this week thinking about why Harvard failed in its attempt to keep Claudine Gay as its president, and I have come to the view that it ultimately happened because the arguments that were made in its defense were a load of old bollocks. Here’s Tressie McMillan Cottom, in the New York Times, to substantiate my conclusion:

    The specter of D.E.I. made her presidency sound like a voucher program for a welfare recipient and not the internal promotion of a long-term employee to leadership. When you hear someone from the reactionary crowd talk about D.E.I.’s undue influence over an institution like Harvard, he sounds like a royal who finds himself forced to go to the D.M.V. for the first time. Subjected to rules designed for hoi polloi, forced into lines with people who need the government and unable to buy his way out of it. It is not genius. It is a powerful rhetorical strategy because it merged the political craftsmanship of the 1988 Willie Horton ad with the moralism of federalism.

    It plays on the latent but powerful idea that government — big government — unfairly helps undeserving people, many of them women and people of color, who drain the pool of opportunity for deserving people. D.E.I. is “bad” because it supplants merit for diversity and it empowers the racialized federal government to stick its hands into an institution that produces the cultural elite. That made Harvard a public problem. The public proved all too willing to weigh in on whether a tenured professor deserved her job, with its role, status and ranking. Once this link was secured, every other charge became stickier.

    None of this is true. One cannot contend with one’s critics if one does not know what one’s critics believe, and Cottom — whose piece runs for 1,750 words but never includes the term “plagiarism” — does not know what her critics believe. Let’s take the above claims one by one:

    The specter of D.E.I. made her presidency sound like a voucher program for a welfare recipient and not the internal promotion of a long-term employee to leadership.

    Cottom mentions “D.E.I.” here, but what she’s really objecting to in this sentence is criticisms of affirmative action, which is a much older sin than “D.E.I.” It is true that Claudine Gay has been described by some as an “affirmative action hire.” But, as enemies of that practice have noted for decades now, the responsibility for that lies with those who promote affirmative action, not those who oppose it. The title of Cottom’s piece is “The Claudine Gay Debacle Was Never About Merit.” Actually, it was — which is presumably why Cottom feels obliged to dismiss that objection right out of the gate and then never revisit it in any detail. Invariably, advocates of affirmative action try to have it both ways. When arguing for its continuation, they insist condescendingly that the practice is necessary because, without it, minorities will never reach positions of power and influence; and then, once they have got their own way, they deny that anyone identifiable has ever benefited from the preferential treatment that they just contended was imperative.

    Having no connection to Harvard, I do not know whether Claudine Gay was an affirmative action hire, but I do know why some people have assumed that she was: They have assumed that she was because Harvard and its apologists have made it sound as if she was. When Gay ascended to the role, the main thing that was said about her was that she is a black woman. When she was criticized in that role, the main thing that was said about her was that she is a black woman. Now that she is out of the role, prominent progressives are insisting that she was only targeted because she was a black woman, and some are urging that “Harvard’s Next President MUST Be a Black Woman.” Since this affair first began, I have heard precisely nobody contend in the detail that Gay was actually good at her job; the whole thing has been about rank identity politics. It ought to come as no surprise that some of those listening have drawn the conclusions that they have, or that, by enormous margins, Americans find the dance in which Harvard has been engaged so distasteful.

    Next, Cottom writes:

    When you hear someone from the reactionary crowd talk about D.E.I.’s undue influence over an institution like Harvard, he sounds like a royal who finds himself forced to go to the D.M.V. for the first time. Subjected to rules designed for hoi polloi, forced into lines with people who need the government and unable to buy his way out of it.

    This is perfectly backwards. It is the DEI “crowd” that is “reactionary”; the advocates of DEI who sound like “royals”; and the critics of DEI who object to the disparity between the rules that are applied to “hoi polloi” and the rules that are applied to the clique.

    Affirmative action and DEI are both predicated upon brazen racial discrimination. One can dress this up, euphemize it, or engage in special pleading in its defense, but one will not change that elementary fact. In one corner, we have clasically liberal ideas such as equality, merit, universalism, and objective truth, and in the other we have regressive, authoritarian ideas such as identitarianism, censorship, collective guilt, and epistemic solipsism. Like many evil institutions — say, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — DEI cloaks itself in ostensibly liberal terms, but they represent nothing more than a carapace over what is, at heart, a viciously bigoted and anti-intellectual worldview that seeks to take us back to the bad old days of group hatreds and empower a tiny clerisy to determine every last detail of our national life.

    Cottom proposes that DEI’s detractors are irritated by their inability to “buy [their] way out” of the system. But this, too, is upside-down. What Claudine Gay’s critics were demanding was that she be treated like anyone else. And, clearly, anyone else who plagiarized on the scale that she did — including students at Harvard — would have been removed from their position post haste. In this context, it is utterly preposterous to cast Gay — who comes from great “privilege” — as one of the “people who need the government.” At Harvard, Gay was at the very head of the “government” — a “government” that hired her despite her obvious mediocrity, paid her $900,000 per year, and then tried to cover up her academic sins in the hope that they would go away. What eventually happened at Harvard was not an example of royalty’s prevailing over hoi polloi, but of hoi polloi’s insisting that the royals’ rules be applied to them, too. With power comes responsibility. Gay had the power; she was forced to accept the responsibility.

    Back to Cottom:

    It is not genius. It is a powerful rhetorical strategy because it merged the political craftsmanship of the 1988 Willie Horton ad with the moralism of federalism.

    This doesn’t mean anything comprehensible, and can thus be ignored.

    Next:

    It plays on the latent but powerful idea that government — big government — unfairly helps undeserving people, many of them women and people of color, who drain the pool of opportunity for deserving people.

    Wrong. What opposition to DEI “plays on” is that DEI is antithetical to the ideals that Americans are taught from birth. As exercised, DEI is hostile to equality, indifferent toward merit, dismissive of free speech, and desperate to divide people up by their immutable characteristics in ways that the United States has spent centuries trying to avoid. There is a reasonable debate to be had about the extent to which the government should help engender equality of opportunity, but that debate pre-existed DEI, and it will survive it. DEI is not a continuation of age-old questions about government aid; it is something else altogether. That something else must be met on its own terms, and it will be.

    Cottom continues:

    D.E.I. is “bad” because it supplants merit for diversity and it empowers the racialized federal government to stick its hands into an institution that produces the cultural elite.

    Yes, that’s correct. But it’s not “bad”; it’s bad. Bad, even. Supplanting merit for diversity — which is a nicer way of saying “judging people not by the content of their character but by the color of their skin” — is Bad. It’s Bad everywhere, but it’s especially pernicious when it is adopted at places that “produce the cultural elite,” because, by definition, that cultural elite has a great deal of power.

    Cottom finishes her summary with a familiar canard:

    That made Harvard a public problem. The public proved all too willing to weigh in on whether a tenured professor deserved her job, with its role, status and ranking. Once this link was secured, every other charge became stickier.

    Harvard is a “public problem” because Harvard accepts billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money and is bound by federal law. I understand that it would be nice for Harvard if, instead of proving “all too willing to weigh in,” “the public” was content to send its cash to Claudine Gay and never think much about how the institution was being run, but that’s not actually how things work in a free country, and nor should it be. As it happens, there’s a well-known word for an arrangement in which the people are obliged to throw their money at a small group of people but enjoy no say in how it’s spent, and it’s a word with which Tressie McMillan Cottom seems to be familiar. What was it? “Roy-,” “Ray-,” “Ri-”? Ah, yes, that’s it: Royalty.

    • LCDR_Fish

      This is fine.

      https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pentagon-withheld-disclosing-defense-secretarys-hospitalization-to-congress-and-press-for-days/

      Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, 70, was hospitalized for nearly a week before members of Congress or the press were alerted to his absence.

      Shouldn’t be behind paywall.

      https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/how-long-are-we-going-to-do-this/

      On Thursday night, Politico revealed that the Biden White House is preparing for a “wider, protracted regional conflict” to emerge from the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. But that’s not much of a revelation. The more surprising discovery Politico inadvertently exposed is that the White House is beginning to reluctantly acknowledge the existence of that very “wider, protracted regional conflict,” which has been both active and observable since the 10/7 massacre.

      Really, what gave it away? Was it the upwards of 118 separate attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Syria by Iran-backed militias? Was it the multiple retaliatory airstrikes Biden approved on positions occupied by Iranian proxies and Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps-linked facilities in the region, the latest of which occurred only yesterday afternoon? Maybe it was the campaign of terror and armed piracy in the Gulf of Aden by the Iran-backed Houthi militia group, which has all but closed the Suez Canal to international commerce. Who’s to say?

      That wasn’t the most shocking revelation in Politico’s latest report. Indeed, even the humiliating discovery that the Biden White House has “for months behind the scenes urged Tehran to persuade the proxies to scale back their attacks,” only to be rebuffed, somehow fails to shock. What was most unnerving in this Politico dispatch is that the outlet forecast Biden’s “plans to hit back at Iran-backed Houthi militants” as though that was news.

      Observers of this conflict have been following the administration’s plans to restore deterrence in the Red Sea and once again guarantee the maritime transit of global commerce for nearly a month. On December 6, Politico revealed that U.S. military officials had “drafted options to hit back against the Houthis, though they are not actively pushing those plans at this time” in the fear that Biden might execute one of those options. Ten days later, Politico informed the public that the White House had reached the “actively weighing” stage of deliberations over the prospect of a retaliatory response against Houthi targets. As of the most recent reporting, the White House was still “drawing up plans to intervene directly against the” terror group.

      All this drawing and weighing is no longer news. It hasn’t been for some time. What is news is the Biden administration’s inexplicable reluctance to execute any of the options the Pentagon has presented to him.

      And it is inexplicable, if only because the rationale that supposedly explains the White House’s reluctance keeps changing. Sometimes Biden is afraid of sparking a broader conflict — one that, by all accounts, is already upon them. Sometimes, it’s because the administration doesn’t want to appear to be on the same side as the odious Saudis in their long-simmering conflict with the Houthis. Occasionally, we are told that Biden is actually seeing to the Saudis’ interests. After all, what Riyadh supposedly wants more than anything is a durable settlement to the civil war in Yemen, and acknowledging the existence of the Houthi’s terror campaign would throw a wrench in those works.

      None of it adds up. Meanwhile, Western prestige erodes by the day, and the international trade regime maintained by the United States degrades further.

      What is obvious is that the Biden administration is self-deterred. Its fear of sparking a broader conflict with Iran has given Iran a free hand to test its freedom of action, and it will continue to probe its parameters until it encounters a hard target. Unless the costs of this regional terror campaign outweigh the benefits, it will continue and, indeed, become more reckless. Already, those benefits include humiliating the United States, forcing it to move assets around the region and expend vast stores of defensive ordnance, and a clear demonstration that it can close the Gulf of Aden through proxies at a time of its choosing. From Tehran’s view, those are real, tangible gains. The costs required to outweigh them grow with every successful provocation. The longer Biden waits, the bigger the event necessary to arrest this tempo of operations.

      What is staying Biden’s hand? That’s the story. The existence of plans, none of which the president seems inclined to act on, is not.

      • LCDR_Fish

        https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/which-hostile-power-is-getting-free-passage-from-the-houthis/

        Would like to see more coverage of this, but we’ll see:

        Iran-Backed Houthis Shut Down Red Sea Shipping — but Not for the Chinese

        Quick geography lesson: The Red Sea, which many Americans associate with Moses, is the lone connection between the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal, which connects to the Mediterranean Sea. Saudi Arabia and Yemen border the Red Sea on one side, and Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, and Djibouti are on the other side.

        If you want to ship goods from India and Asia to Europe or the Atlantic, or vice versa, you have two main options: You can sail through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, which is the fastest and most direct route, or you can sail all the way around the continent of Africa. (There is also the Northern Sea Route, through the Arctic Ocean, but the ability to traverse that route is dependent upon Russian-managed icebreakers.)

        Sailing around Africa adds about 6,000 miles and about two weeks’ time to the journey, which burns more fuel and makes shipping more expensive for consumers. On a normal day, anywhere from 50 to 60 cargo ships transit the Red Sea — about 30 percent of all cargo traffic in the entire world.

        But this region has not seen a normal day in quite some time.

        The Houthis are essentially a wholly owned subsidiary of Iranian Mullahs Inc. and are one side in a long-simmering, bloody civil war in Yemen. The Houthis are the kind of militia who have adopted the Nazi salute, chant “Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse the Jews,” etc. The Houthis’ record on human rights, women’s rights, torture, use of child soldiers, and so on is every bit as appalling as you would imagine.

        One of President Biden’s first major foreign-policy actions was cutting off U.S. support for Saudi Arabia in its fight against the Houthis. Biden accused the Saudis of creating “a humanitarian and strategic catastrophe.” After extensive efforts by the United Nations, the two sides reached a truce in mid 2022, and the cease-fire appears to be holding.

        The Houthis may well have bigger fish to fry. Starting in mid November, the Houthis first attempted hijackings of cargo ships, and then began hitting ships in the Red Sea and the adjacent Northern Arabian sea with drone strikes and missiles.

        The New York Times apparently has actual sources within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, who spelled out the plan back in early December:

        Analysts close to the Iranian government said the Houthis’ base in Yemen makes them ideally positioned to escalate fighting in the region, in the hopes of pressuring Israel to end its war with Hamas in Gaza.

        The analysts’ assessment tracks with descriptions of a plan by Iran and its network of militias to increase attacks on Israeli and American targets in the region, according to two Iranians affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps who were not authorized to speak publicly.

        The Houthis, the analysts said, are Iran’s chosen proxies because from Yemen they are both close enough to the Red Sea’s strategic waterways to disrupt global shipping, and far enough from Israel to make retaliatory strikes difficult. Unlike Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group that has struck Israel from Lebanon, the Houthis are not beholden to domestic political dynamics — making them effectively accountable to no one.

        According to an unnamed White House official:

        Since November 19th, Houthi rebels from Yemen have attacked commercial vessels 23 times. They’ve been using a combination of anti-ship ballistic missiles — for the first time, anti-ship ballistic missiles have been used anywhere, let alone against commercial ships — land attack cruise missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, and fast boats.

        With the Houthis firing missiles on a regular basis at cargo ships heading toward or through the Red Sea, unsurprisingly, most cargo companies are diverting their ships to the much longer and much more expensive alternate routes.

        Denmark’s Maersk “announced that it would pause all vessels bound for the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden in light of the recent incident involving Maersk Hangzhou and ongoing developments in the area. The situation is constantly evolving and remains highly volatile, and all available intelligence at hand confirms that the security risk continues to be at a significantly elevated level. We have therefore decided that all Maersk vessels due to transit the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden will be diverted south around the Cape of Good Hope for the foreseeable future.”

        Switzerland’s Mediterranean Shipping Company, France’s CMA CGM, and Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd also announced the suspension of their services in the Red Sea.

        Not every shipping company, however, is diverting all its ships from that route. One of the exceptions is China’s state-owned COSCO shipping lines.

        The Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit that monitors and translates foreign media sources, spotlighted a YouTube video posted December 19 by Chinese professor and military expert Yun Hua, who is a faculty member at the PLA’s National Defense University.

        In his remarks, Yun Hua laid out that the Houthis’ deference to Chinese ships was no coincidence, and boasted, “China’s COSCO Shipping Holding has become the only major shipping giant able to navigate the Red Sea.” His remarks:

        The national fortune has arrived, and nothing can stop it. The storm set off by the Houthis has even benefitted China. Hello everyone, I am Xiao Yunhua. In recent days, as we mentioned in our programs, the Houthi militants in Yemen have expanded their range of attacks on ships belonging to Israel and Western allies in the Red Sea, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden. This has effectively closed the door for the Suez Canal, the busiest global shipping route to the American and Western bloc.

        However, the Houthi militants in Yemen haven’t reacted much to the idea of the U.S. forming a coalition; they simply stated that the Houthis can confront any alliance the United States tries to create in the Red Sea.

        “Why are we discussing this? Because what’s really interesting is that the U.S. announced this coalition unilaterally, and other participating countries have not given a clear response. Whether they’re coming or not is still unknown. Just a few days ago, a French warship was chased all the way by a Houthi dinghy. Austin’s statement seems more like a political move to show that the U.S. is not isolated in the Middle East. And, importantly, there has been no reaction from the other major Middle Eastern powers, and Bahrain is more politically bound and reluctant to oppose the United States. Without local support, this coalition force of ten countries is unlikely to be very substantial, as supply lines would become a major issue.

        “Given the backdrop of Europe being generally dragged down by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, it’s hard to say whether this coalition will be successful, especially since the Houthi militants can choose to engage in naval warfare when it suits them and retreat to the mountains when they can’t win, launching missiles when you’re not paying attention. How will this coalition force of ten countries handle that? Will they have a permanent presence in the Red Sea? Who will foot the bill? If they choose to conduct a landing operation to encircle and suppress, won’ it lead to another quagmire in the Middle East? So the U.S. initiative in this matter is likely to start with a lot of enthusiasm but may eventually fizzle out.

        After discussing the U.S. response, let’s talk about the impact on China. As I mentioned a few days ago, the Houthis expanding their attack range in the Red Sea has undoubtedly been beneficial to China. From the latest developments, five global international shipping companies — Denmark’s Maersk, Switzerland’s Mediterranean Shipping Company, France’s CMA CGM, Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd — have successively announced the suspension of their services in the Red Sea, opting to detour around Africa. This has resulted in direct increases in time and transportation costs. China’s COSCO Shipping Holding has become the only major shipping giant able to navigate the Red Sea.

        In other words, Iran, through the Houthis, is effectively shutting off the Red Sea to ships from countries it doesn’t like, and only allowing ships from countries it does like to safely pass through the Suez Canal.

        The Axis of the Devils is operating right in front of us, bragging about it. Our president, who has not made any public appearance or remarks in 13 days, has made no public remarks about this crisis.

        Yesterday, a senior administration official conducted a background call and laid out the Biden team’s efforts to get a U.N. resolution denouncing the attacks:

        So, in response to this, we have had a significant diplomatic effort. I mentioned the U.N. Security Council, the first statement they had on December 1st. There’s also action in the U.N. Security Council as we speak, in New York. A statement on December 19th, joined by 44 countries all around the world issued by foreign ministries. And on the military side, on December 18th, of course, we formed a defensive naval coalition called Operation Prosperity Guardian with a number of countries from around the world, now with naval assets operating in coordination with us and the U.S. Navy and U.S. naval forces in the Red Sea.

        That unnamed official also emphasized how serious a warning the administration was sending to the Houthis:

        The President asked for an effort to talk to allies and partners with a statement that would very clearly — very clearly send a warning to the Houthis that they will bear full consequences and responsibility for any further attacks against commercial vessels in the Red Sea.

        At the end of the briefing, Andrea Mitchell of NBC News asked, “So is that it? Would there be another warning if there’s another incident? Would you wait for an incident to respond, or would you take preemptive action?”

        SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Andrea, thank you. Again, I’m not going to get into rules of engagement or any anticipatory further action. I would just say that I don’t — I would not anticipate another warning. I think this statement speaks very much for itself.

        And we have acted defensively. And again, I think it’s a very clear warning. We’re going to let the statement stand for itself, and I’m just not going to get ahead of the process from here.

        There are a lot of people in this world who know more about foreign policy and national security than me, but I feel safe concluding that Houthi militias will not be deterred by U.N. Security Council resolutions, joint statements, or sternly worded warnings. I do suspect that the Houthis will stop when enough bodies of their comrades look like barbecue because of an incoming missile.

        This is the sort of thing that my colleagues here at NR have been covering extensively — here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Our Dominic Pino noticed:

        On Tuesday, the head of U.S. 5th Fleet, Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, visited the ship and presented “combat medals” to five sailors for their “exceptional performance” when the warship shot down 14 Houthi air drones on Dec. 16.” In addition to those medals, the entire crew received a “combat action ribbon.”

        You only award combat medals when there’s, you know, combat. The Houthis are shooting at our navy, and our navy is shooting back.

        The U.S. is effectively at war with the Houthis and Iran; some parts of our government just don’t want to acknowledge it.

        Many corners of the media world seem much less interested in this ongoing crisis than NR is. (Perhaps it’s because there’s no Donald Trump angle to the story.) But one cannot help but notice that as with the eight American hostages still held by Hamas, and the glacial pace of the transfer of U.S. weapons to Ukraine, there’s a strange lack of interest in some otherwise dramatic stories about foreign policy, national security, and the world scene. It’s almost as if some members of the media decided the lesson of the 1980 election was to never cover a foreign-policy crisis under a Democratic president too extensively, lest it help the Republican challenger.

      • juris imprudent

        If the Saudis can’t handle the Houthi, why should we do their dirty work? It’s all on their peninsula. Are the Saudis just a bunch of straw dogs?

      • Lackadaisical

        Seems like it. Why did we have to save them from Saddam?

      • LCDR_Fish

        TBF, they’ve been trying to take care of the Houthis, but our State Dept keeps bitching at them for it.

      • juris imprudent

        That is a European problem. There are European navies to keep open European trade routes.

      • LCDR_Fish

        Trade routes are a global problem. Should we have left the Barbary Pirates alone even though they were attacking US ships?

      • juris imprudent

        These are not US ships, nor are they bound for US ports or even carrying US goods. When the rest of the world wants to pay for our Navy to do this job, then we can talk.

      • juris imprudent

        Britannia ruled the waves because British wealth depended on trade and Britain insured most global shipping. We assumed the role as part of the Cold War bargain – but that is over.

      • LCDR_Fish

        Britannia ruled the waves, but they and the rest of Europe were happy to pay tribute to the Barbary Pirates while we took the fight to them. Global trade is vastly more integrated now in the age of containerization and this is one of the main reasons we have a Navy. The decline of Pax Americana is NOT a good thing by default.

        Trade goes through the Suez Canal both directions.

      • juris imprudent

        I agree that someone doing this is necessary. It can even be us. But if we provide the service, we should be compensated for doing so, and our economy does not depend on this, so it can’t me imputed.

      • dbleagle

        According to the biden Administration we are putting our dicks in it because we are protecting US flagged vessels (which are a rare as virginal prostitutes), are owned by US persons (more but still a small number), or- and this is the new one- have cargo owned by US persons. So if a modern container ship has one container with one AOL CD being shipped as a curio item that is being sold from a US person to a Vietnamese collector then we MUST protect every ship in the Red Sea area.

      • juris imprudent

        Fuck NR and the soft-neo-cons still there. What American troops in Iraq and Syria? By WHO’S FUCKING AUTHORITY in those countries?

      • dbleagle

        Our lasted droning this week in the middle of the day, in the middle on Baghdad, on Palestine Street has united the Iraqi political classes from the Prime Minister on down. They all are loudly denouncing our violation of their soveignity. We may be leaving Iraq, again, in the near future.

    • trshmnstr the terrible

      it ultimately happened because the arguments that were made in its defense were a load of old bollocks

      This strikes me as delusional ivory tower rationalization. “We realized we didn’t have a leg to stand on”? Really?

      Yes, academia has a credibility and a legitimacy problem, but they’re going to be the last ones to realize it, and they’re nowhere close yet.

      The reason this happened is simple. Much of the money, influence, and networking is flowing through old liberal channels, much of which is Jewish or Jew friendly. Much of the activism and revolution making flows from the professors, the administrators, and affiliated NGOs, none of them have power aside from what is provided by those old liberal channels.

      The people who fund Harvard and their affiliates told Harvard to knock it off, and they doubled down. The funders then called the bluff.

      This wasn’t a principled retreat. It was the dog responding to a command from its master.

  16. Tres Cool

    RIP The Dozer.

    This morning he took his last car ride. Unfortunately it was to the vet to get the Big Shot™.
    The house is conspicuously empty.

    • Don escaped Texas

      where’d you get him? where all had he been with you?

      • Tres Cool

        He was the step-dog. He was Jugsy’s when we met. Around 3 years old then, and not happy to relinquish his spot as “sole male in the house’.
        And my forearms still have the scars to show it.

      • Don escaped Texas

        I have a firm two-testicle limit on my household.

    • Sensei

      Sorry to read that. I’m still missing my furry friend from the end of last year.

    • juris imprudent

      Ugh. He’ll always be in your memories.

    • Gender Traitor

      I’m sorry, homey! 😢

    • mexican sharpshooter

      Sorry to hear that.

    • R C Dean

      That’s hard. I’ve got two 13 year old dogs (from a breed where 10 years is good run). Can’t be long now, and I’m dreading it.

      How’s Jugsy doing?

      • Tres Cool

        Not taking it well. When I met her, there were 2 boxers: Dixie and Dozer (we’re not at all white trash). Dozer was Dixie’s son from an accidental litter.
        I was told that on his journey into the world, he was stuck (likely due to his size) and Jugsy had to assist by physically pulling him out. I believe he was the last of 12.
        As you can imagine, he was always her “little boy”.

      • Tres Cool

        Well, this IS the forecast for the week that NA conjured for me.

        Virgo: 3 of Swords – Removal, absence, delay, division, rupture, dispersion.

    • slumbrew

      Ooof, sorry, man.

      Their unconditional love makes their passing especially hard.

    • KK, Plump & Unfiltered

      So sorry Tres

    • Sean

      Sorry, dude. 🍺

    • rhywun

      😟

    • Beau Knott

      My condolences to you and Jugsy. That last drive is a heartbreaker, even, or especially, when it’s the right thing to do.

  17. Don escaped Texas

    where’d you get him? where all had he been with you?

    • Don escaped Texas

      reboot, I thought

      that will clean up performance, I thought

      it’s never operator error, I thought

  18. Lackadaisical

    “He stared into the camera with the pupils of his eyes revealing the depths of hell. For some reason he was wearing a rain coat.”

    I assumed SF always looked this way.

    • mexican sharpshooter

      He’s actually resembles a combination of John Goodman, Wilfred Brimley and Pauley Shore.

      • Ownbestenemy

        I’d watch that movie

      • juris imprudent

        That’s disturbingly accurate.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        That sounds like a description of Alfred Hitchcock with a mustache.

    • Ted S.

      I thought SF was covered in shit.

      • R C Dean

        Because that’s just how librarians roll?

      • Mojeaux

        SF is a librarian?

      • kinnath

        yes

      • R C Dean

        I think so, although I couldn’t tell you when I (thought I) read that.

      • mexican sharpshooter

        Sugarfree is an archivist,

        He’s not just some old lady shouting “SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”.

      • Mojeaux

        The last time I went to the library to work, the only loud person in the place WAS the librarian and she was shouting her convo across the (very gigantic) room. And it was just convo. Nothing about work.

      • mexican sharpshooter

        SHhhhhhhhhhhh

  19. LCDR_Fish

    Movie-wise, finally got around to watching Crichton’s “The Great Train Robbery” last night. For some reason I’ve never read the book before either…

    The remastered blu-ray looks great and some great stunts even on a train moving *only* 50mph. Highly Recommended. (actual BR is much better HD than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT-2VYul_78)

  20. UnCivilServant

    Well, I suppose writing more glibs articles is writing.

    Now if I could finish stuff I had already started…

  21. hayeksplosives

    Are you ready for some football???

    I’m a little surprised that the Ravens are sitting some key guys. They’ll probably still win anyway, but it might gay interestingl.

  22. KK, Plump & Unfiltered

    My furnace is broken

    eom

    • hayeksplosives

      Hopefully one of your handy neighbors can have a look! Fingers crossed it’s something cheap like needing a new starter capacitor.

      I know nothing of RVs. Is the furnace propane or electric?

      • KK, Plump & Unfiltered

        Propane…I’m hoping it’s some kind of gunge on the ignition. RV guy seems to think that may be it, after I sent him a couple of audio files. Won’t be til next week that it gets looked at, though. Space heater is doing yeoman’s work right now. Can’t wait to see my electric bill.

      • hayeksplosives

        If you have hot wire ignition, you can buy a replacement part at a local hardware store and do it yourself. Have to handle with cotton gloves though to keep from getting finger oil in it. Google your furnace model to see what igniter you need.

        Other possibility is that the igniting is ok, but the flame sensor is hunker up. That would look and sound like the little flame jets ignite, but then the furnace shuts them back down because the flame sensor couldn’t confirm that the gas in burning. To cure that problem, just unscrew the flame sensor (again, google your furnace model) and scrub down the flame sensor (a narrow metal tube) with steel wool until it’s clean and shiny.

        Good luck!

      • KK, Plump & Unfiltered

        Thank you!

      • Tres Cool

        I have the weirdest erection right now.

      • R C Dean

        Coming from you, that’s saying something.

    • Tres Cool

      Im not Yufus but Id have a look.

      I’m much better working on the cable tho. Have you ever seen “Log Jammin””?

    • hayeksplosives

      Wow—she really drove all the way through it!!

  23. Sensei

    Popcorn time!

    Ackman Plans to Check MIT’s Kornbluth, Staff for Plagiarism

    The move, announced Friday in a post on X, comes after Business Insider expanded its allegations of plagiarism against Ackman’s wife, Neri Oxman, a former MIT professor. The billionaire investor said that faculty members, including Kornbluth and MIT board members, will be subject to checks using MIT’s own plagiarism standards.

    “We will share our findings in the public domain as they are completed in the spirit of transparency,” Ackman said, adding that “it is unfortunate that my actions to address problems in higher education have led to these attacks on my family.”

    Business insider was nicely douchey by not contacting him directly, but instead contacting his hedge fund and doing so on a Friday evening.