It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (On Friday)

So, initial unemployment claims are up slightly but remain low, and continuing claims fell: 

Applications for US unemployment benefits rebounded slightly after falling in the previous week to near the lowest levels in decades, signaling layoffs remain muted despite recent job-cut announcements.

Initial claims rose by 10,000 to 200,000 in the week ended May 2, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 205,000 applications.

Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, fell to 1.77 million in the previous week, a new two-year low.

Also, the monthly jobs numbers came out. And notwithstanding claims that it is exceptional, the number is actually rather anemic, with about 115,000 jobs added to the work force.

The U.S. job market blew past expectations again in April, buoyed by gains across industries including retail, transportation and warehousing, and healthcare. The results were a sign that the labor market remained resilient so far in the face of the Iran war.

The numbers

The American economy added 115,000 jobs in April, the Labor Department said Friday, far exceeding expectations.

That was down from a net gain of 185,000 in March. But it was much better than the 55,000 jobs that analysts polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected to see for April.

The unemployment rate stayed unchanged at 4.3%, as economists had expected.

Not a bloody clue as to that the f%$# is going on here. 

What I do know is that we are about 2-4 weeks into when ships stopped at the Strait of Hormuz should have arrived at their destinations and that oil reserves fell off of a cliff in April  

Global oil reserves plunged at a record pace in April, as the conflict in the Middle East strains supplies and raises the risk of a further sharp jump in prices ahead of the summer travel season.

Stockpiles of crude fell by nearly 200mn barrels, or 6.6mn barrels a day, estimated S&P Global Energy, even as higher prices triggered a collapse in demand of about 5mn b/d, the sharpest ever fall outside of the Covid-19 pandemic.

That fall in economic demand is driven by a fall in economic activity.

Things are going to get a lot worse. 

 

Charles "Doofenschmirtz" Saroff Will Take Over the Entire Tri-State Area!

We know what he says it is, a lab project for Electronics & Instrumentation II (Mechatronics), but we all know what this REALLY is. 

It's his evil plan to take over the entire Tri-State Area.

Behold the Metronominator !!! 

Yes, I'm bragging about my kid, dads gotta dad. 

In any case, here is his vid:

 

Kids these days with their Arduinos and their 3D printing.

In my day, we had to machine everything with flint tools!

FUUUUUUUUUUKKKKKKK!!!

The Virginia State Supreme Court has struck down the new redistricting map.

Their legal reasoning sounds completely bonkers, unless there is some sort of provision in the state constitution that specifically calls this out:

The problem, the court’s majority suggested, was that the first vote on the amendment in the General Assembly, which would authorize Democrats to redraw the map, occurred days before last fall’s legislative elections — meaning that some Virginians who cast their ballots early did so without knowing how their state lawmakers would vote on the new map.

How the Fuck is this a thing?

A representative vote in a way that the voter does not anticipate when foting is kind of like the foundation of representative democracy!

Headline of the Day

John Roberts Is George Wallace With A Harvard Law Degree

Crooks and Liars

It's pretty on point, and remarkably accurate.

The core of John Roberts' entire career can be summed up with the phrase, "N*****s should not vote." 

………

But the Court didn’t destroy the Civil Rights Act in a day. It was part of a lifelong mission by John Roberts to do so.

Starting as early as 1981, as a 26-year-old lawyer just three years out of Harvard Law School, Roberts began his campaign to undermine the Civil Rights Act. He got himself a job as Special Assistant to Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General William French Smith. Congress was about to amend the Civil Rights Act to provide that state laws would be illegal if they had a racially discriminatory effect, without having to prove that they had a racially discriminatory intent—something almost impossible to prove.

Roberts zealously took on the assignment coming up with arguments against the Amendment. Roberts wrote over 25 memos opposing the Amendment. In one, he argued that the Civil Rights Act was “the most intrusive interference imaginable by federal courts into state and local processes.”

 This is his life's mission.

The New Definitive Definition of Chutzpah

Rudolph "Noun, a verb, and 911" Giuliani is asking to have his health care covered from the fund that pays for healthcare for workers who were exposed to toxins at the 9/11 site.

I would note here a fact from one of hizzoner's divorces, his wife claimed that he spent over $12,000.00 on cigars in the span of 5 months.

And now he wants money from the fund that is support the workers that he betrayed. 

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who has been diagnosed with pneumonia, is applying for free medical care through a federal program for emergency workers and others exposed to toxins following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to his lawyer.

More than 152,000 people have been enrolled in the initiative, the World Trade Center Health Program, which pays for medical research and provides free medical care to people affected by the terrorist attacks. Beneficiaries have access to doctors who specialize in Sept. 11-related illnesses, and the patients don’t face co-payments or deductibles.

………

The federal health program paid out more than 600,000 medical claims in the past year, at a cost of nearly $350 million. Many of the claims relate to cancer, while others covered treatments for respiratory ailments.

Getting approval to receive care through the health care fund could allow Mr. Giuliani or his family members to seek further compensation through a separate fund for 9/11 victims.

Every time I think that they cannot go any lower, they exceed my wildest imaginings.

Cancel Your Subscription

It appears that the OP/ED section of the Washington Post can get even worse than it was under the stewardship of the late and (IMNSHO) unlamented Fred Hiatt.

They just put out an opinion piece criticizing Zohran Mamdani for being too mean to the billionaires who are ruining New York City.

Thank you Jeff Bezos.

I believe that I have stated before, that I would not wish cancer on anyone, and I stand by that.

I still want Jeff Bezos to get Fatal Familial Insomnia, which is much, MUCH, worse.  (I'm not a good person)

This is a Feature, Not a Bug

Is anyone surprised that police are using automated license plate readers to stalk their former romantic partners?

I'm not.

Police have routinely done this with other data sets going back decades.

In fact, I would argue that giving cops the ability to do this is a large part of why police like Flock cameras and their ilk so much. 

The cops never change. Only the tech toys do.

That’s the upshot of this report from the Institute for Justice, which has been tracking what cops have been tracking now that they have always-on access to massive networks of security cameras, including Flock Safety’s controversial offerings, which also include automatic license plate readers (ALPR).

The proliferation of police surveillance has led to repeated abuse. One shockingly common form: police officers using ALPR camera networks to keep tabs on their romantic interests, including current partners, exes, and even strangers who unwittingly caught their eye in public.

An Institute for Justice review of media reports has identified at least 14 cases nationwide of officers allegedly abusing ALPR data this way, with the bulk of those incidents happening since 2024.

This is the same stuff that cops have been doing for years. Access to criminal databases, drivers license info, and anything else swept up by government entities has resulted in numerous cases of abuse.

Maybe what cops need is not better spying tech, maybe what cops need is better people on the force.

Trying to Kill Us

I am referring, of course, to the Food and Drub Administration which just suppressed studies showing the Covid and Shingles vaccines are safe and effective.

RFK, Jr. is a cancer on the American body politic.

Officials at the Food and Drug Administration have blocked publication of several studies supporting the safety of widely used vaccines against Covid-19 and shingles in recent months, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed.

The studies, which cost millions of dollars in public funds, were conducted by scientists at the agency, who worked with data firms to analyze millions of patient records. They found serious side effects to be very rare.

In October, the scientists were directed to withdraw two Covid-19 vaccine studies that had been accepted for publication in medical journals. In February, top F.D.A. officials did not sign off on submitting abstracts about studies of Shingrix, a shingles vaccine, to a major drug safety conference.

The withdrawal of the studies is the latest step by the administration to try to limit access to vaccines. It has sharply cut research funding for vaccine development, released unvetted information casting doubt on vaccines, and blocked other information supporting their safety, most recently a paper on Covid vaccine effectiveness by career scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

These folks need to spend the rest of their lives in prison. 

They’d none of them be missed.

Headline of the Day

The Justice Department Sides With the Ku Klux Klan

—The New Republic, on the disgraceful and corrupt prosecution of the Southern Poverty Law Center

As an FYI, the DoJ is accusing the SPLC of lying to donors because they used their money to pay confidential informants, which literally everyone who donated to the organization knew that they did this.

Also, they accused the SPLC of creating false racist organizations and false racist acts because there is no racism anymore, except against rich white guys. 

It's like a perverted version of Gilbert and Sullivan:

Ko-Ko. Not yet. You see, flirting is the only crime punishable with decapitation, and married men never flirt.

This is an accurate description of that behavior. 

The United States did not always have a Department of Justice. President Ulysses S. Grant founded it in 1870 to help suppress the Ku Klux Klan in the Southern states and enforce federal civil rights protections for formerly enslaved Americans. On Tuesday, Justice Department officials announced what may be the first Klan-friendly prosecution in the department’s history.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, is one of the most influential civil rights groups in the nation. Founded in 1971, it has spent the last five decades monitoring, documenting, and exposing hate groups and violent extremists. The group rose to national fame in the 1980s by financially breaking the modern Klan through strategic lawsuits on behalf of its victims. The SPLC’s most persistent targets have been white nationalist groups like the Klan and various neo-Nazi gangs, but its work has expanded over the years, as well. (More on that later.)

Trump Justice Department officials struck a much different note about the SPLC’s work when announcing the indictment. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed on Tuesday that the SPLC was “manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”

This is what happens when lawlessness is excused in the name of, "Looking forware, not back."

Headline of the Day

Looks Like A Police State To Me, Says Federal Judge Handling Migrant Detention Cases

—Techdirt, quoting Judge Sanket Bulsara of the Eastern District of New York.

Money quote:

And that leads to the judge comparing ICE’s actions to those of a police state: 

This practice of after-the-fact arrest warrants can be called many things—illegal, improper, and unconstitutional, among them. But whatever label one wishes to apply, the practice is fundamentally at odds with and offensive to lawful, constitutional behavior in this country. “An arrest is not justified by what the subsequent search discloses[.]” A contrary rule—the one that the USAO here defends by backing detention and opposing release—“would obliterate one of the most fundamental distinctions between our form of government, where officers are under the law, and the police-state where they are the law.” 

Police and law enforcement cannot operate as roving bands, detaining individuals, figuring out the reasons later, and papering over their failures afterwards. This sadly is the practice in many other parts of the world. But in the United States, the law prohibits such conduct.

(Emphasis original) 

Everyone involved at any level in these actions should be barred from law enforcement and the legal profession for the rest of their life.

 

So Now What

Now that a jury had determined that Live Nation illegally monopolized event ticketing, what happens next?

My guess is not much, beyond a tiny hit to profits for a quarter, but I am a cynic.

A jury in a high-stakes antitrust trial found Wednesday that Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster illegally maintained monopoly power in the ticketing market.

Jurors delivered the verdict in federal court in New York City after around five weeks of trial, which featured testimony from dozens of witnesses. The jury began deliberating Friday.

Personally, I'd like to see criminal charges filed against the executives, but likely we will see a minor financial award and some toothless remedies. 

Taxpayers on the Hook for That F%$#ing Ballroom

Yeah, Congress is proposing to allocate $1,000,000,000.00 for the construction of Trump's monstrous White House addition.

No, just no.

Senate Republicans late Monday proposed $1 billion to pay for new White House security measures, with lawmakers and White House officials disagreeing over whether the legislation would cover President Donald Trump’s planned ballroom.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, laid out a funding package for security upgrades related to the “East Wing Modernization Project,” the Trump administration’s name for its planned 90,000-square-foot project to rebuild the East Wing that Trump demolished last year.

The proposed legislative text says the money would be used for both aboveground and underground security features that the administration has declined to fully detail. The text explicitly says the money could not be used for “non-security elements” of the project, a reference to Trump’s planned ballroom.

“This bill does not fund ballroom construction,” Grassley spokeswoman Clare Slattery said in a statement. “It provides funds for Secret Service enhancements that will ensure all presidents, their families and their staffs are adequately protected.”

I believe that the technical term for Ms. Slattery's statement is, "Bull-sh%$." 

……… 

White House officials said Tuesday that the legislation, if enacted, would authorize the entire project — including the above ground ballroom.

“Congress has rightly recognized the need for these funds,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement, citing the high-profile incident last month when a gunman stormed through the security checkpoint outside the White House correspondents’ dinner. “The proposal would provide the United States Secret Service with the resources they need to fully and completely harden the White House complex, in addition to the many other critical missions for the USSS.” 

And there is the reality.  Such a provision would, "Authorize the entire project — including the above ground ballroom."

That's the real purpose.

Shut it down.

They Cannot Do Any Worse Than the Incumbents

I am hopeful that the celebrity gossip news org TMZ has opened a Washington, DC office will improve journalism in the nation's capitol.

This says all you need about the sorry state of, "Real," journalism inside the beltway. 

Even before Bezos destroyed the Washington Post, the media there sucked.

The three members of TMZ’s new Washington, D.C., bureau arrived at Capitol Hill last Monday ready and eager to stick their cameras in lawmakers’ faces and ask them uncomfortable questions. But they were surprised to find that members of the House wouldn’t be returning to work for another day. “I was laughing — ‘Oh, just wait until you see how infrequently these people work,’” said one congressional reporter. “It’s, like, a maximum four-day week.”

The celebrity-gossip outlet’s Washington operation had started off with a bang. The partial government shutdown had enraged TMZ founder Harvey Levin, who thought he might shame Congress back into session by publicizing how lawmakers were spending their recess while federal workers went without pay. The photos did not disappoint. There was a khaki-clad Lindsey Graham at Disney World, holding a bubble wand and boarding Space Mountain. There was Ted Cruz scrolling in his Economy Plus seat. There were members of Congress touring Edinburgh Castle while on a trip to Scotland. “The reaction in D.C. was, ‘Oh, that’s just a codel,’” said Washington communications veteran Nu Wexler, referring to a congressional delegation. It wasn’t clear TMZ understood the distinction or if it cared. “Stories like that will grab people,” said Wexler.

TMZ’s lack of familiarity with Washington’s weird ways is both a drawback and a strength. Its D.C. reporters do not seem to have experience covering Washington. And they are now crowdsourcing their way through the learning curve, asking for help finding bathrooms and restaurants and interview subjects. They’ve also printed out the pictures of House members to study their faces. But as the political paparazzi photos show, they can unearth stories that more jaded reporters have passed over as business as usual. The recent scandal over Eric Swalwell’s much-rumored creepiness and previously unreported sexual misconduct underscored that there is plenty of room for different newsgathering sensibilities.

Here's hoping that they deliver on the promise of a different kind of coverage.

If the entire DC press corps(e) was replaced by monkeys pounding away at typewriters, the quality of the journalism would improve. 

More Fruit of the Poisonous Antivaxx Tree

An increasing number of newborns are dying from intestinal and cranial bleeds because parents are refusing the once-routine vitamin K injection, because ……… anti-vaccine vibes.

They entered the world the way babies should, with piercing cries announcing their arrival. They passed their newborn screening tests. Some made it to their 2-week wellness visits without concern.

Then, without warning, their systems began to shut down. A 7-week-old boy in Maryland developed sudden seizures. An 11-pound girl in Alabama stopped breathing for 20 seconds at a time. A baby boy in Kentucky vomited before becoming lethargic. A brown-haired girl in Texas, not yet 2 weeks old, bled around her belly button.

Desperate to save them, records show, doctors inserted tubes into their airways and hooked them up to IVs. They ordered blood transfusions. They spent half an hour trying to resuscitate one boy until his parents told them they could stop. They shaved another boy’s soft locks to embed a needle directly into his skull to reduce the pressure in his brain.

None of it was enough.

At the morgue, the babies were brought in with their diapers and blankets and with their hospital ID bracelets still wrapped around their tiny ankles. The pathologists’ findings were like those you would typically see in ailing adults, not newborns — the kind of bleeding seen during strokes or brain tissue loss similar to what happens when radiation is administered to treat cancer.

Their autopsies, which took place over the last several years, all came to the same conclusion: The deaths were caused, in whole or in part, by a rare but potentially fatal condition known as vitamin K deficiency bleeding.

In almost every case, the babies’ deaths could have been prevented with a long-standard vitamin K shot. But across the country, families — first in smatterings, now in droves — are declining the single, inexpensive injection given at birth to newborns to help their blood clot.

RFK, Jr. and Andrew Wakefield should spend the rest of their lives behind bars. 

 

My Thoughts and Prayers for That Innocent Brown Recluse Spider

It appears that spree-killer Kyle Rittenhouse has been hospitalized following a bite from the highly venomous arachnid.

I can only imagine the agony of the spider when it encountered that much evil, bigotry and bile in its mouth. 

Surprisingly Good News

The US Senate has adopted a rule forbidding its members from betting in prediction markets.

Since this is a Senate rule, and not legislation, this goes into effect without a vote of the House or a Presidential signature.

Now, how about banning the whole corrupt enterprise? 

US senators voted unanimously to ban themselves from making bets on prediction markets yesterday, about a week after Kalshi said it caught three congressional candidates betting on their own campaigns.

The resolution to prohibit senators from trading on prediction markets passed yesterday by unanimous consent. The action amends the Senate’s conflict-of-interest rules and does not require approval by the House of Representatives. The House has a pending resolution that would impose a similar rule on its own members.

“United States Senators have no business engaging in speculative activities like prediction markets while collecting a taxpayer-funded paycheck, period,” said Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who introduced the resolution. “Serving in Congress should never be about finding new ways to profit; it should be about delivering results for the American people.”

Moreno’s resolution applies broadly to all bets on prediction markets, not just those related to events of which a senator has inside knowledge. The Senate also adopted an amendment submitted by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), which extends the trading ban to Senate officers and employees. Padilla said in a statement that the rule as amended “is a commonsense step to ensure that senators and their staff cannot use their positions of public trust to line their own pockets.”

The only question now is how lackadaisical the Senate will be in actually enforcing this.

We Are F%$#ed

It looks like the collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is even more imminent than previously thought.

The critical Atlantic current system appears significantly more likely to collapse than previously thought after new research found that climate models predicting the biggest slowdown are the most realistic. Scientists called the new finding “very concerning” as a collapse would have catastrophic consequences for Europe, Africa and the Americas.

The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is a major part of the global climate system and was already known to be at its weakest for 1,600 years as a result of the climate crisis. Scientists spotted warning signs of a tipping point in 2021 and know that the Amoc has collapsed in the Earth’s past.

Climate scientists use dozens of different computer models to assess the future climate. However, for the complex Amoc system, these produce widely varying results, ranging from some that indicate no further slowdown by 2100 to those suggesting a huge deceleration of about 65%, even when carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning are gradually cut to net zero.


The research combined real-world ocean observations with the models to determine the most reliable, and this hugely reduced the spread of uncertainty. They found an estimated slowdown of 42% to 58% in 2100, a level almost certain to end in collapse.

This would upend weather and climate in Western Europe and across the globe.

This is real end of the world stuff, and the actual situation is likely worse, since every major prediction regarding anthropogenic climate change has been too conservative.

It might happen in my lifetime. 

 

Parasite

Steven Roth, the CEO of Vornado Realty Trust has declared that calling for taxing the rich is hate speech.

So, paying the costs of the society that makes your obscene wealth is evil. 

Steven Roth, the chief executive of Vornado Realty Trust, used an earnings call on Tuesday to castigate Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York for his “tax-the-rich” rhetoric, which he likened to a racial slur or a pro-Palestinian rallying cry.

“I must say that I consider the phrase ‘tax the rich’ — quote, tax the rich — when spit out with anger and contempt by politicians both here and across the country, to be just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs and even the phrase, ‘from the river to the sea,’” Mr. Roth said, referring to the pro-Palestinian phrase that some Jews believe amounts to a call for ethnic cleansing.

You were born on 3rd base and believed that you have hit a triple. 

You are a worthless person, and the world would be better without you. 

He Murdered 400,000 Children

I am referring, of course, to the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™, who used DOGE to shut dow USAID because they were investigating his corruption.

The Trump administration’s decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Atul Gawande.

Gawande—a surgeon, author, and distinguished professor in residence at Ariadne Labs, which he co-founded—served in the Biden administration as the assistant administrator for global health at USAID. He wrote a Nov. 5 article in the New Yorker about the devastating impact of the loss of USAID funds around the world. He was also featured in an accompanying short documentary called “Rovina’s Choice,” which he co-executive produced, that told the story of how one mother living in a Kenyan refugee camp tried to save her severely malnourished daughter after U.S. support dried up.

In the article, Gawande cited an analysis in The Lancet that estimated that USAID assistance—aimed at combatting diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and polio, reducing maternal and child deaths, and fighting malnutrition—had saved 92 million lives over two decades.

The dismantling of USAID, according to models from Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols, “has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children,” Gawande wrote. He noted that the toll will continue to grow and may go unseen because it can take months or years for people to die from lack of treatments or vaccine-preventable illnesses—and because deaths are scattered.

(emphasis mine) 

Elon does not care.  These are just NPCs to him. 

What a Delicate Snowflake

Samuel Alito has a sad because Ketanji Brown Jackson called out his negligence and hypocrisy in her dissent on the Voting Rights Act.

Go f%$# your self Sammy.

Conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito raged at his liberal colleague’s “baseless and insulting” dissent in an unusual ruling that speeds up the timeline of a decision benefitting Republicans.

Normally, the parties in a Supreme Court case must wait 32 days for a ruling to be certified and sent back to a lower court. 

But on Monday, the court’s conservative justices granted an extraordinary request from Louisiana Republicans, allowing them to immediately take advantage of last week’s ruling gutting the Civil Rights Act, as they seek to eliminate the state’s two majority-Black congressional districts in time for November’s midterm elections.

In her dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasted the court’s decision to upend its default procedures and “facilitate Louisiana’s midstream redistricting rush,” despite primary ballots having already gone out to military and overseas voters.

Normally, the court frowns upon last-minute changes to election procedures, but in this case, it “dives into the fray” in a way that’s “unwarranted and unwise,” she wrote.

In a concurring decision, Alito fumed that Jackson’s dissent had accused the majority of “an unprincipled use of power,” which he claimed was “baseless and insulting” as well as “a groundless and utterly irresponsible charge.”

“The dissent accuses the Court of ‘unshackling’ itself from ‘constraints.’ It is the dissent’s rhetoric that lacks restraint,” he fumed.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Today in Corruption

It appears that the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ and the Securities and Exchange Commission have cut a corrupt deal, with a $1.5 million dollar slap on the wrist for Elon Musk's Twitter stock fraud.

Elon Musk’s trust has agreed to pay $1.5mn to settle a case in which the US Securities and Exchange Commission accused him of failing to properly disclose stakes in Twitter, a fraction of the sum it claimed the billionaire gained by breaching regulations.

The SEC and the Elon Musk Revocable Trust asked a federal judge in a joint filing on Monday to accept the deal, after which the agency said it would file a dismissal of Musk that would “entirely” resolve the case. The regulator initially alleged the billionaire wrongfully profited by at least $150mn.

Musk’s proposed settlement comes after the SEC showed leniency towards several figures and businesses with ties to the Trump administration, notably dismissing cases against crypto exchanges Coinbase and Kraken, both of which have donated to the president.

………

The deal filed on Monday was made possible by an unusual procedural step earlier in the day, when the SEC amended its complaint to add the trust, through which Musk bought his Twitter shares in 2022, as a defendant.

As part of the proposed deal, the trust does not need to acknowledge any wrongdoing, and Musk faces no personal penalties.

We really need to start frog-marching these rat-bastards out of their offices in handcuffs. 

Looks Like Someone Is Getting Tired of Florida's 2nd Most Worthless Citizen

And by, "Someone," I mean Republicans in the Florida House, and by, "Florida's 2nd most worthlesss citizen," I mean Governor Ron DeSantis, who just had his initiative to block vaccine requirements in the state shut down.

I think that someone out there believes that goose-stepping in lock-step with the Governor is antithetical to reelection.

The anti-vaccine sugar rush that has infected some portions of the country, largely thanks to the profane appointment of RFK Jr. to head HHS, is incredibly frustrating. That makes it all the more important when the movement receives not just pushback when trying to enact absurd policy based on conspiracy theories, but specifically when that pushback comes from the same party engaging in the absurdity.

Earlier this year, flanked by Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Surgeon General, Joseph Ladapo, announced that the state government was seeking to end all vaccine requirements for school children in the state. And, because Ladapo is a hack, he postured this move in the silliest way possible.

Ladapo said the Florida Department of Health would be working with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office to end all mandates in state law, at the event at Grace Christian School in Valrico, located just east of Tampa.

“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Ladapo said of vaccine mandates.

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."

He really did say that. 

………

DeSantis, for his part, stated that some vaccine requirements could be removed immediately, while others would require state legislation. But the legislation drawn up to achieve that has hit a major roadblock, and that roadblock is Florida’s House GOP.

Just minutes into a special session on Tuesday, Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez announced that the Republican-led chamber would not take up a proposal from DeSantis to allow children to opt out of certain school vaccination requirements. The move effectively killed the proposal, which had been backed by the Senate. 

I do not think that Republicans have suddenly ended their opposition to the basic concept of public health, it's just a political calculus about how Trump, Kennedy, et al have become so toxic even among the Republican base.

Quote of the Day

Software Simulacrum Is Not True Consciousness, the Stripper at the Strip Club Doesn’t Actually Love You, and Nearly All of the Biggest Problems with “AI” Have Very Ordinary Human Origins. 

—Karl Bode, commenting on Richard Dawkins' recent statement that Claude is sentient.

It should be noted here that Dawkins is a complete prat.

I Did Not Expect This From Alito

My assumption is that he thought that allowing the ban on mail to go into immediate effect would have such a negative impact on Republican electoral chances that a temporary stay should be called.

The Supreme Court on Monday restored nationwide access to a widely used abortion medication in a temporary order that will, for now, allow women to once again obtain the pill mifepristone by mail.

In a brief order, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. paused a lower-court ruling from Friday that had prevented abortion providers from prescribing the pills by telemedicine and shipping them to patients, causing confusion for providers and patients. The one-sentence order imposes a pause until at least May 11. He requested that the parties file briefs by Thursday, and then the full court will determine how to proceed.

The state of Louisiana sued the Food and Drug Administration to restrict access to mifepristone, saying the availability of the medication by mail has allowed abortions to continue in the state despite its near-total ban. 

(Emphasis mine) 

………

Justice Alito’s order, known as an administrative stay, was provisional and expected, but an important interim step for women seeking to obtain mifepristone in the next week. The order does not signal how the full court may eventually handle the case.

Justice Alito acted on his own at this stage because he is the justice assigned to handle emergency applications from the region of the country covered by the Fifth Circuit. 

I would not expect this from Alito.  I would expect to see delays until the last possible moment, because he is a corrupt son of a bitch.

Also, the case is complete pants, with the state of Louisiana basing its standing on the complete falsehood that mifepristone is so dangerous that it costs them tax money.  (It doesn't)

Also, this argument could be used, and would be true, for a state wanting to ban Acetaminophen, which is the most dangerous FDA approved OTC medication, with about 500 deaths and about 26,000 hospitalizations a year.  

Good News Everyone!

The forces of evil have failed in their efforts to emasculate Colorado's right to repair laws.

I am pleased and shocked by this. 

A controversial bill in Colorado that would have undone some repair protections in the state has failed. The bill had been the target of right-to-repair advocates, who saw it as a bellwether for how tech companies might try to undo repair legislation more broadly in the US.

Colorado’s landmark 2024 repair law, the Consumer Right to Repair Digital Electronic Equipment, went into effect in January 2026 and ensured access to tools and documentation people needed to modify and fix digital electronics such as phones, computers, and Wi-Fi routers. The new bill, SB26-090, would have carved out an exception to those repair protections for “critical infrastructure,” a loosely defined term that repair advocates worried could be applied to just about any technology.

SB26-090 was introduced during a Colorado Senate hearing on April 2 and was supported by lobbying efforts from companies such as Cisco and IBM. It passed that hearing unanimously. The bill then passed in the Colorado Senate on April 16. On Monday evening, the bill was discussed in a long, delayed hearing in the Colorado House’s State, Civic, Military, and Veterans Affairs Committee. Dozens of supporters and detractors gave public comments. Finally, the bill was shot down in a 7-to-4 vote and classified as postponed indefinitely.

It's rare to get a pleasant surprise these days. 

There is Fail, There is F%$#ing Fail, and then there is

Fail so bad that Ted Cruz condemns your actions.

America's most loathsome Senator has condemned the FCC for its witch hunt against Jimmy Kimmel.

Jimmy Kimmel has acquired an unexpected defender amid his feud with Donald Trump: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

The MAGA Republican, who famously clashed with the president during the 2016 primaries before supporting him, bashed the administration’s attempts to pressure Disney and ABC News into firing Kimmel.

“It is not the government’s job to censor speech, and I do not believe the FCC should operate as the speech police,” Cruz told Punchbowl News of the Federal Communication Commission’s move to force ABC to file for license renewals.

Stopped clock time, I guess. 

Mind Officially Blown

Heinz Doofenshmirtz as a good parent who has turned aside his own trauma to be a loving father and family man?

He's right, and I am shocked. 

There is a Difference Between a Conservative and a Disloyal Democrat

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is the latter.

As a result of being dissed by a fellow Democrat during Kamala Harris' Veepstakes in 2024, he pressured people to endorse his Republican opponent.

No.  Just no.  If he wants to die on John Fetterman's hill, he dies on John Fetterman's hill.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro secretly helped a Republican state treasurer's 2024 reelection bid after the official's Democratic opponent had criticized Shapiro as a potential VP pick, a close Shapiro ally said last week.

• Bob Brooks, a Shapiro-backed candidate for the U.S. House, made the surprising comment Wednesday to a small group of Democratic college students. Axios obtained a recording of his remarks, which also were confirmed by a person at the meeting.

Why it matters: Helping a Republican over a Democrat — especially in response to personal criticism — could become a liability if Shapiro runs for president in 2028, as many expect.

• It also could feed the idea — held even by some Shapiro supporters — that he can be vindictive, take critiques too personally and be willing to push aside allies to get ahead.

Zoom in: Brooks' comments referred to summer 2024, when Shapiro was being vetted by Kamala Harris' team as her possible running mate.

• The Democratic candidate for Pennsylvania treasurer at the time, Erin McClelland, had publicly questioned whether Shapiro could be a subordinate to a female president.

Brooks, who's also the president of Pennsylvania's firefighters union, told students at Lehigh University last week that Shapiro had asked his union to back Republican Stacy Garrity over McClelland in the 2024 state treasurer's race.

• "That was a request, ironically, from Gov. Josh Shapiro because Erin McClelland was running against her," Brooks told the students.
• Brooks added: "Josh Shapiro had requested because Stacy, er, Erin McClelland came out hard about something on Josh Shapiro, and really, the Democratic Party as a whole turned on Erin McClelland. And he said, 'I would like you guys to endorse Stacy Garrity.'"
• Brooks mentioned Shapiro's move after a person at the Lehigh gathering asked Brooks why his union had backed Garrity in 2024.

I get that politics ain't beanbag, but this is over the line.

This isn't like endorsing a candidate in the primary. 

Interesting New Tech

NASA has tested a lithium fed electronic thruster, which has the potential to greatly increase the thrust of high specific impulse space propulsion systems. (Up to about 2.5-25 newtons 25N=5.6 lb)

Typically various electronic thrusters can produce about 100 millinewtons. 

If you have a 100 tonne vehicle, with 6x 25N thrusters, you get an acceleration of .0015 m/s2.

ΔV	Units	ΔT
5.40	m/s	1 Hour
12.08	mi/hr
129.60	m/s	1 day
289.91	mi/hr
907.20	m/s	1 week
2029.35	mi/hr
3600.00	m/s	Delta v to get to Mars from LEO
8052.97	mi/hr

So basically, you can go from low earth orbit to coasting to Mars in 12½ days.  The trip would still take about 9 months.

Theoretically the spacecraft could use the increases ISP to further shorten the time involved, but I'm not going to spend the time on celesxtial mechanics to figure that out.

NASA engineers recently tested a next-generation electric propulsion system that could one day power a crewed mission to Mars.

NASA fired up a prototype of its electromagnetic thruster inside a vacuum chamber, reaching power levels of up to 120 kilowatts—the highest achieved in U.S. tests of an electric propulsion system. That’s over 25 times the power of the electric thrusters aboard the current Psyche mission, which launched in 2023 on a journey to explore a metal-rich asteroid.

………

Current electric propulsion thrusters rely on solar power to accelerate propellant, reaching high speeds over time through a low continuous thrust. NASA’s recently tested electromagnetic thruster, on the other hand, runs on lithium metal vapor. The lithium-fed magnetoplasmadynamic (MPD) thruster uses high currents interacting with a magnetic field to electromagnetically accelerate lithium plasma.

Lithium-fed thrusters could potentially operate at high-power levels, using propellant efficiently and providing greater thrust power than the electrical thrusters currently in use, according to NASA. Once fully developed and paired with a nuclear power source, the MPD could help reduce launch mass to support larger payloads for human Mars missions.

They are talking about 4-5 egawatts power, which probably would require nuclear power, 5 mW would require something like 10,000 m2 of solar arrays, but it should make things easier.

 

Headline of the Day

The Federalist Is Super Mad Virginia Will No Longer Subsidize Racists

—Techdirt

I've written about the elimination of funding to neo-Confederate organizations in Virginia, but this is as succinct a description of how the racists in the Federalist Society have responded.

Why Use Ad and Javascript Blockers?

Because The New York Times homepage loads 49 MB of data, that's why.

If active distraction of readers of your own website was an Olympic Sport, news publications would top the charts every time.

I went to the New York Times to glimpse at four headlines and was greeted with 422 network requests and 49 megabytes of data. It took two minutes before the page settled. And then you wonder why every sane tech person has an adblocker installed on systems of all their loved ones.

We need to burn this sh%$ to the ground. 

 

There's an App for That

There is an app on the Android Play Store that detects whether or not there is a Meta glasshole in your immediate vicinity potentially recording you.

I approve.

Worried that someone wearing Meta's snooping spyware goggles could be creeping up on you? Android users now have access to an app that can warn them if someone is wearing such smart glasses in their vicinity by using Bluetooth.

Last week, Yves Jeanrenaud, a deputy professor at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences in Germany, published Nearby Glasses, an Android app that scans Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) advertising data for manufacturer identifiers associated with certain smart glasses, including Ray-Ban Meta AI Glasses.

"This app notifies you when smart glasses are nearby," Jeanrenaud explained in the project's GitHub repo. "It uses company [identifiers] in the Bluetooth data sent out by these [devices]."

In a LinkedIn post on Tuesday, he elaborated on how the software works.

"Bluetooth devices broadcast small advertising packets," he wrote. "Even though MAC addresses (identifying a particular device) and service UUIDs (identifying what they are doing) are randomized, manufacturer company IDs in BLE advertising frames are mandatory and immutable."

………

Pointing out other abuses associated with Meta's AI glasses, and Meta's reported plan to add facial recognition to its glasses, Jeanrenaud said, "This is not a perfect solution, but I hope it's useful for someone. Until consent and privacy are treated seriously in wearable tech, I hope this tool helps someone feel a little more safe."

Seeing as how the app is open source, it seems to me that you could add some features, things like projecting Goatse onto the lenses.  (If you do not know what Goatse is, don't click through)

Deep Thought

The internet has finally justified its existence

It's Bank Failure Friday!!!

It's been a busy week.  We had the 2nd bank failure of the year, Community Bank and Trust - West Georgia of Lagrange, Georgia.

Meanwhile, on the credit union side, People Trust Community Federal Credit Union of North Little Rock Arkansas has moved conserved to liquidated. (I am keeping the count at 4 failures)

Not enough for a data point, but this is interesting.

 

A Small Win

The DHS funding bill finally passed both houses without funding ICE or the Border Patrol.

Johnson said no funding bill without funding those two agencies, but he blinked. 

The House on Thursday passed stalled legislation reopening the Department of Homeland Security, ending a record 76-day shutdown at the agency and resolving uncertainty over whether thousands of federal security workers would be paid in May.

The voice vote after a brief debate brought to a close a bitter partisan fight spurred by President Trump’s immigration crackdown and the tactics of federal immigration officers who fatally shot two U.S. citizens during immigration roundups in Minneapolis earlier this year. Negotiations between the White House and Democrats who were demanding new restrictions on the officers went nowhere, leading to an impasse that cut off funding on Feb. 14. 

………

Senate Republicans and Democrats had struck a deal on April 1 to fund everything except for the immigration enforcement agencies, vowing to approve that money separately in a bill that Democrats could not block. But the House G.O.P. declined for weeks to act on the measure, with conservatives refusing to vote for a bill that did not fund ICE and border patrol.

House leaders finally took it up on Thursday ahead of a 12-day break, and after the White House requested that the bill be passed immediately.

The bullies blinked. 

 

Headline of the Day

Palantir Workers Are Finally Noticing The Skulls On Their Caps

—Techdirt, referencing Mitchell & Webb's finest comedic bits.

Are We the Baddies?

I do not know what took Palantir employees so long to realize that they are evil minions.

There’s a famous Mitchell & Webb sketch where two SS officers, mid-conversation on the Eastern Front, suddenly notice something troubling about their uniforms. “Hans,” one asks, peering at his cap, “are we the baddies?” The skulls had been there the whole time. The skulls are kind of a giveaway. But it took a while for the question to surface. You’ve probably seen it:

………

I thought about that sketch reading Wired’s reporting on the internal turmoil at Palantir, where both current and former employees are starting to ask that question of their own work:

Around that time, two former employees reconnected by phone. Right as they picked up the call, one of them asked, “Are you tracking Palantir’s descent into fascism?”

“That was their greeting,” the other former employee says. “There’s this feeling not of ‘Oh, this is unpopular and hard,’ but ‘This feels wrong.’”

Two weeks ago, we wrote about Palantir going mask-off for fascism, specifically about CEO Alex Karp’s company posting a 22-point manifesto that included some genuinely ugly stuff about how “certain cultures” are “regressive and harmful” and how pluralism is a “shallow temptation.” I argued that this kind of public ideological positioning was both morally bankrupt and strategically suicidal. The moral bankruptcy part should be obvious (if it’s not, go do some soul-searching). But doing so at a time when American-style fascism is historically unpopular basically everywhere, including within the US, just seems like you’ve bet on the losing team at a time when it’s clear they have no chance of coming back to win.

To Quote Upton Sinclair, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." 

From the Department of, "About F%$#ing Time"

The California DMV has issued new regulations allowing police to ticket robotaxies.

Hopefully cops will take this responsibility seriously.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles announced new autonomous vehicle regulations on Tuesday that will, among other things, allow police officers to issue moving violations to AV companies like Waymo and Tesla when their robotaxis break the law.

The new regulations, which will be enforced starting July 1, also require AV companies to respond to first responder calls within 30 seconds. Emergency officials will be allowed to issue geofencing instructions that force robotaxis to be cleared from areas where an active emergency is taking place.

………

Back in 2023, NBC Bay Area was the first to report that robotaxis were immune from traffic tickets since humans needed to be present to accept the ticket. It took almost three years, but that problem has now been fixed.

………

Wired published a new piece on Thursday about complaints from emergency responders, including firefighters, police officers, EMTs, and paramedics, who have warned that some robotaxis seem to be performing worse than when they were initially introduced. Wired cites a private meeting between emergency responders and federal officials in March, where robotaxis were described as blocking fire stations and “freezing up” in dangerous ways.

One question though, how do you handcuff a Waymo?

Osama Take Me Now

Welp, this has never happened to me before but an artist has issued a takedown notice on my most recent video on YouTube in what is in my opinion a comically obvious case of fair use, and you will never guess which band it is.

[image or embed]

— Lindsay Ellis (@lindsayellis.bsky.social) May 1, 2026 at 2:42 PM

Seriously, the Grateful Dead Issued the Take-Down?

Look closely.

Yes, the Grateful Dead, the band who was so supportive of home tapers that they sometimes allowed people to plug their recorders into the mixing board at concerts, is issuing a copyright take-down for what is obviously fair use.

This is the biggest mind-f%$# that I have seen so far this year, and we are living under the Trump administration.

I'm pretty sure that the residents of Bizarro World are looking at us right now and saying, "They am so stupid."

Seriously, stop the world, I want to get off. 

Deep Thought

Man Will Never Be Free Until the Last King Is Strangled with the Entrails of the Last Priest

—Denis Diderot

Bye Felicia Janet

Maine Governor Janet Mills has ended her candidacy for the Maine Senate seat currently held by Susan Collins.

I guess that she realized that all that her continued campaign could do was make people dislike her even more.

In related news, we are seeing increased calls for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to shut the f%$# up.

People are sick and tired of his do-nothing centrist bullsh%$:

Chuck Schumer’s critics are using the faceplant of one of his star recruits to argue he needs to get out of the way in other races.

After Maine Gov. Janet Mills dropped out of her state’s primary Thursday, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) called on the Senate minority leader and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to drop their involvement in remaining contested primaries across the map including Iowa and Michigan.

“I think the math and polling would indicate that that would be a good idea,” Heinrich told POLITICO in an interview.

Heinrich, who endorsed against Schumer’s favored candidates in both Maine and Michigan, said Schumer’s Maine miscalculation showed he and the DSCC have operated on an old model of electability in an anti-establishment year.

Heinrich is being too charitable.  The DSCC, DCCC, and DNC have operated on a FALSE model of electability, not an OLD model.