Things I F%$#ing Hate

 I really, REALLY, f%$#ing hate job fairs.

That is all.

Posted via mobile 

Andrew Mark Cuomo, Would You Please Go Now?

Andrew Cuomo has relaunched his campaign for New York City Mayor as an independent.

Andrew, how can we miss you if you never leave?

For what it's worth, it the rich f%$#s are funding the f%$# out of Eric Adams, deciding that the corrupt and bat-sh%$ insane incumbent mayor is preferable to someone who would make them pay their fair share in taxes.

A poem about "Rat Faced Andy" follows the break, with apolicies to Dr. Seuss and Art Buchwald:

This Worries Me Not One Whit

It turns out that people are using GLP-1 drugs to game insurers, and all I feel is schadenfreude. 

Basically, if you go on GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic for a few months, you can mask a whole bunch of comorbidities, like type 2 diabetes, obesity, cholesterol levels, etc. for a few months.

You can get the drugs more or less anonymously online, and when you go to your insurance exam, you are svelte, your cholesterol and A1C levels, and your sugar levels are good.

So, the underwriters look at the numbers, and you pay less for insurance, and you "win" when you die young.

Anything that hurts insurance companies, and in so doing reduces the money that they have for creating political influence, is OK by me:

I've just got back from HLTH in Amsterdam, nursing what might be the worst three-day hangover of my adult life. Worth it, though. It's one of the best health tech events in Europe, and I made some genuinely great connections.

………

Now, while everyone else obsessed over AI (shocking, I know), I was laser-focused on GLP-1s. One throwaway comment during a private equity panel sent me down a rabbit hole on insurance companies grappling with the weight-loss drug explosion.

The downstream effects are completely fascinating and completely overlooked. I spent the rest of the conference hunting down insurance people who were all asking the same question: how the hell do we deal with this?

Turns out, they have good reason to panic.

Life insurers can predict when you'll die with about 98% accuracy.

This ruthless precision comes from from decades and decades of mortality data they use to figure out how much to charge you every year, so that the money they earn (from you and by investing your premiums) will easily cover what they'll need to pay out later.

………

Typically, underwriters- suspiciously sounds like undertakers-rely on a handful of key health metrics like HbA1c, cholesterol, blood pressure, and BMI to calculate your risk of dying earlier than expected (and thus costing them money).

Those eagle-eyed readers among you have probably noticed something interesting already. Those same four metrics are exactly what GLP‑1s improve. Not just a little, but enough to entirely shift someone's risk profile within at least 6 months of using them.

………

Let’s say a 42-year-old applies for life insurance:

• They self-report a BMI of 25 (healthy)
• No visible co-morbidities in claims data
• No prescription record shows Sema/Tirzepatide
• Labs within normal range

The insurer sees a ‘mirage’ of good health and approves them as low-risk.

But in reality:

• They were obese a year ago (BMI 32)
• Lost around 14kg using GLP-1s from a D2C provider (no detail on their electronic health record)
• Still have underlying metabolic syndrome

………

Insurers call this type of screw-up "mortality slippage."  

Basically, people are pretty good about giving themselves an injection for a few months, but over a 109 year period, most of them drop off the proverbial wagon, which means that their risks go up.

Oops. 

 

Remember When Jon Stewart Was Funny?

Almost as good as his Jim Cramer Interview

He still has its moments.

As you may recall, some asshole hacked the Twitter account of the Sesame Street character Elmo, and posted antisemitic and racist comments and conspiratorial rants about the Epstein files.

So Jon Steward does what Jon Stewart do, and he "interviews" "Elmo".

The red Muppet was created to appeal to the youngest demographic for the educational show, and the interview juxtaposes this with rather adult bit of humor.

My favorite bit was Stewart talking about his doing "Elmopalooza." 

The truth is, I'm being honest. 

Elmo at the time was great to work with, he was. 

Was there a ton of coke on set? 

Of course. 

It gets far more twisted as we go down the rabbit hole.

I Think That Stephen Miller (יִמַּח שְׁמו) Is Now Officially a Cuck

Yeah, I know.  It sounds small and petty, even for me, but Stephen Miller has spent his entire life trying, and largely succeeding, to be the worst human being he possibly could be.

Any misfortune that he experiences is an independent good. 

Once Again, I am Left Stunned

What do you get when you juxtapose Donald Trump, RFK, Jr., and Jayanta "Bhattacharya and public health?

You get the National Institutes for Health cancelling Sickle Cell Anemia research because it is, "DEI."

Because when you have legitimate health issues that largely only effect black and brown people, trying to help them is DEI.

My guess is that they will cancel research on Tay-Sach's disease next, since only Jews get it.

I consider myself a cynic, but this was beyond my wildest imaginings. 

A doctor says she’s scrambling to figure out how she’ll continue her work helping sickle cell disease patients after the National Institutes of Health cancelled her $750,000 research grant, citing diversity, equity and inclusion and divisiveness as a factor.

Sickle cell disease affects about 100,000 people in the U.S., and 90% of patients are Black, according to NIH.

It’s a blood disorder that causes excruciating pain. Patients' red blood cells are shaped like sickles and can’t flow properly. That causes lifelon7g issues such as strokes, lung problems and infections. 

Ewww!

It's a little thing, but this report about restaurants creating false identities on dating apps to boost sales.

The idea is that they would set up a false date, and when the victim was stood up, they would end up sitting there in the restaurant, and they would order something to eat or drink. 

Really skeevy:

This greasy spoon did her dirty.

In the concrete jungle — where taking a dip in the murky shallows of the dating pool often leaves wannabe lovebirds high and dry — an online dater claims she was catfished by an East Village eatery that posed as a potential suitor on an app in an effort to get her business. 

“I was at the restaurant, thinking I’d been stood up, and ordered a cocktail and a meal for about $45,” Taylor Paré, 33, a vintage fashion curator in Manhattan, told The Post, “only to eventually find out that the restaurant is likely scamming me and other women out of our hard-earned money.”

The singleton shared the disturbing details of her date-night nightmare to a stunned TikTok audience of more than 57,000 viewers.

………

“We’re all out here just trying to have a meal with a cute date, and the restaurants have caught on,” added the brunette. “They’re using it as a tactic to increase their business, which is kind of like as dystopian as it gets.”

………

But after primping for the ill-fated night on the town, Paré waited 15 minutes for her no-show beau to arrive at the joint. 

When she reached for her phone, preparing to message the guy about his tardiness via the dating site, the no-nonsense New Yorker discovered that he’d unmatched with her on the app.

Unfazed by the apparent snubbing, Paré enjoyed her dinner, paid the bill and headed home.

However, several days later, while scrolling through an “Are We Dating the Same Guy”-like Facebook forum — a virtual town square, where scorned whistleblowers share red flags about would-be playboys — she was thunderstruck by the notion that she’d been duped. 

“A girl in the Facebook group recently had a very similar experience at the same restaurant,” Paré said. “I just started putting two and two together, and it seems like way too much of a coincidence for [the restaurant not to be involved].” 

Assuming that this is true, this is nasty.

If it's not true, I feel compelled to quote Mason Williams, "Who needs truth if it's dull." 

There May be Hope for Us Yet

It turns out that a significant portion of the workforce at ICE hate what they are currently doing.

My suggestion to these people is either leave the organization, or find subtle ways to sabotage the organization.

You might want to download the 1944 pamphlet, "Simple Sabotage Field Manual," from the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA.

There is a lot there about how to f%$# up an organization without breaking a single law. 

If you just stay there and follow orders, you are what used to be called a, "Good German."

ICE occupies an exalted place in President Donald Trump’s hierarchy of law enforcement. He praises the bravery and fortitude of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers—“the toughest people you’ll ever meet,” he says—and depicts them as heroes in the central plot of his presidency, helping him rescue the country from an invasion of gang members and mental patients. The 20,000 ICE employees are the unflinching men and women who will restore order. They’re the Untouchables in his MAGA crime drama.

The reality of Trump’s mass-deportation campaign is far less glamorous. Officers and agents have spent much of the past five months clocking weekends and waking up at 4 a.m. for predawn raids. Their top leaders have been ousted or demoted, and their supervisors—themselves under threat of being fired—are pressuring them to make more and more arrests to meet quotas set by the Trump adviser Stephen Miller. Having insisted for years that capturing criminals is its priority, ICE is now shelving major criminal investigations to prioritize civil immigration arrests, grabbing asylum seekers at their courthouse hearings, handcuffing mothers as their U.S.-citizen children cry, chasing day laborers through Home Depot parking lots. As angry onlookers attempt to shame ICE officers with obscenities, and activists try to dox them, officers are retreating further behind masks and tactical gear.

“It’s miserable,” one career ICE official told me. He called the job “mission impossible.”

I recently spoke with a dozen current and former ICE agents and officers about morale at the agency since Trump took office. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity, for fear of losing their job or being subjected to a polygraph exam. They described varying levels of dissatisfaction but weren’t looking to complain or expecting sympathy—certainly not at a time when many Americans have been disturbed by video clips of masked and hooded officers seizing immigrants who were not engaged in any obvious criminal behavior. The frustration isn’t yet producing mass resignations or major internal protests, but the officers and agents described a workforce on edge, vilified by broad swaths of the public and bullied by Trump officials demanding more and more.

………

Some ICE employees believe that the shift in priorities is driven by a political preoccupation with deportation numbers rather than keeping communities safe. At ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division, which has long focused on cartels and major drug-trafficking operations, supervisors have waved agents off new cases so they have more time to make immigration-enforcement arrests, a veteran agent told me. “No drug cases, no human trafficking, no child exploitation,” the agent said. “It’s infuriating.” The longtime ICE employee is thinking about quitting rather than having to continue “arresting gardeners.

………

“Morale is in the crapper,” another former investigative agent told me. “Even those that are gung ho about the mission aren’t happy with how they are asking to execute it—the quotas and the shift to the low-hanging fruit to make the numbers.”

There are two moral choices, find another job, or remain there and find ways to sabotage your organization.

Any other actions make you complicit.

 

Finally, a Use Case for AI

The use case is stealing cryptocurrency from exchanges.

Seeing as how the only use case for cryptocurrency is crime, money laundering, blackmail, and the occasional murder for hire.

I am amused:

Using AI models to generate exploits for cryptocurrency contract flaws appears to be a promising business model, though not necessarily a legal one.

Researchers with University College London (UCL) and the University of Sydney (USYD) in Australia have devised an AI agent that can autonomously discover and exploit vulnerabilities in so-called smart contracts.

Smart contracts, which have never lived up to their name, are self-executing programs on various blockchains that carry out decentralized finance (DeFi) transactions when certain conditions are met.

Like most programs of sufficient complexity, smart contracts have bugs, and exploiting those bugs to steal funds can be remunerative. Last year, the cryptocurrency industry lost almost $1.5 billion to hacking attacks, according to Web3 security platform vendor Immunefi [PDF]. Since 2017, crims have pilfered around $11.74 billion from DeFi platforms.

And it looks like AI agents can make taking those funds even easier.

Gee, you mean that software has bugs?  Hoocoodanode?

To quote Nathaniel Borenstein, the inventor of MIME:

The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident.

That's where we come in. We're computer professionals. We cause accidents. 

 

Führer Furor

I am referring, of course, to Elon Musk’s Grok AI has started spewing Nazi tropes.

I mean this literally.  It said that Jewish film executives are attempting to destroy the white race and referred to itself as, "MechaHitler."

This is a natural consequence of the tweaks that the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ had demanded to prevent his AI from contradicting his opinions.

It is not surprising that this went full Hitler:

This week, Elon Musk’s Grok AI started spewing extreme antisemitism, responding with conspiracy theories about Jewish people, and for a brief period telling people to call it “MechaHitler.” The incident perfectly illustrates why Alex Komoroske’s manifesto about the dangers of centralized AI, which we ran less than a month ago, has been making waves. When a single person controls the dials on an AI system, they can—and almost inevitably will—tweak those dials to serve their own interests and worldview, not their users’.

Just days ago, Elon claimed that his team had “improved Grok significantly” and that “you should notice a difference when you ask Grok questions.”

Yeah, that's one f%$# of an improvement, huh?

………

After a similar incident two months or so ago where Grok became obsessed with linking everything to white genocide, the company started publishing its system prompts to GitHub. So, at the very least, we can see the progression on the system prompt side. This transparency, while laudable, reveals something deeply troubling about how centralized AI systems operate—and how easily they can be manipulated.

It started with a big change to the system prompt that included two lines that likely contributed to this end result:

That is, it said that Grok should “Assume subjective viewpoints sourced from the media are biased” and that “The response should not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated.” That seemed to set it off towards being MechaHitler.

It's really simple.  Musk decreed that his AI should support his views, and Elon Musk is a Nazi.

Occam's razor, folks.

In completely unrelated news (Now former) Ecch (Twitter) CEO Linda Yaccarino has resigned.

My guess is that she has determined that the reputational damage sustained by being one of Musk's minions is not worth the paycheck:

Linda Yaccarino has announced she is stepping down as CEO of X, one day after the platform was forced to take action to stop its chatbot Grok from praising Hitler and amplifying harmful antisemitic stereotypes.

In her announcement, Yaccarino does not mention Grok or any reason for her departure. Instead, Yaccarino broke down what she views as her greatest accomplishments over two years at X, taking credit for helping X "turn around" its financial woes while thanking X owner Elon Musk for giving her "the opportunity of a lifetime."

"I’m immensely grateful to him for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App," Yaccarino said.

Yaccarino joined X in the midst of the advertising boycott over antisemitic posts. Musk continues to bitterly fight the advertising dropoff today, hoping to reclaim lost revenue. The former NBC Universal ad chief was expected to use her connections to woo back advertisers, and earlier this year, Yaccarino said she did it, claiming the ad boycott had ended.

Her exit, coming amid the biggest backlash that X has faced over antisemitic content since the ad boycott began, could suggest she's done defending the platform after X was forced to remove not just offensive Grok posts but also Grok prompting that Musk added last Friday. X confirmed that problematic prompting at least partly caused the chatbot to embrace "politically incorrect" viewpoints. (Musk has said that Grok was "too eager to please" and could be "manipulated" with the prompting, but that doesn't explain Grok's antisemitic response to a question about the Texas flood eliciting praise for Adolf Hitler.)

Her eventually leaving was not just foreseeable, it was inevitable. 

When the HMFIC is incompetent, stupid, and convinced of their own genius, the adults in the room always pay for being the adults in the room. 

^*Why yes, I spent a lot of time on the headline. Why are you asking?

Donning My Tinfoil Hat

The reporting that metadata from the Jeffrey Epstein suicide video shows evidence of editing is ……… interesting.

Nothing to see here, move along:

The United States Department of Justice this week released nearly 11 hours of what it described as “full raw” surveillance footage from a camera positioned near Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cell the night before he was found dead. The release was intended to address conspiracy theories about Epstein’s apparent suicide in federal custody. But instead of putting those suspicions to rest, it may fuel them further.

Metadata embedded in the video and analyzed by WIRED and independent video forensics experts shows that rather than being a direct export from the prison’s surveillance system, the footage was modified, likely using the professional editing tool Adobe Premiere Pro. The file appears to have been assembled from at least two source clips, saved multiple times, exported, and then uploaded to the DOJ’s website, where it was presented as “raw” footage.

Experts caution that it’s unclear what exactly was changed, and that the metadata does not prove deceptive manipulation. The video may have simply been processed for public release using available software, with no modifications beyond stitching together two clips. But the absence of a clear explanation for the processing of the file using professional editing software complicates the Justice Department’s narrative. In a case already clouded by suspicion, the ambiguity surrounding how the file was processed is likely to provide fresh fodder for conspiracy theories.

Thankfully, we can depend on the probity and competence of the Trump administration to get to the bottom of this. (not)

Truth be told, I am more meta on this than anything else.

What interests me is not the irregularities of the case, but rather how it appears that these irregularities appear to be doing real damage to both Donald Trump and the Trump administration, evan amongst some of the most vociferous MAGAts..

Historical Rhyming

Yeah, these pictures look awfully familiar.

There is a difference though.  The Chinese tank driver stopped, the ICE goon did not.

This really is the worst timeline ever.

63 Years Ago Today

The Rolling Stones played their first gig at the Marquee Club in London, England 63 years ago today.

63 f%$#ing years.

Makes me feel old. 

Of Course Amazon is Lying to You

Have you heard the latest?

It turns out that the widely announced discounts on Amazon's "Prime Day" are a wholly manufactured artifact of price increases in the weeks before the highly hyped event.

What, you mean that Amazon is f%$#ing its customers?

Well, knock me over with a РС-28 Сармат missile.  (Specific cases fully documented at the link)

Amazon Prime Day is a four-day sale promoted by the mega-retailer as a rare opportunity to secure "deep discounts" on a variety of consumer items. In reality, Amazon deploys deceptive tactics to exaggerate its markdowns and create a false sense of urgency. Featured items are often available at similar or lower prices at other times.

Nevertheless, major media outlets produce a massive number of "articles" promoting Amazon Prime Day, as if it is a genuine news event. This isn't an accident. Amazon provides financial incentive for news organizations to produce this content.

………

List price inflation has been a systemic issue with Amazon Prime Day for years. In 2022, the New York Times' Wirecutter reported that, for many featured items during Prime Day, "the 'before' price is artificially inflated to make it seem like you’re getting a bigger discount than you really are." In 2019, Fast Company found that "prices are often artificially raised" before Prime Day and other Amazon sales "only to be dropped to create the 'discount.'" In 2017, a company that sells foot deodorizers said that Amazon almost doubled its list price "on Prime Day to make it look like people were getting a discount, when they were actually paying full price." A 2017 study by Consumer Watchdog found "61 percent of all reference prices were higher than any observed price charged by Amazon in the recent past 90 days."

Amazon also engages in a variety of tactics to imbue shoppers with a sense of urgency to buy items right away. This might explain why the company insists on continuing to call the event "Amazon Prime Day" even though it now lasts 96 hours. The idea is to communicate that if a consumer does not buy something now, they will end up wasting money by buying it for a higher price later.

Once again, I feel compelled remind you that if an employer treats its own employees like sh^%, they will treat their customers like sh%$.  

Amazon treats its employees horribly.

'Nuff said. 

Well, a Bit of Good News

A federal judge in New Hampshire has accepted all children covered by Donald Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship as a class and issued an injunction.

It should be noted that the Supreme Court ruling striking down earlier injunctions was not on the constitutional merits of the EO, and they said that such an injunction could only apply to litigants or members of a class action lawsuit.

Given the corrupt and partisan nature of the Supreme Court, I expect that this injunction will be shut down, and that SCOTUS will eventually invalidate the 14th amendment because 6 of the 9 members are political hacks.

A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a contentious executive order ending birthright citizenship after certifying a lawsuit as a class action, effectively the only way he could impose such a far-reaching limit after a Supreme Court ruling last month.

Ruling from the bench, Judge Joseph N. Laplante of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire said his decision applied nationwide to babies who would have been subject to the executive order, which included the children of undocumented parents and those born to academics in the United States on student visas, on or after Feb. 20.

The Trump administration has fought to challenge the longstanding law, laid out in the Constitution, that people born in the United States are automatically citizens, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. Judge Laplante’s order reignites a legal standoff that has been underway since the beginning of President Trump’s second term.

 "Reignites a legal standoff?"  Seriously, the New York Times is calling this a, "Legal standoff?"

Trump's order is clearly corrupt and unconstitutional.

Seriously, the Times is broken beyond repair. 

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Short version:  Initial claims fell by 5,000 to 227,000 and continuing claims rose by 10,000 to 1.97 million.

My take on what this means is that employers are loathe to pay the costs of laying people off, and are equally loathe to pay the costs of hiring.

It's an economy on the precipice.  

This is Gonna Leave a Mark

There is throwing shade, and then there is throwing Chicxulub impact level shade:

too much of a pussy to ask for a divorce so he's lowkey aksing ICE to handle it https://t.co/qNQhOnrRo3

— Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) July 10, 2025

This is probably not fair to John Fetterman, but honestly, I do not care.

If This Joke Were Any Darker, Kristi Noem Would Rendition it to a Salvadoran Gulag

I'm sure that I should that I am sorry for this, but I am not sorry one little bit. 

Here is the joke: 

Someone should tell Sirhan Sirhan that RFK, Jr. is cheating on his wife with Jodi Foster.

I came up with this gem on my own in the car this evening.  

If you are wondering what the F%$# is wrong with me, it's a pretty long list. 

Electric Power Just Came Back On

So, my blogging style will be slightly crimped this evening.

Busy Night

For a good reason.

I had two firsts:

• My first homemade fresh pasta.
• My first spaghetti carbonara.

It went pretty well, though it took about 3 hours, what with me learning the ways of working pasta and the pasta machine.  (The one with the hand crank)

Also, it's turkey bacon and turkey pastrami, and vegan Parmesan because using ham or mixing cheese and meat in my wife's kitchen, (I just cook there, but she sets the rules) would result in acute lead poisoning, because it would treif up the dishes.

She would not shoot me, she would implant the bullets manually if I used traditional ingredients.

Recipes:

Fresh Semolina and Egg Pasta

Ingredients
•    1 cups all-purpose flour
•    1 cups semolina flour
•    1 pinch salt
•    3 large eggs
•    1 tablespoon olive oil
Directions

1. Sift all-purpose flour, semolina flour, and a pinch of salt together in a large bowl. Make a mountain out of flour mixture on a clean surface; create a deep well in the center. Break eggs into the well and add olive oil. Whisk eggs very gently with a fork, gradually incorporating flour from the sides of the well. When mixture becomes too thick to mix with a fork, begin kneading with your hands. 
   
   
2. Knead dough until it is smooth and supple, 8 to 12 minutes, Dust dough and work surface with semolina as needed to keep dough from becoming sticky. Wrap dough tightly in plastic wrap; allow it to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes. 
   
   
3. Roll out dough with a pasta machine or a rolling pin to desired thickness. Cut into your favorite style of noodle or stuff with your favorite filling to make ravioli. 
   
   
4. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Cook pasta in the boiling water until tender yet firm to the bite, 1 to 3 minutes (or longer depending on thickness). Drain immediately and toss with your favorite sauce. 

Pasta Carbonara

Ingredients

• 1/2 lb spaghetti
• 3 eggs large
• 1/2 cup Pecorino Romano freshly grated
• 5 slices turkey bacon diced
• salt
• ground black pepper
• olive oil
• scallion

Directions

1. In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta according to package instructions. Once ready, drain the pasta and save a bit of water in reserve.
   
   
2. In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs and Pecorino Romano. Season with a pinch of salt and a generous amount of ground black pepper. Mix well.
   
   
3. Heat a skillet over medium to medium high heat. Cook turkey bacon with olive oil until brown and crispy, and add in scallion towards the end. Set aside and reduce the heat to low.
    
4. Quickly, while the skillet is still hot, stir the pasta + egg mixture and toss until spaghetti is coated. 
   
   
5. Toss the pasta consistently so you don't scramble the eggs. Add in a bit of reserved pasta water (if necessary) until desired consistency is reached.
   
   
6. Stir in the turkey bacon and scallion. Top off with more cheese and serve.

 

Well, That Answers All of My Questions

So, according to Kash Patel and his Jeffrey Epstein had no client list and definitely committed suicide in his jail cell.

Like, totally.  I am SO glad that we now have that resolved. 

I'm like TOTALLY convinced that there is no coverup.

Have I mentioned that US Attorney General Pam Bondi said a few months ago that she had the list on her desk?

President Trump's Justice Department and FBI have concluded they have no evidence that convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein blackmailed powerful figures, kept a "client list" or was murdered, according to a memo detailing the findings obtained by Axios.

To say that this has the reek of corruption is an understatement.

When Will the App be Available on Android?

There is an app called ICEBlock available for the iPhone.

It's a lot like Waze, only for sharing information about masked fascist goons.

The Trump Administration threatened CNN for just mentioning it. 

I wanted it ported to Android:

There’s an app out there that Trump administration officials hate so much that, according to them, even reporting on it is a crime.

So I’m reporting on it. And you should download it. And you should tell your friends and neighbors to download it, too.

It’s called ICEBlock. It’s a clever app that lets people report ICE sightings, then warns any people who are nearby. You can download it on your iPhone here or here. It’s available in 14 languages.

“When I saw what was happening in this country, I wanted to do something to fight back,” ICEBlock developer Joshua Aaron told CNN. (Here’s the story in Spanish; here’s the video.)

Aaron said he sees parallels between Trump’s deportation efforts and Nazi Germany. “We’re literally watching history repeat itself,” he told CNN, “and so I thought ‘What if there was an early warning system?’”

The app, which is modeled after the popular Waze traffic app, allows users to anonymously add a pin on a map showing where they have spotted immigration enforcement activity and post optional notes. Other users within a five-mile radius then receive a push alert notifying them of the sighting.

………

But Trump and his aides have responded to news about the app with fury, hyperbole, and threats. They’re so inflamed, in fact, that they’re conflating the app and CNN’s reporting on the app, calling for CNN to be investigated and prosecuted. 

It's almost enough for me to get an iPhone.  (Not really)

The programmer argues that Android cannot provide the same level of privacy as the iPhone, but this a matter of considerable debate.

My first take, and I am not a software guy, is that the author is conflating the Android App Store with Android, which allows for things like side loading (trivial in Android) and a number of alternate techniques that can be used in Android's less restrictive programming environment. 

What I think does not matter though, I'm not going to be porting this to Android. 

Skeet of the Day

Link (Image because the author does not allow embeds)

This is a pretty good description.  The Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ wants to create a white supremacist party. 

My snark is, "Elon wants to form a 3rd party? I did Nazi that coming.

Maybe Lockheed-Martin Rat-F%^$#ery

A British F-35B experienced mechanical problems and was forced to land in India.

It now appears that they cannot fix the aircraft on site, and so they will have to pull it apart and ship it back to the UK. 

This seems a bit extrema, and I'm inclined to believe that Lockheed-Martin's death grip on maintenance for the aircraft is responsible for this.

Either the maintainers do not know how to repair the system, or are not allowed to repair the system because of LM restrictions 

Otherwise, you could just fly parts in and fix it:

The UK’s F-35B fighter jet, currently grounded at Thiruvananthapuram International Airport in Kerala, couldn't be repaired on-site and is now likely to be dismantled, CNN-News18 reported, citing top government sources

According to the sources, the British Navy is sending a larger aircraft to transport the jet and has assured that all dues — including parking and hangar fees — will be settled with India, the report claimed.

I think that this sort of crap is why Boeing got the "F-47" contract.

The USAF does not want to deal with the Lockheed-Martin IP roach motel maintenance model.

Pass the Popcorn

It appears that the real estate website Zillow is ruffling some feathers by blocking exclusive home listings.

An increasing number of real estate agents are not putting some units on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), largely because this allows them not to split the sales commissions with other entities.

Real estate agents engaging in this practice are suing Zillow. 

The interesting thing here is how changes in the real estate industry, most notably recent court rulings against collusion on commissions, have led to realtors looking for new ways to make money:

Real estate brokerages increasing look to be in decline.

Pretty much every potential homebuyer looks for houses on the internet, scouring listings for the right facade and envisioning their couch in glossy photos of empty living rooms. A lot of the time, that digital touring pays off: The National Association of Realtors recently found that about half of purchasers end up finding the winning property online. For many house hunters, the never-ending cyberquest for that dream home includes a stop (or many) at Zillow.

If you count yourself among the 221 million monthly visitors who scan Zillow or one of its affiliated portals, like Trulia, you probably won't notice any change in your home-scrolling habit on June 30. But it's an important date for the biggest name in home search. Behind the scenes, Zillow is using its vast machinery to fight a battle that could determine where you find your next house — and whether it even appears on Zillow at all.

Starting Monday, Zillow will be banning home listings that have been marketed publicly by a real estate agent — which includes everything from planting a for-sale sign in the front yard to posting on Facebook — without being shared in the local databases that feed home listings to the rest of the real estate industry, including Zillow and other search websites, within one business day. The move is part of a broader fight over "exclusive inventory" or "hidden homes" — basically, properties advertised in some places but not others. In an attempt to seize more control over their listings, agents at some real estate brokerages have been advertising homes in internal databases or posting them only on their own websites, out of reach of the search portals.

While the fight has been going on for a few years, things have recently turned especially ugly. Compass, the largest real estate brokerage in the US by sales volume, sued Zillow in federal court last week over the new blacklist, and industry execs have spent months trading barbs via social media, speeches, and email blasts that reached thousands of agents across the country.

I'm inclined to think that all of this fighting amongst themselves is a good thing.

It means that all of the players in the real estate market are much focused on lobbying legislators to give them freebies.  

Tries to Kill It, Then Takes Credit for It

After trying to kill congestion pricing in New York City, and after the political blow-back forced her to approve a watered-down version of the program, Kathy Hochul is now taking for its undeniable success. (earlier posts here)

This is not a surprise:

Gov. Kathy Hochul and the MTA on Saturday touted congestion pricing as a “huge success,” saying 67,000 fewer vehicles are entering Lower Manhattan each day, while mass transit ridership is up across the board.

The program is also on track to reap the forecasted $500 million in revenue in 2025, allowing the MTA to move forward with $15 billion in improvements to subways, buses, and the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad systems, officials said.

………

“Six months in, it’s clear: congestion pricing has been a huge success, making life in New York better,” Hochul said in a statement.

The dip in vehicle volume – 10 million all told – has led to substantial drops in traffic delays, the governor’s office said. At the Holland Tunnel, rush hour delays are down 65%. And drivers coming into the city are getting back 7 minutes for every hour spent commuting, according to the governor’s data.

Traffic accidents are down as well. Last week, the city’s transportation department published data showing 87 people were killed by motorists during the first six months of 2025 – down significantly from the 128 deaths reported over the same period last year.

At the same time, public transportation ridership is up. Subway riders are up 7%; bus ridership is up 12%; LIRR ridership is up 8%; Metro-North ridership is up 6%, and Access-A-Ride ridership is up, 21%.

To quote (probably, it might be Tacitus) John F. Kennedy,"Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan."

I'm not surprised.  Taking credit for successes that you opposed is Political Hack 101 .

OK, This Might Be the Best Headline of the Day

Is This How ICE Barbie Got Her $50,000 Rolex?

The New Republic, on  revelations that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem received $80,000 in kickbacks from a PAC she founded

As an FYI, we saw the Rolex on her wrist when she did a torture porn photo shoot at a Salvadoran gulag.

First, let me state that I don't get the whole "Rolex" thing.  The last time I wore a wristwatch, it was a $30 (ish) Timex Datalink Watch in the 1990s which stored a phone list on it and had a battery life of over a year.  (Yeah, modern smartwatches suck, but I digress)

I don't get why people buy Rolex watches. 

Notwithstanding the wonderful headline, the go to reporting on this is from ProPublica, who broke this story.  (TNR links back to them)

In 2023, while Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she supplemented her income by secretly accepting a cut of the money she raised for a nonprofit that promotes her political career, tax records show.

In what experts described as a highly unusual arrangement, the nonprofit routed funds to a personal company of Noem’s that had recently been established in Delaware. The payment totaled $80,000 that year, a significant boost to her roughly $130,000 government salary. Since the nonprofit is a so-called dark money group — one that’s not required to disclose the names of its donors — the original source of the money remains unknown.

Noem then failed to disclose the $80,000 payment to the public. After President Donald Trump selected Noem to be his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, she had to release a detailed accounting of her assets and sources of income from 2023 on. She did not include the income from the dark money group on her disclosure form, which experts called a likely violation of federal ethics requirements.

Experts told ProPublica it was troubling that Noem was personally taking money that came from political donors. In a filing, the group, a nonprofit called American Resolve Policy Fund, described the $80,000 as a payment for fundraising. The organization said Noem had brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There is nothing remarkable about a politician raising money for nonprofits and other groups that promote their campaigns or agendas. What’s unusual, experts said, is for a politician to keep some of the money for themselves.

………

While she is among the least wealthy members of Trump’s Cabinet, her personal spending habits have attracted notice. Noem was photographed wearing a gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch that costs nearly $50,000 as she toured the Salvadoran prison where her agency is sending immigrants. In April, after her purse was stolen at a Washington, D.C., restaurant, it emerged she was carrying $3,000 in cash, which an official said was for “dinner, activities, and Easter gifts.” She was criticized for using taxpayer money as governor to pay for expenses related to trips to Paris, to Canada for bear hunting and to Houston to have dental work done. At the time, Noem denied misusing public funds.………

In 2023, the nonprofit spent only about $220,000 of its war chest — with more than a third of that going to Noem’s LLC. The rest mostly went toward administrative expenses and a roughly $84,000 travel budget. It’s not clear whose travel the group paid for.

The nonprofit reported that it sent the $80,000 fundraising fee to Noem’s LLC as payment for bringing in $800,000, a 10% cut. A professional fundraiser who also raised money for the group was paid a lower rate of 7%.

………

Noem’s outside income may have run afoul of South Dakota law, according to Lee Schoenbeck, a veteran Republican politician and attorney who was until recently the head of the state Senate. The law requires top officials, including the governor, to devote their full time to their official roles.

“There’s no way the governor is supposed to have a private side business that the public doesn’t know about,” Schoenbeck told ProPublica. “It would clearly not be appropriate.”

Silly rabbit, the Trump administration will never prosecute!

By the standards of Trump, Noem is a f%$#ing choir boy. 

Headline of the Day

I Don't Know How to Explain to You That You Shouldn't Buy Concentration Camp Merch

—Rafi Schwartz on The Discourse Blog

There is, of course, a American Holocaust Museum gift shop, and there is also an book store run by the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau Former German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp.

They both contain historical books, memoirs, etc.

I understand this.  It's part of their mission. 

That being said, the new US Everglades Concentration Camp T-Shirt being sold by the Florida Republican Party is something else entirely. 

It's a f%$#ing rock band tour t-shirt. 

Credit where credit is due: It turns out the federal government can still accomplish big things when it’s sufficiently motivated. That’s the good news.

Unfortunately, it seems like the only thing motivating the government these days is the overtly racist desire to purge the United States of whichever bloc of marginalized undesirables Stephen Miller is mad about on any given day. That’s the only possible explanation for how Florida was able to construct a massive migrant detention center on an infrequently used airport tarmac deep in the Florida Everglades in a single week.

“Clearly from a security perspective, if someone escapes, there’s a lot of alligators you’re going to have to contend with,” explained Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “No one is going anywhere once you do that. It’s as safe and secure as you can be.”

In spite of being dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, this remote facility has almost nothing in common with the infamous California penitentiary, which, although a notoriously cruel gulag, was nevertheless part of—and subject to—the laws of the federal penal system. This new Florida installation, on the other hand, seems totally detached from any sort of judicial oversight or pipeline, ostensibly serving instead as a semi-permanent receptacle for people kidnapped by (presumably?) ICE agents. So what do you call a massive “camp” of people “concentrated” together by the government outside the normal judicial system?

The t-shirts and other merch being sold by the Florida Republican Party show us who they are.

They are people who should have been drowned at birth.

They are people who will only make the world a better place when they die.

These are not people you can deal with. 

If the FBI Can Use It, so Can the Sinaloa Cartel

Various law enforcement agencies love them some data bought from third party data brokers to cast a wide dragnet that would otherwise not be allowed by law.

They love insecure phone systems and communications providers who sell user data for the same reason.

It turns out that Mexican drug cartels like these things for all the same reasons, except, of course they are not constrained by things like due process:

The Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico hacked the phone of an FBI official investigating kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán as part of a surveillance campaign “to intimidate and/or kill potential sources or cooperating witnesses,” according to a recently published report by the Justice Department.

The report, which cited an “individual connected to the cartel,” said a hacker hired by its top brass “offered a menu of services related to exploiting mobile phones and other electronic devices.” The hired hacker observed “'people of interest' for the cartel, including the FBI Assistant Legal Attache, and then was able to use the [attache's] mobile phone number to obtain calls made and received, as well as geolocation data, associated with the [attache's] phone."

“According to the FBI, the hacker also used Mexico City's camera system to follow the [attache] through the city and identify people the [attache] met with,” the heavily redacted report stated. “According to the case agent, the cartel used that information to intimidate and, in some instances, kill potential sources or cooperating witnesses.”

What happened here is a direct response of law enforcement, both in the US and worldwide, leaning on communications providers to leave back doors open.

To paraphrase E.E. "Doc" Smith, any technology that can be devised by law enforcement can also be deployed by criminal entities. 

Happy July 4th Everyone

A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

—The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, July 4, 1776.

Thanks, Elon

I'm actually serious here. 

 It appears that Elon Musk's botched attempt to buy the Wisconsin Supreme Court election has resulted in the formal legalization of abortion in the Badger State.

It appears that the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy's™ skills in over-promising and under-delivering finally led to something good.

Much better than things like "Full Self Driving" where his lies actually kill people:

A divided Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed abortions to continue in the state, blocking a 19th-century law that for a time effectively banned the procedure in nearly all instances.

The ruling is a victory for abortion rights advocates — who helped flip the elected court’s ideological makeup in 2023 — and puts protections for the procedure on firmer footing. It represents a setback for abortion opponents in the swing state, who had hoped Wisconsin would join the states that limited or banned the procedure after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022.

Health care providers in Wisconsin temporarily stopped offering abortions after that decision three years ago in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended a constitutional right to abortion in the United States. The providers said they feared they could be prosecuted in Wisconsin under an 1849 law that has been widely viewed as banning most abortions.

………

On Wednesday, liberals who control the court invalidated the 1849 law. The decision fell along ideological lines, with the four liberal justices in the majority and the court’s three conservatives dissenting.

The ruling means health care providers can continue to offer abortions until 20 weeks post-fertilization, with the only exception after that point in pregnancies being cases in which the patient’s health is at risk. Wisconsin mandates an ultrasound and a 24-hour waiting period before most abortions.

The state continues to limit medication abortions by requiring that providers dispense abortion pills in person and that patients go for a follow-up visit after taking the medication.

………

The high court upheld [Dane County Judge Diane] Schlipper’s finding that abortion is legal in Wisconsin but used different reasoning. The majority concluded the 1849 law had banned nearly all abortions but determined the legislature had functionally repealed it through post-Roe measures addressing “every aspect of abortion including where, when, and how healthcare providers may lawfully perform abortions,” Justice Rebecca Dallet wrote for the majority.

“That comprehensive legislation so thoroughly covers the entire subject of abortion that it was clearly meant as a substitute for the 19th century near-total ban on abortion,” she wrote.

Now, how about Wisconsin Democrats trying to reverse the restrictions on abortion listed above.

We know that criminalizing abortion is  electoral poison almost everywhere in the United States.  

Make Wisconsin Republicans drink that Kool-Aid. (Actually, at Jonestown, the drank Flavor-Aid, but I degress)

Linkage

• New York City Council Proposes Legislation to Make Bodega Cats Completely Legal (Laughing Squid) I did not know that Bodega cats were a thing.
• Trump’s Budget Transforms ICE Into the Gestapo (MindWar) The budget bill will grow ICE into the largest "Law Enforcement" agency in the federal government.
• The world's oldest boomerang is even older than we thought, but it's not Australian (ZME Science) This was found in Poland.
• Biologists Uncover Previously Unknown Structure Hiding Inside Human Cells (Gizmodo) It transports materials across the cell, and then vanishes.  Kewl.
• Ancient DNA Unlocks the Secret Recipe of Roman Fish Sauce (Gizmodo) It doesn't really, it confirms the documented descriptions from the periods.  Short version, they have confirmed sardines.
• That Dropped Call With Customer Service? It Was on Purpose. (The Atlantic) Absent strong government regulation, the only way that things change is if people go Luigi Mangione on CEOs of companies that do this.  If I'm on the jury for that, I vote to acquit.

Matt Stoller explains how monopoly rents, and things like not enforcing the Robinson–Patman Act, which prevents price discrimination, have led to rising grocery prices and food deserts:

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Initial claims


Continuing claims The numbers look good on initial inspection, but the monthly job numbers look bad upon further examination. (The Friday numbers come out Thursday because of the 4th of July holiday)

Specifically, the unemployment rate fell from 4.2% in may to 4.1%, but this was because 329,000 people stopped looking for work, and are no longer counted.  

The job number, which indicates 149,000 new jobs is largely an artifact of the school year ending, which creates a seasonal adjustment that boosts government jobs numbers.  Private hiring was up only74,000.

The labor participation rate also fell to a 2½-year low of 62.3%.

Meanwhile, on the unemployment filings beat, the numbers were better than forecast, with initial claims falling and continuing claims flat.

Initial claims for unemployment insurance were 233,000 in the week of June 28, down 4,000 from 237,000 in the week ending June 21, revised from 236,000. The Action Economics Forecast Survey expected 240,000. These data are seasonally adjusted by the Department of Labor. The 4-week moving average was 241,500, a decrease of 3,750 from the previous week’s average of 245,250, revised from 245,000.

The total number of unemployment insurance beneficiaries – also known as “continuing claims” – in the week ended June 21 was 1.964 million, unchanged from the prior week’s level, which was revised down from 1.974 million. The 4-week moving average was 1.954 million, up from 1.938 million in the previous week, revised from 1.941 million. This is the highest level for this average since November 20, 2021, when it was 2.004 million.

There is definite softening in hiring.  I'm still looking for work, and don't expect any feedback from my interviews until next week at least, as we are into the summer vacation season.

Damn. 

We Are F%$#ed

See the blue spot south of Greenland and Iceland As my reader(s) may recall, I have suggested that the potential for anthropogenic climate change causing a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could change climate significantly, particularly in Europe, where it could cause a temperature drop of 5-15°C (9-27°F).

The problem is that the anything near a remotely accurate measurement of the AMOC has only been done over the last few decades, so there is not good data to see how this massive current has changed. 

Total volume of the AMOC is about  18 Sverdrup (Sv) or 18,000,000 m³/s, which made observations extremely difficult in the past.

Well , a group of researchers believe that they have found a correlation between AMOC flow rate and the temperature of the cold spot in the Atlantic Ocean south of Greenland.

Given that we have surface temperature readings going back centuries for the Atlantic, this allows us to see trends, and the trends ain't good: 

For months – if not years – debate has raged among scientists over the general health of an ocean current system critical to regulating Earth’s climate – arguing over whether or not the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (or AMOC) is slowing down.

This week, researchers looking into the root cause of a centuries-old patch of cold water south of Greenland and its resistance to the overall warming trend of the Atlantic Ocean, has come to one simple conclusion. That it is.

Landing on only one explanation for the observed ocean temperatures and patterns in salinity across the region, researchers from the University of California, Riverside concluded that the AMOC – a massive current system responsible for moving warm, salty water northward and cooler water southward at depth, is indeed weakening.

“People have been asking why this cold spot exists,” said University of California, Riverside climate scientist Wei Liu, who led the study with doctoral student Kai-Yuan Li. “We found the most likely answer is a weakening AMOC.”

The AMOC acts like a giant conveyor belt, delivering heat and salt from the tropics to the North Atlantic. A slowdown in this system means less warm, salty water reaches the sub-polar region, resulting in the cooling and freshening observed south of Greenland.

………

Together, Li and Liu analysed a century’s worth of this data, as direct AMOC observations go back only as far as 20 years. From these long term records, they reconstructed changes in the circulation system and compared those with nearly 100 different climate models.

Their paper – published this week in Communications Earth & Environment – shows that only in the models simulating a weakened AMOC were outcomes generally matched to the real-world data. Models that assumed a stronger AMOC didn’t come close.

“It’s a very robust correlation,” said Li. “If you look at the observations and compare them with all the simulations, only the weakened-AMOC scenario reproduces the cooling in this one region.”

………

With limited direct data on the AMOC, temperature and salinity records provide a valuable alternative for detecting long-term circulation change, and for helping to predict future climate scenarios.

This does not bode well for our society or our planet.

This Sh%$ Is Nightmare Fuel

A skull that resembles Rex from Toy Story has been found in North Central Texas. The nearly complete skull of an over 280 million-year-old amphibian will eventually be displayed at the Texas Through Time Fossil Museum.

For more info: https://t.co/YNfEV0f3jw pic.twitter.com/UQlUpJTR85

— IGN (@IGN) June 24, 2025

Not Rex from Toy Story


This Guy

So there I am surfing the web, and I come across the following hed, "Paleontologists Find Skeleton That Weirdly Looks Exactly Like Barney the Purple Dinosaur."

I had to share this.

I will not suffer alone:

Deep in the heart of Texas, a goofy-looking dinosaur skeleton has been unearthed — and it's got a funny head that makes it look like a dead ringer for Barney, the purple lizard of 90s television fame with the annoyingly cheery voice.

As the Houston Chronicle reports, the dinosaur in question — called Eryops megacephalus — has a wide, grinning smile on a large flat skull that sits on four squat legs. Paleontologist Andre LuJan told the newspaper that he found the skeleton of the semiaquatic ancient amphibian recently in Archer County, in a quarry that dates back to the Permian era, about over 280 million years ago.

"This is an exciting discovery," LuJan told Chron. "It's a well-known animal and not considered rare, but this discovery is significant because even though it's damaged, it is nearly complete, and that is far more uncommon or even rare than finding fragments."

 The horror.....................

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

One noteworthy thing about Iran's borders is, unlike much of the Middle East, they were not drawn for them.

The territory they hold today looks much the same as the realms they have held since antiquity. pic.twitter.com/JyRbKk7OJB

— 𝗠𝗮я𝗮𝘁 (@maratkaryan) June 27, 2025

This provides essential perspective.

Every other country in the Middle East, Near East, and North Africa is a creation of the colonial powers.

This necessarily effects their society and how they view themselves. 

Poundy McPoundFFace, Dammit!

The Bank of England is requesting public comment regarding updating its bank notes.

To my reader(s) in the UK, you know what to do: 

Bank of England banknotes have showcased notable historical figures since 1970, when William Shakespeare became the first person other than the monarch to feature.

The Bank said there are many ways to represent the UK on banknotes, and six potential themes have been identified.

They are notable historical figures; architecture and landmarks; arts, culture and sport; noteworthy events in history; innovation; and nature.

The public can also suggest other themes for the Bank to consider.

It said banknotes take a multi-year process to design, test and print, to ensure they are high-quality, resilient and accessible.

………

Depending on which theme is selected, the Bank said it may seek further feedback from the public on the specific images that could be used to show the chosen theme.

It said it will give updates, announcing the final note designs in due course.

Examples of how themes could be depicted include portraits of people from history who have made an important contribution to UK society and culture, for the notable historical figures theme.

The Bank will not represent living people on its banknotes, with the exception of the monarch.

The architecture and landmarks theme, meanwhile, could be depicted by images of buildings and other places, such as castles, bridges or heritage sites across the UK.

I am being a good boy, and I am not suggesting a "Goatse" theme. oops

Light Posting for a While

For a good reason.

I'm doing homework for a bunch of interviews with a bunch of companies.

I'm not sure why it is picking up, but it is, and hopefully I will find something soon. 

Headline of the Day

Europe’s Daddy Issues

—Jacobin, on NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte's stunningly obsequious behavior toward Donald Trump

While there are legitimate reasons for people to disagree as to whether NATO is still necessary as a military force or not, it's position as a standards organization is indesputable, (STANAGs) the behavior of senior NATO officials in Europe is the strongest argument for sh%$-canning the whole thing.

NATO is to European self-governance as Charlie McCarthy is to script writing:

On Wednesday, Donald Trump and former Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte sat down for a press conference at the NATO summit in The Hague.

Asked about the ongoing war between Israel and Iran — a conflict that, despite his promises of peace and isolationism, Trump himself dragged the United States into — the president expressed his thoughts in characteristically inappropriate terms: “They’ve had a big fight, like two kids in a schoolyard. They fight like hell; you can’t stop them. Let them fight for about two, three minutes, then it’s easier to stop them.”

Usually whichever world leader happens to sit next to Trump just listens. Sometimes they force a smile, steal a concerned or confused glance at the cameras, or put on a poker face to try to hide their disbelief at the situation.

Rutte didn’t quite do this. Stooping down to — or rather below — Trump’s rhetorical level, he replied with all the tact and grace you’d expect from a seasoned statesman: “Daddy has to sometimes use strong language.” 

………

While some European officials were embarrassed by Rutte’s conduct (speaking anonymously, one source told Politico that “the sucking up was pretty over the top”), others followed his example. “The vibes were good,” someone else said. “This is the Trump effect.” Diplomats reportedly congratulated the president on brokering a cease-fire between Israel and Iran, one that both parties have since violated. The Dutch king took part in the operation too, inviting Trump — a well-known fanboy of all things royal and dynastic — to a palace sleepover.

The people who oppose NATO accuse it of being a lap-dog of US interests.

The people who support NATO respond with, "Here, hold my beer." 

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

That awkward moment Peter Thiel realized he might be the very Antichrist he warned about
pic.twitter.com/D9JvGARDtD

— Mykhaïlo Golub (@golub) June 27, 2025

We need to remember that Peter Thiel has plans to be a literal vampire, so the idea that he is a some sort of mythic avatar of evil is not as strange as one might thing.

Certainly his work on AI and various projects that relating to war and surveillance would imply that he is at least antichrist adjacent.

You know, the neighbor of the beast, as opposed to the number of the beast. 

I would note that Thiel, much like his fellow "PayPal Mafia" member Elon Musk, appears to have gone off the deep end in a rather similar manner they both seem to manifest the same sort of insane libertarian eschatology. 

In Musk's case, it's, "Flee to Mars to save humanity," and in Thiel's case, it's, "Some bureaucrat is the antichrist because he wants to keep people safe."