22 July 2025

Musk's AI Waifu

So, the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ is rolling out an anime sex bot through his xAI system.

Nope.  Nothing at all creepy about that: 

In a bit of news that is in no way indicative of the direction our culture is heading, Elon Musk's xAI is hiring an engineer dedicated to creating anime girls.

The company has a listing with the job title "Fullstack Engineer - Waifus." A waifu is word used by anime fans refer to a female character that people view romantically. It's basically a Japanese version of the English word "wife." The listing said xAI is "looking for exceptional multimedia engineers and product thinkers who want to make Grok's realtime avatar products the best in the world." The pay range: $180,000-$440,000 per year.

There is something wrong with that boy.

Candy Ass Pissants

In response to moves by House Democrats to release the Epstein Files, Republicans have adjourned the House to avoid having a vote.

What a bunch of cowardly hypocrites.

Speaker Mike Johnson announced on Tuesday that he was cutting short the week’s legislative business and sending the House home early for the summer on Wednesday to avoid having to hold votes on releasing files related to the accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Mr. Johnson’s move will, for now, deny Democrats the chance to force procedural votes that would call on the Justice Department to make the information public. It reflected how deep divisions among Republicans on the matter have paralyzed the House, where G.O.P. lawmakers are trying to avoid another politically perilous vote on an issue that is confounding President Trump and roiling the MAGA base.

“We’re done being lectured on transparency,” Mr. Johnson said at a news conference, where the typically unflappable speaker appeared frustrated.

As he wrapped up his final news conference before a summer recess that was to have begun on Friday and lasted until September, Mr. Johnson complained about “endless efforts to politicize the Epstein investigation.”

He insisted that Republicans “have been intellectually consistent the entire time,” and added that “we’re not going to play political games with this.” 

Mixed emotions on this.  I want them to rip the Band-Aid® off for l'affaire Epstein, but in the long run, immediate revelation of the facts would likely benefit the Republicans in the long term.

As Napoleon once said, "Never stop your enemy when he is stepping on his own dick."  (My French translation skills might not be the best) 

Support Your Local Police

In California, the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District (SMUD) was flagging customers with "suspiciously" high electricity usage and sending names and addresses to the cops so that the latter could harass people

Gee, surveillance state much?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has advanced a lawsuit in which it alleges the City of Sacramento misused energy records to accuse residents of growing cannabis, often with disastrous results.

According to a statement from the digital rights group, local law enforcement authorities have worked with local power company, the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District (SMUD), to find households using a suspiciously high amount of energy.

The EFF commenced legal action against SMUD two years ago. This week it finished its discovery and filed a petition [PDF] with the judge in the case along with thousands of pages of evidence, allowing it to move forward with an October hearing.

According to the petition, the Sacramento Police Department (SPS) requested SMUD identify customers in specific ZIP codes whose energy consumption exceeded a monthly threshold, on grounds that the lamps used to grow cannabis indoors use a lot of electrical power. 

Specific ZIP codes?  Only specific ZIP codes?  From a police department that has been repeatedly and successfully sued for using ethnic profiling to harass people?

Yeah, this stinks to high heaven, particularly given the fact that LED grow lights sufficient for a basement pot operation would likely be less than 100W incandescent.

Sounds to me like they were looking for an excuse to hassle Asians:

………

The discovery documents also suggest Sacramento authorities had a preoccupation with race. While law enforcement systematically requested details of suspicious customers, SMUD analysts would apparently ask them to request records for specific addresses. One such text message read: “Send me a request for [two particular addresses]. One is 10k plus, and the other is 4k, Asian….”.

Analysts would also look at credit databases and make racially charged judgments, citing an “interesting thing” about one address was “the multiple Asians that have reported there…” according to one communication from an analyst to law enforcement cited in the petition.

The EFF filed the lawsuit with the Asian American Liberation Network, which advocates for Asian American rights.

One other co-claimant is Alfonso Nguyen, who said police officers visited him and behaved abusively after receiving records from SMUD. Nguyen said he used medical equipment at home to regulate his body temperature. Police called him a liar, the petition says.

As an FYI, Mr. Nguyen is in a wheel chair because of a spinal injury, and needs aggressive air conditioning to control his body temperature.

The EFF mentioned another police visit that saw a resident walk out in his underwear to the sight of police carrying guns. He had been mining crypto.

……… 

This isn't the first time that the SPD has been in court for allegedly targeting Asian Americans for cannabis grow-ops, the document adds. It points to another 2019 case, Wang v. City of Sacramento. 

Yep, seems to me that there is a lot of racial profiling going on here. 

Good Riddance

France has withdrawn from its last military base in West Africa, Camp Geille, in Senegal.

Good to see this bit of colonial occupation ending. 

Now lets see a withdrawal from the CFA Franc, which has member nations having to keep half of their foreign currency reserves in France. 


Some Good News

Remember how I wrote that the Trump DoJ was requesting that former Memphis police officer get only one day in prison for killing Breonna Taylor and then lying about it?

The judge called bullsh%$ on the Trump Administration's attempt to declare hunting season on Black people and sentenced Brett Hankison to 3 years in prison.

Not long enough, but better than what the corrupt prosecutors were asking for: 

A federal judge in Kentucky on Monday sentenced a former Louisville police officer involved in the fatal raid of Breonna Taylor’s home to nearly three years in prison, in a sharp rebuke to the Trump administration, which had requested he serve only one day behind bars.

In November, a federal jury in Kentucky convicted the former officer, Brett Hankison, of one count of violating Ms. Taylor’s civil rights by using excessive force in discharging several shots through her window during a botched drug raid in 2020. Even though none of the 10 shots he fired hit Ms. Taylor, Mr. Hankison, who is white, was the only officer to be charged for his actions during the botched operation.

………

Last week, Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, asked the judge in the case, Rebecca Grady Jennings, to sentence Mr. Hankison to a single day in prison — essentially the brief time he had served when he was charged — and three years of supervised release.

The request was intended to send the message that the department planned to abandon its longstanding efforts to address racial disparities in policing — and to reorient the civil rights division to pursue President Trump’s culture war agenda at the expense of its founding mission of confronting race-based discrimination.

That's an awfully mealy mouthed way of saying, "Show cops that they can kill black people with impunity.

………

The warrant to raid Ms. Taylor’s apartment was based on shoddy surveillance. Three officers were charged by federal prosecutors with knowingly including false information in an affidavit to get a judge to approve the raid. One of them, Kelly Goodlett, pleaded guilty in 2022. The case against the two other officers, Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany, is still open.

Prosecutors argued that Mr. Hankison did not have legal justification to use deadly force when he fired through a window and sliding glass door covered by blinds during the raid, ultimately hitting a neighboring apartment.

He could not see anything, but because he was a pants-wetting coward, he fired 10 shots blindly through a window. 

The United States police are a disgrace, and this is by design. 

Well, That Was a Frank Interview

Hunter Biden has given an interview about the election, and his dad, and the people who he thinks betrayed his dad, and his travails with addiction, etc.

It's a bit long, over three hours, but I think that it's worth a watch.

Some high points are where he drops F-bombs on George Clooney, David Axelrod, the Pod Save America Guys, James Carville, and (especially) Jake Tapper.  (Not expurgating because I'm quoting and it is important)

Hunter Biden has given a profanity-laced, three-hour interview to the US outlet Channel 5 that is remarkable for its no-holds attack on actor George Clooney, denial that he was the source of cocaine found in the White House and thoughts on why his father bombed in his debate with Donald Trump before dropping out of his presidential re-election run.

“Fuck him!” the younger Biden said of Clooney, whose remarkable New York Times opinion piece last July called on the Democratic party for which the actor is a financial donor to find a new presidential nominee.

“Fuck him and everybody around him. I don’t have to be fucking nice.”

Referring to comments from the well-known film director that Clooney is not a “movie star”, Biden continued: “I agree with Quentin Tarantino. Fucking George Clooney is not a fucking actor. He is fucking like … I don’t know what he is. He’s a brand.”

Just so you know, he was far more charitable to Clooney  than he was to the rest of these mooks. (about 2:25—2:45)

Full 3+ hour video below, I just hit the highlights: 

21 July 2025

We Are F%$#ed


This graph is being censored
In response to the growing problems of anthropogenic climate change, the Trump administration is shuttering the Mauna Loa Observatory, which has been the gold standard for measuring atmospheric CO2 levels.

They are going to kill us all: 

More than 11,100 feet above sea level, surrounded by nothing but black rocks, white clouds and blue sky, the Mauna Loa Observatory is in a Goldilocks spot for studying the atmosphere.

The air that swirls around the isolated outpost located on a Hawaiian volcano is a mix from all over the Northern Hemisphere. That makes it one of the best places to measure greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It is indispensable to scientists around the world.

The readings collected from Mauna Loa, starting in 1958, were used to create what is famously known as the Keeling curve. It’s an upward-swooping line that charts the steady rise of carbon dioxide over the past seven decades — the result of nations burning oil, gas and coal.

But President Trump’s proposed 2026 budget would put an end to Mauna Loa, along with three other key observatories and almost all the climate research being done by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

………

The observatory is part of a global network of stations that monitor the atmosphere. The research performed at these labs lets scientists assess changes over the long term, figure out what caused the changes and make better predictions for extreme events like heat waves, droughts and floods. And the stations can help scientists tell which climate policies are working, which are not, and if global warming is accelerating.

………

As important as the Mauna Loa Observatory is, it doesn’t work in isolation. To have a reliable and global picture of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, scientists need to collect samples from multiple places. NOAA operates three other monitoring stations — one in Alaska, one in American Samoa and one at the geographic South Pole — to compile its global average carbon dioxide trend.

The president’s budget would close all four stations, eliminating the United States’ pole-to-pole view of greenhouse gases. They cannot easily be replaced.

What's that New Yorker cartoon about this again?

Yes, this: 

Looking at What’s Underneath the “Cop City” Rocks

One of the dirty secrets in US law enforcement are the allegedly private alleged charity police foundations, which serve to launder police lobbying and malfeasance.

As a result of a court case, the Atlanta Police Foundation will have to turn over its records to journalist.

More than a year after a digital news outlet and a research group sued the Atlanta Police Foundation for allegedly violating Georgia’s open records law, the foundation has sent plaintiffs nearly 300 pages of records linked to its role as the driving force behind the police training center known as “Cop City”.

The outcome “opens the door to what we want; it’s a guide stone for getting records from police foundations, so they can’t be a black box”, said Matt Scott, executive director of Atlanta Community Press Collective (ACPC), an Atlanta-based digital news outlet and one of two plaintiffs in the case.

………

The lawsuit was probably the first of its kind nationwide, Robert Vargas, a sociology professor at the University of Chicago, told the Guardian last year. Although the case centered on the Atlanta police foundation, observers said last year they were closely watching to see if its outcome had implications for police foundations in general and whether they might be subject to open records laws. Every major US city has a private foundation supporting police, with more than 250 nationwide, according to a 2021 report by research and activist groups Little Sis and Color of Change. The foundations have been used to pay for surveillance technologies in cities like Baltimore and Los Angeles without being subject to public scrutiny, according to the report.

Vargas said the ruling, and the records provided, “sets a precedent”. But he added that the results are a “mixed bag”, since Barwick did not offer an opinion about whether all the APF’s records should be available to the public, or whether police foundations in general should be considered public agencies.

There is an infrastructure that has been created ti create law enforcement impunity.

It's a rotten system, and it needs to be torn down brick by corrupt brick. 

20 July 2025

Pathetic Wankers Gotta Pathetically Wank

I am referring, of course, to Barack Obama, who once again is saying that the Democratic Party must hippie punch their way out of the current crisis.

Okay, Ace. Here’s the thing. This kind of tough-love, pep-rally bullshit really has pole-vaulted over its sell-by date. From CNN:
“I think it’s going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions. And it’s going to require Democrats to just toughen up,” Obama said at the fundraiser, according to excerpts of his remarks exclusively obtained by CNN.
It may have escaped former President Look Forward, Not Back’s notice, but there are quite a number of Democrats who are fighting pretty damned hard against the encroaching darkness. In the House, there are Jasmine Crockett, Maxwell Frost, and AOC, with whom the Democratic establishment still doesn’t know what to do. Chris Murphy, Sheldon Whitehouse, Elizabeth Warren, Angus King, and, yes, Bernie Sanders have kicked back against impossible odds, and King and Sanders aren’t even Democrats. Governors like Andy Beshear and Tim Walz are trying to hold the line against the excesses of the administration, and J.B. Pritzker in Illinois had been a rock in the national debate. And mayors like Karen Bass and Michelle Wu have done noble work against the ICE rampages in their cities. In fact, at the moment, most of the Democratic navel-gazing and whining concerns the horrible possibility of Zohran Mamdani’s being elected mayor of New York, and a lot of that is coming from politicians and activists loyal to Obama.

He goes on to pretend that there is no difference between people who want to fight and people who want to sell out, and once again, he comes down firmly on the side of the DLC type sellouts, only this time under the guise of the "Abundance Agenda".

F%$# him and the rest of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) pukes who want nothing to change. 

Please Let This Stick

We now have reports that Heridi parties in the Knesset are threatening to leave coalition with Likud over their conscription exemption.

This could take down the coalition, and remove Netanyahu from office.

This would be good for everyone in Israel not named Benjamin Netanyahu.  

Hell, it would be good for everyone in the world not named Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Support Your Local Police

These days, at least if the victim is Black, a police officer can murder someone and then lie about it, and the prosecution will only ask for 1 day in jail, which means no jail, given his time being booked:

The chief of the Justice Department’s civil rights unit has asked a federal judge to sentence a Louisville police officer convicted in the 2020 killing of Breonna Taylor to one day in prison, a stunning reversal of the unit’s longstanding efforts to address racial disparities in policing.

Last year, a federal jury in Kentucky convicted Brett Hankison, the officer, of one count of violating Ms. Taylor’s civil rights by using excessive force in discharging several shots through Ms. Taylor’s window during a drug raid that went awry.

He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison, and a judge will consider the government’s request at a sentencing scheduled for next week.

On Wednesday, Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, asked the judge in the case, Rebecca Grady Jennings, to sentence Mr. Hankison to one day in prison — essentially the brief time he had served when he was charged — and three years of supervised release.

In the filing, Ms. Dhillon suggested the prosecution was excessive, arguing that the Biden Justice Department had secured a conviction against Mr. Hankison after his acquittal on state charges and the ending of his first federal trial in a mistrial.

Just so you know, as if you had not guessed, Mr. Dhillon is a Trump political appointee. 

………

Such requests are typically filed by career prosecutors who worked on the case. Wednesday’s filing was signed by Ms. Dhillon, a political appointee who is a veteran Republican Party activist with close ties to President Trump, and one of her deputies.

Shortly after the department made its request public, the family’s legal team issued a statement describing Ms. Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, as “heartbroken and angry.”

“The family asked for one thing: that Brett Hankison be sentenced in accordance with the law and federal guidelines,” the lawyers wrote, adding: “Recommending just one day in prison sends the unmistakable message that white officers can violate the civil rights of Black Americans with near-total impunity.” 

This is a feature, not a bug, and the reason why the assistant AG for civil rights made this filing is likely because the Trump minions did not trust them to do the wrong thing.

When (If?) this is all over, we need to make sure that everyone involved sees the inside of a courtroom.

Hopefully they also see the inside of a jail for a very, very long time.. 

Bad Day at the Office

A pilot landing at the Minot Internal Airport in Minot, North Dakota, had to engage in violent maneuvers to avoid being struck by a B-52 Stratofortress.

Thankfully, beyond some shaken up passengers and crew, there was no harm done:

SkyWest Airlines says it’s investigating a near collision between one of its E175s with an Air Force B-52 that prompted one of the regional jet’s pilots to take “aggressive” evasive action at Minot Airport in North Dakota. The E175, flying for Delta Connection, was on final on a flight from Minneapolis Friday evening when pilots saw they were on a converging course with the giant nuclear bomber. “I don’t know how fast they were going but they were going a lot faster than us. I felt it was the safest thing to turn behind them,” he told passengers after the encounter. “Sorry for the aggressive maneuver. It caught me by surprise. It was not normal at all.” The pilot said he doesn’t know why he wasn’t given a “heads up” that the massive Air Force plane was in the pattern. There are dozens of B-52s based at nearby Minot Air Force Base, about 13 miles north of the civilian airport. The pilot got on the PA system after they were on the ground to explain the abrupt turn to the passengers.

I would note that there is an Amtrak station in Minot. 

I Will F%$#ing Pay for the Moving Van

Andrew "Rat Faced Andy" Cuomo has announced that he will move to Florida if Zohran Mamdani wins the Mayoral election.

Good riddance.

Also, and I cannot f%$#ing believe that I am f%$#ing saying this, but props to Eric Adams for this bit of shade:

Adams – who told The Post earlier this week he’d never leave New York even if it’s run by a socialist – said Saturday if Cuomo “is serious about moving to Florida, he should go ahead – he’s already spent three [recent] weekends in the Hamptons.”

The Cuomo campaign later said that it was a joke, and it might very well have been, but calling out the fact that Cuomo hates New York City is good move by Adams.

As an FYI, the general election is first past the post, as opposed to the primary, which is ranked choice voting, which is why you see all the concerns about vote-splitting in the general.

It Was as True as Turnips Is. It Was as True as Taxes Is. And Nothing’s Truer than Them.

Having acquired my first set of cats as an adult after finding one under the hood of my car, after driving 2 miles, (!) I agree.

I also had a cat fall on me through a suspended ceiling.  She was feral, and peed on me and jumped out of my arms. 

19 July 2025

Gee, You Think?

Gee, who could have known that among the wretched hive of scum and villainy that is the trump administration, at least one of them would be making a profit on inside information about Commander TACO's flip flops.

Of course they are: 

………

Front-running is a trading term. It means using fore-knowledge of an impending trade or price move to engage in a personal or proprietary securities transaction in advance of that trade or move. If you know in advance that a price will move sharply, either up or down, front-running means trading in advance of that move, then getting out after the move is complete.

You can make a lot of money if you know what the market will do. Using advance, non-public knowledge of a market-moving transaction or announcement is usually illegal (unless you’re a member of Congress; I mean that literally). 

With that in mind, note this:

Nothing to see here.  Move along.

People Are Flipping Out over This

The Wall Street Journal has a story describing an album of birthday cards given to Jeffrey Epstein which included a card from Trump.

It's clearly newsworthy, it shows that Trump and Epstein were friends, but the fury from the White House over this seems to be a bit excessive.

Part of this is no doubt due to the approbation coming from the MAGAt community over this, I guess.

That being said Epstein and Trump were BFFs for over a decade, and that is a basic fact.

Of course, the card itself, is profoundly disturbing, and it appears to be tacitly acknowledging Epstein's child raping proclivities, which might explain some of the furor over all of this.

It was Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, and Ghislaine Maxwell was preparing a special gift to mark the occasion. She turned to Epstein’s family and friends. One of them was Donald Trump.

Maxwell collected letters from Trump and dozens of Epstein’s other associates for a 2003 birthday album, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Pages from the leather-bound album—assembled before Epstein was first arrested in 2006—are among the documents examined by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein and Maxwell years ago, according to people who have reviewed the pages. It’s unclear if any of the pages are part of the Trump administration’s recent review.

………

The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.

Stay classy, Donny. 

………

Allegations that Epstein had been sexually abusing girls became public in 2006 and he was arrested that year. Epstein died in 2019 in jail after he was arrested a second time and charged with sex trafficking conspiracy.

………

Among those who submitted letters were billionaire Leslie Wexner and attorney Alan Dershowitz. The album also contained a letter from a now-deceased Harvard economist, one of Epstein’s report cards from Mark Twain junior high school in Brooklyn and a note from a former assistant that included an acrostic with Epstein’s name: “Jeffrey, oh Jeffrey!/ Everyone loves you!/ Fun in the sun!/ Fun just for fun!/ Remember…don’t forget me soon!/ Epstein…you rock!/ You are the best!”

Gee, no signs of elite corruption here. 


………

It isn’t clear how the letter with Trump’s signature was prepared. Inside the outline of the naked woman was a typewritten note styled as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein, written in the third person.

“Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything,” the note began.

Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.

Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.

Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.

Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?

Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.

Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.

Oh, yeah, there is nothing creepy at all about this letter,

When Tim Walz called Trump and his Evil Minions™ weird, he did not know the half of it.

 

Profoundly Weird

The initial Air India flight 171 probe is pointing to the engine fuel cutoff switches being thrown seconds after takeoff.

This raises a lot of questions.

As you can see, the switches are guarded on either side, and they are heavy switches requiring a fair amount of force to use.

This (very) strongly implies that this happened as a direct result of a deliberate action by either the pilot of the first officer.

The (very) preliminary is also (very) incomplete, further muddying the waters:

Guided by an opaque process that produced a preliminary report lacking basic details common to any competent accident investigation update, industry’s response to the June 12 crash of an Air India Boeing 787 is leaning heavily on precautions and reading the tea leaves of those with knowledge of the probe.

A preliminary report on Air India Flight 171 (AI 171), prepared by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) and released early July 12, confirms a few key facts about the accident sequence. The most critical: Both of the 787’s engine fuel control switches “transitioned” from RUN to CUTOFF within about 1 sec. of each other, just after the aircraft rotated, investigators say. This immediately cut fuel to each GE Aerospace GEnx-1B engine.

But the report does not shed light on why or how the switches moved. The only conversation referenced in the report between the two pilots at the controls adds confusion where clarity is needed.

“In the cockpit voice recording [CVR], one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cut off,” the report states. “The other pilot responded that he did not do so.”

The switches, located in the throttle control module between the pilots, are designed to prevent accidental movement. They have fixed metal guards on either side and must be pulled out and then down over a gate before they can be toggled to stop fuel flow. The only reasons to touch them are for starting or stopping engines or troubleshooting an emergency.

There is no reason to move them 3 sec. after liftoff, as happened on AI 171, data gleaned from the aircraft’s enhanced airborne flight recorders (EAFR) shows.

………

Movement of the fuel cutoff switch in flight triggers the 787’s engine-indicating and crew-alerting system, which spotlights possible issues for pilots. The report does not reference this or any other flight deck alerts, cautions or warnings generated from engine startup to the last moments recorded on the EAFR—a span of about 22 min.

The report details no other information from the CVR—including discussions that would point to a potential technical fault, cockpit confusion or distraction or anything else that could shed light on the accident sequence.

………

Although the AAIB report does not discuss 787 system characteristics that could explain uncommanded or unintentional switch movement, it does note that inspections recommended in a December 2018 FAA special airworthiness information bulletin (SAIB) on a safety mechanism built into the switches were not done on the accident aircraft, VT-ANB. The SAIB revealed reports of installation problems with some 737 switches and recommended that operators inspect them and similarly designed switches on other Boeing models, including 787s. 

 I think that this is going to get a lot weirder before we see any clarity.

Funny, Innit?

On Tuesday, Stephen Colbert calls the CBS $16 million "settlement" with Donald Trump a, "Big fat bribe," in order to get approval for their (Paramont's) merger with Larry Ellison's kids, and on Thursday, CBS canceled the show, effective in 10 months.

CBS says that it's just about money, and they cannot make money on late night any more. 

For a decade the comedian Stephen Colbert has mocked, ridiculed and eviscerated Donald Trump from every conceivable angle. On Thursday Colbert told his audience at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York that his popular late night TV show is being cancelled. “Yeah, I share your feelings,” he said in response to a chorus of boos.

The CBS network insisted that it had made “a purely financial decision” to wind up The Late Show next year. But others are not so sure. Adam Schiff, a Democratic senator who was a guest on Thursday’s show, tweeted: “If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better.”

There are reasonable grounds for suspicion. Earlier this month CBS’s owner, Paramount Global, reached a $16m settlement with Trump over an interview on its current affairs strand 60 Minutes, removing a potential obstacle to the company’s $8bn sale to the Hollywood studio Skydance Media.

If the mega-merger goes ahead, a friend and ally of the US president, the billionaire Larry Ellison, could wield huge influence over the CBS news division as well as programmes ranging from South Park to Star Trek. The Late Show is sure to be seen by some as an example of obeying in advance.

Sure, Jan.

A tyrants cannot abide being made fun of, and CBS is busy, "Obeying in advance.:

18 July 2025

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We have the weekly unemployment report out, and initial claims fell by 7,000 to 221,000 and continuing claims rose by 2,000 to 1.956 million.

So, people are not firing much, and people are not hiring much, and I'm sitting here looking for a damn job. 

All I can say is that whatever the economy is doing now, MY economy sucks right now. 

17 July 2025

Headline of the Day

Billionaires Convince Themselves AI Chatbots Are Close to Making New Scientific Discoveries
Gizmodo, on Travis Kalanic claiming that LLM generatuive AI will be making massive scientific discoveries any day now.

This should not be a surprise, coming from a guy whose skill is political lobbying, raising venture capital money, and breaking the law.

I don't know if the Silly-Con Valley billionaires started off this stupid, of if they have destroyed brain cells from sniffing their own farts once they got rich, but they are morons. 

Generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok have exploded in popularity as AI becomes mainstream. These tools don’t have the ability to make new scientific discoveries on their own, but billionaires are convinced that AI is on the cusp of doing just that. And the latest episode of the All-In podcast helps explain why these guys think AI is extremely close to revolutionizing scientific knowledge.

Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber who no longer works at the company, appeared on All-In to talk with hosts Jason Calacanis and Chamath Palihapitiya about the future of technology. When the topic turned to AI, Kalanick discussed how he uses xAI’s Grok, which went haywire last week, praising Adolf Hitler and advocating for a second Holocaust against Jews.

There's more in the article, but the fact that the leech who created Uber thinks that it's hunky-dory to use an overgrown Eliza program that has gone full Nazi as the way to enlightenment, something has gone profoundly wrong with him.

Shut Up Nancy

In response to the furor over Trump and the Epstein files, Nancy Pelosi has called the whole thing a distraction.

If you are so concerned about being seen as the adult in the room that you are using Donald Trump's framing, you are neither an adult nor in the room:

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn’t have much in common with Donald Trump, but they can agree on a few things. Like the president, the California Democrat wishes the Jeffrey Epstein controversy would hurry up and go away.

In an interview with MSNBC on Thursday, Pelosi dismissed the buzz around the late sex trafficker as a “distraction.”

The Department of Justice’s refusal to release case files or a long-promised “client list” related to Epstein has torn MAGA apart in recent days. When asked about her take, Pelosi said there are more important things for lawmakers to worry about.

“I’ll leave it up to them to talk it out. But again, whether it’s Jeffrey Epstein or Alcatraz, it’s all off the subject of what they’re doing with this budget that is harmful to the kitchen table, meeting the kitchen-table needs of the American people,” Pelosi said.

After all of that talk about Biden's mental acuity, I'm thinking that we should have been worrying about Pelosi.

She is so far past her sell-by date that it's not funny. 

Bummer of a Birthmark, Eric

Soon to be former New York Mayor Eric Adams has had public financing for his campaign denied because he failed to meet reporting requirements.

What, you mean that the guy who was indicted for taking and then covering up illegal campaign contributions is being held accountable for this crap?

Yippee:

A federal judge Friday upheld a decision to deny Mayor Eric Adams roughly $3.4 million in public money for his 2025 re-election campaign.

New York City's publicly funded campaign finance program offers candidates an eight-to-one match of tax dollars for every dollar raised by small local donors. But the system requires extensive disclosures to make sure candidates are following the law.

………

A federal judge in the Eastern District of New York said the indictment wasn’t the only issue holding up the money.

“The CFB provided two independent valid reasons for its decision to deny the Adams Campaign public matching funds,” U.S. District Court Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis wrote in a 61-page ruling, citing the mayor’s “failure to timely respond to the CFB's request for information” as well as a blown deadline to file a conflict of interest disclosure to the city.

Mess with the bull, you get the horns. 

Things I F%$#ing Hate

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

That is all.

Posted via mobile 

16 July 2025

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. 

15 July 2025

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." 

14 July 2025

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.

 

13 July 2025

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?

12 July 2025

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. 

11 July 2025

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. 

Headline of the Day

Neither Neurodivergence Nor Mental Illness Made Them Bigots—They're Just Awful People

The Big Picture (The non financial one) on how people like Elon Musk using their alleged status to excuse bigotry.

It should be noted here that Elon Musk has never released a formal diagnosis from a medical professional, he's just declared himself that he is on the spectrum.

Also, giving Nazi salutes, or as author Amelia Mavis Christnot so pithily observes, people with neurological differences don't have to be racists, and if they are, it's because they are racist.

The differently abled can be as good or as evil as they choose. 

I've been autistic my entire life, but I wasn't diagnosed until I was 40. I've written before about how my autism manifests.

In retrospect, my autism spectrum disorder (ASD) seems obvious, but in the early days of ASD awareness, the disorder was largely considered exclusive to boys.

………

There were a lot of meltdowns and panic attacks—which for me usually manifested as hysterical crying, heart palpitations, and catatonia.

Still, at one point in my early 30s, I volunteered to establish a customer service phone line and email process for the Department of Defense agency I worked for. It took a lot of pharmaceutical intervention—Ativan—and a great therapist to clear that hurdle.

Do you know one thing I never did to cope or in response to my autism?

Repeatedly fire off a Nazi Roman salute.

(emphasis original)

'Nuff said. 

10 July 2025

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:

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

09 July 2025

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.

08 July 2025

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.

06 July 2025

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.

05 July 2025

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.