Ban Prediction Markets The subhed says it all, "They don’t produce knowledge, they can’t prevent insider trading, and they turn politics, war, and death into a cash-out."
Manhattan prosecutors declined to pursue an assault charge against Gusmane Coulibaly on Thursday night, instead charging him with misdemeanor obstructing government administration and a harassment violation in connection with the viral Washington Square Park snowball fight.
………
In court, prosecutors said that after reviewing the evidence, they were unable to prove that an officer suffered a physical injury caused directly by Coulibaly’s conduct and therefore did not pursue an assault charge. They said the investigation remains ongoing.
About a dozen uniformed officers sat in the courtroom along with union leadership, including Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry.
And the cops proceeded to whine about this, like the entitled babies that they are.
It's just a snowball fight, and if the boys in blue had not attempted to engage in dick swinging, nothing would have happened.
In the wake of the public killings of multiple US citizens, protestors, and legal observers in recent weeks by immigration agents in Minneapolis, January 26, 2025 marked a watershed moment for r/FuckingFascists: they will no longer allow content or roleplay featuring ICE.
The Reddit community r/FuckingFascists is for people with a kink for roleplaying sex with fascists. The subreddit’s description explicitly states that the sub is “about making porn or making fun of authoritarians. REAL FASCISTS, SEXISTS, HOMOPHOBES, TRANSPHOBES AND OTHER BIGOTS ARE NOT WELCOME HERE!,” and “Rule 1: No Fascists”.
On Monday morning, moderator LilyDHM announced a complete ban of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) content in the sub. “No ICE related content will be allowed in kink posts,” the post reads. “We believe that this is the best option to allow people to still post MAGA content without touching this particular aspect of it, as it directly involves current politics and multiple lost lives.”
The Best Time to Leave xAI Is Before Joining. The Next Best Time is Right
Now
—
Gizmodo, commenting on the rapid exit of many of the senior staff at Elon Musk's child porn generator artificial intelligence company.
Having a drug-addled, paranoid, and profoundly stupid boss must suck.
Earlier this week, Elon Musk’s AI firm xAI lost cofounder Tony Wu. A day later, Jimmy Ba joined him in adding ex-xAI to his LinkedIn bio. Ba was the sixth member of the company’s 12-person founding team to ditch the firm, leaving just half of the original crew still on board. They were followed by at least five staffers, according to a report from The Verge, who decided their time was better spent elsewhere. And while few of them had anything negative to say publicly as they collectively headed for the door, it’s all a bit odd, right?
My guess is that they looked at what was going, what with the non-consensual pr0n generation and all, and realized that while the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ is too rich to jail, they aren't.
I'm surprised that the "Gray Lady" was willing to publish an opinion that
explains how Wall Street has become a parasitic force in society.
About the only paper less likely to publish this would be the Wall Street Journal.
The author, Oren Cass, one of the authors of the Heritage Foundation's
notorious Project 2025, is not a particularly likely author either.
It’s bonus season on Wall Street, and a record-setting 2025 is yielding bigger paychecks than ever for America’s investment bankers, thanks to their hard work doing, well, what exactly? Answering that question is surprisingly difficult and helps to explain many of the nation’s most serious economic and social problems. It all starts, like so many of life’s puzzles, with Mary Poppins.
If you’ve taken an economics course — or if you at least enjoy classic family movies — you probably remember the scene: Young Jane and Michael Banks have come to visit the bank where their father works. When the bank’s chairman, Mr. Dawes Sr., snatches Michael’s tuppence, the boy shouts: “Give it back! Gimme back my money!” Overhearing the kerfuffle, a customer assumes the institution is refusing to return a customer’s deposit. Next thing you know, the bank run is on.
………
Since Mary Poppins’s day, the financial sector as a whole — investment banks, hedge funds, private equity firms, cryptocurrency platforms and all the rest of it — has exploded as a share of the United States’ gross domestic product. It now claims the highest share of corporate profits and attracts the highest share of top talent from topschools, in part by offering the highest compensation. But actual business investment has declined, to an average of 2.9 percent of G.D.P. over the past decade from 5.2 percent in the 1960s, when the film was released.
Unlike Dawes’s Fidelity Fiduciary Bank, a modern investment bank mostly earns its money in a way that not even the bravest lyricist would set to music: providing advisory services, executing complex financial engineering schemes, trading stocks and bonds, managing other people’s money, issuing credit cards and so on. Assets get bought and sold, divided and packaged, and the bank collects fees at each step.
David Solomon, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, could not sing to young Michael about the many productive uses to which he might put the tuppence because Goldman Sachs rarely invests in anything at all. Fostering economic progress appears to be beside the point.
Less than 10 percent of Goldman’s work in 2024, measured by revenue, was helping businesses raise capital. Loans of Goldman’s own funds to operating businesses accounted for less than 2 percent of its assets. At JPMorgan Chase the figures were 4 and 5 percent; at Morgan Stanley, 7 and 2 percent. Even the efforts at helping to raise capital are misleading, because less than a tenth of it goes toward building anything new. The rest funds debt refinancing, balance sheet restructuring and mergers and acquisitions.
………
Even critics of the financial industry tend to focus on the worst outcomes — the “lootings” that lead to bankruptcy, the irresponsible gambles, the outright frauds. But the problem isn’t the edge case; it’s the very premise.
Financialization is a grift, a rarefied form of bookmaking, of no net value to workers and consumers, the economy, or society as a whole. Let’s treat it accordingly. Economists and the news media can stop using the word “invest” in contexts where no investing occurs. “Speculate” or “bet” will do just fine.
The term is not, "Grift," the term (coined by John Kenneth Galbraith) is, "Bezzle," the interval between money is embezzled and when the victim realizes that they have been taken.
Even if Summers were a co-conspirator with Epstein on trafficking children,
and there is NO evidence that he was, that would be a small percentage of damage that
he has done as an economist and a political figure.
Former Harvard President Larry Summers will resign from his academic and
faculty appointments at Harvard at the end of the academic year,
relinquishing his University Professorship — Harvard’s highest faculty
distinction — and remaining on leave until that time, a Harvard
spokesperson confirmed to The Crimson.
Summers also resigned Wednesday from his role as co-director of the
Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy
School, a position he has held since 2011, according to the spokesperson.
He will not teach or take on new advisees.
The resignation marks an extraordinary unraveling for Summers, long one
of the most influential figures in American economics. His career spanned
prize-winning research, service as United States Treasury Secretary, and
the presidency of Harvard.
………
Summers’ standing began to collapse after a cache of emails disclosed in
November revealed details of a long-standing personal relationship between
Summers and convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein.
The correspondence revealed that Summers
regularly exchanged
messages with Epstein about women, politics, and Harvard-linked projects
over at least seven years — staying in contact as late as July 2019, the
day before Epstein’s final arrest.
Summers was asking Epstein for dating advice, and how to best seduce one of
his subordinates.
Summers is pond scum. He was pond scum when he shot the breeze with Epstein, and he was pond scum when he covered for another protege, Andrei Shleifer, who was stealing money while he was supervising the privatization of the Russian economy following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Say, "Hi," to Henry Kissenger when you get to hell.
Congressmen Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie are attempting to force a War Powers
Act resolution on what looks to be an all out attack on Iran.
The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party
establishment) is doing their level best to sabotage this effort, because heaven forbid that a member of Congress should go on the record on
the matter of war or peace.
Careerist assholes.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats have been working behind the scenes to
try to prevent a vote on Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie’s Iran war powers
resolution – a measure that would require every member of Congress to go on the
record about a potential U.S. war with Iran.
A top Democratic HFAC
staffer, multiple sources with direct knowledge tell me, deliberately inflated
projections of opposition to the bipartisan measure – warning of 20 to 40
Democratic defections – as part of a broader effort to dampen momentum and
prevent the Iran war powers vote from advancing. Khanna and Massie had initially
planned to force a vote on the resolution this week, but Democratic leadership
is now saying they
expect
the vote to be delayed until next week or even later. The postponement comes as
the Trump administration accelerates preparations for unauthorized military
action, overseeing the largest U.S. military buildup in the region in years.
………
A senior Democratic
congressional staffer told me it’s “pretty clear” Democratic leadership is
working to delay “or potentially sideline” the vote on the Khanna-Massie war
powers resolution. “If you’ve been around the Hill, this is a familiar
playbook.”
………
The internal effort to sabotage momentum for the Iran war
powers resolution reflects a broader strategic calculation among Democratic
elites. As a recent Drop Site
report
detailed, many top Democrats privately believe Iran will ultimately have to be
confronted militarily. But they also understand that openly backing another
regime change war in the Middle East would be politically toxic. Poll after poll
show there is little to no appetite for war with Iran, including lukewarm
support among conservatives. The preferred outcome of many AIPAC-aligned Senate
Democrats, according to a senior foreign policy aide to Senate Democratic Leader
Chuck Schumer, is that Trump acts unilaterally, weakening Iran while absorbing
the domestic backlash ahead of the midterms.
………
Unlike the run-up to the Iraq war, when the Bush
administration orchestrated a sustained campaign to sell the public on invasion,
the Trump administration has made little effort to construct a coherent case for
war with Iran. They aren’t bothering to lie convincingly to the public. And top
Democrats, mainstream media outlets, and liberal commentators have been
conspicuously silent.
………
I asked Schumer’s office last week whether he
supports Trump’s potential strikes, and whether escalation into a broader
regional conflict is a risk he considers acceptable. His office did not respond
to my request for comment. Days later, and only after the Drop Site report was
published, Schumer’s office issued a minimal
statement
in support of congressional war powers.
Heaven forbid that Schumer and the rest of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) make anything like a meaning full statement on this.
It's not like Congress has any role in going to war. (Spoiler, only Congress can declare war)
………
Votes to
invoke the War Powers Resolution are historically rare on Capitol Hill – though
they have increased in frequency in recent years – and party leadership in both
chambers has sought to avoid them. Passed over Nixon’s veto, the War Powers
Resolution of 1973 was designed to guarantee that decisions about war reflect
congressional deliberation and, by extension, the will of the American people
before a president pulls the trigger. Forcing members to take a recorded
position on military action carries political risk and can expose internal
divisions, particularly when the White House is pressing for escalation.
………
Even Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a staunch pro-Israel
Democrat from Florida, has flipped on the issue. She supported Trump’s strikes
on Iran in June but is now publicly against unauthorized war with Iran. “Make
the case to the American people. Make the case to Congress,” Wasserman-Schultz
said in an interview on MSNBC. “We have not seen anything about an imminent
threat that would necessitate a significant strike.”
Even Wasserman-Schultz, the poster child for fecklessness among the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) in Congress is willing state a position.
If a Senator or Representative is unwilling to make a statement on this, they are unfit for office.
Tesla is apparently still insisting its “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” labels are acceptable for the advanced driver assistance systems it offers on its vehicles. The automaker is suing the California DMV to reverse a ruling in December that the automaker had engaged in false advertising and could suspend its license to sell vehicles in the state.
As reported by CNBC, Tesla filed a complaint on Feb. 13 that the DMV ruling “wrongfully and baselessly labels Tesla a false advertiser for marketing its industry-leading advanced driver-assistance systems (‘ADAS’) under the brand names ‘Autopilot” and ‘Full-Self Driving Capability.’”
Maybe it's time to deal with this sort of fraud aggressively, and (all together now) frog-march Elon Musk out of his corporate offices in handcuffs.
OK, it's Tuesday, but I have a fair number of links, and if I didn't do this,
I might watch Trump's State of the Union address, and I would have to do so
sober. **shudder**
On Sunday, I reported
that the FBI interviewed a victim who accused President Donald Trump of
sexually and violently assaulting her when she was 13-15 years old. I
also reported that some of the Justice Department’s case files for this
woman — who later sued and reportedly received a settlement from Jeffrey
Epstein’s estate for sexual abuse allegations in the same timeframe —
appear to be missing from the government’s publicly searchable Epstein
database.
However, I have now found DOJ records showing that the FBI did not just
interview this woman once. The FBI interviewed this woman — who claimed
that Trump forced her to give him oral sex when she was in her early
teens, then punched her in the head after she bit his penis and kicked
her out — at least four times.
But the DOJ’s file associated with those records — a document
cataloguing information that the government provided counsel for
convicted Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell during her trial —
has apparently been removed.
This revelation adds to the mounting pile of evidence undermining
statements from Attorney General Pam Bondi and other senior administration
officials assuring the public that the Epstein file release has been
transparent, complete, and bereft of any evidence implicating Trump in
wrongdoing.
But my initial report also raised questions about files associated with the
victim’s case number — 3501.045 — that do not appear to be in the Epstein
database. In other words, the case seems to be incomplete.
This percentage does not come from the number of documents, it
comes from the total size of the documents, which would imply
that there is a lot of video evidence that has not been released.
The Epstein files are here, thanks to the most transparent
President in US history (he wasn’t forced into publishing them), and
therefore, this saga is over. Well, that’s the line from the Trump
administration.
But it’s not over and nor should it be. The
arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor,
the brother of the King, shows just that. For the victims of Jeffrey Epstein,
there is no closure until there is accountability, justice. Andrew, accused of
misconduct in public office, has always denied any wrongdoing
………
Last year, the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a
memo saying that they had conducted an exhaustive review of all files relating
to Jeffrey Epstein and that they had more than 300 GB of data.
We at The FourSight questioned that.
Since then, Congress forced the DOJ to release all the data. That
has totalled around 300 GB.
………
In emails from June 2020, investigators at the FBI and New York District
Attorney’s Office talk about storage devices with a capacity of up to
50 TBs. Five years later, more emails discuss “approximately 14.6
terabytes of archived data” to process. Lower than in 2020, but still
massive compared to the latest release of files.
In fact, if that’s the amount of data they have on Epstein, but have only released 300 GB, that means just two per cent of the actual Epstein data has been released. Epstein survivors have told Channel 4 News that they believe that the Trump administration has failed to meet their request to release all the files.
We managed to find video from the released documents of Epstein in his Palm Beach office. But we haven’t seen any other surveillance footage from around his New York property - and the 2,500 video and audio files we have uncovered from the files only add up to 60 GB in total. Is there more out there?
In fact, if that’s the amount of data they have on Epstein, but have only released 300 GB, that means just two per cent of the actual Epstein data has been released. Epstein survivors have told Channel 4 News that they believe that the Trump administration has failed to meet their request to release all the files.
We managed to find video from the released documents of Epstein in his Palm Beach office. But we haven’t seen any other surveillance footage from around his New York property - and the 2,500 video and audio files we have uncovered from the files only add up to 60 GB in total. Is there more out there?
The U.S. Press Loves To Pretend Widespread Corruption Doesn't Exist
—Karl Bode, describing how our mainstream media studiously ignores rampant corruption
in the United States
Even before Donald Trump and his minions turned up corruption to 11, the
United States was remarkably corrupt by the standards of "First World"
nations.
I just want you to pause and notice something.
The next time you're
reading a news story about a particular area of U.S. dysfunction – whether
it's gun control, health care, or air travel – notice if the reporter
mentions, at literally any point, if corruption and unchecked corporate power
sits squarely and undeniably at the heart of the problem.
Here's an
example. Earlier this month the New York Times, considered by some to
be the pinnacle of U.S. journalism,
wrote this story
about how the Trump-stocked Supreme Court was preparing to neuter the
authority of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to battle climate
change (spoiler:
they succeeded).
………
But when the article proceeds toward what we're supposed to do
next, you hit this gargantuan turd in the road:
A more definitive way to address the issue would be for Congress to weigh in.
Democrats could pass legislation that defined greenhouse
gases as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act, giving the E.P.A. the
explicit authority to regulate them. Conversely, Republicans could enact
legislation that said the opposite.
But in the half-century since Congress passed the Clean Air Act, it has never
mustered the political will to decide this question. And it seems exceedingly
unlikely to happen at a time when
climate change has become such a polarizing topic.
Why this Congressional gridlock persists is left as an open question for the
reader to puzzle through.
The reason we don't have effective protections for climate change (or
functional gun control, or universal health care, or cheap broadband) is
because the U.S. Congress is often too corrupt to function. Monied
interests have polluted state and federal legislatures to the point they
no longer serve the public interest.
You have to admire one thing about Judge Aileen Cannon down by Florida way. There are sled dogs in the Arctic who don't have this kind of loyalty. From Reuters:
I love Charlie Pierce, but you do not have to admire what she did.
………
You have to go back to the Gilded Age, when the railroads and corporations ran the federal judiciary, to find a federal judge who was as round and complete a hack as Cannon has been in this case. She did everything to stall the proceedings until the unfortunate events of 2024 gave her the opening she needed. That July, she dismissed the documents case on the spurious grounds that Jack Smith's appointment was unconstitutional. An appeals court said that Cannon's handling of the case and her earlier appointment of a special master was "improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction." That is a very polite way of saying, "Get your damn thumb off the scale." By then, the process of burying the report was well underway and, officially, anyway, the last shovel of earth was turned on Monday.
It's time for unofficial solutions. Somebody should leak the daylights of this report. The truth about the Poolshed Papers belongs to all of us.
I think that this is weak tea, but it should go nation wide, if not world wide.
Tesla has complied with an order by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and stopped using the term "Autopilot" in its marketing of electric vehicles, having already modified use of "Full Self-Driving" to clarify that it requires driver supervision.
………
This comes after Tesla was given 60 days from December 16, 2025 to fall in line with the agency's request.
The requirement followed a lengthy case over Tesla's use of the words "Autopilot" and "Full Self-Driving" in relation to its advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), along with the sentence: "The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long-distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver's seat."
………
The Administrative Law Judge proposed suspending Tesla's manufacturing and dealer licenses for 30 days. However, a later review gave Elon Musk's EV outfit 60 days to stop using the terms.
They should have thrown the book at him.
This has been fraud, and it has been fraud for well over a decade.
The question has never been whether law enforcement will misuse technology to
pursue vendettas and the like, it is only how.
Police in Lenexa, Kansas used automated license plate reader (ALPR)
technology to pursue a man who
wrote a critical op-ed
about the police department, according to reporting by Kansas public radio
station KCUR. This is a rare public example of exactly the kind of abuse
that we’ve long warned against when it comes to
mass-surveillance systems
like
license
plate
readers. It also comes on the heels of reports about apparent misuse of license
plate databases by ICE agents in Minnesota not for legitimate law
enforcement purposes but
to intimidate observers and protesters,
and of a woman who was
falsely accused of theft
based on data from license plate readers.
The
op-ed
published by the Kansas man, Canyen Ashworth, was critical of local ICE
operations and the role of Lenexa police in them. The same day that piece
ran, Lenexa police began to investigate Ashworth, according to internal
emails obtained by KCUR. They quickly tied him to an unidentified suspect
the police were looking for who had several days earlier put four posters
up around town showing a picture of an ICE agent and the words “remember
when we killed fascists.” The police alleged that the unidentified “Paper
Hanger” had violated an unspecified city ordinance, and the posters were
removed.
The Paper Hanger’s arguably aggressive message was nonetheless speech
protected by the First Amendment. And while government officials may
regulate constitutionally protected speech through “time, place, and
manner” restrictions, they can't do so selectively based on the content of
the messages. KCUR reports that in Lenexa, “Posters about lost pets and
community events were generally not removed.”
In fact, the town’s mayor later told KCUR that the town had no formal
policy regarding posters on city property.
City and police officials claimed that they were targeting the Paper
Hanger because the glue he used had the potential to damage city property.
On the basis of this great crime, the police began using license plate
readers to track Ashworth’s movements around town, and several weeks after
his op-ed, the police chief emailed patrol officers to announce that “A
suspect has been developed in the case of the City Center Posters” and
announce a “be on the lookout for” (BOLO) alert for Ashworth.
Perhaps most ominously, when issuing the BOLO the chief declared “This is
MYOC,” meaning “make your own case” — which in turn meant essentially,
“there is no arrest warrant for him so look for any reason to stop him”
and, as the deputy police chief at the time put it, “You need to build
your own probable cause, your own reasonable suspicion.”
As my ACLU colleague and head of the Kansas ACLU Micah Kubic put it,
issuing a BOLO on someone for putting up posters is “both a rejection of
the First Amendment, and a really ridiculous misuse of resources.”
Compared to the blatant targeting of people for their speech and/or
political opposition that we’ve been seeing lately from the Trump
Administration, this case may look small. But it was
scary enough for Ashworth. And it's a particularly clear example of the abusive
dynamic that mass-surveillance systems always end up falling into:
Target someone who the authorities dislike but have no evidence has
done anything wrong.
Fire up powerful surveillance technologies that have been sold to the
public as a way to stop serious, dramatic crimes and keep the public
safe.
Use those technologies to watch the disfavored person in the hopes of
drumming up something that they can be charged with, even to the point
of scraping the bottom of the barrel and going after something like
“damaging glue use.”
We’ve seen plenty of this “show me the man, I’ll find you the crime” kind of abuse at the hands of the Trump Administration. But this story
is a reminder that such abuse can rear its head in towns across the nation
— small, medium, or large. And when it does, license plate reading
programs are a natural tool for the authorities to turn to.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Unless and until politicians are willing to fire police officers and try them criminally for this bullsh%$, it will continue.
Imagine that. A voter fraud conspiracist engaging in voter fraud.
A former leader of the pro-Trump group
Turning Point Action was sentenced on Tuesday to two years of probation
and barred from running for office for five years for forging voters’
signatures on his petitions as part of his 2024 bid for re-election to
the Arizona House.
The former state legislator, Austin Smith, pleaded guilty
in November to two criminal counts and admitted that he had submitted
fraudulent signatures to state election officials, including the name of
a woman who had died.
The outcome was
a striking twist for Mr. Smith, 30, a Republican who represented the
Phoenix suburbs for one term and had repeatedly sought to sow doubt
about the Arizona results in the 2020 election, when President Trump
lost his re-election bid.
………
While trying to qualify for the
Republican primary to run for re-election, Mr. Smith was accused in a
court complaint in April 2024 of forging dozens of signatures on his
nominating petitions. The complaint was filed by one of his
constituents, James Ashurst, a Democrat, who said the signatures
resembled Mr. Smith’s handwriting.
Three days after being named in the complaint, Mr. Smith resigned
from his post as a senior director for Turning Point Action, the
political arm of Turning Point USA, the grass-roots group founded by
Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist who was assassinated last
September. Mr. Smith also abandoned his bid for re-election, but denied
any wrongdoing at the time.
Probation and a fine is all he got. It's not enough.
I think that this will be a strategy used by Donald Trump's defense team when
(if) he ends up in the dock.
Jury selection kicked off Thursday in San Francisco federal court in a
trial centered on Elon Musk’s $44 billion buyout of Twitter in 2022.
Musk is set to stand trial in early March in a class action brought by
Twitter investors who claim Musk manipulated Twitter stock leading up to
his multibillion-dollar purchase of the social media platform.
Investors, including lead plaintiffs Steve Garrett, Nancy Price, John
Garrett and Brian Belgrave, sued Musk in October 2022 over claims they
suffered major losses when Musk deliberately made misleading statements
about the presence of spam bot accounts on Twitter to drive down the
company’s stock, in hopes of backing out of the acquisition deal or
renegotiating more favorably for himself.
The investors claim that Musk attempted to artificially lower Twitter’s
stock price after agreeing to acquire the platform, while also failing to
disclose when his Twitter stake exceeded 5% or that he had initially been
invited to join Twitter’s board.
………
More than a third of the initial jury pool indicated they could not serve
impartially and were dismissed by the judge. Others were questioned by the
parties about the answers they provided to the court, indicating a
strongly held negative opinion of Musk.
Stephen Broome of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, an attorney for
Musk, raised concerns with Breyer following jury screening that the court
was “desensitized” to how improper it would be to seat jurors who
expressed extreme dislike for the defendant. He claimed that if Musk was
any other defendant, a juror who said “I hate that guy and he has no moral
compass” would be dismissed.
Breyer pushed back, saying that the case was not like any other because
Musk is a well-known public figure akin to a United States president, and
jurors are allowed to have personal views on public figures.
The judges is right. It is ordinary when people of good will look at Elon Musk, and say, o quote the Dead Kennedys:
If Donald Trump’s administration really wants to find evidence of foreign interference in Georgia’s elections, then they need look no further than the president’s old friend Elon Musk and his shady super PAC.
Members of the Georgia State Elections Board voted Wednesday to issue a formal letter of reprimand to Musk’s America PAC over the billionaire technocrat’s illegal scheme to get Trump elected. Georgia, a key battleground state in 2024, was the target of aggressive campaigning by Trump’s team.
In October 2024, the Georgia secretary of state’s office launched an investigation after receiving numerous reports from residents across several counties saying they’d received partially prefilled absentee ballot applications from Musk’s America PAC, according to John Fervier, the State Elections Board’s chairman.
There was evidence to suggest America PAC had violated a state law that prohibits any person or entity, other than an authorized relative, to send an elector an absentee ballot application prefilled with the elector’s required information, according to Janice Johnston, the SEB’s vice chairman.
America PAC had also failed to display in a conspicuous location that this was not an official government publication, was not provided by the government, and was not a ballot, Johnston added.
Jail, bitch.
Even better than El Paso, we could put him in Epstein's old cell in MDC New York, where he could party like Jeffrey, like he always wanted to.
Senator Mitch McConnell appears to be stalling the voting bill backed by President Trump, and fellow Republicans are not happy.
McConnell, who leads the Senate Rules Committee, is refusing to schedule a vote on the legislation, thus preventing it from moving forward. The bill would create barriers for voting, requiring specific forms of ID in order for Americans to exercise their constitutional right.
………
Last year, McConnell wrote in The Wall Street Journal that such a bill would give a future Democratic president and Congress the ability to “use more sweeping mandates to carry out a complete federal takeover of American elections.”
“The current administration has better ways to spend its time than laying the groundwork for a leftwing election takeover,” McConnell wrote.
Well, I never thought that McConnel was stupid, I just thought that he was evil.
Today, it was Blue Owl Capital, who just made it significantly more difficult for their clients to withdrawing funds from their accounts.
This will not end well.
Shares of Blue Owl Capital, the giant private lender, plunged on Thursday after the company announced that it was changing how investors can get their money out from one of its funds, raising fresh concerns about potential problems lurking in the private credit industry.
Blue Owl said investors would not be able to ask for a set amount of money back every quarter. Going forward, the firm will decide how much it will pay out quarterly.
On a conference call with investors, Blue Owl executives sought to portray the changes favorably, but the announcement had the opposite effect as some investors worried that the moves could lead to obstacles to redemptions.
The company’s stock ended Thursday down 6 percent, after falling as much 10 percent earlier in the day. Other companies with exposure to private credit, including Ares, Apollo and Blackstone, fell more than 5 percent.
This is what companies do when they realize that they living on borrowed time.
Mohamed El-Erian, a Wall Street veteran and former chief executive of PIMCO, wrote on social media that Blue Owl’s change in redemption terms reminded him of the beginnings of the financial crisis when banks sought to contain the damage from the souring mortgage loans on their books.
“Is this a ‘canary-in-the-coalmine’ moment, similar to August 2007?” Mr. El-Erian wrote.
In just a few years, private credit has extended trillions of dollars in loans to business, and Blue Owl, which was founded in 2016, has amassed nearly $300 billion in investor money. But the industry exists outside the traditional, highly regulated banking system, and investors can see only a limited amount of information about private credit borrowers and the terms of their loans.
All of this is going on as the Trump administration is going hell bent for leather to roll back even the meager reforms instituted after the 2008 financial crisis.
The refers, of course, to the (non) evidence that the FBI provided to the
judge to get a search warrant to seize voting records in Fulton county
Georgia.
Will anyone go to jail over this? Probably not.
Should anyone go to jail over this? Certainly.
Earlier this month, the FBI decided it was going to help Donald Trump
steal back the election
he’s claimed for half-a-decade was stolen from him. The state whose Secretary
of State was asked directly by the outgoing president in January 2021 to “find 11,780 votes” was raided by Trump 2.0, who still somehow thinks he can win the election
he lost back in 2020.
It’s not just revenge Trump is seeking. He’s also hoping to find
anything that will allow him to cast doubt on midterm election
results now that it seems entirely possible the GOP might lose its majority in
the legislature.
The FBI walked off with tons of stuff after its raid of the Fulton County
election hub in Georgia. The raid — which was attended by the current DNI
Tulsi Gabbard for no apparent reason — saw the Trump government seize as many
2020 ballots and voter records as possible. The stated reason for this raid
was to collect evidence related to two alleged crimes: not retaining election
records long enough and attempts to “intimidate voters or procure false
votes/false voter registration.”
One of several glaring problems with this raid is the fact that some of the
criminal acts alleged have already surpassed the five-year statute of
limitations. The rest of the glaring problems are far less subtle. Like Trump
using the FBI and DOJ to engage in vindictive prosecution. And the FBI
appearing to have deliberately mislead the magistrate judge to get this search
warrant approved.
This
declaration
[PDF] by Ryan Macias, a project manager for the voting system used in Fulton
County who also served as the Acting Director of the Voting System Program
during the 2020 election, points out multiple flaws in the FBI’s warrant
affidavit — all of which it would be safe to assume were deliberate “errors.”
Trump and his minions are a clear and present danger to the United States of America.
A South Korean court has sentenced the former president Yoon Suk Yeol to life imprisonment with labour over his failed martial law declaration in December 2024, finding him guilty of leading an insurrection and making him the first elected head of state in the country’s democratic era to receive the maximum custodial sentence.
The Seoul central district court found that Yoon’s declaration of martial law on 3 December 2024 constituted insurrection, carried out with the intent to disrupt the constitutional order.
Judge Jee Kui-youn said the purpose was “to send troops to the national assembly to blockade the assembly hall and arrest key figures, including the assembly speaker and party leaders, thereby preventing lawmakers from gathering to deliberate or vote”.
In sentencing Yoon on Thursday, the court pointed to his lack of apology throughout the proceedings, his unjustified refusal to attend hearings, and the massive social costs his actions inflicted on South Korean society.
………
In a historical digression, the judge traced the history of insurrection law and cited the 1649 execution of England’s Charles I, who led troops into parliament, to establish that even heads of state can commit insurrection by attacking the legislature.
………
Under South Korean law, the charge of leading an insurrection carries three possible penalties: death, life imprisonment with labour, or life imprisonment without labour.
Prosecutors had sought the death penalty, arguing that Yoon committed “a grave destruction of constitutional order” by mobilising troops to surround parliament and attempting to arrest political opponents during the six-hour crisis.
Not a fan of the death penalty, but I do approve that he got hard labor.
The number is even worse when you realize that a huge portion of economic activity are AI fraudsters setting money on fire.
The U.S. economy slowed sharply at the end of 2025 to cap a volatile year in which consumer spending and an A.I. investment boom helped keep growth on track despite tariffs, uncertainty and the longest government shutdown in history.
Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, grew at a 1.4 percent annual rate in the final three months of the year, the Commerce Department said on Friday. That was down from a 4.4 percent rate in the third quarter, partly because of the prolonged shutdown.
It was a fittingly messy end to a year in which the economy proved more resilient than many forecasters feared, but fell far short of the revival that President Trump promised on the campaign trail.
Inflation, which Mr. Trump promised to end “on day one,” picked up in 2025. The trade deficit in goods, which Mr. Trump promised to shrink, hit a record high. The manufacturing sector, which Mr. Trump promised to restore, shed jobs.
Trump is saying that he will be using alternate laws to continue this, but given the Supreme Court ruling, it is likely that federal courts will enjoin this, and the Supreme Court is far less likely use the shadow docket to allow those policies to continue until a full court decision is made.
Any further efforts by the Trump administration to do this is likely to run afoul of the , "Bull Durham Rule," which states that the quickest way to get thrown out of a game is to call the umpire a c%$#-sucker.
The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that President Trump exceeded his authority when he imposed sweeping tariffs on imports fromnearly every U.S. trading partner, a major setback for his administration’s second-term agenda.
The court’s 6-3 decision
has significant implications for the U.S. economy, consumers and the
president’s trade policy. The Trump administration had said that a loss
at the Supreme Court could force the government to unwind trade deals
with other countries and potentially pay hefty refunds to importers.
The three dissenters, Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh, had to bend themselves into knots to ignore Congress' plenary powers over taxation, but that is the norm for those corrupt bastards.
Mr. Trump is the first president to claim that a 1970s emergency statute, which does not mention the word “tariffs,” allowed him to unilaterally impose the duties without congressional approval.
He is the first, because his legal justification is complete bullsh%$.
………
The decision on Friday left uncertain the extent to which those who paid tariffs might be able to obtain refunds, with Justice Kavanaugh warning that any refund process could be a substantial “mess.”
The United States “may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid” the tariffs, he wrote, “even though some importers may have already passed on costs to consumers or others.”
That is an issue that falls firmly in the category of, "Not the Supreme Court's problem."
It will be interesting to see what cockamamie legal argument the Trump administration will put out next.
*Not my bon mot. DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS came up with it.
Osaka has received a hefty gift of gold bars worth 560m yen (£2.7m) from an anonymous donor and a request for its specific use: to fix the Japanese city’s dilapidated water pipes.
The gold bars, weighing a total of 21kg (46lb), were given to the Osaka City Waterworks Bureau in November by the donor who wants to help improve ageing water pipes, the mayor, Hideyuki Yokoyama, told reporters on Thursday.
“It’s a staggering amount and I was speechless,” Yokoyama said. “Tackling ageing water pipes requires a huge investment, and I cannot thank enough for the donation.”
The mayor said the city –Japan’s third largest, with 2.8 million people – would respect the donor’s wishes and use the gift to improve waterworks projects.
Most of Japan’s main public infrastructure was built during the rapid postwar economic growth, but urban development in Osaka, a regional commercial hub, started earlier than many and its water pipes and other infrastructure are ageing earlier, the city’s waterworks official, Eiji Kotani, said.
Osaka needed to renew 160 miles (260km) of water pipes, he said. Renewing a 1.2 mile segment would cost about 500m yen, Kotani said.
If I had to venture a guess, I would think that this might be someone from the Yakusa, as making such a donation in gold does seem to imply that some sort of money laundering was involved, and doing this is very much a Yakusa sort of thing.
Luckily, the audience member was struck by the grip, and not the blade, and she left the theater after some minor treatment.
I'm wondering if other bad stuff has been going on in this production? Sometimes productions just have bad mojo.
Sometimes a front-row seat can be a little too close to the action.
On
Thursday evening, during the final scene of a performance of “Richard
III” at the Schaubühne theater in Berlin, a sword slipped out the cursed
king’s hand and struck an audience member in the head.
Luckily
for the woman it hit, she was whacked by the sword’s grip, not its
blade. Although she sustained a light injury, she walked out of the
theater after being treated on site.
The
accident occurred when the actor playing the title role, Lars Eidinger,
was battling his demons during the production’s sweaty, physical
conclusion.
………
According to the Berlin Zeitung, a daily, which was the first to report on the accident, Eidinger immediately interrupted the performance, apologized to the woman and then asked for the house lights to be turned on.
The theater’s doctor treated the woman, and no ambulance was needed, according to Johanna Lühr, a spokeswoman for the theater. She added that Eidinger had a phone call with the woman on Friday to make sure she was on the mend.
Lühr said that the scene had been designed with a stunt coordinator and was practiced regularly. Despite the slip-up, the theater plans to continue with its regular schedule of shows, she said.
Initial claims fell sharply, but continuing claims continue to rise.
I find the latter number more significant than the latter.
Applications for US unemployment benefits fell by the most since November, adding to evidence of stabilization in the labor market.
Initial claims decreased by 23,000 to 206,000 in the week ended Feb. 14, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. That was lower than all but one estimate in a Bloomberg survey.
In the past year, new applications have fallen below the 210,000 mark only a handful of times. That level of weekly filings is a sign that layoffs widely remain low. The data also suggest that people who were temporarily unable to work due to a severe winter storm that spanned the country in late January have returned to their jobs.
However, continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, rose to 1.87 million in the previous week, the highest since early January.
………
Separate data out Thursday showed the US trade deficit widened in December, capping a year marked by erratic tariff policy.
I think that we are already in a recession, and that it will get much worse, but what the hell do I know.
I think that this is significant enough for me to comment on this.
King Charles has insisted “the law must take its course” after detectives took the unprecedented step of arresting his brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
Police took him to Aylsham police station in Norfolk on Thursday morning for questioning about allegations he shared confidential material with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In the evening he was pictured in the back of a car being driven away from the police station shortly after 7pm.
Thames Valley police said he was released under investigation, and searches at a property in Norfolk, Andrew’s home on the Sandringham estate, had concluded. Searches at the Royal Lodge in Windsor, Berkshire, his former address, were continuing.
On an extraordinary day that could have profound effects for the royal family, unmarked police cars and plainclothes officers from the Thames Valley force were seen at Mountbatten-Windsor’s residence at Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate at about 8am. They searched the Norfolk property as well as his former home in the Royal Lodge in Great Windsor Park.
Hours later Charles gave his unqualified backing to the police investigation into his brother, who was arrested on his 66th birthday. The king said the “law must take its course”.
One of the things that people have missed about the whole Epstein affair is that even if one does not consider his child sex trafficking, (Apart from that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?) Epstein was a crook, who hung out with crooks, all of whom saw their wealth as a shield against accountability.
Sometimes, microphones capture something that they shouldn't.
When pedophile co-conspirator Les Wexner was testifying before Congress about Jeffrey Epstein.
His lawyer, who had clearly wanted Wexner to keep it short and sweet in his testimony, was less than pleased with his performance, and when his client became excessively loquacious he had (whispered) words with his client.
BTW, except for speaking a bit loudly, I think that Wexner's attorney, Michael Levy, did a pretty good job there.
I am referring, of course to Washington State Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. (Ecch/Twitter link here, the comments are ……… interesting.)
To be fair Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez, in addition to being a psychopath, she is also a f%$#ing moron.
Even a cursory study of of the state of the salmon fisheries in the Pacific Northwest show where the problems are, agricultural runoff, real estate development driven pollution, pollution and genetic contamination from aquaculture in Puget Sound, hydro-power, and (of course) over-fishing.
For Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, all that matters is that power companies, big agriculture, real estate developers, and other polluters can write a campaign donation check, and sea lions cannot.
So, the FCC Chairman sent a threat to CBS regarding Stephen Colbert's interview with US Senate candidate James Talarico, saying that he might change the rules to on interview shows to require equal time.
Stephen Colbert should call the bluff, and announce an invitation for the Republican candidate, Ted Cruz, to appear on his show.
It's a win-win for the late night host: Ted Cruz refuses, and Colbert gets to taunt him until May, or Ted Cruz accepts, and then Stephen Colbert gets to fillet him like an overfed catfish.
I would pay good money to see Colbert taking down Cruz.
We got about 8 inches of snow in late January, and it was followed immediately some freezing rain, so we had about 3 inches of frozen snow atop about 5 inches of powdery snow.
It would have been perfect snow for an igloo.
I could have cut blocks of ice out with a knife, and used the powder as a mortar and insulation.
I wish that I had thought of this earlier.
I have been in an igloo, when I was 6 in Anchorage at some sort of a winter fair. I recall it being much warmer than the outside. (I also saw the start of a sled dog race that was not the Iditarod, and went on my first roller coaster.)
I do not expect to see a similar sort of snow in the next few years.
Let me be clear, this is not because it is too emotionally painful for me, I have watched various videos with no small amount of amusement.
This is because this sh%$ is so meshugana that I lack the communication skills to address this.
Coming from a people who have as many words for crazy as almost any other people, (meshugana, furshlugginer, verklempt, farmisht, farblunjet, etc.) this is a rather telling admission.
A marvelous and elegant actor who could convey with his eyes what might take another actor a soliloquy to convey.
He is my favorite John Watson, having played against Nicol Williamson's paranoid drug-addicted Sherlock Holmes in The Seven Percent Solution. (I always hated Nigel Bruce's buffoonish portrayal)
Robert Duvall, who drew from a seemingly bottomless reservoir of acting craftsmanship to transform himself into a business-focused Mafia lawyer, a faded country singer, a cynical police detective, a bullying Marine pilot, a surfing-obsessed Vietnam commander, a mysterious Southern recluse and scores of other film, stage and television characters, died on Sunday. He was 95.
His death was announced in a statement by his wife, Luciana Duvall, who said he had died at home. She gave no other details. He had long lived on a sprawling horse farm in The Plains, in Fauquier County, Va., west of Washington.
Orwell and Kafka are spinning in their graves right now.
Some local officials are pledging to restore the Stonewall National Monument’s large Pride flag after a Trump administration directive this week removed it from the only national park site dedicated to LGBTQ+ history.
Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal shared a photo of the bare flagpole at the West Village park on social media Monday evening, along with a screenshot of the U.S. Department of the Interior memo to the National Park Service that led to its removal.
The federal directive states that in most cases, the National Park Service can only fly the U.S. flag, the Department of the Interior flag and the Prisoners of War flag in the public spaces it maintains. The policy makes limited exemptions, such as when a flag would “provide historical context” to a site, or when a site is co-managed with another entity “that may fly that state’s or city’s relevant flag.” But the parks service said in a statement that “changes to flag displays are made to ensure consistency with that guidance.”
In an interview on WNYC’s "Morning Edition," Hoylman-Sigal said protests are being organized for Tuesday, with plans to fly the flag again as soon as Thursday.
I'd also suggest that it might be a good idea for the local LGBTQ community to organize s 24 hour watch on the flag pole to ensure that anyone trying to take down the flag is confronted.
It turns out that the 10 day (rescinded after a few hours) airspace shut-down over El Paso was a party balloon, not any real sort of security threat.
Don't worry though, they shot it down with a laser.
The abrupt closure of El Paso’s airspace
late Tuesday was precipitated when Customs and Border Protection
officials deployed an anti-drone laser on loan from the Department of
Defense without giving aviation officials enough time to assess the
risks to commercial aircraft, according to multiple people briefed on
the situation.
The episode led the
Federal Aviation Administration to abruptly declare that the nearby
airspace would be shut down for 10 days, an extraordinary pause that was
quickly lifted Wednesday morning at the direction of the White House.
Top
administration officials quickly claimed that the closure was in
response to a sudden incursion of drones from Mexican drug cartels that
required a military response, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy
declaring in a social media post that “the threat has been neutralized.”
But that assertion was undercut by multiple people familiar with the situation, who said that the F.A.A.’s extreme move came after immigration officials earlier this week used an anti-drone laser shared by the Pentagon without coordination with the F.A.A. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
C.B.P. officials thought they were firing on a cartel drone, the people said, but it turned out to be a party balloon. Defense Department officials were present during the incident, one person said.
I'm going to give these incompetent idiots the benefit of the doubt, and assumed that it was one of the shiny silver Mylar balloons, which, because of their aluminum coating, are readily picked up on radar.
Over at Gizmodo, they have an article titled, "Dems Want to Ban Surveillance Pricing at Big Grocery Stores," which discusses a bill submitted by Senators Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) to ban personalized digital price gouging by grocery stores.
Call me a cynic, but I think that this is more about extorting campaign donations to water down or kill the proposal than anything else.
Sen. Ben Ray Luján, a Democrat from New Mexico, and Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, introduced legislation Thursday that would ban so-called surveillance and surge pricing in grocery stores. Officially known as the Stop Price Gouging in Grocery Stores Act of 2026, the Senate legislation is modeled on a 2025 bill in the House.
The new bill would require stores to disclose their use of facial recognition technology and would ban electronic shelf labels (ESL) in large grocery stores. ESLs are controversial because they allow retailers to change the price of a given item remotely, opening up the possibility that they could be tied to algorithms which raise and lower prices based on conditions in the store or who’s trying to buy something.
Hypothetically, stores can charge different prices at different times of day or rely on different inputs, right down to personalizing the price based on an individual who was looking at a given item, spotted with facial recognition tech. The concern is that factors like race, gender, and income level could be used to determine how much people are charged. A 2025 study found that Instacart was charging customers different prices for the same products, sometimes as much as 23% more. A few weeks after the study received negative press coverage, Instacart announced it was pulling the plug on its AI-powered pricing.
………
The Biden administration launched an investigation into surveillance pricing in 2024 with FTC chair Lina Khan initiating a study on the ways it may harm U.S. consumers. But after President Donald Trump took power in 2025, his administration killed the study.
I am not suggesting that either Senator Luján or Merkley are doing this solely to extract campaign donations from large retailers. For all I know, they are completely sincere about this.
What I am suggesting is that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is planning to use this proposal as a way to extort campaign donations from the industry., and once they get their vigorish, they will kill or emasculate the legislation.
Scottish food, which may qualify as a crime against humanity, at least in the case of, "Pizza Crunch," which appears to be an affront to all that is holy.
I bet you thought that I was going to diss English food, but not this time.
Bring on the jellied eel, bubble and squeak, stargazy pie, frogspawn pudding, or mushy peas before I eat that Scottish abomination.
We now know who the, "Senior Trump Administration Official," who was mentioned in an intelligence intercept between two foreign officials.
You know, the one subject to a whistleblower complaint after DNI Tulsi Gabbard sat on this information rather than passing it up the chain as required by law.
According to the WSJ, it was Jared Kushner, whose primary role in the Trump administration is arranging foreign bribes for Donald Trump.
Not a surprise.
The highly classified whistleblower complaint against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is related to a conversation intercepted last spring in which two foreign nationals discussed Jared Kushner, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
It couldn’t be determined which country the foreign nationals are from or what they discussed about Kushner. But the connection to Kushner sheds further light on the top-secret whistleblower complaint that bureaucratically stalled within Gabbard’s agency for eight months and was kept locked in a safe until it reached Congress in heavily redacted form last week.
………
The Wall Street Journal and others reported last week that the complaint was based on a foreign-intelligence conversation collected by the National Security Agency. The conversation included a discussion about a person close to Trump and at least in part concerned issues related to Iran, the Journal reported.
………
A heavily redacted version of the complaint was seen by select lawmakers in Congress last week after the Journal first reported on its existence and that it had stalled within Gabbard’s office. Democrats have questioned why the complaint was held up for eight months and indicated it raises national-security concerns that deserve more investigation. Republicans have defended Gabbard and said the attention on the complaint has been orchestrated to undermine the Trump administration.
This is a significant story only because Gabbard suppressed this.
Had it been sent to the White House, it would never have been an issue.
Musk is giving up on Mars because his claims of saving humanity by creating a Martian city have become so transparently laughable that even his normal fanbois are losing interest.
The old grift has gotten stale, so he creates a new one.
Elon Musk built SpaceX on his dream of colonizing Mars. For decades, he kept the company on a strict path toward achieving that goal, arguing just last year that using the Moon as a stepping stone to the Red Planet would be a “distraction.” Now, he’s singing a very different tune. In an X post on Sunday, Musk said SpaceX has “shifted focus toward building a self-growing city on the Moon.” Achieving this new goal, he said, will potentially take less than a decade, whereas colonizing Mars would take more than 20 years.
As usual, it's rally all about getting government money to further enrich himself.
………
This pivot comes as SpaceX is racing against Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin to deliver a lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis 3 mission, which will be the first to land astronauts on the surface of the Moon in over 50 years. NASA awarded SpaceX the contract in 2021, but that never stopped Musk from criticizing the agency’s Moon-to-Mars trajectory.
NASA originally planned to launch Artemis 3 in 2024 but has since pushed the mission to 2028, partly due to uncertainty over when a crew lander will be ready. SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System (HLS) has faced significant developmental delays in recent years, prompting the agency to reopen the contract in October. Now, Musk has apparently gotten on board with the whole Moon-to-Mars thing.
Considering the basic architecture of Musk's moon lander, it's no wonder that Bezos is nipping at his heels.
The lander weighs 6 times that of the Apollo LEM and requires multiple in orbit refuelings, and his rockets are still blowing up and their payload capacity seems to be shrinking with each new test.
His rockets are unlikely to make it to either the Moon or Mars.
This blog is a place to put my stream of consciousness thoughts about life, politics, technology, and cats.
It's a posting ground for my more-or-less annual personal newsletter, 40 Years in the Desert.(PDF's available at link)
I find that if I wait until year's end I miss stuff from earlier in the year.
40 Years is put out the old fashioned way, it's printed out on ledger sized paper with 4 pages and mailed to people, total circulation of about 100.
I'm just not the holiday card kind of guy.
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