Shut Up and Take My Money!

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What can I say, this is an epic bit of pseudo-Mexican cuisine.

Also, considering how often I put my foot in my mouth, this is particularly apropos. 

There Is No Way That You Can Improve a Banksy Artwork………

Banksy original


After censorship by the Royal Courts of Justice OK, I was wrong. 

When the Royal Courts of Justice attempted to efface one of his works, one that protests the prosecutions of pro- Palestinian they made the work more striking and effective.

British judges have been harsh in their actions against pro-Palestinian protesters.

Banksy the artist pointed to this with a mural at a wall of the Royal Courts of Justice.

The mural in more detail.

As Banksy's art accused the British government to censor too much, said government responded by censoring Banksy.

Attempts were made to remove the mural.

But what is left now is still sufficient, if not stronger, in making the point. 

Authoritarians don't get art.

He Deserves This Bad Week

US district judge Christopher Cooper has ruled that Donald Trump's name must come down from the Kennedy Center.  He has also ruled that Trump's 2-year shutdown to remake the building into a gold plated grotesque will not go forward.

A judge on Friday ordered the removal of Donald Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, ruling that the prestigious Washington DC venue cannot be renamed without an act of Congress.

US district judge Christopher Cooper in Washington directed the Trump administration to take down all physical signage bearing Trump’s name and to eliminate any references to a “Trump Kennedy Center” from official materials within 14 days.

“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” Cooper wrote in a 94-page opinion. “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”

The judge added: “The Court has concluded that the Board overstepped its statutory bounds by unilaterally renaming the Kennedy Center after President Trump.”

Not long after the ruling, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would work with Congress on transferring ownership of the Kennedy Center.

“I have instructed the Department of Commerce to make all necessary arrangements with Congress to allow a full and complete transfer of this Institution, giving them the responsibility for its Operation, Maintenance, and Management,” he wrote. 

Ummm....wut?  Transfer?  You do not own the Kennedy Center.  Neither does Congress.

The American people own it.

Cooper also temporarily blocked the center from closing this summer for proposed renovations, two months after Trump announced its two-year closure.

He said that “in ratifying President Trump’s closure announcement, the Board was derelict in discharging the full range of its responsibilities to the Center”.

………

The lawsuit was brought by Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democratic US representative and a member of the Kennedy Center’s board by virtue of her position in Congress.

Thank you Representative Beatty. 

 

Because They Do Not Want To

I give you the cartoon of the day: (click to embiggen)

Link

True as turnips, this is. 

Sweet Prank

i just generated an image in the style of a Monet painting using AI

please describe, in as much detail as possible, what makes this inferior to a real Monet painting pic.twitter.com/VDJovKOqlz

— 𒐪 (@SHL0MS) May 12, 2026

Have you heard the one about the guy who posted a real Monet on Ecch (Twitter) while stating that it was AI generated?

Going through the comments, it's remarkable how many people called it out as authentic before the proverbial paint was dry. 

A poster wrought some moderate havoc this week when they shared a cropped image of a real Monet painting while claiming it was an AI fake, unleashing a flood of ill-informed reactions and muddled discourse. So, you know, it was just another day online.

“I just generated an image in the style of a Monet painting using AI,” read the original post, published to X-formerly-Twitter yesterday by an anonymous conceptual artist who goes by the pseudonym “SHL0MS.”

“Please describe, in as much detail as possible,” he continued, “what makes this inferior to a real Monet painting.”

Commenters were quick to jump in to explain why, in their view, the alleged AI image was worse than the real work of the French impressionist master. According to one, the image was an “incoherent muddle of inconsistently saturated greens.” Another lamented that there was no “coherent composition,” while someone else shared that the painting seemed “busy, artificial, nature in turmoil, polluted.” Another commenter said that the allegedly AI-generated image seemed as if it was “trying too hard” to resemble Monet’s later paintings, which he created when he was close to blindness. Others shared that the image was “obvious” AI slop.

………

Unfortunately for these many opinion-havers, however, they were the ones who were duped. The Monet was actually real: it’s one of his iconic “Water Lilies” paintings, created around 1915 and currently hung in the Neue Pinakothek museum in Munich, Germany.

This the apotheosis of a good prank.

Clever, but not really cruel. 

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write to a famous author & ask for advice.

KURT VONNEGUT (who left us 19yrs ago today) was the only one to respond.

His reply was a doozy. pic.twitter.com/r9vE8uNEk6

— Michael Warburton (@For_Film_Fans) April 11, 2026

This is remarkable.

I'm not a fan of Kurt Vonnegut's writing, it's never done much for me, but I love his attitude.

I've confirmed this story, and here is his letter as text, which I find more convenient than an image. 

Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!" 

~Kurt Vonnegut 

Color me impressed. 

Justice

Rapper Afroman, best known as the artist who produced the song, "Because I Got High," just prevailed in a defamation suit filed by Adams County sheriffs for his mockery of them for breaking into his house, disconnecting his security cameras, and stealing his money. (See here for my earlier thoughts on this)

Afroman took the incident, and made lemonade, or possibly lemon pound cake, over, and the sheriff's deputies decided that being help up for mockery for their egregious and unprofessional behavior hurt their delicate feelings, so they sued, and lost.

Before Friday, Grammy-nominated musician Afroman might have been best known for his Y2K hit, “Because I Got High.” But now he has a new claim to fame, as the man who fought the law—and won. The southern Ohio resident, whose legal name is Joseph Edgar Foreman, prevailed in a nearly $4 million lawsuit filed against him by seven police officers in 2023, all of whom claimed that songs and videos he released regarding a raid on his home were defamatory and an invasion of their privacy.

The saga began on August 21, 2022, when a group of Adams County, Ohio, Sheriff's Office deputies raided Foreman's Winchester, Ohio home, which is about 55 miles east of Cincinnati. According to a Fox 19 report from the time, police had obtained a warrant to search the residence based on “probable cause that drugs and drug paraphernalia were located on the property and that trafficking and kidnapping had taken place there.”

Foreman, who was not home at the time, posted security footage of the raid to Instagram, including a door-busting breach into the kitchen, followed by a police pause at a dessert stand populated by what we'd later learn was a lemon pound cake. An additional video showed police rifling through his closet, as one law enforcement agent asks “is he a Raiders fan? Still?”

According to Foreman, police confiscated a joint, a vape pen, and $5,031 in cash. (The latter was returned.) He was never charged. A spokesperson for the Adams County Prosecutor’s Office later admitted that the raid “failed to turn up probative criminal evidence.”

Well, it was about $400.00 short, the cops, "Misplaced," the cash.  Yeah, sure. 

………

In the wake of the event, Foreman says he thought about suing the police, but decided against it. "I asked myself, as a powerless Black man in America, what can I do to the cops that kicked my door in?" he asked NPR. “And the only thing I could come up with was make a funny rap song about them and make some money, use the money to pay for the damages they did and move on.”

The result was Lemon Pound Cake, an album released by Afroman in 2022. Tracks such as “The Police Raid,” “Why You Disconnecting My Video Camera,” and the title song retold details of the breach in an exaggerated, hyperbolic, and oft-comedic fashion. Another song, “Will You Help Me Repair My Door," was accompanied by a video that included footage from the breach, set to lines like “Did you find what you were looking for/ Would you like a slice of lemon pound cake/ You can take as much as you want to take/ There must be a big mistake.”

………

It wasn't until this week that the trial began, with Foreman in attendance in a suit patterned with the American flag. He took the stand on Tuesday, WCPO reports. “All of this is their fault,” Foreman said. "If they hadn't wrongly raided my house, there would be no lawsuit, I would not know their names, they wouldn't be on my home surveillance system, and there would be no songs ... my money would still be intact."

“After they run around my house with guns and kick down my door,” he said. “I got the right to kick a can in my backyard, use my freedom of speech, turn my bad times into a good time.”

The next day, the jury reached its verdict after six hours of deliberation. "It's been an emotional case, it's been a well-tried case," the judge said. “In all circumstances, the jury finds in favor of the defendant. No plaintiff verdict prevailed. So the matter will be concluded with defense verdicts.”

I'm not sure what he can do legally in response to what was obviously a SLAPP suit, but there is clearly material for another album in this.

Subhed of the Day

None of This Would Have Been Legal If They’d Sent Competent Adults. But the Fact That They Sent Smirking Little Sh%$s Makes It So Much Worse.

—Liz Dye at Law and Chaos, describing how the DOGE bros comported themselves when forced into sworn depositions. (%$ mine) 

Yeah, these smirking assholes make it much worse.  (BTW, the hed is, "DOGE Bros Had More Fun Burning Down Government Than Testifying About It."

In the spring of 2025, the Elon Musk’s DOGE slashed and burned through various congressionally-created and -funded federal agencies, systematically destroying them as part of an effort to … well, who the hell knows. Something-something deficit. Blahblahblah waste, fraud, and abuse. Eradicate DEI!

………

On March 12, the code monkeys descended on the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent agency established by Congress in 1965 to “foster and support a form of education, and access to the arts and the humanities, designed to make people of all backgrounds and wherever located masters of their technology and not its unthinking servants.”

Which is a little on the nose, to be honest.

………

None of that interested Justin Fox and Nate Cavanaugh, the 20-something tech bros dispatched to raze the agency. They’d never worked in government or the humanities, and they didn’t know didn’t know the First Amendment from the Administrative Procedure Act.

………

Fox and Cavanaugh instructed NEH staff to rate the agency’s active grants for the presence of DEI, “gender ideology,” and “environmental justice.” When this failed to yield enough cuts, Fox and Cavanaugh turned to ChatGPT, feeding it the database of grants and instructing it to flag anything that relates to DEI.

A $349,000 grant to replace the HVAC system at the High Point Museum in North Carolina was DEI because, according to ChatGPT, it “enhances preservation conditions for collections, aligning with the goal of providing greater access to diverse audiences.” A documentary about the Colfax Massacre — the 1873 slaughter of Black Louisiana freedmen, one of the bloodiest atrocities of Reconstruction — was canceled “because it focuses on exclusively anti-Black violence, which is a race.” A project to digitize local newspaper archives was nixed because digital accessibility “aligns with DEI goals of inclusivity and representation.” A documentary about Jewish women’s slave labor during the Holocaust was flagged as DEI because it focused on gender and religious oppression.

In short, every bit scholarship or art involving anyone who wasn’t white, male, and able was cut.

………

If all this sounds wildly illegal, that’s because it is.

I really hope that the DOGE Bros get prosecuted to the fullest extant of the law, and that they then get sent to a Federal PMITA prison. 

No Virginia, AI Cannot Hold Copyright

The Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling that AI generated material cannot be copyrighted.

I'd rather that they had ruled definitively on this, but is OK.

The US Supreme Court has declined to hear a case over whether AI-generated art can obtain a copyright, as reported earlier by Reuters. The Monday decision comes after Stephen Thaler, a computer scientist from Missouri, appealed a court’s decision to uphold a ruling that found AI-generated art can’t be copyrighted.

In 2019, the US Copyright Office rejected Thaler’s request to copyright an image, called A Recent Entrance to Paradise, on behalf of an algorithm he created. The Copyright Office reviewed the decision in 2022 and determined that the image doesn’t include “human authorship,” disqualifying it from copyright protection.

After Thaler appealed the decision, US District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled in 2023 that “human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright.” That ruling was later upheld in 2025 by a federal appeals court in Washington, DC. As reported by Reuters, Thaler asked the Supreme Court to review the ruling in October 2025, arguing it “created a chilling effect on anyone else considering using AI creatively.”

Ironically enough if I were to paint a copy of his "Artwork" on my belly, hung gummy bears from my nipples, and videotaped myself engaging in interpretative dance, that would be covered by copyright. 

Note to my reader(s):  I promise not to do this.

A Cartoon, Context, and a Bit of History

This puts everything in the proper context.

H/t Assigned Male

Damn!

Howie Klein, former music executive and later a political activist, has died at age 77 of pancreatic cancer, not something I would wish on anyone.

My exposure to him was primarily as the proprietor of the blog Down With Tyranny,  but he was everywhere in pop music during his earlier career.  (Not sure what will happen to the site with him gone)

He and I were on the same page about the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).

Howie Klein, a veteran record executive, radio DJ and political activist who was a leader in the famously artist-friendly Warner Music family during its golden era of the 1980s and early ‘90s, died Wednesday after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, according to a social media post from his sister. He was 77.

He was a top executive at Sire Records during the label’s peak era — a time when the label had everyone from the Smiths and Depeche Mode to Madonna and Lou Reed on its roster — and later was president of Warner’s Reprise label from 1989 to 2001. He was a co-founder of the San Francisco-based 415 Records during the 1970s, and was a strong and vocal presence in the music industry’s anti-censorship efforts in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, focusing on political activism in his later years.

You can read the rest of the article for his voluminous background in music, particularly Punk.

He occasionally wrote about music on DWT, and I wish that he had written something on the Ur-Punk band Death.

 

This Restores My Faith in Humanity

On Sunday at the Miss Universe competition in Chile, contestant Ignacia Fernández sang a song for the talent portion. 

That is not particularly unusual, what is unusual is that she is in a band, and she brought a band mate on stage to accompany her as she sang a song from the band's repertoire.

What is even more unusual is that her band is Decessus, a progressive Death Metal band.

Who’s to say you can’t be brutal and a beauty? Ignacia Fernández is a 27-year-old model, that much is clear, but what isn’t upon first look is how damn savage she is. While competing in the Miss World Chile 2025 (in Spanish, it’s Miss Mundo Chile) pageant semifinal last Sunday, November 2, Fernández stunned damn near everyone by performing a song from her progressive death metal band called Decessus. Yes, you read that right. Miss World Chile 2025 could be a headbanging guttural queen, and if I could vote for her, I definitely would.

Joined by her bandmate Carlos Palma, Fernández performed an original Decessus song while rocking a ball gown. She understandably garnered a standing ovation, with one of the judges saying he’s never seen anything like it in a beauty pageant before. We haven’t either, sir.

In an interview with the Chilean paper Las Últimas Noticias, Fernández said how she was nervous about her performance and the reactions it might receive. “Television lends itself to people making memes and making fun of you,” she said. The song I sang is by my band. It’s my job, my life.”

Fernández represents the Las Condes district, hoping to move on to represent Chile in Miss Universe. Her performance won her a spot in the pageant finals, which will take place this Sunday, November 9. Imagine how wonderful it’d be to have a death metal maven representing our universe. She’s even said: “I’m not trying to fit in. I’m trying to show myself as I am.” I couldn’t think of anyone better.

She made it to the next round of the pageant, because she was true to herself, and truth is power. 

This is the Most Accurate Presentation of the Jewish Relationship to God I've Seen in a Comic Strip

Yes, I know, this describes a very highly constrained data set, but it is true.

To my gentile reader(s), surely you have a Jew whisperer who might be able to explain this to you? 

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. 

Deep Thought

Seen on Facebook.

Had to share.

This Post Aged Like Milk

Childhood is loving JK Rowling. Adulthood is realising that Neil Gaiman is vastly superior on every level as a creator and a person.
byu/Mr_smith1466 insaltierthankrayt

I'm not talking about the specific "issues" (which is to put all of this this VERY mildly) with either Mr. Gaiman or Ms. Rowling.

I don't want to talk about the specifics, but I do want to note something important:  Artists can produce great beauty and be complete fuckwads.

If you enjoy their work, whether it be Pablo Picasso (horrible to women), Ezra Pound (Nazi), or Lovecraft (racist), etc.

If you can enjoy their work, enjoy their work.  If you can't enjoy their work any more don't.

Setting them up as paragons of virtue is a sucker bet.

Artists have no more authority on morals or ethics than you or I do.  What they do have is authority over their own art.

H/t JR at the  Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Today in Journalistic Enshittification

A Draft of the Cartoon in Question
Long time Washington Post editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes has resigned from the paper following their spiking her cartoon because it was too mean to oligarchs.

Shown is Bezos, (Amazon) Zuckerberg, (Facebook)Altman, (OpenAI), Patrick Soon-Shiong, (LA Tiumes) and Mickey Mouse.

My guess is that it was NOT Mickey that the WaPo editorial board objected to.

Ann Telnaes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for The Washington Post, said on Friday evening that she was resigning after the newspaper’s opinions section rejected a cartoon depicting The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, genuflecting toward a statue of President-elect Donald J. Trump.

In a brief statement posted to Substack, Ms. Telnaes — who has worked at The Post since 2008 — called the newspaper’s decision to kill her cartoon a “game changer" that was “dangerous for a free press.”

“In all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at,” she wrote. “Until now.”

Ms. Telnaes included a draft of her cartoon in her Substack post. In addition to Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, the cartoon depicted Meta’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg; Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive; Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of The Los Angeles Times; and Mickey Mouse, the corporate mascot of the Walt Disney Company.

The Washington Post OP/ED department, even with the absence of the late and unlamented Fred Hiatt, remains the 2nd worst editorial page in the nation.

Cancel your subscription.

Headline of the Day

MAGA Is Claiming “Political Violence” Over a Giant Nude Trump Statue

—The New Republic

Seriously, the MAGAts are such snowflakes. 

You can get images at the link, but I am not posting here.

Just let me say that the anonymous artists have depicted him as less than, "Heroic."

Quote (Dialogue) of the Day

Link

Elizabeth Appleboom: I hate Dr. Seuss, he isn't even a real doctor!

Claire Agustus: There's nothing wrong with taking creative liberties with a pen name.

Elizabeth Appleboom: It devalues all the works actual doctors do to earn the title.

Marten Reed: Just like every black metal musician's pseudonym devalues the work the actual servants of Morgoth do to please their dark master.

I really like that line.

I highly recommend the web comic Questionable Content.

It's up 5 days a week, and I rarely miss it.

I LOVE This

Neat Pic
A competitor in an AI image contest was disqualified when they realized that he had submitted a real photograph.

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

The photographer, Miles Astray, if that is indeed his real name, said that he was trying to make a statement about generative AI faux "Art."

A photographer has been disqualified from a picture competition after his real photograph won in the AI image category.

Miles Astray entered a real, albeit surreal photo of a flamingo into the AI category of the 1839 Color Photography Awards which the judges not only placed third but it also won the People’s Vote Award.

“I wanted to show that nature can still beat the machine and that there is still merit in real work from real creatives,” Astray tells PetaPixel over email.

“After seeing recent instances of AI-generated imagery beating actual photos in competitions, I started thinking about turning the story and its implications around by submitting a real photo into an AI competition.” 

Very well played, young man.