Who Says That Irony Is Dead?

Nope, No Fascist Imagery Here Why am I not surprised that the Trump administration's new uniforms for Space Force were inspired by the uniforms of the Paul Verhoeven film Starship Troopers?

The Dutch director took Heinlein's militaristic and objectively Fascist novel and turned it into an anti-fascist parable. 

Yes, they really are this stupid. 

It was almost too stupid to be real. Last week, the Trump Administration unveiled new uniforms for the United States Space Force with a more-than-surprising caption: “Inspired by the discipline and functionality of the Starship Trooper uniform.” Now, a “Starship Trooper” isn’t a real military force. In fact, it’s not even a fake military force. It’s the title of a 1959 novel about a futuristic military force (who are not directly called “Starship Troopers”) which, in its 1997 film adaptation, was a very obvious commentary on fascism.

The film’s political intention (which is based on a more subtle and debatable intention in the novel) [No, Heinlein's original is Fascist] is something its director, Paul Verhoeven, is used to being overlooked. As far back as the film’s initial release, people latched onto it solely as a big-budget, sci-fi action blockbuster, which it was. But the whole thing was also an over-the-top satire. Space Force clearly missed that with its reveal, so Verhoeven is setting the record straight yet again, almost 30 years later.

………

For the U.S. government to be so proudly announcing it’s using uniforms based on a film, while also completely missing the point of that film, is kind of perfect. After all, as Verhoeven says, the characters in Starship Troopers don’t know they’re fascists either.

You've got to remember that the people behind this are just simple politicians. These are people of the Beltway, the common clay of the Pennsylvania Avenue. 

You know... morons.

For Your Consideration

I give you Zapp Hegseth:

Omg 🤣 pic.twitter.com/Vhw3H8RCYo

— Ingrid Guthrie (@IngGuthrie) September 10, 2026

Yes, I know. That which is seen cannot be unseen.

Today in Very Bad Fashion for a Very Good Cause

If you wondering what could motivate such an ugly sartorial statement, the answer is pretty simple: The pattern f%$#s up the ability of AI to recognize the target as a human being.

Hopefully, this isn't just someone blowing smoke up our collective asses.

Designer Simon Weckert has created a colourful camouflage shirt that cannot be detected using AI video systems.

Developed in response to a pilot project to use artificial intelligence (AI) video surveillance at Berlin's Kottbusser Tor, which starts this month, the shirt was designed to stop the user being recognised as a person.

Named Digital Camouflage, the shirt aims to confuse the AI-powered object-detection system by subverting what the system recognises as a person.

………

The shirt uses a combination of bright colours and patterns to confuse the AI systems so that it doesn't recognise what it is seeing as a person. 

 Make it so.

 

I Have No Son!

Remember when I noted that my son had an idea to sell a T-Shirt that said, "Vore is biblically canon?"

You Maniac, You Blew it All Up!  You Maniac! Ah, damn you! God damn you to hell!

OK, maybe it's not that bad, but daym, it ain't good.

In any case, here is a picture of his abomination, and you can get it at the link above either black on white or white on black in various forms of shirts, buttons, stickers, and magnets.

 

In case you are wondering, this is a reference to the Book of Jonah, not the Catholic ritual of communion.

How Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth

My son Charlie has announced that he will be designing a T-shirt that says:

Vore is Biblically Canon

I thought that I raised him right.

I was misinformed. 

Like Father, Like Daughter

I am referring to Bill Gates's daughter, Phoebe, who has founded a personal shopping and advertising website that appears to be little more than affiliate marketing hijacking and fraud.

Phia, an advertising startup co-founded by Phoebe Gates, daughter of billionaire Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, bills itself as a “personal shopping assistant” that helps users find the lowest prices on a broad range of clothes and fashion accessories.

Download the Phia tool onto a web browser, use it while shopping and — voila — the so-called extension can quickly find discount codes for products. Businesses like these, known in industry parlance as affiliate marketing programs, typically collect a commission from retailers that make the resulting sale.

But according to Ben Edelman, an independent researcher and consultant who studies affiliate marketing, as well as Capital One Shopping, which makes a competing browser extension, Phia claimed credit for online sales it didn’t actually drive, in violation of many digital platforms’ policies.

 ………………

Phia was launched by Phoebe Gates, 23, and friend Sophia Kianni in 2025. The company has raised a total of $43.5 million from investors including Notable Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures and a raft of celebrities like Sydney Sweeney, Khloe Kardashian and Hailey Bieber. Former Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg is also an investor. Representatives for Notable, Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.  

 ………………

The app has garnered a lot of attention, in part because of its well-known co-founders. Both Gates and Kianni have been included on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 lists in recent years, and have touted the business’s data privacy. 

Ah yes, the 30 under 30 list, better known as the, "Forbes to fraud pipeline."

Another Nepo baby, though probably not as big a scumbag as her Epstein linked dad.   

No Blogging Tonight

Power has been out since about 7pm, and as yet, a crew had not been scheduled. 

As to what I did today, I was down in Cheverly for a sewing circle and terrorist society meeting, and I caught the July 4 flyover. 

I just saw some F-18s, some F-22s, a VC-25, a KC 135, and a KC 46.

Posted via mobile.

Well, This Was Not on My F%$#ing Bingo Card

Byron Noem, husband, and cuck, of former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, has been exposed as a cross dressing "Bimboification" fetishist.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. 

I'm just a surprised, even though I have said time and time again that every one of their accusations is a confession.

In the spectrum of creepy GOP sleaze, this one is up there with the Jerry Falwell ally who  died in bizarre auto-asphyxia accident involving a closet, wet suits (plural),  and a dildo in his anus. 

Clearly, fiction writers are going to have a problem writing something weirder than this. 

Kristi Noem's husband is today revealed as a secret cross-dresser who dons gigantic fake breasts and pink hotpants to chat with online fetish models.

While his wife has operated at the highest echelons of government, handling matters of national security in her recent role as secretary of homeland security, Bryon Noem, 56, has been dressing up and paying adult entertainers to talk dirty.

The Daily Mail has reviewed hundreds of messages involving three women from the 'bimbofication' scene – where porn performers transform themselves into real-life Barbie dolls by pumping colossal amounts of saline into their breasts.

Bryon has lavished praise on their surgically enhanced bodies, confessed his lust for 'huge, huge ridiculous boobs,' and even made indiscreet remarks about his 34-year marriage to Kristi, our investigation can exclusively disclose.

National Security experts consulted by the Daily Mail said his brazen behavior could have left the 54-year-old MAGA favorite, who oversaw ICE's aggressive crackdown until she was removed from her position on March 5, vulnerable to blackmail.

If you are worried about vulnarability to blackmail, perhaps Kristi Noem's affair with Cory Lewandoski, or her bragging about shooting a puppy.

Those are kind of red flags to a lot of security folks. 

As an FYI, there are some pictures at The Mail, but I am not sharing them here.

Also, this is not an April Fools joke. 

Today in Unfortunate Branding

There are a number of things that I tend not to write about because they never happen, you know, things like carnivorous killer sheep, sentient slime molds,honest Republicans, etc.

One of these things is, "Expansions in the Los Angeles Metro."

It's not good or bad, it's just never gonna happen.

Or so I thought.

It turns out that they have extended some lines, including, so it seems, the "D" line, which will be adding 3 lines later this Spring.

The folks at LA Metro are excited about this.  They are so excited that they are selling a T-shirt to commemorate this.

What does this shirt say?  

It says, "Ride the D."

The shirts have sold out.

L.A. Metro really wants people to take their soon-to-be-opened rail line extension, and have come up with a wildly popular marketing method to spread the word — a new line of merchandise proudly emblazoned with the phrase, “Ride the D.”

The cheeky shirts, available both in full length and as crop tops, have become a viral sensation, with the initial release selling out in just one day. But those eager to own their own need not despair: The transit system announced shortly before 3 p.m. Friday that a limited batch was back in stock.

“If you neeeeeeeeD it GO NOW,” L.A. Metro wrote in an Instagram post announcing the restock. The T-shirt is on sale for $21 and the crop top for $20. Fans were encouraged to snap them up quickly before they sell out again.


The shirts’ release Thursday coincided with the announcement that the first phase of the Metro D Line subway extension will open May 8, with three new stations connecting downtown Los Angeles to Beverly Hills. The new stations are located at Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax, Wilshire/La Cienega and will collectively serve Koreatown, Miracle Mile, Hancock Park, Carthay Circle, the Fairfax District and Beverly Hills.

That Fucking Paper

On a day where the prosecution in the Luigi Mangione case agreed not to present some evidence because of law enforcement misconduct, the New York Times decided that it to talk about Mangione's fashion choices.

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

The pretrial hearings of Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing the UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, have finally come to an end. The judge will most likely issue his rulings later, possibly even in January, when Mr. Mangione will be back in a different court for the scheduling of his federal trial. But this hearing has been, in some ways, a dress rehearsal.

Literally.

Witness the defendant’s about-face from crew-neck sweaters to suits. Given the way Mr. Mangione’s looks have become a central part of his narrative in the year since his arrest, the significance of such choices is lost on no one — least of all his legal team.

If you still have a subscription to the Times, cancel it.

^*This is not my term, it was coined by Duncan "Atrios" Black.

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

This man simply walked into the fashion show wearing a garbage bag - and no one thought it was strange until security found him

pic.twitter.com/pZCRWyMNJ5

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) October 20, 2025

This is the apotheoisis of high fashion.

An Old Fashion Returns

But it ain't human fashion, it's Orcas wearing salmon hats again after a 37 year hiatus.

I'm hoping that this means that the miniskirt will be coming back:

Northwest Pacific orcas have started wearing salmon hats again, bringing back a bizarre trend first described in the 1980s, researchers say.

Last month, scientists and whale watchers spotted orcas (Orcinus orca) in South Puget Sound and off Point No Point in Washington State swimming with dead fish on their heads.

Off of Point No Point?  If that is not going seriously meta on fashion, I do not know what is.

This is the first time they've donned the bizarre headgear since the summer of 1987, when a trendsetting female West Coast orca kickstarted the behavior for no apparent reason. Within a couple of weeks, the rest of the pod had jumped on the bandwagon and turned salmon corpses into must-have fashion accessories, according to the marine conservation charity ORCA — but it's unclear whether the same will happen this time around.

Researchers think the orcas sporting salmon hats now may be veterans of the trend when it first appeared nearly 40 years ago. "It does seem possible that some individuals that experienced [the behavior] the first time around may have started it again," Andrew Foote, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Oslo in Norway, told New Scientist.

I have a theory.  It involves orca Instagram and orca influencers.

This theory is (of course) complete bollocks.

I did Nazi that Coming

Bummer of a birthmark, HalIt appears that a football (soccer) team in Germany made an unfortunate font choice for their uniforms, which resulted in a rather problematic appearance for any player with a jersey number of 44.

Or maybe someone did it on purpose, I don't know: 

The German Football Association (DFB) announced Monday that it will redesign the font used on its soccer jerseys after comparisons were drawn to a Nazi symbol, outlawed in Germany.

Parallels between the number 44 and the SS rune of the Nazi Schutzstaffel paramilitary organization — similar to two lightning bolts — were first drawn last week on social media. The SS was the unit most responsible for overseeing and administering the Nazis’ crimes against humanity, including the genocide of 6 million Jews.

None of the parties involved in checking the numbers “saw any proximity to Nazi symbolism in the creation process of the jersey design,” the DFB said in a statement on X.

“Nevertheless, we take the comments very seriously and do not want to provide a platform for discussions … we will develop an alternative design for the number 4 and coordinate it with UEFA.”

Two additional comments here:

• I'm pretty sure that someone saw a proximity to Nazi symbolism.
• F%$# the Washington Post for not including a picture of the number 4 in their article.

I had to focus hard on that image not to see the SS runes.

Only in America

Right-wing economist who encouraged the mass infection, hospitalization and deaths of children with a bioengineered BSL-3 vascular pathogen in order to force the proles to work...

...now shilling her own fashion line for the ruling class...

Was NOT on my pandemic bingo card pic.twitter.com/S3jdPBBALy

— Gregory Travis. Make schools #DavosSafe (@greg_travis) November 29, 2023

The amateur model is Emily one Oster..

She is an economist, and makes Larry Summers look like a saint.

Some of her hits:

• Arguing that we should not give antivirals to Africa to treat the AIDS epidemic, because black people are not worth it.  (OK, that last part is subtext, but she did argue that promiscuous Black men in Africa were the real problem.)
• Said that kids should be sent back to school because, "Kids don't get covid," and she doesn't give a f%$# about dead teachers. (OK, that last part is subtext)
• Once it was revealed that kids DO get Covid, and kids DO die and suffer death and disability, she argued that there would be social and learning losses that justified the risk, because she wanted her brats out of the house for a few hours each day.  (OK, that last part is subtext)
• Dismissed discrimination as a causes for skewed male female ratios in Asia, particularly China. (Straight up true.  She apologized when it was revealed that her data was garbage) 
• Argued for drinking while pregnant. (True, she literally wrote a book that says this)
• Argued that even though she was wrong about Covid, she and her fellow travelers should be "forgiven" because who knew that minimizing contact and masking would reduce the spread? (True, she said this, ignoring the fact that minimizing contact and mask wearing have been shown to be effective since before the wide spread adoption of germ theory)
• Has been found to routinely cherry pick data to support her thesis.

And now she is modeling a truly dull line of clothing.

In a just world, she would be a pariah, but she was born on 3rd base, and so she, and the very serious people who have lionized her over the years, assume that she hit a triple.

Tweet of the Day

At this point I really welcome Aliens pic.twitter.com/Ge66zMU8DI

— Tired (@EndemicPrepared) February 13, 2023

.I so want this as a T-Shirt.

Normally, I Don't Comment on Fashion, But

Marjorie Taylor Greene as Cruella de Vil


Kyrsten Sinema shot and skinned Big Bird, or


Carol Burnett and Bob Mackie should
sue her for stealing their ideas


Worst "The Matrix" cosplay ever

The fashion statements of the Batsh%$ Insane Women's Right-Wing Auxiliary at this year's State of the Union address was profoundly ……… Something.

Apparently, Greene was,  dressed as that damned Chinese balloon. (As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know.")

As for Sinema, she was once again dressing to indulge in her own toxic narcissism.

As I have noted before, if you attempt to understand Kyrsten Sinema through a lens of political ideology, or even through a lens of political careerism, but rather as a manifestation of compulsive narcissism.

I should state at this point that I am an engineer, not a psychologist, dammit,* so feel free to take my analysis with a grain of salt, but in my not so expert opinion, she's bloody nuts.

As for the final picture, that is MAGAt Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (FL-13) who has recently been discovered to be Florida's answer to George Santos.  

Her purported life story is literally adjacent to the joke that ends with, "He fell out of a guard tower."

In case you are wondering, she is one of the Republican psychopaths (but I repeat myself) who have taken to wearing an AR-15 lapel pin.

Given that my sense of fashion is roughly as deep and as broad as a cat's sense of quantum mechanics, (Schrodinger's cat is the exception, of course) it really is remarkable that even I can see how inartful their sartorial choices were.

^*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!

I Don’t Know If This Is Genius or Stupidity

Dress in a Can

As many you already know, Bella Hadid walked onto the cat-walk wearing nothing but underwear, and had a dress sprayed onto her.

If this is a serious fashion statement, then everyone involved with this is a blithering idiot. 

If instead, this is a statement mocking fashion, then everyone involved with has caught lightning in a bottle, because it is a bit of absurdist theater as Eugene Ionesco's play The Bald Soprano.

If I had to guess, I would think idiocy, but the statements by the "Designer" could be tongue in cheek:

Paris Fashion Week this year will go down in style history, and it’s all thanks to a truly daring look from none other than Bella Hadid. The supermodel totally stole the show on Sept. 30 when she walked onto Coperni’s Spring 2023 runway with nothing but underwear on... but then reached the end of the catwalk in a full gown. In one of the coolest and most unique displays at any fashion show, Parisian label Coperni pulled out all of the stops and gave Hadid an innovative dress no one would be able to forget. In the final moments of the runway show at Paris Fashion Week 2022, Bella Hadid took the stage and the magic happened, and this video captures all the wonder of Hadid’s spray-painted Coperni dress.

Wearing nothing but nude undergarments, Hadid was circled by two artists that sprayed her body with Fabrican, a “unique spray-on fabric.” From afar, it just looked like Hadid was being sprayed with white paint, but as the artists layered each coat an elastic-like dress began to form on Hadid’s body right on the runway. The crowd audibly gushed over the spectacle and I don’t blame them! According to Coperni’s co-founder, Arnaud Vaillant, the design was a “celebration of women’s silhouettes from centuries past,” he told Vogue. Each layer of Fabrican brought the designer's vision to life. A true model, Hadid stood center-stage and elegantly moved her body ever so slightly for the artists to work their magic.

Clearly, the fashion press is a bunch of credulous idiots, but that goes without saying.

Haberdashery Advice for Would Be Journalists

You wear this hat:


You can get it here (Etsy) for $130, or you can get it at Baron Hats for $560, but the cheaper one is actually closer to the authentic original. 

I know what some of you are thinking, what original, and why should any journalist wear this?

That's because you either never saw, or forgot, the 1970s TV series Kolchak, The Night Stalker, starring Darren McGavin.

In it, the intrepid reporter Carl Kolchak, played by McGavin, pursued all sorts of paranormal phenomenon and creatures, only to be frequently stymied by the powers that be, who did not want this information to get out.

If this sounds a bit like The X-Files, this is because Chris Carter, the creator of that series was inspired by The Night Stalker when he developed his series.

It's more than just an inspiration though.  While the plots are sometimes a bit simplistic and formulaic, the dialogue and characters are exquisitely done, and given that their special effects budget could not have been much more that the cost of a Starbucks Venti, their special effects were remarkably well done.

McGavin's performance to this day seems to be to be the very epitome of what a journalist should be, not Robert Redford hanging out in a parking garage waiting for Mark Felt.

The show is coming on in about 15 minutes on MeTV.

Also, his camera was a Rollei 16s, not a Kodak sub-miniature.

Tweet of the Day

Good to see that J.Crew has FINALLY released a jacket for 19th century colonial explorers who've stalked every beast in the Queen's domain but will not rest until they've brought back the head of the Easter Bunny. pic.twitter.com/rph6HjyJwB

— Jacob Brogan (@Jacob_Brogan) April 28, 2022

This is literally the ultimate Easter Bunny hunting jacket.

This is Monetizing Sociopathy

The front end of the new GMC Yukon. For reference, I'm 6'1". The top of the hood is nearly up to my shoulders. pic.twitter.com/Ls7HVzif9N

— AJ LaTrace (@ajlatrace) February 19, 2022

Not actually a Yukon, but still

What's the driver's response time when they have to look at a forward facing grill cam to decide whether it's safe to go? pic.twitter.com/yrLqrh7EhM

— Keith Bontrager (@bontrager_keith) February 20, 2022

You literally can't see the car in front of you.

Over the past few years, auto manufacturers have made the hoods of their trucks higher and higher, and the grills flatter, and it's killing people, whether it is because the driver cannot see a person standing in front of them, or because when they do strike someone the geometry of the grill is particularly lethal.

I understand and appreciate that there are people who need trucks for work, to haul stuff, to pull boats, etc, but these aesthetic decisions have nothing to do with that functionality.  That all comes down to engine, transmission, suspension, and bed size.

The car makers do this because it sells, and it sells because the average American truck buyer wants to be intimidating and violent.

For some time, and I think that it started with the Reagan years, American has increasingly become a self-destructively hostile place, willing to harm one's self in order to demonstrate one's cojones.

There is a deep evil permeating our society, and I have no clue how to fix this:

Whether you bought a Sierra, like the one in the photo above, or a Yukon, which the tweeter mistakenly thought he was standing next to, or a Ram or a Silverado or a Jeep Gladiator or any other megatruck or monster SUV, you’re making an announcement to the world. It’s not the announcement you think it is, though. It’s not about your wealth or your toughness or your masculinity. No, you’ve announced, very clearly, that you don’t care if you accidentally kill a stranger. You’re saying: “I’m totally cool with someone else dying because of a decision I made.”

I’m not saying you’re a murderer if you own a gigantic truck. I’m saying you’re a manslaughterer. If you do kill a person, it won’t be because you carefully planned it. It’ll happen totally by accident, and you’ll be horrified. The person you kill, if it happens, won’t be some jerk who wronged you. They won’t deserve it at all. Heck, there’s a solid chance it’ll be a toddler.

………

Your car is also really tall, and that makes it more dangerous, too. A grille that’s more than 50 inches off the ground—as tall as the roof of my Honda Civic—makes it more likely that a pedestrian will be struck in the head by a collision. Big trucks are also more likely to push a pedestrian under the tires, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, something that increases the likelihood of a fatality. Those big, road-handling tires you love so much? They’ll also do a great job handling some middle schooler’s torso.

………

Plus, those tall grilles create enormous blind spots, ones so big that when you’re behind the wheel you might not be able to see a pedestrian, a whole-ass Corvette, or half a kindergarten class. And kids are the most vulnerable to that blind spot: Most victims of “frontover” deaths—in which a pedestrian in a front blind spot is struck and killed in a driveway or parking lot—are between the ages of 12 and 23 months. Eighty percent of those deaths since 1990 involved a truck, van, or SUV, according to the advocacy group KidsAndCars.org. Maybe you think that if you do run over a kid, it at least won’t be yours? It probably will be your kid, though. In 70 percent of those fatal frontovers, it’s a parent or close relative behind the wheel.

And if you do collide with that Corvette in your blind spot, well, good luck to that Corvette’s driver. It isn’t just pedestrians who are more likely to be killed if they’re hit by a truck—it’s people in other cars. You feel a lot safer in your 5,000-pound tank, I bet. But everyone around you is in more danger. In fact, your pickup truck is 159 percent more likely than other kinds of cars to kill another driver if you’re in a collision, according to the IIHS. (SUVs, which have been getting smaller over the years, are merely 28 percent more likely to kill people in other cars. Comforting!)

………

Look, I get that some people are contractors, or farmers, or boat-haulers—folks in flannel and work boots, as tough as the kinds of dudes always pictured in ads for gigantic pickups. Great. If that’s you, get the giant pickup, I guess. (Although you could always buy a van, which has better sightlines, can carry more than most pickups, and is cheaper.)

But the rest of you, the people who live in the suburbs, who don’t tow or go off-roading or haul around plywood? The drivers who just love the feeling of being way up off the ground, of having a front end that intimidates other cars, of being big? Just remember this. You’ve made a choice, and that choice tells your community that you are absolutely, totally, 100 percent comfortable with killing someone. How will you feel the day you actually do?

Let's be clear:  Much of the problem is not that someone wants to own a truck, but that they are demanding it be styled in a way that turns them into murder machines.

It's a fashion choice, and it is a psychopathic one.

I should note, however, that I am an engineer, not a psychologist, dammit. ^*

^*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!