40 Years In The Desert

I Know Who Not to Endorse

2026-05-18T19:04:00.000-04:00

Nancy Pelosi is not running for reelection, and I know very little about her successor, but I do know who I would recommend that any of my reader(s) in her Bay Area district NOT vote for, Connie Chan.

I know this because Nancy "Insider Trading" Pelosi has endorsed her in the primary.

Anyone endorsed by the former House Speaker can be reasonably assumed to be of like mind to Pelosi, and more of the same is a f%$#ing disaster.

Nancy Pelosi on Monday endorsed Connie Chan, a San Francisco supervisor, in the race to succeed her as the city’s representative in Congress, calling her the candidate who “stands above the rest”.

Pelosi, the first woman to serve as speaker of the House, will retire at the end of her term and had not yet weighed in on the contested primary for the San Francisco district she has held for nearly 40 years. But as early mail-in ballots trickle in ahead of the 2 June primary, Pelosi declared Chan the “leader best prepared to carry forward the fight for San Francisco in the Congress”.
………
Pelosi’s endorsement comes as polling shows Chan in a tight contest to advance to the November general election in a field that includes Scott Wiener, a Democratic state senator known for championing legislation to ramp up housing production and enshrining LGBTQ+ rights, and Saikat Chakrabarti, a former tech executive who served as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s first chief of staff and has been an outspoken critic of Pelosi and the Democratic party leadership. Ocasio-Cortez has declined to endorse anyone in the race.

Several recent surveys show Chan effectively tied with Chakrabarti for second place, behind Wiener. Under California’s primary system, the top two contenders will advance to the November general election, regardless of party.

Unfortunately, They Both Could Not Lose

2026-05-18T18:55:00.000-04:00

Rather unsurprisingly, Sam Altman prevailed over Elon "I don't read the fine print" Musk in the latter's lawsuit against OpenAI.

The ruling was pretty narrow, the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ waited to file until after the statute of limitations had expired, but my guess is that if that had not been the case, he still would have lost, because incompetent, narcissistic, and erratic justified showing his ass to the door anyway.

A jury ruled in favor of Sam Altman in the culmination of a long and bitter legal battle that pitted the richest person in the world against a leader of the AI boom.

The federal jury in Oakland, California, found Altman, OpenAI and its president, Greg Brockman, not liable for Elon Musk’s claims that they unjustly enriched themselves and broke a founding contract made with Musk when founding the startup.

The verdict, delivered after less than two hours of deliberation, is a stark rebuke of Musk and his lawyer’s claims that Altman “stole a charity” through his leadership of OpenAI. It also provides the AI firm with a clear path ahead to pursue going public later this year at about a $1tn valuation.

The jury’s finding is a non-binding, advisory verdict that left Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers with ultimate power to issue her own ruling in the case. Gonzalez Rogers immediately said that she would agree with the jury’s decision and dismissed Musk’s claims.

Sam Altman is lucky that he was facing off against one of the few human beings on earth more loathsome than himself.

Headline of the Day

2026-05-18T18:12:00.000-04:00

You Can't Build Useful Alliances With Fascists, Dumbass
—Karl Bode, on fundamental stupidity of not punching Nazis in the face.

I think that his subhed says it all, "I hope we all now understand that forging strategic policy partnerships with fascists is like trying to develop an intimate relationship with a running chainsaw."

Read the rest. It's kind of hard to summarize.

Gee, Ya Think

2026-05-18T18:09:00.000-04:00

Hoocoodanode that cuts to the USDA safety program would result in more instances of tainted food?

Could Upton Sinclear please pick up the white courtesy phone?

The number of complaints filed about the safety of meat, poultry and egg products jumped nearly 40% last year, from 1,443 to 2,016, according to a new federal report.

The report comes a year after the Trump administration approved some of the most sweeping staffing cuts to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in recent memory.

Between January and June of last year, USDA reduced its workforce by 18%. The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), the agency responsible for placing inspectors in slaughterhouses and processing plants, lost about 9% of its staff.

It's almost as if meat packers are nut universally businesses run by executives with sterling character.

Linkage

2026-05-18T05:07:00.000-04:00

Neanderthals drilled cavities to treat a toothache 59,000 years ago (Ars Technica) They seem more like this every day.
What Makes a Great Bookshop? (Culture Dump) Nice read, if a bit subjective.
The Strip Mall Where Clarence Thomas Hides His Wife's Money (Glass Empires) The subhed, "A consulting firm in a Virginia strip mall. A justice who votes on the firm's clients. A marriage that has run the same kickback for thirty years. Her name is Ginni Thomas," says it all.
Charles Schulz Franklin Peanuts Harriet Glickman (Boing Boing) A nice history about how Franklin came to join peanuts.
Yacht-wrecking young Orcas ‘not afraid of anything’ after being abandoned by relatives, say experts (The Independent) Short version, following a population drop of the community, adolescent Killer Whales were left without guidance and became delinquents.
This Ridiculously Simple Trick Might Stop Gulls From Nabbing Your Lunch (Gizmodo) It's googly eyes stuck on your food box.
Combined Antibiotic and Herbicide Pollution Accelerates the Horizontal Transfer of Antibiotic Resistance Genes in Coastal Microbial Communities (bioRxiv) The more we learn about agricultural chemicals, the worse the seem.

This song was recorded in 1993. It seems almost prophetic:

DoJ is Taking a Bribe

2026-05-17T22:37:00.000-04:00

In response to Indian fraudster Gautam Adani hiring a friend of Donald Trump as his lawyer, the Department of Justice will be dropping criminal charges against the Indian financier.

This is corrupt as hell.

When the Justice Department indicted India’s richest man in the final weeks of the Biden administration, prosecutors described an “elaborate” bribery scheme involving “corruption and fraud at the expense of U.S. investors.”

Now, according to several people with knowledge of the case, the Justice Department is planning to drop the charges altogether.

The reversal came after the Indian billionaire, Gautam Adani, hired a new legal team led by Robert J. Giuffra Jr., one of President Trump’s personal lawyers and the co-chairman of the prominent firm Sullivan & Cromwell.

Mr. Giuffra’s efforts on Mr. Adani’s behalf culminated in a previously unreported meeting last month at the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington, according to people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Giuffra ticked through about 100 slides outlining why prosecutors lacked basic evidence, as well as the jurisdiction even to bring the case, one of the people said.

Another slide also made an unusual offer: If prosecutors dropped the charges, Mr. Adani would be willing to invest $10 billion in the American economy and create 15,000 jobs, echoing a pledge he had made in the wake of Mr. Trump’s election.

As part of the same meeting, Mr. Giuffra sought to resolve a parallel civil case against Mr. Adani brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as a separate investigation by the Treasury Department. The S.E.C. announced its settlement with Mr. Adani late Thursday; the Treasury Department could unveil its own deal in coming days.

Although prosecutors later told Mr. Giuffra that the $10 billion investment would play no role in the resolution of the criminal case, his offer received a favorable response from at least one senior Justice Department official at the meeting, according to the people familiar with the meeting.

These folks need to be disbarred and prosecuted.

The Underground Employee Culture

2026-05-17T22:19:00.000-04:00

The response of Amazon and Facebook employees to mandates to aggressively use artificial "intelligence" have been to actively sabotage that effort by creating junk usage metrics.

This is not a surprise.

Amazon employees are using an internal AI tool to automate non-essential tasks in a bid to show managers they are using the technology more frequently.
The Seattle-based group had started to widely deploy its in-house “MeshClaw” product in recent weeks, allowing employees to create AI agents that can connect to workplace software and carry out tasks on a user’s behalf, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Some employees said colleagues were using the software to automate additional, unnecessary AI activity to increase their consumption of tokens — units of data processed by models.
………
“There is just so much pressure to use these tools,” one Amazon employee told the FT. “Some people are just using MeshClaw to maximise their token usage.”
Amazon has told employees that the AI token statistics would not be used in performance evaluations. But several staff members said they believed managers were monitoring the data.
………
Meta employees have similarly engaged in so-called tokenmaxxing to improve their standing on internal leader boards.
………
More than three dozen Amazon employees worked on the in-house tool, according to internal documents. One recent memo describing the bot said: “It dreams overnight to consolidate what it learned, monitors your deployments while you’re in meetings and triages your email before you wake up.”
Multiple Amazon employees said they were concerned about the security risks of an AI tool that was granted permission to act on a user’s behalf. This risks situations where the agent may make errors or undertake unintended actions.
“The default security posture terrifies me,” one employee said. “I’m not about to let it go off and just do its own thing.”

Don't commit anything sensitive to any of these companies.

Bad Day st the Office

2026-05-17T21:56:00.000-04:00

There was a midair collision at an air show in Idaho.

Two F/A-18G Growlers collided, but all 4 pilots ejected safely.

Two E/A-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft collided during the Gunfighter Skies Air Show in Mountain Home Idaho on Sunday, in a mishap captured in dramatic videos. The four crew members of the aircraft, from Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 129‘s NAS Whidbey Island-based Growler Airshow Team, were able to eject right after the collision and are being evaluated by medical personnel, according to media reports. The incident took place two miles northwest of the base, according to the 366th Fighter Wing’s Facebook page. The Growler Airshow Team puts on two-jet displays.

Video of the incident showed the one of the Growlers close in on the other from behind and then collide, striking the lead aircraft’s rear with its nose from above. They then became entangled together, nose up, and then down, before tumbling to the ground. Four small explosions from ejection seats blasting out of the falling Growlers can be seen before the parachutes of the four crew members opened up. The Growlers hit the ground, exploding into a ball of flames, followed by the crew members floating down in their parachutes.

The latest report is that the pilots are being checked out, but it appears that there have been only minor injuries.

The Cruelty is the Point

2026-05-16T20:01:00.000-04:00

Is anyone surprised that adding work rules to SNAP (Food Stamps) does not increase employment?

It's not about getting people to work. It's political masturbation.

………

As part of the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act, all “able-bodied adults” 64 or younger who don’t have dependents and don’t work, volunteer, or participate in job training at least 80 hours a month are now restricted to three months of benefits every three years from SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. Previously, the federal requirement applied to those 54 or younger. The new rule, which went into effect in November, also applies to parents of children 14 or older. And it removed exemptions for veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and young adults who’ve aged out of foster care.
Proponents of work requirements argue that they incentivize people who are “work-ready” to seek and keep jobs, reducing dependence on government assistance and upholding the “dignity of work.”

Rhonda Rogombé serves as health and safety net policy analyst for the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. She and her colleagues have studied the effects of SNAP work rules and found that requiring recipients to work does not lower an area’s unemployment rate.

Glad I Own a Hybrid

2026-05-16T18:56:00.000-04:00

Oil reserves are falling off a cliff.

Assuming no change to the current state of affairs, it looks like we could move from higher prices to actual shortages and gas lines by year's end.

An underappreciated surplus of crude oil, sloshing around storage tanks and aboard ships, cushioned the global economy when the Persian Gulf closed 2½ months ago.
That excess supply is now dwindling at a record pace, with oil executives and analysts predicting that a harsh reckoning is set to upend the relative calm in energy markets. Acute shortages of key fuels and soaring prices could emerge within weeks if the Strait of Hormuz remains shut.

This ain't gonna end well.

Good Idea

2026-05-16T18:14:00.000-04:00

And it is from Gavin Newsom of all people.

California is proposing extending its sales tax to cloud based software, rather than limiting it just to shrink wrapped software sold in stores.

I like this, not the least because it ends what was an effective subsidy to the cloud in the Golden State.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced his latest budget plan on Thursday, totaling $349.4 billion, the largest in the state’s history. The proposal includes a new 7.25% state sales tax on cloud-based software.

Currently, sales tax is only paid on software purchased in physical form, whether that’s through software sold as part of a new hardware purchase or tangible media. Cloud-based software and software as a service (SaaS) applications aren’t taxed in the same way, but Newsom’s proposal would change that.

As KCRA notes, the new tax would apply to software like Microsoft Office, Adobe, and QuickBooks, as well as Slack and Workday. Roughly half of the states currently tax SaaS products, and Newsom argues it would just mean bringing California in line with dozens of other states.

The Supreme Court Gets One Right

2026-05-16T18:08:00.000-04:00

The specific issue may seem a bit arcane, the liability of freight brokers when they select unsafe trucking companies, but it a big deal, and hopefully we will see it further expanded to see the liability extended to other industries where contractors are used to deflect responsibility for the big actors.

At issue is the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA) which preempts most state regulation of transportation, things like rates and scheduling, but the law does give the states authority to regulate safety and required insurance.

The lower courts appeared to ignore the black letter law on this, and conclude that the brokers were indemnified, but the Supreme Court actually went with the actual law on this one.

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held Thursday that federal law does not preempt a state lawsuit claiming a shipping broker hired an unsafe trucking company, leading to a crash and severe injuries.
The court said the 1994 Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act preempts most state regulation of the trucking industry but contains a carve-out for state safety regulations "with respect to motor vehicles."
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the entire court, stated that the exception includes a state lawsuit accusing a shipping broker of negligently hiring a trucking company.
The decision revives a suit by Shawn Montgomery, who was on the side of an Illinois highway when his vehicle was struck by a Mack truck, leading to the amputation of a leg and other permanent injuries. Montgomery sued the driver, Yosniel Varela-Mojena; the trucking company, Caribe Transport II; and the broker that coordinated the shipment, C.H. Robinson Worldwide.
Montgomery alleged the broker knew or should have known about Caribe's poor safety rating from a federal regulator and that an accident was likely to occur.
A federal district court found that Montgomery's negligent hiring claim against C.H. Robinson was preempted by the FAAAA, a decision upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
The Supreme Court said applying the language of the federal law's safety exception to Montgomery's claim was "straightforward."
"Requiring C.H. Robinson to exercise ordinary care in selecting a carrier... 'concerns' motor vehicles—most obviously, the trucks that will transport the goods," Barrett wrote. "So Montgomery’s negligent-hiring claim falls within the FAAAA’s safety exception, which saves it from preemption."

Of note here, as significant proportion of Amazon delivery drivers are contractors, even though Amazon specifies the routes to the second and foot, hence the infamous Amazon piss bottles, and so this should apply to Amazon as well.

I would like to see this applied top subcontracting more generally, there are numerous instances where contractors are used to skirt wage and safety laws, but I'm not too hopeful.

What Took Them So Long?

2026-05-15T19:35:00.000-04:00

The DoJ has finally filed charges against the owner of the MV Dali for the destruction of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

It's been pretty obvious that they f%$#ed up, on the day of the crash.

The Justice Department has filed criminal charges against a Singapore-based global shipping company and subsidiaries, accusing them of safety violations that led to the massive container ship crash that caused the 2024 collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday.

Prosecutors accused entities of Synergy Marine Group of fostering unsafe conditions by not maintaining proper systems aboard its ship, the Dali, and others in its fleet. Those lapses left the Dali unable to recover from a blackout of its systems and unable to veer away as it crashed into the bridge in the early hours of March 26, 2024, leaving six men dead.

The indictment, returned under seal in federal court in Baltimore last month, also alleges the company falsified safety inspection records and lied to investigators after the crash.

The company as well as the Dali’s technical supervisor, Radhakrishnan Karthik Nair, face charges including counts of conspiracy; misconduct or neglect of ship officers resulting in death; violations of the Clean Water Act and Ports and Waterways Safety Act; and obstruction of an agency proceeding.

Sweet Prank

2026-05-15T19:12:00.000-04:00

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.

Egregiously Corrupt

2026-05-15T18:57:00.000-04:00

The Trump Appointed US Attorney for the Southern District of New York is offering a deal to the banksters, self report your fraud, and get a slap on the wrist and all records hidden from the public.

He's doing this openly, and the rest of us will pay for this bullsh%$.

Wall Street’s top prosecutors want lawbreaking companies to hand themselves in, offering behind-closed-door deals that let them avoid being charged, fined or having full details of their fraud made public.
The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which secured huge fines and guilty pleas from companies such as Drexel Burnham Lambert and Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital, has been meeting big law firms and corporate advisers in recent weeks to promote its softer approach to white-collar crime.
The lenient new deals are available even in cases where alleged fraud was pervasive, caused severe harm, involved senior leaders and had already been reported in the press or by a whistleblower.
Prosecutors might charge individuals, but they would not charge companies even if the wrongdoing was worse than originally admitted. They would also not publish details of the deals.

So-called voluntary self-disclosure policies have been available in the past but the new SDNY version, which only applies to fraud, is significantly more generous to companies.

The policy here is simple, if wypipo do it, it's not a crime.

A Quisling and a Coward

2026-05-15T18:28:00.000-04:00

I am referring, of course, to Colorado Governor Jared Polis, who just caved to Donald Trump and commuted Tina Peters' sentence for election fraud.

Needless to say, his political career with the Democratic Party should be over now, but it probably won't be, because the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is too busy trying to kneecap people like Platner, Mamdani, and AOC. (Priorities, don't you know)

Gov. Jared Polis reduced Tina Peters’ sentence by half on Friday, ignoring months of pleas against such an action by many other Colorado elected officials and the prosecutor who won the former county clerk’s conviction in an election data-breach scheme.

In a letter to Peters, Polis wrote that she will “be released on parole effective June 1, 2026” — in just over two weeks.

The commutation, which was announced in a group of 44 clemency actions Friday afternoon, reduced Peters’ original sentence of nearly nine years, which was thrown out last month, to about 4.5 years. Polis’ action, coming after more than a year of pressure from President Donald Trump — and several actions taken targeting the state — risked the appearance that he was bending to Trump’s demands. But in an interview with The Denver Post ahead of the announcement, the governor was resolute.

Peters, the former Mesa County clerk, has been a public supporter of election conspiracies rooted in Trump’s reelection loss in 2020. But Polis said that “just because somebody believes the Earth is flat — just because somebody believes in conspiracy theories — does not mean that they should receive a harsher sentence for a very specific crime.”

Polis’ action drew swift reaction from other elected Democrats. Attorney General Phil Weiser, in an interview, called the commutation “an insult,” “mind-boggling” and “a threat to the rule of law.” And Secretary of State Jena Griswold called Polis’ decision “an affront to democracy” and accused the governor of “selling out our state justice system to cave to a vengeful president.”

F%$# Jared Polis.

It's Bank Failure Friday!!

2026-05-15T18:13:00.000-04:00

And we have another credit union failure, Jackson Area Federal Credit Union, of Jackso, Mississippi, the 5th failure of the year.

It happened a week ago Wednesday, my bad.

Here is the Full NCUA list, and the direct link for this year.

Best Ad Blocker Software Ever

2026-05-14T21:24:00.000-04:00

Someone has forked the popular antivirus software uBlock Origin and made tweaks to replace ads with "Glasses On" images from the John Carpenter movie They Live.

This is brilliant.

A fork of uBlock Origin Lite doesn't just remove the ads from web pages; it replaces them with tiles containing slogans from John Carpenter's 1988 film They Live.

Published by Australian Dave Lawrence, the Chromium add-in (so it'll work in browsers such as Chrome and Edge) takes the uBlock Origin Lite content blocker (also known as uBO Lite) and tweaks it so that rather than simply hiding the ads, the ads are replaced with white boxes containing slogans from the movies.

Lawrence listed them: "OBEY, CONSUME, WATCH TV, SLEEP, SUBMIT, CONFORM, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WORK, NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY."
………
They Live is a science-fiction horror film in which the protagonist dons a pair of glasses that allow him to see the world as it truly is: run by ghoulish aliens using subliminal messaging to keep the population under control.

I would note that that They Live is a great movie, and great social commentary. Watch it.

Meanwhile, I need to chew some bubblegum or kick ass.

Safe Until After the Election

2026-05-14T20:54:00.000-04:00

Maybe I'm a cynic, but I refuse to take any action of the Supreme Court's right wing hack justices at face value.

So when the Supreme Court Supreme Court stayed a ruling by a lower court allowing continued access to mifepristone through the US Post Office, I think that it was an attempt to move the final decision past the November elections, nothing else.

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that patients can, for now, continue to access by mail the most commonly used abortion pill, handing antiabortion advocates a defeat in their push to restrict medication abortion.

The justices paused a decision by a U.S. appeals court in New Orleans that had reinstated a requirement that patients pick up mifepristone in person, a mandate supporters of abortion rights have framed as the biggest threat to abortion access since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

How is This Not Dancing on Sailors' Graves?

2026-05-14T20:07:00.000-04:00

When Kash Patel went to Hawaii last year, he insisted that it was not a vacation, but rather a working trip where he snorkeled around the wreck of the USS Arizona.

As an FYI, this is generally forbidden, with exceptions being made for surveys of the state of the wreck and for interring survivors of the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, who have requested to be laid to rest there.

I did not think that the Trump Administration could get any more creepy and inhuman.

It appears that I was misinformed.

FBI Director Kash Patel has been caught in yet another eyebrow-raising side quest: a snorkeling excursion to a sunken battleship in Hawaii entombing hundreds of sailors and Marines.
The controversial official’s strange trip was almost a year ago, but leaked now amid mounting scrutiny of his activities in office.
When Patel flew to Hawaii last July, FBI news releases framed the visit as part of his “ongoing commitment to supporting frontline efforts and strengthening interagency partnerships,” noting meetings with local law enforcement and a walking tour of the Honolulu field office. He then went on to Australia and New Zealand.
But the FBI director returned to the island just days later for what government officials described in internal emails as a “VIP snorkel” around the USS Arizona, the Associated Press reports. The battleship was sunk during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and serves as a memorial and a war grave for more than 900 crew members.

Today in Centrist Democrats

2026-05-14T19:43:00.000-04:00

I give you Virginia Governor Abagail Spanburger, who just vetoed a bill expanding labor rights, particularly for civil servants because she finds treating employees with dignity and respect is a bridge too far.

The motto of the centrists in general, and the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) in general is, "A bit less evil than the Republicans."

This is horrible policy and worse politics.

She sh%$ on the people who went to the wall for her in the last election.

These people are far less likely to do anything in the next election now.

To quote someone who wasn't Talleyrand,* "This is worse than a crime, this is a mistake.

Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger vetoed a statewide collective bargaining bill Thursday to the chagrin of workers and her own party.

“I remain committed to continuing to work with the General Assembly, unions, localities, and public servants across the Commonwealth to develop a public sector collective bargaining system that works for Virginia,” the Democrat said in her veto explanation. “However, I believe additional amendments are needed to the enrolled bill currently before me."

The Democratic-controlled General Assembly passed legislation that would remove the prohibition on collective bargaining for state employees and mandate a collective bargaining right for local employees. Local employees currently have to wait for their local government or school board to opt in to collective bargaining.

“Governor Abigail Spanberger today betrayed half a million of Virginia’s public service workers by going back on her campaign promise to support collective bargaining rights for the people who keep our Commonwealth and communities running every day,” the Virginia Public Sector Labor Coalition, a lobbying group that represents large unions like the Virginia Education Association and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said in a statement. “Instead of aligning herself with General Assembly Democrats who unanimously supported this bill, Spanberger instead vetoed the bill just as her predecessor Glenn Youngkin did, sending Virginia workers the crystal clear message that they are no better off than they were under a Republican governor.”

The legislature rejected Spanberger’s sweeping amendments that labor unions claim weakened the bill. The original version removed a requirement that would have forced local governments or schools to hold votes to allow employees to unionize. The bill also creates a Public Employee Relations Board and codifies employees’ right to negotiate on certain issues, including staffing, working conditions and benefits.

Unfortunately, there are not enough Democrats in either the State Senate or House of Delegates to override the veto.

^*This quote is often attributed to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, but likely comes from either Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe or Joseph Fouché.

Linkage

2026-05-14T05:43:00.000-04:00

The “Messy” Plaintiffs Behind So Many Anti-Abortion Lawsuits (Mother Jones) By, "Messy," they mean plaintiffs with long histories of domestic abuse who should not be able to file under the Texas law.
Once Again, Trump Looks To Get Out Of Paying E. Jean Carroll By Having The DOJ Substitute In For Himself (Techdirt) If there is any justice in the world, Donald Trump should spend the rest of his life in prison.
To Trump voters with regrets, progressives should say 'you hurt yourself – don't do it again' (The Editorial Board) It might be more productive than, "You arrogant ass, you killed us!" but I'm still gonna say the latter.
Simulation Suggests Viking Sunstones of Legend Could Have Worked (Smithsonian Magazine) It appears that high purity calcite (Iceland spar) can polarize light, allowing the sun to be located through clouds for navigation.
Study shows aluminum adjuvants in vaccines are safe (Skeptical Raptor) There are issues with aluminum and toxicity, just not at the levels used in vaccines.
South Africa Used AI To Write Its Now Withdrawn AI Policy. The Citations Were Fake. (Techdirt) Of course it did.
Study: Infrasound likely a key factor in alleged hauntings (Ars Technica) Ultra low frequency sounds create sensations akin to hauntings. (Not a surprise. I read an lfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators book around 1970 where infrasound created a creepy feeling)
New Wikipedia Clone Made Entirely of AI Hallucinations (Futurism) I know that this is a parody site, but Osama take me now!

He is wrong. Palantir has ALWAYS been toxic:

DoJ Opposes Legal Ethics

2026-05-13T21:53:00.000-04:00

The recent lawsuit filed against the D.C. Bar in response to their investigating ethics complaints against Trump administration officials is entirely consistent with past behavior.

The Justice Department on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the District of Columbia Bar over its efforts to discipline Trump administration lawyers, escalating the department’s feud with legal ethics authorities.

The lawsuit defends Jeffrey Clark, a government lawyer in the first Trump administration who sought to undo the results of the 2020 presidential race, and Ed Martin, a current senior Justice Department official. The suit was filed by Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, and Stanley E. Woodward Jr., the No. 3 official at the Justice Department.

………

That position — that lawyers at the Justice Department or other federal agencies are above scrutiny by legal ethics officials — is likely to be challenged by a host of legal profession entities.

The lawsuit centers on the long-running battle over the D.C. Bar’s effort to disbar Mr. Clark, an environmental lawyer who had no formal role in investigating elections, over his push to promote Mr. Trump’s baseless assertions of fraud in Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s electoral victory in 2020.

While the lawsuit is focused on Mr. Clark, Justice Department leaders in the suit also argued in defense of Mr. Martin. Two months ago, the D.C. Bar filed disciplinary charges against Mr. Martin over what it cast as his misconduct in seeking to punish Georgetown University’s law school.

I rather expect this to end up at the Supreme Court, where they will shut it down with a shadow docket decision.

I Like It

2026-05-13T19:35:00.000-04:00

Hawaii has an interesting approach to dealing with corporate money following the Supreme Courts infamous Citizens United decision.

Rather than attempting to regulate corporate money, Hawaii is on track legislation to redefine corporate power in the state as a way of preventing corporate campaign donations.

Sweet idea, but I am pretty sure that the Supreme Court will overturn this in a 6-3 vote before the ink is dry.

The corrupt 6 want corporate money distorting democracy, and Citizens United was always a corrupt partisan ruling.

When Hawaii drafted its constitution for eventual statehood in 1950, the delegates made very explicit the principle that runs through the laws of the 49 states that preceded it into the Union. “The power of the State to act in the general welfare shall never be impaired by the making of any irrevocable grant of special privileges or immunities,” reads Article I, Section 21 of the Hawaii Constitution.

Sixteen years after Citizens United started laying waste to America’s elections, the Hawaii legislature is poised to put that tool to unusually good use. S.B. 2471—a bill under which Hawaii would no longer grant artificial entities, including corporations, the power to spend in Hawaii’s politics—has passed both chambers with overwhelming bipartisan support. It is in conference committee now, one step away from Gov. Josh Green’s (D) desk.

Gov. Green has said he will sign a good bill that meets constitutional muster. That is the right test. S.B. 2471 meets it.

The bill, which is based upon the Center for American Progress’ “Corporate Power Reset,” is not a regulation of speech. It is a redefinition of corporate power. Aviam Soifer, former dean of the University of Hawaii’s law school, has studied the measure closely and concluded that it is squarely constitutional.

………

While this state authority is not new or novel, it is dusty; no state legislature has redefined corporate powers this directly in roughly a century. It is natural that questions have arisen, including from Gov. Green, Hawaii Attorney General Anne E. Lopez, and some legislators.

………

The bill redefines the powers Hawaii grants to the corporations that operate within the state. It does not regulate what corporations say. It does not regulate what they spend. It defines what powers they have in the first place—and the powers Hawaii grants would no longer include the power to spend in Hawaii’s politics.

Natural persons like you and me keep every political right they have today.

Political committees remain governed by existing campaign finance law. This bill applies to corporations, LLCs, partnerships, and similar artificial persons—entities that operate in Hawaii only because Hawaii law creates them or empowers them to do so.

A note here, the registration of corporations and the powers that they have have always been left to the states, and in order for the Supreme Court to overrule this, they would reverse this, which would mean that Congress has this power. (It also means that corporate shell company states like Delaware and Wyoming would likely be much more tightly regulated)

My guess is that SCOTUS will use some sort of hypocritical slight of hand to strike this down.

Gee, Ya Think?

2026-05-13T18:31:00.000-04:00

This is my shocked face Santa Clara county, California is suing the criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™ for knowingly profiting from advertising scams.

Given the decades long history of Facebook actively harming its users for a few books by allowing dishonest and fraudulent advertisements, (remember Cambridge Analytica?) this development not a surprise at all.

California’s Santa Clara county has sued Meta Platforms, alleging it has profited from Facebook and Instagram ads promoting scams in violation of California’s false advertising and unfair business practices laws.

The lawsuit – filed on Monday in Santa Clara county superior court on behalf of all California residents – accuses the social media giant of tolerating fraudulent advertising on a global basis. The suit seeks restitution, civil damages and an order prohibiting Meta from engaging in unfair business practices.

Citing leaked internal documents first reported by Reuters last year, the complaint alleges that the company earned as much as $7bn in annual revenue from so-called “high-risk” scam ads which show clear signs of being fraudulent.

Rather than undertaking a broad crackdown on fraudulent advertisers, the county alleges, Meta largely tolerated the misconduct and even established “guardrails” to block scam reduction efforts if they cost the company too much money.

I live for the day when Mark Zuckerberg is frog-marched out of his home in handcuffs.

Don't Expect the New Fed Chair to Cut Rates

2026-05-12T22:32:00.000-04:00

Not with US inflation rising to 3.8% last year and more inflation in the pipeline from energy disruptions as a result of the US-Iran war.

We are in for a bumpy ride.

US inflation jumped to 3.8% in April as the war in the Middle East continued to drive energy prices and everyday costs for Americans.
Prices rose 3.8% over the last year, according to the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the highest jump since 2023.
This is the second official measure of the consumer price index, which measures the price of a basket of goods and services, since the start of the war with Iran. In March, prices rose 3.3%, up from 2.4% in February.

And consumer sentiment is falling as well. Go figure.

Decimated, Huh?

2026-05-12T21:55:00.000-04:00

Well, if you use the original definition of decimated, to remove ⅒, that appears to be what the US military has done according to a report from the The New York Times.

The Trump administration’s public portrayal of a shattered Iranian military is sharply at odds with what U.S. intelligence agencies are telling policymakers behind closed doors, according to classified assessments from early this month that show Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities.

Most alarming to some senior officials is evidence that Iran has restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites it maintains along the Strait of Hormuz, which could threaten American warships and oil tankers transiting the narrow waterway.

Yep, that sounds like the original definition of that word.

Here is the money quote, "The findings underscore the dilemma Mr. Trump would face if the fragile month-old cease-fire in the conflict collapses and full-scale fighting resumes. The U.S. military has already depleted its stocks of many critical munitions, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, Patriot interceptor missiles, and Precision Strike and ATACMS ground-based missiles, and yet the intelligence suggests that Iran retains considerable military capability, including around the vital Strait of Hormuz."

Not to worry though, I'm sure that Army Detachment Steiner will be able to sort things out.

My Bagels!!!!!

2026-05-12T21:52:00.000-04:00

New York state is set to ban bromated flour because bromine is a carcinogen. (Also why Bromo-Seltzer no longer contains bromine)

The use of bromated flour is ubiquitous among New York City bagel shops. (When I made bagels, I used non-brominated and malt free flour, [family allergies] and they turned out OK.)

The additive in question potassium bromate (KBrO3) is a slow acting oxidizing agent, and as such, it makes the dough springier more quickly.

There are techniques and other additives (ascorbic acid comes to mind) and mixing and kneading the dough for a longer time can ameliorate the effects as well. (For my bagels, I added additional gluten directly, but use a stand mixer with a dough hook. My hands hurt for 3 days afterwards)

The recipe for Utopia Bagels has remained unchanged since the popular bakery opened in Queens in 1981. Louie and Ernie’s Pizza in the Bronx has used the same ingredients in its slice for nearly as long.

But if lawmakers in Albany prevail, these bakers and thousands of others in New York State will have to stop using a key component, bromated flour, potentially raising costs and changing the character of their breads, bagels and pizza crusts.

Last month by a wide margin, legislators passed the Food Safety and Chemical Disclosure Act, which bans potassium bromate (along with propylparaben and Red Dye No. 3) from any food sold in the state. The bill now goes to Gov. Kathy Hochul; a spokeswoman said only that the governor “will review” it.

Used by an estimated 80 to 90 percent of commercial bakeries in the state, bromated flour makes doughs springier, stretchier and more consistent. Sam Silverman, a New York bagel evangelist who runs tours, classes and an annual gathering called BagelFest, said that after bromated flour became widely used in the 1940s, it helped create the signature modern New York bagel: tall and fluffy, with significant chew. In pizza, it produces an airy crust with enough structure to hold sauce and cheese, and enough pliability to be folded in half.

………

But since the 1980s, when studies first linked potassium bromate to thyroid and kidney cancers in rats, it has gradually been removed from the food supply in most of the world. It’s banned in China, Canada, India, the European Union and many other countries. Starting next January, it will be illegal in California, as part of the so-called “Skittles ban” signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023.

This is not actually a big deal, and my guess will be that after 6 months or so, the bakers will find a combination of other proofing agents and techniques to address this.

Today in Bat Sh%$ Inane

2026-05-12T21:34:00.011-04:00

First, we have Trump calling for Barack Obama's arrest again, basically, "Yadda, Yadda, Yadda, Russiagate," which these days is not particularly remarkable, and then we have elements of the Trump administration calling Tucker Carlson and Nuck Fuentes terrorists.

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

Two right-wing figures — Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes — have been named by the White House as possible domestic terrorists, according to the Trump administration’s top counterterrorism official.
Sebastian Gorka, himself a former right-wing influencer turned National Security Council principal, has been making his rounds on conservative media, describing the meaning and purpose behind the President’s new National Counterterrorism Strategy (which I reported on previously).
Between grandiose monologues about his vision of a crusade to save Western civilization from “anti-American” and “anti-Christian” extremism, Gorka let slip that the administration’s war on “domestic terrorism” isn’t just aimed at the left. It targets anyone who isn’t in line with the broader MAGA agenda. While Trump’s national security directive NSPM-7 explicitly singles out the left with its list of so-called terrorism indicators, many of them could describe people on the right as well.
………
Asked by Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex Marlow if there’s any “right-wing terror” or “right-wing extremism” threat, Gorka replied by pointing to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and streamer Nick Fuentes — both of whom have become vocal critics of the Trump administration — arguing they aren’t actually conservatives anyway. Here’s the exchange:
MARLOW: “ I wanna get your thoughts on any right-wing terror … Do you regard it as a threat at all or anything that's important to be considering right now?”

GORKA: “…I'm not sure that Nick Fuentes or Tucker Carlson are conservatives. If you are lauding Sharia law, if you are saying that there are Muslim states that seem to be better qualitatively than America in terms of freedom and prosperity, I'm not sure that means you're part of the conservative movement. So if you remove those individuals and you understand that they're not conservatives, what's left?”
Gorka’s charge that Carlson lauds Sharia law is, to put it lightly, ridiculous.

To be fair, Carlson and Fuentes have been promulgating stochastic terrorism, wherein they realize that someone in their large audience will take matters into their own hands, but what Gorka is talking about is the idea that any criticism of Dear Leader is terrorism.

We really need to make sure that everyone in this corrupt administration sees the inside of a courtroom as a defendant.

A Good Start

2026-05-11T20:04:00.001-04:00

French prosecutors hhave announced their intention to file preliminary charges against Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino in response to Grok's child porn generator function, Nazi propaganda, etc.

French prosecutors who are investigating Elon Musk and his social media platform X have summoned the billionaire to France to face preliminary charges. The investigation is now officially a criminal probe, according to French officials.

France opened a probe in 2025 to investigate whether X has violated French law, an investigation that has expanded following incidents last year when Musk’s AI chatbot Grok started denying the Holocaust, praising Hitler, and allegedly generating child sexual abuse material when prompted by users.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino have been asked to travel to France to face preliminary charges. As the Journal explains, after preliminary charges have been filed in France, an investigating magistrate starts a process that can take months and doesn’t necessarily mean a trial will be held. It’s entirely possible that the case could ultimately be dropped.

French authorities are looking into the “complicity” of Musk in creating sexual abuse images of minors and sexually explicit deepfakes, according to the Associated Press. Grok also allegedly spread misinformation in French, including a claim that Auschwitz wasn’t a death camp during the Holocaust but was used for “disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus.”

If Yaccarino ends up in the hands of French prosecutors, my guess is that she will sing like a canary, and I would not be at all surprised if she points the finger at Musk. (It's also the truth)

Pass the popcorn..

The Supreme Court Gets One Right

2026-05-11T18:28:00.002-04:00

I should have discussed this earlier, but inCox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment, the Supreme Court ruled (9-0) that simply providing internet access to someone is not contributory infringement of copyright.

This is a good ruling.

Sony and other major record labels recently suffered a thorough defeat at the Supreme Court in their attempt to make Internet service providers pay huge financial penalties for their customers’ copyright infringement. Sony’s loss is certain to have wide-ranging effects on copyright lawsuits, offering protection for ISPs, their customers, and potentially other technology companies whose services can be used for both legal and illegal purposes.

In Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment, the Supreme Court ruled that cable Internet firm Cox is not liable under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) when its customers use their broadband connections to download or upload pirated materials. Music copyright holders claimed that once Cox was informed that specific users repeatedly infringed copyrights, it should have terminated their accounts.

A jury agreed with Sony in 2019, hitting Cox with a $1 billion verdict. While the damages award was overturned by an appeals court in 2024, that court gave Sony a partial win by finding that Cox was guilty of contributory copyright infringement—a type of secondary liability for contributing to others’ infringement.

Cox was facing the prospect of another damages trial until the Supreme Court took up its case and unanimously ruled in its favor on March 25 of this year. The court found that Cox isn’t liable for its customers’ misdeeds because it did not induce them to infringe copyrights and did not “tailor” the broadband service so that it could be used for infringement.

………

While the Cox ruling’s most immediate effect is on other ISPs that were also sued by record labels, one of the attorneys who represented Cox at the Supreme Court told Ars that the decision seems to apply broadly to all other kinds of technology platforms.

“I think it applies to any technology provider. I didn’t see any basis in the opinion or its reasoning for limiting it only to a particular type of technology provider,” attorney Christopher Cariello said. Whether Cox applies to another case “basically just depends on if it’s the same configuration, providing technology that someone else uses for infringement, then it’s the same analysis,” he said.

………

Sony itself laid the groundwork for its 2026 defeat in 1984 when it convinced the court that the Betamax was capable of noninfringing uses and that selling it did not constitute contributory infringement. The 1984 Betamax case and the 2005 ruling in MGM Studios v. Grokster both factored heavily into the Cox decision authored by Justice Clarence Thomas.

A Sony victory against Cox could have made it easier for copyright owners to sue companies whose offerings have both legitimate and illegitimate uses. The firm’s loss will surely make such cases more difficult. As Thomas wrote in Cox, a service provider can be held contributorily liable “only if it intended that the provided service be used for infringement.” Such intent “can be shown only if the party induced the infringement or the provided service is tailored to that infringement,” he wrote.

This means that when a service is capable of “substantial” or “commercially significant” noninfringing uses, its provider can worry a bit less about being held liable for infringement. Users of those services can also worry a bit less about the service provider aggressively terminating accounts.

I think that this is an indication of a cultural shift, where even institutions like SCOTUS are thinking that the current IP regime is way over its skis.

I could not imagine such a ruling even a decade ago.

Gee, You Think

2026-05-11T18:15:00.000-04:00

This is my shocked faceRather unsurprisingly, it appears that solar, wind, and hydro are way cheaper than carbon capture of fossil fuels.

Also, the technology for renewables is more mature, and less likely to be a source of rents for Wall Street ……… Oh, NOW I get it.

To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, the global community must rapidly transition to renewable energy while also expanding carbon dioxide removal—technologies that literally pull this greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere. Both endeavors will be costly, but a new study strongly suggests the U.S. should prioritize investing in renewable energy over expensive, energy-intensive direct air capture schemes.

The findings, published Monday in Communications Sustainability, show that renewable energy is far more cost-effective than direct air capture—a growing carbon removal strategy—at reducing atmospheric carbon. Across nearly every U.S. region through 2050, money spent deploying wind or solar power will deliver a greater combined climate and public health benefit than if it is spent on direct air capture, according to the study.

Yes, but they present less opportunities for looting by the banksters.

No nice things for you, the Wall Street guy has a mistress he needs to buy coke for.

Headline of the Day

2026-05-11T18:01:00.000-04:00

To Protect And Swerve: NYPD Cop Has 547 Speeding Tickets Yet Remains On The Force

—Streetsblog New York City, on the serial (to the point of being surreal) traffic offender NYC police officer

The fact that this guy has been caught multiple times speeding on residential streets, school zones, etc. yet remains a police officer indicates a problem.

I'm a bit of a cynic, but my guess is that he's used his law enforcement connections to get out of paying fines.

Conservatively, the total fines for those speeding tickets is something north of 30 Grand.

Is this public enemy #1?

James Giovansanti lives and works on Staten Island. Since 2022, traffic cameras have caught his pickup truck blasting through school zones or running red lights 547 times in that one borough. He received 187 camera-issued tickets in 2025 alone — an average of one every other day.

That record makes Giovansanti the second-most-reckless driver in the city. Because he pilots a 4,800-pound RAM 1500 truck at more than 41 mph across the island, he poses a unique danger to himself and his neighbors. Ticket data show a pattern of dangerous driving in a wide arc from Pleasant Plains to Tompkinsville.

And here’s what makes him a true enemy of the public: Giovansanti is an officer in the New York City Police Department — the agency supposedly in charge of keeping New Yorkers out of harm’s way.
………
Activists say that Giovansanti is a poster child for the urgency of passing the “Stop Super Speeders Act,” a pending bill in Albany that would force the worst repeat speeders to install a speed limiter in their vehicles. If such a law was already in place, Giovansanti’s truck would have been rendered unable to speed on Aug. 7, 2022, just months after he bought it.
………
Records show that James Giovansanti, 33, reserves the bulk of his speeding for the borough’s densely populated North Shore. A traffic camera on Richmond Avenue and Monsey Place — the same block as P.S. 22, an elementary school that enrolls more than 700 students — issued 25 speeding tickets to the truck.

Another camera on Richmond Terrace and John Street ticketed the truck 50 times. A third camera on Richmond Terrace and Nicholas Avenue ticketed the truck 55 times. Those last two cameras are located just north of Port Richmond High School, which enrolls more than 1,500 teens.
………
Giovansanti’s choice of car dramatically heightens these risks. An unmodified 2022 RAM 1500 weighs at least 4,775 pounds, measures at least 77 inches tall, and features an enormous, boxy and flat-faced hood. This design limits the driver’s ability to see pedestrians and cyclists and makes it far more likely they will drag a crash victim beneath their car’s chassis instead of throwing them onto its hood.

We could not determine whether Giovansanti has ever harmed someone by speeding. But the circumstantial evidence is not reassuring: The right side of his truck is visibly damaged, and he refused to answer a straightforward question about his collision history.

Support your local police.

I Saw The Sheep Detectives Last Night

2026-05-10T21:21:00.000-04:00

I was impressed by the the movie.

The concept is kind of silly, sheep that can talk to each other but not to humans solve a murder, but it's well played and does not take itself too seriously.

Additionally, the CGI seemed to be understated and well executed.

It's smart, funny, I laughed out loud, and genuinely surprised when the murderer was exposed.

It was definitely worth the price of admission, though, full disclosure, my eldest bought the tickets as a Mother's Day gift for Sharon*.

Our local theater now has a bar in the lobby, so you could drink beer and watch the movie, which seems to be to be a bad thing.

One of the rites of passage in my day was teenage movie-goers smuggling food and booze in.

F%$#, I'm old.

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Because They Are Cowards and Hypocrites

2026-05-10T19:51:00.001-04:00

Over at The Nation, they are asking, "Why Do the Democrats Keep Expanding the Institutions They Claim to Oppose?"

How's that a simple answer for a simple question?

In January, the senseless killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti briefly forced many Americans to confront the brutalities of state violence. Millions took to the streets nationwide to express their anger and outrage over the murders of a 37-year-old mother and poet and a 37-year-old nurse who cared for veterans. The idea that ICE is beyond reform and should be abolished was no longer confined to the left. Even prominent conservative pundits began saying openly what many progressives have known for years: This agency cannot be restrained by norms, oversight, or exposure.

But as the administration’s “shock and awe strategy” advances, launching a war with Iran and generating new crises domestically, public attention has largely moved on from ICE violence to other outrages. Meanwhile, the deportation operations have not stopped. ICE has continued making hundreds to more than a thousand arrests daily, with more than 32,000 people booked into ICE detention in March alone. Tens of thousands of community members continue to cycle through a detention system operating at full scale, largely out of public view, and increasingly untethered from any coherent claim of public safety.

Instead of endorsing popular calls to abolish ICE in this critical moment, establishment Democrats have again sprinted in the opposite direction. In headline after headline, Democrats are described as standing firm—blocking funding, demanding reforms, holding the line. But look closer at what that “line” is: They are not fighting to shrink the enforcement state. They are negotiating the terms under which it continues.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is corrupt and incompetent. They need to be completely turfed out of politics.

Peak Elon

2026-05-10T17:52:00.001-04:00

A judge has ruled that the DOGE was stupid and bigoted when it revoked thousands of grants.

Short version: They looked for words which implied non-white, non-mail, and non-Christian using AI, and when this turned up a positive result, they canceled it with no further review.

The Department of Government Efficiency’s cancellation of over $100 million in grants was unconstitutional, according to a ruling on Thursday. In the 143-page decision, US District Judge Colleen McMahon cites DOGE’s process for eliminating grants, which involved using ChatGPT to determine if something is related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

The ruling, which stems from a 2025 lawsuit filed by humanities groups, says “it could not be more obvious that DOGE used the mere presence of particular, protected characteristics to disqualify grants from continued funding” from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Judge McMahon cites several instances in which DOGE appeared to use ChatGPT to scan and eliminate grants using their relation to characteristics like race, national origin, religion, and sexuality.

Here's a thought: The statute of limitations for the over-broad and frequently misused RICO statutes is 4 years.

If the 2028 election goes the Dem's way, they would have about 4 mohths to file charges, take them into custody, and ship them to Gitmo.

Today in the Presumption of Regularity

2026-05-10T17:08:00.000-04:00

Once again Federal Judge Judge James Boasberg has ruled against the Trump DoJ.

In this case, he has ruled that the Trump administration's demands for records from pro-trans organizations was retaliation for protected speech.

Basically, he's calling the government lying sacks of sh%$.

Last night, Chief Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted preliminary injunctions in two parallel cases—Endocrine Society v. FTC and World Professional Association for Transgender Health v. FTC—enjoining the Federal Trade Commission from enforcing civil investigative demands against the two leading medical organizations on transgender health. The judge ruled in both cases that the FTC likely violated the organizations' First Amendment rights and engaged in unlawful retaliation against them for their protected speech supporting gender-affirming care. Boasberg further found that the Trump administration and the FTC had pursued the organizations based on "extensive evidence of animus" and "wafer-thin justifications" for their demands. For now, the private communications, internal deliberations, and member information of these two organizations are protected from the Trump administration's escalating campaign of government censorship and retaliation against the medical institutions that support transgender people.
"On this preliminary record, with extensive evidence of animus and wafer-thin justifications lacking evidentiary support, [the Court] finds that WPATH is likely to demonstrate a causal link between its protected speech and the FTC's issuance of the CID,” said the judge in the WPATH ruling. In the parallel Endocrine Society ruling issued the same day, the judge went likewise found similar violations: "The Court finds the same systemic targeting of proponents of medical treatment for gender incongruence at work here. The Society is the latest casualty in some Executive Branch agencies' bid to investigate hospitals, medical providers, and charitable organizations that support transgender health. The CID's focus on academic and medical speech, combined with the FTC's paucity of logic or evidence pointing to a genuine investigation, confirms the conclusion that the CID was likely issued for a retaliatory purpose."
The cases center on Civil Investigative Demands—administrative subpoenas the FTC issued to both organizations in January 2026, demanding sweeping and unprecedented access to their internal operations. The FTC ordered the organizations to turn over decades of internal communications about their clinical guidelines on gender dysphoria, every educational and advocacy material, every financial record, and the names of every member who had ever helped develop claims about gender-affirming care—potentially thousands of people. The CID to WPATH alarmingly reached back to 1979, the year WPATH was founded. The CIDs are part of a sprawling Trump administration campaign to suppress speech about transgender people and crush the institutions that provide it: the Kennedy Declaration, which drove more than 40 hospital systems to shutter their trans youth programs before a federal judge vacated it as unlawful last month; CMS proposed rules that would bar Medicare and Medicaid-receiving hospitals from providing such care entirely; and DOJ subpoenas to hospitals across the country, which federal judges have repeatedly quashed as "smokescreens" for retaliation. The FTC's CIDs were the latest weapon in that campaign.

We really need Nuremberg style tribunals when this is all done.

Clearly, the Problem is Criticism of the Supreme Court

2026-05-10T16:48:00.001-04:00

In writing his opinion emasculating the Voting Rights Act, Samuel Alito used fraudulent data.

I would argue that this should embarrass the Supreme Court Justice, except that:

Alito has no shame.
He doesn't care, and likely know that it was bogus.

The claims Samuel Alito, a supreme court justice, made about voter turnout in Louisiana in a landmark Voting Rights Act case were based on a misleading data analysis, a Guardian review has found.

In his opinion gutting section 2 of the Voting Rights Act last week, Alito said that Black voter turnout had exceeded white voter turnout in two of the five most recent presidential elections, both nationally and in Louisiana. Alito’s claim was copied almost verbatim from a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the justice department. It was a critical data point Alito used to make the argument that the kind of discrimination that once made the Voting Rights Act necessary no longer exists.

“Vast social change has occurred throughout the country and particularly in the South, where many Section 2 suits arise,” Alito wrote in a majority opinion in the case, which concerned Louisiana’s congressional map, joined by the five other conservative justices on the court. “Black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate, even turning out at higher rates than white voters in two of the five most recent Presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana.”

But a review of turnout and racial data in Louisiana reveals that assertion relies on an unusual methodology. The justice department brief that Alito cited calculated Black and white voter turnout in Louisiana as a proportion of the total population of each racial group over the age of 18. Such an approach is not preferred by experts in calculating statewide turnout because the general over-18 population may include non-citizens, people with felony convictions and others who cannot legally vote. But it does yield Alito’s conclusion that Black voter turnout exceeded white voter turnout in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections in Louisiana.

The widely accepted approach is to consider voter turnout as a proportion of the citizen voting age population or the voter eligible population, the latter of which excludes non-citizens as well as people who cannot vote because of a felony conviction or because they have been deemed mentally incapacitated. When the Guardian analyzed turnout numbers in Louisiana using the citizen voting age population, it found that Black voter turnout in Louisiana only exceeded white voter turnout in the 2012 presidential election.

This is not the first time that Alito has cited fraudulent data, and it will not be the last. He is a corrupt hypocrite.

Linkage

2026-05-10T05:30:00.004-04:00

Two tonnes of mascarpone and 19,000 eggs: chefs make world's longest tiramisu – video | Guinness World Records (The Guardian) To quote Styx, "Too much time on my hands."
Homer’s "Iliad" Found Stuffed Into Egyptian Mummy’s Wrappings (Gizmodo) Nos there's a book lover.
Where to buy a non-Apple, non-Google smartphone (The Register) Some slightly less evil alternatives.
Lost Copy of the Oldest-Known English Poem Discovered in a Rome Library (Gizmodo) For the history geek out there.
Egyptian Archaeologists Find Perfectly Circular Temple Tied to Ancient Water Cult (Gizmodo) You know all those people who say that the ancients could not do things? They are wrong, the ancients could do this.
Lost Pages of a Medieval Manuscript Recovered, Revealing New Testament Text (Medievalists.net) Impressions of prior text on reused parchment.
Scientists make breakthrough in solving mystery of volcanic lightning (The Guardian) Carbon, silicon, violent updrafts.

Sourdough or Shoggoth? (H/T JR at the SP BBS)

The Front Fell Off?

2026-05-09T19:34:00.000-04:00

My bad, it's not the front of a ship falling off, it's Tesla Cybertrucks wheels falling off.

I am shocked that such a thing could happen on the immaculate engineering masterpiece that is the Swastikar.

Tesla is recalling some Cybertrucks over concerns that their wheel studs could separate, potentially causing drivers to lose control.

The recall affects certain 2024 to 2026 Cybertrucks that were equipped with 18-inch steel wheels either during production, beginning in August 2025, or later during service, according to a report filed with the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). In total, the recall covers just 173 vehicles.

The issue centers on the trucks’ brake rotors. According to the report, rough road conditions and cornering could strain the stud holes in the wheel rotor and cause cracks to form. If those cracks spread with continued driving, a stud could eventually separate from the wheel hub. Tesla said early signs of the problem could include vibrations or noises audible from inside the truck.
………

The recall also offers a glimpse at demand for Tesla’s short-lived, cheaper rear-wheel-drive Cybertruck. The NHTSA filing noted that production of the affected vehicles stopped in November because of “limited demand of Cybertrucks equipped with 18-inch steel wheels.”

Several outlets have connected that line to Tesla’s cheaper rear-wheel-drive Cybertruck, which launched in April 2025 and was discontinued later that year. That version started at around $70,000 and omitted several features found on more expensive Cybertrucks. It also came with either 18-inch or 20-inch wheels.

Considering the recall affects only 173 vehicles total, it appears Tesla sold very few Cybertrucks with the 18-inch steel wheel setup before pulling the plug.

It ain't just the Incel Camino though. A few miles from my house there is a parking lot for a former Walmart that is has hundreds of cars parked in it.

None of the cars are selling.

Gee, You Think?

2026-05-09T18:55:00.001-04:00

When you read a headline like, "Maine Dems Angry About DCCC Interference in House Primary," you know that the story is incomplete.

The a more complete story would have the hed, "Main Dems Angry About Democratic Establishment in House and Senate Primaries," and a truly complete story would have the hed, "Main to Democratic Party Establishment, F%$#-Off You Incompetent Losers."

Among Democrat Party members, the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is about as popular as bleeding hemorrhoids.

Locals in Maine are bridling at the decision by a powerful Washington Democratic group to throw its weight behind one candidate in the contested primary race for the House seat in the state’s 2nd Congressional District.

On Monday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee issued a coveted endorsement of state Sen. Joe Baldacci in the primary race, prompting angry protests from the three other candidates in the race to replace outgoing Democratic Rep. Jared Golden.

In response to the endorsement, the Penobscot County Democratic Committee — in Baldacci’s home county, which includes the city of Bangor — will vote Saturday on a measure to condemn the endorsement. The language of the proposal, which was put forward by former Maine state Senate President Charles Pray, denounces the endorsement as being in “total disregard and willfully ignoring” local party rules that bar the Democratic state and county chapters from backing a candidate in a primary.

The Democratic Party base is sick and tired of the professional losers who constitute the party leadership.

Like Having Your Mother-in-Law Driving off a Cliff in Your Brand New Car

2026-05-09T18:32:00.001-04:00

I was once a student, and any disruption of finals is not good for them, but its cause, the hack of the widely loathed ~~spyware~~ education software platform Canvas.

Everyone who is actually directly involved in education, so not school board members or IT staff, hates it with a passion.

Chaos erupted at schools and colleges throughout the US on Thursday as a cyberattack disrupted online learning platform Canvas just as students were due to take final exams.

Canvas parent company Instructure said that as of Friday morning, the platform was back online. Instructure said it temporarily took Canvas offline on Thursday after identifying unauthorized activity in its network. The threat actor was the same one responsible for a data breach that Instructure disclosed a week ago. Data accessed included user names, email addresses, student ID numbers, and messages exchanged on the platform. The company said it has no indication that passwords, dates of birth, government identifiers, or financial information were involved.

Here's an idea. Don't use programs where your data is stored with a 3rd party who monetizes that data.

Gee, You Think?

2026-05-09T17:11:00.000-04:00

Following their drubbing in local elections, many in labor are pressuring Keir Starmer to step down.

Considering that he just got his ass kicked by the English version of Fred Flintstone, Homo heidelbergensis specimen Nigel Farage, their arguments carry a lot of weight.

While Starmer has achieved his goals, purging the Labour Party of actual Labour and prostrating the party before the alter of Neoliberalism, it turns out that this is not what the voters want.
Keir Starmer is under pressure to set out a timeline for his departure after a crushing defeat in elections across Britain prompted senior Labour MPs to call for him to step down within a year.

In a disastrous set of results, Labour had lost control of more than 25 councils and more than 1,000 council seats in England by Friday night, many to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which made large gains across the Midlands and the north as well as taking seats from the Tories in the south.

After more than a century of domination, Labour has faced near-wipeout in Wales, where the party’s first minister, Eluned Morgan, lost her seat. Labour could slump to third place in Scotland behind the SNP and Reform. In London, a Green surge meant Labour lost control of councils it had dominated, including Hackney and Waltham Forest.

While the prime minister appeared to have avoided an immediate coup, there was a furious response to the results among senior MPs and the unions, with some warning him to change course or risk electoral oblivion. By Friday evening, 10 more MPs had called for him to set out a timetable for departure from No 10.

It seems that the campaign slogan, "Better things are not possible," is not a winner.

Headline of the Day

2026-05-09T16:49:00.001-04:00

Patel’s Proving A Heavy Bourbon for Trump
—The Status Kuo, Ka$h Patel's many excesses during his tenure at the FBI.

Quoting the old Japanese proverb, "バカにつける薬はない." (There is no medicine for stupidity.)

As I wrote about last month, The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick published a blockbuster investigation of FBI Director Kash Patel based on over two dozen current and former FBI officials, detailing what the magazine described as his “conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences.” The report alleged that meetings were delayed because of late-night drinking, that senior Justice Department officials were alarmed by his conduct, and that Patel was often unreachable.

Patel’s allies said it was all fabricated. The FBI pushed back. And a reasonable person might have thought, “Okay, lay low. Let it blow over. Don’t make it worse.”

Kash Patel is not a reasonable person.

The account gets far weirder from there.

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (On Friday)

2026-05-08T20:04:00.016-04:00

So, initial unemployment claims are up slightly but remain low, and continuing claims fell:

Applications for US unemployment benefits rebounded slightly after falling in the previous week to near the lowest levels in decades, signaling layoffs remain muted despite recent job-cut announcements.

Initial claims rose by 10,000 to 200,000 in the week ended May 2, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 205,000 applications.

Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, fell to 1.77 million in the previous week, a new two-year low.

Also, the monthly jobs numbers came out. And notwithstanding claims that it is exceptional, the number is actually rather anemic, with about 115,000 jobs added to the work force.

The U.S. job market blew past expectations again in April, buoyed by gains across industries including retail, transportation and warehousing, and healthcare. The results were a sign that the labor market remained resilient so far in the face of the Iran war.
The numbers
The American economy added 115,000 jobs in April, the Labor Department said Friday, far exceeding expectations.
That was down from a net gain of 185,000 in March. But it was much better than the 55,000 jobs that analysts polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected to see for April.
The unemployment rate stayed unchanged at 4.3%, as economists had expected.

Not a bloody clue as to that the f%$# is going on here.

What I do know is that we are about 2-4 weeks into when ships stopped at the Strait of Hormuz should have arrived at their destinations and that oil reserves fell off of a cliff in April

Global oil reserves plunged at a record pace in April, as the conflict in the Middle East strains supplies and raises the risk of a further sharp jump in prices ahead of the summer travel season.
Stockpiles of crude fell by nearly 200mn barrels, or 6.6mn barrels a day, estimated S&P Global Energy, even as higher prices triggered a collapse in demand of about 5mn b/d, the sharpest ever fall outside of the Covid-19 pandemic.

That fall in economic demand is driven by a fall in economic activity.

Things are going to get a lot worse.

Charles "Doofenschmirtz" Saroff Will Take Over the Entire Tri-State Area!

2026-05-08T19:45:00.001-04:00

We know what he says it is, a lab project for Electronics & Instrumentation II (Mechatronics), but we all know what this REALLY is.

It's his evil plan to take over the entire Tri-State Area.

Behold the Metronominator !!!

Yes, I'm bragging about my kid, dads gotta dad.

In any case, here is his vid:

Kids these days with their Arduinos and their 3D printing.

In my day, we had to machine everything with flint tools!

FUUUUUUUUUUKKKKKKK!!!

2026-05-08T18:05:00.004-04:00

The Virginia State Supreme Court has struck down the new redistricting map.

Their legal reasoning sounds completely bonkers, unless there is some sort of provision in the state constitution that specifically calls this out:

The problem, the court’s majority suggested, was that the first vote on the amendment in the General Assembly, which would authorize Democrats to redraw the map, occurred days before last fall’s legislative elections — meaning that some Virginians who cast their ballots early did so without knowing how their state lawmakers would vote on the new map.

How the Fuck is this a thing?

A representative vote in a way that the voter does not anticipate when foting is kind of like the foundation of representative democracy!

Headline of the Day

2026-05-08T17:08:00.018-04:00

John Roberts Is George Wallace With A Harvard Law Degree
Crooks and Liars

It's pretty on point, and remarkably accurate.

The core of John Roberts' entire career can be summed up with the phrase, "N*****s should not vote."

………
But the Court didn’t destroy the Civil Rights Act in a day. It was part of a lifelong mission by John Roberts to do so.

Starting as early as 1981, as a 26-year-old lawyer just three years out of Harvard Law School, Roberts began his campaign to undermine the Civil Rights Act. He got himself a job as Special Assistant to Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General William French Smith. Congress was about to amend the Civil Rights Act to provide that state laws would be illegal if they had a racially discriminatory effect, without having to prove that they had a racially discriminatory intent—something almost impossible to prove.

Roberts zealously took on the assignment coming up with arguments against the Amendment. Roberts wrote over 25 memos opposing the Amendment. In one, he argued that the Civil Rights Act was “the most intrusive interference imaginable by federal courts into state and local processes.”

This is his life's mission.

The New Definitive Definition of Chutzpah

2026-05-07T20:31:00.000-04:00

Rudolph "Noun, a verb, and 911" Giuliani is asking to have his health care covered from the fund that pays for healthcare for workers who were exposed to toxins at the 9/11 site.

I would note here a fact from one of hizzoner's divorces, his wife claimed that he spent over $12,000.00 on cigars in the span of 5 months.

And now he wants money from the fund that is support the workers that he betrayed.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who has been diagnosed with pneumonia, is applying for free medical care through a federal program for emergency workers and others exposed to toxins following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to his lawyer.
More than 152,000 people have been enrolled in the initiative, the World Trade Center Health Program, which pays for medical research and provides free medical care to people affected by the terrorist attacks. Beneficiaries have access to doctors who specialize in Sept. 11-related illnesses, and the patients don’t face co-payments or deductibles.
………
The federal health program paid out more than 600,000 medical claims in the past year, at a cost of nearly $350 million. Many of the claims relate to cancer, while others covered treatments for respiratory ailments.
Getting approval to receive care through the health care fund could allow Mr. Giuliani or his family members to seek further compensation through a separate fund for 9/11 victims.

Every time I think that they cannot go any lower, they exceed my wildest imaginings.

Cancel Your Subscription

2026-05-07T20:23:00.002-04:00

It appears that the OP/ED section of the Washington Post can get even worse than it was under the stewardship of the late and (IMNSHO) unlamented Fred Hiatt.

They just put out an opinion piece criticizing Zohran Mamdani for being too mean to the billionaires who are ruining New York City.

Thank you Jeff Bezos.

I believe that I have stated before, that I would not wish cancer on anyone, and I stand by that.

I still want Jeff Bezos to get Fatal Familial Insomnia, which is much, MUCH, worse. (I'm not a good person)