Have we celebrated the resignation of DeJoy(less) as Postmaster Fuckup yet? If so, I must have missed it.
I like to think it’s because he never wants to be questioned by Jon Ossoff again. I know this is from 3 months ago, but I’m not sure this kind of burn goes away. Ever.
I watched the video at the time, and I happily watched it again when someone linked to it yesterday. Since Obama, I haven’t been as excited about a Senator as I am about Jon Ossoff. They don’t come better than this.
If the resignation is part of some plot to further destroy the post office, please break it to me gently.
Open thread.
This Is Why We Fight for Every Seat
WaterGirl
Want to nominate another senator who is this great? Jump right in!
A Ghost to Most
What’s to celebrate? He quit so his company could get the contract to replace postal service.
Steve LaBonne
@A Ghost to Most: That wasn’t very gentle. ;)
rikyrah
SECURITY BREACHES EVERYWHERE
Fred Wellman
@FPWellman
BREAKING NEWS: A high level source at the DOD has informed me that the Trump Administration authorized deployment of Signal onto government phones last month and it is a primary means of communicating with the White House. Read my exclusive story (1/2)
Fred Wellman
@FPWellman
Katie Arrington the newly installed Deputy Chief Information Officer for Cybersecurity and Chief Information Security Officer at the Department of Defense issued a waiver to install Signal on DoD phones last month. (2/2)
https://x.com/FPWellman/status/1904945988013285852
eclare
@A Ghost to Most:
Is that why he did it? He resigned so quickly.
eclare
@rikyrah:
That and no records kept. Signal erases them after one month, I believe. That is what FFOTUS learned from his first impeachment, leave no communication record.
sentient ai from the future
Marcy seems to think that Jamieson Greer, in the USTR, was the person they were attempting to add to the sekrit war chat and that makes sense.
But even if, as rikyrah says, DoD had issued a waiver, that doesn’t explain why the guy who was in Russia was not participating because his personal phone was at home.
Also, I’d imagine signal doesn’t get a waiver for NOT KEEPING FUCKING RECORDS UNDER THE FRA to go with it.
sentient ai from the future
@eclare: and he learned that because it was key to obstructing/ delaying the jan6 cases.
ETA: signal does not delete them, you can set a timeline for messages in a chat to disappear when you set it up, and that could be “never”
but it doesn’t prevent users from taking screenshots
rikyrah
@eclare:
ABSOLUTELY. THAT’S THE ENTIRE POINT. NO RECORDS.
Belafon
@rikyrah: Even though the DOD issued a Signal is vulnerable warning.
sentient ai from the future
@Belafon: the “high level source tells me” construction is telling. There are details being left out, almost certainly deliberately, and….hey journalist, have you corroborated this claim somehow?
Chief Oshkosh
@eclare: As probably most here know, actions taken by government officials are the business of the people. By law they must be archived and available to others at some level (e.g., just publicly available, others by FOIA, and others via security clearance).
But it all has to be documented and saved.
Chief Oshkosh
But back to DeJoy’s resignation: I, too, am wondering why now and why so abruptly?
Jeffro
@Chief Oshkosh:
every bit of this
including Jeffrey Goldberg on a Signal group chat is not the scandal…HAVING a Signal group chat is the scandal…LYING about the Signal group chat is the other scandal…and then TRYING TO SMEAR GOLDBERG is the other, other scandal
Jeffro
DeJoy no doubt resigned because trumpov is about to break the Post Office.
That and/or about to prohibit it from delivering mail-in ballot requests, mail-in ballots, etc. They’re already plotting how to ‘fix’ the midterm elections.
lowtechcyclist
@eclare:
No taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy, and all that.
WaterGirl
Trump can’t force any of them to take the fall for this because then that person would turn on Trump.
No honor among thieves. So I think they are gonna keep lying and obstructing until someone or something holds them accountable.
The press could do it. They haven’t covered themselves in glory, but right now, The Atlantic is looking like one possible candidate to make sure this doesn’t die or get swept under the rug.
RevRick
@Chief Oshkosh: They aim to fully privatize it, which will absolutely destroy mail service to rural areas and impoverished communities. But hey, there’s always the chance that the Pony Express will make a comeback.
eclare
@lowtechcyclist:
It’s all in the game…
Trollhattan
Remember “beautiful clean coal”? Well buckaroos, Donny now wants you to have a nuke in your backyard.
“Reliable, abundant, affordable” sure sounds like a winning trifecta to me! [I’m being told it’s zero of three.]
WaterGirl
@RevRick: But rural communities are their base!
Old School
@Chief Oshkosh:
From Maddow Blog:
A break to give WaterGirl time to sit down.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@eclare: I’m not sure what Trump learned. He seems out of it to me. When asked to comment on the current scandal, he said maybe it was a bad signal. Sometimes that happened. This from the man who thinks Hilary Clinton poured bleach on her computer.
Geminid
@rikyrah: Katie Arrington! That name rang a bell so I looked her up and sure enough, she’s the Tea Party crank who knocked out Rep. Mark Sanford in the 2018 SC01 primary.
Arrington went on to lose the seat; it had been in Republican hands since the party realignment of the 1970s. She ran again in 2020 but that time Meaner Girl Nancy Mace won the primary.
Those Republicans definitely aren’t sending their best. It’s like they pulled Arrington out of some political landfill.
sentient ai from the future
@Trollhattan: this is no doubt being driven by techbros in their quest to power their AI server farms.
I built a barely-adequate autocorrect from millions of pirated books and all I got was this lousy
t-shirtradioactive waste with a 50,000 year half lifeButch
On the subject of the USPS, we’ve been ordering chicks (baby chickens) by mail for probably 25 years. This time (last week), the USPS mishandled them so badly that we lost 18 of 40 chicks. It was heartbreaking and infuriating.
lowtechcyclist
@Trollhattan:
Riffing off Tom Lehrer:
We’ll try to stay serene and calm
when our asshole neighbor gets the Bomb
Old School
DougJ is excited:
From Fox News trending:
Gloria DryGarden
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
maybe it was a bad signal,
to use Signal,
so they could erase their signals and communication trails.
to smoke everyone out. But instead their signal got broadcast,
and even if JG hadn’t been there, all manner of other
unfriendly entities might have picked up the signal…
It’s a multiplicity of bad signs, red flags, signaling a big f’ing problem.
lowtechcyclist
My WAG is that, as bad as DeJoy has been, six months from now (if it takes that long) we’ll wish he hadn’t quit.
Trollhattan
@Old School: “might consider trying”?
Christ, every Republican since forever has wanted this and after they forced the long-range benefits fund prepayments, the Postal Service lost money ever since.
Old School
MTG apparently feels she hasn’t received enough attention lately. I’m sure this will improve foreign relations.
BlueGuitarist
Check out Wisconsin Democrats vs Musk re Wisconsin Supreme Court
Ben Wikler refers to these 2 ads as “punch[ing] back”
“The People vs. Musk”
https://bsky.app/profile/benwikler.bsky.social/post/3ljkqyj2fqc2d
“Firing Air Traffic Controllers. Cutting Rape Crisis Centers. Attacking Social Security. Elon Musk is out of control. And now the power-hungry billionaire is unloading millions to buy the Wisconsin Supreme Court. He knows MAGA politician Brad Schimmel is for sale and will abolish the checks and balances that protect us. He thinks he’s above the law. Protect our last line of defense. Vote Susan Crawford for Supreme Court.”
“kneepad Brad”
https://bsky.app/profile/benwikler.bsky.social/post/3llc5q7664c2e
“Brad Schimmel is corrupt and will do anything to get on the Supreme Court.
Audio of Schimmel with photo and text on screen:
‘I have to invest in knee pads. I have to crawl around begging people.
Please, please, please.’
And who did he beg? Elon Musk needs a guaranteed vote on the Supreme Court because his company is suing the state of Wisconsin.
Schimmel begged and Musk unloaded $10 million to rig the court.
So how much does it cost to buy off a corrupt politician?
Just ask knee pad Brad. [‘please, please, please.’]”
me
@Old School: Also from there “Federal appeals court announces ruling on Trump administration’s deportation flights” without saying in the headline that the lower court was upheld. I’m sure they are having a sad right now.
eclare
@Butch:
Oh I heard of that happening a couple of years ago. So sorry.
It may have happened to Ozark?
Belafon
@Butch: I remember that from Trump’s first term, and it’s another thing that bothers me that rural people still voted for him even after that was allowed to happen.
Gloria DryGarden
@me: but the people who got flown to El Salvador are still there, in non- good conditions, right?
people suffering; courts working on it on a different time line.
just noticing the contrast. It hurts. People
arehave been getting hurtScout211
@eclare:
That was me! Or rather my husband who use to raise our chickens. Our little rural post office clerk was in tears when the chicks finally arrived, all dead. The folks at the hatchery were as devastated as were we. We had to refuse the order and the hatchery sent a new batch but it was so awful. That had never happened to us before.
eclare
@Scout211:
Oh I would have been in tears too. I knew it happened to someone here.
Old School
I see Hegseth is going with the “Don’t believe your lying eyes!” defense.
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Oh. my. god.
Jay
Pekka Kallioniemi
@P_Kallioniemi
8h
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll talk about the takeover of social media by illiberal, populist influencers. For the last ten years, social media has been dominated by these voices and it is one of the main reasons for the political rise of people like Trump and Orban.
1/25
Scout211
As for why DeJoy resigned, most of the news stories are signaling that Trump plans a USPS “overhaul” or “shakeup” and was frustrated with DeJoy’s slow progress. IMHO, both sound ominous.
Butch
@eclare:
@Belafon:
@Scout211: Thanks, all. We did file a complaint with USPS but the response was a lesson in the difference between a reason and an excuse. We didn’t ask for replacements because we were afraid the same thing would happen. The local feed store has recommended a hatchery (we didn’t know about it) that’s within driving distance, so that’s what we’ll use in the future.
And yeah, we’re about as rural as you can get (rural Upper Peninsula) but we are definitely not Trump voters!
A Ghost to Most
@Steve LaBonne: This is no time for gentle.
hells littlest angel
DeJoy was forced out because he’s not shitty enough for Trump’s needs. Excuse me while I forgo celebrating.
eclare
@WaterGirl:
No worries. I hear Barron is good with the cyber.
Belafon
@Old School: Nobody was texting recipes. Where did you get the idea there were recipes? I don’t want to talk about recipes Why do you keep bringing it up?
Jay
@Gloria DryGarden:
at least 7 are not, El Salvador refused to accept them because apparently ICE and the transphobe Kristi Noem can’t tell the difference between men and women.
El Salvador has only agreed to accept Venezuelan men,
and there are a couple of Nicaraguan’s up for release as well.
WaterGirl
@Belafon: I remember the university-wide email that explained that the President of the University was resigning but he wasn’t resigning because of the fuckup with the new system that was being brought in.
I think they mentioned at least 5 times that it wasn’t because of the new fucked up system.
We all read it and said “he had to leave because the new system has been such a disaster.”
lowtechcyclist
@Old School:
Yeah, because an attack by our military against a foreign entity in a foreign land has nothing to do with war.
What a ditzbrain.
eclare
@lowtechcyclist:
His whole demeanor is scary AF. So of course he was confirmed.
Like Boof, I mean Brett.
Scout211
More clown show inadvertency (I think I just made that word up). Edit: nope it’s a real word
Big news day in inadvertency.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: oh my gosh. Thanks. And the un accepted people have continued their un requested travels, then, I assume?
Captain C
@WaterGirl:
And even if they didn’t, Trump would look bad for making the hire in the first place, so they’ll just close the shades on the train and pretend it’s still moving.
(This comes from a Soviet-era joke about what their leaders would do if they were on a train which suddenly stopped: Stalin would have the engineer and the crew shot and replace them with loyalists, Krushchev would appoint a team of experts to fix the train and try to make sure the problem doesn’t happen again, and Brezhnev would simply have the shades shut on all the windows and pretend the train was moving.)
BlueGuitarist
@Gloria DryGarden:
More people being disappeared:
story today, with surveillance video, what looks like a kidnapping of Tufts Doctoral Student Rumeysa Ozturk, by gang in civilian clothes, masks, unmarked vehicles who snatched her off the street. Apparently ICE/DHS, apparently they are big mad about an op-ed she co-wrote a year ago, and they say they will revoke her visa.
https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/03/26/video-tufts-student-arrested-ice-rumeysa-ozturk/
Scout211
Oh, and there’s more.
. . .
Jay
@Gloria DryGarden:
The Nicaraguans are going home. Unclear if the Venezuelan women have been returned to ICE Concentration Camps in the US, or are in a Salvadorian hotel.
Gloria DryGarden
Reposting from last thread, because it went dead, but this is of interest:
OT, but of military interest, fyi:
Pollyanna has just seen a large cargo jet, grey military coloring, flying low, heading north, in NW Georgia, near Rome/ Summerville. 5 minutes ago.
IN 2.5 years there, he has not seen this before.
What’s going on?
Jay
@Gloria DryGarden:
He can check flight radar. It could be something as simple as a weather reroute.
Captain C
@Scout211:
It’s OK, I’m sure the nice, gentlemanly, honest people in the Russia and Chinese (and many other) secret services wouldn’t do anything so rude as read each other’s mail.
eclare
@BlueGuitarist:
That is terrifying to watch. Her lawyer has no idea where she is.
cain
@eclare: but make breaches great again
There will be a record trail because of hacking.
bbleh
@Belafon: it seems pretty clear that nobody from the Orange Guy on down cares much about security vulnerabilities.
The Pool-Shed Papers? The personal cellphones? Fkin Tulsi Gabbard? (Here I thought maybe the Orange Guy was the most obvious Russian asset in the WH but noooo.)
One presumes that anyone with ANY brains assumes that the entire WH is effectively fully compromised.
WTFGhost
@RevRick: Yes. They want to privatize the post office so UPS can deliver mail in Manhattan, and no one delivers it out in the boonies. Sucks to be rural!
@Trollhattan: Small modular reactors do have game changing potential to provide reliable, abundant, and affordable, energy. They’re like a pre-fab house, but far more complicated, and they should be walk-away safe, and able to be linked together (hence “modular”). Because they can be mostly constructed in a lab/factory, they can be almost dropped in place, and start working. Someday, people will likely wonder why it took us so long to perfect them – didn’t we care about the problems of big reactors enough?
That said: the Trump-feds are saying “plop it anywhere you want; we don’t care how it affects the community, we only care about the billionaire who’s backing it.” Still, soon there will be conservative commentators joking that nuclear waste is a fine weedkiller, and so forth, if there are problems.
Peke Daddy
@Trollhattan: Absolute waste of time, money and very limited in carbon abatement. Amory Lovins:
https://youtu.be/3Y0ocpqDAiI?si=RzE0g18lHaE9A69N
RaflW
Someone speculated that he’s resigning because he knows the P25 thugs have something so bad planned for USPS that even DeJoy doesn’t want his fingerprints on it. Blergh.
Jacel
@RevRick: Of course the new Pony Express will be on the Buy Your Own Pony basis.
Harrison Wesley
@lowtechcyclist: He is referring all future inquiries to his personal assistant, Captain Morgan.
Ruckus
@RevRick:
The Pony Express? That’s horseshit. All over my front porch….
Sorry it just popped into my head. But that’s the only concept I could see if the pony express delivers my mail.
Folks, let’s face it – people like T. Dump have zero concept of any kind of democracy and us being in any way equal to any of them. And we already know that they aren’t equal to us. Just ask them. Oh wait, they think they are better than all of us put together.
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I’m sure what dump learned. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. OK I’ll give him some credit. He learned how to be worse.
Baud
@RevRick:
Finally. After years of complaining that I want a pony, I’m going to get a pony.
Craig
@Scout211: and Waltz is supposedly a Security Advisor. We live in Bizarro World.
Trivia Man
@Butch: in my old town they had a booming live chick business. I liked going to the post office when they had a shipment moving through. Peeppeeppeeppeep
eclare
@WTFGhost:
I can guess which communities will be graced by these new reactors…
gene108
@rikyrah:
Back around 2008 or so, and I don’t remember if it was in Iraq or Afghanistan or maybe both, U.S. troops stationed in those areas bought external storage drives from the local markets.
A hostile actor (probably Russia) shipped a bunch of these drives to the local markets through regular seeming suppliers. The drives were infected with a virus or malware. U.S. service members would buy these devices to backup what they worked on. Once these were connected to a government computer the virus or malware found its way through the DOD IT systems.
It took 10 years or so to clear the DOD systems from this attack.
I feel like all these chuckle fucks in the DOD and IC don’t care about a god damned thing other than acting tough. To hell with all the lessons the DOD learned through trials and tribulations about cybersecurity.
eclare
@Craig:
Don’t you remember? These are merit hires, not like that DEI four star General Austin.
Ruckus
@Geminid:
Wrong. That IS their best.
Hence the problem……
Baud
Via reddit, marketing!
Martin
@eclare: You can set how quickly they are erased. You can erase them in a day.
And that requires that you trust signal to erase them. I have no reason to believe they are lying about that, but the federal fucking government should if they’re using it for some of the most valuable information in the world.
Also worth noting, Signal is an open source protocol that anyone can use, including the federal government. They can deploy it inside the DOD and maintain control over what is deleted and what is not. They are choosing to not do that because they are adamant about their conviction that the federal government is incompetent, even when they’re running it.
The biggest advantage of doing this is that the feds can control who has an account, which means they can make it impossible for Jeffrey Goldberg to be invited in, because they can prevent Jeffrey Goldberg from having an account. This has long been identified as a critical security element of any system – account control.
Jay
@WTFGhost:
@Peke Daddy:
@eclare:
Nuclear Research Canada has been “chasing” the idea of small nuclear reactors for over 40 years, with the idea of replacing diesel generators in remote communities.
Billions spent, 0 reactors.
In Nunavut, they have figured out to replace diesel generators in small communities. Wind and solar.
Martin
@WTFGhost: You’re going to have to qualify the ‘affordable’ part there, because if there’s one thing we know from 70 years of nuclear power, affordable and safe are to some degree mutually exclusive. Safe nuclear power isn’t cheap – go ask the navy, who are very safe.
Jay
@eclare:
Well, one is a DUI hire.
Martin
@Scout211: Let the phishing attacks commence.
TF79
@Old School: The card says Moops!
eclare
@Jay:
Mee-ouch! But true.
Trollhattan
There’s a Lifetime movie here somewhere.
swiftfox
Time for the boss to do some deep thought about this blog because without mister mix it’s pretty stale.
eclare
@TF79:
Hahaha…
Martin
@TF79: Link is helpful for those who don’t know the reference.
Baud
@Martin:
DOGE will take care of that.
Peale
@Trollhattan: Really more something for Gagaoolala or Dekkoo to stream.
Trollhattan
@WTFGhost:
What I glean from the propeller heads is while they can scale down plant size, and in theory standardize them, security risk does not scale. Going from a hundred giant installations to a thousand small ones means adding 900 terror targets.
Meanwhile, more PV fields, more battery plants, eliminate the desire and argument for ghoulishly expensive fusion power.
Peale
@Jay: El Salvador is going to lose on this one, but I’m going to guess that they will soon find a few hundred thousand people they didn’t wish to exploit. Couldn’t happen to a nicer asshole president.
patrick II
Quick question: If gang tattoos will get a person deported without a hearing, why isn’t Pete Hegseth rotting in a Venezuelan jail?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Jeffro:
This.
I’m not paying real close attention to the media coverage on this but am assuming they’re not covering this angle because I always assume that media coverage will be shambolic.
Having said that, I read the annotated CNN report on the text and these people not only are stupid, they’re incompetent.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: clean, renewable, sustainable, low risk. I like that.
Geminid
@Old School: Rep. Greene may be worried about a primary challenge from the right. There is a young, fast-talking* and very ambitious state Senator from Dalton who likely has Greene in his sights.
* Thirty-one year old Senator Colton Moore won the Georgia state auctioneer title at age 21.
Peale
@patrick II: Just to be clear here, it is any male with a tattoo. This is the right wing we’re talking about here. You think they know one thing from another or care? Its like how they were convinced that every gesture a black man makes is a gang sign, or that Michelle and Barrack Obama’s fist bump was a tribute to the Mau Mau uprising.
WTFGhost
@Trollhattan: Fair enough, and that’s a reasonable thing to call out. Me, I’m all “OMG, the wonderous science and engineering!” but, yeah, there’s pragmatism. We put nuclear reactors on ships and boats… but we have them full of military personnel, too.
West of the Rockies
Kinda catty, but I’ve always felt a bit sorry for the presumed Mrs. DeJoy when he presents the little postmaster general.
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: will he be any improvement?
No One of Consequence
Evening all, if I may, I’ve a question for those assembled who have served:
Wouldn’t any information about *ANY* service member imminently going into Harm’s Way be — by definition — classified?
It would certainly seem to me that it would make sense if such information WERE at least classified…
DafugdooEYEknoh?
-NOoC
Scout211
Go Senator Duckworth.
More like this, please!
Baud
@Gloria DryGarden:
He won’t need to find someone else to display dick pics at the Capitol.
Bill Arnold
@eclare:
For a Signal group at least, it is a setting and the default is keep-forever. It has to be changed to e.g. 4 weeks. (Just went through this on one of my Signal groups.)
So making messages disappearing was probably deliberately done by Waltz, unless it was baked into a DoD version/configuration of Signal, and that would be in blatant and obviously deliberate violation of the law.
Jay
@Trollhattan:
get rid of useless AI megaprojects and Crypto and the problem goes away.
Martin
@Trollhattan: Security risk does not scale, but a bunch of other things don’t either. Disposal of spent fuel is a huge one. The biggest risk of doing that is transporting it, and more reactors means more transporting, or more backyard waste dumps. One of the bigger problems with Fukushima was that Japan was storing spent fuel onsite (as we routinely do in the US) because of that transportation problem, and that spent fuel was part of the nuclear release in the area, with significant work done to maintain cooling of spent fuel that continued for nearly a decade.
But nuclear is mostly a non-starter because we are seriously failing the management of large projects in the US. A lot of that gets blamed on excessive government regulation, but just as much, and in a lot of cases even more should be blamed on the state of the US financial system. You’re going to need to borrow a billion dollars to build one of these things and pay it off over a period of decades as ratepayers provide the funds. Yes, the NRC is going to make you jump through a million hoops to prove you can operate that plant safely, but the bank is going to make you jump through just as many hoops to reasonably ensure you can pay off that loan, which means demonstrating that the levelized cost of nuclear will remain competitive with alternatives (in a fast moving environment where renewable generation costs are falling through the floor). And that’s not even the worst of it. Lending for long-term infrastructure is not a particularly good investment when so many alternatives are available. Why tie up that capital for 20 or 30 years at 5%, when you have everything from equities to crypto you can dump that money into, potentially get better than 5% and be able to pull those assets back at any time. Since the 80s we’ve opened up insanely many new places to make money, and pouring concrete is probably the worst of the lot. So unless you have a billion dollars burning a hole in your pocket that you can’t think of any better place to put, sure, go for it. But note that there are how many large corporations throwing off that kind of cash in buybacks, who deem that a better use of a billion dollars than small nuclear. Apple could build one of those reactors every few weeks for what they’re handing back to investors, and they ain’t doing it. And note, Apple runs their own wholesale energy company from investments in large scale grid solar. You don’t even get the excuse of ‘that’s not their industry’, it actually is their industry now.
Jay
@patrick II:
wrong skin color,
The gang in question, doesn’t have gang tattoos as a marker, some of the deported have no tattoos, some have tattoos from a famous tattoo artist, one has a bunny under a palm tree.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: well, then.
Happily, I didn’t know anything about this. MTG? I refuse to google such a filthy topic.
What I know about dick pix:
There was a lovely skating couple, Olympic level, that had to break up their pair, because he got banned from competing, by the figure skating association, because he sent dick pics to underage skaters at his training arena in Florida.
too bad. Vanessa James and a French guy, I get his name mixed up with Gabrielle Pappadakis’ partner.
Vanessa James went on to skate pairs for Canada with a new partner. YouTube has a nice video of her skating with her previous guy, to sounds of silence. They were really good, in the top 8 in the world, I believe.
I don’t know anyone who wants to see that kind of photo. It’s all about how the person is in relationship; not about parts. As discussed previously.
Give me instead, photos of the French Pyrenees or a purple sunset, any day.
Gloria DryGarden
@Martin: thank you, I didn’t realize money over time was such a big deterrent to building nuclear power plants. Glad to know it.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: It depends on how you look at it. Moore seems smarter. Right now he’s a Georgia Republican problem though; very anti-establishment. His advantage over Greene is he’s from an established NE Georgia business family, while Greene carpetbagged in from the Atlanta suburbs. And he’ll outwork Greene; the guy acts humble but he radiates ambition.
Pollyanna might be in Colton Moore’s senate district so he might know about him.
Jay
@Gloria DryGarden:
The only dick pic’s I am interested in are of Dick van Dyke.
At a hearing MTG had posters of what are supposedly Hunter Biden’s junk and presented them to the House.
As it was on CSPAN, technically, she should have been charged.
Bill Arnold
@Peke Daddy:
The current interest in SMRs is driven in part by the anticipated demands of potential future AI datacenters, I strongly suspect.
Beats natural gas for low carbon emissions, at least.
ETA also perhaps bitcoin mining; I hope not, but with the Trump2 adminstration, it is possible.
The Audacity of Krope
@Trollhattan: It has been hard enough to get communities to accept the idea of commercial nuclear energy. Personal reactors is nutso, even from the perspective of the most eager nuclear energy enthusiast, one would assume.
Baud
@The Audacity of Krope:
I would buy one for my car so I can roll uranium.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: my van dyck is actually warm and kind and the kind of dick, Richard Tom or harry one might enjoy being around. I’ve watched him in interviews. Seems an outstanding guy. Great reply, man.
Its weird she wasn’t charged! Creepy. As well as rather vile, imo.
Baud
Blue State difference
Jay
@Bill Arnold:
There has always been “interest” in SMR’s. In theory, you have a small number of large Cargo containers that you can stack or connect, and they can power a small city, a remote factory or town for about 25 years. At 25 years, some of them get hauled away and new “power cores” get installed. The old reactor’s get “safely recycled” at an imaginary facility.
It’s based on the idea that you can scale down nuclear reactors.
Yes you can, nuclear ships, subs prove you can, but, you need a crew of Nuclear Engineers working 24/7 to keep it safe. It’s not a plug and play. Inuvik has a hard enough time recruiting a single Family Doctor, so I doubt they can recruit 25 Nuclear Engineers to work shift work, no matter what they pay.
And of course, when Felon Husk’s Grok goes nuclear, the first thing he will do is fire the engineers.
karensky
@Jeffro: Absolutely.
The Audacity of Krope
Jokes on you. Nuclear reactor emissions are water vapor.
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: smarter is good. Hard working is good. If he’s not maga, and not crazy, that could be good.
I’ll ask Polly about his district. He’ll be getting a way to have internet at home pretty soon, maybe he’ll start keeping up again.
Jay
@The Audacity of Krope:
Not always.
Martin
@No One of Consequence: Don’t serve, but I have been trained to some degree on handling of classified information as we had a fair bit of it in my organization floating about. It was mostly of the form ‘if you find this in a place it shouldn’t be, here’s what you should do’. I never had a security clearance, but I was considered an information security officer at a reasonably high level and was relied on to always know what to do with something that landed in my lap, even accidentally.
The thing to understand is that classification is an administrative act. Generally information is not inherently classified (nuclear information is an exception). Information is marked as classified. Someone has to decide ‘this is sensitive, this shouldn’t be shared’. This is a semantic point, but it’s an important one particularly when you are hearing this testimony.
Orthogonal to classification is national security sensitive information which there are a different set of laws which address revealing that information. This is the designation for things that are inherently sensitive. In most cases, this information would then go on to be classified, but not always. Information which the government doesn’t own can’t be classified, so trade secrets such as information around Starlink, even industry data like much of a given thing we make across our markets, etc. It’s still protected, you can still go to prison to reveal it, but it’s a different set of laws. This information is formally called ‘Controlled Unclassified Information‘ but it’s a fair bit broader than that.
My organization operated a research nuclear reactor. There was a small amount of information surrounding that reactor that fell under the Atomic Energy Act and was illegal to reveal, but was not formally classified. Almost all of this nobody really gave a shit about and this was archaic, but we still handled per the law.
My guess regarding the chat, most of the information in there wasn’t (yet) classified, some was (like the assets on the ground who were verifying identities), but all of it was sensitive national security information that was almost certainly illegal to reveal to a journalist. Terminology matters a lot here if you are looking at hearings, and I think a lot of the Democrats cross examining are asking the wrong questions and allowing the folks from that chat to weasel out by being precise with their words. Was the chat classified? No. Was it going to be classified immediately after? Yes, if that transcript was even passed along to be classified. My guess is they were going to hide it from the government so they wouldn’t have to bother with that, assuming that it had simply been deleted. Was the chat sensitive national security information that was illegal to share under existing law? Absolutely.
Jay
@Martin:
How do you classify a group chat over an unsecure app?
Martin
@Gloria DryGarden: It’s a deterrent to pretty much all big infrastructure problems. The VC Summer reactor in South Carolina suffered from this problem as well, and ultimately failed due to some of the contractors going out of business.
We gave finance too much room to operate. They don’t care about building infrastructure or durable value to society – that’s what government cares about. Finance’s job is to turn small piles of money into large piles of money controlling for risk and time, and large infrastructure projects aren’t favorable on either of those terms.
My view stands that if you want nuclear for grid generation, hire the navy to do it, and be prepared to pay their price. It won’t be cheap, but it also won’t fail. The reason solar and wind have succeeded they are generally small in scope, can be partially implemented to get returns started immediately, and are sufficiently simple in nature that a bankrupt contractor can easily be replaced. Nuclear means you’re going to plow the entire investment amount into the project before you get a penny out of it. Likely 10 years of zero returns. No bank wants to make that loan.
Gloria DryGarden
@The Audacity of Krope: riding on the vapors of several intertwined discussions, this seems a reasonable moment for my promised angle on “bigger:”
Size. If it’s a city, and it’s big, that’s good, right? If it’s a hamburger, or a penis, or a military, or a mountain and it’s big, that’s good. Ours is bigger than yours. And boobs, big boobs are supposedly good, too. So why is it, a woman is supposed to never be fat, or big, but always slim, and small (and perhaps easily overcome?)
This thought originated in the pressure, as a woman, to stay a smaller size, to not have big thighs, to stay small. (Equivalent, required to be seen as beautiful). To not ever be fat. And in my growing up years, to pretend one’s intellect and math prowess were small, too. Sort of, how come those things are great if they’re big, but not for me. And check it out, we get mommy tummy, we get rounder and fuller, most of us with age. Darn.
Baud
This is different from the Venmo thing.
Xentik
I just want to correct this, as it’s not true.
All military plans are put together on a classified system and marked with classification from the starting point. There is never a point where military operations information is not classified, and almost everything to do with active operations is Top Secret.
Hegseth would have had to manually copy (i.e. write it down on paper) the information from a secure system in a room where no outside electronics are allowed to get it onto his Signal account. Or he took the phone in and typed on it there, which is *also* a crime.
Gloria DryGarden
@Martin: if they’re asking the wrong questions, they need you on a call, to advise them. Well informed advisors can make a difference, esp since the congress critters are often basically lay people, some with training in law, others not so much.
your calls to your reps could be specialized…
Xentik glad to read your perspective.
LAC
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/unions/2025/03/after-dejoys-exit-usps-unions-wary-of-trumps-shakeup/
DeJoy is an ass, and this does not read as a joyful development. Two things can be true at once
Martin
@Jay: Well, it’s presumably a secure app. Signal protocol is good.
If DOD was operating the signal protocol (which is open source) in their own app which they controlled, this would be fine. They would control access to accounts which could be invited (so, not giving one to reporters to be accidentally invited), they would control that the encrypted chat transcript was deleted (they are trusting that the company that runs Signal is going to do that), and DOD could control that the transcript was made available for classification if they wanted to preserve it. It might be okay it’s not preserved – there are conversations involving sensitive information that are not preserved.
The trick with encryption is that all encrypted messages can be broken, but the cost may not make it worth it. If you don’t know the nature of an encrypted message, you aren’t going to devote your nations supercomputer to crack it if it might just be my conversation with my gardener. But if you KNOW it’s a conversation between the secretary of defense and the vice president, that’s a message that’s probably worth devoting those resources to.
So Signal and iMessage and all of these end-to-end encrypted protocols are secure for you and I because nobody fucking cares about us. We don’t have important things to say. But the standard for government communication, which do have important things to say, is much higher, and while signal protocol is likely adequate to that task, a lot of the things around the edges that make it easy to use for normies (like being able to save Jeffrey Goldbergs contact information on device) make it insufficient for government. Most notably the mirroring feature that allow you to interact from more than one device, so when you are chatting with your mom, you can jump from your iPad to your iPhone when you need to run into the kitchen to make dinner. That’s a nice convenience, but DOD doesn’t want that to allow you to shift from your DOD secured device to your personal device. And that’s the feature which has the vulnerability that can allow a hostile actor to establish a side-channel into your Signal chat.
Again, this just strikes me as lazy and unserious. If DOD doesn’t have their own service like this, that’s a failure of a lot of administrations including the Biden one. If they do and these guys just didn’t feel like using it, that’s just straight criminal. We know from the Clinton email saga that the availability of adequate services is lacking. That’s a valid criticism.
Gin & Tonic
@Martin:
Hey! Speak for yourself.
Gloria DryGarden
I think I need a little t chart, to compare and contrast “Hillary’s emails,” and this recent signal-gate event.
duration, hackability, archiving, classified info requirements, numbers of. Lives affected potentially…
so I can argue w those persons who bring it up. And for a nice wide fact check and reality check..
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl: “There is NO cannibalism in the British Navy, and when I *say* there is no cannibalism, I MEAN – there is a certain amount.”
The Audacity of Krope
@Gloria DryGarden: Beauty standards are moving. Though it still isn’t in a healthy place for women.
I know a lot more men lately looking for “thick” women. They’re usually looking for that thickness in the thighs and ass (but not the waist😵💫).
This still creates an unrealistic standard and is encouraging…risky surgeries. I will never understand why men get to set a standard and any women seek to achieve it. Whatever happened to doing things for oneself or accepting people how they are?
karen gail
@Butch: For years I ordered chicks by mail and the mailman would talk about putting up with cheeping for hours since I wasn’t only one ordering. Then that local post office stopped delivery of chicks and had you pick them up before 9 am; figured if I was going to have to make a run to get chicks I would check out local hatcheries even though they didn’t carry the assortment I preferred. Ended up switching breeds of layers and then buying meat birds rather than a heavy layer straight run.
chemiclord
@eclare: He resigned because he could. Had Harris won, I can promise you he would still be at his post.
Martin
@Xentik: You’re assuming they are still operating in that way. I’m not convinced they are, because I think Hegseth was either openly operating from a SCIF or this information was openly being passed through one (it wasn’t all recounting plans, some of it was realtime info).
To be clear, you’re correct that’s how it SHOULD be done, and historically always has been done. I think it’s unwise to assume that’s still the case and opens up a whole set of other questions from Congress.
Another Scott
@Trollhattan: +1
Plus, there’s still the problem of all the highly radioactive waste…
Best wishes,
Scott.
eclare
@chemiclord:
Thanks. Sometimes the simplest answer is the most accurate.
Miss Bianca
@Bill Arnold: Hell, they’re keeping coal plants in GA open that were due to be scuttled because of data center demand. Outrageous.
Gloria DryGarden
@The Audacity of Krope: just so. I don’t know if men are taught to be so critical of their bodies, but as a woman, it’s been lifelong. Trying so hard to accept what is there, the shape, the non ideal attributes. To see it all as acceptable, rather than feeling I can’t pass, because I’m overweight, or have big thighs, am not pretty enough, am too obviously brainy. And I’ve heard it from all my women friends and clients. Too much of this, not enough of that, saying we’re fat, when there’s some curve here or there. All the time. Every time we get dressed, or zip our jeans, or try on clothes. Just rarely ok. The standards have been insane.
Emma Thompson says it so well in her interviews: oh do, spend all your time criticizing and hating your body and trying to change it. Instead of finding creativity and making things happen in the world.
People come in all shapes and sizes, and ages, and all are normal.
Scout211
@Baud: Also too, at #57
Baud
Via reddit, I can’t understand how Trump got so many votes.
Baud
@Scout211:
You are first!
Gloria DryGarden
@Another Scott: That. IS. THE. THING.
radioactive waste. And safety operating the reactor
human error is a given.
The idea of having a well staffed, trained disciplined careful group such as the U.S. navy handling all nuclear facilities, would be a lot safer. Barring earthquakes..
( we’ve all heard about corners being cut in construction. Leaks, melt downs, thinking of three mile island, and Chernobyl…And building one in an earthquake zone, Japan, the west coast of USA, lack of foresight..
Baud
@Gloria DryGarden:
I had body issues when I was young.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: say more? Examples? So, boys, too?
(Is every guy supposed to be big and strong, and brave, and eat puppy dogs tails on a dare?)
im assuming you’re not just making an elegant quip this time
The Audacity of Krope
@Gloria DryGarden: I’m a man and I can definitely be critical of my own body. But my goals are personal, they’re my own.
And if a man doesn’t like my body type as a rule, I move on to the next one. And if I perceive that someone might be interested but for my not putting as much effort in as he is, I can increase my efforts or not, I can shoot my shot or not. But I know, in the end, I can find someone I’m attracted to without some dramatic culturally dictated alteration.
Geminid
@Xentik: One thing I think that was going on the night the new bombing campaign is that the planning and execution of the strikes was lrft to Central Command or CENTCOM– or at least that is what I’ve read. CENTCOM has been dealing Houthi attacks in shipping and Israel since October of 2023. The Bidn administration kept the efforts at a relatively low level because their strategy was to contain conflicts related tonthe Gaza war and not escalate them. But CENTCOM was always tracking Houthi assets and kept a big target list.
There was a hiatus in the conflict st the beginning of February with the Gaza ceasefire. When Israel.ended the ceasefire 10 days ago the Houthi missiles started flying again and the administration told CENTCOM to implement its plans to “take out” the Houthi threat. Hedgseth and company weren’t clustered in a Pentagon war room because they essentially acted as kibitzers and cheerleaders. This os not to justify their reckless and irresponsible conduct but to explain it.
The “Signalgate” scandal has taken attention away from the actual operation, but that is the norm now; American politics tend to overshadow actual warfare as I saw in the case of the Gaza conflict of which this bombing campaign is an extension.
But people should be paying attention because this military campaign may well result in a conflict with Iran. The administration says it will hold Iran responsible if the Houthis keep attacking Israel, American warships and commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
Trump also sent a letter to Iran’s leaders earlier this month that gave them two months to end their nation’s extensive effort to acquire a nuclear weapons capability. The Iranians maintain that they will not negotiate under threat of force
There are Iran hawks in Congress and in his bumbling national security team egging Trump on. The US just sent a 5th and 6th B-2 bomber to an airbase at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and the Carl Vinson carrier group is on its way from the Pacific Ocean to the the war zone. These movements are not about the Houthis; they’re about Iran.
Baud
@Gloria DryGarden:
I was self conscious about not being in good shape. And being unpopular. And smelling bad.
Another Scott
@Martin: You’re violating one of dsquared’s “1 minute MBA” rules. Namely – Never give known liars the benefit of the doubt.
They were using Signal because they want no oversight. They don’t want to follow the laws and rules about government records.
The government has all kinds of secure communications platforms – they don’t need to roll their own DOD Signal. They refused to use them because they don’t want anyone knowing what they’re doing.
NPR.org:
IANAL, but it seems obvious they broke all kinds of regulations, rules, and laws in their little conversation. They didn’t care. Their only concern was to try to prevent any oversight by Congress.
(And you know this isn’t the only conversation they’ve had to try to avoid the regulations, rules, and laws…)
HTH!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Jay
@Geminid:
They dropped an entire apartment building, killing 52 including 5 children to kill one Houthi Missile Tech.
Gloria DryGarden
@BlueGuitarist: i will now go sob loudly into a pillow while screaming and kicking. I don’t know what to do. Masked, unidentified persons, it’s kidnapping.
An article she wrote a year ago?
They’re coming for us, next.
freedom of speech and press…
in Uruguay, one story was, someone got warned they were coming for them, hopped a plane out of the country before 24 hours.
no words for how horrified I feel.
Steve in the ATL
@Baud: you left out ugly
Martin
@Gloria DryGarden: Personally I think they both stem from a similar problem, that the federal government doesn’t provide adequate infrastructure for administrators to operate at the pace and manner that they feel they need to operate. I think that’s a valid thing to poke at. Maybe I’m wrong and these people just refuse to use the available systems, but I spent enough time working in the public sector to know that’s the lack of adequate infrastructure (in modern context) is a common and widespread problem at all levels.
Note, this is isn’t an excuse. But it does appear that someone approved the use of Signal on DOD devices. I think that decision deserves to be investigated. I wasn’t allowed to use Signal for university communications because of the lack of an audit trail and a lack of institutional control over content deletion, control over namespace (you may claim to be Jeffrey Goldberg from the Atlantic, but how can I be sure of that? etc.) I wan’t allowed to send student information to an email address that wasn’t one that we provided to the student, because I can’t verify identity through hotmail. In order to provide information over the phone, we had a process to verify the persons identity even if it was from a known phone number. There are no technological solutions to these problems, in a complete sense. There are always procedures that you need to employ on even the most secure systems – are the correct people in this channel. I never had a conversation in Zoom without knowing exactly who was in the conversation, because I don’t know what I can say without knowing who I’m talking to. Basic precautions like that appear to not have been taken.
To be clear, it think Clinton fucked up with the server. Not enough to disqualify her over Trump, mind you.
The Audacity of Krope
@Baud: A ten minute shower fixes a third of those problems.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: us military did that?
reminded of ruzzia in their current war against civilians…
Jay
@Baud:
You probably would have been more popular if you wore pants.
Geminid
@Geminid: Plenty of typos and incomplete thoughts in that one but I think the basic meaning got expressed.
eclare
@Baud:
That is so sad. And infuriating. Desperate people being preyed upon.
Jay
@The Audacity of Krope:
Or a dab of Musk rather than a whole can of Axe Body spray.
RevRick
@Jacel: You better be prepared to pony up.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: You are pulling our leg, aren’t you?
The Audacity of Krope
No, you need the whole can. Shit only last like half an hour.
@schrodingers_cat: My leg remains unmolested.
Geminid
@Jay: I saw that. Hedsgseth and company patted each other on the back over that one. These people think they are ruthless but they’re just amoral. They’re pretty stupid too; a very bad combination.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jay:
I remember, a million years ago now, that the Trump admin in the early days axed a part of the DOD that worked to minimize civilian casualties.
These people are depraved monsters
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: Adolescence was such a misery, for so many of us.. no one felt popular, we were all starting to smell, no one had compassion for people with less means or lower standard of living, and with regard to fitness, not everyone takes to physical fitness stuff, or sports. Some of us preferred math,or French, or art, or debate team…
we had to run around the park in gym class. There were always a few of us girls straggling in the back. It just didn’t come natural.
The culture of comparisons didn’t teach respect or valuing others. I’m saying I relate some.
Baud
@eclare:
You have a good heart, but I imagine there’s not much of a hair a gap between those people and Trump voters.
eclare
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Yes, they did. They also dismissed all of the JAG’s.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: but, but, think of the gratuitous dick pix!
Martin
@Another Scott: There is now reporting that Signal was approved for use on DOD devices. I’m also seeing reporting that contradicts that. The disagreement may be that DOD doesn’t approve, but someone above DOD may have overruled that. I don’t know, and I think Congress should sort that shit out ASAP.
There’s also the open question of whether these people were using DOD devices or personal ones.
I’m trying to make a bigger point that if the feds need an end-end secure encryption solution, they can make it themselves. It’s not even that hard as they could worst case just take the signal protocol and run with it (as though the NSA doesn’t have a fucking room full of better options). There’s simply no excuse for using the commercial solution. At the same time, this is a cohort of people who believe that to the last man, the federal government is inept and ONLY the private sector can be trusted. Democrats are going to have to learn how to fight against that, because I don’t see shit being done there.
Geminid
@The Audacity of Krope: At least gay men don’t woo partners by sending pictures of themselves holding up stringers of fish they just caught. I mean, I hope they don’t.
Jay
@Gloria DryGarden:
Typical Yemeni structures are “tower houses”. Their foundations are limestone, sometimes the first story as well, after that, it’s rammed earth or mudbrick up to 6 stories, sometime with another 2 stories of wood construction. Wood is very expensive as Yemen has no forests.
Even a small warhead will bring the whole thing down.
And the people who picked the target knew that.
Baud
@Baud: “a hair” should be deleted
The Audacity of Krope
Dick pix are never gratuitous. Even the ones you don’t want tell you that this isn’t a person worth spending more time talking to.
eclare
@Baud:
I know…but somehow I think the people who prey on that desperation are worse. Serial killers and people who recruit for cults know what to look for. Nothing different here.
YMMV. And it’s fine if it does
Note> I am talking about people really driven to despair, not MAGA idiots on 100k boats telling us to fuck our feelings.
The Audacity of Krope
I definitely see this in the occasional profile pic. Doesn’t bother me, but I don’t find it especially interesting.
But if two people of whatever gender combination can hit it off over a mutual love of fishing, more power to them.
Baud
@eclare:
Oh, I agree with the hierarchy of worseness. I’m just having trouble feeling sympathy for people on the lower end of the worseness scale who are victims of the higher up. There are too many truly innocent victims because of them.
ETA: I suppose some of the people victimized by the grift are not actually Trump supporters. An assumption on my part that the overlap is significant.
The Audacity of Krope
But not theirs. Never theirs…
schrodingers_cat
OT Art Supply Update: I am getting Kuretake’s Art Nouveau watercolor paint set of 24 pans. I already have their 48 set and pearl set.
Another Scott
@Martin:
I assume you’re talking about this:
Is this guy credible? Dunno.
But the 47 people have a history of ignoring all kinds of rules, regulations, and laws, so it would not at all be surprising if they demanded approval to put Signal on their bigwigs’ phones.
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
eclare
@Baud:
Excellent point.
I am all over the place and calling it a night.
Grr, these goddamned interesting times.
The Audacity of Krope
It’s kind of their whole thing.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud:
Nobody needs to spend $1000, or $10, either, to be hooked up with angels, to have your prayers reach the desk at “god central agency for whatever it is”. I think you just type in your zip code, you get connected to your “case manager.” It’s available for everyone, whatever religion, or non religion. I really believe this.
None of that grift! If I want god, I call Her up direct. It’s working for me. i don’t need some crystal cross item that might sell for $20 at the gift shop, if I wanted one. And everyone has angels, already. You just to need to talk to them, request help. Special.
besides, most of you can just boil up some spaghetti, send it flying across the room, and float your prayers that way. I’m sure they’ll stick.
Just appalled at White House raising grift funds off the biggest religious holiday, to pretend people don’t already have the spiritual resources they desire. You do. Cashing in on religion seems to get me pretty mad.
not quite kidnapping, desaparecidos mad, or war crimes on my dime mad. But quite vile and unacceptable.
Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@schrodingers_cat:
Cool! I hope you share some of your watercolor pieces here
Brendan In NC
@sentient ai from the future: Yup. Microsoft wants to pay to have 1 reactor at Three Mile Island powered up again, for its Data Centers only…
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@eclare:
Pretty scary implications of that
Gloria DryGarden
@The Audacity of Krope: the fish I caught wa# bigger than the fish you caught. Would you like to see?
//
The Audacity of Krope
@Gloria DryGarden: Not gonna lie, time out alone on a boat does sound potentially romantic.
Jay
@Gloria DryGarden:
I was MVP of the swim team, a running back on the football team, (Canadian football, not that wussy “Mercan stuff or that gawd awful Euro nothing ever happens stuff.)
I gave the girls on the Swim Team private swimming lessons, after practice, (boy was I dumb, I just wanted them to swim better).
Other than Physic’s, I was an A student. Long story about that.
I had a part time job as a busboy/dishwasher, where they wouldn’t promote me to wait staff, just kept giving me raises every time I asked to become a waiter.
I had a “gang” at school. As Steve Harper (our QB) put it, “The Collection of Misfit Toys”. The actual “gangs” and many of the toughs, gave me respect, mostly because of rational anger issues and a propensity for violence. My “gang” were people I liked, for a variety of reasons, Allison had cerebral palsy, was in a wheel chair, weighed about 65lbs, but man, was she smart.
Unfortunately, with two alcoholics as parents, one violent, I had self esteem issues into my mid 30’s, and still have some today.
WaterGirl
@Xentik: Appreciate all that information!
Jay
@Geminid:
Some do. Sometimes a man is just looking for a large, woodsy smelling real man to hibernate with.
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca: No more than is absolutely needed! :-)
Baud
@Jay:
Nominated!
Gloria DryGarden
@eclare: and people who groom adolescents.
Martin
@Geminid:
That strikes me as much more of a gay woman wooing effort.
The Audacity of Krope
Barbers? Parents? I’m confused.
The Lodger
@Baud: Obviously, he sent $1,000 to Paula White.
No One of Consequence
@Martin: One of the best replies I have ever received on this full service blog, and I thank you for it.
It has been decades since I read Glass Palace, about the creation of the NSA, but it would seem logical to me that any concrete plans before intended action would be classified by nature inherently.
I do get the distinctions and nuance, and the use of weasel wording and obfuscation. I would guess that nuance will be lost on the great unwashed, so I am of the opinion that one possible line of attack here for consideration is: this is reckless, sloppy, UNPROFESSIONAL, and DANGEROUSLY-BAD habits to form/use/condone.
One of my two senators is Joni Earnst. I initially had hopes that Hegseth and his interactions with women might be a bridge to far for her, but this was before the ProPublica piece about her affair with a weapons manufacturing lobbyist, so her switching to ‘Sure, why not?’ was no longer so hard for me to grok. That said, I enjoyed leaving my constituent call asking her if she still felt good about her acquiescing to this embarrassment of a SecDef and all of the damage YET TO COME from the OompaLoompa Clown Show and the MAGA Tent Revival.
Thanks again,
-NOoC
The Audacity of Krope
I’ve been at this for 8 months. How do I still have so many Democratic donor lists to unsubscribe from?
Gloria DryGarden
@Martin: Theres a cool story, on the moth, this black poet laureate lady in Wisconsin marries a black dude from Alaska. They agree to live a few years here, then a few years there, and she has poet laureate duties in Madison, I think it was. Covid happens, she slips off to Alaska, and her man drags her out fishing, she in all her city clothes, or touristy looking togs. Ends up she gets good at fishing those salmon, gets coached by some local ladies, learns the local regulations for which salmon who can catch and keep.
she didn’t like the fishing, until she caught one, and then…
The Audacity of Krope
@The Audacity of Krope: Never mind, figured it out. Just remembered awful people.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud:
@Jay:
sometimes that’s all a woman wants, too. Is it after dark?
truly glad it’s been nominated.
Jay
@The Audacity of Krope:
Peds, Ministers, Rethuglican reps look for kids with low self esteem. Ditto for Incel “whisperers”.
The Audacity of Krope
It’s always after dark somewhere. Here in Massachusetts, now, for example.
Jay
@Gloria DryGarden:
It’s after dark somewhere.
My go to is woodsmoke and rubbing myself with hemlock branches,
Sage if I am headed to the People’s Republic of East Van.
Just kidding, still happy with the woman I am with. 31 years now.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jay:
That’s horrible, Jay. I’m sorry you had to endure a childhood like that
The Audacity of Krope
Tossing out a wild guess here, you a straight dude?
bbleh
@Xentik: second this, if it hasn’t been already.
My first thought was, OMG that’s TS stuff.
Nelle
@No One of Consequence: What part of Iowa are you in? I’m in Des Moines metro area.
Geminid
@The Audacity of Krope: I heard the fish picture thing a couple years ago ago. I got the sense it was meant to express the hetero man’s prowess as a provider.
I joked about it here when telling the story Tomyris, the nomad queen who spurned Cyrus the Great’s offer of marriage. This was back around 550 BCE. I described an archeological find: a clay tablet depicting a man in conical hat and curled beard holding up a stringer of fish, the traditional Persian offer of marriage. It had Cyrus’s royal seal impressed on it
The archeology team also found a tablet with Tomyris’s reply: the back of a fist slammed into the moist clay with middle finger extended.
More seriously, Herodotus said Cyrus did propose marriage to the female ruler of the Massagetae, a Scythian tribe that roamed the plains east of the Caspian Sea. Tomyris figured he just wanted her people’s lands and refused. But Cyrus would not take no for an answer and when he invaded, Tomyris’s warriors cut the conqueror of Lydia and Babylon down.
With the aid of Artificial Intelligence linguists have deduced that Tomyris is Scythian for “Girl Boss.”
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: self esteem issues, that’s a whole thing. I too come from alcoholic and secretly violent people. And was smart, got good grades. (I agree physics was a bit tough.) and i was beautiful, but I didn’t know it, didn’t perceive it, because it felt ugly inside. Totally, I get this.
you weren’t dumb w the swim team girls. You were a safe decent human being, and that let them know a guy could be caring, and help them get better at swimming, etc. Girls need a few chances To be around safe kind thoughtful guys who don’t objectify us or look at us as prey. Not saying you couldn’t have made some deeper connections or friendships. Just, being safe, and treating people w respect is a nice contrast, a respite.
We’ve met the other kind, who just want one thing, and don’t see us for our range of qualities and abilities.
It’s amazing how tough these issues can be, how long lasting, and it’s also amazing how well we can pass. And turn things better.
moops
I wouldn’t celebrate too much. Within a year Musk and Trump will be unrolling the privatization of the USPS, and selling off the assets for pennies on the dollar, to DeJoy. He will be one of the oligarchs this administration creates to rule us and rob us.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Geminid:
LOL 😆
BlueGuitarist
@Gloria DryGarden:
About 2,000 people at a protest demonstration in Somerville, MA this evening to support Rumeysa Ozturk
https://bsky.app/profile/unchi.org/post/3llcrxfwv6223
Gloria DryGarden
@The Audacity of Krope: speaking of if dark, I’m so glad it wasn’t in your radar, and it took you a minute. For those of us aware of such things, it doesn’t fade away, one doesn’t forget.
Gloria DryGarden
@BlueGuitarist: amen
Gloria DryGarden
@moops: i would like you to be wrong, in this prediction.
The Audacity of Krope
So about the last time being a talented fisher, alone, would make one a good provider?
Typical incel behavior
How could it be otherwise?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@BlueGuitarist:
That’s a heartening turnout
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: im into sage, woodsmoke is lovely when I’m back from a fire circle (too windy at the last one, Saturday, so we had propane fires).
no idea about hemlock, which may not grow here, nor about the republic of east van. If I get bored, I may look it up.
but i loved your comment. Just joking around about humans and how we catch fish, or smell like the woods, or love someone for 30 years, provides the necessary sweetness of human connection that is a soothing balm and a delicious respite. The image of hibernating with someone…
Geminid
too bad that Scythian girl boss didn’t have a common language with the big king and his classic marriage proposal. We ladies have often been jittery about men wanting the wrong thing from us.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
It’s f’d up. You can have almost “everything” in adolescence and childhood, and one or two people in authority can “f” you up for decades.
And it hurts more and sticks longer in adolescence, when you are starting to form “who” you are.
My Manager at Bino’s, ( a Canadian Denny’s kinda clone), would never promote me from dishwasher/busboy, because the bathrooms were always clean, the cooks tools were front of house, the waitresses’ carts were always full, cook tops were always clean, you could walk in the kitchen with out slipping on a greasy floor, (the grout when I started, was black, it was actually white, (1/4’+ of accumulated grease)), the unglazed tile floor no longer seeped grease after being mopped. The walk ins were pristine.
I started at $2.65 hr and 2 years later, was making $15.75hr plus shared tips+. (Cooks would cook me steak for my comped lunch, when we closed, waitresses would comp me beer, I was 15).
Two people ground me down, plus ppl not holding me up, verbally. Yeah, there were the things, beer, steak, but for a bunch of reasons, praise would have mattered more.
Funny that.
WTFGhost
@No One of Consequence: I think this is what is referred to as OPSEC
@Jay: “You’re great! Acting, dancing, singing – what’s your name?”
“Penis van Lesbian”
“uhhh… can you pick a stage name?”
“How about Dick van Dyke?”
@Bill Arnold: My thoughts are cheap-to-produce electricity *and* heat – with enough heat, we could create hydrocarbons from hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. Some new reactors have little proliferation value, and have better waste storage possibilities, because they’re not using the same fuel as prior generations.
I don’t care about data centers or crypto – as an engineer (of sorts), I see power you can drop in place of a coal fired plant, and that can provide steady state power.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jay:
Absolutely. Appreciation and praise goes a long way
JaySinWA
@Jay:
Sounds like a bear market.
JaySinWA
@The Lodger:
I’d be surprized if he didn’t get an influencer freebe on condition of a good review.
Jay
@Gloria DryGarden:
In my High School swim team, we had A team, (Dolphins mostly, on track for the Olympics), and B Team, (won’t put their face in the water).
Grade 11, had 4 female Olympians on our team, 1 swimming, 1 diving, 2 synchronized swimming, all grade 12.
My Grade 12, 0 “A” team female swimmers. I knew some of them from the Coquitlam Sharks “B” team. (Summer team).
Some had week legs, (poor kickers), most had issues with their faces being in the water, so,………….
Years later, I figured out, with her help, after a brief relationship with one of the girls, the reason they did not get “better” as swimmers, is they weren’t there for the instruction, or practice. It was swimsuit parts rubbing against swimsuit parts.
Yes, I am the moron.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: oh, i see. THEY had ulterior motives. And from your description, you were a good looking guy, which might be all they knew about you.
ok
Unknown known
@Captain C: other old Soviet joke:
A man runs through Red Square shouting “Brezhnev is an idiot! Brezhnev is an idiot!”. He was immediately arrested and charged on two counts: 1: slandering the great leader, and 2: giving away state secrets
First time as tragedy, etc
Jay
@Gloria DryGarden:
I was young, fit like, had Patrick Swayze hair, hard body, Football and Swim Team, dumber than a bag of hammers when it came to women.
At the MVP speech at the Athletes Award banquet where I got MVP, (swimming and football*), the swimming coach noted that I was giving private swimming lessons and that they had never had so many girls apply to join the team.
*I should never have gotten the MVP for football. There were better players on our team (Go Centurions), but we were seriously outmatched, I got the MVP for playing dirty, when they played dirty. We never won a game, and I only played 1/2 the games, mostly being on suspension.
prostratedragon
@BlueGuitarist:
From the comments: Diagram to show the drill the Anti-Man-Hunting League had for the running off of a slave or man-hunter
brantl
No classified information is supposed to be shared in an unsecure app.