Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

This fight is for everything.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

“woke” is the new caravan.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Everybody saw this coming.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

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  • Baud
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  • The Audacity of Krope
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    58Comments

    1. 1.

      cain

      It’s been nice today. My wife had a relapse on her concussion. Still amazes me how women are treated by healthcare industry. Just crazy.

      Reply
    2. 2.

      satby

      But, at least it’s not Friday.

      And our tornado warning expired without a tornado here anyway. The sirens went off, so a funnel cloud was sited, but not near me.

      Reply
    3. 3.

      sentient ai from the future

      whats all this im hearing about the sheriff of something or other?

      hold on, gotta check my 401k balance.

      Reply
    5. 5.

      xephyr

      Stormy weather here in mid-Michigan, dark all day long with pouring rain and thunder. Finally quieted down about a half hour ago. The weather in general just seems different around here anymore…

      Reply
    9. 9.

      The Audacity of Krope

      Man, I used to keep jobs for years without incident. Now I find myself looking for the door at the first hint of, well, any hurtful practices by the business.

      So I find myself wanting to look for a new job half knowing at some point I’m going to find myself distrusting any employer.

      I just need to hold out til my lease ends on my apartment and Trump has the military fully reconfigured as a protection racket, then the walking hunger strike begins and I don’t have to worry about my ability to pay for shit.

      Reply
    10. 10.

      Sister Golden Bear

      Seriously, I’m finally seeing my shoulder unfreeze yyyaaayyy! It finally looks like there a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s not an ongoing train. (Frozen shoulder is the latest in shoulder problems that have lasted more than a year.)

      OTOH, while I’m making good progress updating my LinkedIn and portfolio, to try to get back into my field again, the job market’s going to get even harder, which I didn’t think was possible.

      Reply
    13. 13.

      The Audacity of Krope

      @RandomMonster: That’s ok, that will be 6 trillion out of the pockets of working people who should rightly be paying it; not billionaires who, let’s face it, could use a bit of a reprieve from the economic hardship they undoubtedly faced in the last couple decades.

      Reply
    14. 14.

      comrade scotts agenda of rage

      I spent most of the day moving drum gear from one storage unit to another.

      My wife and I have become the new gear people for Girls Rock Denver, a camp for, well, girls and rock.  It’s not a ‘School of Rock’ setup in that it’s not about excruciating musicianship.  Instead it’s about campers 8-17 exploring their boundaries via music.

      I’m the only male involved and I do a lot of behind the scenes gear work with my wife but otherwise, stay in the background.

      Reply
    15. 15.

      Fair Economist

      @Sister Golden Bear: A year is a fairly typical time for frozen shoulder to recover. I got it in both shoulders – thankfully not at the same time! Both took about a year to recover but in the end were almost the same as before (a little less flexible, but not much). Hope your recovery runs fast.

      Reply
    17. 17.

      Danielx

      You may not have much to report but I can tell you the weather here in central Indiana is pretty damn sporty at the moment,

      Reply
    18. 18.

      satby

      @Danielx: ALL DAY: gloomy and rainy with thunder and lightning. Feels like we had maybe a total of 60 minutes without rain in the last 24 hours here in S.Bend.

      Reply
    19. 19.

      sab

      @Danielx: We have a flood watch until tomorrow morning. I am glad we moved from the valley to the top of the hill last summer. Next county over has a tornado watch.

      Reply
    20. 20.

      TS

      @Sister Golden Bear:

       I’m finally seeing my shoulder unfreeze

      Mine took a year, I initially went to the doc who sent me to the physio who gave me some starter exercises, and started doing major painful manipulation – and then we had major floods and her office took months for repair so I kept up the starter exercises – a year or so later, it was suddenly better. Still not as good as the other arm, but no pain.

      I think it was someone on BJ who told me

      1.  If you have an operation it will take 1 year to recover

      2. If you do physio it will take 12 months to recover

      3. if you do nothing it will take 52 weeks to recover

      Reply
    22. 22.

      Trivia Man

      @cain: I was getting a new blood pressure medicine and the doctor was reassuring me it was safe. “Its been too ut for a while and is well studied so i dont expect any bad side effects.”

      So i joked back with a straight face, “but has it been tested on older white men yet?”

      He very quickly assured me that yes, it had.

      He didn’t see the joke but when i told my wife what i said she laughed and told her sister and niece. They laughed. With a side of anger.

      Reply
    23. 23.

      RaflW

      Looks like we got about 1.5″ of rain here in SE Wisconsin – some of which came in through the closed patio doors this morning due to intense winds. Not how I wanted to start the day.

      Fortunately the cabin has plastic ‘wood’ floors (they look pretty decent for what I believe to be 25 a year old installation), so cleanup isn’t onerous.

      Got one bedroom mostly painted today (will do the ceiling another trip) and did paint the ceiling in the other bedroom, which was enough of a refresh to make me not hate the wall paint. Prev. owners had painted the walls and ceiling the same hard-to-quantify taupe/gray with slight pinking overtones? Ceiling white just lifted the whole room pretty nicely.

      Other than that, well, there’s the general shitshow but I didn’t turn on any radio while painting, and then watched This Old House reruns after my body said “enough” to the painting. Man, Bob Villa was a dork. And Roku f’kd up and lost the ‘wrap up’ episode of a c. 1989 series on a ranch cum garrison house in the Boston area. Oh, well, whatever.

      Reply
    26. 26.

      thruppence

      Putin rubs his hands and laughs and laughs. Who knew destroying America, always his goal, would be this easy?

      Reply
    29. 29.

      karen gail

      I read blog by one of my favorite authors; seems that Meta is working on their own AI; they are using works of fiction to help build. Now instead of purchasing works and rights to use those works, they are pirating works of fiction; so authors are being encouraged to certify that their works are done by humans and not AI. Authors Guild is suing since Meta could well afford to purchase the licensing needed.

      Reply
    31. 31.

      frosty

      @RaflW: ​ Painting. We painted over all the twee “Early American” stenciling in our Craftsman foursquare when we moved in … over 20 years ago. The whole first floor has to be redone. I’m writing a check this time.

      Reply
    32. 32.

      frosty

      @Craig: Music jokes … Q: how do you tell a drummer is at your front door? A: The knocks get louder and faster.

      Q: What’s the difference between a saxophone and a chainsaw? A: vibrato.

      Q: What do you throw to a guitarist who’s drowning? A: His amp.

      I’ll be here all week, try the veal.

      Reply
    38. 38.

      Pete Downunder

      @frosty: What’s perfect pitch with an accordion? When you can throw in the dumpster without hitting the sides.
      What’s the difference between  a Jaguar car and a banjo? With enough time and money you can tune a Jaguar.

      Reply
    42. 42.

      Martin

      @karen gail: Meta has been releasing AIs for 2 years now – LLama. They didn’t intend to release it, I should say, it leaked out including all of the weighting and became the leading unintentional open-source model that researchers use. That leak yanked a lot of the value out of proprietary models.

      All of the models are trained on work they didn’t license. They are trying to get congress to change copyright law to allow them to do this (there are countless suits piling up against them for copyright violation).

      Reply
    43. 43.

      tobie

      I started casually looking for jobs overseas. I’m really too old for this but the instability is getting to be too much to take.

      Reply
    45. 45.

      Geminid

      A neighbor came by this evening scouting for turkeys (it’s Spring gobbler season). His turkey call was pretty neat: a slate disk in a plastic case with three different shaped holes in the top. He would move a wooden quill through a hole to make a turkey sound by scratching the slate. He didn’t get any answers,

      We remarked on how totally still the air was; a real contrast to the heavy weather in the Midwest.

      Reply
    46. 46.

      Geminid

      @satby: I like John Stoerh’s work. He strikes me as a very level headed man with no particular axe to grind. I ran into him through Magdi Jacobs, aka Mangy Jay. She’s written pieces for Stoehr’s Editorial Board.

      I ran into Mangy Jay through Ragnarok Lobster. I haven’t checked those two characters out lately, so thanks for the reminder.

      Reply
    48. 48.

      YY_Sima Qian

      Trumpian unpredictability on tariffs & everything else will be a huge headwind:

      John Arnold@JohnArnoldFndtn

      Imagine being a multinational trying to decide whether to respond to the tariffs by greenlighting a new plant in the US that is more expensive and won’t come online for years without knowing what tariffs will be in effect in 4 years, or even in 4 months.

      Trump might want to deal, but will any other country want to deal with/ him, other than as a stalling tactics to buy time to de-risk from the U.S.?

      Gerard DiPippo@gdp1985

      If this formula remains in place, countries’ tariff actions, either up or down, won’t affect the US tariff except with a major lag. That makes negotiations seem pointless. Maybe they aren’t the point then? 1/

      That said, my hunch is Trump will retaliate for any major retaliation, and he’ll want to make deals. I won’t be surprised by inconsistency. Or anything, at this point. Happy Liberation Day to all! 2/

      To be clear, the US “reciprocal tariffs” have nothing to do with other countries’ tariffs, non tariff barriers, or exchange rate. It’s simply a goods trade balance tax. Services don’t count. Negotiating over services won’t count either, if they stick to the formula. 3/

      Expected fallout in E/SE Asia:

      Evan A. Feigenbaum@EvanFeigenbaum

      I’ve been warning we’d be the Hessians of Asia for more than a decade – a security provider, sailing ships and flying planes around, but in an Asia that looks to itself on the other things that matter. Think that moment, which has been emerging gradually, is about to arrive.

      Over the medium term, bye-bye US influence in Asia. Was already being reshaped faster than the U.S. was adapting. Won’t be the same on the other side of this shit show. The three major pillars – demand driver and open market, standard setter, and security provider – all eroding.

      The U.S. is pretty much done strategically in Southeast Asia. The region is filled with pragmatists, who can and do navigate all kinds of crazy stuff from outside powers. But that depends greatly on those players being either principled or strategic—and Washington is now neither.

      C Nguyen@CNMNguyen

      On social media, Vietnamese people and diplomats are reacting to Trump’s tariffs with great sadness and disappointment. This month marks the 50th anniversary since the wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos with the US ended. All three countries today were among those hit the most.

      Enormous policy preparations had been laid down and new tariffs were already expected. But everyone in Vietnam is left shocked at the magnitude of the new tariffs, at a crucial stage of Vietnam’s economic growth trajectory. Perhaps the needed shock to re-model growth?

      Reply
    49. 49.

      YY_Sima Qian

      Oh, & the announced TSMC investment did not let Taiwan off the tariff hook. But Russia & Belarus are exempt! Also, Canada & Mexico, but we’ll see how long that lasts.

      Reply
    52. 52.

      YY_Sima Qian

      LMAO (video through the link):

      MeidasTouch@MeidasTouch

      Bloomberg reporter: Plans for conversations or a trip to Beijing?
      Bessent: N-nothing imminent when it comes to this negotiation.
      Reporter: April 9th, these tariffs come in place. Do you plan on having negotiations before that date?
      Bessnet: I-I-again, I’m not part of the negotiations. So you know, w–we’ll see.
      Reporter: Canada and Mexico, notably missing on that chart. Why is that?
      Bessent: Um. I’m not sure.

      Reply
    53. 53.

      YY_Sima Qian

      Also LMAO (ChatGPT output through the link):

      Destiny | Steven Bonnell II@TheOmniLiberal

      I think they asked ChatGPT to calculate the tariffs from other countries, which is why the tariffs make absolutely no fucking sense. They’re simply dividing the trade deficit we have with a country with our imports from that country, or using 10%, whichever is greater.

      Reply
    56. 56.

      YY_Sima Qian

      Isabella M. Weber@Isabella Weber

      Tariffs are cost shocks. Last time around, across the board cost shocks coordinated price hikes and triggered sellers’ inflation (see paper below). Get ready for the next inflation bout! This time courtesy of MAGA.

      & no cheap imports to soften the blow this time around.

      Reply

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