Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

The lights are all blinking red.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

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

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

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

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

The world has changed, and neither one recognizes it.

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

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Celebrate the fucking wins.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

Bark louder, little dog.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

You are here: Home / NEWSMAX STOLE MY BIKE

Reader Interactions

120Comments

  2. 2.

    Short Bus Bully

    The intertubez, how does they work?

    Ads come up, money flows in… Can’t explain that.

  3. 3.

    Short Bus Bully

    BTW, the bloghost bitterness, vitriol, and caustic love for teh stoopids makes the sun shine brighter where I’m at.

    /popcorn

  7. 7.

    scav

    Site upgrades here are like watching a Regency Quadrille at Almacks: formal, regimented, elaborated into complex known patterns, set to music, only with more overt verbal abuse. Bow to your partners and change for the upcoming Country Dance.
    Vitriol and Ices at the Buffet.

  9. 9.

    piratedan

    well if Newsmax stole my bike, the appropriate response is obviously IOKIYAR

  10. 10.

    BarbCat

    I’m seeing an ad that reads, “Click here to read more about Wendy Gruel’s text messages,” and I am ON IT. Go Garcetti, go!

  11. 11.

    Rick Taylor

    I found GBCW in the urban dictionary, but think it should be added to the lexicon here as well.

  12. 12.

    geg6

    And this is why I’ll always love you, John Cole. Even if you never answer my emails.

  17. 17.

    Ash Can

    And PS: Thanks to all responsible for the tip on the “Comments RSS” feature. It’s dandy.

  19. 19.

    Yatsuno

    @Ash Can: I ain’t going nowhere. Plus it was the change without any kind of heads up that threw me. A little advanced warning does marvelous things for hurt fee-fees.

  20. 20.

    ploeg

    If you can’t eat their food, drink their booze, screw their women and then vote against them, you have no business being up here. – Jesse Unruh

  21. 21.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    I think at this point GBCW would be more appropriate for coming to this place rather than leaving it.

    “I’ve made my mind up. There’s a good chance I won’t survive, but I’m going there anyway. “

  26. 26.

    Ash Can

    @Yatsuno: I think the change itself looks fine. I like the font, the layout, the function, the whole shot, and I don’t care if there was no heads-up on that. What honks my ass is Cole telling us we’re morons for thinking that something that looks exactly like deliberate and approved web site content is in fact deliberate and approved web site content. Excuse the fuck outa me for thinking that clicking on something that says “What’s this?” would take me directly to the Newsmax site, to which I don’t want to give hits, and fear that from which my computer could pick up god-knows-what cookies, spyware, malware, shit, etc., as has happened in the past.

  27. 27.

    Pinkamena Panic

    I use Adblock.
    I’m not turning it off.
    And this shit is why.

    Granted, I wouldn’t be complaining about it. I’d rather complain about the trolls, the shitposting FPs, and the fact that Pat fucking Lang is STILL not in the mock section of the sidebar.

    That said? These fonts look weird. And they’re all overlappy on mine.

  28. 28.

    Woodrowfan

    I heard that Newsmax is the Pittsburgh Penguin’s Offical Sponsor Website. Is that true? JAQ.

  30. 30.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    The ads are easy to ignore. It’s crap like FPers stomping on each other that I get angry at. (I bring it up here because I know at least most of the FPers get pissed when it’s brought up.)

  31. 31.

    lojasmo

    OT: I found out a couple weeks ago that I am allergic to ducks eggs. This morning I had the same reaction to hens eggs.

    Fuxorz.

  32. 32.

    MikeJ

    BTW, two weeks from tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of the 1.0 release of WordPress.

    It seems like we should sacrifice some sort of animal to it.

  33. 33.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    So this is the bitchfest thread? Sorry, no can do. First sunny day after 3 days of monsoons here. I would like any news from the Stuck hunt.

  35. 35.

    Poopyman

    Wow! With such trolling you must be planning to be busy for while today. Good! Your mom deserves it from her favorite little shit.

    GBCWMA

  37. 37.

    The Other Chuck

    @MikeJ:

    BTW, two weeks from tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of the 1.0 release of WordPress.

    It seems like we should sacrifice some sort of animal to it.

    How about the WordPress developers?

  38. 38.

    raven

    The weather sucked in Rhode Island so I burned too many FF miles and unassed the Ocean State and came home early.

  40. 40.

    Suzanne

    I feel cheated. Site looks exactly the same, I see no Newsmax ad, and the baby got onto my jewelry drawer and is pulling everything out, handing each item to me, and saying, “THANK YOU,” so now I have to say, “You’re welcome!”

    GBCW.

  41. 41.

    CarolDuhart2

    @MikeJ: A goat.

    People. I get a laugh out of Newsmax and their crazy conspiracy theories that nobody but they care about. The fact that nobody else cares makes them even crazier and more entertaining.

    I can usually take or leave ads. The internet can’t run only on donations, or worse-trust fund largesse. If I don’t care about an ad, I just skip by the ad.

    The real money that’s made on Newsmax is from those health letters you subscribe to for “cures” for diabetes, et al. How do I know? I subscribed to a newsletter on heart disease for a few months and bought a couple of relevant books. Then I realized that if I didn’t think the politics were sane, I couldn’t really trust the medical advice either. As long as the medical ads don’t show up too often, I would be fine with that.

    This place was a refuge during the Obot/Hillary wars, and I shall remain.

  42. 42.

    Biff Longbotham

    GBCW? I like Grace Baptist Church Waterloo (Iowa). Now that’s some good eatin’.

  44. 44.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    It’s time to boycott this travesty until the only ads are for solar powered cars woven from renewable materials by fair trade protected workers in some deserving third world country.

  45. 45.

    Roger Moore

    @MikeJ:

    It’s a pity it’s not used around here more often.

    There are certainly some people who I would love to have storm off in a huff and never come back. I’m afraid if I keep hearing so much about pie, I’m going to gain weight.

  46. 46.

    Irish Steel

    Kay’s informative, well researched posts really stick in my craw. And Tim F’s dog looks totally photoshopped. This is me ankling your total jerkblog, Cole.

  48. 48.

    Roger Moore

    @lojasmo:

    OT: I found out a couple weeks ago that I am allergic to ducks eggs. This morning I had the same reaction to hens eggs.

    Be careful about getting vaccinated against the flu, then; allergies to eggs are one of the reasons you shouldn’t get the shot.

  50. 50.

    Mike in NC

    Took all of 5 seconds to download and install an ad blocker. Presto, no Newsmax.

  52. 52.

    Suzanne

    ….and as soon as I make my previous post about how the site looks just the same for me, block quotes turn blue and the headline font is now a serif. The post numbers are now a serif, as well, but are not the same that they were before and are not as large.

    GO BACK TO WHAT IT WAS TWO VERSIONS AGO. it was so much prettier.

  53. 53.

    Irish Steel

    @MikeJ:

    It seems like we should sacrifice some sort of animal to it.

    A reviled yet necessary member of the animal kingdom. I suggest a hyena or buzzard.

  54. 54.

    eemom

    @scav:

    The screen shots I saved last night still make me laugh.

    Srsly, it was hilarious. Y’all who didn’t see it really missed out. Especially when the comment box narrowed to the size of a postage stamp with like three miles of empty space on either side. lolz.

  55. 55.

    MikeJ

    @eemom: I have spent the last two weeks with my arm up to my elbow inside wordpress. I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.

  56. 56.

    lojasmo

    @Roger Moore:

    Yeah, but I’m in health care. I’ll probably just tank up on zantac and benadryl prior to getting the shot, and keep an epi pen handy.

  59. 59.

    Anoniminous

    I’m beginning to ‘get’ why a college education is bankrupting the youngs. Bought a survey textbook a couple of days ago because I need to get back up to speed on a field. A 160 bucks!?! Just for the one, introductory, course buying the required and suggested texts would be over 500 bucks. Assuming a normal class load looking at (over) $2,500 per semester … just for the books.

    Jeebuz.

  61. 61.

    MikeJ

    @Anoniminous: TExtbooks were often over a $100 each many years ago when I was buying them. Of course back then they were only updated every five or six years and didn’t include an online component. If you were unlucky enough to have to buy a new copy of the book, you would know that at least you could sell it at the end of the semester. Now they use online content to make sure they get maximum money from every student.

  64. 64.

    raven

    @MikeJ: They normally sell a key code for the updated (or not updated) online content. Publishers are in deep shit and they know it.

  70. 70.

    raven

    @gene108: When the publishers incorporate online content the students often must buy access to that content whether they buy a cheaper hard copy of the book or not.

  72. 72.

    Anoniminous

    @MikeJ:

    Back when I was gettin’ eddicated profs would use the same text for years and years, supplying a stack of xeroxed or mimeographed – yes, I’m that old – off-prints of any necessary recent findings. Also the texts contained a reasonable amount of material. Looking at the brick I bought there’s no way anyone could get through the entire thing in one semester. And attended class. And get through the other material and attend other classes. I mean … there is still only 24 hours in a day and a person has to sleep and eat sometime.

    @gene108:

    At a local library’s Sell-It-Off book room.

    I know they can be picked-up cheaper by buying used. Quickly looking at used prices, I see one shop has it for $48. I also see the text has been through 4 editions in 12 years (another rant I’ll reserve for later) as the publishers try to prevent that route.

  74. 74.

    Roxy

    This has probably been brought up before and my apology for bringing this up. I am pretty new to the site.

    Is there a reason why replies don’t nest under the comment your replying to?

  75. 75.

    Anoniminous

    @raven:

    The reason publishers are in trouble is because their prices are divorced from reality. Dover Publications manages to produce high quality scientific and technical books at reasonable prices. Tauschen produces high quality Art books at reasonable prices. University textbooks are the foundation of a person’s technical, working, library. They need to be available to people entering the field.

  77. 77.

    Roger Moore

    @Roxy:

    Is there a reason why replies don’t nest under the comment your replying to?

    Because people around here hate threaded/nested comments. They encourage the conversation to splinter into a whole bunch of sub-discussions instead of focusing on a single topic, and new comments wind up scattered across the page when you refresh instead of being concentrated at the bottom. Threaded discussions work best for things like USENET, where you’re looking at posts one at a time and people are disciplined about proper quoting. They work much less well for the kind of free-wheeling conversation we tend to have around here.

  82. 82.

    Redshirt

    Does FYWP also prevent straight up quoting? As in if I hit reply to a post, the contents of that post are automatically quoted in my reply?

  83. 83.

    dance around in your bones

    @Roxy:

    This has probably been brought up before and my apology for bringing this up. I am pretty new to the site.

    Is there a reason why replies don’t nest under the comment your replying to?

    Nobody likes them here. If you want to see the comment you’re replying to, just click on the commenters name in your reply. You can keep hitting backspace to go through the whole reply thread(s) if you are so inclined. And back again.

    also, Roger Moore: ;see Roger Moore’s comment.

  84. 84.

    Winston Smith

    I would just like to say that I have not been commenting because I’ve been really busy and haven’t had time to read BJ much recently.

    I will now not be commenting because I’m angry at Newsmax or something.

    Just, FYI. Please repost my report to your Facebook page to show you care.

  85. 85.

    dance around in your bones

    @Redshirt:

    You have to copy the comment, paste it in the comment box, highlight it then click b-quote button. Presto change-o!

  86. 86.

    Shortstop

    @Redshirt: Not a great plan. Too many people leave the whole original comment in rather than keeping just the part to which they’re responding. Then the people responding to the reply do the same thing, and you have miles of uselessly repetitive stuff to scroll through. Better to copy and paste something you want read in tandem with your response.

  87. 87.

    Shalimar

    Anyone want to get out of the boat at Newsmax and find out “Why the next stock market crash will happen any day”? With record productivity leading to record profits, that seems very counter-intuitive.

  88. 88.

    Heywood J.

    I don’t see a Newsmax ad. I see an ad for Willard Scott pimping walk-in tubs. I feel sorta cheated.

    I thought Willard Scott was dead.

  89. 89.

    Roxy

    Thank you Roger Moore and Anoniminous.

    I do like the conversations that occur on this site. This is just my two cents worth; I don’t find the nesting of comments a hinderance to the free wheeling conversations that occur on this site.

    Once again thank you for taking the time to answer my question.

  90. 90.

    Anoniminous

    @raven:

    I thought we were having a conversation and it would be courteous when ‘spinning off’ from something you wrote to acknowledge that it was spun off from your comment.

    I won’t do so again.

  91. 91.

    Roger Moore

    @Shalimar:

    Anyone want to get out of the boat at Newsmax and find out “Why the next stock market crash will happen any day”?

    I got out of the boat. There are a bunch of charts showing how the situation now looks similar to the situation before previous crashes. P/Es are high, the market has had a big upward run, investors are complacent, etc. The charts are enough to be scary to somebody who doesn’t know much about the economic fundamentals (e.g. interest rates are near record lows, which tends to push up P/E ratios, investors may be confident because of high profits, etc.). But it looks as if the real reason for the ad article is that the guy who put together the charts wants to give you investment advice. Who wants to bet that he’s encouraging people to take the opposite side of his bets?

  95. 95.

    DPS

    @Ash Can:

    I’m sorry, but it looks like “deliberate and approved content” only if you’re a moron. It says “Newsmax Headlines” at the top and has the red flag “What’s this?” link in the corner. If you look at that and think “Ooh, look, Balloon Juice content” you are totally clueless and you should probably get off the Internet before you fall victim to a scam.

  97. 97.

    Shortstop

    @Redshirt: Nah, you have to think about everyone using the thread, not just your own convenience. It really clogs up/needlessly lengthens threads and people walk away from all the chaff rather than reading.

    When I’m in comment threads packed with unedited, multiparagraph quotes, I assume that particular commenting community is full of people just discovering intertube conversation.

  101. 101.

    MikeJ

    @Redshirt:

    As in if I hit reply to a post, the contents of that post are automatically quoted in my reply?

    Actually I hacked on the plugin that handles the reply button to make it automagically quote selected text, but it’s not in yet. It will probably be one of the last things they install because it is very dependent on the xpath on the quoted element. Need to have the design frozen before it goes in.

  102. 102.

    dance around in your bones

    @Redshirt:

    @dance around in your bones: Too much work. Count the clicks! And there’s a swipe in there too, which is the worst for the wrists.

    Really? I can do it in my sleep. It took me a while to figure out, though – so I can understand Roxy’s confusion.

    And for me the ‘swipe’ is a tiny finger movement on my laptop touch pad. Not anywhere NEAR as onerous as playing Skylanders with those damn Xbox controllers with my 4 yr old grandson. I swear I get carpal tunnel syndrome after playing with him (which means following him around and praising his awesome powers for 2 hours).

    Also, I have this add-on called Right Clicks which makes the extra clicking somewhat superfluous. I love it.

  104. 104.

    Chickamin Slam

    I tend to see ads highlighting products or subjects from/about sites I visited.

    Say for example I was thinking about ordering flowers for mom. Ads for nurseries appear. I look to compare prices for computer components. I get ads featuring those or like. Same for when I research colleges for finishing a degree. “Get that distance learning degree now at …”

    But John Cole wants us to write him a goodbye cruel world statement so here are these:

    I am leaving and I’m taking Tunch with me! No more pictures for you fools!

    Without me you will all be pining for Sully while eating bon-bons. What kind of life is that?

  106. 106.

    dance around in your bones

    Ok, here’s a teensy weensy little complaint/comment….why is the R in the reply arrow bolded? It looks kind of odd.

    Oh gawd, don’t hate me for my aesthetics!

  108. 108.

    Redshirt

    @dance around in your bones: I tire easily.

    Also, it makes it easier to follow who’s talking to who about what.

    But FYWP don’t allow it (not surprised), and so not a request or anything. Just asking questions!

    Also, as an Obot, why can’t I have a unicorn too?

  109. 109.

    Anoniminous

    A 108 comments in and nobody’s complained about the kerning in the titles?

    Lordy, lordy, what is BJ coming to?

  112. 112.

    dance around in your bones

    @Redshirt:

    You mean you don’t obsessively follow every single thread like me?

    I am shocked, just shocked.

    I mean, copy/paste the relevant part of the comment, highlight and b-quote is too tiring? I was freaked out last night that I might have to learn HTML to do all that shit. Thank gawd for the HTML buttons on the top of the comment box is all I have to say. Fuck the unicorns. All they do is fart rainbows, which is useless in comment threads.

    Imagine a whole thread full of rainbows – pretty but….. use your backspace key to follow sub-threads. It works both up and down :)

  113. 113.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @BruceFromOhio: @MikeJ: If you are ever in Cleveland you simply must let me buy you a beer or three for this comment alone. Ditto for Cincinnati. Mr. Q does some WP development from time to time and knows not to discuss it in detail because I’m likely to run screaming from the room.

  114. 114.

    Suzanne

    @sacrablue:

    I’m equally annoyed by the monospaced comment numbers.

    Oh my GOD, YES. The old numbers were in a lovely small caps. May have been Clarendon? These new numbers SUUUUUUCK.

    And still no balloon man or rotating tags.

  115. 115.

    dance around in your bones

    @Suzanne:

    Well, it’s still a work in progress – that is, if we all haven’t scared off the web designer with our vitriolic pack of jackals response last night.

    Cole said all the things we wanted were going to be put in the new design.

    “You mean I have to do ALL the things?!”

  116. 116.

    sacrablue

    @Suzanne: We are all going to die waiting for balloon man and rotating tags to return. But it is Mother’s Day, so I’m just supposed to be happy with what I do have.

  117. 117.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    I made the day of one of my customers today when I called her to tell her happy Mother’s day and that she could stop by tomorrow to pick up the computer system that I put together for her son. I build and customize computers for a living and when I get enough old parts together (that are still useful) I put together a computer and give it to one of my needier customers kids. He’s a good kid and is always drooling over the latest hardware on hand whenever he passes by. I never tell the customer until the computer is ready to go and it always makes people happy when they hear about the surprise gift.

    Her daughter even called me afterward to let me know what an awesome guy I am.

    I told her that it’s recycling at its best. :)

  118. 118.

    sacrablue

    @Suzanne: The other thing that is bugging me in this current iteration is the hairline box that surrounds the ad at the top right also ensnares the recent posts box. If recent posts had its own box that would make more sense.

  119. 119.

    JR in WV

    @Roxy:

    Yes, it’s easier to just provide a link to the post you’re responding to / arguing with rather than rewriting the whole page every time a response is made.

    Just get used to it, until it changes without (much) warning.

Comments are closed.