Midweek Meh-Ness [DOT 10/9/25]

10/9/25 MegMegMcGee 50

Hope everyone’s week is going alright so far…

Israel tried to kill Hamas leaders in a strike in Qatar. Trump disapproves
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/09/nx-s1-5535210/israel-qatar-hamas-doha

Trump calls release of suggestive note to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein a ‘dead issue’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/09/trump-jeffrey-epstein-birthday-note

The main author on all these Epstein stories from WSJ, Joe Palazzolo, is a friend of a friend. We used to hang out in a house that we referred to as “the shoe” because so many people lived in it. I think they had like 7 roommates at one point? Like the old lady who lived in a shoe. And now he’s got three Pulitzers.

Epstein Birthday Letter With Trump’s Signature Revealed
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/epstein-birthday-book-congress-9d79ab34?st=pN8p56&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

#merica!

The school shooting industry is worth billions — and it keeps growing
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/08/nx-s1-5317647/school-shooting-industry

And here I thought he was dead.

Oliver North marries Fawn Hall, his document-shredding secretary at the center of Iran-Contra scandal
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/09/politics/oliver-north-fawn-hall-iran-contra-marry

Have a great day!

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50 Comments

  1. …way to go, joe

    …but…the NPR one?

    …I say this as someone with way too many hours literally booked all over genres that are long on the exact sorts of near-through-far-future dystopian scenarios to not identify with utter certainty that…on the strict understanding that it’s not the meme about relocating a section of the bookshop in light of current events…this passage

    “We use drones to stop school shootings,” says Justin Marston, the CEO of Campus Guardian Angel, the company selling the drones. In the event of a shooting, remote pilots fly the drones, housed at the school, at the shooter. They shoot pepper balls and run the drones into the shooter to debilitate them.

    The technology is one example on a long list of products schools can buy to deter a shooter.

    …*in an explicitly fictional context*…would triangulate that story as presenting more or less an intention to pitch itself at what is statistically the sweet spot of a venn diagram in which several popular & lucrative genres overlap

    …forget transmetropolitan…way back when alan moore could still be found writing “future shocks” in the pages of 2000AD & dan dare & commando comics were still a thing…& judge dredd hadn’t even turned out to have a brother yet…that is the kind of shit that led a kid called marlon (iirc…marlon shakespeare, even…not to be confused with martha washington…which is a whole other book) to pursue a career moonlighting as an underground celebrity graffiti tagger called chopper…that will eventually lead to his banishment to an irradiated wasteland without the megacity walls referred to as the cursed earth…&…eventually…living in the antipodean equivalent that lot refer to as the radback

    …for the record…while dredd is the law…it was never particularly unclear that chopper was the fucking hero in those arcs…like…robin hood to a nottingham resident…or the scarlet pimpernel to a french aristocrat…or whatever

    …either way, though…it was intended to be literally cartoonish in its intentional over-exaggeration & extrapolation for the sake of making an incidental statement orthogonal to the foreground narrative…the fat people are so fat they have curved two-wheel skateboards to support their guts in order to be able to move…the entire point of the premise of the reality depicted is to be a future you’d so obviously avoid as to make you feel better about how in the present we’re far enough from it that it’s a no brainer we’ll avoid getting stuck on the fork that goes that way

    …&…dredd…in quite a few ways…is who you get if the punisher is how law enforcement goes…but with a tricked out gun that makes no mechanical sense & a motorcycle with implausibly wide tyres that batman would…ok, not *kill* for…but pick up a tab for a life-time of somebody else’s medical care for

    …hard to believe, really…but…when I was a kid…those comics were considered a threat to the wellbeing of children & society…there weren’t FPS high-def video games then & comics-are-just-for-kids & all that

    …sort of bleakly funny how wrong you can be as a kid about which parts of fictional works are firmly in the make-believe column

  2. …I know it’s still early as the day goes & I never really seemed to stop yesterday…but…since this is I guess what I do these days to make sure that IRL I still stop short of performative shit like setting my head on fire or standing on a rooftop on a streetcorner screaming at innocent passersby…or whatever…I didn’t have any hand in this being a thing I could find so it can’t be a deliberate response to the DUAN title

    Geopolitically, it has been a tumultuous 48 hours. Updates on the situations in Finland, Russia-Ukraine, Estonia, France, Palestinian Territories, Syria, Qatar, Tunisia, Eritrea-Ethiopia, Rwanda-Congo, Nepal, Indonesia, South Korea, Venezuela, and the U.S.

    — Malcontent News (@malcontentnews.bsky.social) 2025-09-10T04:44:12.345Z

    …but…the nepal thing?

    Nepal burns parliament
    Indonesia burns congress
    Korea imprisons corrupt leaders
    China executes corrupt billionaire

    Americans… hold signs and hope for the best when it hasn’t worked for 60 years

    The revolt happened when the government attempted to seize control of YouTube, social media, and messaging apps to quell a growing anti-corruption outcry. At least 20 people are dead and 300 injured, protestors killed the former PM's wife and chased the finance minister into a river and beat him.

    — Anonymous (@youranoncentral.bsky.social) 2025-09-09T16:24:35.489Z

    …I…see a lot of people who seem to be feeling a lot of “well done them”…or “why don’t we do that in X place?”…&…well

    The world is lighting up. Riots in Paris and Nepal, and now this. 😪kyivindependent.com/poland-asks-…

    — Dr Lisa 🇰🇳🇨🇦🏳️‍🌈❤️🥳🧘🏽‍♀️🎸🏝💃🏽🛸 (@xitter-refugee.bsky.social) 2025-09-10T09:47:11.798Z

    …if you exist in a matrix (not in the movie sense but in the matrices sense you didn’t enjoy when you did vectors in math) where there is functionally no longer a reliably-discernible division between conjecture for which an abundance of “proof of concept + form” exists & “comprehensible accusation almost certainly not prosecutable in any recognised body of jurisprudence”…much less the parody of a supreme court that has steadfastly enabled things to make their way to where we all are now…for…let’s call them a statistically-significant-at-the-electoral-&/or-college-level number of people…then…yes…you most likely will feel a particular kind of a way about that

    Now 400 ppl dead bc facebook did not want to give up dominating Nepal’s digital space & so let the National Endowment of Democracy (CIA) regime change Nepal via local NGOs bragging about Western funding.

    Not a coincidence it’s young people, who are ON facebook & misled by western propaganda.

    …much the same way it’s not hard to hear this

    The 400 richest Americans are now worth a record $6.6 trillion, after getting $1.2 trillion richer over the past year alone.Meanwhile, the rest of the country is getting squeezed by tariffs and high prices for groceries, utilities, and health care.The system is broken.

    — Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) 2025-09-09T19:15:10.539704Z

    …& feel some kind of a way about the sound it makes when the other jackboot drops

    Sure seems like Big Pharma spent way way more energy, money and lobbying capital on fighting Dems on prescription drugs than doing anything about the Secretary of HHS casually, and without any real evidence, telling everyone their products kill kids and give them autism.

    — Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes.bsky.social) 2025-09-09T22:51:17.271Z

    …but…here’s the thing about that other jackboot

    they keep calling the Nepal protests “violent” bc 22 people died. But they only died bc troops shot protesters

    — Brian Box Brown (@boxbrown.bsky.social) 2025-09-10T11:00:34.723Z

    …then what?

    …today’s the day we collectively snap & the populace goes postal…instead of taking the line that currently pritzker seems to be walking the sort of walk down that would pass a roadside sobriety check…let’s all go downtown & find a nice old-looking big bit of symbolic architecture we can literally set fire to because…I dunno…it went so well with the reichstag that time…or whatever ahistorical bit of delusional grandeur does it for you…great

    they keep calling the Nepal protests “violent” bc 22 people died. But they only died bc troops shot protesters

    — Brian Box Brown (@boxbrown.bsky.social) 2025-09-10T11:00:34.723Z

    …happy now?

    Peace is gradually returning in Nepal. Yesterday and the day before, the Nepal Police and Armed Police completely failed to control the riots. From 10 PM last night, the Nepali Army took to the streets. From today, a curfew has been issued. The army is gradually bringing everything back to normal.

    — Bhim Adhikari 🇳🇵 (@bhimabish.bsky.social) 2025-09-10T05:32:45.537Z

    …right…no, you’re right…I’m the one being unreasonable…I apologise…my bad…apparently…I’ll…get my coat?

    …go live in a van down by the river?

    …become…walden?

    …fuck me…is that what a tent costs these days?

    …brb…trying to figure where in the world they make those videos of landscape you can cut a pretty well-appointed house out of with a stick at a push…the vegetation looks pretty lush & the water runs clear & there aren’t a lot of people in shot…hmm…I may have taken the wrong classes at school…but I’m willing to learn, I guess…so…got that going for me, at least?

  3. …ok…I’ll stop…&…I get the part where everyone who wants to probably watched stephen’s bits already

    …but…some things

    …bear repeating?

    …& if one of those is that of the people sitting on that bench she remains one I don’t struggle to respect & believe has a functional legal mind accompanied by a stout moral compass…& she herself implores that I take the time to read the thing she took the time to compose…&…more than that…to read the one the guy I wouldn’t give the time of day slapped together from shit he pulled out of his ass…well

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a169_5h25.pdf

    …that’s 11 pages of shit to wade through before she dog-walks that fool for just shy of twice that…& I’m not going to claim I can spare enough time out of my day to look up & read the case law in the references…but…I could do that much, I reckon?

    • …I promise I’m not working up to block-quoting the entire thing when I already put a link where people could click on it…&…I’m pretty sure I have no standing last I checked at that particular bar…much less a seat…or a bench…but…when I say I can respect her but I struggle to respect the likes of this?

      plaintiffs likely lack Article III standing
      to seek a broad injunction restricting immigration officers
      from making these investigative stops. In Lyons, the Court
      held that standing to obtain future injunctive relief does not
      exist merely because plaintiffs experienced past harm and
      fear its recurrence. What matters is the “reality of the
      threat of repeated injury,” not “subjective apprehensions.”
      Id., at 107, n. 8. So too here.
      Plaintiffs’ standing theory largely tracks the theory
      rejected in Lyons. Like in Lyons, plaintiffs here allege that
      they were the subjects of unlawful law enforcement actions
      in the past—namely, being stopped for immigration
      questioning allegedly without reasonable suspicion of
      unlawful presence. And like in Lyons, plaintiffs seek a
      forward-looking injunction to enjoin law enforcement from
      stopping them without reasonable suspicion in the future.
      But like in Lyons, plaintiffs have no good basis to believe
      that law enforcement will unlawfully stop them in the
      future based on the prohibited factors—and certainly no
      good basis for believing that any stop of the plaintiffs is
      imminent. Therefore, they lack Article III standing:
      “Absent a sufficient likelihood” that the plaintiffs “will
      again be wronged in a similar way,” they are “no more
      entitled to an injunction than any other citizen of Los
      Angeles; and a federal court may not entertain a claim by
      any or all citizens who no more than assert that certain
      practices of law enforcement officers are unconstitutional.”
      Lyons, 461 U. S., at 111; see Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA,
      568 U. S. 398 (2013); Application 16–22; Reply 4–9.²

      …leave aside the part where it’s like saying there’s no argument that stop & frisk is deployed with racial bias because the first dozen times a particular young black man dressed in casual athletic wear got stopped & frisked doesn’t make it any more likely that the next time they pick someone who ticks those boxes it’ll be him again so he can’t call that racial profiling…but neither can the guy who hasn’t been stopped or frisked for not looking like that just because they probably won’t be tomorrow, either…because they don’t have standing either…but the people enforcing a reading of the law that even the supreme court just about agrees with itself about agreeing would hypothetically be illegal if they were asked if it was by someone with the appropriate standing to do so on account of the irreparable harm it would do them to have the law hold it to be declared legal…the ones not even the courts apparently have the power…or the desire…to adjudicate…doing the unconstitutional stuff they lack any standing to be doing…those are irreparably harmed…to a degree that renders the man putatively running the free world so incapable of executing the office of the presidency of the united states that, per that “worthy”, it will bring about the collapse of the united states…state…&/or economy…not necessarily in that order…swiftly to be followed by a backdraft effect inducing a cataclysmic global inferno…which…to be clear…is still to be considered a more optimal outcome than obvious criminals criminally profiteering off fomented chaos & the emiseration of the overwhelming plurality of humanity…you know…failing to at least break even & stay out of jail so they can keep going to those parties you aren’t invited to in places you couldn’t afford to be anyway

      …that little footnote-denoting ² right there at the end?

      …between you, me & the nobody-here-but-us-chickens…this is the footnote

      To be clear, the plaintiffs have Article III standing to seek damages
      for any unlawful action taken against them. For standing purposes,
      Lyons distinguished between claims for damages and claims for broad
      forward-looking injunctive relief.

      …&…instead of whatever crap I can’t seem to help myself stack up into something sandwiched into the space marked DOT tomorrow…I don’t doubt for a moment I could break the wordcount wordpress awarded yesterday’s in a plain-text prose essay solely about the ways even I can tell you brett-likes-beer is a triflin’ no-good pretexturalist craven motherfucker of a dimestore sophist…just by starting with that footnote & applying elementary logic & undisputed observable facts

      …it’s fine…getting that far puts nearly half his shit in the rearview…& I’m starting to look forward to the part where if I push through until I break the back of it…it’ll be downhill from there right up to where the good part takes off when we get done with the he-said & ramp up to the she-said part?

      [ETA – P.S. …brett…& your brewskie-butt-buddies…how about…just for shits & giggles…we take *your* “subjective apprehensions“…&…shit on them…then giggle…I’m telling you brett…it could start a trend…hell…it might could yet save your soul if you believe the math on the dead-messiah exchange rate on the sort of sorry that counts with god…just…sayin’…I’d be down…probably…if the option were on offer…& anyone asked…nicely…maybe with a pretty smile…& a short hem line…that always helps…according to brett…who…by the way…can fuck all the way out of here with this absolutely laughable bullshit being a thing anyone should for a single moment entertain is believably of the sort of weighty legal substance that merits not immediately resigning in utter disgrace from a position on a bench you are fulsomely unequal to measuring up to…in…uh…my…”un-qualified”…lay…opinion…that has all the legal standing brett’s would in a sane fucking universe]

  5. I’m a little concerned about the writers — bringing back a will-they won’t-they (commit light treason) couple from the ’80s in 2025? That’s some sloppy fan-service shit trying to play on nostalgia and I don’t buy it.

    • Not at all, this is what the right is desperately trying to cling to — Ben Shapiro asked three AI chatbots! It’s evidence, IT’S EVIDENCE WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING — and they have to take that seriously and literally so … here we are with WaPo just asking questions that the right would like them to please keep asking until such time as they can come up with something else even dumber for the media to ask about.

  8. Well, it’s a successful morning. I’ve managed to crash my work laptop twice in 20 minutes.

    I’m going to be super productive at the office today!

    • …can’t find the clip…fuck it…maybe I just buy the stupid fucking shirt & be done with it?

      • There’s also a strong whiff of “old geezer hears a term that all the kids are talking about and demands that everyone start using thing he doesn’t and never will understand.”

        Years ago I had an ancient VP who demanded we produce a “viral video.” I could not explain to him that “viral” wasn’t a quality we could build into the video — it had to “go viral” based on clever content and a lot of luck. And the enterprise software we sold, being a highly niche product, did not lend itself to a “viral video.”

    • Not surprised John Solomon is involved. He’s always been a wingnut hack.

  11. …words…or possibly weakness of the flesh &/or spirit…fail me

    "We emailed Infidels MC for comment. In response, Mr Mulford instructed fellow leaders of the biker gang not to reply but included the BBC when he clicked 'reply all'—inadvertently disclosing email addresses and names of fellow Infidels MC members…working in Gaza." http://www.bbc.com/news/article...

    — David_j_roth (@davidjroth.bsky.social) 2025-09-10T14:23:11.380Z

    …as far as I can tell…that’s not a fever dream I had because someone snuck in here & laced my coffee with acid?

  12. …when they say life imitates art or maybe it’s the other way around…is…this what they meant?

    – you clean up that banksy?- sure did, your honour, leaving a perfect, permanent outline, imbuing the work with real fuckin gravitas while making its point better than the artist did himself just like you asked

    — The Author, Séamas O'Reilly (@seamas.bsky.social) 2025-09-10T13:02:01.653Z

    • …iirc when banksy & some presumably well-heeled mates clubbed together & bought a pedestrian tunnel under the railway arches by waterloo station in london the one of his on those walls the weekend they opened that to all comers as a non-prosecutable space for graffiti…was literally of a guy with a pressure washer having that effect hosing cave-paintings off a wall

      …good thing I like irony, I suppose…or I might be crying by now?

      • …close enough for government work?

    • …nah

      …that’s article #5

      …this is the article #4 thing

      …that’s just talking about whether it’s time to talk about article #5

      …this-is-fine.gif

      …also…this is also why having troops the attacking of which would be article #5 time posted where the people flying those are trying to invade is tantamount to unforgivably threatening the safety of the world from nuclear armageddon courtesy of…uh…the drone-flying invading guy a number of western “leaders” keep getting quoted saying nicer things about than they do about their constituents when those say they don’t support murdering thousands of children so one guy that happens to be jewish doesn’t have to go to prison & can keep being a prefect…I mean prime minister of israel…so he can do war crimes to not have to answer for the just-regular crimes he did before those

      …which is…keen…or something…& not thinking it’s fine is magically antisemitic by the way…so…they’re basically invincible rhetorically, akshully?

      • President Donald Trump has posted on Truth Social: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!” Our White House reporter said this shows his mounting frustration with Russia

      I’m so glad that we have a “White House reporter” who can sanewash Grampa’s toilet tweeting for us.

      No, it doesn’t show “mounting frustration.” It shows he has no fucking idea what’s going on, despite that being literally his goddamn job.

      • I just heard Thom Hartmann say that Putin probably told Trump he was going to do this when they met in Alaska.  We are going to attack Venezuela & Putin won’t give a shit while he tries to take Poland & all the former Soviet states.

  15. …holy shit…somebody shot charlie kirk?

    • Oh well, he kind of thought it is worth it?

        • daaamn. there’s no way he’s alive right? Like that was straight to the carotid.

          • Reports are saying he’s in critical condition.

             

            • Mediate sez he’s gone to the 2nd Amendment in the sky.

              It seems ironic that he died at a place, allegedly, of higher larning.

              • Truth social posting by Preznit Cheeto saying Kirk died, too.

                • You’d have been better off waiting for a more reputable source, but it’s apparently official now, yeah.

                  • All the early reports kept going back to his announcements. So either he was told first, or he knew first because he told someone to pull a plug etc.

              • Well, I wouldn’t say it’s in the sky, necessarily. . . .

      • That is… ironic?

        When people like that talk about gun martyrs… they usually don’t talk about themselves.

        • Yeah, that quote up there keeps getting removed the moderators of r/murderedbywords (too soon. . . ?), and its latest iteration was in a tweet saying that it’s what he would have wanted. I mean, somehow I doubt he’d have wanted it for himself, but he probably wouldn’t have had much of a problem if it happened to you. . . .

    • The Minnesota Dem shooting was basically out of major headlines after 36-48 hours. If he dies — and it looked hella bad — I think this is the biggest story in America for at least five days, maybe longer.

    • I thought you had misthread with the missiles bouncing off the UFO…

    • Now they’re saying the gunman is still at large. Are we sure Luigi is in jail?

  17. This fucking racist moron just cost the area she wants to represent, the Hyundai EV battery factory and she’s proud of it.

  18. Trump just said Kirk is dead.

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