Midweek Meh-Ness [DOT 4/3/26]

I can probably keep this short as you’re still reading yesterday’s DOT at this point…

Today is my Mom’s 84th birthday so happy Bday to Mrs. McGee.


Drone Targets U.S. Consulate in Dubai as Iran Escalates Attacks
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-israel-us-strikes-2026


Trump denies that Israel forced USโ€™s hand in launching strikes against Iran
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/03/trump-israel-iran-war


More of this por favor

Father of Georgia school shooting suspect found guilty of murder and manslaughter
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/03/georgia-school-shooting-suspect-father-guilty


Kristi Noem refuses to retract statement calling Minnesotans killed by federal agents โ€˜domestic terroristsโ€™
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/03/kristi-noem-senate-hearing-minnesota-ice-shootings


He’s right tho

The candy heir vs. chocolate skimpflation
https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2026/03/03/g-s1-111940/the-candy-heir-vs-chocolate-skimpflation


A minor league hockey team had a wiener dog race. Zero thoughts, just vibes and absolute chaos. A thing of beauty

Razzball (@razzball.bsky.social) 2026-03-03T18:38:38.188Z

Have a good day!

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24 Comments

  1. …really not trying to repeat yesterday’s performance…& actually do have probably enough on today to ensure that’s even true…but…gah

    ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ ๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ท President Donald Trump and his team have scrambled to reclaim the narrative on why he decided to attack Iran, after his top diplomat suggested US forces struck only after learning of an imminent Israeli strike. โžก๏ธ u.afp.com/Susb

    AFP News Agency (@en.afp.com) 2026-03-04T10:00:28.852Z

    Secretary Foam Party caught in a lie again. Nuremberg now.

    Greg Olear (@gregolear.bsky.social) 2026-03-04T09:56:19.309Z

    Elon Musk is expected to take the stand in a shareholder trial Wednesday in San Francisco, where heโ€™s accused of making false and misleading statements that drove down Twitterโ€™s stock price before he bought the social media platform for $44 billion in 2022.

    The Associated Press (@apnews.com) 2026-03-04T10:00:10Z

    Re: the debacle in the Texas primary today: Lies about voter fraud (from past elections) motivate and justify retaliatory actions and policy changes that make elections less fair and lead to more turmoil, more confusion and uncertainty, more rumors and legitimate greivance, and diminished trust.

    Kate Starbird (@katestarbird.bsky.social) 2026-03-04T05:36:25.318Z

    One of the things we looked at with CIP was “vicious cycles” of misinformation and policy. Failures lead to conspiracy theories which lead to bad election policy which lead to more failures which leads possibly to more conspiracy theory. And so on. November is looking bleak.
    screenshot of NBC news story about issues with voters in texas being unable to access polliing venues that a judge tried to intervene with a ruling on and has led to issues in the race between Jasmine Crockett and James Talerico

    It’s true of course that this works to the benefit of bad actors. But the spiral also pulls in people who are legitimately concerned about the chaos they see. Bad information and deceptive framing leads to movements that take that urge to fix and pervert it.

    At one site in Dallas County:

    388 voted
    350 were turned away

    “At about 5:30 pm, Central Time, 388 people had voted at this polling place [where correspondent Rosa Flores was]. And, according to the election judge, again of the Democratic party, about 350 had been turned away.”

    BREAKING: "All those ballots that were cast… between 7P.M. and 9P.M. will be separated and kept. The big question is, will they be counted?"Rosa Flores explains the voter controversy in Dallas County.www.ms.now/liveblog/202…

    MS NOW (@ms.now) 2026-03-04T04:00:25.384Z

    Jared Polis, Gov of Colorado, just pardoned Tina Peters (a 2020 election conspiracist who broke the law) at the demand of Trump Iโ€™m shocked and sickened

    Adam Kinzinger (@adamkinzinger.substack.com) 2026-03-04T03:07:42.532Z

    Republicans have caused total chaos in Dallas County. It's instructive.Whether or not Trump attempts some sort of executive order to nationalize election administration, Republicans have an endless number of paths to create absolute mayhem in November.

    Brandon Friedman (@brandonfriedman.bsky.social) 2026-03-04T03:13:10.197Z

    deleted his tweet as soon as an actual war popped off

    derek guy (@dieworkwear.bsky.social) 2026-03-04T02:54:19.821Z

    lol if they really did this without planning and resourcing a country-wide C-WMD recovery mission. Good lord itโ€™s gonna be ugly.

    Tony Stark (@tonystark.bsky.social) 2026-03-04T02:53:52.267Z

    I actually don't have words as to how angry I am. Wonder what happened in these countries that people on student visas in the UK found themselves needing to apply for asylum instead of going home post 2021. UK Labour are heartless bastards & apparently have bo idea whats happening in the world.

    Xun-ling Au ๆญ่ฟ…็ต ๐Ÿด (@xunlingau.bsky.social) 2026-03-04T07:27:58.306Z

    yet again I have accidentally sat on the lathe of heaven
    screenshot of headline indicating likely replacement of Iranian Ayatollah to be his son

    You see both were members of the powerful Ayatollah family (in Iranese the family name comes first)

    Okay I feel like this is going to come up a lot in the next 24 hours so let's just clear this up:Ayatollah Khameini, the Iranian supreme leader allegedly killed today, is/was *not* the same person as Ayatollah Khomeini, the supreme leader who came to power in the 1979 revolution.

    James Ball (@jamesrball.com) 2026-02-28T21:14:41.425Z

    Trump is breaking shit he cannot un-break, no matter how hard he tries to backpedal or shift blame.

    Trading halt in Korea. Dayum.

    Tom Hearden (@followtheh.bsky.social) 2026-03-04T02:49:31.283Z

    Primary elections matter, folks

    Alex Ip ่‘‰ๆธ…้œ– (@alexip718.com) 2026-03-04T04:03:32.665Z

    Words have value and the only way youโ€™re going to have readers is if they understand that you also understand this how can the ASSOCIATED FREAKING PRESS OF ALL PEOLE NOT UNDERSTA [walks into sea]

    erin mccann (@mccanner.bsky.social) 2026-03-04T03:46:04.162Z

    • You know, I work on a boring IT team at a boring company and don’t do anything important in the grand scheme of anything.
      And even my teams understand the point of “get your story straight when you open your mouth about a project,” something our government clearly cannot manage.

  2. Who can take a Reese’s cup?
    (Who can take a Reese’s cup?)
    Mix in some chemical goo
    (Mix in some chemical goo)
    Cover it with a label and a marketing lie or two

    The Hershey Man (the Hershey man)
    The Hershey Man can (the Hershey man can)
    The Hershey Man can ’cause he mixes it with tariffs
    And hope the Murrica don’t care
    (Hope the Murrica don’t care)

  3. Weiner dog chaos indeed. I think about the ones in our family. They’d be those running around barking in circles unless mom was at the other side. She drew them like a magnet and they all ran to her (mostly for food.)

  4. Dan “Arrr” Crenshaw lost his TX primary because he didn’t lick Trump’s taint enough and this is why the rest of the world will have a hard time forgiving the Murrica because you have fuckwit places like this who don’t care what’s going on elsewhere and loyalty to Trump is al that matters.

  5. I do hate to hoperpost but last night was pretty terrific for the forces of … well, I don’t want to say “good” so let’s go with less bad. Three NC Dems in their statehouse went against a governor’s veto to pass some GOP anti-trans bullshit. All three got wrecked in their primaries, including the also-pro-ICE one losing 70%-22% (not a misprint.) Voters mad!

    Talarico winning clean(-ish; the Dallas precinct voting thing is eyebrow raising vis a vis electoral fuckery later this year) with far higher turnout and Cornyn/Paxton needing a runoff are both good signs in Texas. I’m not hopeful there, necessarily, but it’s in play.

    • It’s the same at the Pill Factory. Loyalty to a clan or frat or certain engineering skule or certain execubots was more important. To be fair, I’m glad I never got trapped in that hamster wheel. If I was a miserable shit as a production ape then I’d be way more miserable as a process engineer especially after all the (improvements and ego punching) shit I pulled off.

    • tho…i really am beginning to think this current administration is actually made of the worst american posters on the interwebs…

      you know..the ones that actually believe europe is a third world country without proper internet or colour tv….

      the arrogance is hard to let slide

      • …see now if I’d waited maybe the reply would have been better here…but…they are the content coup committee for sure, yes

        …they think the world is now the internet & twitter is the high ground…& somehow that they’re all either luke skywalker or han despite being either a palpatine wannabe or a hutt

        …& hegseth probably thinks stormtroopers are famous marksmen & says he watched those films

        …it’s fucking delusional…& yet…here we all are having to live their dysfunction rather than have any chance of anything happening that doesn’t have fucking-stupid running through it like letters in a stick of rock

        • hahahaha oh fuck no thats not why i said what i said

          thats somehow worse and sadder

          congratulations… you are now north korea far as media blurbles go

          i uhh.. you know.i dont know how to put a positive spin on that..

          twould appear you have found a way to turn a position of strength into a position of ridicule…

          this would be a lot funnier if you didnt hava all the nukes and president thin skin

    • …yeah…it’s not great to be saying shit to the home crowd in front of a watching world that knows you lying

      …whether the part where it “works for him” with that domestic audience makes that worse is perhaps…academic…in the sense that it clearly is worse if it does but the ways it’s bad in the rest-of-the-world context & the ways it’s bad that it might play fine domestically are different…if overlapping…kinds of bad?

      …for the full hat-trick you gotta wonder how much of the extortion racket in an administration costume that doesn’t fit actually believes this stuff…the orange mush might…mush isn’t really mind so he’d probably pass a polygraph while contradicting himself…but…does anyone else out there enabling him actually think any of the shit they put out is remotely tethered to reality at this point?

  6. well… one of the stereotypes about americans over here…is that they are not even a little bit curious about the world….beyond the borders of the greatest nation…

    and you know…that probably explains why leavitt feels like she can just make shit up….coz odd are…the people wont look further..

    as to the full hat trick point…i actually think very few people enabling him believe any of it…..but they see personal gain

    • …can’t argue with the last bit…here & there I think some had their bits they really did do the sunk costs thing with…like MTG…the pivot is to keep the grift going but the betrayed framing seems like it might be really how she feels because she thought the insincere for-desired-effect stuff was the leopard that would never eat *her* pet stuff with the cute faces everyone loved

      …whoever let them keep making their shortlist for ayatollah replacements while bibi’s bunch had those on the gone-now list…& somehow told him he could give bibi the cake he literally said delightedly he’d been waiting to taste for 40years…but also that even though they couldn’t do it without him also they would go first so it wasn’t war when he did it & then he could get his gonna-be-dead candidate in place & tell everyone how it went even better than venezuela…is either very, very good at what they do…or…he/they is/are somehow even dumber than I think…which…seems implausible…& yet?

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