Hope you all had a nice weekend!
I had a Sunday Funday…I spent all morning / early afternoon at the pool and then came home and watched the entire first season of The Hardacres.
Concepts of a plan?
US-Iran peace deal could see strait of Hormuz open on Friday ‘under Iranian arrangements’, says state media – Middle East crisis live
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jun/14/iran-us-middle-east-crisis-donald-trump-peace-deal-strait-hormuz-open-pakistan-latest-news-updates
Sprots!
New Yorkers celebrate Knicks championship with all-night party; NYPD reports 63 arrests
https://gothamist.com/news/knicks-in-five-new-yorkers-celebrate-the-championship-with-all-night-party
That’s horrible
Pilot and 11 skydiving passengers killed in private plane crash in Missouri
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/14/butler-missouri-plane-crash
I’m just gonna stay on the ground
US musician Oliver Tree, 32, killed in helicopter crash in Brazil
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/14/musician-oliver-tree-32-killed-in-helicopter-crash-in-brazil
Ah, that’s too bad. Anyway, what’s for breakfast?
Former Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hospitalized
https://www.npr.org/2026/06/14/g-s1-128089/mitch-mcconnell-hospital
Jennifer has a good blog:
My big, fat, anti-AI post, once and for all.
https://dirtbagchristian.substack.com/p/my-big-fat-anti-ai-post-once-and
Have a great day!
…competitive stupidity is seemingly the boom industry of our times?
…keir is attempting a crusade to keep kids off…hmmm…well…some online stuff…mostly the stuff the australian example has been about 70% ineffective at enforcement of…but with maybe some extra that the aussies didn’t even try to do…I dunno…fortnite or roblox or something
…but…elon becoming a paper trillionaire while hosting the .gov social media presence on a platform he uses to spew the sort of stuff out of “tommy robinson” that requires him to also pick up a tab for the consequent legal fees…that’s all fine
…oh, & the teens that we need to save from the evils of the internet should probably get ready to ingest a bunch of AI in their curriculum
…because these people fully…uh…grok…the way all of this works
…honestly hard to say if that’s dumber than the attempt to pretend the deal would represent anything other than iran being gifted a spectrum of stuff it wouldn’t have if the status quo had stayed with the deal the guy even a plane-blinding light show & a monster energy sponsorship with a cage match center-piece couldn’t prevent nodding off in the middle of it focusing on anything but him
…but that seems moot given israel all but wiped their ass on the part about lebannon & that seems unlikely to have flipped by friday when it supposedly kicks in
…how very…monday…of you, monday
…this is why nobody likes you, monday
You’re right. Iran won. From a financial perspective (I’m not forgetting the murdered schoolgirls and other civilians), they’re WAY better off than before and now they get to collect astronomical tolls on Hormuz. Trump totally fucked the whole thing up, but what else is new?
Also, by the reckoning of people who count such things, I believe this is the 38th time Trump announced an agreement. Based on track record, I agree this won’t make it to Friday.
Iran didn’t just win. It humiliated the U.S. We don’t have the specifics — and that’s even assuming this deal lasts the week, which call me skeptical — but if what we’re hearing is correct, Iran got a shitload of money directly from us and an approval to skim off the top of the world’s economy in exchange for what they gave up for free to Obama basically 15 years ago. That isn’t even status quo ante!
As a free speech absolutist I think it’s appalling what the Australians did and what Keir is trying (although Britain seems to be turning into this dystopian Groupthink hell. This is known as the Banter Ban:
…the problem…at least potentially…in that it would fit the role…is that the hard answer is that what it takes to do what they want is to wholesale re-adjust the baseline worldview of enough of society that it’d be on the level of “we don’t let kids fall off stuff…too much…or from high enough to hurt more than a bit…or…put their hands in open flames…teenagers…eh…the feral monsters can fend for themselves…it’s character building”
…they want for it to not be “normal”…for kids not to be able to say “everyone else is” about the stuff that’s all gateway-to-misery but peer-pressure-pre-requisite
…kier’s comparison is “teens get pissed but we don’t say there’s no point saying it’s illegal to serve them alcohol” & this is…to him…just like that
…if you could air-gap a sand-box-ed internet-for-kids that might even be a good thing…but…it absolutely does not map onto the marketing-first-data-tap the one we have floats on top of
…which does rather make this have the makings of a thing designed to blow up in his face because it’s conceptually detached from anything remotely deliverable…much less deliverable *by him*?
…quick question
…has any member of this cabinet hung out with someone under the age of…let’s say 21…since they read &/or wrote this thing?
…&…what kinda advance do you think is the going rate for your print run if you have a window on that sort of thing?
…still…I guess points for nailing the clueless-dad branding..gotta respect the combo of irony & commitment to the bit…but…you’re trying to make a promise that kinda can only go bad on you?
…if there’s no line & “it’s the internet – anything goes”…you can’t enforce a bubble that keeps kids out of it…you can continue to make choices that tie you in knots because you won’t meaningfully enforce the lines these “highly profitable engines for economic growth” bulldoze or flout while they avoid admissions that might have the revenue able to inland any of that…or wildly over-reaching into digital creepiness…sure…you can do that, I guess?
…if it was weird that some people didn’t like the “oh, you’re just always on a hot mike – that’s how it can be listening when you talk to it whether or not you want to talk to it ever because that’s a feature actually & never mind if we send that audio off to get transcribed someplace you wouldn’t go on holiday so it helps align our machine-generated real-time sub-titles & stuff” part…then it’s double-weird not to want your kid’s phone to be watching them like big brother’s pocket edition, right?
…that keeps them “safe”…so they can get a twitter account when they grow up like an innocent midwestern naïf getting welcomed at the bus station downtown…that’s a sane & proportional & most importantly responsible way to approach modifying the behavior of…*checks notes*…teenagers
…look…it says teenagers…*I know*…but…that’s still what it says…if you don’t believe me…check what the prime minister said to camera while in a cardie on the pro-eugenics-&-gender-violence platform owned by the guy you can’t “afford” to do anything about
…it’s great…everything’s great…america’s great (again)…the straits
arewill-be-by-friday-pinkie-swear great…everyone had a great time at the action-man playdate last night…in a few hours you’ll be as far from a monday morning as you can be…literally what could be more great than this…it’s practically a walking zen koan?Also didn’t Starmer tout AI in schools at all ages, like, this month? Does he know who made those products and their worldviews vis a vis social media or nah?
…yup…I am almost at the point of tying my wrists to the chair so I can’t type today
…we also found out that there’s a russian angle on the arson campaign against properties with ties to our mr starmer…only if you just heard the headline on the BBC they only mentioned the two involved being ukranian by passport
…like…I know memory is super-fallible & all…but…the parts of being that age that I remember…just…none of the shit…computes?
…make an announcement in standard-non-threatening-middle-class-dad-mode…to reassure parents you will police the internet so their kids don’t keep them up at night worrying about what the kids are up to…on…elon’s platform
…about…the support network for the functioning of most tech in the household for a broad majority of those…particularly when you loop in the times that means grand-kids
…uh-huh
…& if you break off the little bit of plastic it’s *impossible* to record over that tape, too
…if you couldn’t figure it out the kids never will…that always works, right?
I realized after I wrote my comment you mentioned it in the first comment above … I just can’t wrap my head around “this technology built by these people in this place is evil and must be kept from children but THIS technology build by these same people in this same place is necessary for kids immediately.” Like sure, they can’t have a loaded Colt 45 but a Remington is fine?
I have to wonder if Haberman was actually saving it for the book or just too cowardly to anger Trump back then. Now that his regime is collapsing, she found her spine.
Of course, it could be both.
Meant to thread this under RIP’s comment. Oops.
…the whole day feel like one big “oops”
…seriously…the coverage is making me struggle not to festoon this place in stuff that makes me want to go full-network with a light touch of clockwork orange for the sensation that none of this is what I want to be watching
…so…by way of displacement activity…here’s jonathan pie?
Honestly, this is worth a separate entry. She’s a journalist in the same sense that a deadbeat dad is a parent; technically true, but not actually doing the job in any meaningful way.
Pop-pop couldn’t make it through his 80th birthday party.
We know the answer to the question: “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?”
No.
The general consensus of most observers is that Trump (or his clown posse) concocted this to address his declining poll numbers with young men. Kind of like his decision to got to the NBA finals. He has no interest in this stuff (as demonstrated by nap time), but he’s perfectly happy to squander tax dollars on it if it reverses or even slows his plummeting popularity.
It’s not working.
Finally got my damn internet back. It turns out it was defective coax.
When you can’t win…
https://hartmannreport.com/p/what-desperate-regimes-do-before-3c0
The shit doesn’t fall too far from the grifting pig…