Hope everyone had a great week! Mine was a little crazy at work and also it’s really weird at home without the cat. Too quiet!
Sounds like a case of “I know you are but what am I?”
‘Lowlife with small brain and big mouth’: Trump hits out at ex-aide Kelly
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/05/donald-trump-john-kelly-comments-military-veterans
As one does
Man with handgun seeking governor arrested in Wisconsin Capitol, returns with assault rifle
https://apnews.com/article/wisconsin-governor-handgun-threat-85f3a2f9fe73b505660b4f552a94cbb4
Ukraine Updates:
Russia’s war in Ukraine
https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-10-05-23/index.html
As one does
Officiant fires gun to welcome bride, shoots grandson — and wedding goes on
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/10/04/wedding-officiant-shoots-grandson-michael-gardner-nebraska/
Two-thirds of CEOs are delusional
Two-thirds of CEOs think staff will return to office five days a week, survey finds
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/oct/05/two-thirds-ceos-think-staff-return-to-office-five-days-a-week-survey-finds
Stonks!
Why borrowing costs for nearly everything are surging, and what it means for you
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/05/why-borrowing-costs-for-nearly-everything-are-surging.html
Sprots! Yes I’m filing this under Sprots IDC
Have a fantastic day!
…was going to say this was interesting
…but that beckham clip is…either a masterpiece of carefully curated “reality” theatre…or an actual candid moment that is probably the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages?
…someone mentioned the british being funny about class in ways that the US isn’t just the other day & that exchange encapsulates a lot of what I did not nearly so good a job of trying to convey without a comedy component…she always wanted to sort of shed the “posh spice” thing…but also very much wanted to be a sort of middle-class white version of the jay-z/beyonce power couple that would be accepted by the home counties set
…& he…for an insanely wealthy & talented guy…has always come off as remarkably down to earth and not a little humble in a sort of genuine way that I always hope is hard to fake
…which makes the whole thing priceless…down to the part where he’s trying to stay out of shot so as not to draw the focus to him but also as the caption says “not having it”
…I know that’s a long-winded way to say “no notes”…but…there’s a lot going on that might be easy to overlook when you’re too busy laughing so I figured I’d throw in…I dunno…a rudimentary concordance or whatever that was?
He has also trolled his son.
It was me saying the Brits recognize class in a way Americans don’t — and that has its own positives and negatives. But if it were true here, poor to middle class GOP voters would likely be a lot more skeptical (maybe I should say sceptical?) about, say, billionaires promising things and endless rich-guy tax cuts being their only reward for loyal voting.
Edit to add: The Tories obviously do the same obfuscatory things there as they do here (Brexit, come on down!) but traditionally they’ve been seen as the money party.
I think the US has much more of sense of working and middle class life as providing necessary credentials. You get a lot more of that kind of Victoria Beckham behavior among people born to the manor in the US.
Dunno, lotta voters took Trump’s word on him being a big smart businessman when he was actually a millionaire by the time he could walk. Not sure that goes down as easily if class were on people’s minds here in the way it is in some other places.
…there’s manors & manors in the UK…& though they use the same word they kind of a never-the-twain kind of deal…so…if you’re to the manor born the way they ran a whole sit-com about for a while with a posh lady fallen on hard times living in the gamekeeper’s cottage or the gatehouse or whatever it was while the new money guy who bought her family seat off her ends up kind of desperate for her approval…then…maybe your other car is also a rolls…or a bentley…or whatever
…but you could just as easily find those cars in some decidedly less classy locales…whose residents would also consider their “ends” to be “my manor”…as in, “don’t come round my manor taking liberties or we’ll stitch you right up” & other such things you’d find in a guy ritchie flick
…there’s an old lady who lived up the road from where I grew up who, when she was a young girl about town, worked as a barmaid among other things…& also hung out with all sorts…coppers (straight & crooked), clergy, “regular folk”…& the kind of east end gangsters whose names might even still mean something these days…& she once told me a lovely story that had the bonus of making jimmy saville look like a tool…he’s hitting on her fellow barmaid all night even though she’s having none of it…& eventually gets around to trying to impress her by offering a lift home in his fancy car…which I believe was a rolls…he gets her to come to the door so he can point it out & probably say something about the generous capacity of the back seat that would get him cancelled if he hadn’t famously done so much worse…& she says “you mean that one, over there?”…”yes, bet you never got a lift in a motor as classy as that, have you?”…”oh, I dunno – see that bentley next to it? that’s what I drove in to work & that’s what I’m driving home but I’m pretty sure I’ve told you already I ain’t going in your direction…”
…she was dating…maybe not a kray twin…but let’s just say it’s a shame the boyfriend whose car it was hadn’t been in that night…because that might have been all she wrote for jimmy?
…any road…I don’t think (I definitely don’t know because I’ve never cared to find out but am under the impression) that victoria beckham actually came from a particularly posh family…but she was very much the “aspirational” sort…& it’s entirely possible the rolls she went to school in was a picked-up-cheap-second-hand sort rather than an heirloom silver ghost or anything like that…& while I don’t think she was raised by the sort of person you could find in a bunch of less than salubrious ‘hoods these days with a six-figure car out front of a council flat in a tenement block that it’d be hard not to assume was a drug dealer or something…what that dynamic between them said to me was somewhere along the lines of “between the pair of us you’re the posh one…it’s not even close…c’mon now…don’t be telling the nice people porkies”…& to some extent the part where it seemed to be implied that her family had more than one car growing up & she made her dad do the school run in his (rather than whatever her mother drove) would have been enough on its own for some people to side-eye any suggestion she had it rough…but he knows the make probably makes it sound like they were better off than maybe they were & he’s kind of lovingly roasting her about the whole thing…because he probably spent a long time hearing about how they had to get a nice house in the right sort of place & do all sorts of things he very possibly thinks of as putting on airs specifically so the neighbors didn’t get to look down their noses at the newly-minted tabloid favorites for being of humble origins…& maybe even bragging a little about riding in a rolls as a little girl…only for her to now be giving it the “actually I’m really just a working class girl” routine
…like I said before…kind of a lot going on for a short clip with not a lot in it…but…fucking priceless?
Whatever happened to “Russia’s economy is on the verge of collapse” because of the war? People have been saying that for a year or more. Who is propping them up? Or was it just anti-Russia disinformation?
well…uhhh…in a funny old sort of way…..we are…and china
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/08/30/eu-purchases-of-russian-lng-up-40-compared-to-pre-war-levels-new-study-finds
Economies are the worst. JFC:
…way back when I did a whole thing with a string of stuff from the FT about how the west was putting the screws to vlad & how poorly configured the whole thing was from the point of view of weathering the kind of fiscal siege tactics it was scrabbling to fortify itself against…& I think that was pretty much on the level rather than a bunch of wishful thinking propaganda…though it did note that there were a few lifelines in terms of some holdings in gold & the like that didn’t live in the jurisdictions that would have put them in brackets on the balance sheet…& a lot of grey areas when it came to china & their non-SWIFT-reliant digital fiat currency…so I imagine that’s part of it
…then there’s the part where even after detonating half of that pipeline…the spice must flow…so there’s still some less-impacted income streams…& a good bit of price manipulation which is one of the reasons why there was a lot of coverage of insane energy bills that in many ways kicked off that “cost of living crisis” that has rishi tying to make out telling car manufacturers they can keep churning out fossil fuel cars for a few more years…maybe even long enough to have them filled up by petrol derived from…or more accurately imported at a cost that’s off-set by the actual product…brand new licenses for extraction right in blighty…in the hope that somehow daily mail readers will see that as making their next car cheaper…along with various other ways to cap off doing away with the high speed trains by showing he’s putting an end to the “war on motorists” even if he isn’t about to lower fuel duty…without which petrol would be cheaper than bottled water on a per gallon basis…but I digress
…there was a thing I threw in at some point in the last few weeks about the shenanigans being played by tankers past their design life-spans being serially re-flagged by increasingly sketchy nations so they could continue running essentially a shadow fleet in large part to do the same thing they’ve been doing to get around the embargoes on iran for a while but more so because they’re doing it for russian oil too…so that while they may have to flog it at a discount so it can be transferred in & out of storage & re-badged as coming from somewhere else…it’s not as much of a discount as the cap on russian oil prices would make it…so the hurt is a little less
…& underneath all that…they have a lot of practice (& a decent slice of their population for whom it would be a return to the familiar) running a closed economy of the sort you can keep working when it shouldn’t by just saying things cost what you need them to to make the numbers dance…which is a towering oversimplification but I’ve already gone on for an eye-glazing amount of time so I’ll at least call it quits on that part
…but another supremely useful thing about that set up if you’re vlad is that nobody can meaningfully check your books
…they can run the numbers…try to adjust for the variables they can take a decent guess at & keep their eyes peeled for the sort of consumer level indicators of an economy that’s struggling…but they know the margin for error is big enough that they’d have egg on their face if they called it as past breaking point & it turned out he was actually dipping into the off-the books funds he’s had people hold not in his or the country’s name ever since he carved up the mineral wealth of a third of the planet & told a dozen or so people they were now some of the richest private citizens in theirs or anyone else’s country
…so…like that thing about how some of the tools that got broken out to wage economic war directly with russia very much not the way the west insists it has no plans to nor any appetite for saying it will much less is was on about…the “soft” power being wielded on that front wasn’t just a bunch of geeks blowing smoke…they’re still bailing hard enough to just be holed below the water-line & not entirely sunk…or at least that’s about how I’m given to understand that picture to look…which is a big part of why I thought that stuff that beau of the fifth column fella was saying about the way russia has all the clocks but ukraine has the time was interesting?
oh yeah it is interesting….ukraine only has the time if we dont drop the support tho
its looking a little shakier than it should at mo tbh
anyways…i doubt its possible to completely block the sale of russian gas and oil over here…as people will find ways around whatever we do
but we could probably do a little better at not looking the other way when a ship full of reasonably priced gas turns up
…yeah…what it is he said…all wars are popular…for about the first 30days…something along those lines
…& it’s uncomfortable to be seeing so many shit-stirrers in so many places with elections coming up giving it the old “we need that money at home” when…like he says…if everyone just keeps picking up their part of the tab in the longer haul it’s arguably in the bag & insanely cheap at the price…callous as that undoubtedly is to say about a thing that’s still killing ungodly numbers of people…considering what keeping up with joneses set the west back in that cold war at least one side claims to have stopped fighting on the treasure rather than blood side of the balance sheet…not to mention getting great material to keep under china’s nose while it contemplates military assets of a similar lineage while eyeing taiwan with indecent thirst?
i mean….odds are..if we drop ukraine china tries it with taiwan…as clearly we lack staying power…and are now short on ammo
(i mean…the us is only short on stuff it can give away…its a whole different stockpile from the personal use stockpile….the rest of as are underfunded tho)
…. funny how the right/nationalist talking points are pretty much identical world wide tho…..not even a regional twist on it
highly sus
…one of the things I’ve noticed he says in a few of the clips he does talking about geopolitics is that basically it’s like an international game of high stakes poker where everybody cheats…& that common hand you allude to does bear such a striking resemblance as to make it hard to believe that it’s not coming off the bottom of a shared deck that’s trying hard to stack the odds of buying out the pot to bail out someone who’s all in beyond what they can afford…because they all think they’d get a share of the take
…while the people they’re appealing to all think the cause they’re championing is staking them in a domestic game that’s high stakes for them & feel like johnny foreigner is getting away with picking their pocket “& anyway everything costs so damn much now & we aren’t even in that war…where’s the justice in that?”
…you’d think it wouldn’t be too hard to ring that “sus” bell loud enough most folks would hear it…but…somehow…here we are with that callous disregard routine sassoon was no fan of & blamed on a deficiency of imagination
…&…not to be a cheap cynic about it…but…those sure are a lot of coincidences…maybe so many it’s tough to believe in coincidences…& maybe we shouldn’t ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence the same way we shouldn’t hear hoofbeats & think zebras before horses…or assume the sort of movie-grade inexplicably seamless kind of simplified conspiracy that would be at least a 3 martini deal for 007 to foil when the same stuff works on a lot of people because a lot of people will fall for the same stuff
…but…if I were going to break out the tinfoil I’d have a hard time coming up with a lower common denominator than “the climate change thing is killing us, politically, metaphorically & literally…but fuck me if it isn’t killing us financially…& the only way to keep the domestic side of things sweet enough to stay on top is…fuck…fucking all of that tracks back to a foundation in a petrochemical industrial base…& is several political generations of political cycles from being able to up sticks for greener pastures…but then that goes for everyone…fuuuck…so fucking nobody’s going do shit to hurry up & go broke turning off the money right when we need to be spending that shit…because they know nobody wants to let the ones who don’t make bank rendering moot the shit they’re going broke trying to set an example by doing…so…”realistically”…surely the responsible thing to do is act like that all already happened & play out the whole doomsday scenario on fast forward so we’re in good shape for the inevitable end-game…ok…wait…where’s the playbook again…& which side of the play are we running…hmmm…yeah, ok…that could work…shame, really…but we all die in the end…& at least I will before the shit really hits the fan so in the meantime I imagine I’ll sleep just fine”
to a foundation in a petrochemical industrial base…
nah….couldnt be that mate
anyways the climate is in safe hands now
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/04/dutch-politician-who-worked-for-shell-poised-to-become-eu-climate-chief
he says good shit…..but i feel like everyones forgetting something
hes a politician
politicians lie
(also sorry i only ever pick a part of your comment to reply to…..its just..you always give me many bits to choose from….and im not particularly inclined to making long posts)
…that’s a very charitable way to tell me I run on at the mouth…or at least keyboard
…but it’s a fair cop, guv…& I’m in it for a conversation so I don’t need it to happen all at once…or at all if people aren’t feeling it…but I always appreciate a response that indicates someone got through the wall’o’text™?
…even if I’m just thinking aloud…or really on account of how that’s what I’m doing…the bits that I say are by a substantial margin the least interesting since they’re already there without needing to type or read them…so…a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind man & all that
…that appreciation part is no joke, though
Bidens wall ain’t impressive. It makes sense, seeing how establishment Dems are centrist right, but damn, hurts all the same.
That whole thing is such bullshit. He’s saying he doesn’t have any choice because they have to spend the money. No, Joe, actually you don’t have to spend the money. You can just let it sit there. This is about one thing and one thing only: his constant desire to appease republicans. In this, he and Obama are exactly the same.
And ….it doesn’t work, they, the right, are too stupid and vengeful.
You can’t negotiate with terrorists.
So many questions. Why would you fire a gun at a wedding? Guns are painfully LOUD. Seriously, the noise can actually be painful. If you chose to do so, why would you not acquire a legitimate starter’s pistol instead of trying to make your own “blanks”? How is it that anyone still doesn’t understand that “blanks” discharge the material holding the gunpowder in the shell, and that material travels out the barrel at high speed and can penetrate humans at close range? Why was the gun pointed at the child at all? Was the idiot performing some half-ass quick draw? How do you continue a wedding after someone’s been shot? Ship the kid off to the hospital and then go, well, might as well wrap this up?
I’m just utterly dumbfounded by the complete stupidity of this scenario.
How quickly people forget the Alec Baldwin case, or Brandon Lee’s death. Blanks aren’t safe, just like a dull knife blade still isn’t safe.
First one I remember is Jon-Erik Hexum, who died back in the eighties after pointing a gun with blanks at his own head as a joke.
Brandon Lee’s death was a lot more complicated than a gun with blanks. There was a whole series of irresponsible moves that led to there being a slug in the barrel of the gun, so effectively it was a live round that killed him.
…damn…I kind of forgot about that…but after his dad died “mysteriously” on set I remember at the time there were all sorts of unlikely sounding details that did the rounds until they started devolving into conspiracy theories on account of the curse that supposedly killed his dad…or the people that killed his dad & spread a bunch of stuff about a curse because you didn’t talk about those people if you didn’t want to die a mysterious death of your own, depending on who you asked
…if I remember rightly…they wanted a shot of the gun being loaded…so they filmed someone slamming a magazine with at least a couple of (inert) dummy rounds in it & maybe racked the slide…then failed to check either the breech or the magazine or however many other things might have indicated that the slug had come off the top one & was lurking in the barrel when it got put away for the night…then came back the next day & pulled it out along with a magazine of blanks for the scene where he gets shot…ironically enough there were a lot of them since his character was a kind of vengeance-zombie so no idea which one…& the blank threw the slug into him…which sounded like maybe it would mean it was not as bad as being hit by an actual bullet because it was slower…but…& you’d almost certainly know this sort of thing better than me…it meant it was tumbling & deformed & all kinds of stuff that goes badly for you if you’re in the point-blank-to-short kind of range?
I’m sure that up until that moment, this asshole thought of himself as “a responsible gun owner.” Maybe still does. And that’s why we can discount “responsible gun owners” when considering gun control.
Dick Butkus died. This is a fun interview with him from not too long ago.
And Ditka’s still alive. No justice.
New Mexico footprints are oldest sign of humans in Americas, research shows
Those footprints are amazing.
https://www.newmexicomagazine.org/blog/post/prehistoric-footprints-white-sands-national-park/
I think the Guardian article is overstating the level of controversy, though. At this point the scientific consensus has pushed back the dates of settlement of the Americas to this approximate range, and the issue is more about dialing in the specifics and establishing dates for specific sites.
Trump blabbed at Mar a Lago about highly sensitive nuclear subs to an Australian billionaire owner of a packaging company.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/05/us/politics/trump-nuclear-submarine-classified-documents.html
Obviously prosecutors aren’t the source, and at this point I think it’s fair to say this isn’t necessarily the Times in its usual role of aiding a limited hangout leak by Trump. There are enough moving parts of people wanting to protect themselves that this could be a legit third party leak, although you can’t rule out things like witness intimidation by Trump. Or some combination.
“Trump blabs state secrets to cardboard magnate” is a nice quick-hit description of the past 7 years, honestly.
It’s telling that it’s only becoming news now, considering how at least six journalists knew right after it happened.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/after-white-house-trump-allegedly-discussed-potentially-sensitive/story?id=103760456
To be fair to those six, it’s possible they followed up but couldn’t get confirmation in this particular instance.
But it’s obvious Trump has been shooting his mouth off repeatedly. His blabbing is a huge story, but the only other significant splash was the time in NJ when he showed off the Iran attack plan. The only reasonable question is how much damage he has done and how much more he will do, but outlets keep trying to shrink the framework down to narrow technical legal points or else political angles like poll numbers.
It would be like arguing that Robert Bowers hadn’t shot anyone in Pittsburgh because their were open questions about his psychiatric condition. Trump did it, and the question of what happens in court doesn’t change horrific security breaches that need a bigger share of the coverage.
…I haven’t had a minute most of today so apologies if the answer’s the other side of the link…but when you say now as opposed to the time they knew…how long ago was the latter?
…I figure the first I heard of that was…I want to say about three days ago but it might only be two…not counting today…so I’d probably give them a pass if it was a week…or possibly two if it took a bit of shoeleather to nail it down…but…if he said it longer ago than I thought I’d gathered or it was laughably simple to confirm because it got livestreamed or something totally believable…maybe not so much…although, I guess if he did it longer ago than I thought but they only heard about it much later & that made it harder to verify…I don’t know
…I think there’s a difference between not half-assing the thing by running to press before you’ve done your due diligence…which I think you’d agree is laudable & necessary endeavor particularly when the man has done so much wrong that gifting him an accusation that isn’t demonstrably true would be counter-productive in more senses than getting your paper sued
…& sitting on shit like bob wooodward did so it could hit the headlines & the book hit the stores?
This is an excellent thread on the latest testimony regarding the damages Trump must cough up after losing his criminal fraud trial.
https://nitter.net/lawofruby/status/1710238653971042736
In short, one of his top financial guys has testified to things which are cracking apart claims about it all being unintentional.
It’s worth stressing that the judge already ruled criminal fraud happened, and has moved on to the damages portion.
Which is why this piece “There’s a Crucial Question About Trump, Real Estate and Fraud” by Peter Coy is just junk.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/28/opinion/trump-lawsuit-real-estate.html
It’s telling that Coy doesn’t even mention Trump lost — there literally is an answer to the question he posed. “Just asking questions” is idiotic when there is an answer, established in a court. That’s the point where unbiased journalists should swing the balance against bothsidesing, barring some major evidence — and all Coy can come up with is anecdotes.
Coy also tips his hand by claiming if there’s no harm, who cares. How does this guy get a column?
Paywall, so I can’t read it, but defrauding lenders and insurance companies constitutes “no harm”? Normally Republicans and their shills ignore defrauding the little people and/or government, but they take a hard line against stealing from each other.
The exact quote is —
All Coy had to do is do what a reporter ought to do and call up a qualified source for clarification. This isn’t a remotely obscure legal concept. It’s no question it’s a crime to fraudulently borrow a million bucks, bet on a hot tip on Bucket o’ Bolts at 3-1 in the 4th race at Churchill Downs, pocket the winnings, and then return the borrowed money.
The law is explicitly designed to stop that kind of behavior. I’m guessing Coy actually had sources telling him this, but is just playing dumb.
…it kicks off with
…& pretty clearly that’s more than one question & the answer to the one being considered in court is “fucking of course it does”…but from there on out it seems like what he’s doing is…speciously perhaps but not without at least somewhat accurately reflecting the prevailing standards of the broader real estate market…filled at is is with rank after rank of more faceless but equally rank individuals no less these days than when his daddy dearest was a slumlord…so personally I thought the anecdata did a decent job of painting the state of the wider industry (not least in the context of the difficulties a lot of folks have had finding affordable housing the last few years particularly…even to rent much less buy) as one where business as usual was synonymous with a bunch of crooks & chancers
…personally I wouldn’t have been surprised to find it show up somewhere like r/accidentalcommunism or whatever it’s called
…so…your criticism might be valid but I think it might also be looking past a lot of what’s available on the page that might make it something other than a wasted statement?
I woke up to thousands of ants in my dining room and kitchen. FML
https://tenor.com/xAzN.gif
[horror movie screaming]
We had an awful spring/summer with those guys.
😖
I had carpenter ants invading the back bathroom. I hope I got them all with ant bait. It took weeks.
nooooooooooooooooo
When we were buying the house before the one we’re in now, we had your usual round of home inspections done. The inspector had noticed a rotted outdoor window frame for the living room (it was actually wood, it was so old), and noted it down stating we could negotiate the price down for it, which we did.
Fast forward a few months, when we’re in the house and have our first visit from the exterminator. I’m walking around the house with him, when he stops in front of that same outdoor frame. He takes his sprayer and just gives it a single pass on the frame.
A full-blown horror movie follows, with thousands upon thousands of carpenter ants flowing out of the house. Actually, they went everywhere–outside, inside, wherever, just to get away from the poison. We were finding, and killing, stragglers inside for weeks.