Author: Brett L

In sports, I guess the WNBA season ended? ESPN put it front and center so… congrats to the Seattle(?) Storm. In beisbol, A’s pound the Orioles for 6 straight victories, Mets, Nats, Sawx East get their 100th win, Brewers, Twins, Rockies, Doyers, Rays, Pirates, Braves, Padres, Sawx West, and Los Anaheim all won, as did the World Champion Houston Astros. Goddamn A’s, Houston is 10-1 in September and can’t shake the fucking A’s. But the schedule favors the ‘Stros, whose last 10 games are series with the Angels, Blue Jays, and close with 4 against Baltimore. Speaking of Bal’mer, they take on the Cincinatti Bengals tonight. Gooo, Flaccos!

Born today, some dude named Milton Hershey and some doc named Walter Reed. Bill Monroe, father of bluegrass; Mel Torme and Roald Dahl.

Also, on this date five years ago, under the watchful eyes of our families and her daddy’s shotgun, my wife and I were married in her back yard with her being a wee bit pregnant. Afterwards we had a nice lunch at our favorite asian place in Tallahassee and went off to stay at one of the Disney properties for a long weekend. She still has not strangled me for being a jerk, or stabbed me for being an idiot. I definitely married up, so I think I’ll keep her another year. Enough of this sentimental shit and now…. the links!

Jeebus, New Mexico, get your shit together. I’m not saying its aliens, but… its aliens.

Some asshole in Bakersfield went on a murder spree before killing himself. From the pattern, it appears that he believed his wife might have been stepping out. Not a good reason for killing people, by the way.

New York’s Finest still the biggest, baddest, gang in the Big Apple.

Holy shit, can you imagine if your son fell out a tree-house, stood up and had a fucking meat skewer through is face to the handle? Glad he survived and will make a full recovery.

And by the way, this stall pattern is what fucked up East Texas so bad last year. Don’t pay attention to the Category rating, 40 inches of rain will fuck things up. Less wind is good, but Florence isn’t nothing.

I’ll put up one of my wife’s favorites. When she wants me to watch this song on her phone, I know its time to put down the booze and head to bed. Love ya, babe!

Well, well, well, here we are on hump day and I’m not dead yet. Speaking of not dead yet, if you live on the Carolina coast, or inland from there prone to flooding, get the fuck out. Its going to be nasty by tomorrow morning. You’ll be waiting for the Cajun Navy to pick your ass up, with no power, hoping rapesquatches stay in their caves during floods.

FIrst of all, go read SF’s latest Hat & Hair if you haven’t yet.

It’s good to see Microsoft go back to their asshole roots. Bruh, Edge sucks. I mean, Chrome and Firefox also manage to suck almost as bad, but not quite.

Health officials warn of “chaos” if federal judge suspends the ACA. I got a semi just reading the headline.

There’s even hope for the Walter Pecks of the world now that man born without penis (XY sex chromomes) has member crafted from scratch.

Aww, sweetheart. Your soy-boy who was so big into affirmative consent was only using it to talk you into a one night stand? How sad. PUAs take note.

Chicago wants to get into the, uh, selective basic income subsidy* game.

*Several here have noted that all “universal basic income” programs have been neither universal nor enough to actually be a basic income substitute

If you are within 10 miles of the coast between Charleston and Norfolk, go buy a bunch of water, food that doesn’t need refrigeration, and fill your gas tank if you have less than half a tank. And do your neighbors a favor. Gas up early, not often. People say to keep your tank topped off — please don’t. Go buy a 5 gallon gas canister (or two) and fill that. That will get any car or truck another 50+ miles. If you have half a tank plus that, you can get far enough inland to get gas. It keeps the lines shorter, and lets the tanker fleet run a little more effectively than having everyone in town constantly buying the gallon or two they just burned.

In less depressing news, Florida Man got a chance to tangle with British sailors. Oh wait, the Brits just fought each other, because Florida Man is that scary. Or the Brits are just that polite. Pick your stereotype and run with it.

GOP Gubernatorial candidate resigns from Congress. He says because he’s not going to be in Washington much this fall and it wouldn’t be right to accept his salary. Brett says, “pull the other one.”

Donald Trump, suuuuuper-genius, appears to have saved Jeff Sessions from pointed questions about how Sessions’ testimony before Congress is a little different than what actually happened. Its not so much that he’s playing 8-D chess as that his opponents have only a single response to anything he does.

John Bolton’s Mustache has threatened to murder and exsanguinate anyone from the ICC who attempts to prosecute Americans.*

*Not actually what he said.

Old guys when they were young, live.

Happy Friday, frens. I hope your day is going smoothly. I will be working late tonight to try to avoid working on the weekend. So I’m making up by mixing  my first drink at, well,  a pretty early hour. My Seminoles look to rebound against Samford. Here’s hoping they found pads for some of the bigger flag girls and get some blocking on offense. tOSU takes on conference powerhouse Rutgers. UT plays Tulsa, and we’ll hope for only one fourth quarter interception after the game is out of reach. Oh, and pro football starts. Texans will find a way to lose to the Patriots. I’m hoping Clowney/Watt/Mercilus combine for a lot of angry Tom Brady yelling at the refs. And that all three survive Week 1 without injury.

Florida Man gives “rough trade” a go, ends up stabbed in neck.

Hey look, U niversity of Texas may have lost to Maryland, but they seem to have superior heat stroke treatment.

Florence looks like she’s gonna take a big dump on the East Coast next week. Glibs from GA to NJ may want to start watching the weather, buying ammo, and polishing their looter-shooters.

Let’s all roll our eyes at this one. Cincinnati shooting could have been a bloodbath because the shooter had “over 200 rounds of ammunition”. Okay, so like, what? He packed his usual range bag? I can only imagine what would be said about my friends who buy ammo by the case.

Hey guys, what’s up. Trying to get some work out the door and I have a date with my wife (no kids! Thank mom-n-dad!) tonight. So here’s the links, have fun. Bye now.

The Florida Woman story with the little kid turned out just the way everyone knew it would. But here’s Texas Woman, hitting 100+ in her car, and then remembering to grab the baby when she flees on foot.

Bernie Sanders gets a hard-on thinking about confiscating Amazon’s money.

Superflu at Kennedy airport?

I think chipping homeless people like dogs probably violates their rights.

I dug on Axl Rose a little in the Morning Links for getting fat, but he’s trimmed down some since going on tour.

You know what’s really awesome? When you work almost entirely in the “Microsoft cloud” and the entire cloud login service is down in the morning, you, uh, “catch up on documentation”. To give them their propers, it was only down for an hour and a half. Other than that, shitty football weekend, great times with the kids. How the hell are you? Aside from Yusef. Sorry about your job, bud. Good luck on the hunt!

I’m sorry, Bob Woodward might have once been a respected journalist, but I want to hear the tapes or see the transcripts on these too good to check quotes.

• Chief of Staff John F. Kelly once said of Trump during a small meeting: “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”  What the fuck is you CoS doing with a job after this?
• Senior officials have taken to stealing stuff from Trump’s desk so that he doesn’t see it. AYFKM? Sack the fuck up and tell your boss not to sign something. What are you, 10? Stealing the report cards

All you Glibs between Destin and Lake Charles, stay safe! If in doubt, leave!

Here’s a feature-length article about how “technology favors tyranny” Ctrl-F reveals no mention of the words “Cody” or “Defense”. Here’s the thing — when these complicated algorithms no longer effectively produce the result set that people are trying to find — say “people who won’t default on the money I lend them”, as long as there is a relatively free market and fair legal system, someone else will start lending money to the set of people who aren’t in that algorithm that ALSO won’t default on their loans. Its just a fucking tool. Its like saying that because only church records were written down in certain places in Medieval Europe there was no complex secular law or record keeping. Demonstrably false. Don’t confuse the tool with the outcome.

This is a little rah-rah, but I’m in favor. High school holds “signing day” for seniors who have jobs in the trades waiting for them upon graduation. Show students you value what is important.

Rahm Emanuel is not seeking re-election next year. Maybe after some of those cash bribe stories started circulating, he realized things had changed.

Fuckin’ Fredocons. Republicans consider abandoning 2nd phase of tax cuts after SALT backlash. Guys, the whole fucking point — THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT — of capping the SALT exemption was to put pressure on high-tax states and localities to consider how their taxes might be a part of the overall burden.

Let’s hope it doesn’t get this bad on the Gulf Coast this time.

I assume all you Glibertarian capitalist running-dog shitlords have the long weekend? I don’t. I have work that needs to be done Tuesday when the client gets back. Adding to the fun is that my company — because they are idiots — require that you take PTO on certain holidays, and furthermore my boss’s boss would have to approve me working on such a holiday. Labor Day being one. So I am not working Monday. At least I get one day off this long weekend. OTOH, college football is back! Tomorrow at noon I get to see if strip club fan Tom Herman — whose wife is totally cool with him going to strip clubs — can whip my beloved, benighted Longhorns into shape against a program that ran a player to death in conditioning drills. And then Monday night, the place I actually matriculated from is bring back the blackout uniforms to help the new (black) coach take on VaTech. Also, I will be rooting for Sloopy’s nemesis because fuck Notre Dame.

Never call the cops — celebrity edition. I love the writing: “Officers spoke to the woman for more than an hour and at one point she became combative.” Like, the point where they shot her?

I can’t wait to terrorize coworkers with a tele-presence robot. “Hey! Everyone else has coffee? Why don’t I get coffee?”

The Man is keeping an enterprising Florida Man down! “Police said the couple transformed a kitchen window into a drive-thru window because it didn’t want to draw attention by having customers regularly entering and exiting the home.” Genius!

Now that’s a good husband. “Metcalf later allegedly told authorities he had made the weapons over the course of four years because his wife was fearful of the government’s collapsing, according to KNXV.” 40 pipebombs. Outstanding, Marine!

Here’s a work song for the weekend.

Yesterday, I descended from my office to find a very large puddle of water in my living room. I have a split level, so the living room windows are about six inches above ground, but the source was pretty surely one of the windows. I had a previous incident where I found water under a towel I had put down for my mother-in-law’s dog while it was raining sideways a couple weeks ago. I blamed the dog. I went out and bought some sealer and sealed the edges of the windows inside and out. So far, so good. It is raining sideways today, but the living room is dry. Also, the youngest is home sick because his school decided to take his temperature yesterday despite no apparent sign of illness. School rule is that if the temp is over 100.5F, you have to stay out the next day, too. Although they didn’t actually send him home yesterday, so I can only ponder when they took his temperature and why. Anyhow, taking a three year old to Home Depot turned into a lot of fun. He was fascinated by the Halloween decorations displays. I explained to him that Halloween was fun, because people like the feeling of being scared when they know they are actually safe. He said, “I not scawed.” But he was holding my hand pretty darn tight. We also had a fun discussion about whether the fog-breathing dragon liked tacos or not (reference here for those of you who don’t have a kid under 10). Its a pretty good life when you can blow off a morning at work because your kid is sick. Now I got to get out some links and squeeze 3 hours of productivity into 3 hours instead of my normal 8.

I hope no Glibs are thinking for running for office, because if this facebook group is racist, lord only knows what they’ll say about us.

The group’s members have shared racist, misogynist, and offensive posts, including posts slamming Parkland shooting survivors and disparaging Black Lives Matter activists, comparingboth toHitler. Members have made statements against NFL players who kneel during the anthem in protest of police brutality, calling them “overpaid ball chasers” who “kneel like ISIS.” Users have also posted bigoted statements against Muslims, referring to Islam as a religion of “pedophilia, sex slavery, rape gangs, and honor killings.”

In other words, a day that ends in “y” around here. (I don’t think y’all are racist or misogynist, but many comments would be interpreted as such)

Dear Floridaman, do not bring a mobile phone to a gun fight. Crazy ass stalker acts crazy and gets shot. All the other rookie cops are gonna be jealous that this guy got his first “good shoot” before he even swore in.

I think Robert Heinlein covered an emergency procedure for just this sort of space incident. The real astronauts will probably not be so cheeky.

Mr. Lizard, one of your people forgot to put on his skinsuit before going out in the backyard yesterday.

And since I’ve been so Florida-heavy, I’ll tie it all up with one from Florida’s original Lizard King.

Hi guys, did you know that I have six hours of meetings today? Six. Hours. And somehow, somehow, I am also supposed to do a full day’s work in the other hours of the day. Also, I had the standard tech demo experience where I practiced everything 3 times and then it went to shit during the demo. Why is that? How does that work? Next time, I’m going to just do screen shots of my demo tests and present those. Put some little “screen loading” animations over them. God I hate that. Hate it. The worst part is the shit works! Unless I have been messing with the same thing over and over again.

Florida GOP Gubernatorial candidate starts off general election campaign on a high note. Oh Lawd, I’m gonna be looking back on Charlie Crist and Skeletor as good times in Florida.

Tulip shares this article about how a Florida Man with a will (probably) didn’t let being a quadruple amputee stop him from shooting — his parents. “A prosthetics expert told the Orlando Sentinel you don’t need a hand to shoot both your parents—just the will—as most guns can apparently be fired by the handless, “without special devices.”‘

Limeys and Frogs having a good old fashioned fishermen’s war. I look forward to privateering charters.

Prof bans laptops from classroom, grades AND student satisfaction goes up. I’m sure there are some people who can take notes on laptops, but I have found after almost 2 decades of trying to take notes by typing while paying attention in meetings that I have a harder time focusing. It shouldn’t work that way, but somehow it does.

Apparently, the Irish are very in tune with their goats’ emotions. No word yet on the best way to keep them from running when they see the velcro gloves.

Here’s a nice pickin’ song about privateering. And for something

So Friday was pretty shitty, like literally, there was a lot of poop to clean up, but young master Theodore was a quick study after all. I cleaned up no poop this weekend, and all of the accidents were edge cases — a long nap, pissed himself trying to get his pants down at the toilet (which, he’ll do again drunk at some point if he has my genetic predisposition and indulges). We declared victory and sent him to school in underwear. I think it saves us $50/month at daycare if he’s able to use the bathroom. Also, its weird how different two kids from the same parents (they at least both look like me and I saw they came from the same place) can be. The older one still expects that the toilet will attack him at any given time and wants someone to watch him go. The younger one already has no fear of the toilet, just wants total privacy and wants to get this wiping the ass thing down so we’ll leave him alone. I know which one is going to be ready to move out at 16.

So on to the links.

Trump continues to do things like this: White House flag returns to full-staff. Its not like we lost a former President or something. Still waiting to see if he sends Pence to the funeral. Me and Tooch at TOS agree on this one. The sooner everyone realizes there’s nothing honorable about all this governing stuff, the better. Although I think my favorite part is how taken-aback all the news services are. “OMG! Trump isn’t sucking McCain’s dick! Doesn’t he know that’s what you do?!”

Apparently, New York’s Bravest get that way by having other firefighters rub their balls on your face on your first day. I had several friends in Houston who were firefighters, and yes, they were all giant men-children unless there was an emergency. I just can’t imagine why I’d want to put my nutsack on another guy. That’s more like homoerotic wish-fulfillment rather than hazing.

Here’s FDNY doing something a little more productive with their time, putting out a propane fire on Liberty Island.

YCombinator becomes the latest group to throw money at the “Targeted Income Subsidies” studies to try to simulate Universal Basic Income. Why anyone would try this in Oakland… I have no idea. I like the YC guys. I think they do good work helping people become tech entrepreneurs. I think this is going to be a loss for them.

Iran claims control of Persian Gulf. I hope the Saudis can still compete on oil price if they have to pay baksheesh to the Persians. And I also hope the US Navy doesn’t feel the need to do anything about this.

I think some people are starting new schools this week.