So let’s get this straight- there’s no evidence of asbestos in the product, there’s no evidence connecting the product to this lady’s cancer, but they’re an EEVUL KORPORATION, so let’s mulct $25 million from them, just because. Ahh, the wisdom of California juries. And did I mention how much I hate lawyers?
If I were to carve out an exception to the First Amendment, it would be to ban media outlets and politicians from talking about science. These are some ignorant congressmen. The writers at factcheck.org are equally ignorant and highly mendacious “journalists.” Their sources are a dead giveaway. Want to know the actual truth? Read the analyses of actual scientistshere, here, here, and here. Bottom line: it’s complicated, buried in the noise, and basically we just don’t know. Just like anthropogenic climate change. Perfect for politicians and politicized “journalism.”
Speaking the high quality science being done by our government, here’s another gem, this time to bolster the latest pants-wetting SCARIEST DRUG EVER NEED MOAR LAWS panic. It’s… a reach. But it hits the narrative in an intersectional way, all directed toward more government. Note that there’s nothing quantitative presented, no links to peer review, no actual risk assessment. And of course, the mandatory ties to unrelated but SCARY research.
I always said that I’d be a gynecologist if I could specialize in hot young girls. I had no idea that this specialty actually existed, but apparently my spirit brother managed to carve out that niche.
OK, Old Guy Music, as if you were going to get away without it. A wonderful song, and some delightful playing by a talented kid.
Before getting to the news, please allow me to be a bit self-indulgent. SP and I love baseball, and particularly love minor league baseball. It’s wonderful to see young players who are chasing their dreams, still really care, and aren’t likely to be caught wrapping their Lamborghini around a light pole. There’s a delightful intimacy to the parks and a lack of pretense. Best of all, you’re not put through a TSA-level screening to get in (which has caused us to stop attending MLB games).
With great delight, we discovered that there are independent league teams playing in our area, with the Schaumberg Boomers just an hour or so away. SP scored us some nice seats at their charming little park (row six, on the third base side, perfect for watching the pitching). When we got there, we found out that it was a promotional night, this time with (TRIGGER WARNING!) a Harry Potter theme. So of course, the stadium was over-run by geeky kids in capes and round glasses. And some folks who aren’t exactly kids.
And of course, minor league ball rates minor league mascots. I wonder what Philly fans would do with this one?
My favorite was, of course, little girl in front of us who was playing with a toy cell phone.
“I can pretend I’m Mommy when she’s driving!”
Anyway, we got a bonus when the Boomers and their opponents, the Grand Traverse Beach Bums, played the last three innings of a rain-interrupted game from the day before, then a full game. Boomers got crushed in both, likely due to their uniforms matching the style and color scheme of my beloved but hapless Orioles.
Cowboys receiver Terrance Williams was arrested for public intoxication and leaving the scene of an accident. Williams has now supplied his side of the story that, as told by the authorities, involved Williams allegedly wrecking his Lamborghini into a light pole…
Williams’ lawyer, Chip Lewis, added this: “Contrary to media reports, Terrance did not hit a light pole and there was no light pole even near the vehicle. Secondly, his arrest was wholly unrelated to the traffic accident.”
According to Orlando police, as the flight from Colorado was descending for landing at Orlando International Airport, Timothy and Petrini Manley took issue with fellow passengers’ service dog. Petrini Manley allegedly complained she was allergic to dogs and Timothy Manley complained the dog, a Great Dane, was taking up too much space.
Timothy then punched the service dog with a closed fist, according to police.
The owners of the service dog, Mathew Silvay and Hazel Ramirez, who are both deaf, began arguing with the Manleys “as best they could,” police said, though both communicate using sign language.
It is not clear if the professor was paid to speak with Trump campaign figures, but public records show that he has received large payments from the federal government in the last two years. The Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment — a shadowy think tank that reports directly to the secretary of defense — paid Halper $282,000 in 2016 and $129,000 in 2017.
Nice work if you can get it. And lest you think that he just did this because he was an Obama True Believer,
Halper has close personal and professional ties to the CIA reaching back decades. He is the son-in-law of a former deputy director of the agency and worked on the 1980 presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush, who had served as CIA director. When Bush became Ronald Reagan’s running mate, Halper was implicated in a spying scandal in which CIA officials gave inside information on the Carter administration to the GOP campaign.
Since Jay was not filming on the premises, nor did she have any complaints, it seems odd that Airbnb had discovered she was a porn star—unless someone within the company recognized her.
Sources said Besson’s accuser went to police on Friday to file a complaint against Besson after the alleged assault at the Bristol hotel in the French capital. The complainant said she had been in a relationship with him for around two years, stating she felt pressured into being intimate with him for professional reasons.
For good measure, she even threw in a Cosby.
According to Europe 1 radio, which broke the story, Besson’s accuser said she had “drunk a cup of tea, then felt unwell and lost consciousness”. The station quoted her as saying that when she came round she remembered being sexually assaulted.
OK, enough news, let’s have some music. The right kind of music. Old Guy Music. And this time, a live version of a classic. See, I’m not actually old, I’m a classic.
And (((we))) do, you know. According to Stormy Daniels, Trump is circumcised, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence!
I really should note that today is the birthday of both Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot. I hope they’re celebrating it together. It’s also the birthday of Andre The Giant. I hope that in Heaven, he’s dreaming of large women. And one other notable birthday, which I’ll save until the end. But first, a few carefully curated news stories.
The fiery leftist leading the race for Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, vowed Friday to hit back at US President Donald Trump if he insults Mexico on Twitter. “If he makes an offensive tweet, I’m going to take responsibility for answering him,” said Lopez Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor who has a double-digit lead in most opinion polls heading into the July 1 election.
That’ll teach him!
This story is sooooo meta. And it strikes me that prosecutions here are violations of the First Amendment, but what the fuck do I know, phrases like “no law” and “shall not be infringed” are things that as a non-legal scholar I cannot possibly be allowed to understand.
“This pay-for-removal scheme attempts to profit off of someone else’s humiliation,” said Attorney General Xavier Becerra.
Said with the innocence of a guy who caused that humiliation. I need to go look for a good deal on a woodchipper.
There are some pieces of pseudo-science that refuse to die. The electromagnetic fields one is a beautiful example, a complete creation of one guy (Brodeur) that captured the imaginations of millions of ignorati. I must admire the creativity in this latest twist, however.
Matt Shardlow, CEO of Buglife said: “We apply limits to all types of pollution to protect the habitability of our environment, but as yet, even in Europe, the safe limits of electromagnetic radiation have not been determined, let alone applied. “There is a credible risk that 5G could impact significantly on wildlife, and that placing transmitters on LED street lamps, which attract nocturnal insects such as moths increases exposure and thereby risk.
“Therefore we call for all 5G pilots to include detailed studies of their influence and impacts on wildlife, and for the results of those studies to be made public.”
Translation: we’re going to keep sowing FUD and making demands until you pay us off. I do like that they’re worried about sources of EMF being placed too close to… sources of EMF.
OK, that last birthday that I hinted at. Yep, old Scoopnose, my fellow hobbyist, Pete Townsend. And here’s a song of his from the early days that should be better known than it is.
Well, SP does morning links yesterday, Web Dominatrix does an article last night, and here I am doing links today. We’re running out of family members here to write this shit.
I’m just back from my second technical conference in two weeks. Fortunately, I didn’t have to fly to it, it was within a day’s drive. Unfortunately, I had an invited paper to present, which meant wearing a suit. This is particularly annoying because in a suit, I look like an elderly and chubby side-show monkey, and really, I became a scientist because it was a profession that would not require me to be in business attire. Even worse, I couldn’t have my emotional support polar bear with me because of the hot weather.
Wilders has lived in safe houses under 24-hour guard since 2004 to protect him from Islamist militants who threaten to kill him. He says Islam is a fascist ideology, and has called for halting immigration from Muslim countries, shutting mosques and banning the Koran.
So he’s (correctly) complaining that the government wants to shut down his freedom of speech, while happily calling for banning of a book and ending religious freedom. I really do hate everyone in this story. He does have great hair, though. You gotta give him that.
This story amazes me. Not because the lawyer was an asshole, but because people acted so shocked and surprised that a New York Jewish lawyer would be an asshole. Inconceivable! What doesn’t surprise me is the functional illiteracy of both the guy who started the outrage cycle and the moron who wrote the article.
“They where on there [sic] lunch time and ordering there [sic] food and just because they where speaking in Spanish to the waiter this asshole jumps in and started to call the waiter and my wife and her best friend all types of names and threatened to call I.C.E on them and the employees,” Suazo wrote. “What a big man talking down to couple of women and a helpless employee. I wish someone tells me I can’t speak in my native language! First of all they wasn’t talking to you!!”
“There is a spirit that is over this city that has to be brought down. A spirit of racism and division,” [Birmingham mayor] Woodfin said in a Facebook post. “We have to change the conversation to what we need it to evolve into. Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that,” the post went on to say.
Didn’t Woodfin get the memo? Only white people can be racist.
Old Guy Music! I wish Milt Buckner got the credit he deserved. He had a unique “locked hands” method of playing, very chord heavy. Here’s his take on a great Neal Hefti standard, and I probably need not point out that Jo Jones may have been a perfect drummer. His timing was… well… remarkable.
Let me be self indulgent and say a few words about my mom. She had a rather tough life, growing up poor, having buried three husbands, and raising a family with my dad, a free-thinking, creative, and hyperintelligent fellow who could barely scrape up a living as an artist. In a house of chaos and creative destruction, she was the island of relative sanity and common sense and still managed to turn two kids into reasonably successful adults. Today my mom will spend her day chowing on Publix roast chicken, since we’re too far away to take her to the (((deli))), and in reality, that’s what she’d rather do anyway. She’s not a person who cares about frippery and ceremony, she’s never had even a hint of pretense, and a simple and comfortable life these days is her reward for all she had to put up with. Though she has never understood me, she’s always stood by me. My mom is the greatest.
The UK shows itself again to be a bastion of freedom. Well, no, not really. But, as usual, it’s for the children.
The cards will cost around £10 and could can also be used to purchase other age restricted products such as alcohol and knives. However, shopkeepers could still ask to see documents, such as a passport or driving licence, before selling the 16-digit online access code. It comes after a recent report showed how a total of 1.4 million children clicked on pornographic websites in a single month – half aged six to 14.
I’m sure you all have already gotten your cards and codes. I’m more interested in the children.
“Data is itself valuable, and people give it in exchange for services,” said Alec Burnside, a lawyer at the Dechert law firm in Brussels who has taken part in antitrust complaints against Google. “I think they are wrong in believing that data must have all the characteristics of cash.”
Old Guy Music, of course, has only one possibility today. And check out the guitar work here.
My apologies for my rather slender participation the last few days- I was at a technical conference, and I spent far too much of it getting explosively angry. The focus was talk about new regulations, new compliance requirements, new paperwork burdens, new needs for expensive consultants to navigate the legal minefields, and rapidly increasing uncertainty as to what it’s going to take to stay out of jail if you want to improve people’s lives with new technologies and products. No value-added to any of this, just government burdens. If there’s significant deregulation going on, it sure wan’t evident. I felt like an outcast presenting a paper that actually dealt with science…
And thus my extreme case of shpilkies. It would not be a good career move to start yelling, “WHO DO WE HAVE TO KILL TO END THIS BULLSHIT????” during the presentations.
Feh, enough about me. Let’s start with history. Many significant birthdays, most notably George Carlin, Stevie Winwood, and Katherine Hepburn. But there was something else… SP and I were planning on a day trip to Postville, Iowa, a town that at one time had the distinction of having the highest per capita concentration of rabbis in the world. I figured to take some photos and talk with some people there for a Jewsday feature. But we found out that today is the tenth anniversary of the Postville Raids and that there were planned events that would not be particularly Jew-friendly. So another day, perhaps.
History aside, let’s see what’s happening in the world today.
Dozens of Palestinian youths set fire to the Kerem Shalom border crossing, the only point where goods enter Gaza from Israel. Gas pipelines at the crossing, bringing fuel into the coastal enclave, were damaged, the army said.
Old Man music, this time another song my band used to cover. The lyrics are trite, but it’s a good tune and the chords lay out beautifully. I don’t think these guys ever got the musical respect they deserved. Ah well.
“Well, we’ve been entirely unable to demonstrate health hazards from second hand smoke? What are we going to do now?” “Hold my beer.”
Instead of Old Guy Music, because it’s that time of year, something with a baseball theme. Earl Weaver was the greatest manager in the history of the game and certainly the most fun. He had a weekly radio show in Baltimore called “Manager’s Corner,” and one episode of it went a bit differently than usual…
In the fine tradition of Cortes, Mexican Sharpshooter laid me low yesterday. His evil plot did not succeed- I am still alive- but I must admit that he winged me pretty good. Yes, it was the beer he sent me, the New Belgium Lips of Faith “Le Terroir”; after drinking it, I did not feel well, and ended up taking to my bed to detoxify my humors. Clearly, this is a beer that’s antisemitic. I’m also guessing that the name was a typo and that this was actually made with the extract from a Terrier.
In any case, I think I have expelled most of the poison, transferring my suffering to the porcelain, so I can at least drop some news items here for your amusement and commentary.
What does WaPo love the most? Yep, Rednecks In The Mist articles. What happens when you send their most rabid Obama-worshipper to an NRA convention? I think you know.
And this is a truly fascinating article about a very intriguing prosecutor. If there’s any locals here, I’d love to know what people on the ground there really think of this guy.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I wonder if we can start getting progs on board for the idea of taking the First Amendment seriously? Eh, it’s a dream, I know.
Why is this totally non-surprising? What got my attention was the added bit that simulates ejaculation. I keep thinking of the Shake Weight on South Park.
And finally, Old Guy Music. There’s something unique about this song, care to guess?
It’s Cinco de Mayo, which is Spanish for “day drinking.” And night drinking as well. I’m queued up with a bottle of something interesting from Mexican Sharpshooter and, of course, margarita makings. Coincidentally, the always-delightful Chef John posted his margarita recipe, which is touted as “Perfect” and probably is, since it’s pretty much what we do- much less sweet and much more flavorful than the typical crap you get at restaurants and bars. Having it made by a Jew, of course, is Step 1 in cultural appropriation. Or is it?
One book I loved reading was Bernal Dial del Castillo’s classic “The True History of the Conquest of New Spain,” his eye-witness account of Cortes’s wars against the Aztecs and eventual conquest of Mexico. And interestingly, if there was one thing Cortes enjoyed doing more than killing Aztecs, it was killing Jews or even people suspected of being Jews. In a particular instance of ingratitude, the Catholic conquistadors burned Hernando Alonzo, who was accused of being a secret Jew, at the stake- the fact that he had made himself wealthy and (in an early form of asset forfeiture) his possessions would be confiscated had nothing to do with it. Hmmm, hated Jews, hated people who made themselves successful and wealthy while being himself quite wealthy, looks like Cortes would fit beautifully into today’s Democratic Party. They might even make him vice-chairman.
In any case, (((we))) have a long history in Mexico, the revolution pretty much ended the Catholic practice of Jew-killing and granted (((us))) far more religious freedom, so fuck you, I’m drinking margaritas today. And bringing you links.
We all laughed at the moron city councilman from Washington, DC who claimed that Jews controlled the weather. Well, who’s laughing NOW, assholes?
Isn’t it delightful that with Team Red in control, people who love to talk about smaller government and the rule of law, that the whole unconstitutional domestic spying thing is going awa… oh wait, never mind.
Old Guy Music today of course follows the theme “Mexicans and Jews,” though to be fair, there’s not much Steve Berlin in this cut. Doesn’t matter, it’s a great song.
I badly wanted to see the documentary, The Rainbow Man, which covered the life of Rollen Stewart, a fascinatingly obsessed character. But that was not to be, it seems to be unavailable for streaming. Ditto one of my favorite movies ever, Dadetown, which doesn’t seem to be available any more in any format. But nonetheless, SP and I persisted, and we saw two movies this weekend which were individually and in aggregate MUCH better than Jaws. Both were black-ish comedies, a genre we love, being dark-hearted cynics. Quick Change was a Bill Murray vehicle that somehow we had missed before. Totally non-profound, just light and well-crafted entertainment. And young Geena Davis. Like Adam Sandler, I always find Randy Quaid annoying and not at all funny or likeable, but I was mostly able to ignore that and enjoy the rest. You’ve seen it all before, but its rehashed well. And we had both seen Dirty Rotten Scoundrels before, but in the deep, deep past, so we gave it a re-watch. And it was even better the second time around. It’s apparently difficult for Michael Caine to make a bad movie. Liberal application of a pretty awesome bottle of wine did not hurt the humor for us.
But you didn’t come here to survey what light entertainment we’ve been viewing, you want NEWS, you want LINKS.
Today is the birthday of Henri Poincare (who anticipated chaos theory by nearly a century and relativity by a few decades, oh, and did I mention group theory in physics? Smartest person in modern history? Very likely.), Duke Ellington (arguably the greatest American composer), and Luis Aparacio, the slickest-fielding shortstop I ever saw.
And in Old Guy Music, another tune my band used to cover from a band that is not well-remembered these days. Pity, they should be. Enjoy the delightful guitar playing, we sure as hell did.
