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| What idiot puts a comma after "Dear"? |
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| We're going through an action-figure-meme phase. |
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| So Heinlein was right. |
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| Plata o plomo—silver or lead, i.e., take the bribe or get the violence. |
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| He's too busy munching his dad's tumors, gathering inspiration for his art. |
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| Some ignorant people still don't get the charm or effectiveness of homeschooling, though. |
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| Asshole. |
If New York City is truly stupid enough to give this loud of a fuck you to its police department, the people deserve whatever's heading their way.
Good God, I've had this bánh mì sauce by Joshua Weissman sitting in my fridge ever since I'd made those bánh mì in late 2023. The sauce never went bad, and a little voice my head said it'd be a good substitute for the faux teriyaki sauce that also serves as a generic Chinese sauce for American-style Chinese dishes like my usual shrimp-chicken-cashew bowl (with bell peppers,* chili** peppers, and shrooms... all of it piled on rice*** in my pre-stroke, pre-heart-attack days). So I went out today and bought some cashews, some peppers of various colors, some frozen shrimp, and some prepackaged sous-vide chicken breast. I belatedly realized, after I'd thrown everything together into a low-carb meal, that I should also have bought some mushrooms. Now, the combination of chicken and shrimp also lends itself to curry dishes (although for curry, I'd switch out the veggies with peas, carrots, potatoes, and maybe cauliflower), but I was committed to using up the rest of Joshua Weissman's bánh mì sauce. And I did. The result, even without mushrooms, was a success. Below are two pics.
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| a wide shot of the low-carb bowl |
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| a food-porn closeup |
It was a decent meal. Tomorrow, I'm doing a keto fondue, then I'm fasting for the remaining weekdays—Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. My A1c is down to about 6.8 according to my calculations; it can go further, but I'm happy with my progress thus far, and meals like today's are part of that process. The fasting won't hurt, either. If I can get down to about a 6.5 A1c by my July 9 appointment, I'll be happy, but for the moment, merely remaining under 7.0 is the modest practical goal. This appointment, with my cardio doctor, comes only two months after my previous one in May, which had been with my diabetes doctor.
__________
*Capsicum in the UK, Oz, etc., despite not having any noticeable capsaicin. That culture loves misnaming things, which is why ground beef is called mince (a very fine dice—not ground at all) and the word pudding refers to fucking everything.
**It's chilli, with two "L"s, in the UK, Oz, and elsewhere.
***I recently saw keto orzo on iHerb (orzo is a pasta that looks like long-grained rice, making keto orzo a viable rice substitute), but the listing showed it was out of stock. I clicked on the "inform me" button, so I'll be flagged the moment the product comes back into stock.
I watched The Critical Drinker's short film "Rogue Elements," based on characters from his novels. The short had a small budget, and it shows, and even though the Drinker normally gets a lot of love from his fans, the comments to his film did not spare his feelings one bit.
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| I like the seeming bullet holes. But they may be too precise for sandpeople. |
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| If you're a leftie, just say anything. I'm sure no one will notice. |
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| lookin' pretty Photoshopped in that bottom pic |
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The outrage gland is what prompts commenters to write personal responses to my general comments that never specifically targeted them. |
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| What's the problem with the first sentence? |
The economy's doing great. All that squawking and flapping about tariffs was for nothing.
Some Democrats are dimly realizing that siding with socialists, communists, and other types of central-planning partisans is not the way to win elections. But is it too late for the Dems to eject the crazies they've allowed into their midst?
I haven't seen "Severance," but I might want to. At least Season 1. From what I hear, Season 2 isn't nearly as good.
The Washington Post was recently seen in a rare moment of Dem-on-Dem, lib-on-lib, leftie-on-leftie smearing. Here's the headline:
Whoa! WaPo Drops Blistering Op-Ed on Socialist NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani
Interesting point by the Post re: how the Democrats are trying to look for new blood and finding only far-left extremists in the same crazy-eyed vein as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The left really does seem intent on losing over and over again as the rest of the nation finally wakes up and realizes the danger posed by the other side. No, there is no moral equivalency; no, there is no relativism. It is not the case that both sides are "equally bad." Do both sides make mistakes, have their violent sectors, and manifest corruption? Of course! But if that's as deeply as you think, then you are shallow indeed. One side is manifestly, objectively more divorced from reality, more violence-prone, and more delusional than the other right now. It could be that, in the future, the right could become that way: after all, it's been that way in the not-so-distant past (think: Dubya-era neocon theocrats, still around and still fighting against Trump), and these things move in cycles. If, in your rush to say both sides are equally bad, you miss the obvious fact that one side is currently much worse than the other, well... that's not my problem although I'm sure you'll try to make it my problem somehow.Well, this was certainly unexpected. The leftist Washington Post dropped a devastating op-ed Friday by its editorial board that ripped into Democrat socialist mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani and said that he would be “bad for New York.”
As we reported, the political novice won a shocking victory in Tuesday's Democrat NYC mayoral primary, beating disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo and putting himself in prime position for the November general election.
Usually, the liberal rag is little more than a mouthpiece for the DNC, so to see them go after a Democrat this hard is a stunner and reveals two things: 1) Mamdani and his extremist policies are truly a danger to the Big Apple, and 2), leftists are scared right now. As I wrote earlier Friday, Mamdani could turn out to be a “big, beautiful gift” to the GOP because we can and will pound away [at] the narrative that this guy is the new face of the Democrat party.
Even for many libs, this permanently grinning specter with his socialist-utopia visions, grand tax schemes, and antisemitism is a bridge too far.
The Post agrees, and they give the entire game away in their headline: Zohran Mamdani’s victory is bad for New York and the Democratic Party.
The WaPo was just getting started, saying that almost all other Democrats are “better” than Mamdani.
Zohran Mamdani, the charismatic 33-year-old who is now the front-runner to be the next mayor of New York, might seem like a breath of fresh air for a Democratic Party struggling to move past its aging establishment. In fact, New Yorkers should be worried that he would lead Gotham back to the bad old days of civic dysfunction, and Democrats should fear that he will discredit their next generation of party leaders, almost all of whom are better than this democratic socialist.
Whoa. Tell us how you really feel, WaPo.
When I read paragraphs like this next one, I feel as if I’m reading RedState and not one of the most far-left outlets in the nation:
Now, a man who believes that capitalism is “theft” is in line to lead the country’s biggest city and the world’s financial capital. His signature ideas are “city-owned grocery stores,” no bus fares, freezing rent on 1 million regulated apartments and increasing the minimum wage to $30. No doubt these might strike some voters as tempting ideas. But, as with so many proposals from America’s far left, the trade-offs would hurt the people they are supposed to help.
Who are you, and what have you done with the Washington Post?
The Democrats are running scared because they’re realizing that with folks like this and NY Dem Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, they’ve gone too extreme even for themselves. Hopefully incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, running as an independent, or someone else will somehow pull a rabbit out of their hat and claim victory in November in the general election, but that wouldn't change the fact that a wild-eyed extremist got this far.
[ ... ]
When you’ve lost the WaPo, you’ve really veered left off the cliff.
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| How have we done since April 25? |
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| Capitalization, compound-word problem, missing comma, inappropriate preposition. God, this was bad. |
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| Henry Rollins! |
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| Do you see the two comma problems and the one period problem? |
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| "I am, and always will be, your fish sticks." |
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| mentally doing orbital-mechanics calculations |
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| She was inspired by the pillar of fiiiiiiiiiiirewoooooooorrrrrrrrk. |
This isn't the end, though, nor did the court rule on the crucial issue. Read on.
Supreme Court Sides With Trump Admin, Limits Nationwide InjunctionsThe Supreme Court partially allowed President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order on June 27 in a decision that said universal injunctions likely exceed courts’ authority.
The 6–3 decision didn’t offer a final ruling on the constitutionality of Trump’s attempt to limit birthright citizenship but instead focused on whether three nationwide injunctions blocking the policy could stand.
The majority of the court said that “universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.”
“The Court grants the Government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue,” it said.
More specifically, the court said that the Judiciary Act of 1789 had not granted courts such broad authority.
Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said that “when a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
Writing for the dissent, Sotomayor said the court had “abdicate[d] its vital role” in fighting for the survival of the nation’s democracy.
She said that Trump had made a mockery of the Constitution. “Rather than stand firm, the Court gives way,” she said.
Republicans have raised concerns that the practice of issuing nationwide relief, which has grown in recent years, exceeds the parameters that Article III of the Constitution sets up for courts’ authority.
[ ... ]
The majority noted, however, that they were not taking a position on whether Article III of the Constitution, which grants courts judicial authority, foreclosed the ability of judges to issue nationwide injunctions. Solicitor General D. John Sauer had attempted to use Article III as a basis for challenging the nationwide blocks on Trump’s birthright citizenship order.
There's more. Read the rest if you can get behind the paywall.
A lot of stuff is happening in July. I just made a reservation to visit Immigration for the final thing I need to get renewed: my F4 visa. So I made the reservation for July 15 (a Tuesday) even though I saw an open slot this coming Monday. I also just spent a million years using Adobe's "fill and sign" function to fill out the PDF version of visa-renewal form; it's been checked and postdated to July 15, so that's ready to go. I don't think I need to bring along a photo—that's only for reissuing visas, not merely extending them—but I might get a photo, anyway, because there's no more room on my current visa to print out a validity period. That means I'll need a new card which, practically speaking, is a lot like reissuing a visa. (Better safe than sorry.)
2025 has been the year of getting shit renewed and contracts signed. I renewed my passport, renewed my driver's license (with REAL ID and a lease agreement!), obtained a new PNC Bank card (after a sit-down with a bank staffer), and processed my updated passport info with Korean Immigration. Now, finally, I'll be renewing my F4 visa for the second time in a year—this time for a period of three years. So I can breathe a sigh of relief come mid-July.
In the meantime, my July 11 doctor's appointment got moved to July 9 because of some sort of scheduling problem, so I've got that to look forward to as well. It's the cardiac doc, and I've got a lot to ask him about what can be done re: recurring angina. If I have a second infarction or stroke, I'm pretty sure I'll be finished. Miracles like last time don't happen twice in a row.
On top of the rigamarole of this final visa renewal and the existential threat of another heart attack or stroke, there's my self-education plus my million personal projects to worry about. I'll have more to show off on that front soon. I recently finished watching a very useful Adobe Illustrator tutorial, and I'm impatient to practice the skills that were taught.
How fluent am I after using Duolingo?
A nice, commonsense strategy for learnng new languages:
A primer on language learning in general:
A survey of language-learning apps:
And the most intriguing video for me—using ChatGPT as your language teacher:
I seriously doubt that only a single person was pulling the strings, and I don't think that that's what Trish Regan is implying in the video below, but I suspect that Biden's handlers were more like a network or cabal than a one-man show. How's ol' Joe been doing lately, what with his advanced prostate cancer that doctors neglected to mention?
With "Project Hail Mary" being made into a movie (please don't ruin it) and Denis Villeneuve setting his sights on adapting Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama to the screen (novel reviewed here; please don't ruin it, Denis), we've got some good cinema coming our way.
At least... I hope so.
According to Freitas, under Trump, we would go in, kick ass, and let people know not to mess with the US. That's it. This wouldn't be about occupation. That sounds reasonable to me: the US does suck as an occupying force, and we should stick to just kicking over sand castles at need (desert-people pun not intended)—and that only as a last resort.
As I noted in my previous posts on the East Coast heat wave, the term “heat dome” is part of the language manipulation being embraced by the mainstream media and climate cultists to gin up fear about weather and enforce ecoactivist policies.
For quite some time, I have been taking our language back and countering the global warming inanity by using the term “pseudo-science.” I am grateful to see that a growing number of scientists and analysts have begun to label the theory of human-caused global warming as “pseudo-science.” This perspective enforces the reality that the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change is not settled, and that the evidence supporting it is flawed or insufficient.
To my profound delight, I have noted that one of the most preeminent scientists in this field is using the term. In a recent interview published on “Watts Up With That” blog, Curry argues that climate science has become “pseudo-science.”
Interviewer: What’s the state of science under these conditions, or climate science in particular?
Dr. Judith Curry: It’s not science anymore; it’s become a pseudoscience. You know, the hardcore, physics-based climate dynamics, you know, such as what we had in the 1980s or whatever, I mean, that’s just a small sliver of what we now define as climate science.
I mean, what the students are getting their PhDs in—they analyze the output of these climate models, looking for some sort of catastrophe that they can identify and write a paper on, without ever even, you know, critically evaluating these models or how they should be used. I mean, it’s just sort of nonsense, and it’s received so much funding. And also, the journalism has been—you know, like 15 years ago, there were only a handful of journalists who specialized in climate or even the environmental beat, so to speak.
Now, you know, until recently, you had, like, 35 people in the climate bureau at a major media outlet, and there were some that were funded by these billionaire donors—Carbon Brief and some of these other things—that were publishing, had huge staffs, and publishing a lot of material, and it was funded by activist donors. It’s not what I would call honest or investigative journalism; it’s journalism that’s designed to advocate for a particular political position.
Read the rest. As I've repeatedly stated, I think there are plenty of human-caused environmental problems to worry about, starting with plastics and microplastics in our water—clogging our rivers, embedding itself in the flesh of sea life (that we then eat), polluting our green spaces, etc. Finding new and more efficient ways of producing engines and factories that don't belch out pollution into the atmosphere would also be a worthy goal. But forcing people to use electric cars, solar batteries, wind power, etc., when those systems are still remarkably inefficient (not matter how you try to cram the issue down our throats) is just folly on top of asininity. Wildly proclaiming the world is going to end in less than a decade, or that the seas will rise to consume island nations, or that the ice at the North Pole will completely disappear—these actions only make environmentalists look loony. Stick with the tangible, practical stuff that we can do something about. Provide plausible motivators (probably financial) to get people up off their asses and making an effort to keep their own spaces as clean as possible. And don't model your solutions on the heedless, centrally planned, top-down utopianism that has failed over and over in the past. Drop the "we're smarter than you" attitude; approach the problem with humility and an eye to constructive concerted action. Show us in clear terms why these actions are in our best interests, and focus on quality of life, not "Well, we'll need to tighten our belts and behave ourselves for the next twenty years if we're going to get through this." How has that attitude worked for you thus far?
The women never learn, and they still don't get why they're not paid equally. It's a business, lovelies. If you don't perform, you don't get the big bucks.
Dave Cullen:
Nerdrotic:
The Critical Drinker:
As happened with "Batgirl," this project should've just been scrapped, and Marvel should simply have taken the loss. More woke garbage now out of step with the current Zeitgeist.
