Saturday, March 15, 2025

images: Ides of March edition

stabby-stabby

They can't stop talking about him.

still a bitch-boy

You'll have to ask the pervs.

That's that GOP wingnut Murkowski, isn't it? Oh, Alaska.

"Let's paint some happy, little bits of sobriety on her face."

Or every American has just 0.2 backup guns.

Whatever else the man might be, he's a litmus test of character.

Oh, no! Not that!

This feels like that "Never trust what's said on the internet" Abraham Lincoln meme.

I hope he didn't leave any part of himself in the ice.

My God—even conservatives joke about the price of eggs! We'll get through this, guys.

Say you're old without saying you're old.

Did you see what I saw?

Not so great from the side, either.

Fix everything that absolutely needs fixing. But not "cuz."


that can't be good news

Headline (from the right-leaning Epoch Times—paywalled):

Consumer Confidence Tumbles as Inflation Expectations Jump
Americans grew uneasy about the economy in February as inflation expectations surged and consumer sentiment took its steepest dive in over two years.

Confidence among American consumers fell sharply in February, hitting a 29-month low, while long-run inflation expectations recorded their biggest monthly jump in 32 years, according to the latest University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey.

The data suggest that U.S. households are bracing for some uncertainty—possibly turbulence—which the Trump administration insists will be a short-lived “detox” period as tariffs and other policies take effect, and as government spending shifts to the private sector.

The University of Michigan’s closely watched consumer confidence survey, released on March 14, showed sentiment plunging 11 percent last month to a preliminary reading of 57.9, down from 64.7 in January and the lowest level since November 2022. The index has now dropped 22 percent since December, when post-election enthusiasm over President Donald Trump’s pro-business policies sent confidence soaring.

Inflation expectations are also rising. Long-run inflation projections climbed from 3.5 percent in January to 3.9 percent in February—the largest month-over-month increase since 1993. Short-term expectations rose as well, with year-ahead inflation forecasts jumping from 4.3 percent to 4.9 percent, marking the highest reading in 29 months and the third consecutive month of significant increases.

Despite these declines, the data suggest consumers are more concerned about the future than the present, as job market conditions and broader economic indicators remain relatively strong.

Trump has dismissed concerns about a downturn. He told reporters on March 11 that he does not believe a recession is coming “at all” and said that the country is “going to boom.”

I hope for his sake that he's right, but even some Trump-supporting conservatives are predicting that the US is headed for a Bidenomics-fueled recession, a boulder put in motion by the senile git and now unstoppable. But we'll see. Egg prices are already going down—a positive indicator. That said, people won't wait forever, and the masses, notoriously, are both stupid and fickle. By the same token, people won't wait for Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce real, tangible results in the form of actual Epstein documents and real arrests of prominent people. Thus far, the AG's office has produced nothing but rhetoric. It's embarrassing. As Asmongold said regarding Bondi's big promises in a recent video: "I'll believe it when I see it." (Trump also needs to work on turning his executive orders into laws. Otherwise, his changes will be undone by the next Democrat in the Oval Office.)


some Sky News videos



2/5: Joe Rogan vs. the Kamala campaign's lies.

2/7: Trump: "60 Minutes" should be taken off the air.

2/10: the US  Department of Education no longer exists?

2/10: HuffPost reporter blasted by Trump.

2/18: what can only be described as a troll.

2/18: "Disaster for Democrats."

2/19: Megyn Kelly vs. Tom Hanks.


more Schumer fallout

The left is now coming after their own. The target: Chuck Schumer, who just caved to Trump regarding the Trump-endorsed continuing resolution.*

*In case you didn't bother to click on the link, it's a negative depiction of the continuing resolution by partisan Democrats. But it still gives details of the CR.


optimal amount of alcohol for the gym: zero

See the interview with Dr. Mike Israetel here.


Dave Cullen is pumped

They'd promised us five seasons of this garbage. They were serious.




almost

I almost ordered medical equipment to be sent to my buddy Mike's house. Luckily, halfway through the ordering process, I did what I should've done before even ordering: I checked whether things like insulin pens and blood-sugar-monitor lancets can be taken on board planes despite being sharp objects. Turns out they can. So I canceled my order and saved myself $80. I'll just bring along my own equipment—probably not insulin pens, but my BP cuff/monitor, my pulse-ox monitor, and my blood-sugar monitor (with test strips and lancets). It goes without saying that I'll have my pills with me, too, but the pills, at least, aren't sharp objects. If I need anything more while I'm in the States, I can drive over to a Walgreens, CVS, Walmart, Target, or whatever's nearby. I haven't been to the States since before the pandemic. Will I remember the roads?

Blood sugar this morning was 81.


a few from Link Lauren

February 25:

2/8: Dems melt down over Trump and USAID.

2/9: Trump roasts Harry and Meghan.

2/21: Elon Derangement Syndrome.

2/22: Trump vs. Maine governor Janet Mills.


recreating a Michelin-star dish

I don't know what the point of this is, but it's interesting:




Friday, March 14, 2025

images

The Ivy League turns out to be a bubbling tub of shit.

Truth is funnier than fiction.

And I'd have greased more palms, too, if it hadn't been for that damn African American.

I've got a long list of people I'd like to Thanos-snap.

I'd love to see the DOE go down. But will it?

I like this metaphor.

And Ben "Moobs" Affleck is a good representative of them. Along with his woke friend Damon.

"Does a new thing"... like talk.

I'd have been much more petty and vengeful in his place.

Four more years of this.

This makes no sense, either.

The "creepy uncle" caption works. The "grandfather" one, not so much.

And he's good at the role.

And "Scheinbaum." What's all with the Latinos with German surnames? Descendants of escaped Nazis?

I thought this was a joke at first, but that's one way to do an end run around an executive order.


no fed income taxes on $150K or less?

Here's a first pass at a newly proposed tax plan:

There's a bit of skepticism on the right about this, and the left, of course, is going fucking nuts. I personally am not a no-tax absolutist: I think some taxes are necessary for the maintenance of infrastructure, defense, etc. At the same time, as DOGE is making abundantly clear, so much tax money gets wasted on useless projects, tied up in fraudulent projects, spent on projects and measures that go nowhere, or used to fund projects that service foreign powers for no good reason. So even if I believe taxes have their place, I think we as a nation need to be much more watchful about where the money goes. If a given state functions on threat of force, as libertarians love to contend, and as is evidenced by the armed wing of the IRS, then libertarians aren't totally wrong to see taxation as a form of theft.

As Matt Morse notes above, though, the proposed tax benefits are for the middle and lower classes ($150K salary or less), not for the rich, thus deflating the argument that Trump is lining the pockets of his rich cronies. I'm still learning about this new economic posture, i.e., using tariffs on other nations as a way to reduce taxes. I'm no historian, but this was apparently an economic stance that the United States took very early in its history, and Trump is bringing us back to it, knowing that we hold all of the cards. The cries of "Tariff wars will raise consumer prices!" don't seem to have much substance, as Vince Dao argues in a recent video. But as I said, I'm no historian, nor am I an economist, so this is all new to me. Can Trump make it succeed? I guess we'll all see.

Reinforcement:




Chuck Schumer caves... and he might pay the price

In a staring contest with Trump, Schumer just blinked.

That said, let's not celebrate just yet. The story is never over.

UPDATE: more on Schumer's "face plant."


one of my favorite topics

What makes for a great fight scene?




a Karen gets hers

This is pretty funny.

ADDENDUM: but this is just depressing, what with the Karen bystanders more worried about the criminal than about the off-duty cop.


2/8: Nancy's mind is going




the Drinker's final word on "Brave New World"




"Invincible," Season 3: review

Conquest (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) goes after Atom Eve (Gillian Jacobs)

[WARNING: some spoilers.]

I'm not sure I'd understand the Invincible series if I didn't listen to Charlie's commentary over at the YouTube channel Emergency Awesome. Charlie, a movie-lore and comics-lore nerd, does exegeses of various shows and publications—mostly shows. I get the feeling that he skews more left than right; he generally keeps politics out of his commentaries, never commenting on woke Hollywood, but he's made the occasional barbed Trump remark. Well, whatever. No one's perfect. Anyway, without giving detailed spoilers (unless he's doing a spoiler review), Charlie will often lay out the salient features of whatever movie or comics universe he's describing, and if it's a long storyline, he'll give some hints as to what to anticipate next, often while asking his commenters not to reveal details when they comment. It's mostly thanks to Charlie that I understand the Invincible universe well enough both to follow the story and to understand the story's greater implications. This isn't to say that the Amazon streaming show "Invincible" is poorly written and impossible to follow on its own terms; it just contains a lot of characters as well as a plot that seems to be moving toward, well, something, and it's good to have Charlie around to decode and demystify everything.

Season 3 has the moment in which Atom Ave (Gillian Jacobs) gets her ass handed to her by Conquest (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) as the Viltrumite Empire moves closer to taking over Earth. I've mentioned this moment before in my review of Season 1. Eve doesn't stay dead, though; as Charlie points out, she has god-level powers that are unleashed only when she's in extremis, so she heals herself by instinct. Eve is able to revive herself during the battle and, while she doesn't beat Conquest, she softens him up enough for Mark/Invincible (Steven Yeun) to defeat him. Season 3 also gives us the death of a major character (whose death was faithful to the comics), the escape of Omni-Man (JK Simmons) from a Viltrumite prison with the help of Allen the Alien (Seth Rogen), the evolving and deepening relationship between Mark and Eve, and the maturation of Mark's purple half-brother Oliver, whose mother was an insectoid Thraxan. Thraxans have a very short life span of maybe a year or two, but Oliver is half Viltrumite, and with Viltrumite genes being so dominant, he's ensured a much longer life than his fellow Thraxans. Those dominant genes are also the reason why Oliver looks like a normal human boy except for the purple skin. Oliver is still trying to figure out this whole superhero thing; sometimes he gets it wrong and causes chaos, but sometimes he gets it right. One argument that Oliver has with Mark is about when and whether it's ever justified to kill a villain. This question is explored repeatedly in Season 3.

Because Mark is aware, thanks to his dad and to the Viltrumite named Anissa (Shantel VanSanten), that the Viltrumite Empire is on its way to conquer Earth, Mark trains under Cecil (Walton Goggins), the special agent tasked with organizing superheroes and defending Earth from cosmic and Terran enemies. Season 3 gives us more in the way of multiple universes, hell realms, and time travel, and the Viltrumite Conquest doesn't arrive on Earth until the final episode. As usual, multiple plot lines interweave as Mark tries to figure out how to protect his family while still engaging in the superhero gig. Nolan/Omni-Man and Allen the Alien are also presumably on their way to Earth, with Omni-Man being repentant for all the destruction he'd caused on our planet, and for the insulting way in which he'd referred to his wife Debbie (Sandra Oh) as a pet back in Season 1. While in prison, Nolan admits to Allen that misses his wife, but she's now dating a regular human named Paul. I suppose Season 4 will reveal what happens to Mark's family when Nolan comes back to Earth around the same time the Viltrumite Empire does. (Conquest was just a vanguard, but as Nolan reveals to Allen the Alien, only fifty pureblood Viltrumites remain in the universe.)

Season 3 remained watchable for me, but as the stakes inevitably get raised (as seems to happen in all superhero stories), the battles become ever more titanic, and for an old guy like me, that can get numbing after a while. The dialogue remains inconsistent in terms of its cleverness and wittiness; the season brought back one of my favorite characters from Season 1, Machine Head (Jeffrey Donovan), from whom I was expecting another torrent of hilariously sharp-tongued banter, but Machine Head wasn't given much to do this time around. The story in Season 3 has been building out since the events of Season 1. While Earth faces multiple dangers from places like hell and alternate universes, the main threat remains the inevitable arrival of the rest of the Viltrumites. As Mark continues to grow in power, seeing himself as an Earthling first and foremost, we can see the shape of the conflict to come. I don't know all of the twists and turns the comic story will take, but I assume Mark and his father, along with Allen the Alien, will do what they can to defend Earth from the coming invasion.

The whole story is silly, of course, but Season 3 is a mostly successful continuation of the storyline from Season 2, and according to Charlie, while the animated show does diverge from the comics in certain ways, it's overall faithful to the original story. I'm rooting for Mark and Eve's relationship, and I hope to see a reconciliation between Nolan and his ex-wife Debbie, even if they don't get back together. Nolan has a lot to apologize for, and in a real way, it's impossible for him ever to make up for all the destruction he'd caused while on Earth. But Nolan's time on Thraxa taught him a thing or two about love and loyalty, and I get the impression that he's keen to apply those lessons back on Earth.

Season 3 was generally watchable and entertaining if a bit fatiguing with all of those titanic battles. The battle between Mark and Conquest, though, was gritty and personal (albeit shot through with way too much collateral damage); Charlie wryly noted that voice actors Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Steven Yeun had played opposite each other in "The Walking Dead," with Morgan's character killing Yeun's character, leading the showrunners to describe the Invincible/Conquest fight as "Steven Yeun's revenge." Except, as we find out at the very end of the season finale, Conquest isn't dead: he's just being kept under lock and key by Cecil, who wants to find out more about the Viltrum Empire so he can design proper defenses.

I have no idea how many more seasons of "Invincible" there'll be. From my own research, I know that Anissa will eventually come back and rape Mark, producing a son (who, I think, eventually dies). Fans of the comics series are generally pleased that the show hasn't stepped too far out of bounds; the showrunners seem mostly focused on respecting the lore, so I imagine the animated series will end approximately where the comics series does. As always, the show is an entertainingly messy and tangled web, peopled with all sorts of colorful characters, and for the moment at least, I'm still along for the ride.


a duffel of Paul Joseph Watson

People are upset about Trump's ban of trans people (men) from women's sports.

Oops: French politician advocates a Great Replacement.

Female comic has on-stage meltdown. The left praises her; the right derides her.

2/12: German elections: why vote for the AfD?

The BBC is obsessed with exposing kids to trans ideology.

Defending the migrant criminals.


Thursday, March 13, 2025

seen on a walk this past Tuesday

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

That off-ramp along the Tan-cheon finally looks as though it's going to be completed. I hope it happens this year. By the time it's done, the traffic-congestion problem it was meant to solve will have reset itself back to zero. Just like American road-building projects.


images

as another meme called it: the retard squisher

Apparently, a poaster is a poster on Twitter. Oh, and the left will never be definitively defeated.

I get the impression there are still a lot of timid, squishy righties out there.

I love you, Morgan, but use a question mark. And why is "Algos" capitalized?

Zee bread lines!

Gaz is French for "gas."* It's even a verb: Ça gaze? = How's it going?

I expect this is a head-fake. Pay attention to what he does, not to what he says.

I wonder if this chain of causation is true. Hmmm.

On maps, Greenland has a plump ass.

I would love to see this bitch rotting in a cell for all of her insider trading. Hurry up, Bondi.

__________

*Gaz is "gas" in the sense of gaseous gas. The French word for the gas you put in your car is essence. Carbonated water is eau gazeuse. Make it make sense.


fetch




England is surreal

If you think surreal, absurdist humor is funny, wait'll you see a real-life example of it. The word "penis" gets mentioned a few times. And to be clear: what you see below is just one example among many of a certain recurrent theme.

That tweet's final sentence could use some work. As could the Orwellian police state.

The above tweet was found in the comments thread to this post. The commenter who uploaded that tweet wrote:

Europe is in a lot more trouble than anyone here may know. If this is an example of [the] Freedom and Democracy that we demand of other countries[,] we are in deep shit.

Meanwhile, Europeans will keep whistling past the graveyard ("What are you talking about? There's no problem! I haven't seen a single problem!") as they continue to hack away at the roots of their own civilization through bad immigration policy, repression of free speech, intrusive police-state cameras and governments, undemocratic repression of local election results (watch Michael Heaver on YouTube), refusal to defend their national borders and sovereignty, transnational progressivism (maybe that's something of a dated term these days), economic over-regulation, etc. Remember when George Carlin used to joke with a weird sort of avid cynicism about how American culture was "circling the drain"? Probably true, but it ain't just American culture: it's pretty much the whole West, gone PC/woke and calling itself evil. Maybe that's why immigrants love moving to the West. The rampant evil.


a small avalanche of Asmongold

A stupid Redditor openly discusses assassinating Trump:

Woman claims to have lost 50 pounds due to poverty under Trump. After two months??

Trump: Prince Harry has enough problems with his wife.

Casting decision sparks stupid accusations of genocide or genocide-support.


another Johnny Somali update

Legal Mindset is the YouTube channel to watch for updates on Johnny Somali's current (there will be more than one!) court case.




as I've long said: Trump is a 90s-era Democrat

Here's DeVory on the question of cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in government. Not so long ago, this was the Democrats' axe to grind, but ever since Trump switched his label from D to R, the Democrats have taken positions that are basically anti-Trump and nothing deeper. This isn't about core principles; it's about opposing the Bad Orange, the Cheeto Hitler. Here—I've cued up DeVory's punchline, but I enourage you to watch the video from the beginning.




presented without comment




Joerg renames his channel




"a lesson in hypocrisy"




it's all coming out now


an exegesis of "Perfect Days"

My review of "Perfect Days" is here.




the latest info on alcohol

"It's a toxin." I've cued up the relevant part of the video.

Stop getting shit-faced.

To be fair, the doc also sounds as though he's anti-walking.


Wednesday, March 12, 2025

images




Are those some sexy-ass feet, or some sexy ass-feet?


Add a space and a hyphen. And toolbox is one word.


I can't imagine many liberals today buying Teslas. I'm still an EV skeptic.


Where does the comma go? And the period?

I really do hope it's all, "Kamala who?" in four years.


And just who is Big Balls?

Written by Alexandra's cock?

The unnecessary capitalization... it burns....

Where does the comma go?


Is that the DOGE?

Period, apostrophe, and a compound-word problem.

Let's put Rachel Maddow's info out there for all to see.