Saturday Happy Hour

Enjoy

Boom

I used to put these kinds of predicts on my calendar regularly. I should start doing that again.

Mommy He Shot Me Back

Some insight into what turned the tech guys into Nazis:

Mozilla guy (Eich) donates money to support banning same sex marriage. People - importantly, his employees! - get mad and he loses his position, eventually.  This is not being tossed out a window.  More importantly, who shot first, here? 

This is presumably what Marc Andreessen complains about on the rich guy group chat as he justifies going full MAGA to the beneficiaries of his patronage.

The American Empire

Not quite where I have always imagined.

Senator Pudding Brain

CIA not beating the allegation of "storage closet for elite failchildren."

Apparently there was a video, too (both since deleted).

This wasn't a slip. It was in a written speech and blasted out on social media.

Slotkin's only 4 years younger than I am. This was still an era were you grew up "knowing" this stuff through basic osmosis if your parents flipped on PBS occasionally, even aside from what you should have just learned.

Admittedly I knew this stuff a bit more than the average bear because my mom was a child in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, but still...

You can read coverage of the speech here, from a liberal outlet which puts in convenient ellipses to obscure the stupid part. The whole thing is the same fucking speech a certain kind of Democrat has been giving for 20 years, in which nothing can be justified separate from "national security" and a "threat from China."

Improving lives in America isn't a "national security" issue. You don't have to frame it that way.

Bernie Sanders: we should take these actions to improve the lives of Middle Class Americans (boo, hiss, communism)

Centrist Dipshit Senators: we should do unspecified things to improve the lives of Middle Class Americans because scary China (swoon, wow, so smart, brilliant)

John Blutarsky was closer to reality:

Friday Night

Rock on.

Leprechaun Barbecue

After many reports that Trump was trying to "induce" Eric Adams out of the race for mayor, he is, in fact, going to keep running. At least for today.

Short version is that he needs to drop out by 9/11 or he stays on the ballot, though there are a couple wrinkles.

Stay Away

Businesss keep your money and people out.

Around 450 people were arrested, said the Atlanta office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in a social-media post. The post described the people as “unlawful aliens.”

...

...

Among those detained at the factory were South Korean employees of LG Energy Solution on business travel. Hyundai Motor said it believed that it didn’t directly employ any of those detained. LG Energy said Friday it was cooperating with the South Korean government and relevant authorities to ensure the employees’ safety and secure their prompt release from detention.

Certain kinds of business travel are of course perfectly legal for people from visa waiver countries, but don't expect agents with a quota to know or care. Heckuva job, here:

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Tori Branum is a Marine Corps veteran, firearms instructor, and Republican candidate for Georgia’s 12th congressional District.

She’s also a proud “America first” supporter of President Donald Trump. On Thursday, as agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security were still carrying out a raid at a Hyundai plant in rural Bryan County, just outside the district Branum is running to serve, she expressed pride in something else: her purported role in causing the raid, which resulted in the arrest of 450 people, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

“How do I feel about it? Good,” Branum tells Rolling Stone. “I have no feelings about the law. What’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong.”

Certainly helping My President's plan to attract foreign investment.

Donald The Dove

Sorry, Mr. President, sir, this going to make giving you that Peace Prize (you were the best nominee!) a bit harder.

US President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Friday that directs the Department of Defense to be known as the Department of War.

Y'all Motherfuckers Lying And Getting Me Pissed

I suppose a minor difference between reactionary centrists and the MAGA right is that the former are proud of being the smartest boys in the room, believing they know things they do not know and understand things they do not understand, while the latter embrace being dumbasses.

The former think you can win with debate club in the Marketplace Of Ideas and the latter are just, "fuck you, we're in charge."

Suspected

We're all enemy combatants now.

Trump Claims the Power to Summarily Kill Suspected Drug Smugglers

Reiterating: drug smuggling is not a capital crime nor even (in itself) violent.

Monthly Jobs Report

There was some drama (nerd drama) earlier as the database tools weren't working, but +22K jobs for the month - shitty number, though the reality could be even shittier because lol nothing matters.

You need about +150K per month to keep up with population growth.

Gotta fire whoever the new guy is.

Morning

What will distract us from kitchen table issues today?

Happy Hour

Get happy

Priorities

They don't believe in what were the primary functions of the FBI, so why not.

WASHINGTON, Sept 4 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's surge of federal law enforcement into Washington, D.C., is exposing the FBI's fleet of unmarked cars, potentially risking its ability to do its most sensitive national security and surveillance work, nine current and former employees of the bureau warned.

Tom's Two Laws Of Robotics

The Moustache Of Understanding:

So what I was trying to do is basically say, given this onrushing train of A.I. and its vast implications, there’s only one way to manage this, and that is if the two A.I. superpowers — China and the United States — collaborate together on a system for controlling A.I. and ensuring that every A.I. device that either of them makes or sells to the other has embedded in it a set of ethical normative controls to ensure that their A.I.s can only be used for the advancement of human well-being, and not for any nefarious purposes.

Sometime I feel the need to explain why things are dumb, but I think pointing laughing is good enough for this one.

The Liberal Bubble

A regular trope presented by our reactionary centrists (shy right wingers) is that liberals/lefties live in some sort of cloistered "bubble," unaware of the concerns and thoughts of right wingers, despite having them blasted at us from every media outlet constantly. 

Needless to say, they never write this piece for right wingers who have no idea that The Left thinks about anything (reactionary centrists don't either).

As for the bubble, it is somewhat amusing that the MAGA Right has spent years constructing elaborate conspiracy theories centered on Jeffrey Epstein, while somehow missing that Donald Trump and Mar-A-Lago are at the center of Epstein Cinematic Universe.

We could've told them that.

Sure Why Not

They shouldn't do it, but it would be a little bit funny, at least.

Driving the news: Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla on Wednesday called Trump's Operation Warp Speed — the 2020 American effort to develop COVID vaccines — "a profound public health achievement."

"Such an accomplishment would typically be worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, given its significant impact," Bourla said in a statement.

He also provided a link to "numerous published studies and updates" that validate the Pfizer vaccine's "safety and effectiveness."

Chemtrails

The dangers of indulging the fantasies of the crazies.

Since the state law went into effect, the Floridians who backed it have grown increasingly angry by seeing the skies just as marked by white trails as they were prior to the state law.

Here’s a smattering of irate posts on X in the two months since the state law went into effect:

— “Yes, the spraying has taken place every single day since the Ban was put in place!”

— “The invasion continues. Florida skies are under constant attack.”

— “DeSantis, why do you lie? Why do you say that you signed a Florida Bill getting rid of these hideous chemtrails, and it is all a fat big LIE?”

— “Welcome to Florida, the chemtrails state. Now we are being sprayed from 4 a.m. to 5 a.m., so by 10 a.m. the skies are cleared but you are breathing heavy metals. Thank you DeSantis.”

— “See how the chemicals are spreading out. Trees are dying, crops are barely growing. Why is our government doing this to us?”

By humoring Florida’s free-dumb coalition on chemtrails, state lawmakers have unleashed a tornado of disappointment upon themselves.

While not precisely the same, there is a lesson here about trying to give anti-immigration zealots something you can't give them. They don't want cuts to illegal immigration or even legal immigration. 

They want you to send them all back again, and if you can't provide that, they won't be happy. They will vote for the people who they think might.

Stop negotiating with the imaginary Reasonable Republican in your head, imagining that surely this compromise will appeal to them, because it's very sensible. Reasonable Republicans don't exist, and they haven't agreed to your compromise.

At Least They Fake Banned Tik Tok

I wonder if any country was too stupid to have data sniffers (I have no idea if this is a good technical term) around the White House when they were sending everything through Starlink.

China has hacked into American power grids and companies for decades, stealing sensitive files and intellectual property such as chip designs as it seeks to gain an edge over the United States.

But a sweeping cyberattack by a group known as Salt Typhoon is China’s most ambitious yet, experts and officials have concluded after a year of investigating it. It targeted more than 80 countries and may have stolen information from nearly every American, officials said. They see it as evidence that China’s capabilities rival those of the United States and its allies.

I suspect a decent chunk of powerful people are regularly being blackmailed by foreign powers, but we've hit the "what can you do" point of that.

Morning

Thirsty Thursday

Happy Hour

get happy

Sure Why Not

It isn't going to take too much more for other countries to move towards requiring vaccination proof.

Florida is set to end all state vaccine mandates, state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced at a news conference Wednesday.

Of course, other states won't be able to do similar, as people bring their measles back from Plague Park, Orlando.

Recessions

It just occurred to me that the last two downturns - Great and Covid  - were quite acute and sudden.  The former had a slow recovery time - thanks, Obama - and the latter a quick one, but in both cases the onsets were quick.

I think "we" sort of expect them to be like that, now, but neither of them were "normal."

I'm not predicting one.  I'm just saying that it generally takes awhile for things like tariff increases to percolate through the economy.

Saved

The author used to yell at me when I would post this, arguing that the piece was nuanced and critical and blahblahblah, but, well..

(this is from 2013)

Why Don't You Make Them One Million Percent Then

Bernie Sanders can be like, "maybe we should raise the minimum wage," and a thousand economists and Briefcase Centrists will descend upon his house with pitchforks to explain why he doesn't understand economics, and now we have this...

Imagine if every country did this, we could push world output to infinity in weeks.

Assassinations

I don't expect The Democrats to point out that assassinating alleged drug smugglers - not even a capital crime - is, maybe, bad, but they should consider the broader consequeneces of these taboos continuing to fall.

Extrajudicial killing is bad, yo.

Judicial, too.

You gotta stand on principle or you'll find there aren't any left.

No I don't think The Democrats have magic powers to stop these things.

Morning

Wacky Wednesday

You Can't Trust Freedom When It's Not In Your Hands

Pritzker has his own Guard.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) said Tuesday President Donald Trump is preparing to deploy National Guard troops in the state over the governor’s repeated objections. Pritzker also warned Trump will soon launch large-scale immigration raids in Chicago.

Pritzker said the Trump administration has begun staging the Texas National Guard for deployment in Illinois. He added that Illinois law enforcement agents were informed by Trump administration officials that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies will soon begin immigration operations across Chicago.

“In the coming days, we expect to see what has played out in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., to happen here in Chicago,” Pritzker said, referring to Trump’s aggressive deployment of the military in Los Angeles earlier this year and his recent deployment in D.C.

Work Is Hard

I bet most of these guys are barely-shows.

As the article points out, man-against-working-from-home can't use it as an excuse.

Exciting Announcement Thread

Still a chance it is "I am dead."

Lunch

eat

Do The Robot

I know Elon's robots are 100% bullshit, but for anyone who thinks they're 90% bullshit:

Automation and robots are nothing new. We have been very good at producing highly efficient machines for specific tasks. The point of a general purpose humanoid robot is that it would be able to do a wide variety of tasks without additional programming and with a great degree of flexibility.

What would they be useful for? My test is the "clean my table, load the dishwasher, and put the clean dishes away" test. That would be the home consumer test.

A commercial test would be "clean hotel rooms."

Try to imagine these creations doing those things. You can't do it, my friends.

Elon Musk is deemphasizing Tesla Inc.’s car business like never before in favor of humanoid robots that are still in development and a ways off from generating revenue.

Tesla’s chief executive officer said Monday the company will derive about 80% of its value from Optimus, the robot initiative he first touted four years ago. Musk made the prediction shortly after Tesla published its latest “master plan,” an oft updated corporate manifesto that mentioned robots for the first time.

He is just going to abandon the car business. And somehow the stock price will stay afloat.

Nadler

My longtime theory about congressional non-retirements - confirmed by a few people - has been that even the rich ones can't easily replace the loyal staffers that provide the equivalent of elder care.*  Good for Nadler not taking that route. I always liked him.

In a recent interview in his downtown Manhattan office, Mr. Nadler, 78, said he hesitated to step aside when he believes that President Trump is threatening the foundations of democracy. But he said he had been persuaded it was time for a changing of the guard.

“Watching the Biden thing really said something about the necessity for generational change in the party, and I think I want to respect that,” Mr. Nadler said, adding that a younger successor “can maybe do better, can maybe help us more.”

I don't really know why the "genocide" word is too much for people - its application to various events in the 90s didn't have this level controversy.  It isn't "holocaust" or "Shoah."  But I don't really care what people call it as long as they don't think arguing about the word is more important than what is happening. Still coming from Nadler this is something:

“I don’t know what to say at this point,” he said. “I can’t defend what Israel is doing.”

Mr. Nadler has been sharply critical of Hamas, still believes in a two-state solution for the region and does not agree with those who say Israel is carrying out genocide in Gaza. But he said that under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel was committing mass murder and war crimes in Gaza “without question.”

*Many people don't get that "elder care" largely isn't medical or similar, more just handling the complexities of life which become harder to handle.  More like you are dealing with a child, but they own a house and otherwise have the complications of adult life, like dealing with two factor authorization.

This One's For All The Haters And The Losers

I suspect the 2pm announcement from Trump is not "I am dead." I predict that Donald the Dove is going to start calling it the War Department.

Trump will make “an exciting announcement related to the Department of Defense,” per Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. https://t.co/mnxMEKLdbh

— Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) September 2, 2025

...ah looks like it's the LOCATION OF SPACE COMMAND. Could be both.

Morning

Dead again?

Monday Evening

Enjoy

Precisely The Same

Seems Bad

The relaxation of the assassination taboo has not been especially wise.

A plane carrying the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was targeted by GPS navigation jamming while trying to land in Bulgaria on Sunday, a spokesperson for the commission told CNN.

The West

I don't really know who "The West" is in this framework. Or what "aligned" means. I don't think whoever wrote it does either.

It was a scene in eastern China almost certainly intended for an audience on the other side of the world: The leaders of China, Russia and India, the three largest powers not aligned with the West, smiling and laughing like good friends as they greeted each other at a summit on Monday.

Legitimate Concerns

This is mostly about the UK - with lessons from the US - but the same applies to all The Democrats (and I know many of you don't like to believe me, but this is the animating belief of House Democrats right now) who think they can put on their tough guy racist pants and "win" on immigration.

That is because the question at the heart of immigration crises isn’t “how many is too many”, but “how few is few enough”. The answer is “fewer than zero”. And because that is not a scenario that is possible, no matter what ever-escalating pledges, solutions or policies are offered, nothing will ever be enough. And each time that one decisive solution is executed – whether that be Brexit, increasing deportations, mobilising the navy – a chorus of voices will tell us that these are necessary placatory measures, and then promptly forget when the next one is demanded, and sign up to that as well. 

Morning

Holiday Monday funday.

Cindy Who

Not that I expect anything from Trump's people, but that Biden's people and all senators stopped taking her calls is.. a lot.

This is the team. The ones making sure food reaches people in #Gaza. Despite tremendous challenges, their commitment and determination never waivers.

I reiterate my call for their safety & protection—and for the sustained access that @WFP needs to continue our life-saving work. pic.twitter.com/Q9IVmdPiFt

— Cindy McCain (@WFPChief) August 31, 2025

Translate This

I think what actually happened is pretty obvious, but you can all speculate!

Afternoon

enjoy

America's Worst Humans

Patrick O'Hanlon.

Main Character

One can't completely deny America's centrality in the world, but we are, relatively speaking, much less important than we used to be. A lot of those "poor" countries - big and small - aren't poor anymore. Our big sticks are still there, of course, but our carrots, especially ones dangled by the Mad King, aren't as valuable as they once were. Any transition is complicated and potentially costly, but China and India (for example) really don't need the US.

Public Safety

Broadly, the "police chase" should basically never happen.

U.S. Park Police have initiated at least 10 car chases in the past three weeks as part of President Donald Trump’s surge in federal law enforcement in D.C., court records show. They’re pursuing drivers they tried to stop for tinted windows and fake tags, broken headlights and running a stop sign.

A driver with a minor in the back seat struck a tree, then a guardrail. Another accelerated to more than 80 mph before hitting multiple cars on Interstate 295. A third nearly hit a detective before flipping the car. Court records reviewed by The Washington Post show that among the 10 chases since Aug. 14, at least six involved crashes.

The pursuits — all of which began as traffic stops for nonviolent crimes and were initiated by federal task forces formed in response to Trump’s Aug. 11 executive order — would have violated D.C. police policy. The District’s police department allows car chases only when the driver is putting other lives in danger or is suspected of committing a violent crime.

Morning

Sunday funday

Some Dumbasses Thought Trump Would Actually Pay Them

How do people not learn.

Saturday Afternoon

It appears the reports of his death were somewhat exaggerated.

Sure Why Not

I guess all IP law is nonsense now.

Aug 29 (Reuters) - Meta has appropriated the names and likenesses of celebrities – including Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway and Selena Gomez – to create dozens of flirty social-media chatbots without their permission, Reuters has found.

While many were created by users with a Meta tool for building chatbots, Reuters discovered that a Meta employee had produced at least three, including two Taylor Swift “parody” bots.

Amazing stuff:

All of the virtual celebrities have been shared on Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms. In several weeks of Reuters testing to observe the bots’ behavior, the avatars often insisted they were the real actors and artists. The bots routinely made sexual advances, often inviting a test user for meet-ups.

Interesting Times

Morning

Is he dead yet?

Friday Evening

enjoy

...Circuit Court chucks out Trump's tariffs.   Someone wake John Roberts.

Deathgrip

You don't have to know anything about any of these people to know this is nuts.

Reportedly, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is wooing Maine Governor Janet Mills to run for the nomination. At 77, a win against Collins would make her the oldest senate freshman in history. (Platner is 40.) Platner’s campaign only becomes an insurgency against Susan Collins if he first survives the Democratic establishment. His pointed critiques of party inaction have already set the tone. His candidacy isn’t just about beating Republicans, it’s about forcing Democrats to do more than fundraise off of their failures.

Whoopsie Doodle

They lie about everything.

Years after a Tesla driver using Autopilot plowed into a young Florida couple in 2019, crucial electronic data detailing how the fatal wreck unfolded was missing. The information was key for a wrongful death case the survivor and the victim’s family were building against Tesla, but the company said it didn’t have the data.

Then a self-described hacker, enlisted by the plaintiffs to decode the contents of a chip they recovered from the vehicle, found it while sipping a Venti-size hot chocolate at a South Florida Starbucks. Tesla later said in court that it had the data on its own servers all along.

The hacker’s discovery would become a key piece of evidence presented during a trial that began last month in Miami federal court, which dissected the final moments before the collision and ended in a historic $243 million verdict against the company.

Life Is But An Illusion

I have some, um, nuanced views about the whole Fed Independence issue, but if the people who run it aren't willing to preserve it, then it never really existed anyway.

Unless, of course, he makes the decision to stand up for the rule of law and explain that the attack is not merely on the central bank, but democracy and the constitution. Powell should give a public, primetime television speech explaining the stakes, that the president’s order was legally invalid and that the Federal Reserve system will ignore the order. Federal Reserve Board General Counsel Mark Van Der Weide and the legal division of the Federal Reserve Board are no doubt advising Powell that any such bold action would open Powell up to the risk of a “for cause” firing from Trump himself. Their legal analysis is sound but their political instincts are wrong.

When your opponent is Donald Trump you escalate in response to threats; you don’t try to appease him. Powell must do everything in his power to compel the conventional wisdom of market traders to more adequately “price in” the degradation of the rule of law. This must include tying the rule of law and the threats to the constitution to the credibility and standing of the Federal Reserve itself. Powell’s term expires in less than a year anyway. If defending the constitution and his own institution is not worth the risk, what would be? The Federal Reserve has already made the error of letting itself become isolated from the attacks on the rest of the administrative state. Powell can still change course, but time is running out. Federal Reserve Chairman Powell: hang together with Lisa Cook.

Seems Bad

We seem to have cycled through our effective official policy being: 1) it's not happening, 2) it's happening but we're not responsible, 3) we're responsible but it's too expensive to do anything about it, also something something China and Africa 4) it's too late to do anything about it, and back to to 5) it's not happening.

The collapse of a critical Atlantic current can no longer be considered a low-likelihood event, a study has concluded, making deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions even more urgent to avoid the catastrophic impact.

The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is a major part of the global climate system. It brings sun-warmed tropical water to Europe and the Arctic, where it cools and sinks to form a deep return current. The Amoc was already known to be at its weakest in 1,600 years as a result of the climate crisis.

Self-Preservation

I get that the rich and powerful can insulate themselves from a lot of the deprivations they inflict onto the rest of us, but it is a bit difficult to protect yourself against various plagues. You would think some members of the Oldest Deliberative Body In The World (by age of members) would have some minor concerns about this.

Also, Magic Beans

I was going to criticize something else in this WaPo piece, but then I reached the end and found something which we increasingly see in pieces on every topic. Basically, "...and then artificial intelligence will solve everything."

In classic Trump fashion, such quick deadlines might help focus people and force them to innovate faster. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has, so far, certified only a dozen third-party service providers to collect and pay duties on international mail. That number will grow soon. Embracing artificial intelligence, including predictive analytics, could help speed packages through customs, no matter their value.

That first sentence is amazing, also, too.

Morning

Funky Friday.

Thursday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

get happy

37

I think 37% is about as low as Trump can go unless a shit economy kicks in, or some other catastrophe, but if that isn't low enough for people to treat him as unpopular...

President Donald Trump’s approval rating dropped to a new low of his second term, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

The new poll found that Trump’s approval rating slid 3 percentage points since the survey was last conducted in July. According to the poll, 37% of voters approved of how Trump was handling his job as president while 55% said they disapproved.

Somehow Tony Blair Returned

Signifying nothing good.

Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister who led his country into the war in Iraq and whose eight-year tenure as a Middle East envoy got — at best — mixed reviews, raised eyebrows on Wednesday when he attended a White House summit on the future of Gaza.

Cindy Who

It does say a lot about That Town that everybody stopped taking her calls.

#Gaza is at a breaking point. I've just seen it myself.
 @WFP operates in conflict zones all over the world. Families in Gaza are starving—and we know how to deliver at scale.
 
We must revive our network of 200+ food distribution points, community kitchens & bakeries ASAP.

— Cindy McCain (@WFPChief) August 28, 2025

So Much For The Tolerant Left

Just because I demonize them for several hours every day to my audience of millions?

The conservative personality admitted on his self-titled Fox News show that he fled the metropolis because he was pushed to the limit by a few glances — or perhaps glares — he suffered through during an experience at a local eatery.

"It's not going to impact my life, because I left New York," Hannity said while discussing the potential for Zohran Mamdani, the son of film director Mira Nair, to win the city's mayoral race.

"You know why I left New York? High taxes, quality of life, crime," the 63-year-old stressed, before telling his audience, "I had a hard time going to a restaurant in New York City because people would stare at me and hated me."

He added, "They had daggers in their eyes."

The violent left with their eye daggers.

The Plagiarism Machine Is Now The Snitch Machine

Yah don't use this.

In a new blog post admitting certain failures amid its users' mental health crises, OpenAI also quietly disclosed that it's now scanning users' messages for certain types of harmful content, escalating particularly worrying content to human staff for review — and, in some cases, reporting it to the cops.

"When we detect users who are planning to harm others, we route their conversations to specialized pipelines where they are reviewed by a small team trained on our usage policies and who are authorized to take action, including banning accounts," the blog post notes. "If human reviewers determine that a case involves an imminent threat of serious physical harm to others, we may refer it to law enforcement."

People are going to SWAT themselves trying to "write" fiction.

Wonder of Science

The man can see mitochondria.

Morning

Get your morning on.

Wednesday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

get happy

Metastasize

I know it doesn't apply to everyone - or every entity - individually, but collectively, the Professional Democrats are a hell of a lot more corrupt than they were 20 years. People like this are not going to save us!

A Democratic Senate candidate running in Maine on a platform of getting money out of politics has spent his career entangled with controversial PACs created by the notorious email fundraising firm Mothership Strategies. The firm pioneered the hair-on-fire fundraising tactics that often send more money to political consultants than to political candidates.

Mothership was recently the subject of yet another viral investigation that revealed that of the $678 million the company’s core political action committees raised since 2018, just $11 million went to candidates; $159 million made its way to Mothership Strategies. Meanwhile, the firm’s spammy approach to email and text messaging—mock overdue bills, sky-is-falling rhetoric, and so on—has left the grassroots commons desiccated, draining email fundraising of its potency and driving many campaigns toward SMS (which is in the process of being destroyed itself).

Corruption seeps into everyone and everything eventually. That's just how things are done, don't rock the boat, hey you'd better show you're one of us by joining in. No one is going to get ahead by threatening to expose the system.

Where's Daddy

Chotiner interviews Jacob Lew, Obama's Treasury Secretary, Biden's ambassador to Israel.

When you would call them in the middle of the night and say, “What on earth happened?,” what was usually the answer?

The general pattern was that in-the-moment stories were inaccurate, and that the Israeli military and government establishment were not in a position to fully explain yet. We could almost never get answers that explained what happened before the story was fully framed in international media, and then when the facts were fully developed, it turned out that the casualties were much lower, the number of civilians was much lower, and, in many cases, the children were children of Hamas fighters, not children taking cover in places.

Sorry, what did you just say?

In many cases, the original number of casualties—

No, I meant the thing about who the children were.

They were often the children of the fighters themselves.

And therefore what follows from that?

What follows is that whether or not it was a legitimate military target flows from the population that’s there.

Crackers

No golden age, but I do think there's a small chance that in the aughts this would have been a resignation event.

People other than Media Matters might have noticed, at least.

Where Have All The Good Men Gone And Where Are All The Gods

Fresh from the fight.

Prosecutors Fail to Secure Indictment Against Man Who Threw Sandwich at Federal Agent

Trial Balloons

The reason to scream when they get floated is to try to pop them.

The reason to scream, generally, is that the people whose calls get taken - the people who don't have to scream - are much more likely to think this is good and right.

The title of the post was "115 Dems" for a reason.

The modal belief of House Dems right now is that they lost because of immigration and trans issues, and somehow - despite everything - if they could just go back in time and pass the 2024 immigration bill, then everything would have been fine.

That immigration reform was the top agenda for months, that Biden talked about nothing else, that the Republicans predictably rug pulled it, and that all this accomplished was precisely what critics predicted - ensuring that immigration was a top election issue - has not phased them in the slightest.

Don't focus on immigration, we said.  The Republicans will not let this bad bill pass, anyway, we said. It failed and guess who was right - they were!

Trump is doing what is he doing and over a third of House Dems are running with "he is basically right."

115 Dems are not in marginal seats.  These are not rogue members trying to win re-election in Trump +4 districts.  This is the dominant view of House Dems at the moment.  Not universal, but dominant.

We've been getting lectures about everything being a distraction from "kitchen table issues" for months, and this is what they have come up with.

2026 is going to go very badly - for the country, and electorally - unless we scream at these people and get many of them out of office in primaries.

Crimecop

Philadelphia DA proposes making crime illegal again.

Krasner: So, if what you have is a group of ICE agents, or even the military, coming into Philadelphia and committing crimes—assaults that are illegal, kidnapping, unlawful restraint, obstruction of the administration of justice—they can be prosecuted.

[image or embed]

— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) August 27, 2025 at 12:43 AM

Morning

Wobbly Wednesday.

Tuesday Night

Rock on.

115 Dems

Genius stuff. 

A group of House Democrats hope they have the solution to a policy issue that has long plagued the Democratic Party: immigration reform. 

 

The New Democrat Coalition, comprising 115 members who span the caucus’s ideological spectrum, released a framework Monday containing policy proposals on topics including increasing financial and operational support to border agents and rethinking U.S. visa policy.

It is much much worse than those paragraphs suggest.

I don’t know what politics show some of you are watching.  I think opposing this morally bankrupt and politically suicidal course is more important than clapping loudly for the brilliant Dem messaging, which is converging on "like Trump, but more responsibly and sensibly."

The ones who are actually opposing Trump's actions do not get to sit at the cool kids table at the Dem caucus lunches.

Sometimes I know what I am talking about.

The Message Factory

Rolling Stone on who is guiding The Democrats.

As the Times explained elsewhere, Blue Rose handled much of the ad testing for the Super PAC Future Forward as it worked to support Harris’ campaign. Blue Rose’s team was effectively embedded within Future Forward, which served as Harris’ primary outside spender and spent $560 million to boost the Democratic ticket in 2024. It’s worth noting that many of the ads run by Future Forward were completely unwatchable — overstuffed with tidbits about various policies, provided too quickly for a casual viewer to process and often presented by random narrators. 

Blue Rose has worked with much of the Democratic Party apparatus — the Democratic National Committee; the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and its outside spending arm, Senate Majority PAC; the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and its independent arm, House Majority PAC.

The firm is prone to bold proclamations. Among its contributions to the 2024 campaign was the idea that running negative ads against Trump was ineffective, and contrast was more important, according to people familiar with the Blue Rose operation. (Democratic National Committee officials are still incensed that Future Forward eschewed attacks on Trump.) Another was that the Super PAC should deploy its ads late in the campaign, when the cake was already nearly baked.

These proclamations are typically based on experiments, randomized-controlled trials, that are supposed to determine the efficacy of ads and messages. Critics question whether this is a viable way to test the impact of political messages, as well as the methodology — which Blue Rose doesn’t share — based, in part, on who exactly is participating in its web panels. 

Jake Grumbach, an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, made an apparent dig at the methodology on Sunday, joking on X that the Democratic Party is being run by “people who sign up to take online surveys about the persuasiveness of various digital campaign messaging vignettes via consumer reward programs.”

I'll add that this particular message memo concludes that these are bad messages:

They are correct.  These are absolutely shit messages that no one should use! That is not the same as saying that the topic is shit.  They're just shitty statements!  There is a difference between "voters aren't concerned about this issue" and "voters think this is a fucking stupid thing to say!"

The Milky Way And Fucking Shooting Stars

How about eleventy million percent?

Aug 25 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that China has to give the United States magnets or "we have to charge them 200% tariff or something" amid a trade dispute between the two nations.

I suspect China, out of all entities, knows to tell him to fuck off.

Nobody Could Have Predicted

I still expect something absolutely catastrophic to happen because of this type thing.

Members of the Department of Government Efficiency uploaded a copy of a crucial Social Security database in June to a vulnerable cloud server, putting the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans at risk of being leaked or hacked, according to a whistle-blower complaint filed by the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer.

Sincere Advice

I do love the genre of evil conservatives giving Democrats advice, as their big concern is the success of the Democratic party. 

Oh, Ramesh, tell us how to win! Please!

I don't love that Hakeem Jeffries is reading and nodding along.

In case you need a reminder of Ramesh's deep concern for the fortunes of the Democratic party:

Taking The Lead

If federal elected Dems don't take the lead in opposing Trump's military occupation of cities, masked kidnappings, and other authoritarian actions, then that activism will happen elsewhere, and in ways they have less control over. I don't think that's what they want, as still, in the year of our Gritty 2025, they are unable to not take the bait in somehow being responsible for things random people do and say.  Even made up things!

Someone's going to be shouting "abolish ICE" and "defund the police" and even "worse" and they can't stop that!

I guarantee the response to this will be something like, "This is a despicable act, HOWEVER" and that is not going to help you! You took Trump's side even though you think you didn't!

Team Big Rich Oaf

Man of the moment.

Over the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning, for quite a while now, to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country's founders warned against, and it's the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances.

What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American.

No one from the White House or the executive branch has reached out to me or to the mayor. No one has reached out to our staffs. No effort has been made to coordinate or to ask for our assistance in identifying any actions that might be helpful to us. Local law enforcement has not been contacted. We have made no requests for federal intervention. None.

We found out what Donald Trump was planning the same way that all of you did: We read a story in The Washington Post.

If this was really about fighting crime and making the streets safe, what possible justification could the White House have for planning such an exceptional action without any conversations or consultations with the governor, the mayor, or the police?

Let me answer that question: This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals.

This is about the president of the United States and his complicit lackey, Stephen Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities and end elections.

There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention. There is no inter- insurrection. There is no insurrection. Like every major American city in both blue and red states, we deal with crime in Chicago. Indeed, the violent crime rate is worse in red states and red cities.

Here in Chicago, our civilian police force and elected leaders work every day to combat crime and to improve public safety, and it's working.

Not one person here today will claim we have solved all crime in Chicago, nor can that be said of any major American metro area. But calling the military into a U.S. city to invade our streets and neighborhoods and disrupt the lives of everyday people is an extraordinary action, and it should require extraordinary justification.

Look around you right now. Does this look like an emergency? Look at this. Go talk to the people of Chicago who are enjoying a gorgeous afternoon in this city. Ask the families buying ice cream on the Riverwalk. Go see the students who are at the beach after school. Talk to the workers that I just met taking the water taxi to get here. Find a family who's enjoying today sitting on their front porch and ask if they want their neighborhoods turned into a war zone by a wannabe dictator. Ask if they'd like to pass through a checkpoint with unidentified officers in masks while taking their kids to school.

And the important bit:

Finally, to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous: we are watching and we are taking names.

This country has survived darker periods than the one that we are going through right now, and eventually the pendulum will swing back, maybe even next year. Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf.

You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually. If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law.

This man should be talking about kitchen table issues, which involves saying, "Donald Trump is distracting us from the price of eggs!" 

Hakeem Jeffries must condemn!

Morning

What is distracting us from our kitchen tables today?

Late Happy Hour

enjoy

Kitchen Table Issues

Seems like "being scared to leave your house without your passport" might qualify, if only indirectly.

The Girls Are Fighting

Sam Altman's only redeeming feature is that Elon hates him. T

wo of Elon Musk’s companies sued Apple and OpenAI on Monday, accusing the pair of an “anticompetitive scheme.”

Lunch

eat

The Royal 'You'

Who is the NYT addressing here? I mean, its own staff, hopefully, but otherwise?  Maybe most people are aware of things that the NYT office group chat is surprised by.

I am not surprised by the answer.  Why does the NYT assume I would be?

Breaking The Mail

Delivery isn't seamless everywhere, and the bureacracy for dealing with customs on small value goods is not great everywhere! I've experienced it! But that bureacracy... exists in those places, even if it is cumbersome and frustrating. In some countries, the mailman will knock on your door and demand you pay the tariff or VAT in cash. That's not great! But it is a system!

We don't have a system in place for handling this stuff at volume!

France’s state-owned La Poste suspended the shipment of business parcels to the United States starting Monday, joining similar moves by other European firms due to looming US customs duties. La Poste said only gift parcels sent by individuals and worth less than $100 would continue to be shipped.

Distractions

They are spending the money that they raise from you on consultants - David Shor - who tells them to do this.

If it were about "law and order," he'd coordinate with local law enforcement.

If it were about "health and safety," he'd reinstate the millions in gun violence prevention funding he cut.

Trump is trying to distract you from the Epstein Files and rising prices.

Don't let him. https://t.co/4XUULouRWB

— Tammy Duckworth (@SenDuckworth) August 24, 2025

Distraction from what?

Jimenez Rosa’s time in custody ended with her alone, wet and begging for help at The Cheesecake Factory in the Burlington Mall, after ICE agents released her into the rainy street outside the detention facility Wednesday night. She was 30 miles from home, with no phone and a broken spirit.

... 

When Rosa asked about his wife’s medical care, the agent cited HIPAA laws as a barrier to knowing her health issues. Taken aback, Rosa pointed out that doctors can share medical information with law enforcement when a patient is in custody, which is specifically outlined in HIPAA.

“He said a very disgusting joke after that,” Rosa recalled.

"He said, ‘We’ll notify next of kin if she dies.’ And at that moment, I knew that I was no longer dealing with humans.”

“I knew I was dealing with someone that is sick in the head, and this was the person who made the decision to incarcerate her,” Rosa said.

(click and read the whole thing)

Morning

Go go Gadget blog

De Minimis

If there was a seamless way to collect tariffs on small shipments then this wouldn't be as much of a problem. HOWEVER...

The international courier DHL on Friday joined other European mail carriers that have put temporary restrictions on sending packages to the United States because of President Trump’s executive order that eliminates an exemption on duties on cheap imported goods.

The temporary halt by DHL’s German parcel service and its domestic mail service, Deutsche Post, covers commercial shipments originating in Germany to consumers in the United States. The company will continue to send private packages as long as the content is worth no more than $100 and labeled a gift. More valuable items can be sent through DHL Express, a more expensive option that includes commercial customs services.

The Long Term Effects Of Kryptonite Exposure

I think it's fine that Dean Cain, official older guy, isn't in great shape, but I don't know why they're advertising it.

TV’s former “man of steel” Dean Cain runs through the obstacle course during training to become an ICE officer at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia.
https://t.co/R6CcwFbFgD pic.twitter.com/tenSTvp1oY

— U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (@ICEgov) August 23, 2025

Yes. Former.

Masks

I don't think I need to explain the obvious here. 

HOUSTON — An investigation is underway after two men wearing ski masks and claiming to be police were shot and killed at a home in southeast Houston Friday night, according to the Houston Police Department.

...

"[The homeowner] became suspicious, because, you know, they have a ring camera too, and the suspects were saying they had a warrant, but it was just two people and they're masked up and no police cars, no lights or anything like that," said Lt. Khan with HPD.

... 

Police said if you're ever unsure whether it is really the police outside your door, there are some signs to look for.

"Obviously, a police car with some sort of lights and sirens and a bullhorn where we'll be announcing ourselves," HPD Detective Kyle Stringer told Choi.

Stringer noted that real officers do not wear ski masks.

  

Entertaining Passages

We don't have enough people writing delightfully vicious things these days.

Name an undesirable trait a person might have, and this book will demonstrate Andrew having it. He is, supposedly, in addition to being a sex offender, cruel, easily enraged, stupid, boring, naive, attention-seeking, unfunny, childish, arrogant, and out of touch, as well as a misogynist, a liar, a thief, a bully, a pervert, a bad lover, a bad husband, a bad father, a brat as a child, a brat as a teenager, and a brat as an adult. Just when you’re thinking that surely every possible slight has been leveled at the prince, and that there can surely be no greater depth to which your opinion of him can sink, Lownie relates that staff at Buckingham Palace used to have to clear away collections of “soiled tissues” in his bedroom.

Character assassination feels too light a term for what Lownie has done here. Apart from anything else, Andrew’s character has been dead and buried for a while now. This is taking a thousand daggers to a corpse. There is truly no stone left unturned here under which something denigrating to Andrew’s reputation might be found. You come away from reading Entitled convinced that Prince Andrew is not only the most hideous member of the royal family but perhaps even the worst person in the British Isles. There can be no coming back from this for Andrew, no return to public life, no reinstatement of royal duties. I’m not sure how the man will leave the house.

Don't care about the Royals but I was amused. It's about this book.

Morning

Sunday funday.

America's Worst Way

The Third .

Afternoon

enjoy

The Vacation Column

I like hiking, but every year some pundits do a vacation column which is, basically, I just went on vacation and I need to file something so how about: Everyone should tune out from "the news" and "politics" (somehow not including reading this column) and have nice vacation like the one I just had.

So when friends are overwhelmed by the craziness of national and world events, when we’re angry at one another and all society feels taut, my counsel is simple: Take a hike.

[that's Kristof]

Lookin' Good, Gramps

The brain worms have been chewing more slowly than I expected, but they keep chewing.

Morning

Slacker Saturday.

Friday Happy Hour

 Enjoy

Au Revoir, Tar-Jay

I think what these businesses don't get, when they try to cater to the supposed "anti-woke" zeitgeist, is that the strategy of including a black person in an advertisement, and that of telling all black people to fuck off, are not actually equal-but-opposite strategies.

I don't think I'm being overly optimistic about the level of racism in this country to assert that most people - even most racists! - are not especially bothered by mild bits of representation and similar. Polls show support for DEI! Only a bunch of really intense online weirdos, and of course the current federal government, actually get upset about these things.

It's obvious what alienates more potential customers.

Yet what Cornell clearly missed is that Target is far less vulnerable to the effects of anti-“DEI” campaigns—now expanded by MAGA bigots to encompass even basic acknowledgments of marginalized communities by any institution—than the Bud Lights of America. As CNN Business has frequently pointed out, Target has a “more progressive base of customers” than many of the other companies harangued by conservatives. The daughters of Target’s founder wrote a letter to the Los Angeles Times in February decrying this caving by Target and other corporations as “undermining the very principles that have made their companies a success.” And the Trump administration’s own attacks on DEI have run into legal challenges.

Notably, the companies that have recognized this and acted accordingly are doing much better these days. Costco leadership made a big show of rejecting an anti-DEI shareholder resolution introduced by a conservative think tank, and it has avoided the steep falls in store visits that have hit newly DEI-phobic chains like Target and Walmart. (However, it has also displeased liberal customers by refusing to stock mifepristone.) John Deere, which shed its DEI commitments last year after right-wing social media backlash, saw investors reject a similar resolution to Costco’s not long after Trump’s inauguration. Apple’s happy investors have also made their pro-DEI stance clear, even as CEO Tim Cook attempts to mollify an unhappy Trump with gold-plated gifts. As Axios found in a survey, companies that have stuck to their DEI policies (e.g., Delta Air Lines, Kroger, Patagonia) have better reputations with their employees and the broader public; Walmart, which initially cowed on diversity thanks to conservatives, has since joined Target in warning investors that opposition to DEI rollbacks could affect its sales.

It remains to be seen if other companies should also worry. Big Tech firms that have eagerly sucked up to Trump have the privilege of avoiding blowback, considering their monopolistic positions in their sectors. (The recent sell-offs in their stocks have more to do with jitters over poor A.I. investment returns than with anything else.) But there are rolling waves of boycotts planned for multiple other DEI-less companies, including actions against Uber and PepsiCo to be held next month. A Harris poll from February found that about 25 percent of respondents had stopped going to favored stores for moral reasons, a trend that was especially heightened among Democratic and Black Americans; a follow-up poll in March found that majorities of Gen Z, Black, and Latino respondents were joining such boycotts. Indeed, shoppers of color are persisting in the charge against corporate America’s turn away from underprivileged communities.

The article says that all companies got spooked by the Bud Light boycott, but that was really the exception not the rule. Conservatives boycott something about every week and it rarely takes off.  They often call to boycott something they forgot they were already boycotting.

Target's other problem is that its stores  - especially its urban locations - have evolved into giant CVSs, instead of being Tar-jays. No one really needs to shop in them.

Oh no don't destroy The Barrel

America's Worst Humans

Nate Cavanaugh

3 2 Experts

I have a Ph.D in economics and I still wouldn't want the New York Times to describe me in this way.

Barro has a BA in psychology.

His Dad is/was a famous economist, however.

Sure just a bad headline, but there is consistently something wrong with the NYT headline writers.

America's Worst Governors

Josh Shapiro.

The documents indicate that Shapiro helped steer Penn’s response to concerns over antisemitism, including its spring 2024 encampment, pushed for increased discipline against its main pro-Palestinian student group, and aligned itself as an ally to an on-campus pro-Israel organization. In a moment when President Trump’s effort to reshape higher education is dominating headlines, Shapiro’s foray illustrates a subtler sort of political influence — and the extent to which politicians on both sides of the aisle seek to exact changes at elite campuses.

The same changes, tho.

Norms

There are many bold departures from norms in evidence here. Political:

The news that an adviser to Mr. Adams, Winnie Greco, had attempted to pay a reporter from an online news outlet, The City, stood out as a bold departure from political norms. Ms. Greco had put a red envelope stuffed with cash inside a potato chip bag and slipped it to the reporter after a campaign event.

 And journalistic!

In July, New York Times reporters witnessed other Adams supporters handing out red envelopes with cash at three separate campaign events: one in Flushing, Queens; another in Manhattan’s Chinatown; and a third in Sunset Park in Brooklyn. At those events, Mr. Adams picked up support from leaders of influential Chinese community groups, including several with close ties to the Chinese government.

...

Five days after the event in Queens, Chinese American community leaders held a rally at Confucius Plaza in Chinatown in Manhattan, where Times reporters again witnessed red envelopes being distributed. Then, on July 27, Times reporters saw more envelopes being passed out at the Sunset Park rally.

Robin Mui, the chief executive of the Sing Tao U.S. newspaper, was among the organizers of the Manhattan rally. Mr. Mui made at least one trip, in 2014, to China with Mr. Adams and Ms. Greco.

Mr. Mui, who also heads a local Chinese journalists’ group, told The Times that reporters received red envelopes from Adams supporters at last month’s events as a “form of appreciation” to cover transportation expenses and to “subsidize” their salaries. Mr. Tin “had to” give the reporters cash, he said; “otherwise they don’t write their stories.”

Why didn't the NYT consider any of this newsworthy for a month?  I'd bet a 50% stake in Eschaton World Industries that they were trying to catch Mamdani doing similar.

Sure

Lefty plans are always portrayed as absurd communism (Mamdani's plan to open 5 pilot city-run grocery stores has caused everyone to lose their shit), but Trump's crew are going to do this, which they can't and wouldn't make any sense if they could.

Millions of Americans might soon have mail from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The health secretary—who fiercely opposes industrial, ultraprocessed foods—now wants to send people care packages full of farm-fresh alternatives. They will be called “MAHA boxes.”

If you read the whole article (you can access  it through your favorite paywall-bypassing system if you are so inclined),  it touches on reasons this is absurd, but also says it's good, actually, and will happen!

MAHA boxes are likely to come in some form or another. Some of the packages might end up in the trash. Lots of people, and especially kids, do not enjoy eating carrots and kale. Just 10 percent of U.S. adults are estimated to hit their daily recommended portion of vegetables. But if done correctly, MAHA boxes could do some real good.

Yes mailing boxes of food to millions of households is going to happen and could be good. I am very smart. 

All coverage of RFKjr is like this.  "Yes people should eat more healthily, so here is my fantasy RFKjr who will make that happen. I am not a crank, and neither is he.  Establishing an insane logistical system is something he definitely has the smarts to do, especially when they are cutting budgets and staff."

Sure Why Not

Going after the mustache, leaking it to the Post.

FBI agents raided former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton’s DC-area home Friday morning in a high-profile national security probe, The Post can exclusively reveal.

Federal agents busted into Bolton’s house in Bethesda, Md., at 7 a.m. in an investigation ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel, a Trump administration official told The Post.

Morning

Feral Friday.

Happy Hour

Get happy.

But Medicaid Should Exist Only For Her Son

I'm only barely exaggerating.

She isn't just some random "proud conservative," but an active movement member, vocally opposing everything good except, it seems, Medicaid for her son and maybe some people just like her and her son.

There is a point, perhaps, to publishing something like this in explicitly conservative outlets. What is the point of putting it in the NYT? Well maybe I answered that.

Rest In Piss

Today, we share the news of the passing of our beloved founder, Dr. James C. Dobson. He went home to be with the Lord peacefully, following a brief illness.

Dr. Dobson’s unwavering faith and tireless devotion to the family shaped generations. pic.twitter.com/DKzaOVsEJS

— Dr. James Dobson Family Institute (@DrJamesDobsonFT) August 21, 2025

Next Year's Horny Chatbot Will Be Great, I Promise

This is what we are betting the entire economy on.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Concedes GPT-5 Was a Misfire, Bets on GPT-6

...

One lesson from GPT-5’s launch is that people form emotional ties with AI, he noted. Some users described the new model as colder, more mechanical, and less supportive than its predecessor. After GPT-4o was deprecated, some Reddit users even said the upgrade “killed” their AI companions.

Despite the outcry on subreddits like r/MyBoyfriendisAI, r/AISoulmates, and r/AIRelationships, Altman estimated that fewer than 1% of ChatGPT users have “unhealthy relationships” with the bot but said the company is paying close attention.

America's Worst Professors

Norman Goda.

Press Relations

Has this worked before?

A former top City Hall advisor and current campaign confidante to Mayor Eric Adams attempted to give money to a reporter from THE CITY following a campaign event in Harlem Wednesday.

The failed payoff — a wad of cash in a red envelope stuffed inside an opened bag of Herr’s Sour Cream & Onion ripple potato chips — was made by Winnie Greco, a longtime Adams ally who resigned last year from her position as the mayor’s liaison to the Asian community after she was targeted in multiple investigations. She resurfaced recently as a consistent presence in his re-election campaign.

Happy Hour

get happy

Lunch

I have some things to take care of this afternoon, so adjust your expectations accordingly!

AI-Enhanced Excel Says This Checks Out

Sure.

The investor argues that the math for investing at the $500 billion valuation is straightforward: Hypothetically, if ChatGPT hits 2 billion users and monetizes at $5 per user per month—“half the rate of things like Google or Facebook”—that’s $120 billion in annual revenue.

How many people are there, Michael? 10 trillion?

America's Worst Democrats

Hakeem Jeffries.

History

I was looking up some things to jog my memory of something, for various reasons, and I came across this:

If Fawn Brodie wrote Hemings into the story of Jefferson's life in a way that had never before been done, Barbara Chase-Riboud, in her 1979 book, Sally Hemings: A Novel, treated Hemings herself as the subject, giving flesh, blood, and psychology, where the historical record could only say she was "mighty ne'er white." Chase-Riboud also offered the first fully-realized portrait of the relationship between Jefferson and Hemings, with all of the psychological complexity and texture of relations between any two people who felt passionately for one another. Chase-Riboud even dared to imagine the first sexual contact between the two:

I bent forward and pressed a kiss on the trembling hands that encompassed mine, and the contact of my lips with his flesh was so violent I lost all memory of what came afterward. . . At once he left me, surveying me from above with the yes of a man afraid of heights scanning a valley from a tower. Then his body tensed and rushed toward me as if he ahd found a way to break his fall. Thus did Thomas Jefferson give himself into my keeping.

Chase-Riboud relied heavily on Brodie's biography, and other academic sources, blending historical documents into her historical fiction. Like Brodie, Chase-Riboud may have most offended Jeffersonians simply by being popular--her novel became a best-seller. When CBS announced plans to adapt the book for a television mini-series, the Jefferson "establishment," an informal coalition of eminent historians, descendants, and Monticello staff, rallied as never before to make sure the mini-series never aired. Jefferson biographer Dumas Malone advised the CBS President Robert A. Daley that he should "abandon" a series based on "a tawdry and unverifiable story." Malone added:

If you do go ahead with the project, I would urge you to make it absolutely clear that you are presenting fiction. . . I do this not only on my own account, but in behalf of all persons who are concerned with the preservation and presentation of the history of our country.

Later in January of 1979, historian Merrill Peterson followed up on Malone's letters, writing the CBS Chairman William Paley to reconsider lending his network's good name to "vulgar sensationalism masquerading as history." By February of 1979, Malone had gone public with his concernes, telling a Washington Post reporter: "Scandal and sex can be exploited to great financial advantage. The public will always believe the story. You can never get it back. You can never stop it." By December of 1979, plans for the mini-series were dead. Virginius Dabney, a Jefferson descendant and vocal critic of the Brodie biography and the Chase-Riboud novel wrote to Malone to say CBS "had lost all enthusiasm" for the story. "Enough damage has been done by Brodie and Chase-Riboud without TV," Dabney added. Though Dabney congratulated Malone for his role in killing the mini-series, Malone expressed regret that the matter had attracted so much publicity and worried that this would might not be the last effort to popularize the Hemings story: "We must keep our fingers crossed. Eternal vigilance will be necessary."

I have memories of the Hemings-Jefferson "relationship" moving from controversy to fact in The Discourse. I have a very vague memory - which was why I was looking - of some representative of the denial side of things being incensed with rage on PBS's Newshour some similar program.

I don't know if that hazy memory is precisely correct, but that the Jefferson fan club was throwing everything at suppressing this is certainly true.

...(sorry, link added)

Morning

Wacky Wednesday.

Happy Hour

get happy

That Was Quick

Back to focusing on his greatest innovation: cartoon legs.

Some A.I. executives are expected to leave, the people said. Meta is also looking at downsizing the A.I. division overall — which could include eliminating roles or moving employees to other parts of the company — because it has grown to thousands of people in recent years, the people said. Discussions remain fluid and no final decisions have been made on the downsizing, they said.

A bunch of people playing Tetris all day, hoping the boss doesn't figure it out.

What Are Spreadsheets For

It seems Microsoft has no idea.

Microsoft Excel is testing a new AI-powered function that can automatically fill cells in your spreadsheets, which is similar to the feature that Google Sheets rolled out in June. You would use the “COPILOT” function followed by a natural language prompt and (optionally) specify the cells you want it to reference; the AI would then classify information, generate summaries, create tables, and more.

... The COPILOT function comes with a couple of limitations, as it can’t access information outside your spreadsheet, and you can only use it to calculate 100 functions every 10 minutes. Microsoft also warns against using the AI function for numerical calculations or in “high-stakes scenarios” with legal, regulatory, and compliance implications, as COPILOT “can give incorrect responses.”

I always thought that "adding up stuff, correctly" was a core function. I guess I was wrong!

Bill Clinton Endorsed

In the primary, but it isn't any secret what kind of guy Cuomo is.

Andrew Cuomo’s counting on President Donald Trump and top Republicans to tell the party faithful to vote for Cuomo for mayor if they want to stop Zohran Mamdani, and not to vote for GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa.

“We can minimize (the Sliwa) vote, because he’ll never be a serious candidate,” Cuomo told the crowd at a Hamptons fundraiser Saturday, according to audio obtained by Playbook. “And Trump himself, as well as top Republicans, will say the goal is to stop Mamdani. And you’ll be wasting your vote on Sliwa. So I feel good about that.”

Popularism!

About 8 in 10 Americans, 79%, say immigration is “a good thing” for the country today, an increase from 64% a year ago and a high point in the nearly 25-year trend. Only about 2 in 10 U.S. adults say immigration is a bad thing right now, down from 32% last year.…

— PBS News (@NewsHour) August 18, 2025

Thinking of an alternate timeline during which Dems didn't spend 2 years begging to be forgiven for defunding the police and letting marauding hordes of immigrants rape good American women.

The "bipartisan immigration bill" was never going to pass.  Of course the Republicans were going to do a rug pull so it could be a campaign issue.  They set the Dems up perfectly because the Dems fall for this shit every time.  How did they not understand this?

It's Tariff Day, Again

 Sure why not.

President Donald Trump stunned the logistics industry on Friday by widening his steel and aluminum tariffs to include more than 400 consumer items that contain the metals, such as motorcycles and tableware. Customs brokers and importers in the US were given little notice to account for the change, which went into effect Monday and did not exclude goods in transit.

The new tariff inclusion list was posted by the Customs and Border Protection agency just as many were leaving for the weekend and appeared in the Federal Register on Tuesday, creating fresh headaches for trade professionals.

I thought AI could take care of such things now. Get Big Balls on it.

"Did not exclude goods in transit" is the kind of move that will make everyone just say fuck it.  Someone's gotta eat that bill, and no one is going to be happy about it.