News Roundup

In related Health News:

Biden’s doctor “missed” Stage 5 Cancer For Years
...really?  How conveeeenient.

So if we’re going to look at areas where over 2,000 other doctors have fucked up:

Why Butter, Cheese and Ice Cream Could Help You Live Longer
...but we all knew that already In fact, denying yourself all that lovely stuff just makes you not want to live longer.


...but sadly, it’s not going to submerge Portland under a 300-foot tidal wave because it’s not that kind of eruption. [pout]

Some news from The Great Cultural Assimilation Project©:


...good grief, man:  if you let the people vote on something like this, you’ll only end up like the rozzbiffs:


...never mind all that “democracy” bullshit, the Party always knows what’s best for you, you bloody peasants.

Back here in MAGA Land:


...as the legacy media tries to hide its deep disappointment, and fails.

And from one of our favorite Trumpistas, a double shot:

Tulsi Gabbard Ends Biden-Era Domestic Terrorism Policy

Tulsi Gabbard Fires Anti-Trump Deep State Officials Who Were Politicizing Intelligence

And as for deportations:


...to the amazement of Democrats and media.  [some overlap]


...the hits just keep on coming.  And as for this one:


...stop/start stop/start?  GTFO.

But elsewhere, in Democrat Cuntry:


...yet another exercise in failure.  Ain’t never gonna happen, assholes.

And in sillier news:


...I do believe I first saw that claim in 1981.


...I report, you decide:
  #Florida


.fucking hell, why not just make it four weeks off?  Then we can hire a man to replace you and actually get the job done.

And now, in the very bowels of 

 

While walking down :

Salma Hayek On Cover Of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue At 58 
...here ya go:

And a couple others taken during the shoot:

...and a few from the archives:

Handing Over The Future

Last week I talked about a serious young teacher quitting her job because of A.I. and how said excrescence was affecting her students.

Here’s another take on the same topic, courtesy of Insty (thankee, Squire):

“We’re talking about an entire generation of learning perhaps significantly undermined here,” said Green, the Santa Clara tech ethicist. “It’s short-circuiting the learning process, and it’s happening fast.”

Perhaps? 

From a student:

“I think there is beauty in trying to plan your essay. You learn a lot. You have to think, Oh, what can I write in this paragraph? Or What should my thesis be? ” But she’d rather get good grades. “An essay with ChatGPT, it’s like it just gives you straight up what you have to follow. You just don’t really have to think that much.”

As for the teachers:

“Massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees, and into the workforce, who are essentially illiterate, both in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate and having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else’s.”

“How can we expect them to grasp what education means when we, as educators, haven’t begun to undo the years of cognitive and spiritual damage inflicted by a society that treats schooling as a means to a high-paying job, maybe some social status, but nothing more?”

Well, yeah.  Perhaps [gasp!]  not all kids are college material.  And I think this A.I. cheating thing is proving the point.

And then, from the teechurs:

“Every time I talk to a colleague about this, the same thing comes up: retirement. When can I retire? When can I get out of this? That’s what we’re all thinking now,” he said. “This is not what we signed up for.” Williams, and other educators I spoke to, described AI’s takeover as a full-blown existential crisis.

Of course, this whole situation is fixable — there’s always a solution to a problem of this nature — but don’t expect the current crop of teachers to figure it out.  Especially if it takes actual hard work and thought.

Small wonder their students are screwed up and hopeless.

Read the whole article.  It’s worth it.

My American Car Experience – Part 1: The K-Car

My very first experience driving an American car was in 1982, on my honeymoon with Wife #1.  Our itinerary was first to drive from Manhattan to Boston / New England and back to Manhattan via a different route:

…thence down to New Orleans, over to Disney World, and back up to Manhattan via the East Coast, likewise taking a different path:

This was not a brief visit — we had sufficient vacation time (in Seffrica, as in most places in the world, paid vacation time was three calendar weeks, and we’d both accrued a couple more thereof), so we took five weeks to complete the round-trip.

On arrival at JFK, we spent a few days in Manhattan to get over jet lag and to see the World’s Greatest City.  Unfortunately, we arrived in late September during a) the hottest summer of the decade and b) a NYC garbage workers’ strike, so when it came time to leave, we did so with some relief because when it came to searing heat in city streets and an unbearable smell of rotting garbage, I wasn’t to encounter anything similar until I went to India, many years later.

We’d accumulated considerable coinage during those early days, mainly because I couldn’t count change quickly enough for impatient New Yokkers, so I just threw bank notes around at every purchase.  But when I tried to convert the coins back into dollar bills, the tellers at two banks told us to get stuffed because we weren’t customers.  As we weren’t customers (and unlikely to become such), therefore, I felt no shame in snarling at all of them for their shitty service.

But that was a blessing in disguise, because when we hit our first tollbooth getting out of Manhattan, I ended up in the cash-only lane, and was only able to get us out by flinging handfuls of change into the basket provided until the boom lifted.  (In fairness, it was the first tollbooth I’d ever encountered.)

We’d specified a compact car from Hertz — thinking we’d get the typical small car like a Mazda 323 (First Wife’s car) — but to our amazement, our “compact” car was a six-seater family saloon, a Plymouth Reliant.


(This is the actual color of the car we rented.)

I thought we’d been given a large car by mistake, but was assured not by the rental clerk.  (I’d like to say that this was my first experience with American Portions, but we had been to Katz’s Deli and ordered their pastrami sandwiches.  We ended up eating less than half of one each, and took the remainder and the other one back to the room for road food.)

But on to the trip.

Amazingly, the car drove reasonably well — a little harshly over the concrete slabs on the interstate highways, but the 2.2-liter engine worked fine* and we weren’t in any hurry to get anywhere anyway, so the car was never called on to perform any heroics.  But the handling took a bit of getting used to;  my car back in Johannesburg was an Opel Ascona:


…which was a little bigger than a K-car, but having been built to German-GM standards and not U.S.-GM standards, it handled really well — almost to Mercedes levels.

So the K-car was an interesting drive, to say the least, but as I said, not being in a hurry, it was no problem and there were no mechanical issues.

*I did think that the engine was remarkably lifeless for one of 2.2-liter capacity;  the Opel had a 1.6-liter engine, and it had far more poke than the K-car.  (In retrospect, I think the crappy no-lead U.S. fuel may have been the principal culprit — how I missed, and still miss, the 100-octane no-ethanol rocket fuel of the old days.)

The trip concluded back in Manhattan, where we turned in the Reliant to the astonishment of the rental guy at the mileage we’d covered.  (In those days it cost a little extra to get “unlimited” mileage for a rental, but I paid it gladly, especially when I learned what the per-mile overage charge would have cost.)  I’d also heard horror stories about fill-up charges for gas, so I bought a 5-gallon gas can and filled it back somewhere in (I think) Delaware, and that was sufficient for us to top off and turn in the car with a full tank.  So the gas consumption wasn’t too bad either.

All in all, therefore, my first experience driving an American car wasn’t too bad, car-wise.  (Oh, and the front- and back bench seats were just ideal for honeymooners, if you get my drift.)

That would change in future trips, as you will see.

Don’t Care

Of course we saw this coming:

Walmart is warning it plans to raise prices due to tariffs, despite the fact April’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) showing President Donald Trump’s tariffs did not affect consumer prices.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon issued the update during an earnings call on Thursday, stating that they will try to keep prices “low as possible,” but the reality is, they are unable to absorb all of the costs due to tariffs.

“But given the magnitude of the tariffs, even at the reduced levels announced this week, we aren’t able to absorb all the pressure given the reality of narrow retail margins,” McMillon stated, adding, “The higher tariffs will result in higher prices.” 

Utter bullshit.  As far as I can see, the tariffs may have affected the price of Chinese goods, but if anything, the goods made in places like Thailand, Taiwan and Pakistan should be reduced with all those other countries getting lower or non-existent tariffs.  So yeah, some of Walmart’s prices on Chinese merchandise should go up, but what they’ll do is raise all their prices to minimize the much-higher Chinese prices.  It’s called “spreading the load” in retail-speak.

Don’t care, because I’ll just stop buying non-foods at Walmart until things quieten down, and buy only the foodstuffs there that I absolutely cannot get anywhere else.  Last time I looked, that’s only one product, and amazingly, it’s made in the U.S.A. anyway.

Besides, if Walmart were truly committed to keeping prices lower, they’d improve their efficiency by ditching their fucking ultra-woke DEI practices — which would never have been instituted in the first place had Sam Walton still been around.  But they’re not going to do that, are they?

Feel free to do what you think is proper in your own circumstances.

But for me?  Toodle-oo, WallyWorld.

And So It Begins

Seems as though I’ve opened up a big ol’ can of Murkin worms in posting about the ’66 Mercury Comet last week.

Reader Brad_In_IL wrote:

On the way home from work the other day, I was passed by what I’d call “Purty Car”. And what was that fine ride you ask? Something of an American Classic. Twas a 1971 Buick Skylark convertible:

Fucking hell, that’s an ugly barge of a car.  Sorry, Brad — but my taste runs towards this kind of 1971 convertible:

That’s the Fiat Dino, with its Ferrari-inspired 2.46-liter V6 engine.

And Reader Clem C. added his experience:

We owned a ’91 Buick Reatta coupe.  Maybe you’ve heard of it.  I look forward to your take on the car.  We enjoyed it.

Actually, I don’t find that Reatta too appalling.  Although much larger, as is the American way, it compares quite favorably, shape-wise, to the 1990 Toyota MR2:

…although the actual performance of the Buick, when compared to that of the “Mister Two”, makes one understand why Buick only made the Reatta in small numbers for two years while Toyota made a zillion MR2 models over two decades.

(Actually, I prefer the chunkier 80s-style MR2:

…but that’s just me.  I’d drive one today, in original condition.  YMMV.)

In Comments to last week’s post, Reader Don C. spoke of his love for the brawny ’71 PontiaG GTO convertible:

…which would be, I agree, a better choice than that overpriced Mercury Comet, although I still think it’s hideously bloated.  But #MuscleCar, so it can be forgiven.

Reader Topcat loved him his Chevy Nova SS back in the day:

…which I think is easily one of the ugliest cars ever made, but I’ll accept the #MuscleCar excuse here too.

Although I have to say that the more I look at these things, the more I prefer my compact and nimbler Euro cars…

…and I’m not even talking about Ferraris, Lamborghinis or Maseratis.  That’s a 1971 Alfa Romeo Giulia GT 1750cc.

This topic is kinda fun, guys.  Keep them coming.

And tomorrow begins a weekly series of my personal experiences with American cars.

Cry Me A River

Via Insty:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said New York City’s proposed $1 billion cut from the police department budget tiptoes around demands from activists who are asking for a reduced police presence.

Though the plan proposed by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) cuts one-sixth of the New York Police Department (NYPD) budget, activists note that much of it would be transferred to other city departments, including the Department of Education, where it could pay for police in schools. Activists have advocated for removing officers from schools altogether.

“Defunding police means defunding police,” the congresswoman said in a statement. “It does not mean budget tricks or funny math. It does not mean moving school police officers from the NYPD budget to the Department of Education’s budget so the exact same police remain in schools.”

—The Hill, June 30th, 2020, at the height of left’s riot, arson, and looting season.

How it’s going: The Fruits of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Labors: A 70% increase in Violent Crime in Her District.

Last year, AOC was hoping to be named to the top spot on the powerful Oversight Committee. Pelosi blocked her ascension,  proving to AOC that moving up in the Democratic Party will be harder than she thought.

Through all of this political maneuvering to further her career, AOC has forgotten the people who got her to where she is: her long-suffering constituents. From 2019 to 2025, murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny and auto theft have jumped 70%.

You might claim that a congresswoman’s actions or inactions have little to do with the crime rate. That would be true if AOC hadn’t been a prominent voice in the “Defund the Police” movement.

“The 115th Precinct, which also serves part of Roosevelt Avenue in addition to Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst, and north Corona, saw major offenses rise by 85%” reports the New York Post.

Ocasio-Cortez’s district takes in two police districts that are among the worst in the city. And some residents are pointing the finger at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“She’s not doing shit. She doesn’t live in the neighborhood, she doesn’t care,” said Elmhurst resident Guadelupe Alvarez, who has lived in the neighborhood her entire life.

Here’s a quick question for “Elmhurst resident Guadelupe Alvarez”:

Did you vote for AOC in the past couple/three elections?

If you did, then you got what you wanted.

If you didn’t, then all the other people who did are also getting what they deserve*.

Vote for Commies, get government run according to Communist principles. 

Tell your sob story to someone who cares.


*Or, as H.L. Mencken once put it:  “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”