No, this is not the housecleaning as Sarah Hoyt indulges in. This is the attempt to fix the Comments/login nonsense, which first involves clearing the ten thousand-odd spammers and bots, to name but some.
I’ll be busy for a while…
Tag: Suckage
Things that totally suck
Quote Of The Day
Concerning the inconvenient facts that confront the Climate Screamies:
Equatorial island chains stubbornly refusing to disappear below rising seas, the Great Barrier Reef hitting record coral levels, animal populations thriving, with higher CO2 levels (almost entirely from natural geological emissions) bringing record greening to parts of the planet that desperately need it. But then again with atmospheric CO2 levels of a scant 420ppm (with industrially insane mankind providing just a trace proportion of that), which in our distant past were as high as 6,000ppm, and which would witness the end to life on earth if they fell below 180ppm, reality, sadly for the cultists, is dawning. — Danny Lockwood
So long, losers. First it was the Population Bomb, then the New Ice Age, then Glueball Wormening, then (unspecified) Climate Change. Sprinkle liberally [sic] with Pandemic Fairy Dust, and you have a near-complete list of bullshit that has been used to frighten the global population into some kind of societal regression.
And sadly, it’s mostly worked. Except, of course, in places that are contributing the most towards the befoulment of the planet — that would be China, Southeast Asia, Africa and other Third World shitholes — but we can’t say anything bad about these people of course because RAAYYYYCISM! (And there’s the final item on the list.)
A pox on all of them.
Future, By Subscription Only
Reader Stephen S. chimes in with this little piece of technological bastardy:
The rapidly approaching future of the Windows PC is no longer just about what’s on your desk, but what you’re permitted—by subscription—to access from the cloud. Microsoft promotes this as inevitable and, to some, the advantages are real. Yet for those uncomfortable with their digital world being defined and priced by a faraway corporation, alternatives remain.
What is worse is that Microsoft will have your data on their cloud (OneDrive) and you will need to continually pay to have access to it. On the flip side, because it is on “their” computer systems (1970’s Supreme Court Decision), they will be able to scan it and use it for training their AI. They will also be able to sell your data to 3rd parties, again because it is on “their” computers. [Microsoft has already changed their EULA to reflect this]
How does the medical profession make sure the patients’s data is secure. Although on a personal level, I’m sure Microsoft’s AI would love finding out about illness discussions, personal behavior, etc to be sold to 3rd parties. That kind of info is what insurance companies would love to know, and the users would be paying Microsoft to provide it to them.
But a larger point occurs to me. Microsoft would be getting the financial data for people and businesses smaller than the DOW 50, and that is a gold mine for them (Wall St spends millions to collect it). Again, the users are paying Microsoft to provide their financials to Microsoft, and then Microsoft can then use it.
How nice.
It has taken me a Herculean effort to stop this OneDrive bullshit from imposing itself on my paltry online existence, and I’m not even sure that I’ve been that successful. I get the occasional “warning” email that my OneCloud subscription has expired or my storage allocation is full, and that they can no longer store any more of my data — to which, of course, my unspoken response is: I never wanted you to store my data anyway, so fuck off.
I have no idea how this is going to end, or if it ever will.
Get Busy
Here’s something I can only describe as a wake-up call:
Rep. Andrew Clyde (R) is leading a coalition of GOP House members urging President Donald Trump to pick an Attorney-General who will “immediately” wipe away Biden-era ATF gun controls. Clyde and 32 other House members signed an April 21, 2026, letter, asking Trump to choose and A-G who will “immediately cease enforcement of Biden-era gun rules and secure permanent – not temporary – relief.”
Yes, yes, and again yes.
I’m getting heartily sick of a Department of [alleged] Justice which pays lip service to the Constitution — and especially to the Second Amendment — but either fails to redress wrongs through inaction or by continuing to slavishly enforce older regulations which tramp all over the Founding Document.
Clyde and his colleagues also ask Trump to choose an A-G who will reform and clean house at the ATF. They view this task as including:
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- Purging the ATF of gun-grabbing bureaucrats;
- Opposing any effort to create, operate, or maintain a federal firearms registry in any form;
- Stopping the ATF’s release of sensitive firearm trace data in violation of the Tiahrt Amendment*;
- Shutting down and deleting the ATF’s illegal, searchable gun registry known as the Out-of-Business Records Imaging System (OBRIS); and
- Reducing NFA application processing times.
That “purging the ATF of gun-grabbing bureaucrats” should only be a precursor to moving the A and T part back to the Treasury (where it belongs), and a complete deletion of the F, because fuck them.
Clyde and his colleagues pointed to the support Trump received from gun owners during the November 2024 elections, suggesting he should now support them as they supported him: “Mr. President, American gun owners have been some of your most loyal and enthusiastic voters. They delivered for you at the ballot box, and they deserve to see their constitutional rights respected in return.
“The roadmap above requires no new legislation – it only requires leadership, will-power, and a Department of Justice that is genuinely committed to your agenda rather than protecting its own institutional inaction.”
Clearly, ex-AG Blondie wasn’t up to the job. If I were Trump, I’d make Alan Gottlieb (of the Second Amendment Foundation) the AG, let him clean the place out for (say) two years, and then let him get back to doing his proper job at SAF.
Frankly, I don’t actually care what Trump does. What I want is for the DOfuckingJ to stop harassing gun owners and go after the real criminals. And to do it quickly. If DJT can achieve that with his choice of Blondie’s replacement, so much the better.
*The Tiahrt Amendment is a provision of the U.S. Department of Justice 2003 appropriations bill that prohibits the National Tracing Center of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) from releasing information from its firearms trace database to anyone other than a law enforcement agency or prosecutor in connection with a criminal investigation. This precludes gun trace data from being used in academic research of gun use in crime. Additionally, the law blocks any data legally released from being admissible in civil lawsuits against gun sellers or manufacturers.
Passing Of The Guard
This is becoming an all-too-familiar event: an old rocker of enormous talent goes off to jam with Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck (both of whom knew him, and would undoubtedly welcome him into their band with open arms).
R.I.P. Dave Mason — one of the absolute best.
Misguided
This little promo caught my attention:
Forget Vienna and Salzburg, there’s another Austrian city that is proving the perfect weekend destination, with a fabulous food culture, gorgeous green spaces and even a friendly alien.
Unlike its imperial sisters, Graz has long flown under the radar, despite being Austria’s second largest city. It’s hard to understand why. A historic beauty, Graz boasts the remnants of a medieval hilltop castle, prettily situated among the old baroque houses, church spires, and gabled roofs, and surrounded by wooded mountains.
So far, so good. I’ve always wanted to go to Graz, having already visited Vienna (several times), Salzburg, Linz and the gorgeous Innsbruck. Austria is one of my favorite countries on the planet and frankly, if someone were to point a gun at my head and say, “You have to leave the U.S. and live in a furrin country”, Austria would be pretty much at the top of the list.
All the more so when you see pictures like these:
Hubba hubba, book that tick– wait a minute, what?
JHC, what is the matter with these people? I thought the Parisians were crazy, what with the I.M. Pei pyramid and the godawful Pompidou Centre; but Paris is a huge city and you can hide all sorts of awfulness away there.
But Graz is tiny (relatively speaking), so plonking those “friendly alien” (my ass) structures into so small an area is just some architectural vandal stabbing a middle finger right into your eye. That gorgeous bucolic river view assaulted by that horrifying glass worm of a bridge: it’s like finding a festering carbuncle on Scarlett Johannson’s nose.
I still want to go to Graz, of course, but just a little less so now.