October 12, 2025
Sunday Overnight Open Thread - October 12, 2025 [Doof]
Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (447) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Gun Thread: Pre-TXMoMe X Edition!
Posted by: Weasel at 07:00 PM | Comments (286) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Food Thread: Rugelach!
Posted by: CBD at 04:00 PM | Comments (274) | Trackbacks (Suck)
First-World Problems...
Posted by: CBD at 02:00 PM | Comments (182) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Islam's War Against Israel Must Be Flipped Around: Israel's Policy Should Now Be Unrelenting Offense
Wars are immensely complicated human endeavors, and the arrogance of assuming that one's enemy's plans are understandable and manageable is tremendously dangerous.
The ancient Greeks understood that rather well... Hubris --> Atis --> Nemesis --> Tisis That sad progression applies perfectly to Israel's military and political hierarchy with respect to Hamas and, to a lesser extent, Hezbollah. For a generation, Israel was willing to accept a certain level of terror attacks against its people, assuming that Hamas accepted that status quo because of the existential risks of all-out war. They also assumed that the the luxurious lives lived by the leaders (and their families) of Hamas in Qatar meant that they did not want to jeopardize that comfort for some unlikely success against Israel's modern military. Israel also assumed that the oceans of oil money pouring into western capitals and universities would have only limited influence on the support for Israel in America and Europe. In addition, Israel felt that their incredible technological advantages would protect them against internet-based attacks. And then Israel made tactical decisions that the border with Gaza could be defended with a small, lightly armed force plus automation and high-tech sensor systems. Their intelligence apparatus assumed that they would learn about and be able to defuse any large-scale attack. Israel's leadership was wrong on all counts, and the catastrophe of October 7, 2023 could have been much worse had the Arab and Muslim propensity for backstabbing, disloyalty, and craven self-interest not held true. Hezbollah did not join the attack until the next day, and they launched rockets but did not attack with troops. Iran did not launch missiles, the Houthis did not launch missiles or drones, and the only real and successful support for Hamas came from the entrenched terror-supporting organizations in the West, on college campuses and in the streets of blue cities. The profound failure on all Israeli fronts was mitigated by tremendous bravery among the few military personnel who were able to respond, the police, and the relatively few armed civilians who saw the reality on the ground that was still being denied by Israel's elites. But the damage to Israel's ethos of self defense was profound. But it also came with the realization that Israel's left was simply wrong about the concept of trading land for peace, and more importantly, they were absolutely wrong that there is any accommodation to be made with the 7th century savages whose holy texts command them to kill Jews; who see Jews as subhuman; who consider Israel to be an unconquered part of their Caliphate. And that sea change, if it survives, will be the basis for a new strategic imperative in Israel. Waiting and watching and attacking only when absolutely necessary may work for awhile, but eventually, one of Israel's many enemies will succeed. And accepting some sort of low-level of terrorist activity in the interests of some tortured geopolitical consideration was just shown to be arrant nonsense. The first step must be to hunt down every single one of those who perpetrated the October 7th Pogrom. Even if it takes 50 years and Israel kills a grandfather on his deathbed...that must be done. The second step must be a significant reevaluation of the decision making that leads to defensive strikes against its enemies. Israel waited too long against Iran. Israel waited too long against the Houthis. Israel waited too long against the Hamas leadership in Qatar. Israel may have waited too long to go into Gaza in force! How many hostages could have been saved had they not titrated and equivocated for two years? Islam must be put on notice that any attacks on Israel and Jews throughout the world will be met with force. And any attacks being planned will be met with force as early as possible. And no level of terrorist activity will be tolerated. Yes...the world opprobrium will be savage, but how different would it be compared to today? Israel will be vilified no matter what it does, and if they are vilified before a monstrous attack such as October 7th (or worse) occurs, isn't that better than being vilified for its response?Posted by: CBD at 12:00 PM | Comments (166) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Reading Thread 10/12/2025
Posted by: Weasel at 09:00 AM | Comments (275) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Daily Tech News 12 October 2025
Top Story
- Amazon's Prime Day sales are mostly a lie, with prices averaging just 0.6% lower during the company's largest sale of the year. (MSN)
Some prices are lower, some say they are lower but are the same as the usual discount offered online, while others actually increase during Prime Day sales looking for people who are too busy to price-check.
There are some bargains but they are far and few between. I did find in the latest sale that it was cheaper to buy a Bosch cordless drill with battery and charger than the battery alone.*
* So I did.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (213) | Trackbacks (Suck)
October 11, 2025
Saturday Night "Club ONT" October 11, 2025 [The 3 Ds]
The Club is subtle.
Welcome to Club ONT! A collaboration the 3D's - The Disco, The Dino, and The Doggo. We are one week out from TX MoMe X. Where will you be?
Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (373) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Saturday Evening Movie Thread - 10/11/2025
James Whale should get as much credit as any other individual for both the elevation and fall of Universal Studios' ownership in the 1930s. His four horror features for Carl Laemmle Jr., Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, and Bride of Frankenstein represent the pinnacle of the studio's efforts at bringing literary-sourced horror to the screen. Four films that were so successful that they set the financial path for the studio for almost twenty years.
And yet, right after Bride of Frankenstein, he made Show Boat in 1936, a cinematic adaptation of a Ziegfeld musical that was a major box office success but which had been so expensive and went over-budget during production that the producing father and son pair were forced to give up control of the studio to their creditors. That change in studio executive backing ended up leaving Whale without anyone to support him leading to post-production on his next film, The Road Back, a sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front based on the source sequel by the original novel's author Erich Maria Remarque, which Universal massively reshot to soften it, hoping to get it past Nazi censors to sell in Germany. (It didn't work. The film bombed horribly everywhere.)
And Whale was essentially homeless creatively after that. He had a contract with Universal to work out, so he made a handful of small films (a couple of them pretty good) while lending himself out to other studios like MGM, Warner Brothers, and Columbia for individual picture deals (which was how Howard Hawks made his entire career) until he just grew too tired to make any more movies and quit in 1941. He invested well, lived off of that and with his partner, producer David Lewis, and eventually committed suicide by drowning himself in a pool in 1957 because of health issues.
Watching his films, though, it was obvious, early, what drove him, and it wasn't the fact that he was gay.
James Whale
James Whale should get as much credit as any other individual for both the elevation and fall of Universal Studios' ownership in the 1930s. His four horror features for Carl Laemmle Jr., Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, and Bride of Frankenstein represent the pinnacle of the studio's efforts at bringing literary-sourced horror to the screen. Four films that were so successful that they set the financial path for the studio for almost twenty years.
And yet, right after Bride of Frankenstein, he made Show Boat in 1936, a cinematic adaptation of a Ziegfeld musical that was a major box office success but which had been so expensive and went over-budget during production that the producing father and son pair were forced to give up control of the studio to their creditors. That change in studio executive backing ended up leaving Whale without anyone to support him leading to post-production on his next film, The Road Back, a sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front based on the source sequel by the original novel's author Erich Maria Remarque, which Universal massively reshot to soften it, hoping to get it past Nazi censors to sell in Germany. (It didn't work. The film bombed horribly everywhere.)
And Whale was essentially homeless creatively after that. He had a contract with Universal to work out, so he made a handful of small films (a couple of them pretty good) while lending himself out to other studios like MGM, Warner Brothers, and Columbia for individual picture deals (which was how Howard Hawks made his entire career) until he just grew too tired to make any more movies and quit in 1941. He invested well, lived off of that and with his partner, producer David Lewis, and eventually committed suicide by drowning himself in a pool in 1957 because of health issues.
Watching his films, though, it was obvious, early, what drove him, and it wasn't the fact that he was gay.
Posted by: TheJamesMadison at 07:45 PM | Comments (209) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Hobby Thread - October 11, 2025 [Lumberjack Rex]
Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. A spin of the Ace of Spades Wheel of Hobbies (TM) landed on lumber.
Are you thinking "I hate trees and I don't know anything about lumber, so there is nothing here for me"? No Moron could possibly say such a thing. Stick around. You might be entertained or learn something. You might enjoy hearing from others and seeing what others are hobbying. I have faith that you can find something in the content that resonates or contribute your own hobbying interests. Dig around in the content and soak in the comments. Be curious. If you were a tree, what tree would you be? Glad you're here.Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (140) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Ace of Spades Pet Thread, Oct 11
* * *
Good afternoon and welcome to the almost world famous Ace of Spades Pet Thread. Thanks for stopping by. Kick back and enjoy the world of animals.
Would you like a treat?
Let's relax a little with the animals and leave the world of politics and current events outside today.
From Hrothgar: "My Conor pup at work"
Posted by: K.T. at 03:31 PM | Comments (56) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Gardening, Home and Nature Thread, Oct. 11
I thought the colors were so vibrant I just had to take a picture. Now that I can again walk , hope to be resuming my trail walks so maybe will be able to contribute more. Sharon(willow's apprentice)Gorgeous, lucky photo! We will be looking forward to your trail walks!
Posted by: K.T. at 01:29 PM | Comments (69) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Thinking about Rousseau and some of today's leftists
via Wikimedia Commons
Considering the out-sized influence of Rousseau and some of his disciples on our civilization, his life and some events surrounding his death are marked by ironies. There are ironies in some of today's young leftists which remind me of certain stories about Rousseau.
Posted by: K.T. at 11:01 AM | Comments (184) | Trackbacks (Suck)
The Classical Saturday Coffee Break & Prayer Revival
Good morning boys and girls and everything in between. Before we enter the Prayer Revival just a few housekeeping matters to go over. (Rulz for those of you in Hortonville) 1) This is an open thread. Feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2) Be kind, be nice. And equally cruel with the trolls.
3) Gosh darn it. No, you can't run with sharp objects.
4) A big Shout Out and Thank You to Annie for shepherding the Prayer Revival
5) Have a great weekend!
[Too opinionated this morning? Deal with it.]
Good morning boys and girls and everything in between. Before we enter the Prayer Revival just a few housekeeping matters to go over. (Rulz for those of you in Hortonville) 1) This is an open thread. Feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2) Be kind, be nice. And equally cruel with the trolls.
3) Gosh darn it. No, you can't run with sharp objects.
4) A big Shout Out and Thank You to Annie for shepherding the Prayer Revival
5) Have a great weekend!
Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 08:00 AM | Comments (300) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Daily Tech News 11 October 2025
Top Story
- Just when we were starting to worry about things getting boring again China has blocked exports of rare-earth elements to the rest of the planet. (MSN)
There are 17 rare-earth elements, used in electronics (particularly magnets) and chemistry, and China has shut off sales of 12 of them. China gained control of the market not because it has massive resources - Vietnam by itself has half the proven reserves of China - but because rare-earth elements are stinky and China didn't mind the smell.
Past tense, because a lot of China's rare-earth production these days comes from slave camps in Myanmar and not from China at all.
President Trump has announced a 100% tariff on all imports from China in response.
This is hardly the first time China has pulled this shit - the same thing happened in April. Which seems like hundreds of years ago, but trust me, it wasn't.
- And share prices in Australian mining companies are booming as a result, because Australia is currently the largest Western producer of rare-earth metals. (MSN)
Because the funny thing is that rare earth elements aren't all that rare. Vietnam, as I mentioned, Brazil, India, Australia, and the US itself all have millions of tons of reserves.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (133) | Trackbacks (Suck)
October 10, 2025
Peter Piper Picked A Peck Of ONTs
Hi everyone! Welcome to Friday night. Are you ready for some memes?
Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (412) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Trust Fall Cafe
by Simon Needham
I could do this but balance and swinging seem gay. Uber Dog is a favorite of young women with dangerous necklines. The Devil's Eye cenote in Croatia.
Family photo. He'll get there eventually. Ducks take over the cats' bed. Taking your tortoise out for a drive. Good neighbors. Dog doesn't know which side of the road is the most fascinating. Best job: Doggy Day Care Bus Driver. Charging baby rhino is very light on his feet.
by Simon Needham
I could do this but balance and swinging seem gay. Uber Dog is a favorite of young women with dangerous necklines. The Devil's Eye cenote in Croatia.
Family photo. He'll get there eventually. Ducks take over the cats' bed. Taking your tortoise out for a drive. Good neighbors. Dog doesn't know which side of the road is the most fascinating. Best job: Doggy Day Care Bus Driver. Charging baby rhino is very light on his feet.
Posted by: Ace at 07:40 PM | Comments (227) | Trackbacks (Suck)
The Week In Woke
As reading scores improve in red states thanks to the "Southern Surge" and their emphasis on scientifically-proven methods of reading instruction like phonics, they're falling in blue New England states. Red states raised the bar, whereas blue states just lowered standards.
A Cultural Enrichment Agent illegally entered England by boat and decided to Enrich British Culture by threatening to murder Reform Party leader Nigel Farage.
Just as Farage had somehow learned of Khan's videos, Khan learned about Farage's video featuring him as an example of the kind of people the UK should be deporting. He quickly made a response on TikTok. Here's the video in which he threatens to kill Farage. "Delete the video. This not good my friend. You not know me. I gonna come to England. I gonna pop, pop, pop, murder." He also published another video in which he doubled down on his theat.Quick, give him a free apartment and lifetime of welfare before this Cancer Curer decides to go to another European country and threaten to kill people there.A subsequent TikTok post by Khan read: "I mean what I say" on an image of a GB News report about the threat against Mr Farage.Khan was stopped when he eventually crossed the channel. He was interviewed and denied any intention to kill Farage.In a police interview on 1 November last year, Khan said through an interpreter that he had attempted to come to the UK "10 times" and was in Dunkirk, France, when he recorded the video in which he is alleged to have made a threat to kill Mr Farage. Khan told police: "I come here because I want to live here. I want new life. I don't come here because I want to kill Nigel Farage." He also said that he had been smoking cannabis and was "high" at the time of posting the video.
As reading scores improve in red states thanks to the "Southern Surge" and their emphasis on scientifically-proven methods of reading instruction like phonics, they're falling in blue New England states. Red states raised the bar, whereas blue states just lowered standards.
Massachusetts public schools were the best in the nation, and the rest of New England wasn't far behind, writes Christopher Huffaker in the Boston Globe. Ten years ago, Massachusetts students "led the United States across ages, subjects, and most demographic groups, despite wide achievement gaps," on the Nation's Report Card. Students in the Deep South, who came from much poorer families, were at the bottom. Now test scores are falling in New England, rising in Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Alabama, he writes. While leaders of the "Southern Surge" focused relentlessly on improving reading instruction, New England schools were lowering expectations, Huffaker writes. To end the Massachusetts Malaise, leaders must "override the wishes of popular and powerful teachers unions, and, most of all, stop resting on their laurels." Karen Vaites and others have written about the Southern Surge in reading scores for months now, but it's an essay last week by Kelsey Piper, Illiteracy is a policy choice, that seems to have woken everybody up. "If you live where I do, in Oakland, California, and you cannot afford private education, you should be seriously considering moving to Mississippi for the substantially better public schools," wrote Piper in The Argument. No, Mississippi isn't cooking the books, Piper and Vaites write this week, also in The Argument. With far fewer resources than most states and far needier students, these deep South states are showing impressive progress. ... The "surge" states adopted comprehensive programs to train teachers in the "science of reading," adopt high-quality curricula and show teachers how to teach the curriculum well, Wexler writes.Expecting teachers union members to do their jobs well is racist or something, you Racists (or somethings). Huckster and flake Vivek Ramaswanay, the Guy Smiley of the Ganges, is now scolding the right for attempting to defeat the left and "own the libs." This guy always stunk of the rankest opportunism. He was always a phony and a flake. And he'll soon be calling us racists for wanting to restrict H1-B's for Indians.
Trump fans liked him in the primaries because he was the guy "running for the nomination" who was in fact never running for the nomination at all, but always praising Trump and basically running to be a Trump appointee. Raise your hand if you didn't see this coming. Now slap yourselves with the same hand, you Big Dummies. A leftwing jag who is very, very exercised by Right Wing Authoritarianism is almost as upset by the left's headlong pursuit of political suicide.The truth is, we face a hard choice ahead for our movement. It is a fork in the road. It is a fork in the road for the future of the conservative movement. And it's a hard question to ask ourselves: Is our goal to defeat the left, or is our goal to save the country? Last year, I believed these goals were one and the same. But going forward, I don't think they quite are.An Axios preview described his speech as "No more 'owning the libs': Ramaswamy pushes sharp break for GOP":
Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy on Tuesday plans to call on the GOP to embrace a less overtly belligerent and oppositional posture, Axios has learned. According to his prepared remarks, Ramaswamy will say the conservative moment is at a "fork in the road" and urge them to abandon its fixation on "owning the libs" in favor of a less overtly confrontational posture. "We can still stand for truth, while viewing those who believe in falsehoods not as our enemies who must be vanquished, but instead as our fellow citizens who have lost their way and must be shown the light," Ramaswamy will say. "Not to berate them, embarrass them, and banish them -- but to pray for them, to talk to them, and to persuade them," he will add.
I saw Trump's Anti-Democratic Blitzkrieg open for Turgid Wrinkle Noodle at the Cow Palace in 1977. The left's long romance with "revolutionary violence" -- aka terrorism -- is actual insurrection, writes Glenn Reynolds.
During the 2010s [leftwing] sentiment swelled to a crescendo, but in the 2020s it has begun to wane. The popular outpouring of "antiracist" sentiment that characterized the "Great Awokening" has petered out, and with it has gone the feeling of overwhelming progressive cultural domination. Bari Weiss, who got run out of the New York Times for being insufficiently progressive, just got hired to run CBS News. Cancel culture is canceled. ... Meanwhile, the activist energy that powered the smaller, initial version off BLM in the mid-2010s is gone now. That generation of activists has largely gotten exhausted and/or aged out. When the Supreme Court killed Roe v. Wade and banned affirmative action in college admissions, there was no major grassroots pushback. All the grassroots energy on the left now is invested in the Palestine cause, which is basically harmless to Republicans. And the policy ideas that came out of the woke era mostly flopped. Black Americans did not like the country's brief experiment with anarchy in 2020, and became much more pro-cop, which put an end to "defund the police". The flood of illegal and quasi-legal immigrants that Biden allowed during his time in office ended up turning much of the country against immigration (at least temporarily). The trans movement is losing on key issues such as women's sports teams. But in response to all of these losses, progressives have failed to moderate their views [...] ...progressives have retreated to safe spaces where they still maintain the absolute cultural dominance that so intoxicated them in the 2010s -- universities, NGOs, a few companies, and the small social network Bluesky. There, they can wield some facsimile of the cancel-power they once enjoyed [...] Meanwhile, quietly and behind the scenes, progressives are still quietly pushing Democrats to support policies that no one outside the progressive bubble really likes. This kind of thing renders progressives extraordinarily ineffective against Trump's anti-democratic blitzkrieg. It's also probably a big part of what makes the Democratic party so incredibly unpopular.
As I said earlier: The Democrat-Antifa-Media Cult keeps making the case that political violence is acceptable if you're angry enough. I don't think they appreciate that we on the right are thisclose to agreeing wholeheartedly with them. And then won't that be fun for them? Last week, Cracker Barrell cut ties with the advertising firm "Prophet" which advised it "Go Woke, Get Stoked!"
We live in ugly times -- made uglier, and ever more violent, by the institutional left. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller didn't mince words this weekend: "There is a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country," he declared on X. "It is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle . . . terror networks." Progressives like Stephen King shrieked "extremist!" in response, but example after example backs Miller's point. In Chicago on Saturday, a mob of protesters surrounded ICE agents on a routine patrol, ramming their vehicle and boxing it in with 10 cars to frustrate immigration enforcement efforts. Chicago officials allegedly ordered the city's police to stand down and not assist the federal agents -- even though one of the "protesters" was armed and shots were exchanged. Disturbed Staten Island teen seen bloodied on gurney as he's charged with murder for allegedly decapitating mom's boyfriend Armed resistance to US government officers executing the law, with police refusing to back them up? That was no accident. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker didn't condemn the violent resistance, but he did condemn the feds. ...
Sen. Charles Schumer openly threatened the Supreme Court, saying Kavanaugh would "pay the price" for overturning Roe v. Wade, shortly before Roske's assassination attempt. Democrat after Democrat openly called Trump a fascist, a dictator and a mortal threat to "our democracy" -- and two different people came close to killing him before the 2024 election. ... Democrats are forever telling conservatives their "rhetoric" could lead to violence. Apparently they meant violence from Democrats.
Cracker Barrel is ending its partnership with Prophet, the consulting firm behind its failed rebrand. The chain faced intense backlash after unveiling a new logo and redesigned stores that longtime fans said stripped away what they loved most about the brand. Cracker Barrel's restaurants, long known for their kitschy Americana décor, were recast in a style critics called drab and soulless. The uproar grew after the company dropped its iconic logo of an elderly man leaning on a barrel. A March press release said Prophet was hired to redesign Cracker Barrel restaurants and lead a new brand marketing campaign. At the time, the company said: "In collaboration with Cracker Barrel, they are focused on shaping a new brand vision that will enhance market share while preserving the company's unique heritage. This new strategy will inform brand communication, restaurant redesigns, brand marketing campaigns and a redefined employee value proposition." Separately, Prophet CEO Michael Dunn pledged $4 million in 2020 for the firm's DEI initiatives, saying the company would "bring in Black team members across every level of the firm," hire a DEI-specific recruiter and provide $4 million in pro bono work to social justice organizations, according to a 2020 blog post. Fox News Digital found no evidence that Prophet's DEI commitments were connected to Cracker Barrel's rebranding.Makes sense, right? Not to effeminate anti-Christian liberal extremist David French.
Now, a reminder: New York Times columnist David French explained, just over a month ago, that the controversy over Cracker Barrel's rebranding was an absurd fake crisis ginned up by right-wing idiots who were just pretending that something had gone wrong at the company. Along with the Sydney Sweeney thing, he concluded that we were watching some "completely frivolous and meaningless cultural disputes," examples of the way "right-wing media both mobilizes its base and bends political reality." If you believed that the Cracker Barrel rebranding was poorly done and would alienate the company's customers, you were falling for an invented reality that was completely meaningless and frivolous. Then Cracker Barrel fired a bunch of managers and its rebranding consultant, abandoned the rebranding, and apologized profusely, while its stock plummeted. If you listened to French, if you trusted the op-ed pages of The New York Times to explain the world to you, your understanding of the most basic outline of factual reality was flipped over, turned precisely upside down. He was only wrong about literally every single detail, completely missing what was happening, what it meant, and what would happen in the near future as a result of it. To listen to this idiot is to abuse your own mind, trapping yourself in the confines of an absurd house of ideological mirrors. He is inevitably wrong, completely wrong, reliably wrong to the point of absolute and unyielding madness. Now, the twist:David French, 2022: Churches are terrorist training centers, and churchgoing Americans are preparing to attack the country in a vast wave of right-wing insurrectionist violence. When you drive past one of the Lutheran terror cells, you're looking at the next 9/11, because here comes the Christian nationalist insurrection that they're prepping for in the pews.
Posted by: Ace at 06:37 PM | Comments (198) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Hollywood Is Dying: One Third of All Hollywood Jobs Gone In Just Two Years
I've got a theory: Maybe it has something to do with Hollywood basically being Antifa Theater Kids now. Hollywood's big prestige drama for the fall is One Battle After Another which is expliclty pro-left-wing terrorism and anti-ICE. It never uses the word "Antifa" or "ICE," but its leftwing terrorist heroes are plainly Antifa, and the even Reichwing government agency they're blowing up and shooting at is plainly ICE. Sean Penn is part of this, you won't be surprised to hear. He plays, get this, an evil right-wing law enforcement official. Despite his insane levels of racism, apparently he's got a thing for darker-skinned minority women. (Oooh, maybe that's why he's so racist! Now that's some outstanding character psychology.) He used to have sex with a Virtuous Terrorist Minority Woman and had a Secret Racist Love-Child with her and, per Ethan Van Sciver, wants to erase all evidence of that. Van Sciver is being coy because he doesn't want to spoil everything but I think it's pretty clear he means that this evil Reichwing LEO wants to kill his former lover and his own child so that he can run for office in Texas or something. It's got real Four Quadrant Appeal!
If you work in entertainment, you probably heard some variation of this last year: "Survive 'til '25." Things have been bleak. In a recent article from The Wall Street Journal, the reporting goes as far as to call Los Angeles' production prospects "a disaster movie." The numbers are stark. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, around 100,000 people were employed in Los Angeles County's motion picture industry at the end of 2024. Two years earlier, that figure stood at 142,000. That's a loss of 42,000 jobs--nearly a third of the workforce--in just 24 months. The decline shows no signs of stopping. ... FilmLA, the official film office for the city and county, reported that on-location production was down 22% in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the same period last year. Television production has been especially hard-hit. The region reached a peak of 18,560 annual shoot days in 2021. By 2024, that number had plummeted to just 7,716. It's a 58.4% decline in three years. Paul Audley, president of FilmLA, told NBC Los Angeles that 2024 was "the worst year on record, excluding COVID." The first quarter of 2025 looks even worse. Every major category of production, from television dramas to commercials, logged fewer shoot days compared to the year before. What's driving this collapse? Multiple factors have made this unemployment stew. We have not yet recovered from the WGA and SAG strikes. The streaming bubble has burst, with major companies pulling back on content spending after years of explosive growth. The fires uprooted many on the west side of the city, and rebuilding is slow, so some have opted to leave town.
Posted by: Ace at 05:40 PM | Comments (244) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Health and BRAINZZZ GAINZZZ
I've been craving some kind of nootropic since I first heard of them -- well, since I saw Bradley Cooper change his entire life by taking a fictional nootropic (brain-boosting drug) in Limitless. Months ago I saw Thomas DeLauer touting creatine as a nootropic. I also saw Rhonda Patrick talking about dosing herself with 20 grams of creatine when she wanted a mental boost. She claims it's like speed. I've tried speed -- well, Ritalin -- for the nootropic effect and I will say, no, it's not like speed. If you take speed, you know for a fact that your brain has been hit with a drug. It's potent stimulant that leaves no doubt you have been stimulated. Creatine's effect is more subtle. Note that weightlifters usually take around 5mg-10 grams per day (for the effect of boosting energy storage in cells). So 20 grams is a high dose. For the past couple of months, I've been trying to get at least 5-10 grams of creatine per day and sometimes trying to get 20 grams when I could remember to do it. Sometimes I would just have 5 g. Other days, ten. But I tried to hit 15-20. Based on my own N=1 study: I do notice significantly improved focus and ability to just churn out work when I get 20 grams of creatine. As I've started to notice the effects, I've been better about trying to make sure I get 15-20 grams consistently. My usual working day is 6 to 7 hours. I'm not saying I work efficiently for 6 or 7 hours. I do a lot of dicking around, a lot of scrolling through stories without ever bothering to post about them, and just wasting a lot of time. The amount of time-wasting I typically do is, well, embarrassing and just wildly sub-optimal. When I've got a good 15-20 grams of creatine, I work 4 and a half or five hours. I'm not really working better or harder, it's just that I don't waste as much time. No mid-day perusal of Busty Lesbian Porn. I'm more able to just say, "Here is the pile of stories I have to crank out, so let's get to it." I think that's a benefit. I haven't tried it with trying to work on that novel I've picked up and put down one hundred times before, but I'd like to. As you may know, creatine is cheap and legal and is well-tested and there are few negative effects. I've seen people say "Talk to your doctor first if you have kidney problems," and of course pregnant women and kids should probably not use it at all. This guy talks about possible health problems, including the possibility that low-quality producers may sell you powder containing a lot of dangerous heavy metals. One problem with it is possible GI distress. I don't know if this is a real problem or just one that Mac put into my head. Assuming it's a real danger, you probably don't want to just start on a 20 grams per day regimen and you wouldn't want to take 20 mg all in one sitting. Your GI system may need to build a tolerance for it. I built up to the 20 g over a couple of weeks and usually have 5 g per drink (coffee or diet soda, or, in the future, just water) for the first couple of hours of the day. Update: I had to go to Ikea earlier today so I drank two cups of coffee and took about 8 grams of creatine over an hour. I did in fact get a bout of Intestinal Urgency. I don't know if it was the coffee or creatine or just both at once. But I think Mac might be right. Or it could have been caused by eating Ikea Swedish meatballs early in the day and then doing the Ikea Death March for four hours. Back to post: It's not a wonderdrug. It's not the Limitless drug, unfortunately. (Damn I want to take that pill.) But I'm pretty sure there is a real benefit. The reason weightlifters and athletes use it is because it helps cells regenerate energy (ATP) during exercise. It also does this for brain cells. So maybe the better focus I'm experiencing is due to brain cells being able to regenerate ATP more quickly. I guess it just helps in recovery when you burn energy, including in your brain. Obviously I'm not a doctor and you should consult with your blah-blah before making any medical blah-blahs. But if you try it, let me know after four or six weeks if you think there are genuine BRAINZZZ GAINZZZ or if I'm just experiencing a placebo effect. Since I'm now in Joe Rogan mode: Say, pyramids are weird, right?!!?! The blocks are so big they only could have been moved by enslaved Bigfeet under the direction of Space Reptiles, right? So: Do you have any GAINZZZ? My own GAINZZZ: No real GAINZZZ, because I've had a lot of personal work I've had to do, but I also haven't regained the weight I lost during the fast. I'm counting that MAINTAINZZZ as GAINZZZ.
Commenters kept telling me that diet soda was almost as bad, or as bad, as regular sugar water soda, and I kept not believing them.
A new study says that diet drinks with artificial sweeteners cause fatty liver disease -- a disease that 30% of the public has -- just like sugar water drinks do.I mean, it sounds so drastic, but I might have to give it a shot.
People could be at higher risk of fatty liver disease from both sugary sodas and diet drinks, a new study says. In fact, artificially sweetened drinks might pose a greater threat to liver health than sugary beverages, researchers reported Monday at the United European Gastroenterology's annual meeting in Berlin. The team also found that replacing these drinks with water significantly reduced people's risk of fatty liver disease.
... Fatty liver disease occurs when fat accumulates in the liver, which over time can cause liver damage. It's the most common chronic liver disease, researchers said, affecting more than 30% of people worldwide.I was diagnosed with Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease -- i.e., Fatty Liver Disease because you're fat, not because you drink liquor -- five or six years ago. After I shed a bunch of weight, I went in for a follow-up, and had no more fatty liver disease. So it can be cured just by shedding fat. I don't know to what extent I have it now. I guess I have to get it checked again.
... Results show that drinking about nine or more ounces of artificially sweetened beverages every day was associated with a 60% increased risk of fatty liver disease. Likewise, drinking sugary beverages daily was associated with a 50% increased risk, researchers said. "Our study shows that low- or non-sugar-sweetened beverages were actually linked to a higher risk of (fatty liver disease), even at modest intake levels such as a single can per day," Liu said. Drinking water instead of an artificially sweetened beverage lowered a person's fatty liver disease risk by more than 15%. Likewise, replacing sugary beverages with water reduced people's risk by nearly 13%. ... On the other hand, artificially sweetened beverages might affect liver health by altering a person's gut microbiome, driving cravings for sweets and stimulating insulin secretion, Liu said.Via Instapundit, who says that we're probably close to a cure for obesity: scientists discover a switch controlling hunger.
Through the use of advanced fluorescence microscopy and single-cell imaging, researchers discovered that a protein called MRAP2 plays a key role in shaping how MC4R is positioned and behaves inside cells. Fluorescent biosensors and confocal imaging revealed that MRAP2 is essential for moving MC4R to the surface of cells, allowing it to more effectively send appetite-suppressing signals. This discovery reveals an additional layer of control in how hunger is regulated and could inspire new therapies that imitate or adjust MRAP2's activity to treat obesity and related metabolic diseases. Professor Heike Biebermann, project leader at CRC 1423 and co-lead author of the study from the Institute of Experimental Pediatric Endocrinology at Charité, notes that this international and interdisciplinary effort combined multiple experimental methods and perspectives to uncover key physiological and pathophysiological insights into appetite regulation with potential clinical impact.VodkaPundit: It's been six years since weed was legalized in Ohio and the damage report is in.
Green discusses the potency of today's weed. I remember reading about this when the Legalize Pot movement was really making strides. Pot growers had really cultivated the marijuana plant, just like we did with corn and grapes and wheat, making it produce far more "fruit" than it ever had in nature. I remember DEA agents warning people who thought it would be cool to just light up a J in the street: Today's pot is definitely not the pot you remember from 1977. It's basically an entirely new species. Green notes that 36 years ago, the pot in his area was prized across the country for having a super-strong THC content of 14-15%. Today, merely-average pot has a 21% TCH content.
A new Wright State University study showed that more than four out of 10 deadly car crashes included a driver with high levels of THC in their bloodstream. The study, just published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, reviewed data for 246 deceased Ohio drivers, and found an average THC blood level of 30.7 ng/ML -- 15 times the state's legal limit -- in 41.9% of dead drivers. Ohio is a fairly typical state in most regards, so I'd take that 42% as a good-enough approximation of trends in states with legal weed. Almost a dozen years have passed since legal weed first went on sale in Colorado and Oregon, so the numbers, high as they are (heh), don't surprise me. But the report is also frustrating in the context that it lacks. What percentage of fatal crashes involved weed before 24 states legalized recreational sales? The closest we get to that side of the issue is this item from the ACS writeup: "The rate of drivers who tested positive for THC did not change significantly before or after legalization (42.1% vs. 45.2%), indicating that legal status did not influence the behavior of those who chose to drive after use." The study only reaches back six years -- by which time medical marijuana, often a fig leaf for recreational use, had already been legal for four years. Prior to medical (and then recreational marijuana) becoming more widely available, there wasn't nearly as much testing -- making the data frustratingly incomplete.
Speaking of Mind-Expanding Drugs: I have some drugs to recommend.
Frogurt -- a name-brand grown and sold in Michigan -- tests at 41%. Something called Future #1 is up to 37% THC, and the Permanent Marker brand runs at an average of 34%. Back in the day, the hard-to-find 15% stuff was the much-sought-after "one-hit weed." The average pot today is 50% stronger. But for people willing to pay a little more, they can get stuff four times more powerful than much of anything your typical 1990 dorm-room smoker enjoyed behind the Redwood Curtain.
I've been craving some kind of nootropic since I first heard of them -- well, since I saw Bradley Cooper change his entire life by taking a fictional nootropic (brain-boosting drug) in Limitless. Months ago I saw Thomas DeLauer touting creatine as a nootropic. I also saw Rhonda Patrick talking about dosing herself with 20 grams of creatine when she wanted a mental boost. She claims it's like speed. I've tried speed -- well, Ritalin -- for the nootropic effect and I will say, no, it's not like speed. If you take speed, you know for a fact that your brain has been hit with a drug. It's potent stimulant that leaves no doubt you have been stimulated. Creatine's effect is more subtle. Note that weightlifters usually take around 5mg-10 grams per day (for the effect of boosting energy storage in cells). So 20 grams is a high dose. For the past couple of months, I've been trying to get at least 5-10 grams of creatine per day and sometimes trying to get 20 grams when I could remember to do it. Sometimes I would just have 5 g. Other days, ten. But I tried to hit 15-20. Based on my own N=1 study: I do notice significantly improved focus and ability to just churn out work when I get 20 grams of creatine. As I've started to notice the effects, I've been better about trying to make sure I get 15-20 grams consistently. My usual working day is 6 to 7 hours. I'm not saying I work efficiently for 6 or 7 hours. I do a lot of dicking around, a lot of scrolling through stories without ever bothering to post about them, and just wasting a lot of time. The amount of time-wasting I typically do is, well, embarrassing and just wildly sub-optimal. When I've got a good 15-20 grams of creatine, I work 4 and a half or five hours. I'm not really working better or harder, it's just that I don't waste as much time. No mid-day perusal of Busty Lesbian Porn. I'm more able to just say, "Here is the pile of stories I have to crank out, so let's get to it." I think that's a benefit. I haven't tried it with trying to work on that novel I've picked up and put down one hundred times before, but I'd like to. As you may know, creatine is cheap and legal and is well-tested and there are few negative effects. I've seen people say "Talk to your doctor first if you have kidney problems," and of course pregnant women and kids should probably not use it at all. This guy talks about possible health problems, including the possibility that low-quality producers may sell you powder containing a lot of dangerous heavy metals. One problem with it is possible GI distress. I don't know if this is a real problem or just one that Mac put into my head. Assuming it's a real danger, you probably don't want to just start on a 20 grams per day regimen and you wouldn't want to take 20 mg all in one sitting. Your GI system may need to build a tolerance for it. I built up to the 20 g over a couple of weeks and usually have 5 g per drink (coffee or diet soda, or, in the future, just water) for the first couple of hours of the day. Update: I had to go to Ikea earlier today so I drank two cups of coffee and took about 8 grams of creatine over an hour. I did in fact get a bout of Intestinal Urgency. I don't know if it was the coffee or creatine or just both at once. But I think Mac might be right. Or it could have been caused by eating Ikea Swedish meatballs early in the day and then doing the Ikea Death March for four hours. Back to post: It's not a wonderdrug. It's not the Limitless drug, unfortunately. (Damn I want to take that pill.) But I'm pretty sure there is a real benefit. The reason weightlifters and athletes use it is because it helps cells regenerate energy (ATP) during exercise. It also does this for brain cells. So maybe the better focus I'm experiencing is due to brain cells being able to regenerate ATP more quickly. I guess it just helps in recovery when you burn energy, including in your brain. Obviously I'm not a doctor and you should consult with your blah-blah before making any medical blah-blahs. But if you try it, let me know after four or six weeks if you think there are genuine BRAINZZZ GAINZZZ or if I'm just experiencing a placebo effect. Since I'm now in Joe Rogan mode: Say, pyramids are weird, right?!!?! The blocks are so big they only could have been moved by enslaved Bigfeet under the direction of Space Reptiles, right? So: Do you have any GAINZZZ? My own GAINZZZ: No real GAINZZZ, because I've had a lot of personal work I've had to do, but I also haven't regained the weight I lost during the fast. I'm counting that MAINTAINZZZ as GAINZZZ.
Posted by: Ace at 04:35 PM | Comments (358) | Trackbacks (Suck)
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