Stephen Colbert's Ratings Hit New All-Time Low
Update: Washington Post Braces for a FIFTY PERCENT Cut in Jobs

Remember, six months ago, in the immediate aftermath of his cancellation, Colbert's ratings rose based entirely on Sympathy Viewing and liberals all claimed he was going to build the show into a juggernaut that CBS would have to un-cancel.

I've got a special delivery: Six barrels of 100% pure pesticide-free Nope Juice.

The Stephen Colbert ratings freefall has reached an undeniable breaking point. As The Late Show with Stephen Colbert approaches its already-announced cancellation, the program is now posting record-low January numbers, marking one of the steepest late-night declines in recent television history.

According to Nielsen data reported this week, Colbert's show is averaging roughly 285,000 viewers in the crucial 25--54 demographic, putting it on track for its worst January performance ever in the category that advertisers actually care about. With just months left before the curtain closes for good, the ratings trajectory suggests viewers have been checking out long before CBS formally pulled the plug.
Stephen Colbert Ratings Hit Historic Lows in Key Demo

While total viewership erosion has been gradual over the past several years, the collapse in the 25--54 demo tells the real story. Late-night television lives or dies by that number, and Colbert's January performance places him firmly near the bottom of the competitive pack.

The show's demo average now sits far below what the franchise once delivered during its peak years -- and even trails where The Late Show performed during periods widely considered transitional or unstable. In practical terms, this means fewer ad dollars, weaker affiliate confidence, and little justification for long-term investment.

For a host once positioned as the undisputed leader of late night, the falloff is stark.

Cancellation No Longer Feels Abrupt -- It Feels Inevitable

...

With Colbert's final shows scheduled for May, the ratings collapse has reframed the narrative entirely -- and it directly contradicts the wave of progressive outrage that followed the cancellation announcement.

Many left-leaning voices rushed to denounce CBS's decision as politically motivated, even attempting to cast it as retaliation linked to President Trump. But the January numbers tell a far less ideological story: an unmistakable audience collapse.

...
The Stephen Colbert ratings collapse is more than a single show's problem. It highlights the fragile state of late-night television as a whole -- particularly for hosts like Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers who have leaned too heavily into predictable commentary rather than entertainment.

Colbert's record-low January figures now stand as a blunt data point: viewers have moved on. And with cancellation already locked in, there is no runway left to reverse the trend.

Speaking of cancellation: The Washington Post continues losing money and Bezos is going to put the paper through another round of massive layoffs.

I missed the scale of the coming layoffs: up to H A L F of all leftwing layabouts may be fired.

Paul Farhi
@farhip

Per former colleagues at the @washingtonpost: In a Zoom meeting today, Post foreign staff was told by editors that up to *half* the Post’s newsroom will be cut imminently. Biggest cuts to foreign and sports staff.

Sickening.

Brian Stelter whines that Bezos isn't being a good "steward" of the Washington Post.

Jon Podhoretz responded that he's not a "steward," he's the owner.

But the bratty, underperforming losers at the paper think that Daddy Warbucks should just keep bailing them out forever.

Posted by: Ace at 05:20 PM | Comments (281) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Former Conservative Home Secretary Suella Braverman Defects to Reform, Denounces UK Tories as Traitors

Suella Braverman had been Secretary of the Home Office (one of the top positions in government) under former PM Rishi Sunak. She was kicked out of the office for speaking two truths the conservative party had declared heretical:

1, that unlimited third world migration constitutes an "invasion," and

2, that it is evident that the police punish native Britons much more harshly than foreign invaders, and this constitutes "two-tier policing."

So she's always been more #based than the average inbred paper-pusher in the "conservative" party.

But she was loyal to the dying Conservative Party.

Until now.

Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman has accused the Conservatives of "betrayal" as she became the latest MP from the party to defect to Reform UK.

She is the third sitting Tory MP to join Nigel Farage's party in the last eleven days, and takes Reform's tally of MPs to eight.

At a press conference following her defection, Braverman said she had felt "politically homeless for the best part of two years" pointing to differences over areas including Brexit and immigration.

Her defection comes hot on the heels of Robert Jenrick and Andrew Rosindell, who also left the Conservatives earlier this month.

Responding to her defection, the Conservative Party said it was "always a matter of when, not if, Suella would defect".

As you know, the dying establishment's main weapon is left's weapon of denunciation and defamation:

The party's initial statement also said: "The Conservatives did all we could to look after Suella's mental health, but she was clearly very unhappy."

They later issued a corrected statement which removed the sentence, saying the original lines were "a draft version" which had been "sent out in error".

Braverman said the reference to her mental health was "a bit pathetic" and "more signs of a bitter and desperate party that seems to be in free-fall".

...

She accused the Conservatives of failing on Brexit while delivering "out-of-control immigration" and high taxes.

She said "the final straw came in the last few days" as there appeared to be a "concentrated effort, a witch hunt to hound out right-wingers".

...

In addition to the four sitting Conservative MPs who have now switched to Reform, around 20 former Tory MPs have made the move since the general election, including former ministers Nadhim Zahawi, Nadine Dorries and Jake Berry.

Henry Smith - one of those ex-MPs to make the switch - said Braverman had tried to "steer the last government in a Conservative direction" but had been "very much stopped in her tracks".

Speaking to Matt Chorley on BBC Radio 5 Live, the former Crawley MP said that while the Conservative leadership "might be making noises to the right", many Conservative MPs were "quite frankly more comfortable in a much more Liberal Democrat position".

I saw a Lotus Eaters video in which they predicted -- or put down as a prediction for a 2026 prediction Bingo game -- that the "conservatives" would wither away down to their most liberal members, at which point they would just merge with the Liberal Democrats. As the BBC points out above, that's all they are now anyway.

Braverman denounced the remaining "conservatives" as cucks for the liberal globalist one-world maxi-state. Or "wets," as she called them.

She now says the Conservatives are "too weak to save themselves, let alone the country".

...

She was not offered a position in Kemi Badenoch's shadow cabinet, and became a vocal critic of the party's record in office on immigration, net zero and what she branded "woke" thinking.

...

At a press conference alongside Farage, she dismissed her former party as dominated by "centrists" and "One Nation wets".

"Wets" has a specific meaning in British politics. I guess we'd call them "RINOs."

Google AI:

In British political slang, "wets" referred to moderate members of the Conservative Party, particularly under Margaret Thatcher, who were seen as weak, unprincipled, or too willing to compromise on her strict monetarist and spending-cut policies, contrasting with her hardline "dries".

The term, used pejoratively by Thatcher and her supporters, described those who opposed her tough economic medicine and favoured more consensus or less drastic reforms, like reducing government spending and challenging unions.

Key Aspects of "Wets":

Origin: Popularized by Margaret Thatcher in the late 1970s/early 1980s to criticize internal party dissent.

Meaning: Lacking firmness, being effete, ineffectual, or weak in character and resolve.

Policy Stance: Opposed to Thatcher's radical economic agenda, including spending cuts and confronting powerful unions.

...

Contrast: Directly opposed to "dries," Thatcher's loyalists who fully embraced her free-market principles.

The first video below is her full 18 minute speech. If that's too long, check out the clip from the press conference she gave after her defection. It's a lot punchier.

Posted by: Ace at 04:32 PM | Comments (250) | Trackbacks (Suck)

New Details on Church Invasion Prove It Was a Straight-Up Hate Crime

Tyler O'Neill's thread has the supporting charging documents.

This behavior would not be tolerated if a mosque was invaded.

Tyler O'Neil
@Tyler2ONeil

HORRIFYING NEW DETAILS

The invasion of Cities Church was even worse than we thought.

Agitators blocked stairs so "parents were unable to get to their children" at Sunday School.

One told a kid, "Do you know your parents are Nazis, they're going to burn in hell?"

...

William Kelly, "DaWoke Farmer," shouted, "This ain't God's house. This is the house of the devil."

About 50 members of the congregation were "stuck" towards the front of the church. Not only did the agitators take over the service, but they "made it nearly impossible for parishioners to get out and leave."

One woman broke her arm.

Congregants "were terrorized, our children were weeping, college students and young women were sobbing, it was impactful and it will take time to work through."

An agitator "continued to scream in the faces of young children while they were crying."

Nekima Armstrong, a main ringleader, said that @citieschurch
"cannot pretend to be a house of God while harboring someone who is directing ICE agents to wreak havoc upon our community and who killed Renee Good."

Make no mistake: this church invasion was an atrocity.

Sadly, Democrats like @Jacob_Frey, are carrying water for the agitators. Judges denied arrest warrants for 5 of the 8 charged defendants.

But @HarmeetKDhillon says this isn't over. Stay tuned.

The Researcher
@listen_2learn

19h

Compare and contrast what these criminals did and how they were quickly released from custody to what they did to the J6ers who simply walked through the Capitol.

The two-tiered system of injustice is going to destroy our country.

As gay sex assailant Don Lemon declared -- and he was privy to the intentions of the invaders, being part of the plot himself -- the entire point of the exercise was to "traumatize" the church-goers. Including the children.

Posted by: Ace at 03:35 PM | Comments (362) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Walz Agrees to De-Escalate His War Against the United States? Or... Not?

Apparently Trump and Walz had a phone call.

I'm not sure what Walz has agreed to -- maybe letting ICE pick up wanted illegals from their jails and courtrooms?

Or is it Trump who's backing down and needs Walz to provide him cover by pretending to have given up something?

Trump here says that "we're looking for all criminals" in Minnesota's "possession," but I don't see any claim that Walz actually agreed to this.

Walz says that Trump agreed to an "investigation' of ICE agents. Again, I don't see any actual agreement that Minnesota will actually cooperate with ICE. Walz just says he's working to "reduce the number of federal agents in Minnesota," not "reduce the number of foreign pedophiles, killers, rapists, and gangsters."

Walz' office said the call was "productive."

"The Governor made the case that we need impartial investigations of the Minneapolis shootings involving federal agents, and that we need to reduce the number of federal agents in Minnesota," his office wrote in a release.

Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both Minnesota residents and U.S. citizens, were fatally shot and killed by federal immigration officers in separate incidents in Minneapolis.

Trump agreed to talk to the Department of Homeland Security about ensuring the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is able to conduct an independent investigation, Walz' office said, and also agreed to look into either reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota or working with the state "in a more coordinated fashion on immigration enforcement regarding violent criminals."

I don't know if there's any actual agreement here. This might be the typical result of diplomacy, wherein all parties just celebrate the fact that diplomacy occurred.

Posted by: Ace at 02:28 PM | Comments (387) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ringleader Behind the Somali Fraud Scandal Says There's No Way that Tim Walz and Jihadi AG Keith Ellison Didn't Know She Was Stealing a Quarter Billion Dollars

That's what I say, too.

Posted by: Ace at 01:22 PM | Comments (447) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Special Forces Veteran: This Isn't a Protest, This Is an Organized Insurgency Like We Faced in Iraq

Cam Higby infiltrated insurrectionist Signal groups. (Signal is a secure private message app favored by anyone who wants to keep his messages secret, including terrorists and insurrectionists.)

He posted several of the screenshots of the secret insurrectionist chats. Note that Minneapolis police are part of the insurgency.

Posted by: Ace at 12:16 PM | Comments (454) | Trackbacks (Suck)

THE MORNING RANT: Lodging Made Torturous by Smart Appliances and Electronics - “The Big Regression”

When vacationing, my wife and I are tending to once again stay at hotels rather than renting through VRBO or Airbnb. While we prefer to rent an apartment/condo with a kitchen, laundry room, full size bathroom, and additional living space, the unrelenting hassles involving appliances and electronics is pushing us back to hotels. (As well as the detailed and lengthy “clean-up” instructions we’ve encountered at some places, but that’s a subject for another day.)

It has effectively become part of our unpacking process when we arrive at a rental property to contact the property manager so we can learn how to set the thermostat and operate the TV.

In a crazy paradox, the more “luxurious” the rental unit is, the more complex and user-unfriendly it tends to be. For me, having to watch training videos and download apps before I can set the thermostat or run the dishwasher is not luxury, it’s torture. Programming the lighting through a tablet on the wall is excruciating when I realize that something less upscale would offer me a simple light switch.

Jason Fried, a tech executive who co-founded Basecamp, wrote about this problem at “Hey,” another of his software companies. I first read this essay in its entirety on Mr. Fried’s Twitter/X page, but he also has it posted under the title “The Big Regression” at his website.

My folks are in town visiting us for a couple months so we rented them a house nearby.

It’s new construction. No one has lived in it yet. It’s amped up with state-of-the-art systems. You know, the ones with touchscreens of various sizes, [Internet of Things] appliances, and interfaces that try too hard.

And it’s terrible. What a regression.

The lights are powered by Control4, and require a demo to understand how to use the switches, understand which ones control what, and to be sure not to hit THAT ONE because it’ll turn off all the lights in the house when you didn’t mean to. Worse.

The TV is the latest Samsung which has a baffling user interface just to watch CNN. My parents aren’t idiots, but definitely feel like they’re missing something obvious. They aren’t — TVs have simply gotten worse. You don’t turn them on anymore, you boot them up. Worse.

The Miele dishwasher is hidden flush with the counters. That part is fine, but here’s what isn’t: It wouldn’t even operate the first time without connecting it with an app. This meant another call to the house manager to have them install an app they didn’t know they needed either. An app to clean some peanut butter off a plate? For serious? Worse.

Thermostats... Nest would have been an upgrade, but these other propriety ones from some other company trying to be nest-like are baffling. Round touchscreens that take you into a dark labyrinth of options just to be sure it’s set at 68. Or is it 68 now? Or is that what we want it at, but it’s at 72? Wait... What? Which number is this? Worse.

The alarm system is essentially a 10” iPad bolted to the wall that has the f***ing weather forecast on it. And it’s bright! I’m sure there’s a way to turn that off, but then the screen would be so barren that it would be filled with the news instead. Why can’t the alarm panel just be an alarm panel? Worse.

And the lag. Lag everywhere. Everything feels a beat or two behind. Everything. Lag is the giveaway that the system is working too hard for too little. Real-time must be the hardest problem.

Now look... I’m no luddite. But this experience is close to conversion therapy. Tech can make things better, but I simply can’t see it in these cases. I’ve heard the pitches too — you can set up scenes and one button can change EVERYTHING. Not buying it. It actually feels primitive, like we haven’t figured out how to make things easy yet. That some breakthrough will eventually come when you can simply knock a switch up or down and it’ll all makes sense. But we haven’t evolved to that point yet.

It’s really the contrast that makes it alarming. We just got back from a vacation in Montana. Rented a house there. They did have a fancy TV — seems those can’t be avoided these days — but everything else was old school and clear. Physical up/down light switches in the right places. Appliances without the internet. Buttons with depth and physically-confirmed state change rather than surfaces that don’t obviously register your choice. More traditional round rotating Honeywell thermostats that are just clear and obvious. No tours, no instructions, no questions, no fearing you’re going to do something wrong, no wondering how something works. Useful and universally clear. That’s human that’s modern.

Preach, brother. Preach. Thank you.

For me, simplicity is luxury. An absence of apps is luxury. Not having to watch a training video is luxury. Not having to engage with a wall-mounted tablet is luxury. Those are the luxuries I want when traveling.

Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM | Comments (407) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

River Rouge Plant
Charles Sheeler

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (496) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 1/26/26

Good morning kids. With reports of widespread power outages as well as the cancellation of hundreds of airline flights as a result of winter storm Fern, I hope you are all safe, sound and warm and minimally affected or otherwise inconvenienced by the cold and ice that has hit a large swathe of the nation over the weekend.

Of course the top story remains insurrection and revolution — no not in Iran but right here in the good old US of A, which with what is going on in Minneapolis could potentially devolve into a disunited state of chaos. Considering the wastage of life, treasure and human potential for decades in its bloodthirsty drive for absolute power, the Democrat party and anti-American leftist movement have produced some of the worst examples of humanity to ever hold the reins of power. And in recent times among the worst of the worst was and remains Barack Hussein Obama. During his accursed tenure as president, he turned back over 50 years of societal advancement and sowed racial division and enmity that within a few years of his departure from the White House American cities burned to the ground in an orgy of violence unseen since the 1960s, and all based on blood libels against law enforcement and the bogeyman of white supremacy. All because Donald Trump dared to run and win a massive victory that in many ways was a complete repudiation of everything Obama stood for, believed in and foisted in the American people. Now here we are six years later and this despicable, evil, twisted lout is at it again.

The anti-ICE riots aren’t ‘grass roots’. They’re as ‘grass roots’ as the BLM riots that the Obama administration not so secretly nurtured. And, by no coincidence at all, Barack Obama popped up to endorse the latest incarnation of his War on America.

Obama popped up to issue a press release attacking federal immigration law enforcement, falsely claiming that, “people across the country have been rightly outraged by the spectacle of masked ICE recruits and other federal agents acting with impunity and engaging in tactics that seem designed to intimidate, harass, provoke and endanger the residents of a major American city.”

The man who funded and freed Islamic terrorists, spied on political opponents and had a man arrested for making a movie about Mohammed, whines that “many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.”

But apart from all the rants about ICE and the usual propaganda, Obama concludes with “every American should support and draw inspiration from the wave of peaceful protests in Minneapolis and other parts of the country.”

The “peaceful protests” that so far include deadly assaults on federal law enforcement, biting an officer’s finger off, and the usual rioting.

Obama wants back in the treason game. He should face the legal consequences for encouraging an insurrection to overthrow the government and enable the conquest of America.

If you want to know why two people are dead and why many others might very well wind up in a Minneapolis or even Anytown USA morgue drawer just like them, it's because Obama, Walz, Frey and the entirety of the Democrat Party is egging them on.

That Tim Walz dares compare ICE to the Nazi German Gestapo rounding up Anne Frank, and to me on no less a day than Holocaust Remembrance Day, makes my blood boil.

Of course the willingness of some to become cannon fodder for the Left is not a great mystery.

What’s inside the mind of a pro-crime leftist? Some identify vicariously with the criminal as a source of revolutionary violence while others go into a kind of Stockholm Syndrome driven by white guilt and bleeding heart liberalism.

‘Why I Didn’t Report My Rape’, Anna Krauthammer, writing at the radical leftist The Nation goes all in on pro-crime guilt. The author, a grad student who claims to have been gang raped, read Angela Davis and declares that she’s a ‘prison abolitionist’.

“There in that hotel, a little over four years ago, I was raped by a group of men during a three-day trip I took to Las Vegas with two of my best friends. Of the rape, which lasted all night,” she writes. “The simple answer to the question of why I never reported the rape is that I believe in the abolition of police and prisons.”

“I don’t want to ruin the lives of my rapists and I don’t know if they have children,” she blathers. “I have believed in and used the term prison abolition for at least a decade, but for less time than I’ve felt in my bones that I could never participate in any chain of events that might send someone to prison.”

. . . This is what moral inversion does to morality. It makes the perpetrators into the victims and vice versa. . . Women are told to practice a Gandhiesque liberalism in which they must accept being raped rather than send a rapist to jail. This is the endpoint of ‘Abolish ICE”, “BLM”, “Defund the Police’ and the entire mad spectacle of pro-crime policies.And when you understand that moral inversion is the ultimate sign of evil, you understand everything.

For those of a certain age who remember the 1960s, as bad as the anti-war demonstrations and even the Civil Rights marches and race riots of that era, wha we are witnessing here and now potentially can do what those events could not — erupt into an actual civil war, or into such a state of societal breakdown akin to perhaps Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. And then everything is up for grabs.

When churches and now hotels are invaded by roving bands of deranged people convinced they are the moral equivalent of the FFI and the White Rose movement resisting the Nazis — and an entire political party as well as the media using this gargantuan blood libel nonstop, this will not end well.

Remember, long before Minneapolis, the Democrats labeled Donald Trump and all of us as Literally Hitler and Nazis. And so we get this to potentially have to deal with:

Antifa Influencer Declares ‘Guerrilla War’ Against ICE After Minnesota Shooting — Kyle Wagner, a self-described “entrepreneur” and “master-hate-baiter,” posted a series of videos to social media appearing to encourage armed and explicitly non-peaceful demonstrations against federal agents, whom he referred to as “Nazi gunmen.” The far-left influencer uploaded the videos in the immediate aftermath of the day’s fatal shooting, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed targeted a suspect who looked ready to “massacre law enforcement.” Chaotic riots subsequently erupted on the streets of Minneapolis. . . “My name is Kyle, I’m Antifa, and there’s so much rage in me, I’ve had to record this like fifteen times trying to get the message out,” Wagner addressed the camera in one video posted to Instagram. “They fucked up.”

“[I]t’s time to suit up, boots on the ground … show up ready to go,” he said, later noting he was specifically “talking specifically to my fucking followers.”

“No, not talking about peaceful protests anymore. We’re not talking about having polite conversations anymore,” Wagner stressed. “Sorry, but welcome to America 2026 where Second Amendment is the only thing that’s gonna keep you fucking protected from literal fucking Nazi gunmen that are killing innocent people in the street with impunity. This is not a fucking joke. There’s nothing fun to chant about it.”

Can you imagine if someone on our side took to social media to implore ordinary citizens to march on Minneapolis or wherever and help defend ICE agents as they went about their business?!

Have a great day.

And lastly, a quick shout-out and a huge thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY LINKS
• Pro-Crime Leftist defends her rapists, Taliban and Hamas.
  “I Don’t Want to Ruin the Lives of My Rapists” Says Hamas Apologist

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:27 AM | Comments (404) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 26 January 2026

Top Story

• Replication crisis as a service. (Columbia)
  
  You may have heard about the replication crisis science, and if you haven't, you should. Half of all published medical research, for example, cannot be replicated, and for preclinical trials the rate increases to four fifths.
  
  An interesting point from that Wikipedia article is that 70% of scientists have tried and failed to replicate another researcher's work, but only 20% have been contacted by another scientist trying to replicate their work.
  
  Which is perhaps by design:

  This paper in Management Science has been cited more than 6,000 times. Wall Street executives, top government officials, and even a former U.S. Vice President have all referenced it. It's fatally flawed, and the scholarly community refuses to do anything about it.

  Management science, huh? Bad as things are in medical research, at least they admit to baseline reality.
  
  When someone tried to correct the record on this particular paper, his efforts were not well received:

  The authors ignored me, the journal refused to act, and the scholarly community looked the other way. Two universities disregarded evidence of research misconduct - even after the authors admitted publishing a misleading report.
  
  The article remains largely uncorrected - misleading thousands of people each year.
  
  I believe our systems for curating trustworthy science are broken and need reformation.

  A latter-day dissolution of the monasteries?

  Having received no response from the authors, I contacted Management Science. After getting advice, I submitted a comment.
  
  It was rejected.
  
  The reviewers did not address the substance of my comment; they objected to my "tone".

  As the article says, ah, the tone police.

  The authors did admit to the editor that they had misreported a key finding - labeling it as statistically significant when it was not. The authors claimed the error was a "typo." They intended to type "not significant" but omitted the word "not".

  That's one hell of a typo.
  
  The story gets worse from there. And that's just a single paper out of millions.
  
  
  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (175) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Overnight Open Thread - January 25, 2026 [Doof]

Howdy Hordelings! Welcome to the Sunday ONT. Did you get a lot of snow in your area today? If so, how much? If not, what did you do today? Step on in and let us know what's on your mind tonight!

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (453) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gun Thread: Bigly Storm Edition!

Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!

Holy Shitballs! How in the ever-loving Hell did it get to be the Bigly Storm Edition?

Yikes, people! El Bigly Storm-o is here! I'm near Washington D.C., writing this on Saturday and reasonably prepared for a prolonged power outage should that happen. By the time this goes up Sunday, assuming I still have power and an innernet connection, the storm should be close to wrapping up here. It's going to be colder than a box of penguin turds for the foreseeable future, so whatever we get is going to be around a while. Were you in the path of the storm? Feel free to share your story in the comments tonight!

With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?

Posted by: Weasel at 07:00 PM | Comments (251) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Food Thread: It's Chilly Outside, Time To Make Chili!

This is what winter is all about! What's not to love about crappy winter weather? it is an opportunity to stock the refrigerator and freezer with all sorts of stuff that requires a few hours on the stove or in the oven, and is deliciously warming and hearty.

Chili is particularly well suited for cooking on a cold and windy day, because it is easy, infinitely malleable no matter what your tastes are, and is a perfect way to use up those extra carrots and cans of beans!

Yeah...yeah... chili can be whatever you want it to be!

''When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.''

So the chili above has black beans and hominy, and a very pleasant hit of chipotle. The lead actor is of course beef, because I am not a savage, but pork would work in a pinch. And even chicken, though that changes things considerably. And I guess you could use lamb? Anyone ever make lamb chili?

One thing I do is saute the herbs and spices before I add the liquid. It seems to accentuate their flavors, and even if it doesn't, the house smells great!

Anyone have a particular trick they use to make their special, world-famous chili?

Posted by: CBD at 04:00 PM | Comments (304) | Trackbacks (Suck)

First World Problems...

Obviously the solution is to find a finish carpenter who knows how to steam bend wood, and bend the hardwood floor to match the curve of the oriental rug.

[Seriously, that is a very old rug that I inherited. Hand made, and very nice...and large!]

Posted by: CBD at 02:00 PM | Comments (239) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Does The West Still Have The Oxford Martyr's Spark?

Hugh Latimer was the Bishop of Worcester, and a convert to the ideas of the reformation, for which he was tried and convicted of heresy, and along with his friend Nicholas Ridley, burned at the stake in 1555. They, along with Thomas Cranmer, who was burned a few months later, are called "The Oxford Martyrs."

His final words are a testament to the strength and resolve of men of the West.

Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man, for we shall this day light such a candle in England as I trust by God's grace shall never be put out.

Whether that resolve remains in Great Britain remains to be seen, But Western culture is no stranger to religious wars. The Reformation sparked conflict for a few hundred years, and it was brutal. The 30 Years War killed off at least 5,000,000 people, and smaller but no less vicious conflicts spread across Europe.

Europeans once fought and died to protect their religions and culture. From our lofty perch in the 21st century, it seems almost quaint that they would disagree so profoundly about what many of us see as, simply, Christianity. Regardless of the reasons for the conflict, we must respect the fortitude that they displayed.

Is there that same fortitude in the current population of Europe? Yes, certainly, among the Muslim invaders! But it remains to be seen whether there is any fight left in the descendants of the people who bled and died for their faith, their country, their culture.

Who will be the men who light the candle that shows the West that our culture is worth fighting for...and dying for?

PS. This is not a forum for Catholic or Protestant bashing.

Posted by: CBD at 12:00 PM | Comments (345) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Morning Book Thread - 1-25-2026 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

(Click for larger image)

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading (for masochists only!). Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM | Comments (403) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 25 January 2026

Top Story

• Bitlocker: The encryption technology where everyone has access to your data except you. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Microsoft's Bitlocker is infamous for suddenly enabling itself without you explicitly going through the setup process so that neither you nor anybody else has any idea what the encryption key is, and you data is simply gone.
  
  But if you do go through the setup process, it automatically shares your key with Microsoft so the government can ask for and receive your keys.
  
  Which government?
  
  All of them.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (305) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Night Club ONT - January 24, 2026 [Double Trouble]

Welcome to Club ONT - A Double Shot of Double Trouble from The Disco and The Dino.

Worried about snow? We're not! Club's open and ready to serve. Just please stomp your boots a few times on the mat before coming in, OK?

Are you on weather watch? Share your local weather reports. Snow? Ice? Sleet? Rain? Sunshine?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (619) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Evening Movie Thread - 1/24/2026

Wolfgang Petersen

Few directors have all-around strengths, the ability to see every aspect of a production from pre-production through sound mixing and determine what's best for the story, for the film as a whole. Most noteworthy directors tend to have groups of strengths, certain parts of the production where their attention and skill is most directly applied to their films. Wolfgang Petersen wasn't an all around strong director, but he did have one particular strength: the sequence.

The Sequence Director is actually really interesting because while scripts may end up having issues, the strength of the sequence done really well is its own thrill and joy. John Ford was actually a sequence director according to his own writers, not really understanding narrative form but understanding exactly how to put together a sequence for film. Wolfgang Petersen feels like a similar filmmaker, just without a strong studio system to back him up with a stable of quality writers.

Moving from German television to Hollywood and then getting hired from one job to the next in ever-increasingly large budgeted productions, Petersen proved that he was a man for the time. Taking simple concepts like a president needing to fight terrorists on Air Force One and delivering them with aggressive energy in clearly filmed sustained sequences, Petersen became one of the most powerful and sought-after directors in Hollywood for about a decade. I don't know if that's what he had dreamed of his career being, but he made the most of it while he was there.

Posted by: TheJamesMadison at 07:30 PM | Comments (226) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hobby Thread - January 24, 2026 [TRex]

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 officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. We gave the Ace of Spades Wheel of Hobbies (TM) a spin it landed on wood carving and tools.

[Top photo courtesy Bird Rock Doc]

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (149) | Trackbacks (Suck)