Sunday Morning Book Thread (01/04/2026) [MP4]

Good morning, book lovers! CBD was kind enough – or foolish enough, depending on your view – to ask me to host a Sunday Book Thread, and so here I am.

If you were around when the Book Thread posted pictures of my home library a while back, you might have noticed that one set of shelves contained books on true crime and mystery, which is going to be today’s topic. I, myself, make a distinction between the two: ‘true crime’ is something like Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden or the Son of Sam. A ‘mystery’ would be something unexplainable, such as Offyreus and his perpetual motion machine, the Bermuda Triangle or the vanishing of Richard Colvin Cox. Of course, some of these can be combinations; the Borden case is both true crime (her parents were axed to death) and a mystery (who did it and how?). I’m going to highlight a few books in each category that I enjoy.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM | Comments (382) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 4 January 2026

Top Story

• The US Invaded Venezuela and Captured Nicolás Maduro.
  
  ChatGPT and the Perplexity search engine are here to help you understand why this is not only a bad thing, but absolutely did not happen. (Wired) (archive site)

  "What's likely going on is a mix-up with real events that are often described in dramatic or misleading ways online. Here's what actually has happened:
  
  What the U.S. did not do
  ❌ No U.S. military invasion of Venezuela
  ❌ No arrest or capture of Nicolás Maduro
  ❌ No overthrow of the Venezuelan government by U.S. forces
  Maduro is still in power in Venezuela."

  
  
  I have used Grok as an augmented search tool on occasion and it's often pretty good. When you don't know the exact name of what you are looking for it will match things up better than Google.
  
  Sometimes it misses things or simply gets it wrong, but I haven't seen it get things this wrong. (Grok told me in answer to a poorly-worded question, "No, the US did not capture Nicolás Maduro today. It happened yesterday." which was true at least in my own time zone.)

  "Pure LLMs are inevitably stuck in the past, tied to when they are trained, and deeply limited in their inherent abilities to reason, search the web, 'think' critically, etc.," says Gary Marcus, a cognitive scientist and author of Taming Silicon Valley: How We Can Ensure That AI Works for Us. While human intervention can fix glaring problems like the Maduro response, Marcus says, that doesn't address the underlying problem. "The unreliability of LLMs in the face of novelty is one of the core reasons why businesses shouldn't trust LLMs."

  This problem has been greatly alleviated by AI providers enabling live search, which loads fresh data into the context window - the AI equivalent of short-term memory.
  
  But it can't be properly fixed without continual learning, which is an unsolved problem with LLMs.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (324) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Night "Club ONT" January 3, 2026 [The 3 Ds]

Welcome to first Club ONT of 2026. A collaboration the 3D's - The Disco, The Dino, and The Doggo. New Year wishes to you: May your coffee be strong, your Wi-Fi stable, and commenting be witty.

Did you get a new calendar? Mark Club ONTs for each 2026 Saturday - in pen.

[Top photo: Antietam National Battlefield, Sharpsburg, MD]

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (478) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Evening Movie Thread - 1/3/2026

Otto Preminger

Before I started watching the complete filmography of Otto Preminger, I didn't really know what I was going to get. Oh, sure, I'd seen the highlights. I'd seen Anatomy of a Murder, Advise and Consent, and Laura, but he completed nearly forty films in his nearly fifty years making movies. Could I say that those three films were representative of him?

It's not like Laura and the other two have a whole lot in common, but you could draw lines of comparison, but what about Forever Amber or The Moon is Blue or Bonjour Tristesse or Hurry Sundown? What do they have to say about Preminger? Well, that's why I do these runs, so that I can find out.

And you know what I found out about Otto Preminger?

I do not think he was a very good filmmaker.

Posted by: TheJamesMadison at 07:30 PM | Comments (233) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hobby Thread - January 3, 2026 [Angler 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 officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. We gave the Ace of Spades Wheel of Hobbies (TM) its first spin of the new year and it landed on ice fishing.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (121) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, Jan 3

* * *

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.

Posted by: K.T. at 03:18 PM | Comments (48) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Afternoon Open Thread

Walter Kirn: "If you go back and watch my recent podcasts w/ @mtaibbi you will note that I've consistently predicted a short, sharp conflict with Venezuela.

The hysteria over a long war was all propaganda.

Maduro & Co held no cards."

Posted by: K.T. at 02:54 PM | Comments (438) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Home and Nature Thread, Jan. 3

My husband was in the Army for 38 years and we lived in several different climates (coastal CA, central valley CA, Baltimore, Tidewater VA, and Hawaii). We retired to Las Vegas and while I was never much of a gardener, I managed to keep our living quarters looking OK over the years. Not here. Unless you love cactus, this is easily the most challenging garden environment ever. Fortunately I can buy amaryllis bulbs. They are from Eden Gardens, a wonderful garden supplier. They were badly hit by the North Carolina floods, but still managed to fulfill their orders on time.

Anyway, here’s part of my “harvest” this year. The flowers are so large that they sometimes fall over, but this is not a problem because they do really well when cut and put in a vase.

Ps. I always enjoy your thread. Thanks.

Margsnow

A low-key thread on a busy day today, starting with some beautiful flowers!

It's okay to switch between specialty and news threads on the weekend.

Posted by: K.T. at 01:04 PM | Comments (60) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Trump Speaking Now: "This Is Big Stuff"

The screechy communist whore vice president shrieked on TV after Maduro's capture.

Venezuela's socialist regime appeared rattled and scrambling Saturday after its own vice president publicly admitted she does not know where dictator Nicolás Maduro is, hours after President Trump announced that Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, had been captured and flown out of the country following U.S. military action. Speaking by phone with state-run broadcaster VTV, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said the regime had lost contact with both Maduro and Flores and demanded that Washington provide what she called "proof of life," an extraordinary on-air concession from a government that has long projected absolute control.

"In light of this brutal situation and this brutal attack, we do not know the whereabouts of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores," Rodríguez said during the broadcast, accusing the United States of having "violated, attacked, and assaulted" Venezuela. She repeatedly pressed the Trump administration to account for Maduro and Flores, framing the operation as an act of aggression rather than addressing the disappearance itself. Rodríguez went on to claim Maduro had warned Venezuelans such an operation could happen, blaming what she described as American "energy greed" for the strike.

Audio at the link.

Does she sound scared? Well, Bulg says she's so scared that four sources say she's already fled to Tucker Carlson's other favorite "conservative" country, Russia.

Reuters is reporting that the Venezuelan VP is in Russia, according to four sources.

Posted by: Bulg

Press conference link below:

Posted by: Ace at 10:55 AM | Comments (1099) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Trump Orders Air Strikes on Venezuela, Sends In Delta Force to Capture Nicolas Madura and His Wife

My mood, thanks to Michael the Texan.

Maduro and his wife have been captured and brought to the US to stand trial for drug trafficking and, if I know my Trump, election interference in the 2020 rigged election.

Obviously, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Glenn Greenwald, and all the leftwing pinko pacifists who now, apparently, represent the True Conservative Right are the hardest hit.

As for me? I voted for Trump's foreign policy, not ANSWER's foreign policy, not Ron Paul's foreign policy, and certainly not fat alcoholic Nazi Tucker Carlson's foreign policy.

Good luck trying to bend Trump to your will, Qatar-funded FARA faggots.

Posted by: Ace at 10:07 AM | Comments (368) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

[H/T Meme Sharon Willow's Apprentice]
[H/T Music Sock Monkey]

More fun and pithy comments next week, perhaps.

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 08:00 AM | Comments (692) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 3 January 2025

Top Story

• Contract prices for memory are expected to rise by 50% this quarter, on top of the massive increases in the previous quarter. (WCCFTech)
  
  And that's if you can even get a contract. Spot prices are out of control.
  
  
  
• Which may be why Corsair has been cancelling orders for memory kits that were accidentally sold at only double the old price, rather than four times. (Notebook Check)
  
  The sales took place on New Years Eve, which is coincidentally when I bought 128GB of Corsair DDR4 RAM on Amazon - I noticed it was selling for close to pre-apocalyptic prices and pounced.
  
  The reported cancellations mostly involve a specific 48GB DDR5 kit, though, which is not at all what I ordered. And one 64GB kit I ordered has already shipped, so it looks like I lucked out. Waiting to see a shipping notice on the two 32GB kits.
  
  Every time I think maybe I bought too much memory I see another story that suggests things are going to get even worse. Memory rarely fails, and the next two generations of AMD CPUs will still support DDR5, so I should have enough to keep me going for years.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (267) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Should Ohh Enn Tee, Be Forgot, And Never Brought To Mind

Hello all! Welcome to the first meme ONT of 2026! Got some fun stuff for you, plus some Christmas leftovers. Let's start with this. It's a new year, but what if you were given the chance at a new life. Total reset, the clock rolls back to the day you were born. What traits would you choose if you could?

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (504) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Rescue Cafe

Nice woman rescues one dog, but then winds up with a bonus rescue dog who just invites himself into her house.

Horse thieves. Well, not thieves, but B&E repeat offenders.

Day two of my rigorous new exercise regime.

New climate hoax drops -- panda colony collapse!

When the public bathroom's door doesn't lock.

If you thought 2026 was the year bears would come back under control, you thought wrong.

Mud was made for children, strippers, and dogs.

After brief deliberation, he's all in.

First Friday of the year!

Posted by: Ace at 07:10 PM | Comments (258) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Elon Musk Endorses Republicans for the 2026 Midterms, Arguing that Democrats Will Destroy the County and It "Won't Be America Anymore"

Accurate.

Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk signaled Thursday that he is lining up behind Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, a notable turn after months of public friction with President Trump and flirtation with launching a third political party of his own.

"America is toast if the radical left wins," Musk wrote on X, warning that a Democrat-controlled Congress would "open the floodgates to illegal immigration and fraud" and that the country "won't be America anymore." The post came in response to a conservative influencer claiming Musk was "going all-in funding Republicans to help President Trump take back full control" of Congress in November 2026.

According to Axios, Musk has already begun making sizable contributions to GOP candidates in key House and Senate races, though the precise amounts will not be public until campaign finance disclosures are released later this month. The signal carries weight. Musk poured more than $290 million into the 2024 election cycle, becoming the largest single political donor that year by a wide margin.

Posted by: Ace at 06:00 PM | Comments (213) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The CIA Promoted Abstract Modern Art As a Psyop

Interesting video. The CIA promoted abstract expressionists like Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollack as some kind of bulwark against the propaganda value of Soviet art, which itself was realistic and representational. (Though idealized in showing proud, strong, happy Soviet peasants harvesting the abundant fields.)

So using taxpayer money, they pushed this crap. "Our" art would be simple geometric shapes and paint splatters.

It was literal Gay Ops.

But that's not the most egregious CIA Gay Op. They also funded and promoted leftwing magazines, including one founded by Bill Kristol's father, Irving Kristol. The point of this was to give leftwing intellectuals a leftwing ideology to believe in that wasn't actual communism.

But what they did was fund magazines that relentlessly attacked the right and pushed socialism.

Fifty years later, this op came to its ultimate fruition as a majority of the younger generations, for the first time in American history, now support socialism.

And many support communism.

Bang-up job, guys. Give yourselves all a promotion.

Just as an FYI: Irving Kristol eventually turned away from leftist more or less completely and founded the anti-communist "neoconservative" movement.

His son then turned all the way back to leftism.

Posted by: Ace at 04:50 PM | Comments (212) | Trackbacks (Suck)

"America First:" Stop Taking Any Action Against Any Hostile Foreign Regime, Focus on Fentanyl Smuggling
Also "America First:" Don't Take Hostile Action Against the World's Biggest Narcoterrorist States

The "America First" clowns both want an end to drug smuggling from foreign countries, and a policy of pink pacifism toward the foreign dictators arranging the bulk of drug smuggling into the US.

They are incoherent. They are just angry and unreasoning and pissed of at everything, and frankly, you shouldn't listen to people who get off on their own omnidirectional rage to the exclusion of any capacity for rational thought.

Maduro says he's ready to talk.

Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro is striking a suddenly conciliatory tone toward Washington after a reported CIA drone strike targeted a cartel-linked docking area inside his country, claiming Caracas is now "ready" to negotiate with the United States on drug trafficking -- and even dangling access to Venezuela's oil sector as leverage.

In a sit-down interview recorded on New Year's Eve with Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet and aired Thursday on state television, Maduro said the U.S. government has long known Venezuela is open to talks, insisting that if Washington wants a note-for-note agreement to combat narcotics flows, "we're ready."

He went further, suggesting that American energy firms could return in force, saying Venezuela is open to U.S. oil investment "whenever they want it, wherever they want it and however they want it," explicitly referencing past dealings with Chevron.

The remarks come amid an aggressive U.S. pressure campaign that has seen at least 35 American strikes on suspected drug-smuggling vessels across the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since early September, operations U.S. officials say have killed more than 115 suspected traffickers.

I do not believe he's ready to talk due to Trump following Tucker Carlson's pinko pacifist plan of just being nice to Venezuela. I think he's ready to talk because Trump is using the US military to blow up his drug boats and seize his "Dark Fleet" terrorist oil ships.

Posted by: Ace at 03:40 PM | Comments (294) | Trackbacks (Suck)

More CBS "News:" CBS Executives Killed an Interview With Elon Musk Because They Insisted They Should Be Able to Edit and Hide What He Had to Say

Elon Musk wanted to do the interview live precisely so they couldn't give him an Asshole Edit and hide his actual words to push their previously-decided narrative.

CBS "news" executives said they would never, ever agree to do that. They need to control the narrative.

This comes from former CBS investigative reporter Catherine Herridge, who left the network, presumably over this kind of absolute bias and corruption.

Mario Nawfal
@MarioNawfal

12h

🇺🇸 CATHERINE HERRIDGE: CBS WALKED AWAY FROM ELON BECAUSE THEY COULDN'T CONTROL HIM

Catherine revealed CBS passed on what could have been one of the biggest interviews in modern media, not because Elon refused, but because the network did.

She said discussions were underway after her work connected to the Twitter Files, and an opportunity emerged to interview Elon live on his own platform.

That's when everything stalled.

"I went to the CBS executives and I said, this is the opportunity that we have.

He's saying, I want to do it live and on my platform.

He's one of the most influential human beings on the planet.

And the reaction from the executives was, well, we can't do it live.

And I was like, what do you mean we can't do it live?

They said, we don't know what he's going to say.

And I'm thinking, isn't that the point of journalism?

They said it has to be taped.

We have to be able to edit it. It has to be on our platform.

We have to control the platform.

Everything just got shut down.

It was one of the biggest interviews you could ever have.

I felt ashamed. I never went back to Elon to say they want to do it, but only if they can control it.

I couldn't do that to someone whose DNA is free speech."

Catherine Herridge
@C__Herridge

21h

Straight to the Point:
When Corporate Media Bias Is Baked In

In the fall of 2023, I brought CBS News a proposed interview opportunity with Elon Musk.

CBS Executives said the interview couldn't be done live, rather it had to be pre-recorded so they had the ability to edit Musk and it had to be on a CBS platform.

"We don't know what [@ElonMusk
] is going to say!"

I could not believe what the CBS News executives were saying. Isn't that the point of journalism? You don't know what the person's going to say?

At that time, @cbsnews
was under different management and did not respond to our questions seeking comment.

@thelatmg
@latimesstudios

So here's the obvious truth: "Reporters" want to grill opponents (and they do consider them "opponents") and make them look foolish and ask them questions they struggle to answer.

But "reporters" are themselves pretty stupid. Among "professionals," they're the least intelligent and educated. (And they're very lazy and have very high rates of alcoholism.)

"Reporters" do not want their opponents turning the tables on them and make them look foolish and make them struggle to answer questions.

That's why they insist, absolutely, on the power to edit the interview. To make sure they always come off looking like heroes and always come out on top.

But this is obviously a huge and corrupt deception. Editing an interview to make it look as if your debate opponent (and these are debates, not "interviews") lost is itself a corrupt lie. You are deliberately altering the actual historical record of the event to present a false story to the public.

The edit is for purposes of disinformation -- and a very narcissistic, self-serving form of disinformation.

Posted by: Ace at 02:30 PM | Comments (241) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Trump: If Iran Begins Shooting the Protesters Challenging Their Corrupt Terrorist Rule, I'll Take Their Asses Out

The Iranian people are rising up again, like they did in 2009, when Obama was president.

But Obama isn't president any longer.

Posted by: Ace at 01:24 PM | Comments (431) | Trackbacks (Suck)

CBS "News" Announces That They Have "Missed" Big Stories Because They Only Talk to "Advocates," "Academics," and "Elites;" Admits That No One Trusts the "Legacy Media" Any Longer

And they promise they'll correct that.

Now, they continue lying by omission -- the problem isn't just that they only speak to "advocates" or "academics" or "elites." There are conservative versions of those, whom they don't speak to. Their bias is not to "advocates" or "academics" or "elites," but to the communist left.

They're claiming that their bias is towards experts while they ignore the uninformed general public.

Um, the "experts" told us the vaccine worked and was totally safe and that covid didn't come from a Chinese lab.

They still refuse to admit that and I would never trust a lifelong liar until he admits his lifelong lies.

Still, this is a pretty big statement, lies and all.

The legacy media has never before acknowledged that it is merely a legacy media, among other newer medias. They insist they are the one and only media.

Posted by: Ace at 12:16 PM | Comments (345) | Trackbacks (Suck)