The Restaurant Industry Is Now Enjoying Bidenomics, and They're Not Enjoying It Much

In California, restaurants and fast food chains are taking the hit from the eyepopping $20/per hour minimum wage.

Menu prices in California will rise once again when a new law goes into effect in the summer, a double-whammy after fast-food chains in the state hiked prices to help pay for the $20 minimum wage the state imposed last month.

Restaurant owners in the state are warning that a new law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that bans "junk fees" in the state starting July 1 will force them to raise prices because it prohibits restaurant surcharges and fees.

Restaurant owners have often relied on surcharges to provide their employees benefits like health care. Some businesses would note surcharges on menus, and others would make them optional, with the decision left to the customer.

However, the new law is prompting restaurant owners to hike prices on their menus to comply with the new law.

California's attorney general confirmed to the San Francisco Chronicle this week that restaurant surcharges and fees would be illegal under the new law in a blow to the industry.

Golden Gate Restaurant Association Director Laurie Thomas told CBS News Bay Area the law will put restaurants in a tough spot with either lower wages for employees or by discouraging customers with higher prices.

"So, now, do you take their rate down and do you go to an old-fashioned tip model and say to your servers, 'You have to tip the whole house, but that drops everybody's salaries' or do you raise your prices 20%, 25%?" Thomas said. "It might make a lot of customers happier. They might say, 'We understand why prices went up.' Let's hope that happens. But I don't know if our industry can hope that's what happens. They're still struggling. It's been a tough year."

Unexpectedly, the restaurant sector is now downsizing. Or should I say, Bidensizing.

Starbucks announced a surprise drop in same-store sales for its latest quarter, sending its shares down 17% on Wednesday. Pizza Hut and KFC also reported shrinking same-store sales. And even stalwart McDonald's said it has adopted a "street-fighting mentality" to compete for value-minded diners.

For months, economists have been predicting that consumers would cut back on their spending in response to higher prices and interest rates. But it's taken a while for fast-food chains to see their sales actually shrink, despite several quarters of warnings to investors that low-income consumers were weakening and other diners were trading down from pricier options.

You just hate to see it happen to Google, too. Google to lay off 200 " " " workers. " " "

The NY Post:

The job cuts -- announced internally on the eve of Google's blowout first-quarter earnings report -- targeted members of Google's "core" team, which works on the "technical foundation behind the company's flagship products" as well as the online safety of users and its global IT infrastructure, according to its website.

At least 50 of the roles were based at Google's headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. Google is expected to hire replacement workers for the roles in Mexico and India, CNBC reported, citing a review of internal documents.

"Announcements of this sort may leave many of you feeling uncertain or frustrated," Asim Husain, vice president of Google Developer Ecosystem said in an email to staffers last week announcing the cuts, according to CNBC.

But... Google's AI was such a smash success!

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 03:28 PM | Comments (439) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The American Public Has the Right to Know, "Did the President Shit Himself, and When Did He Know He Shit Himself?"

I used to make poopies the size of Buicks, my word as a Biden.

My bowel movement was voted to the All State Bowel Movement Team, I'm not joking.

I almost went to Annapolis to join their Shit In The Pants squad on a free ride scholarship, but they had a guy there, you might have heard of him, named Roger Staubach. He could crap like a choir of angels, I'm serious, this is a fact, you can look it up.

From Matt Vespa.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:35 PM | Comments (389) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Maxine Waters: I'm Demanding the Already-Weaponized DOJ Investigate Trump For the Violence He Has Planned for the Future In Case He Loses the Election

Don't worry, you lunatic moron. He won't lose. So you'll be safe. Ish.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 01:25 PM | Comments (393) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Columbia Cancels Graduation Commencement Ceremony;
George Washington U Students Sentence School Administrators to DEATH

The graduation's off at Columbia.

Columbia University canceled its main commencement ceremony but will still go ahead with smaller-scale graduations, the school said Monday, after weeks of pro-Palestinian demonstrations disrupted campus.

The ceremony, which was scheduled for May 15, has taken place outdoors on its New York City campus where students had set up a pro-Palestinian encampment that was taken down by police last week.

The protests over the Israel-Hamas war that have swept campuses nationwide have prompted university administrators to rethink commencement plans with a goal of protecting students and guests from potentially ugly and violent political disputes. Concerns about security were one of the main reasons why Columbia decided to cancel the larger commencement ceremony, a person familiar with the matter said.

Artem Ilyanok, a senior at Columbia who wasn't part of the protests, said this is the second graduation he will miss out on, after his high school canceled its in-person 2020 graduation due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

"I am very disappointed to once again be deprived of a typical graduation experience," said the 22-year-old history major.

What a shame that a small minority of good students has to have their fun spoiled by the vast majority of amoral, feral future Welfare Earners of America.

Meanwhile, GWU "students," and I use that term reluctantly, are trying school administrators in absentia and sentencing them to be hanged or beheaded.

As students call for the death of school administrators and trustees, D.C. law enforcement officials and the Mayor have denied George Washington University's request for the police to clear out the encampment that has taken over their campus.

The Jacobins and the Sans Coulottes are working themselves up to recapitulate The Terror, and the people in charge of our Nation's Capitol just smile and wave.

So, when's the New Helter Skelter Massacre coming?

Stu
@thestustustudio

At the George Washington University Gaza Solidarity Encampment today, the protesters held a "People's Tribunal" where they put President Ellen Granberg, Provost Christopher Bracey, the Board of Trustees, @GWPolice
, and many others on trial.

Is it normal for students to want to hang their provost and chop the heads off of the Board of Trustees?

"Guillotine, Guillotine, Guillotine, Guillotine"

"Bracey, Bracey, we see you. You assault students too. Off to the motherfucking gallows with you."

"As you already know where I am sending her [to the guillotine], her and her fuckass bob."

When will @GWtweets finally do something? If the students hurt any of these people in any way, the university will be completely at fault.

Update: I missed something very important -- while the university has asked the police to clear out the illegal encampments, the DC Police, controlled by leftwing radical Muriel Bowser, are refusing to do their job.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 12:17 PM | Comments (413) | Trackbacks (Suck)

THE MORNING RANT: Partitioning Baton Rouge & the Importance of Dissolving Old Political Boundaries

There is an important story out of Louisiana that may seem like a just a local story, but it could also prove to have significance as the first victory in a necessary national movement to break up old political boundaries that harbor failed municipal governments.

After a long battle spanning more than a decade, a section of East Baton Rouge Parish has successfully seceded from the Baton Rouge city/county consolidated government. The new city of St. George, Louisiana has been born.

“A new City of St. George: How a major Louisiana Supreme Court ruling could change Baton Rouge”

The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled Friday to allow the City of St. George to move forward with plans to incorporate, a monumental decision for Baton Rouge and possibly the end to a decade-long battle over the creation of the new city.

The new City of St. George will include at least 86,000 residents across a 60-square-mile area in the southeast corner of East Baton Rouge Parish, making it one of the largest cities in the state — on par with Lake Charles and Kenner.

There are generally two hallmarks of failed cities – rampant crime and failed schools. Baton Rouge is renowned for both. The St. George movement didn’t even start out as an effort to form a new city, it was about trying to create a new school district independent of the dysfunctional Baton Rouge schools.

The St. George movement had preceded that election by a decade — it originally started as a push to create a separate, independent school district before evolving over the years into a full-fledged campaign for a new city.

There are bubbling municipal secession movements across the country, from Buckhead in Atlanta to Lost Creek in Austin as well as efforts by conservative counties to secede from blue states such as California. May the victory in Baton Rouge provide encouragement that the battle may be long, but it can be won.

Few people expect local government to be free of corruption and graft, but in exchange for an often-corrupt political machine, the expectation for local government had always been that it would effectively provide essential city services and maintain civil order. In the most recent Cut Jib Newsletter podcast, Michael Walsh, JJ Sefton, and CBD discussed the concept of “honest graft” as it applied to the Tammany Hall era of New York City. It was terribly corrupt, but it also provided policing and functioning schools, and it generally maintained civil order.

Unfortunately, Tammany-type Democrats in cities across America have been replaced by Pol Pot Democrats who seek to destroy the old order, embracing crime and lawlessness as tools in their vision of re-organizing society. Where working class residents were once the most important constituents, modern blue-city leaders have ditched the working class in favor of criminals and illegal aliens.

About a year ago I wrote a piece titled, When States & Municipalities Fail, Let’s Break Them Up [Buck Throckmorton – 6/19/2023] discussing how the bankruptcy of the city of Milwaukee, and the imminent bankruptcy of the state of Illinois present opportunities to dissolve those failed entities.

Milwaukee is a failed city that cannot pay its bills. Regrettably, the Republican-controlled legislature in Wisconsin is simply going to bail the city out, rather than letting it actually go bankrupt. Any bailout that keeps municipal services operating should also terminate the city as it is currently incorporated, because Milwaukee has proved it is not capable of self-governance.

Circling back to Milwaukee, I don’t know if it has neighborhoods that wish they could de-annex, but my experience is that in most any city, there are neighborhoods that were annexed against their will which wish to be free of the taxes and pathologies of the leftist municipal government that now holds control over them.

Here is an idea that is not originally mine, but it’s a good one. How about dissolving the failed state of Illinois and making it a territory? Or perhaps putting Chicago in federal receivership, making it similar to Guam as an unincorporated territory of the United States, and allowing the downstate counties to be annexed by neighboring states?

Boundaries and borders have always changed. Look at the video below to see how state boundaries have changed in this country since its birth. There is nothing sacrosanct about the current map that it must remain unchanged in perpetuity. In fact, it cannot stay unchanged. History tells us that. City boundaries are going to change. State borders are going to change. The ideal should be that they change in a peaceful manner.

Let Baton Rouge / St. George be the first of many dissolutions of political entities that are in need of a cartographical divorce.

Which city is next? How about Austin? It would be a prime candidate for partition/dissolution because it is currently engaged in an insurrection against the state of Texas, having declared itself a “sanctuary city” in order to protect the ghouls who are medically preying on children in the ongoing transgender social contagion. The City of Austin is in open rebellion against state law.

Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM | Comments (313) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

The Dream of Saint Helena
Paolo Veronese

["Woild the f*cking cherubs please shut up! They're giving me a headache!]

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (297) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 5/6/24

Good morning, kids. Yesterday was "Yom Ha'Shoah," or Holocaust Remembrance Day. Considering the times in which we live and what's going on not only in Israel but all over the world and right here in our own country, the timing is perfect.

The Einzatz-groupies who mindlessly ululate with orgasmic glee at the events of October 7th, the largest, and most heinous single-day mass slaughter of Jews since 1945 also remember the Holocaust – with a yearning wistfulness. They want to finish the job that Hitler started, which is kind of funny since their brainwashers alternate between declaring that as their singular purpose in life and the notion that the Holocaust is a myth or an exaggeration. Then they flip back again, equating Israel with Hitler insofar as committing genocide against the mythical "Palestinian" people, who somehow since 2005, when Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, have managed to triple their population. If that's genocide, then Bibi, old boy, you're not doing it right.

Speaking of genocide, despite Joey Sponge-Brain Shits-Pants doing everything he can to help Hamas pull out a win by forcing Israel to cease fire while at the same time trying to fake his support for Israel's right to exist, and thereby keep his coalition of the unbalanced intact this November, just the opposite appears to be happening. The Maoist/Muslim base has pulled a Trump and tarred Biden with the moniker of "Genocide Joe" as they feel he isn't doing enough and fast enough to throw Israel into the gas chamber. When another Foggy Bottom bottom dweller quits after being in that sewer of America- and Israel-hate – that's 18 years as an insider to the duplicitousness and desire to see us and our allies laid prostrate before our enemies yet still can't recognize Biden's and Blinken's fakery for the bullshit that it is – then the junta is for sure in trouble.

At the other end of the spectrum, the explosion of verbal and physical attacks on Jews and their supporters, have opened the eyes of perhaps a fairly significant number of independents (if such an animal really exists these days) and the relatively sane among traditional liberal Democrats as to just who they've been supporting, actively or just reflexively, for so many years. The images of 10/7 and now on campuses across the nation are the icing on the cake of the past three years of abject destruction that has affected them directly and personally.

Somehow, the wires got crossed and the wrong groups are reacting the wrong way to the wrong message. Perfect.

Yet, they still persist.

Hamas fired rockets close to civilian shelters, aimed a maximizing casualties in case an Israeli response. “The launches carried out by Hamas adjacent to the Rafah Crossing, located approximately 350 meters from civilian shelters, are a clear example of the terrorist organization’s systematic exploitation of humanitarian facilities and spaces, and their continued use of the Gazan civilian population as human shields,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in press release Sunday afternoon.

Hamas proudly took responsibility for attacking the humanitarian border crossing. Israel was forced to close the passage of aid trucks following the strikes, the IDF confirmed.

The rockets were fired from the terrorist stronghold of Rafah, an area Israeli military plans to evacuate in case of a possible military operation to free the remaining hostages. In recent days, Hamas terrorists have repeatedly used Rafah’s civilian areas to fire rockets towards Israel. . .

. . . The rocket barrage comes days after the Biden [junta] reportedly ‘guaranteed’ Hamas that Israel will not enter Rafah and end all military operations if the terrorist group agrees to the latest hostages-for-terrorists deal.

The Israeli government rejected the Biden [junta's] unilateral guarantee to abandon the military mission to capture Rafah, where Hamas’s terrorist leaderships is hiding behind Israeli hostages serving as human shields.

You know how Biden can guarantee the IDF will not go into Rafah? Because they're halting shipments of munitions and materiel that the IDF needs at this crucial juncture.

The Biden [junta] last week halted an ammunition shipment to Israel in a bid to pressure the IDF into abandoning the planned operation in Rafah, Israeli journalist Barak Ravid reported in the new website Axios Sunday. The revelation comes as Israel’s military offensive against Hamas enters its seventh month. Israel, a key U.S. ally, relies of American-made weapons, ammunition and spare parts for its armed forces.

"Genocide Joe" alright. Too bad the micturating matriculating Muslim mavens at Columbia, UCLA and elsewhere don't understand who Biden is "genociding" or wanting to. My gut tells me that Israel indeed has what it needs to finish the job, and will likely be able to get what it needs to fill in any shortfalls from the Saudis or Emiratis.

Speaking of which, Biden over the past several years has gone off on the Saudis, mostly for their cutting oil production at a time when he needs their oil to keep our dying economy from flatlining before the election, after kneecapping our own production to appease the red-green enviro-commies before the election. I'm sensing a pattern here.

Have no fear; he's got this covered. Ho. Lee. Farouk . . .

After draining the strategic petroleum reserve ahead of the midterms, Biden has been unable to refill it because his environmentalist allies and the Saudis have kept prices high. The Saudis had rejected requests to lower oil prices for anything short of assistance in building their own nuclear program. Shortly before the Hamas attacks of Oct 7, the Saudis had offered to temporarily boost production if it would make it easier to sell Congress on a defense agreement.

Back then the Saudi deal had been portrayed as an extension of the ‘Abraham Accords’ and offered ‘normalization’ of diplomatic ties with Israel. Whether the Saudis were ever serious about normalization is debatable but since Oct 7, any such agreement has been conditioned on an internationally recognized.Islamic terrorist ‘Palestinian’ state affiliated with Saudi Arabia.

The current expectation is that a deal between Biden and the Saudis will drop the Israeli component and focus on a defense agreement and nuclear power in exchange for cheap oil. Whether Israel is or isn’t on board, a Saudi nuclear agreement is a bad deal for America.

The United States is more than capable of producing its own oil. The only obstacle in the way of American energy independence is Joe Biden and his party who are determined to push ‘green energy’ that only makes us equally dependent on Muslim terror states and Communist China.

Nuclear energy could help solve our energy problems, but the Saudis, who are the world’s largest oil producers, certainly don’t need to go nuclear to fix any energy shortfalls. Nor do they care about the environment. A civilian nuclear energy program makes about as much sense for Saudi Arabia as it does for Iran. And the only reasonable argument for enabling the Saudis to go nuclear would be to counter Iran’s nuclear weapons program, but rather than averting a nuclear attack, that could double the risk and the possible vectors for nuclear armageddon.

The trouble with letting either Iran or the Saudis go nuclear is not just the direct nuclear threat, but the indirect one that will come from Islamic terrorists getting their hands on either nuclear weapons or materials. Saudi Arabia has made some progress under the MBS monarchy, including allowing women greater rights and backing away from some of the terrorist groups and movements that the kingdom has traditionally supported, and even purged some of the old guard who oversaw the Jihadi war against America (this led to Jamal Khashoggi’s death). . .

. . . Biden is proposing to swap nuclear capabilities in exchange for the Saudis providing cheap oil for his election. The Saudis have made it clear that they can’t offer long term price guarantees which means they’d be doing little more than providing a temporary market fix long enough to get a presidential candidate his second term in in office.

After all the talk of impeachable quid-pro-quos, here’s one that could get millions killed.

Nuclear materials in the hands of Islamic terrorists is the ultimate nightmare and Biden is risking mass death, the destruction of entire American cities, in exchange for an election day bribe. . .

. . . By emptying the strategic petroleum reserve to bribe midterm voters, Biden already dangerously endangered our economy and our national security. The cost of his illegal student loan debt bribes is already approaching an estimated $1 trillion and that may just be the beginning.

But there’s a big difference between stealing money to bribe voters and making a deal with an enemy nation that can cost the lives of millions. One is corruption while the other is treason.

I'm no Perry Mason, but I can make an argument that considering the intentional erasure of our borders and the flooding of our nation with 8 million and counting foreigners, among them thousands of hardened criminals, spies and saboteurs from our strategic enemies and worst of all confirmed jihadists, Biden indeed is guilty of treason right there. Already, the mass crime wave that has seen our citizens brutally raped and murdered makes Biden guilty before and after the fact in each one of those crimes, that taken together is a treasonous breach of his Constitutional oath. Yeah, I know. Go tell it to the Marines. Meh, they're under the control of Vanilli Milley and Lloyd Austin.

Great. Give the Saudis nukes, at a time when MBS' rule is perhaps not as stable as we might assume given the Wahhabists in his midst and the threat from the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.

Meanwhile, here's something that I know will come as a huge surprise:

Two of the main organizers behind protests at Columbia University and on other campuses are Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. Both are supported by the Tides Foundation, which is seeded by Democratic megadonor George Soros as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and it in turn supports numerous small nonprofits that work for social change. (Gates did not return a request for comment, and Soros declined to comment.)

Another notable Democratic donor whose philanthropy has helped fund the protest movement is David Rockefeller Jr., who sits on the board of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. In 2022, the fund gave $300,000 to the Tides Foundation; according to nonprofit tax forms, Tides has given nearly $500,000 over the past five years to Jewish Voice for Peace, which explicitly describes itself as anti-Zionist.

Several other groups involved in pro-Palestinian protests are backed by a foundation funded by Susan and Nick Pritzker, heir to the Hyatt Hotel empire — and supporters of Biden and numerous Democratic campaigns, including $6,600 to the Biden Victory Fund a few months ago and more than $300,000 during the 2020 campaign.

I saw Soros, Gates, Rockefeller and Pritzker open for The Fourth Reich at the Sportpalast in '45. Lots of hormonal Einsatz-groupies kept shrieking and spoiled the show. PLO terror towels are the new bobby sox.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
• "The ordinary person’s passivity in the face of the criminal and civil attacks on Donald Trump suggests that Americans think we’re already there."
  Has Leftist Lawfare Created the Police State Yet?
  
• "Science journalism surrenders to progressive ideology."
  Unscientific American
  
• Victor Davis Hanson: "The one-eyed Jack American Left has been flipped over, and what turned up proved frightening."
  The End of Old Left-Wing Mythologies
  
• Miranda Devine: "It is a manifestation of the growing political divide between men and women that has been evident in opinion polls for some time. There is a 10-point gap on most issues between men and women. Young unmarried women, in particular, skew very left, while young men are becoming markedly more conservative."
  Frat Boy Summer is This Year's Backlash Against an Epidemic of Arrogant, Entitled Women
  
• " It would behoove us all for the world to recognize what this holiday of Remembrance of the Holocaust and for Strength is about. The world must come to its senses before we see the descendants of the Maccabees and Warsaw Ghetto forced to act in ways reminiscent of their ancestors."
  A Jewish Holiday About Strength, Not Victimhood

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:39 AM | Comments (322) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 6 May 2024

Top Story

• With its player community up in arms and its reputation on fire - with 200,000 negative reviews landing in just three days - Sony has decided maybe Helldivers players on Windows don't need a PlayStation Network account after all. (MSN)
  
  This comes a day after the game was removed from sale on Steam in 177 countries and dependencies because the PlayStation Network was not available there.
  
  Which also goes to show how widely available Steam is. They don't care if you live in the Aland Islands or Andorra or Antarctica, if your credit card works you're in.
  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:42 AM | Comments (152) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Overnight Open Thread (5/5/24)

*****

The Quote of The Day

Quote I

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Jesus Christ, Matthew 6:34

*****

The best comments on the webz can be found here at AoS.

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 10:13 PM | Comments (505) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gun Thread: The Five-O of de May-O 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 May? As I predicted last week, May was just around the corner, and well dang if it didn't come true!

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 (320) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Food Thread: Cake...The Final Frontier

Great cake...does it exist? Sure, but I think the topic is a bit more complicated than just throwing a ton of chocolate and frosting in and hoping it all works out. And even the frosting gets a little weird. Too many are just sugar bombs that feel like they are are rotting one's teeth with the first bite. And frosting hides a multitude of sins, most egregious being dry cake. Except it doesn't really hide that dusty, crumbly, sort-of-gross mouthfeel that a dry cake gives.

Oh, and another thing...don't use the same frosting in the layers as on the outside! I want some contrast, damn it! In fact, some of the best cakes I have ever eaten had a tart fruit based filling between the layers, which I think works perfectly with the sweeter frosting.

But not too sweet! Do I have to repeat myself again? And that's quite a trick, because frosting is sugar. But some bakers know how to do it, and that is a truly impressive thing. When the filling is delicious and the frosting is interesting but not too sweet and the cake is moist and flavorful, then that means that the stars have aligned and all is right in the world...at least for a few minutes.

Yeah...cake is complicated. There is a reason why great cake bakers are in demand.

Posted by: CBD at 04:00 PM | Comments (251) | Trackbacks (Suck)

First-World Problems...

What the hell? I open a box of chocolates (Sees Candy) and I see this? What has happened to American pride? What happened to our industrial base that a box of chocolates (dark chocolates with mostly caramels...of course) can slip past supposedly rigorous quality control and reveal a 180 degree catastrophe?

I guess I'll have to return the entire box.

Posted by: CBD at 01:59 PM | Comments (280) | Trackbacks (Suck)

You'll Buy Our Products And You Will Like Them!

The modern fascistic American corporation is perfectly content to shove crap products nobody wants down our throats.

Except...eventually consumers say...NO!

Plant-based meat sales down in US as customers dislike taste, price: report

Data showed that while those who bought plant-based substitutes in previous years continued to do so, companies failed to entice new customers.

According to GFI, unit sales were down 9 percent in 2023 while dollar sales fell by 2 percent. As a result, the plant-based food market in the US went from being worth $8.2 billion the year before to $8.1 billion.

Well, actually, it's clear that existing customers are leaving too! Factor in inflation, and it's even uglier than at first glance.

This pattern holds true with all sorts of businesses, including the sacrament of The Sustainable Organic Church of The Carbon Apocalypse...the electric vehicle. The business plan is embarrassingly simplistic, and consumers aren't going along with it.

But look at other businesses that push crap we don't want. Lingerie for morbidly obese women? Shaving cream for transsexuals? mRNA-based vaccines that are a health crisis in waiting? Lesbian Studies degrees from 3rd tier colleges?

These products are going the way of the Dodo, and it couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of lickspittle wanna-be fascists.

Posted by: CBD at 12:00 PM | Comments (259) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Morning Book Thread - 05-05-2024 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

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 (HT: Dash my lace wigs). 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...(Axeman's "pouncing 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 (340) | Trackbacks (Suck)

EMT 5/5/24

Happy Sunday.

Posted by: krakatoa at 06:54 AM | Comments (170) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 5 May 2024

Top Story

• The US government has mandated automatic emergency braking in all new cars sold starting 2029. (Car and Driver)
  
  This could save 360 lives a year, claims the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, almost as many as are killed by beavers and bathtub accidents combined.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (58) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Overnight Open Thread (5/4/24)

*****

THE SATURDAY NIGHT JOKE

The mother-in-law comes home and finds her son-in-law furious and packing his suitcase. "What happened?"

"What happened? I'll tell you what happened! I sent an email to my wife saying that I was coming home from my trip today. I got home and guess what I found? My wife, yes my Rachel, with a naked guy in our marital bed! This is the end of our marriage, I will leave forever!"

"Calm down!" says mother-in-law. "There is something odd about this story. Rachel would never do such a thing! Wait a minute while I check what happened."

Moments later, mother-in-law comes back with a big smile. "You see, I said there must be a simple explanation. Rachel didn't receive your Email." (H/T Isophorone Blog)

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 09:59 PM | Comments (545) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Evening Movie Thread 05/04/2024 [TheJamesMadison]

Robert E. Howard

Six films have the credit of some variation of "Based on the works of Robert E. Howard," and I watched all of them a few weeks back. It all started when I got the 4K collector's set of the first two Conan the Barbarian films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger from Arrow Video (they're very nice). I expanded it to include the other four, and as I was going through them, I had the recurring thought that I would write a post about them. However, the only thing that kept attracting my attention was the idea of the films as adaptations of Howard's writing. The problem was that I hadn't read a Conan story in about a decade, and I'd never read any of the Kull the Atlantean or Solomon Kane stories.

So, I read all of them. Well, all of the stories that Howard published in his lifetime. I wasn't going to go down the rabbit hole of the fragments, recreations, and adaptations in other mediums (mostly the Marvel comic books). This also meant that I could thoroughly ignore Red Sonja since the character as presented in the film is actually a creation of Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith in a Marvel comic, sort of inspired by a character named Red Sonya by Howard who didn't appear in the Hyborian Age.

The question then becomes, which is the most accurate? Is accuracy the real goal of this kind of exercise? Is Howard the kind of writer to be slavishly accurate to when adapting to a vastly different medium from short stories and novellas into feature film?

And, just to be clear, the five films discussed will be: Conan the Barbarian from 1982, directed by John Milius, Conan the Destroyer from 1984, directed by Richard Fleischer, Kull the Conqueror from 1997, directed by John Nicolella, Solomon Kane from 2009, directed by M.J. Bassett, and Conan the Barbarian from 2011, directed by Marcus Nispel.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:45 PM | Comments (323) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Weekend Hobby Thread (5/4/24) Authored TRex

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Welcome hobbyists. Do not adjust your interweb. A spin of the Ace of Spades “wheel of hobbies” has come up with tools. In this case, “tools” refers to implements of hobbying rather than people who are annoying.

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 05:30 PM | Comments (271) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, May 4

Saw this and I chuckled.

As a male dog owner, I appreciate it very much.
Misanthropic Humanitarian

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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 03:19 PM | Comments (97) | Trackbacks (Suck)