Ace: aceofspadeshq at gee mail.com
Buck: buck.throckmorton at protonmail.com
CBD: cbd at cutjibnewsletter.com
joe mannix: mannix2024 at proton.me
MisHum: petmorons at gee mail.com
J.J. Sefton: sefton at cutjibnewsletter.com
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published.
Contact OrangeEnt for info: maildrop62 at proton dot me
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 First February Edition? Show of hands - who is already sick of winter? I know that I am. I do not think we have been above freezing here for two weeks, and it's becoming annoying.
With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?
So what are you doing fundamentals-wise to keep in practice? Going to an indoor range? Practicing dry fire at home? Skills are perishable, so it's probably a good idea to do something during the off season. Please let us know how you're staying sharp in the comments.
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$700 vs. $2,000 AR
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CMP - Philippine Return Garands
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44 Magnum
Six rounds in 1 second with our pal 'Jer'!
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Whoopsie-Doodle!
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Ax Weasel
Q: Weasel, what is life like on a modern farm?
A: See below
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Our Pal Frequency Modulation
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FSJ and Gertie Protest Winter
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Highway Patrol!
This week's episode: Desert Town
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War Between The Planets!
Holy Crap!
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Cigar of the Week
This week our pal rhomboid scores again with this excellent review of the La Palina Red Label
A "cedar" note is one of the most common flavor elements described for premium cigars. With good reason, it's a feature of many. But like most flavor notes, it usually eludes me. Finally I came across a stick where the cedar is clear and predominant. The La Palina Red Label is a nice looking medium brown cigar with an Ecuadorean sun grown wrapper around Nicaragua and Dominican fillers. Draw on these toros I smoked was perfect. Body was definitely medium, very smooth. Lots of smoke, burn line didn't require constant management.
Cedar predominated throughout for me. Many reviewers find nuttiness and spice as well - I'd say subtle elements of those probably added to the overall flavor at various points. A nice thing about the Red Label is the cost. Definitely a good value proposition, with this quality. These toros can be found online for $4.50 and up, just above a bundle style price but well below most cigar prices these days, which seem finally to have jumped a bit after holding fairly steady through our recent, ruinous Inflation-o-rama.
Excellent, rhomboid! Thank you!
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Here are some different online cigar vendors. You will find they not only carry different brands and different lines from those brands, but also varying selections of vitolas (sizes/shapes) of given lines. It's good to have options, especially if you're looking for a specific cigar.
A note about sources. The brick & mortar/online divide exists with cigars, as with guns, and most consumer products, with respect to price. As with guns - since both are "persecuted industries", basically - I make a conscious effort to source at least some of my cigars from my local store(s). It's a small thing, but the brick & mortar segment for both guns and tobacco are precious, and worth supporting where you can. And if you're lucky enough to have a good cigar store/lounge available, they're often a good social event with many dangerous people of the sort who own scary gunz, or read smart military blogs like this one. -rhomboid
Anyone have others to include? Perhaps a small local roller who makes a cigar you like? Send me your recommendation and a link to the site!
Please note the new and improved protonmail account gunthread at protonmail dot com. An informal Gun Thread archive can be found HERE. Future expansion plans are in the works for the site Weasel Gun Thread. If you have a question you would like to ask Gun Thread Staff offline, just send us a note and we'll do our best to answer. If you care to share the story of your favorite firearm, send a picture with your nic and tell us what you sadly lost in the tragic canoe accident. If you would like to remain completely anonymous, just say so. Lurkers are always welcome!
That's it for this week - have you been to the range?
Food Thread: Bourbon, Cornbread, And Bacon, The Three Legs Of The American Meal
—CBD
Commenter "Pete Bog" poses the question: "Too much bacon?"
After I moved past the embarrassment of the question...the answer is obviously, "not enough."
In fact, it is an even more flawed question, because the bacon in the photo is homemade bacon, made from a 4H pig, which was no doubt lovingly raised by a very motivated teenager. Pete Bog, aside from his Paella-stirring blindness, is no slouch in the kitchen, and has embraced the real (not virtue-signaling) concept of "Farm To Table" and "Nose To Tail!"
Obviously not all of us have access to 4H pigs, but trying to keep the food we eat as close to the source as possible is a fine goal. Bags of chopped vegetables, containers of cut fruit, supermarket-roasted chickens, and even more processed foods are undoubtedly convenient, but they are often more expensive, expose us to food-borne illness at a higher rate than our home kitchens, and remove us from the elemental joys of preparing our own food from start to finish.
One of the things that has convinced me of the virtue-signaling silliness of most of the current food craze is the plethora of (____) milks. Show me the nipples on an almond or an oat, and I will accept them as real. But a glance at the ingredients of these ultra-processed foods should convince you of the silliness of their positions as natural replacements for evil cow milk.
But back to bacon! Even store-bought mass market bacon is tasty. I don't recall ever having bad bacon, unless it was under-cooked or burned beyond recognition. But there is a big difference between Safeway bacon and a well-made bacon or homemade. Yes, you can spend a ton of money...try Neuske's if you have some extra cash, but Costco thick-sliced bacon is quite good! Certainly better than generic supermarket bacon, and it is less expensive to boot.
The rambling point is; We can eat well and healthfully without breaking the bank, as long as we pay a bit of attention to what we start with. And that isn't necessarily more time consuming! The undeniable bonus is that it is often fun and satisfying!
Yum! Lovely, complex, with some nicely balanced sweetness, and a bit of vanilla and butterscotch. And the alcohol is perfectly in balance! It is 129 proof, and it drinks like a 100 proof bourbon.
Sadly, it is north of $60, but if you are going to splurge on a bourbon, this is a strong candidate.
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My experiment with bacon/buttermilk cornbread from last week was interesting, but unsuccessful. This week I was kicked off cornbread duty, and to my everlasting disgust and disappointment, last night's version was excellent! A bit too sweet for my taste, but it was delicious nonetheless. Honey Butter Cornbread is a keeper!
Pre-cooked pasta? Hell, even nurse ratched can cook pasta!
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I love the crap that pizzerias make to use up their extra dough. Garlic Knots are sort of disgusting, but damn, they are also delicious. I use more garlic and also dip them in olive oil, because why the hell knot?
I have a cold from hell, I will be in and out. Please play responsibly, and don't leave the rice out on the counter overnight.
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A friend graciously gave me some genuine grown-in-the-USA garlic, and I tasted one clove and planted the rest, because my pathetic failure last year is an anomaly...right? I hope so, because it's in the ground (actually, a large pot), and it had better work this time!
Send all of your extra antelope to: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com.
Rumor has it that the Bourbon Bubble is bursting. I have seen no evidence of decreasing prices, but maybe the bursting started somewhere else! I think the sweet spot is $40-$60 for excellent and interesting bottles, and bumping that to $100 gets you an incremental improvement in quality, but nothing mind-blowing. More than that and I think you are paying for hype and rarity, which may look good in your liquor cabinet, but doesn't translate to more quality in the bottle.
The problem...or the solution...is to buy lots of bourbon, take tasting notes, and eventually arrive at your favorites! It should take forty or fifty years, but it is worth it!
For some unfathomable, deeply anti-freedom reason, lip balm tubes always advance the lip balm into the top while resting in my pocket, rather than it being a random thing...sometimes advancing and sometimes retracting. And of course the balm nestles into the top and then breaks off from the rest, and there we have it...the crisis of the lip. Should I use my little finger to try to dig it out? Advance the remaining balm in hopes that it will adhere to the separated balm and then...impossibly...retract whole back into the body of the dispenser?
It is obviously a vast conspiracy between Big Lip and Big Balm, and the engineers who designed this one-way screw mechanism should be arrested, tried, and executed.
As The UK Circles The Drain, The Labour Party Resorts To -- You Already Know The Answer -- Demagoguery
—CBD
Never mind that the Reform candidate is stating the obvious, that what he is saying is objectively true. The existential crisis that the UK finds itself in is almost entirely the result of catastrophically poor decisions made during the dissolution of the empire, when they welcomed their former subjects into England, assuming that they would continue on the path to 1st world civilized behavior, culture, and morals. Then, to make it even worse, they began to import cheap labor from the 3rd world because, frankly, they were too stupid to cultivate home-grown labor, and needed the endless expansion of the welfare state to continue.
“Goodwin has claimed non-white people cannot truly be English. He said if we'd listened to Tommy Robinson and the English Defence League, we would have ‘avoided some of the problems’ we face today.
“He complained about our civilisation being ‘drained away’ by ‘people from inferior cultures’. He's even suggested women should be told when they should have children.
“This isn't mainstream politics. It's extreme – and Reform chose Goodwin deliberately to drive a wedge between voters.”
The United Kingdom is unrecognizable, and it is trending toward 2nd world status. In London, White Britons are no longer the majority, and a trip on the Tube suggests that English is not the most popular language in the city!
Vast swaths of the country have been taken over by immigrants from the UK's former colonies, and they brought the worst of their countries without embracing the best of British culture. Add in a healthy dose of illegal immigration, and the former jewel of the civilized world is a few generations from losing its position in Western culture, and entering the miasma of the developing world.
But Labour, as it has always done, is fanatical about splitting away immigrants from any sense of patriotism or love of country that may develop, and continues to either demonize traditional Britons or push them farther into the vicious cycle of welfare dependence.
How this shakes out in 2029 when Britain goes to the polls again is hard to predict, but if Britain does not arrest the multicultural catastrophe that is its current domestic politics, then it is lost. The current trend of an ascendant Reform party is full of risk for both the Conservative Party, which has plummeted to practically minor-party status, and for Labour, which may lose not only its absolute majority in Parliament today, but may become a minority party.
But the election is three and a half years away, and that is an eternity in parliamentary politics. It is possible, but not likely, that the prime minister will call an election earlier, simply to protect as many seats as possible . He would lose his position, and it is distinctly possible that Reform would win. But to avoid a catastrophe in 2029, that may be the best choice.
Of course the Labour party is busily trying to lock in its gains, and the destruction of free speech, the resistance to any controls over the border, and the expansion of the welfare state may well cement their gains of last year. That would be the end of "Great" Britain, but that is a cost they are happy to pay to retain power!
Good morning, ‘rons and ‘ronettes. It’s time once again for the semi-regular MP4-hosted Sunday Book Thread. Dress is country club casual, but hats for ladies are required, such as this:
So ask the barman for an Old Fashioned, covfefe or tea and let’s get started!
Today’s opening topic is a two parter:
First Book: I suspect most of you are like me, in that you can’t remember a time when you couldn’t read. My grandparents had a separate room that held not just their own books, but ones that my mother and aunt had read during college. There was the usual 1960s crap like The Organization Man and The Feminine Mystique, but also wonderful ones that have stayed with me to this day. The first books I can distinctly remember reading were Lewis Carroll’s Alice books and – oddly – Nineteen Eighty-Four. Both had me hooked from the start; Carroll not so much for the story or wordplay, but for Sir John Tenniel’s illustrations, which made Victorian fashion my go-to ever since. And as far as Orwell, who could stop reading after his opening sentence, It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen? I couldn’t understand the machinations of the Party and the constriction of Newspeak, but as I got older, the book became ever more chilling and so much closer to reality.
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Books That Changed My Life: Two other books I discovered fairly early in my reading life were the Victorian-era erotica Venus in Furs and A Man with a Maid, which, I suppose, could be considered books that changed my life, since they’ve colored my views of and relationships with women ever since puberty. I’d be less than honest if I didn’t admit that.
But the book that I can truly say changed my life was one that I mentioned a few weeks ago: Donald Rumbelow’s The Complete Jack the Ripper. I knew nothing about the case when I first saw it – in fact, my first reaction was, “how can there be an entire book about Jack the Ripper?” – but after reading it, I delved deeply into the world of the Whitechapel Murders, eventually corresponding with and meeting some of the most respected names in true-crime writing, editing a magazine about the murders and the world of 1888, as well as writing a reference book and penning a to-this-day regular column in the specialist magazine Ripperology. It was after I finished my JtR book that I looked around for another subject, thought about tackling the idea of a silent film mystery with Theda Bara as an amateur detective. . .and here I am, with two Bara novels under my belt and a third on the way.
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What about you? Do you remember the first book you ever read? What book, if any, changed your life and made you who you are today?
He explained that the real story is that Nvidia is not going to invest $100 billion in OpenAI:
"Sam is closing the round (of investment) and we will absolutely be involved," Huang added. "We will invest a great deal of money, probably the largest investment we've ever made."
Asked whether it would be over $100 billion, he said: "No, no, nothing like that."
So there you have it. Nvidia will absolutely definitively be going ahead with investing some amount in some company at some point maybe.
Saturday Night Club ONT - January 31, 2026 [Double Vision]
—Open Blogger
Welcome to Club ONT - Seeing double? D and D? This is a collaboration of The Disco and The Dino.
The parking lot may still not be fully cleared from last weekend's snow storm, but we are full open for both business and fun! Don't let the lyrics to tonight's mystery click give you any ideas about our guests there on that table. They are friends, not food!
And on the first day of creation, God created the cat.
On the second day, God created man to serve the cat.
On the third day, Gold created tuna, mice and all the animals of the earth to serve as potential food for the cat.
On the fourth day, God created honest toil so that man could labor for the good of the cat.
On the fifth day, Gold created the ball of yarn, the feather thingie on a string, and the catnip mouse so that the cat might or might not be amused.
On the sixth day, God created veterinary science to keep the cat healthy and the man broke.
On the seventh day, God tried to rest but the cat woke him up at 5:00am.
Hat tip: Iris
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Late one afternoon, the Airmen out at Area 51 were very surprised to see a Cessna landing at their "secret" base. They immediately impounded the aircraft and hauled the pilot into an interrogation room.
The pilot's story was that he took off from Vegas, got lost, and spotted the base just as he was about to run out of fuel. The Airmen started a full background check on the pilot and held him overnight during the investigation.
By the next day, they were finally convinced that the pilot really was lost and wasn't a spy. They gassed up his airplane, gave him a terrifying "you-did-not-see-a-base" briefing, complete with threats of spending the rest of his life in prison, told him Vegas was that-a-way on such-and-such a heading, and sent him on his way.
The day after that though, to the total disbelief of the Airmen, the same Cessna showed up again. Once again, the MP's surrounded the plane, only this time there were two people in the plane.
The same pilot jumped out and said, "Do anything you want to me, but my wife is in the plane and you have to tell her where I was last night!"
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Drink of the Night
Tonight we drew the 5 of Spades from our deck of playing card cocktails
Even though the word "conch" rhymes with BONK, we won't do that to you if you mispronounce it!
Putting this in the mystery click would have been too easy!
How about a version you've probably never heard?
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Someone say "double"??
Some retro commercials for Doublemint Gum!
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Top 10ish Comments of the Week
Definitely not a Comment of the Week:
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Club ONT Brought to you by...
Dumb and Dumber spinoffs
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Club ONT is a retard free zone. Please leave your retard at home. Know the difference between a retard and a Moron. Please don't pet or feed the iguanas. The iguanas are sensitive to flash photography. That means do not flash them while taking a selfie. You don't want to know what happens!
Perhaps this thread is a continuation of the previous Saturday threads.
Tonight's theme I guess is, Does music bring you joy? If music doesn't bring you joy what does?
Some of you know that I dabble with paints. I find it more than a hobby. It is a passion rather than a hobby. Music brings joy to the studio. And one never knows what will be playing in the background of MisHum Studio. The creative process of painting involves an eclectic mix from Adele to Zappa surging through the speakers.
Lately I have been finding myself on listening binges of various artists. So no boys and girls and everything in between, it's not Frank Zappa here 24/7/365(6).
Tonight's Thread has been brought to you by Playlists & The Maestro, FZ.
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 sea shells.
Best wishes to Morons in the midst of the current weather event. Feel free to check in with weather reports.
As per usual Hobby Thread etiquette, keep this thread limited to hobbying. All (legal) hobbying is welcome. Discussion of current events, religion and politics can elsewhere. Pants are optional. As always, puns are welcome and encouraged.
Play nice. Don't be a troll and do not feed the trolls.
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Let's thing warm thoughts and talk sea shells. Like snowflakes, no two are exactly the same. They fuel the ultimate beach scavenger hunt. No matter how many you have or have seen, there always might be one more gem hidden in plain sight, just waiting to be discovered.
Shells are simply skeletons of animals, the remains of dead organisms. But unlike humans and most other animals, these mollusks, such as snails, clams, oysters and mussels, have an exoskeleton, meaning it's on the outside of their bodies.
The process of making a shell is known as biomineralization. How marine animals build their shells can vary greatly depending on the species, but all of these animals have special tissues to make their shells, just as humans have special tissues to grow and strengthen our bones.
Most marine animals form their shells from calcium carbonate, which is a tough mineral also found in limestone. Some sponges and microorganisms use another compound silica. There is also a group of brachiopods that build shells using calcium phosphate, which we use to build our bones, too.
More than 50,000 mollusk species live today on our planet, and most of them make shells. But each species makes a different shell. This accounts for the huge variety of shapes and sizes in the seashells you find on the beach.
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Shells of Sanibel and Captiva, Florida (click to embiggen):
Living sand dollars are not white. They're usually brown, gray, or even have a purplish tint, with tiny, fuzzy spines covering their bodies.
They're related to starfish and are burrowing sea urchins.
Sand dollars eat using tiny hair-like structures called cilia, which move food particles to their mouth on the bottom side.
They can burrow into the sand to protect themselves from rough waters or predators.
Like tree rings, sand dollars' ages can be determined by counting the growth rings on their exoskeleton.
Sand dollars typically live for 6-10 years.
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Horde hobbying from PA Dutchman:
This is a Type 1 Chi-He medium tank from Fine Molds. Only 170 were built and all were kept on the home islands, mainly Kyushu, in anticipation of Operation Olympic. They were the first Japanese tank to include a radio as standard equipment and a mechanism to raise and lower the gun barrel.
Outstanding!
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Impressive. Pretty amazing that the guy still has all his fingers. I couldn't tell how the threads were added but maybe that's a trade secret.
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Did you miss the Hobby Thread last week? We did an wood carving and tools theme. The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.
Bonus content carryover:
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Notable comments from last week:
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Words of wisdom:
"Because despite all our troubles, when things are grim out in that wide round world of ours, that's when it's really important to have a good hobby." Posted by: tankascribe at June 22, 2024 07:41 PM (HWxAD).
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If you have trouble finding something in the content or comments that resonates with you, contribute your own. Send thoughts, suggestions and photos of your hobbying to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Do mighty things.
Our own Dr _ No has been experimenting with AI. Dogs are good subjects for imagination.
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Cats are also good subjects for imagination.
Courtesy Terry Glenn
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A friend went hiking with a grandchild during a time of medical stress at Wild Burro Trail at Lake Pleasant in Arizona. They met some wild burros.
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Stress relievers. At least on this day.
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Meet The PetMorons
A week after we lost Kroger, we were contacted by a regular client who wanted to rehome their boy because they were expecting their first child. We quickly accepted and a few weeks ago, Domo arrived in the house. He's very sweet and as laid back as any normal Greyhound. Here he is discovering that he has toys at his disposal.
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And as you can see, he's very helpful when it comes to chores like making the bed.
-NR Pax
So sorry you lost Kroger. Glad you got sweet Domo. We can see that you needed help making the bed.
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PetMoron Adjacent Animals
Encountered by Members of The Horde
From By-Tor
Brown Pelicans followed our boat back to the dock, hoping for scraps from the deck hands that were cleaning our fish.
Great photos, as usual!
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Thank you for sharing your pets and animal photos and stories with us today.
If you would like to send pet and/or animal stories, links, etc. for the Ace of Spades Pet Thread, the address is:
petmorons at protonmail dot com
Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known when you comment at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.
In October, we visited Lodz, Poland. Not the best known tourist site, but my father's father was born there, and I've been wanting to visit for a long time. We missed the city's open air botanical garden because of rain, but did make it to the palm house a couple of days later. Under the palms there were some interesting flowering plants, and there was a special collection of hot peppers. The pepper pictured is called Dragon's Breath, and it is rated 2 500 000 units on the Scoville scale. Attached to the palm house, there's also a cactus hothouse and a small, but pleasant, outdoor formal garden.
That's it for the meantime. Hope your winter is going as it should. Here we've had an unseasonably hot fall, and real rains began only a couple of weeks ago, instead of in October. Keep your fingers crossed for us.
Best regards,
Neal
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Dragon's Breath!
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Great photos! Thanks for thinking of us during your interesting trip, even though you had to contend with rain. Good luck with getting some rain back home.
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Gardens of The Horde
From 40 Miles North:
Hi KT, I hope you are doing well. I saw one commenter talking about 'the activity of his Amaryllis.' Does activity means total garden domination? A large part of my garden looks like this:
Would those be true Amaryllis? The pink ones?
The Irises and amaryllis don't typically have leaves at the same time, but this year they do, and the amaryllis are out of control. The grape vine is almost invisible. The fig trees don't even have leaves yet. On the other side of the grapevine, it also looks like this:
On the other side of the yard, the Gaillardia think it's late summer. I guess because it's 75 degrees during the day and 40 degrees at night:
I like it!
Anybody else got growth in their garden?
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Hope everyone has a nice weekend.
If you would like to send photos, stories, links, etc. for the Saturday Gardening Thread, the address is:
ktinthegarden at g mail dot com
Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.
I recently saw a perplexed, sort-of conservative person on social media ask why Trump needed to send all those rough ICE agents to Michigan just because of a few reports of daycare fraud by Nick Shirley. But before Nick Shirley, there was a NYT report blasting Tim Walz about fraud, as well as Chris Rufo pointing out that taxpayer money was ending up in the hands of Somali terrorists.
Why didn't she know this?
Oh. And there was also this LONG written piece before any of the above:
LOOTING, PILLAGING, THEFT, BILLIONS IN
DISBURSEMENTS, ALL ON THE HONOR SYSTEM
We have discussed this piece before, but I don't think we have emphasized the honor system factor, based partly on a previous Norwegian high-trust society which was prominent in Michigan (Ooops - Minnesota - hope it doesn't spread) for a long time.
The specifics of how these fraudulent systems seem to have developed are remarkable. I don't think it's all "cultural differences". I think a lot of it is leftism. Pick an example from this piece and see what you think. In one case, a whistleblower report of fraud was sent back to the ringleader of the fraud for resolution!
So much fraud was reported for so long, and IGNORED for so long.
I haven't verified this (I don't understand Somali). Ilhan would have been about 20 years old at this time. It was before she was elected to Congress.
Nov 6, 2012: Ilhan Omar & MN leaders are on tape arguing Somalis are "nomads" incapable of holding IDs. They explicitly urged a NO vote on Voter ID to protect the "services" and "benefits" their community receives. Verification stops the grift, so they killed the verification. pic.twitter.com/Wl0BcCIGFz
Spain just legalized 500,000 illegal aliens to “defeat the far-right.”
It’s not even a secret anymore. By legalizing 500,000 illegals under the guise of defeating the far-right, Pedro Sánchez is essentially dropping the mask. This is electoral engineering.
There exists a state, a donut hole of existence, where law exists and doesn't exist at the same time.
I think we are watching something in Minneapolis that is amazing and terrifying at the same time.
It appears to me that a strange new form of governance is emerging in modern democracies, especially in America where the strongest protection of individual liberty exists. It is a governing system that exists in a state of perpetual contradiction and it has spread to Washington where Democrats recognize there are actual immigration laws they don’t like, but instead of attacking them and changing them, they want to defund the agency charged with the enforcement of the laws and the removal of those who broke them to stop the law from being enforced. They want to play another round of “Defund the Police” with national security and sovereignty in the balance.
So, law exists but it doesn’t exist because it can’t be enforced.
In this new system, the fundamental legitimacy of democratic processes, elections, legislation, and judicial rulings becomes conditional, subject to acceptance by those affected. If you (and an extreme minority composed of other chaos agents) disagree with an electoral outcome or dislike any passed law (whether newly passed or settled), you can simply declare it invalid, at least for yourself. The social contract that binds citizens to respect democratically enacted rules, even those they oppose, becomes entirely situational and voluntary.
This rejection of authority operates parasitically within the very system it denounces. Those who refuse to accept certain laws simultaneously invoke other laws and constitutional protections as absolute shields. They weaponize rights to assembly, speech, and due process—protections they claim are inviolable—while coordinating sustained campaigns of civil disruption designed to make governance impossible.
The asymmetry is deliberate: the system must respect procedural limits and individual rights even as those same individuals work to paralyze it. You can even use the system against itself, tying it in knots by using its own processes to delay judicial outcomes for weeks, months, and in some cases—years.
The result is a kind of legal donut hole, a void where law simultaneously exists and doesn’t exist. Authorities face an impossible dilemma. . .
Next Monday is Groundhog Day, but it needs updating. No, not because the PETA lunatics want us to replace Punxsutawney Phil with a hologram (see Section 3 below), but because there are other persistent things for which the groundhog indicator could be redeployed. Like ICE protests, because it is the categorical imperative of the Omnicause that protests must go on no matter how cold the weather. Or like Sydney Sweeney. If the groundhog spots Sweeney’s new lingerie line hanging on the Hollywood sign, it means at least six more weeks of Sweeney in the news. As our pal RS says sagely, if Sweeney doesn’t win all the Golden Globes awards, then words have no meaning.
We cover this important ongoing and vital story in memes in Section 3 of today’s TWiP, and if that doesn’t keep you scrolling, we can’t help you. (Actually we can, as we have “Amelia” to cheer us up in Section 1 today. . .
The cartoon below, from "X", is NOT Amelia.
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Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.
The Classical Saturday Coffee Break & Prayer Revival
—Misanthropic Humanitarian
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Good morning boys and girls and everything in between. Before we enter the Prayer Revival just a few housekeeping matters to take care of. (Rulz for those of you in Iola)
1) This is an open thread. Feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2) Be kind, be nice. Being Pretti good isn't good enough.
3) Running with sharp objects? Sure you can. We just won't pray for you.
4) Have a great weekend!
Please submit any prayer requests to me, “Annie’s Stew” at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com. Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks unless we receive an update.
Prayer Requests:
11/15 – Sponge posted an update on the “First lady”. She is doing OK from the surgery pain-wise, however it appears her compromised immune system from chemo is susceptible to viruses. She has been spiking a fever all weekend.
12/13 Update – The First lady is doing well. She is still on restrictions but things are progressing nicely. The last mammogram showed clean. They are grateful to all who have been praying for her.
1/7 Update – They send thanks for the thoughts and prayers over the past year. The latest visit with her urologist revealed blood in her urine. The Doc didn’t seem concerned, but there will be more scans of her bladder and kidneys to see if they find anything more serious.
1/14 Update – Sponge sent an update on the First Lady’s father – he passed away on 1/11. They have been busy making arrangements for the arrangements, writing the obituary, eulogy, notifying people, etc. Thank you all for the thoughts an prayers that you have been providing for a long time.
12/20 – Morgan, longtime lurker, takes tango lessons from Sebastian, whose son, Matias, is recovering from brain surgery. The MRI was read on 12/19, and the surgeons did not remove the entire tumor. Even though the biopsy indicated the tumor was benign, the boy is probably facing several rounds of chemo. Please pray for the boy’s continued recovery in El Salvador.
1/10 Update – Matias will have surgery in 2 weeks to try and remove the rest of the tumor, and then he will receive radiation therapy.
12/27 – buzzion asked for prayers for a friend named Christina. Christina has struggled with a lot, including addiction and relapse. Buzzion has not heard from Christina in a while and hopes she is okay. Please pray that Christina finds her way and knows that people love and care for her and believe in her.
1/3 Update – Christina was arrested on 1/3. Please pray for this to be a final wake-up call for her.
1/22 Update – Christina was released from jail and is staying with Buzzion. She is working through the legal troubles and she is continuing her recovery. She really appreciates the prayers, as does Buzzion.
12/27 – BlackOrchid requested prayers for a Navy Veteran uncle who has been struggling with his health the last few weeks. The root cause is undetermined, but recurrent infection/sepsis keeps sending him back to the hospital. It seems to be worsening his dementia, which makes it harder for BlackOrchid’s aunt to handle him.
1/3 Update – BlackOrchid’s uncle (her “stand-in dad”) is still not doing well. He will probably need to be put in a LTC facility although they are doing everything possible to avoid this. He is 86, and at the stage where his immune system can’t fight back well.
1/24 Update – BlackOrchid’s uncle is doing much better. He is carting around an O2 canister to help him, but otherwise is doing well.
1/3 – Legally Sufficient asked for prayers for the repose of the soul of a boss, who passed away suddenly early Sunday morning. Prayers are appreciated for strength, faith, and understanding for the boss’ wife and all who loved him.
1/6 – Diogenes requested prayers for his best friend since college, who was diagnosed with cancer. Within hours or hearing this, the friend’s son, a man that Diogenes has known since he was a baby, collapsed from what appears to be a brain tumor. The prognosis isn’t hopeful. Please pray for both of these fine men.
1/23 Update – Diogenes’ best friend’s son Sean had emergency brain surgery. The labs are back and it’s not good news. He has stage 4 brain cancer. They were scheduled to meet with an oncologist on 1/26 to determine the best pathway ahead for the time he has remaining. This is just crushing news. Thanks to all the Horde for their prayers and support for this fine young man.
1/6 – Commissar of plenty and festive little hats sent prayers of thanks that it was not cancer, and asked for prayers for courage to even set a date to reverse the colostomy surgery. It was a lot to get over the first time!
1/7 - D sent an update on his wife Susan, and her battle with pancreatic cancer, as well as her recent infection. He sent his thanks to everyone for the prayers. They are helping and much appreciated. Susan’s infection finally has been healed, so she was able to resume chemo. It’s been really rough.
1/8 - Doof asked for prayers for his mother. She was hit hard by the flu. She couldn’t get out of bed the morning of 11/8 and was sent by ambulance to the hospital. She is alert and communicating but prayers are appreciated for her recovery. Prayers are also appreciated for Doof, as he absolutely despises hospitals.
1/23 Update – Mom was in the hospital for 5 nights and has been in a rehabilitation center since 1/13. Her recovery is slow but steady. Her breathing and mobility are still not back to normal. She is good spirits but wants to be home. They very much appreciate the continued prayers.
1/10 – LA Sue asked for prayers for her brother, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September. They just learned it moved from stage 2 to stage 4. The chemo treatments and side infections from surgery have so debilitated him that he is considering stopping. Please pray for strength and that he opens his heart to God.
1/18 Update – LA Sue is taking her brother to hospice. He is fading.
1/23 Update – LA Sue’s brother passed away.
1/15 – Sharkman posted on behalf of Niederemeyer’s Dead Horse that NDH was given a prognosis of 6 months to live due to heart failure. The plan is for NDH to move into the Mayo Clinic to receive treatment and wait for a transplant.
1/17 – Emmie asked for prayers. She and her husband are on the verge of foreclosure. Their side hustle of delivery driving ended when a young driver crashed into their car and totaled it. They aren’t able to make the mortgage payments without that extra income. Their church is helping, but it’s a small church.
1/23 Update – They have a loaner/rental car that they can use until they can devise a long term solution, and have found an insurer who will cover delivery driving work. Another friend is supplying a financial cushion during the mortgage reset probationary agreement. But the underlying financial problems persist. They ask for prayers that they would conduct themselves with wisdom, discipline, diligence, prudence, and joy in God’s provision. Emmie specifically asked for prayers in her struggle with resentment and despair.
1/18 – Teresa in Fort Worth sent an update. She had surgery on 12/11, and a pump was installed that will direct medication into the hepatic artery. This will allow a much larger concentration of medication to be applied directly into her liver. This should give fewer side effects and (hopefully) shrink the tumors. It will take several months before they know if this new medication is working, but if it does, they are hoping for an extra 2-3 years before the disease progresses again.
1/19 – NR Pax requested prayers for his father, who had a stroke on 1/16. He went back to the hospital on 1/19 and was in the ICU until 1/23 due to influenza. He is in the hospital and they do not know when he will come home.
1/20 – Inogame asked for prayers. His wife and baby girl (due in February) are healthy, but some bad luck has come to their family. The business they purchased a year ago has taken an abrupt turn and they are trying to understand what is happening. They may not be able to keep their home if they cannot discover and correct the problem. This stress and what it might mean postpartum is worrying them. Thank you all for your prayers in the past.
1/20 – MkY sent an update on his wife Judy, who was diagnosed with Stage IV renal cancer last January. Despite being unable to receive her cancer drugs for 3 months while her port infection healed up, the tumors did not grow and she is feeling strong. Thanks so much for all the prayers! Last week, MkY was diagnosed with fluid on the brain. They operated the same day. They drilled two holes in his skull, inserted tubes, and had him lay flat on his back for 2 days. MkY thanks God for the modern miracles of medicine. He needs to heal quickly since he operates a small business. So far, no complications.
1/24 – NR Pax requested prayers for his father, who had a stroke on 1/16. He went back to the hospital on 1/19 and was in the ICU until 1/23 due to influenza. He is in the hospital and they do not know when he will come home.
1/24 – Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd posted some updates and requests. In the blessings department: blood glucose has continued to fall, well within normal range. BP is good. The hole where his molar used to be is coming along nicely. The youngest has jaw surgery coming up in February. This is many years in the making and should correct her bite and ease the pain in her jaw and ears. She’s not looking forward to the liquid diet, but is looking forward to the pain relief. Prayers are always appreciated, and based on what they have been through, he knows they are efficacious.
1/25 – Pawn at AoS asked for prayers after his dear friend Julia passed away. He asked for strength for himself and his family to fill a very large void in this world. He only has a couple of friends left so asks for protection for them.
1/27 – K asked for prayers for K’s neighbor Mike, whose doctor found a lump near Mike’s esophagus. Many thanks.
For submission guidelines and other relevant info, please contact Annie's Stew, who is managing the prayer list. You can contact her at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com. If you see a prayer request posted in a thread comment, feel free to copy and paste it and e-mail it to Annie's Stew. She tries to keep up with the requests in the threads, but she's not here all of the time, so she may not see it unless you e-mail it to her. Please note: Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks or so unless we receive an update.
2 Corinthians 4:8-9
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.
And I would also like to add:
Romans 8:39
39) neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (New International Version)
I'm a little surprised it's not higher, but the article points out that layoffs have hit major - so called "AAA" - Triple A - studios twice as hard as indies, so it is higher for the companies I'd focus on with news stories.
The survey also found that 82% of US-based respondents support the unionization of game industry workers, with 5% opposed and 13% unsure.
And I was just about to feel some sympathy for these people.
Produced by Wildlight Entertainment, which is a private company so we don't have details of the financials, but they've had over a hundred experienced developers working on this game for four years in California. So somewhere north of $100 million.
It's free-to-play. It reached nearly 100,000 players on its first day... Then lost 90% of them on its second day.
Not because it is particularly buggy. Players have shown problems with being disconnected from the servers, but for the most part it seems technically competent. The problem is that it is completely uninspired.
It got the top billing during the recent Game Awards (which had more viewers than the Super Bowl), with shameless promotion from the presenter. Everyone watching saw it as derivative slop and predicted it would fail, hard, and it was, and has.
Highguard was in for a bloodbath, and I cannot believe that the devs didn't know that. With so much experience at AAA powerhouses like EA, I genuinely think they fully understood the implications of that TGA shenanigan, and cannot fathom why they never reacted.
The plan, unveiled in September, was for Nvidia to invest $100 billion in OpenAI so that OpenAI could purchase $100 billion of Nvidia hardware.
Now... Not so much.
Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang has privately emphasized to industry associates in recent months that the original $100 billion agreement was nonbinding and not finalized, people familiar with the matter said. He has also privately criticized what he has described as a lack of discipline in OpenAI's business approach and expressed concern about the competition it faces from the likes of Google and Anthropic, some of the people said.
OpenAI has name recognition - it's the company behind ChatGPT - but its CEO is a snake oil salesman.
It has twelve cores and 48MB of L3 cache vs. 8 cores and 32MB of cache for Zen 2 (and 3, 4, and 5), but the move to the latest 2nm process means that it's about the same size as it always has been. Zen 2 on 7nm was 77mm2, and Zen 6 is 76mm2.
If the promises for TSMC's N2P process node are borne out, this should be a major upgrade - not just 50% more cores, but cores running 30% faster at the same power requirements.
Reportedly - Nvidia hasn't announced this officially but it matches my own and everyone else's market observations - 75% of GPU supply from Nvidia will go to three models: The 5060, the 5060 Ti 8GB model, and the 5070.
The high-end models and the 16GB 5060 Ti will have limited availability going forward, with the entry level 5050 not even rating a mention. And the 5090 already isn't available anywhere for less than 50% over MSRP.
I bought an AMD 9060 XT 16GB fearing shortages and price increases, which haven't happened to that model, though the 9070 which was briefly available below MSRP no longer is.
Musical Interlude
I looked up Van Morrison just now fearing I'd missed an obituary at some point, and not only is he still around, he was recording anti-lockdown songs with Eric Clapton during the WuFlu.
The Volonaut airbike, which the company claims is real, and not just a prop being moved around by a rope dangling from a crane which is digitally removed with CGI. The cost of the airbike, if it's real, will be $880,000, when it's ready for sale, if ever.
Bargatze is interesting because he avoids all profanity and sexual stuff. I think he's popular, though, because he gets into truly edgy material: passive-aggressively fighting with his wifeabout nothing from the stage.
This is real courage in comedy. Speaking Truth to Wife.
Last weekend, without assistance or ropes or any other equipment*, star climber Alex Honnold climbed the 1667 foot 101 Tapei building. It was streamed live on Netflix, so I guess he got legal permission to do it?
Minnesota's first openly homosexual governor, Tim Walz, makes the Stunning and Brave Announcement that he will never run for political office again. As if it's xis choice! This is as bad as Kristen Stewart saying she can't "freely work" in the US so she'll be filming her zero-budget middle aged woman student film in Latvia. That's not a choice, that's just reality.
But note he only says he won't run for office -- he may still serve.
Reportedly, Minnesota's first openly homosexual governor and corrupt Democrat Senator and perpetual presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar have worked out a corrupt deal. He drops out of the governor's race, she enters it, she wins, and then she appoints him as senator to take over for her.
Amazing.
Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is now an inconvenient embarrassment. It was published 20 years ago, and made plenty of predictions prophecies, but none of those Dooms have yet come to pass.
Gore shared dramatic graphs.
Polar ice? Gone, any day now.
Sea levels? Twenty feet in the "near future," which, in political time, means "before the checks clear."
Arctic summers ice-free by, oh, pick a year, any year; 2013, 2014, five to seven years from whenever he was speaking.
Snows of Kilimanjaro? Vanished within a decade.
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Coastal cities? Should be holding snorkel conventions by now.
Reality, being the stubborn jerk that it is, refused to cooperate with Tipper's husband.
Arctic ice dips and bobs like it's on a budget seesaw--it never quite disappears.
Sea levels creep up a modest few millimeters each year, and at this rate, your great-great-grandkids might need taller beach chairs.
Snow still falls on Kilimanjaro, while cities keep building condos on the water like it's prime real estate.
No mass evacuations, no sirens, just... life.
Deadlines came and went quieter than a mime convention. There wasn't a press conference with Gore saying, "Oops! My bad; turns out the models were a little more enthusiastic than I thought." Just new deadlines, fresh urgency, yet using the same PowerPoint.
Now if only Star Trek makes the same realization:
Paul Embery
@PaulEmbery
10h
Some of us have been arguing for a long time that the BBC's obsession with promoting hyper-diversity in its drama productions -- even in period dramas -- was preachy and inauthentic and was alienating viewers. Needless to say, the usual accusations were thrown at us. Now an independent review, commissioned by the BBC itself, has found that the over-representation of ethnic minority characters, especially in period dramas, can feel "clunky", "inauthentic" and "preachy" to the viewer. It concludes: "The BBC should aim for an organic and authentic approach to diversity rather than it looking forced or tick box." Interestingly, the authors state: "We found our interviewees of colour as emphatic on this point as those who were white."
BREAKING: The Department of Education ruled that San Jose State violated Title IX by allowing trans-identifying male volleyball player Blaire Fleming to compete on the women's team.
@OutKick was the first outlet to report a team forfeiting against SJSU, which later led to several more forfeits in protest
🚨🚨 If you haven’t seen his male advantage, you need to watch this.
The grown man who yelled at a girl and called her a “c*nt” for supporting ICE has reportedly been identified as the treasurer for the District 12 Arizona Democratic Party https://t.co/xfYAmtz2DDpic.twitter.com/iSamtpdK23
The first openly gay lesbian Mexican judge in Texas, named "Speedlin Gonzales," and no, that's not a racist joke, that's her name, has been arrested for handcuffing an attorney in the jury box. She has refused to take down the gay flags she hangs in her court (illegal political messaging from what is supposed to be a dispassionate objective judge) and routinely congratulates attorneys whose politics she supports on their victories -- victories she handed them.
Texas Judge Rosie Speedlin-Gonzalez who was just arrested for handcuffing an attorney, was in a battle over her pride flags. She claims she was “targeted” for being asked to remove all her lgbtq merch from around the courtroom.
Lgbtq Judge Rosie who was just arrested was involved in multiple scandals and was even ordered to take an additional course on judicial ethics.
- reportedly congratulated attorneys on winning cases in her court on her official FB page
- was found with a loaded gun at the airport and received a fine
- was ordered to remove pride flags and entered a years-long battle
- now facing a felony charge for unlawfully handcuffing an attorney over a dispute on courtroom procedure
Here she is standing next to the sodomy flag while wearing a Mexican tricolor sash.
Would you feel as if this judge was ruling without fear or favor if you had the misfortune to be hailed into her court?
Black Conservative Perspective has two good clips below. The first you may have already seen, of overrated femmy communist DEI actor
The clip starting at 3:25 might be new to you. In it, the "actress" and "comedian" Amanda Seales -- I never heard of her either, but apparently she has a comedy special called, I josh thee not, I Be Knowin' -- says "the quiet part aloud," as Foreman says. She explains that the movement is made up of two kinds of people, those who fight in the streets and sometimes get justifiably shot by police -- the "outside people," she calls them -- and the pampered rich communist leaders who sit on their fat asses and incite the "outside people" to risk their lives while they risk nothing. She calls these people -- people like herself -- "inside people," and says the "inside people" are smart people who are too valuable to work "outside" because their skills at incitement -- or "bullhorning," she calls it -- are too precious.
The dumb people, on the other hand, are really good at being cannon fodder and useful corpses.
At the end of her explanation that their are Dumb Doers who get shot and Smart Leaders who get paid, she says that unknown enemy forces may someday come knocking on her door so when you think about it, aren't we all risking our lives for the cause?
It's pretty great.
According to new polling, a comfortable majority of Americans (as much as 64%) want all illegals immigrants deported. A majority also want legal migration reduced.
It just so happens that the biggest deportation drive since Eisenhower's poorly-named "Operation Wetback" coincides with the first fall in LA rental costs since, well, forever.
There's "increased housing supply," they say. No word about decreased housing demand.
"Finally, a renter's market": L.A. rent prices drop to four-year low
L.A. metro area rent prices dropped to a four-year low in December, with the median rent falling to $2,167.
Increased housing supply -- 15,095 apartments completed in 2025 -- combined with decreased demand is shifting power back toward renters for the first time in years.
Sandra Gomez braced for impact as she opened the lease renewal offer for her East L.A. apartment in September. She paid $2,000 for the last 12 months, but since the unit wasn't covered by L.A.'s Rent Stabilization Ordinance, her landlord could jack up the price for the next lease.
The new price? $1,950.
"I thought it was a mistake," Gomez said. "Since when does rent get cheaper in L.A.?"
For years, L.A. has been one of the costliest cities in the country for renters. Annual price hikes seemed inevitable, and finding the perfect apartment felt more like a competitive sport.
But data suggest that the market could be ever so slightly shifting.
The median rent in the L.A. metro area dropped to $2,167 in December -- the lowest price in four years, according to data from Apartment List that analyze new leases for one- and two-bedroom apartments in a given month. The median rent for L.A. County also dropped to a four-year low of $2,035.
The last time L.A. rents were that low was January 2022, in the wake of a furious pandemic home-buying market that saw a wave of renters buy homes for the first time, leaving apartments empty and bringing prices down.
I wonder if this drop-off mirrors a national trend.
The drop-off mirrors a national trend, as the U.S. median rent dropped to a similar four-year low in December. But within Southern California, the downturn is unique to L.A. Over the same stretch, rents rose or remained steady in Orange, Ventura and San Bernardino counties and in California as a whole.
I guess national rents are also affected by LA's supposed "increase in housing supply."
Opinions also vary on the cause, but the clearest explanation seems to be a simple case of supply and demand.
Tell me more about the demand, LA Times.
No? Don't want to talk about that?
Although L.A. has generally lagged in housing construction compared with cities such as San Diego, 2025 was a big year for new apartments hitting the market, despite several hundred multifamily buildings burning in the Palisades and Eaton fires.
...
Renters are starting to notice that the landlord-tenant balance of power is shifting, ever so slightly, toward tenants. On a Reddit post discussing the drop in rental prices, one user wrote that they pay $3,200 for a two-bedroom apartment in Koreatown, but now, the building has six vacant units listed for about $2,800.
Another user wrote that they secured a lease for $1,000 less than the previous tenant paid after noticing the unit had sat on the market with multiple price cuts.
Anthony Moore has lived in his North Hollywood apartment complex for two years, paying $2,700 for a two-bedroom unit. In the fall, he noticed similar units in the same complex listed for $2,500.
"I pay month to month, so I wasn't tied to my lease," he said. "I called my landlord and told him I wanted to pay what the other units were listing for or I would move out."
He now pays $2,500.
The article literally never mentions the country's first year of net-outwards migration in history.
It's amazing -- the media screams incessantly that deporting illegal workers will cause a labor crisis, but they absolutely refuse to mention the fact that a net-negative immigration rate will naturally cause housing prices (and all other prices) to fall.
🇺🇸Dr. Oz exposes $3.5 Billion Hospice Fraud Ring in Los Angeles Tied to Russian-Armenian Mafia
On the ground in Van Nuys, Los Angeles: in a single four-block radius, there are 42 hospices, many with Cyrillic signage, boarded up windows, and no visible patients or staff… pic.twitter.com/G6gEHX0XXm
Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger was sworn in just a few weeks ago, but the tornado of bad policy is already swirling around her state.
Spanberger's very first order of business was reversing Gov. Glenn Youngkin's Executive Order 47, which had allowed for coordination between the Virginia State Police and the Department of Corrections and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That coordination was important because it allowed the federal and state governments to cooperate to remove people in the country illegally who had committed additional crimes. That it was necessary for Spanberger to make it harder to deport criminals is a tell that her moderate campaign commercials will instead translate into a much further left administration.
Spanberger isn't alone in moving Virginia sharply leftward. Both branches of the state legislature are now also controlled by Democrats, and they're introducing policies that no one campaigned on. House Bill 863 would reduce minimum sentencing for rape, manslaughter and child pornography. If Spanberger ran on "let's let rapists off easy," the Virginia electorate somehow missed it. In fact, Spanberger's campaign ads highlighted her law enforcement experience and that she's a moderate who works with both sides of the political aisle.
...
Then there's House Bill 1442, which would prevent any enforcement of immigration law near polling locations. We're told it's very rare for illegal immigrants to vote in our elections and yet the Virginia legislature thinks a law like this is a high priority for the state. Why would immigration operations interfere with polling locations unless there are illegal immigrants voting at those polling locations?
...
Democrats are going to spend the next four years moving Virginia as far left as they can get away with -- unless Virginians stop them. Virginians who want to save their state have to keep pointing out that Spanberger the candidate is not Spanberger the governor, and that the state government being fully controlled by the Democratic Party is turning lawlessness and social engineering into policy. Virginia can be saved from this, before it becomes another failed blue state with residents running for the door, but they need to act quickly.
Obviously they want to tax everything. To increase affordability, they say.
Virginia Democrats are proposing a slew of new hikes, pushing to have consumers to pay up for their gym memberships, Amazon orders, leaf blowers, and over a dozen other tax hikes. All of this comes after the Democrats and Governor Abigail Spanberger ran on "affordability," a message that flies in the face of the new proposals.
The new tax bills are pushing for a tax on all of the following areas:
Higher sales taxes on all Virginia counties and cities
Personal property tax on electric leaf blowers as well as electric landscaping equipment
Large employer tax
Ammunition and firearms tax
New income tax brackets
A delivery tax, set to hit Amazon orders, FedEx and UPS orders, as well as Uber Eats in Northern Virginia
Gym membership tax
Counseling tax
New car tax and highway usage fees
Storage facility tax
Investment income tax
Event tax
Vehicle repair tax
Dry cleaning tax
Fantasy sports tax
Rideshare tax
Dog walking tax
Digital personal property tax
Increase in taxes in the Arlington area for hotels
Statewide speed camera (not a tax, but additional fines)
They have big plans for all that new money "liberated" from taxpayers: They're going to buy themselves fucking houses.
Virginia Democrat politicians propose "unlimited" grants for home purchases for the most deserving constituency of all -- Virginia Democrat bureaucrats.
While the entire country focuses on Minneapolis for the next 48 hours, Democrats in Virginia have passed a bill out of committee that allows government bureaucrats to receive unlimited taxpayer funding to buy a house.
Top Official Of USAID-Linked Foreign Aid Agency To Plead Guilty To Taking Bribes
African Development Foundation CFO admits he routed money to friend's African 'pass-through' in exchange for kickbacks
By Luke Rosiak
Jan 30, 2026 DailyWire.com
Top Official Of USAID-Linked Foreign Aid Agency To Plead Guilty To Taking Bribes
Mathieu Zahui, chief financial officer of the African Development Foundation / ADF
The chief financial officer of the African Development Foundation, a federal agency affiliated with USAID, will plead guilty to steering grants and contracts in exchange for bribes.
The previously-obscure African Development Foundation became a darling of the Left when its CFO, Mathieu Zahui, locked its doors to prevent Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency from entering. Democrat politicians framed it as an act of moral courage, and left-wing media called the group "the little agency that could."
But on Friday, the Department of Justice said Zahui admitted that he was doing exactly what conservatives have suspected is common in foreign aid: Laundering money through poor nations and then back to D.C. insiders, who used it to enrich themselves.
According to court papers filed Friday, the African Development Foundation sent $800,000 to a Kenya-based company run by Zahui's friend. The friend paid Zahui a kickback of $12,000, and the company kept $134,886 for doing no work.
The rest of the money was simply a "pass-through" where the Kenyan company paid bills that the agency owed to other people. That made it appear that more money was going to African aid as opposed to bureaucratic overhead, and added a layer that concealed where the agency's money was actually going.
Zahui has agreed to plead guilty to accepting gratuities and making a false statement to a federal law enforcement officer, after he lied to the USAID Office of Inspector General about having received the kickbacks. He could face up to seven years in prison.
Today started out as a slow news day but now there are a lot of stories being leaked out for a Friday burial.
'OH MY GOD!!!!! I am dying': Jeffrey Epstein Showered Obama White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler With Gifts, Including $9,400 Hermes Handbag and Four Seasons Spa Treatment, Emails Show
Ruemmler, who told CNN Epstein never 'compensated' her, accepted the gifts years after Epstein's sex crimes were public knowledge
Chuck Ross and Collin Anderson
January 30, 2026
Former Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler has attempted to downplay a steady drip of revelations about her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein by claiming he never "compensated" her. Newly released emails, however, show the convicted sex criminal showered Ruemmler with luxury gifts, including a $9,400 Hermes handbag, an Hermes-branded Apple watch, and a spa treatment package at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C., emails reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show.
The gifts, revealed in documents released Friday by the Department of Justice, came years after allegations of Epstein's sex crimes against children became public knowledge and undercut Ruemmler's attempts to distance herself from Epstein.
Ruemmler, now the top lawyer for Goldman Sachs, has faced intense criticism as troves of Epstein records shed light on her relationship with the sex pest. When CNN reported last month that Ruemmler advised Epstein on media strategies, she told the outlet she "did not represent him and was not compensated by him."
The documents released Friday show otherwise. In emails ranging from 2014 to 2019, Ruemmler routinely corresponded with Epstein's associates to accept gifts or express her gratitude to Epstein. In some cases, she asked for specific items.
The priciest gift likely came in August 2016, when Epstein purchased Ruemmler a $9,400 handbag from the French luxury brand Hermes. Epstein took a particular interest in ensuring Ruemmler received the bag, directing one of his associates, Lesley Groff, to "confirm receipt with Kathy" and "follow up to make sure it happens." When Ruemmler received the bag, she wrote to Groff, "OH MY GOD!!!!! He is in so much trouble!!!! I am dying. It is so beautiful," as Groff relayed to Epstein. Used versions of the same bag--a Jypsiere 31--now sell for around $5,000.
Some two years later, in November 2018, Epstein bought Ruemmler an Hermes edition of the Apple Watch, which retails for $1,300. Emails show that Ruemmler asked for a specific model and watch band and said the gift was "so sweet of Jeffrey!"
"If truly okay with him to do the Hermes, I would love the 40 mm, stainless Hermes with bleu indigo swift leather double tour," Ruemmler wrote at the time. "I'll wear that one every day, whereas the sportier ones I would likely only wear on weekends or when exercising, etc." When Epstein's associate, Groff, relayed the gift to Epstein's accountant, Richard Kahn, Groff wrote, "I knew Kathy would want Hermes." Epstein bought another Apple Watch for Steve Bannon around the same time, according to the emails.
Epstein also appeared to be attuned to Ruemmler's schedule and professional achievements. He booked a "full half day" spa appointment at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown for Ruemmler in August 2016, writing to an associate, "she won her case and needs some pampering." The associate responded with a credit card authorization form and said, "Kathy will go either today or tomorrow she says..." A massage and facial at the luxury hotel can cost upwards of $1,000.
Epstein appeared to provide other gifts of unknown value to Ruemmler. In December 2014, an Epstein associate emailed Ruemmler to inform her that Epstein planned to send his housekeeper to "deliver your ring to you!!" In February 2019, an Epstein associate sent a reminder email to an unidentified individual reading, "Reminder: Bottle of wine and note card to be delivered to Ruemmler today. Let me know once it has been delivered so I can tell Jeffrey."
Wow. In the Epstein emails DOJ dropped, Jeffrey sent himself emails memorializing a fight he had with Bill Gates. In it he says that Bill Gates got STD’s from Russian hookers, and then asked Jeffrey for antibiotics that Bill could secretly give to Melinda without her noticing. 😳 pic.twitter.com/XNA0vNWTcI
Podcast:Jim Lakely of The Heartland Institute joins us for a wide-ranging discussion of Heartland's recent Anti-Davos initiative: The World Prosperity Forum. We also discuss MN's all-encompassing graft, free markets as an antidote to misery, the truth behind the ICE riots in Minneapolis, and more!
Podcast: CBD and Sefton talk about insurrection in MN coming to NYC? Trump's Greenland rhetoric was over the top, the Gaza Peace Panel is anything but, Minnesota churchgoers need to step up, and is it possible that if the Persian people toss out the Mullahs they will begin a Muslim reformation?
Long-time Coblogger and commenter "Niedermeyer's Dead Horse" is having significant health issues, and would appreciate the thoughts and prayers of The Horde. If you wish to reach out, use @NiedsG on X/Twitter. [CBD]
Disclose.tv
@disclosetv
30m
JUST IN - DOJ investigating Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for conspiracy to impede immigration agents -- CBS
Podcast: CBD and Sefton chat about the end game in Iran, what to do about the Fed, its supposed "independence," and its hyper-politicized chairman, the housing crunch, and Trump's harebrained suggestion to decrease credit card interest!
Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, and an always interesting observer of the human and political condition, has died. RIP. [CBD]
Tousi TV: France closes embassy in Tehran, US Department of State advises all US citizens to get out of Iran He's been saying that Tuesday will be a decisive day. Other reports say that Trump is in the last stages of planning an action against the mullahs. (And other reports say that Tucker Carlson Simp JD Vance is attempting to get Trump to agree to "negotiations" with Iran -- for fucking what? What do we get out of saving the fucking mullahs and letting them kill and torture their own people? Apart from Tucker Carlson getting to pretend he's a Big Man Influencer and that he's worth all the Qatari money he's receiving.)
Asmongold predicted that AWFLs would turn on immigration the moment we started importing hot women into the country, and he was right via garrett
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