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Chavez the Hugo 2020
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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.
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Maybe Minnesota's $9 billion in fraud is what we speculate we'll ultimately find, while the current known fraud is, what, a billion? He seems to mean we know California is defrauding the US for $7 billion and the ultimate tally will be much higher.
Vice President JD Vance revealed that about $7 billion worth of fraud has been discovered in California.
"I think we have a fraud problem that is much worse than California than it is in Minnesota," Vance said in an interview Thursday, noting the head of US Small Business Administration gave him the shocking news.
"This is unfortunately a problem that is much bigger than Minnesota."
The vice president also said efforts to block immigration enforcement were a uniquely blue-state phenomenon, adding that some Democratic-led states are engaged in a "small-scale civil war" with the federal government over immigration.
...
The Trump administration has also paused federal child care funding to Minnesota, blaming alleged fraud in daycare programs, and has imposed new documentation requirements -- including attendance records and receipts -- before releasing payments to any state, CBS reported.
...
Vance pointed to Don Lemon and other protestors storming a church in Minnesota as well as the killing of Renee Goode, saying "a small band of very far-left people" are trying to make ICE "the ultimate enemy," including through assaults on officers and raids on churches.
"It's absurd," he said. "It's added a lot of chaos."
The Democrat Party is causing the chaos, to create an argument for returning them to power-- "We'll stop the chaos."
But you're the ones causing the chaos.
It's like the old bit about the man who murders his parents, and then pleads for the mercy of the court, saying that he's an orphan.
The Democrat Party has created a huge block of voters dependent on their enabling of fraud at an industrial scale. Looters are now a huge political constituency.
And to make that point: You can't cover stories in Minneapolis without fraudulent Somali "day cares" and "patient transport services" in the background of your photos.
Minneapolis's primary industry is government fraud.
Can't wait to see what California's doing.
Meanwhile: Democrats rush to give illegals the vote.
Look, I'm not a mind reader. I have to infer intentions from patterns like everyone else. But there's virtually no daylight between the behavior you'd expect from a party that wants illegal immigrants to vote and the behavior of the Democratic Party. https://t.co/llS1pdELkB
Stephen Colbert's Ratings Hit New All-Time Low Update: Washington Post Braces for a FIFTY PERCENT Cut in Jobs
—Ace
Remember, six months ago, in the immediate aftermath of his cancellation, Colbert's ratings rose based entirely on Sympathy Viewing and liberals all claimed he was going to build the show into a juggernaut that CBS would have to un-cancel.
I've got a special delivery: Six barrels of 100% pure pesticide-free Nope Juice.
The Stephen Colbert ratings freefall has reached an undeniable breaking point. As The Late Show with Stephen Colbert approaches its already-announced cancellation, the program is now posting record-low January numbers, marking one of the steepest late-night declines in recent television history.
According to Nielsen data reported this week, Colbert's show is averaging roughly 285,000 viewers in the crucial 25--54 demographic, putting it on track for its worst January performance ever in the category that advertisers actually care about. With just months left before the curtain closes for good, the ratings trajectory suggests viewers have been checking out long before CBS formally pulled the plug.
Stephen Colbert Ratings Hit Historic Lows in Key Demo
While total viewership erosion has been gradual over the past several years, the collapse in the 25--54 demo tells the real story. Late-night television lives or dies by that number, and Colbert's January performance places him firmly near the bottom of the competitive pack.
The show's demo average now sits far below what the franchise once delivered during its peak years -- and even trails where The Late Show performed during periods widely considered transitional or unstable. In practical terms, this means fewer ad dollars, weaker affiliate confidence, and little justification for long-term investment.
For a host once positioned as the undisputed leader of late night, the falloff is stark.
Cancellation No Longer Feels Abrupt -- It Feels Inevitable
...
With Colbert's final shows scheduled for May, the ratings collapse has reframed the narrative entirely -- and it directly contradicts the wave of progressive outrage that followed the cancellation announcement.
Many left-leaning voices rushed to denounce CBS's decision as politically motivated, even attempting to cast it as retaliation linked to President Trump. But the January numbers tell a far less ideological story: an unmistakable audience collapse.
...
The Stephen Colbert ratings collapse is more than a single show's problem. It highlights the fragile state of late-night television as a whole -- particularly for hosts like Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers who have leaned too heavily into predictable commentary rather than entertainment.
Colbert's record-low January figures now stand as a blunt data point: viewers have moved on. And with cancellation already locked in, there is no runway left to reverse the trend.
Speaking of cancellation: The Washington Post continues losing money and Bezos is going to put the paper through another round of massive layoffs.
I missed the scale of the coming layoffs: up to H A L F of all leftwing layabouts may be fired.
Paul Farhi
@farhip
Per former colleagues at the @washingtonpost: In a Zoom meeting today, Post foreign staff was told by editors that up to *half* the Post’s newsroom will be cut imminently. Biggest cuts to foreign and sports staff.
Sickening.
Brian Stelter whines that Bezos isn't being a good "steward" of the Washington Post.
Jon Podhoretz responded that he's not a "steward," he's the owner.
But the bratty, underperforming losers at the paper think that Daddy Warbucks should just keep bailing them out forever.
A top Post reporter tells me "there's now a strong sense" across the newsroom "that neither Jeff Bezos nor Will Lewis are serious, good-faith stewards of The Washington Post." pic.twitter.com/ORtFdFmWbD
As I've said before, rich men buy papers for three reasons. The worst reason is to make money. Papers don't make money. But they'd like to lose as little as possible. The Post is losing lots of money. Bezos' money.
They also buy papers for prestige. But the Washington Post has no prestige. It's a woke clown show. It brings shame, like David French's browser history.
The third reason is that rich men think they know something and they want to spread their ideology. Bezos is trying to do that, trying re-orient the paper to be pro-free-markets, for example, but the bratty employees think Bezos should pay them to push their ideology.
That's not how this works. As they say, he who pays the piper calls the tune.
John Nolte responded to some pussy whining that the Post might shut down its foreign desk:
Christopher Miller
@ChristopherJM
Our journalist colleagues at The Washington Post here in Ukraine provide vital coverage, particularly of the human impact of Russia's ongoing war. It would be a major loss for The Post if it closes or downsizes this team or its other excellent foreign bureaus. But it would especially be a loss to the communities they cover and the American public, too. Hoping The Post leadership comes to its senses.
John Ocasio-Rodham Nolte
@NolteNC
We might care if it weren't for all the lying.
Y'all shouldn't have done all this lying:
· The ICE Detains Five-Year-Old Hoax
· The Hegseth 'Kill Everybody' Hoax
· Trump "Destroying" White House Hoax
· Photo of Starving Gaza Baby Hoax
· Israeli Troops Murdered Food-Seeking Palestinians Hoax
· Trump Tariffs Will Explode Prices Hoax
· Maryland Man Hoax
· Black Newborns Much More Likely to Die If Doc's White Hoax
· Elon Musk Nazi Salute Hoax
· Mass Hysterectomies Performed on Immigrants Hoax
· The All-White Trump Party Hoax
· Springfield Bomb Threat Hoax
· Trump Called for Liz Cheney to Be Executed Hoax
· Violent Crime Down Under Biden/Harris Hoax
· Arlington Cemetery Hoax
· Kamala Was Never America's Border Czar Hoax
· Russia Collusion Hoax
· Hands Up, Don't Shoot Hoax
· Jussie Smollett Hoax
· Covington KKKids Hoax
· Very Fine People Hoax
· Seven-Hour Gap Hoax
· Russian Bounties Hoax
· Trump Trashes Troops Hoax
· Policemen Killed at Mostly Peaceful January 6 Protest Hoax
· Rittenhouse Hoax
· Eating While Black Hoax
· Border Agents Whipping Illegals Hoax
· NASCAR Noose Hoax
· Georgia Jim Crow 2.0 Hoax
· Trump Assaulted Secret Service Agents and Grabbed Steering Wheel of Beast Hoax
· MAGA Assaulted Paul Pelosi Hoax
· COVID Lab Leak Theory Is Racist Hoax
· Hunter Biden's Laptop Is Russian Disinformation Hoax
· Joe Biden Will Never Ban Gas Stoves Hoax
· COVID Deaths are Overcounted Is a Conspiracy Theory Hoax
· Mass Graves of Native Children in Canada Hoax
· Trump Killed Japanese Koi Fish Hoax
· Trump Told People to Drink Bleach Hoax
· Hamas Hospital Hoax
· If Reelected, Trump Will Execute People Hoax
· The 900,000 Kids Hospitalized with Coronavirus Hoax
· Dozens of Environmental Hoaxes
· The Alfa Bank Hoax
· Libs of TikTok Murdered Non-Binary Teen Hoax
· Aaron Rodgers Sandy Hook-Truther Hoax
· 'Bloodbath' Hoax
· Biden 'Sharp-as-a-Tack' Hoax
· Iowa Poll Hoax
Meanwhile, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce won't rule out seeking vandalism and trespassing charges against Sydney Sweeney for a harmless and yet sexiful publicity stunt.
Sydney Sweeney may face vandalism charges after climbing the iconic Hollywood sign and hanging bras on it to promote her new lingerie brand 👀 pic.twitter.com/4gkGfPtAR3
Former Conservative Home Secretary Suella Braverman Defects to Reform, Denounces UK Tories as Traitors
—Ace
Suella Braverman had been Secretary of the Home Office (one of the top positions in government) under former PM Rishi Sunak. She was kicked out of the office for speaking two truths the conservative party had declared heretical:
1, that unlimited third world migration constitutes an "invasion," and
2, that it is evident that the police punish native Britons much more harshly than foreign invaders, and this constitutes "two-tier policing."
So she's always been more #based than the average inbred paper-pusher in the "conservative" party.
But she was loyal to the dying Conservative Party.
Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman has accused the Conservatives of "betrayal" as she became the latest MP from the party to defect to Reform UK.
She is the third sitting Tory MP to join Nigel Farage's party in the last eleven days, and takes Reform's tally of MPs to eight.
At a press conference following her defection, Braverman said she had felt "politically homeless for the best part of two years" pointing to differences over areas including Brexit and immigration.
Her defection comes hot on the heels of Robert Jenrick and Andrew Rosindell, who also left the Conservatives earlier this month.
Responding to her defection, the Conservative Party said it was "always a matter of when, not if, Suella would defect".
As you know, the dying establishment's main weapon is left's weapon of denunciation and defamation:
The party's initial statement also said: "The Conservatives did all we could to look after Suella's mental health, but she was clearly very unhappy."
They later issued a corrected statement which removed the sentence, saying the original lines were "a draft version" which had been "sent out in error".
Braverman said the reference to her mental health was "a bit pathetic" and "more signs of a bitter and desperate party that seems to be in free-fall".
...
She accused the Conservatives of failing on Brexit while delivering "out-of-control immigration" and high taxes.
She said "the final straw came in the last few days" as there appeared to be a "concentrated effort, a witch hunt to hound out right-wingers".
...
In addition to the four sitting Conservative MPs who have now switched to Reform, around 20 former Tory MPs have made the move since the general election, including former ministers Nadhim Zahawi, Nadine Dorries and Jake Berry.
Henry Smith - one of those ex-MPs to make the switch - said Braverman had tried to "steer the last government in a Conservative direction" but had been "very much stopped in her tracks".
Speaking to Matt Chorley on BBC Radio 5 Live, the former Crawley MP said that while the Conservative leadership "might be making noises to the right", many Conservative MPs were "quite frankly more comfortable in a much more Liberal Democrat position".
I saw a Lotus Eaters video in which they predicted -- or put down as a prediction for a 2026 prediction Bingo game -- that the "conservatives" would wither away down to their most liberal members, at which point they would just merge with the Liberal Democrats. As the BBC points out above, that's all they are now anyway.
She now says the Conservatives are "too weak to save themselves, let alone the country".
...
She was not offered a position in Kemi Badenoch's shadow cabinet, and became a vocal critic of the party's record in office on immigration, net zero and what she branded "woke" thinking.
...
At a press conference alongside Farage, she dismissed her former party as dominated by "centrists" and "One Nation wets".
"Wets" has a specific meaning in British politics. I guess we'd call them "RINOs."
Google AI:
In British political slang, "wets" referred to moderate members of the Conservative Party, particularly under Margaret Thatcher, who were seen as weak, unprincipled, or too willing to compromise on her strict monetarist and spending-cut policies, contrasting with her hardline "dries".
The term, used pejoratively by Thatcher and her supporters, described those who opposed her tough economic medicine and favoured more consensus or less drastic reforms, like reducing government spending and challenging unions.
Key Aspects of "Wets":
Origin: Popularized by Margaret Thatcher in the late 1970s/early 1980s to criticize internal party dissent.
Meaning: Lacking firmness, being effete, ineffectual, or weak in character and resolve.
Policy Stance: Opposed to Thatcher's radical economic agenda, including spending cuts and confronting powerful unions.
...
Contrast: Directly opposed to "dries," Thatcher's loyalists who fully embraced her free-market principles.
The first video below is her full 18 minute speech. If that's too long, check out the clip from the press conference she gave after her defection. It's a lot punchier.
She rightly called out two-tier policing and rising Islamism and antisemitism at hate marches. She was sacked as Home Secretary, none of her colleagues backed her.
This behavior would not be tolerated if a mosque was invaded.
Tyler O'Neil
@Tyler2ONeil
HORRIFYING NEW DETAILS
The invasion of Cities Church was even worse than we thought.
Agitators blocked stairs so "parents were unable to get to their children" at Sunday School.
One told a kid, "Do you know your parents are Nazis, they're going to burn in hell?"
...
William Kelly, "DaWoke Farmer," shouted, "This ain't God's house. This is the house of the devil."
About 50 members of the congregation were "stuck" towards the front of the church. Not only did the agitators take over the service, but they "made it nearly impossible for parishioners to get out and leave."
One woman broke her arm.
Congregants "were terrorized, our children were weeping, college students and young women were sobbing, it was impactful and it will take time to work through."
An agitator "continued to scream in the faces of young children while they were crying."
Nekima Armstrong, a main ringleader, said that @citieschurch
"cannot pretend to be a house of God while harboring someone who is directing ICE agents to wreak havoc upon our community and who killed Renee Good."
Make no mistake: this church invasion was an atrocity.
Sadly, Democrats like @Jacob_Frey, are carrying water for the agitators. Judges denied arrest warrants for 5 of the 8 charged defendants.
But @HarmeetKDhillon says this isn't over. Stay tuned.
The Researcher
@listen_2learn
19h
Compare and contrast what these criminals did and how they were quickly released from custody to what they did to the J6ers who simply walked through the Capitol.
The two-tiered system of injustice is going to destroy our country.
As gay sex assailant Don Lemon declared -- and he was privy to the intentions of the invaders, being part of the plot himself -- the entire point of the exercise was to "traumatize" the church-goers. Including the children.
I'm not sure what Walz has agreed to -- maybe letting ICE pick up wanted illegals from their jails and courtrooms?
Or is it Trump who's backing down and needs Walz to provide him cover by pretending to have given up something?
Trump here says that "we're looking for all criminals" in Minnesota's "possession," but I don't see any claim that Walz actually agreed to this.
Walz says that Trump agreed to an "investigation' of ICE agents. Again, I don't see any actual agreement that Minnesota will actually cooperate with ICE. Walz just says he's working to "reduce the number of federal agents in Minnesota," not "reduce the number of foreign pedophiles, killers, rapists, and gangsters."
Walz' office said the call was "productive."
"The Governor made the case that we need impartial investigations of the Minneapolis shootings involving federal agents, and that we need to reduce the number of federal agents in Minnesota," his office wrote in a release.
Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both Minnesota residents and U.S. citizens, were fatally shot and killed by federal immigration officers in separate incidents in Minneapolis.
Trump agreed to talk to the Department of Homeland Security about ensuring the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is able to conduct an independent investigation, Walz' office said, and also agreed to look into either reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota or working with the state "in a more coordinated fashion on immigration enforcement regarding violent criminals."
I don't know if there's any actual agreement here. This might be the typical result of diplomacy, wherein all parties just celebrate the fact that diplomacy occurred.
Ringleader Behind the Somali Fraud Scandal Says There's No Way that Tim Walz and Jihadi AG Keith Ellison Didn't Know She Was Stealing a Quarter Billion Dollars
HOLY SHIT: Amiee Bock, the mastermind behind the $250 MILLION Somali fraud scandal in Minnesota, claims that top state officials, including Governor Tim Walz and AG Keith Ellison, KNEW about the fraud but did nothing to stop it.pic.twitter.com/kjlqf0FNR9
Jihadi antifa punk Keith Ellison says you can't trust a fraudster. Fair enough -- I trust my own common sense. There's no way you didn't know, dude.
A quarter. Of a Billion. Dollars.
You didn't know?
You seemed on top of the facts when the Somalis stealing this quarter of a billion dollars asked you to run interference for them in exchange for donations and political support:
BOMBSHELL AUDIO: Democrat AG Keith Ellison bragged about helping indict fraudsters who stole $250 million from a federal child nutrition program.
But newly uncovered audio shows Ellison privately offering support to people tied to the scandal. pic.twitter.com/6QTWxnGvOs
Fox Business News reporter Elizabeth MacDonald reports on -- get this -- "problems" in the paperwork regarding Ilhan Omar's and her "husband's" sudden $30 million overnight fortune.
Elizabeth MacDonald
@LizMacDonaldFOX
NEWS Major problems discovered in how Ilhan Omar and her husband went from just $16K net worth to suddenly skyrocketing to up to $30M in *just one year.* 1st, there are no SEC records that either her husband, his partner, or their investment firm are registered with the SEC as investment advisers.
The names "Rose Lake Capital" or "Rose Lake Capital LLC" and the names "Tim Mynett" and "Will Hailer" do not show up listed as registered investment advisers with the SEC. Major reporting also doesn't mention any SEC adviser registrations.
Mynett and his partner Hailer have little to no Wall Street experience. They co-founded a political consultancy in DC, E Street Group, and Mynett was a major Democrat fundraiser in Washington, D.C. for about 15 years, where he helped raise more than $100M for Democrats and worked on Omar's 2019 re-election.
Hailer spent nearly two decades in U.S. politics, especially within Democratic Party leadership, including as a senior advisor to the DNC chair.
Mynett's firm would typically be required to file Form ADV and register with the SEC. The reason there could be no SEC forms here may be because, to stay below reporting thresholds, it only advises a small number of high-net-worth or institutional clients, or it advises only VC firms, or it does not use leverage like hedge funds.
That all means his firm is pretty limited in scope-meaning, it still looks more to be a political advisory firm. Which begs the question: How did his limited firm go from little to no assets to $30M AUM in just one year? How did their net worth rocket from just $16K to $30M in just one year?
First, the winery. In 2020, Omar's husband Tim Mynett and his partner Will Hailer launched their California winery, eStCru. Ilhan Omar first disclosed that winery in her government financial disclosures in 2021, where she valued it at between $15K-$50K. She reported the same valuations for 2022 and 2023.
>b>In 2022, Mynett and Hailer then launched Rose Lake Capital, a venture capital management firm, aiming to do "global financial dealmaking." Documents show there is very little to no information about its actual clients, investments and deal history.
Omar valued Rose Lake at only between just one dollar to $1K in her 2022 filings. Omar reported the same valuation range in her 2023 government disclosures.
But then Omar suddenly reported valuations that rocketed higher in just one year, in 2024. Omar reported Rose Lake's value at between $5M--$25M and the winery between $1M--$5M -- contributing to a combined household asset range of $6M--$30M in Omar's 2025 filings.
Below: Trump is denying applications for naturalization for dirty foreign fraudsters found to have illegally registered to vote as aliens.
Redditor's application for naturalization was denied because he was illegally registered to vote at the DMV.
Special Forces Veteran: This Isn't a Protest, This Is an Organized Insurgency Like We Faced in Iraq
—Ace
Cam Higby infiltrated insurrectionist Signal groups. (Signal is a secure private message app favored by anyone who wants to keep his messages secret, including terrorists and insurrectionists.)
He posted several of the screenshots of the secret insurrectionist chats. Note that Minneapolis police are part of the insurgency.
And one of the top organizers is a former Tim Walz strategist.
@amuse
@amuse
Jan 24
Minnesota anti-ICE Signal group leader identified as Amanda Noelle Koehler, a protest organizer and former Tim Walz campaign strategist, also known by the code name HAH and admin of the MN ICE Watch Signal chat group.
“SALUTE (Size, Activity, Location, Uniform, Time, Equipment) is a mnemonic for providing useful information about opposing forces in your area.” pic.twitter.com/5ROceItumM
A former Special Forces Warrant Officer says: This is exactly what we saw in Iraq and Afganistan.
Eric Schwalm
@Schwalm5132
As a former Special Forces Warrant Officer with multiple rotations running counterinsurgency ops--both hunting insurgents and trying to separate them from sympathetic populations--I've seen organized resistance up close. From Anbar to Helmand, the pattern is familiar: spotters, cutouts, dead drops (or modern equivalents), disciplined comms, role specialization, and a willingness to absorb casualties while bleeding the stronger force slowly.
What's unfolding in Minneapolis right now isn't "protest." It's low-level insurgency infrastructure, built by people who've clearly studied the playbook.
Signal groups at 1,000-member cap per zone. Dedicated roles: mobile chasers, plate checkers logging vehicle data into shared databases, 24/7 dispatch nodes vectoring assets, SALUTE-style reporting (Size, Activity, Location, Unit, Time, Equipment) on suspected federal vehicles. Daily chat rotations and timed deletions to frustrate forensic recovery. Vetting processes for new joiners. Mutual aid from sympathetic locals (teachers providing cover, possible PD tip-offs on license plate lookups). Home-base coordination points. Rapid escalation from observation to physical obstruction--or worse.
This isn't spontaneous outrage. This is C2 (command and control) with redundancy, OPSEC hygiene, and task organization that would make a SF team sergeant nod in recognition. Replace "ICE agents" with "occupying coalition forces" and the structure maps almost 1:1 to early-stage urban cells we hunted in the mid-2000s.
The most sobering part? It's domestic. Funded, trained (somewhere), and directed by people who live in the same country they're trying to paralyze law enforcement in. When your own citizens build and operate this level of parallel intelligence and rapid-response network against federal officers--complete with doxxing, vehicle pursuits, and harassment that's already turned lethal--you're no longer dealing with civil disobedience. You're facing a distributed resistance that's learned the lessons of successful insurgencies: stay below the kinetic threshold most of the time, force over-reaction when possible, maintain popular support through narrative, and never present a single center of gravity.
I spent years training partner forces to dismantle exactly this kind of apparatus. Now pieces of it are standing up in American cities, enabled by elements of local government and civil society. That should keep every thinking American awake at night.
Not because I want escalation. But because history shows these things don't de-escalate on their own once the infrastructure exists and the cadre believe they're winning the information war.
We either recognize what we're actually looking at--or we pretend it's still just "activism" until the structures harden and spread.
Your call, America. But from where I sit, this isn't January 2026 politics anymore.
It's phase one of something we've spent decades trying to keep off our own soil.
Who's organizing this? Peter Schweizer says that one major organizer is a hostile foreign government -- Mexico.
WOW 🚨 Peter Schweizer exposes Mexico runs 53 consulates in the United States, and THEY'RE ORGANIZING ICE PROTESTS
The Mexican consulates in America ARE MEETING WITH THE DEMOCRAT PARTY and organizing protests. There‘s a consulate in Minneapolis
The Mexican consulates in America ARE MEETING WITH THE DEMOCRAT PARTY and organizing protests. There's a consulate in Minneapolis
"Mexico has 53 consulates, and I started looking at what Mexico was doing with those consulates. I found out that they're organizing protests, they're still organizing some of these anti-ICE protests. They've got a consulate up in the Twin Cities right now that's neck deep in what's going on in Minneapolis.
But I also found that they were meddling in our politics. They were literally meeting with Democratic Party activists in 2024 saying, how are we going to stop Trump? We got to stop Trump. We turned California from red to blue. We turned Arizona from red to blue. We've got to stop"
A top Mexico Senator on the Mexican National Defense Committee says, Quote, "Mexicans are in our territories. California, Nevada, Texas, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Wyoming. We're going to take back the territory that was stolen from us -- We already know that the Mexican population in the United States reaches 39.2 million. We Mexicans are reclaiming our territory"
Hello. I hope you're all dug out from out of the ice.
THE MORNING RANT: Lodging Made Torturous by Smart Appliances and Electronics - “The Big Regression”
—Buck Throckmorton
When vacationing, my wife and I are tending to once again stay at hotels rather than renting through VRBO or Airbnb. While we prefer to rent an apartment/condo with a kitchen, laundry room, full size bathroom, and additional living space, the unrelenting hassles involving appliances and electronics is pushing us back to hotels. (As well as the detailed and lengthy “clean-up” instructions we’ve encountered at some places, but that’s a subject for another day.)
It has effectively become part of our unpacking process when we arrive at a rental property to contact the property manager so we can learn how to set the thermostat and operate the TV.
In a crazy paradox, the more “luxurious” the rental unit is, the more complex and user-unfriendly it tends to be. For me, having to watch training videos and download apps before I can set the thermostat or run the dishwasher is not luxury, it’s torture. Programming the lighting through a tablet on the wall is excruciating when I realize that something less upscale would offer me a simple light switch.
Jason Fried, a tech executive who co-founded Basecamp, wrote about this problem at “Hey,” another of his software companies. I first read this essay in its entirety on Mr. Fried’s Twitter/X page, but he also has it posted under the title “The Big Regression” at his website.
My folks are in town visiting us for a couple months so we rented them a house nearby.
It’s new construction. No one has lived in it yet. It’s amped up with state-of-the-art systems. You know, the ones with touchscreens of various sizes, [Internet of Things] appliances, and interfaces that try too hard.
And it’s terrible. What a regression.
The lights are powered by Control4, and require a demo to understand how to use the switches, understand which ones control what, and to be sure not to hit THAT ONE because it’ll turn off all the lights in the house when you didn’t mean to. Worse.
The TV is the latest Samsung which has a baffling user interface just to watch CNN. My parents aren’t idiots, but definitely feel like they’re missing something obvious. They aren’t — TVs have simply gotten worse. You don’t turn them on anymore, you boot them up.Worse.
The Miele dishwasher is hidden flush with the counters. That part is fine, but here’s what isn’t: It wouldn’t even operate the first time without connecting it with an app. This meant another call to the house manager to have them install an app they didn’t know they needed either. An app to clean some peanut butter off a plate? For serious?Worse.
Thermostats... Nest would have been an upgrade, but these other propriety ones from some other company trying to be nest-like are baffling. Round touchscreens that take you into a dark labyrinth of options just to be sure it’s set at 68. Or is it 68 now? Or is that what we want it at, but it’s at 72? Wait... What? Which number is this? Worse.
The alarm system is essentially a 10” iPad bolted to the wall that has the f***ing weather forecast on it. And it’s bright! I’m sure there’s a way to turn that off, but then the screen would be so barren that it would be filled with the news instead. Why can’t the alarm panel just be an alarm panel?Worse.
And the lag. Lag everywhere. Everything feels a beat or two behind. Everything. Lag is the giveaway that the system is working too hard for too little. Real-time must be the hardest problem.
Now look... I’m no luddite. But this experience is close to conversion therapy. Tech can make things better, but I simply can’t see it in these cases. I’ve heard the pitches too — you can set up scenes and one button can change EVERYTHING. Not buying it. It actually feels primitive, like we haven’t figured out how to make things easy yet. That some breakthrough will eventually come when you can simply knock a switch up or down and it’ll all makes sense. But we haven’t evolved to that point yet.
It’s really the contrast that makes it alarming. We just got back from a vacation in Montana. Rented a house there. They did have a fancy TV — seems those can’t be avoided these days — but everything else was old school and clear. Physical up/down light switches in the right places. Appliances without the internet. Buttons with depth and physically-confirmed state change rather than surfaces that don’t obviously register your choice. More traditional round rotating Honeywell thermostats that are just clear and obvious. No tours, no instructions, no questions, no fearing you’re going to do something wrong, no wondering how something works. Useful and universally clear. That’s human that’s modern.
Preach, brother. Preach. Thank you.
For me, simplicity is luxury. An absence of apps is luxury. Not having to watch a training video is luxury. Not having to engage with a wall-mounted tablet is luxury. Those are the luxuries I want when traveling.
Related Business Idea – “The Hostelry TV”: As noted in Mr. Fried’s back-to-basics rental unit in Montana, everything was old-school except for the TV, which was still a burden. There is a business opportunity in the tech / media space for someone to develop a simple, user-friendly TV for hostelries that works like a hotel TV of old, in that the guest simply clicks “Power” on the remote and can then start changing channels with the “Channel” button. Perhaps it might be a 32” desk-top TV (with larger wall-mounted options) and a simple, proprietary remote, along with immediate access to what might have been called “basic cable” in the old days. The TV would immediately connect to the internet via Starlink, or some such. Tech bros could figure that out pretty quickly, I presume. The Hostelry TV manufacturer could contract with one of the streaming services to have the basic cable bundle ready to go. There has got to be a way to provide simple, traditional TV access to patrons of hotels and lodging facilities.
Mexico made a mistake in letting itself become a dumping ground for China’s excess automobile production. (Which, by the way, is overwhelmingly gasoline-powered vehicles, not electric, despite the media buzz about Chinese EVs.) Mexico is finally trying to undo the damage with stiff tariffs on Chinese vehicle imports.
Allowing Chinese vehicles into a market is not “free trade.” China has excess capacity of government-subsidized vehicles, which it is dumping into new markets, causing great harm to existing auto manufacturing operations. Many of these vehicles are manufactured by state-owned entities, whose primary purpose is to provide jobs in China, not to make a profit. Mexico has learned how damaging this trade structure is. Canada would be wise to take note.
My latest piece at The American Spectator: China has made Mexico a dumping ground for its glut of government-subsidized new cars*. To save its auto industry, Mexico just retaliated with stiff tariffs. (*Despite media hype, these are gas cars, not EVs.)https://t.co/ebzHzJy5iV
Good morning kids. With reports of widespread power outages as well as the cancellation of hundreds of airline flights as a result of winter storm Fern, I hope you are all safe, sound and warm and minimally affected or otherwise inconvenienced by the cold and ice that has hit a large swathe of the nation over the weekend.
Of course the top story remains insurrection and revolution — no not in Iran but right here in the good old US of A, which with what is going on in Minneapolis could potentially devolve into a disunited state of chaos. Considering the wastage of life, treasure and human potential for decades in its bloodthirsty drive for absolute power, the Democrat party and anti-American leftist movement have produced some of the worst examples of humanity to ever hold the reins of power. And in recent times among the worst of the worst was and remains Barack Hussein Obama. During his accursed tenure as president, he turned back over 50 years of societal advancement and sowed racial division and enmity that within a few years of his departure from the White House American cities burned to the ground in an orgy of violence unseen since the 1960s, and all based on blood libels against law enforcement and the bogeyman of white supremacy. All because Donald Trump dared to run and win a massive victory that in many ways was a complete repudiation of everything Obama stood for, believed in and foisted in the American people. Now here we are six years later and this despicable, evil, twisted lout is at it again.
The anti-ICE riots aren’t ‘grass roots’. They’re as ‘grass roots’ as the BLM riots that the Obama administration not so secretly nurtured. And, by no coincidence at all, Barack Obama popped up to endorse the latest incarnation of his War on America.
Obama popped up to issue a press release attacking federal immigration law enforcement, falsely claiming that, “people across the country have been rightly outraged by the spectacle of masked ICE recruits and other federal agents acting with impunity and engaging in tactics that seem designed to intimidate, harass, provoke and endanger the residents of a major American city.”
The man who funded and freed Islamic terrorists, spied on political opponents and had a man arrested for making a movie about Mohammed, whines that “many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.”
But apart from all the rants about ICE and the usual propaganda, Obama concludes with “every American should support and draw inspiration from the wave of peaceful protests in Minneapolis and other parts of the country.”
The “peaceful protests” that so far include deadly assaults on federal law enforcement, biting an officer’s finger off, and the usual rioting.
Obama wants back in the treason game. He should face the legal consequences for encouraging an insurrection to overthrow the government and enable the conquest of America.
If you want to know why two people are dead and why many others might very well wind up in a Minneapolis or even Anytown USA morgue drawer just like them, it's because Obama, Walz, Frey and the entirety of the Democrat Party is egging them on.
What’s inside the mind of a pro-crime leftist? Some identify vicariously with the criminal as a source of revolutionary violence while others go into a kind of Stockholm Syndrome driven by white guilt and bleeding heart liberalism.
‘Why I Didn’t Report My Rape’, Anna Krauthammer, writing at the radical leftist The Nation goes all in on pro-crime guilt. The author, a grad student who claims to have been gang raped, read Angela Davis and declares that she’s a ‘prison abolitionist’.
“There in that hotel, a little over four years ago, I was raped by a group of men during a three-day trip I took to Las Vegas with two of my best friends. Of the rape, which lasted all night,” she writes. “The simple answer to the question of why I never reported the rape is that I believe in the abolition of police and prisons.”
“I don’t want to ruin the lives of my rapists and I don’t know if they have children,” she blathers. “I have believed in and used the term prison abolition for at least a decade, but for less time than I’ve felt in my bones that I could never participate in any chain of events that might send someone to prison.”
. . . This is what moral inversion does to morality. It makes the perpetrators into the victims and vice versa. . . Women are told to practice a Gandhiesque liberalism in which they must accept being raped rather than send a rapist to jail. This is the endpoint of ‘Abolish ICE”, “BLM”, “Defund the Police’ and the entire mad spectacle of pro-crime policies.And when you understand that moral inversion is the ultimate sign of evil, you understand everything.
For those of a certain age who remember the 1960s, as bad as the anti-war demonstrations and even the Civil Rights marches and race riots of that era, wha we are witnessing here and now potentially can do what those events could not — erupt into an actual civil war, or into such a state of societal breakdown akin to perhaps Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. And then everything is up for grabs.
When churches and now hotels are invaded by roving bands of deranged people convinced they are the moral equivalent of the FFI and the White Rose movement resisting the Nazis — and an entire political party as well as the media using this gargantuan blood libel nonstop, this will not end well.
Antifa Influencer Declares ‘Guerrilla War’ Against ICE After Minnesota Shooting — Kyle Wagner, a self-described “entrepreneur” and “master-hate-baiter,” posted a series of videos to social media appearing to encourage armed and explicitly non-peaceful demonstrations against federal agents, whom he referred to as “Nazi gunmen.” The far-left influencer uploaded the videos in the immediate aftermath of the day’s fatal shooting, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed targeted a suspect who looked ready to “massacre law enforcement.” Chaotic riots subsequently erupted on the streets of Minneapolis. . . “My name is Kyle, I’m Antifa, and there’s so much rage in me, I’ve had to record this like fifteen times trying to get the message out,” Wagner addressed the camera in one video posted to Instagram. “They fucked up.”
“[I]t’s time to suit up, boots on the ground … show up ready to go,” he said, later noting he was specifically “talking specifically to my fucking followers.”
“No, not talking about peaceful protests anymore. We’re not talking about having polite conversations anymore,” Wagner stressed. “Sorry, but welcome to America 2026 where Second Amendment is the only thing that’s gonna keep you fucking protected from literal fucking Nazi gunmen that are killing innocent people in the street with impunity. This is not a fucking joke. There’s nothing fun to chant about it.”
Can you imagine if someone on our side took to social media to implore ordinary citizens to march on Minneapolis or wherever and help defend ICE agents as they went about their business?!
Have a great day.
And lastly, a quick shout-out and a huge thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.
A Minneapolis man who calls himself “Antifa” urged his nearly 36,000 Instagram followers to “get your fucking guns” and “stop” federal law enforcement, after a Border Patrol agent fatally shot an armed man in his city. Kyle Wagner, a self-described “entrepreneur” and “master-hate-baiter,” posted a series of videos to social media appearing to encourage armed and explicitly non-peaceful demonstrations against federal agents, whom he referred to as “Nazi gunmen.” The far-left influencer uploaded the videos in the immediate aftermath of the day’s fatal shooting, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed targeted a suspect who looked ready to “massacre law enforcement.” Chaotic riots subsequently erupted on the streets of Minneapolis. Antifa Influencer Declares ‘Guerrilla War’ Against ICE After Minnesota Shooting
Speaking to insidious CBS News propagandist Margaret Brennan — the woman who claimed free speech caused the Holocaust — O’Hara falsely claimed that the protester had a First Amendment right to record and challenge Border Patrol (actually, what the protester did is against federal law). Minneapolis Police Chief Says It Doesn't Matter if Shooting Was Justified
Even absent any Second Amendment discussion, rule number one here seems a purely logical point. It's one that seems to be getting ignored by many: You simply do not pull a loaded gun on a federal officer doing his duty enforcing the law and expect to survive. Minneapolis: How Is This Not an Insurrection?
Rory Miller’s Force Decisions shows why emotional snap judgments about police use of force ignore reality—and how facts, training, and restraint are the only path to de-escalation. A Citizen’s Guide to Violence in Minneapolis
“If he had a permit to carry, it’s not unlawful to be carrying while you’re exercising your First Amendment right,” Doar said. “You don’t have to pick between which rights you exercise.” Doar added that video footage appeared to show agents had already removed Pretti’s firearm before they opened fire. Ellison has since filed a lawsuit to preserve evidence in the shooting. He labeled the federal presence in Minnesota an “illegal and unconstitutional occupation” and called for a full investigation into Pretti’s death. Minnesota’s AG Previously Joined Other Blue States Arguing Against Right To Bear Arms At Political Rallies, Protests
Democrats such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), among others, came out against voting in favor of a bill that would fund DHS. Democrats called for “MAJOR reforms” to be made to DHS. Senate Democrats Threaten to Block DHS Funding Bill After Border Patrol Shooting
Authorities have charged Mexican illegal alien Juan Alvarado-Aguilar with death by vehicle and driving while impaired (DWI). He caused the fatal accident that killed the young couple after making a totally illegal move on the road in Rowan County, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) press release. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lodged a detainer request for custody of Alvarado-Aguilar. It remains to be seen if North Carolina authorities will honor the ICE detainer. Unfortunately, the state has a Democrat governor, and Democrats often refuse to honor ICE detainer requests, even for killers (Gavin Newsom, for instance). ICE Seeks Custody of Illegal Alien Who Killed Young N.C. Couple
OFFICIAL DEMOCRAT PARTY/LEFTIST-ENDORSED ANTI-SEMITISM, ANTI-CHRISTIANITY
What some touted as a clear rejection of Christian Zionism by the top Catholic official in the Holy Land was instead an episode in which one church rather disingenuously used a joint forum to drag other institutions into its fight. Far from expressing a unified Christian voice, the statement undermined the shaky trust between the historical churches in Jerusalem. How the Internet Fell for a Supposed Condemnation of Christian Zionism
It’s the same playbook whenever the dying media want to manipulate their audiences and turn public sentiment against a government policy they oppose. In this case, immigration law enforcement. They would have you believe that ICE snatched an adorable little boy out of preschool and marched him into the frigid air of a Minneapolis suburb. Here’s How The Media Are Lying Right Now: ICE And ‘5-Year-Old Boy’ Edition
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AI cannot add anything to the information it has. It might be able to compile that information well, but its analysis is always going to be limited because it has no true creative spirit. It is merely a software program, albeit a very sophisticated one. “AI isn’t getting smarter. We are getting dumber.”
RED-GREENS, CLIMATE CHANGE HOAX, DEMOCRAT-LEFT WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS,
DEMOCRAT/LEFTIST AND RINO SCANDALS, MESHUGAS, CHUTZPOCRISY
Multiple X accounts posted screenshots of a fundraising text message sent from a toll-free number Saturday beginning with the words, “Alex Pretti is the limit,” and calling on recipients to “Stand with us! Donate $50 for 200% MATCH.” The message appeared to have linked to a donation landing page for Democratic Youth Wave PAC hosted by leading Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue. Both the page and the PAC’s website, however, were taken down at the time of publication. Pro-Kamala Group Goes Dark After Getting Caught Fundraising Off Alex Pretti’s Death
How “principled” GOP Senators are betraying Trump, MAGA and the American people. Russian Roulette 2026
POLITICS
The Supreme Court’s request for a response puts California Democrats’ new congressional map in limbo as Republicans argue it amounts to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Supreme Court Orders CA Dems To Justify Prop 50 Maps
Software engineer Saikat Chakrabarti is running to succeed Malig-Nancy Pelosi in Congress—but his leftist vision is far more expansive than that. Progressive on a Mission
Roger Kimball: Peace talk aside, the ticking in Iran isn’t diplomacy—it’s a death-rattle, as a murderous regime nears judgment and a brutal people pray that liberation, at last, is real. The Countdown to Iran’s Liberation Has Begun
Iranian security forces may have killed as many as 30,000 people in just two days as the regime crushed nationwide protests with gunfire and heavy weapons. Two senior officials from Iran’s Ministry of Health told TIME Magazine that the government’s internal death count reached approximately 30,000 on Jan. 8 and 9 alone. The slaughter outpaced the state’s ability to handle the dead. Body bag supplies ran out, and 18-wheel trucks took over for ambulances, the officials said. ‘Spasms Of Death’: Up To 30,000 Reportedly Dead After Iran’s Regime Cracks Down On Protestors
Filling Latin America and the Middle East with governments united in peace and development certainly improves the world for America. Regime Change: Antidote to Forever Wars
Trump’s push to bring Greenland under the Stars and Stripes isn’t nostalgia—it’s strategy, blocking Russia and China while expanding American power without firing a shot. From Greenland to Red, White, and Blue Land
With fewer than 8 million new babies in 2025, China is not only down to the lowest level of natality since the Communists took power in 1949. It’s actually back to birth levels last seen three centuries ago, in the early 1700s, when the national population may have been no more than 225 million — less than a sixth of China’s current 1.4 billion. It’s a bitter irony for a regime that enforced a coercive one-child policy for 35 years, until 2015: The new birth figures imply that the total fertility rate has finally fallen below one birth per woman, just as the central planners wanted. China is facing a demographic bomb— and it could handcuff Beijing’s ambitions
REVIEW: ‘Doing Great Harm? How DEI and Identity Politics Are Infecting American Healthcare―and How We Are Fighting Back’ by Stanley Goldfarb Medicine’s Descent Into Madness
How could so many highly credentialed people have been so wrong for so long? (To ask is to answer! - jjs) Food Wars
FEMINAZISM, TRANSGENDER PSYCHOSIS, HOMOSEXUALIZATION, WAR ON MASCULINITY/NORMALCY
Time and again, movements framed as "liberation" overshoot their target, swinging so far in the opposite direction that they become hostile to balance, reason, and restraint. How feminism destabilized modern America
ALSO: The Morning Report cross-posts at CutJibNewsletter.com usually within an hour or so of posting here, if you want to continue the conversation all day.
You may have heard about the replication crisis science, and if you haven't, you should. Half of all published medical research, for example, cannot be replicated, and for preclinical trials the rate increases to four fifths.
An interesting point from that Wikipedia article is that 70% of scientists have tried and failed to replicate another researcher's work, but only 20% have been contacted by another scientist trying to replicate their work.
Which is perhaps by design:
This paper in Management Science has been cited more than 6,000 times. Wall Street executives, top government officials, and even a former U.S. Vice President have all referenced it. It's fatally flawed, and the scholarly community refuses to do anything about it.
Management science, huh? Bad as things are in medical research, at least they admit to baseline reality.
When someone tried to correct the record on this particular paper, his efforts were not well received:
The authors ignored me, the journal refused to act, and the scholarly community looked the other way. Two universities disregarded evidence of research misconduct - even after the authors admitted publishing a misleading report.
The article remains largely uncorrected - misleading thousands of people each year.
I believe our systems for curating trustworthy science are broken and need reformation.
A latter-day dissolution of the monasteries?
Having received no response from the authors, I contacted Management Science. After getting advice, I submitted a comment.
It was rejected.
The reviewers did not address the substance of my comment; they objected to my "tone".
As the article says, ah, the tone police.
The authors did admit to the editor that they had misreported a key finding - labeling it as statistically significant when it was not. The authors claimed the error was a "typo." They intended to type "not significant" but omitted the word "not".
That's one hell of a typo.
The story gets worse from there. And that's just a single paper out of millions.
The Verge may have gone full-blown communist revolutionary newspaper but on this they are not wrong. Google is sometimes completely reversing the meaning of tech articles in its AI summaries.
Which is perfectly possible, just not very efficient. After all, dinosaurs breathed air, and all our gasoline comes from liquified dinosaurs.
It takes carbon dioxide and water vapour from the air, electrolyses the water, and combines them to create methanol. Then it goes through a more complicated process to turn the methanol into usable fuel.
The device costs an estimated $20,000, and if you have a free source of electricity, a gallon of gas costs around $1.50, though the article doesn't mention exactly how this was calculated.
Since you probably don't have a free source of electricity, a gallon of gas will actually cost between $10 and $30, which is why dinosaurs always win.
Musical Interlude
Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the national anthems.
Sunday Overnight Open Thread - January 25, 2026 [Doof]
—Open Blogger
Howdy Hordelings! Welcome to the Sunday ONT. Did you get a lot of snow in your area today? If so, how much? If not, what did you do today? Step on in and let us know what's on your mind tonight!
A man convicted of trying to rob Taco Bell in Ocala using a rock has been sentenced to four years in state prison.
Kewarren Anderson, 40, received the sentence on Thursday. Court records show he was credited for six months and 19 days of time already served.
The incident happened in July 2025 and was recorded on body camera video later shared by Ocala police on social media. The footage shows a K9 unit tracking Anderson from the Taco Bell at 2380 SW College Road to a nearby trash bin. When the dog located him behind the bin, it bit Anderson.
According to the arrest affidavit, Anderson told police he was homeless and needed money. He admitted he tried to rob Taco Bell by climbing through a drive‑thru window while holding a rock and demanding cash from employees.
It's that time of the week - when we turn the ONT over to our good friend Piper for a bit. Here's this week's fashion pr0n.
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Remembering Valentino Garavani – The Last Emperor of Elegance
The fashion world is in mourning. This week, we said goodbye to the incomparable Valentino Garavani, who passed away peacefully at his home in Rome on January 19 at the age of 93. He wasn't just a designer, he helped define glamour, romance, and unapologetic beauty. In an industry that often chases the next big thing, Valentino (as we all lovingly called him) created timeless pieces that made women feel like goddesses. His legacy? Eternal elegance.
Born Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani in 1932 in Voghera, Italy, he knew early on that fashion was his calling. After studying in Milan and Paris, he returned to Rome and founded his house in 1960. From the start, it was all about sophisticated femininity, flowing silhouettes, exquisite craftsmanship, and that signature traffic stopping, fiery red.
Valentino dressed the most iconic women of the 20th century: Jackie Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Julia Roberts (remember that stunning black-and-white gown she wore to accept her Oscar in 2001?), Gwyneth Paltrow, Sophia Loren... the list goes on.
His magic in action:
In the 1960 Federico Fellini film La Dolce Vita, Anita Ekberg takes a night swim in a black Valentino dress in the Trevi Fountain.
Jackie Kennedy Onassis’ wedding dress paved the way for the modern bride in the late ‘60s by opting for something shorter rather than a long princess gown.
Anjelica Huston worked as a model in the 70s and became the face of several Valentino Haute Couture advertising campaigns. The photo by Gian Paolo Barbieri, where she posed in a yellow floral dress, became one of the designer's favorites.
After divorce with Prince Charles, Princess Diana decided to abandon strict dress code. In 1992, she wore a piquant burgundy midi with a velvet corset bodice and translucent hem by Valentino Garavani.
Anne Hathaway at the 2011 Oscars in signature Valentino Red.
Valentino didn't just design glamour; he lived it. Perpetually tanned, impeccably coiffed, surrounded by his beloved pugs, he hosted legendary parties at his châteaux in France, his Roman villa, or aboard his yacht. The 2008 documentary Valentino: The Last Emperor gave us a glimpse into his world , the passion, the perfectionism, the emotion of his final couture show in Paris where the entire audience (including me, in spirit) wept.
This week in Rome, stars gathered to pay tribute at his funeral – Anne Hathaway in tears, Donatella Versace, Tom Ford, and so many more honoring the man who made beauty his life's work.
Valentino creative director Alessandro Michele arriving at the ceremony.
Donatella Versace
The house of Valentino continues to thrive, but it all began with him – the last true emperor of couture. Rest in peace, Mr. Valentino. You made the world more chic.
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Thanks, Piper!
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DJ Doof - Guess The Theme
This one is probably quite challenging. Difficulty Level - 4 out of 5
What's the common thread / common meaning / common leitmotif?
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Tonight's ONT brought to you by a dude who better be joyous
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Tonight's ONT was crafted remotely by someone at Doof Enterprises, LLC. Our offices were closed due to snow, but the ONT show must go on! Please show your appreciation in the comments.
Your feedback may or may not be very important to Doof Enterprises. Follow Mr. Doof on X @doof2112 or do the email thing – doof2112 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 Bigly Storm Edition?
Yikes, people! El Bigly Storm-o is here! I'm near Washington D.C., writing this on Saturday and reasonably prepared for a prolonged power outage should that happen. By the time this goes up Sunday, assuming I still have power and an innernet connection, the storm should be close to wrapping up here. It's going to be colder than a box of penguin turds for the foreseeable future, so whatever we get is going to be around a while. Were you in the path of the storm? Feel free to share your story in the comments tonight!
With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?
Remember, all y'all - just leave it alone and it will melt eventually.
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Mag-Fed Garands!
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Sniper Garand!
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Conversion Garand!
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A Clean Garand Is A Happy Garand!
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More Ice!
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Driving On Snow And Ice
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Highway Patrol!
This week's episode: Portrait Of Death!
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Atomic Attack!
Sorry, New York City, although this would expedite snow removal.
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Cigar of the Week
This week our pal Diogenes scores again with this excellent review of lighters.
Source of Fire review.
Since when did 'Murica get so sissified in making matches? I have always preferred to light my cigars with the standard 'ol basic wooden match. It (used to be anyway) would light the first time, provide a sufficient flame, and had enough stick to make sure you got the cigar well started. One seldom had to light a second one. But today, that just doesn't happen. The matches you see here came from one of my favorite Brick & Mortar cigar shops and they, well... they just suck. I have found that I must use two and sometimes three at a time to get a flame sufficient to even get the cigar started. And as you can see, they are short and burn quickly. End result, very unsatisfactory, with a lot of broken unlit matches on the patio which pissed off Mrs D and makes the cigar experience less fun.
Now the Zippo lighter is a gift from my Army days and it is useful even today for many fire starting things. But, it is not very good for lighting cigars. And this may be just me, but I find any cigar I light with this lighter brings a lighter fluid taste to the tobacco. It will ruin even the best cigar. I recommend you avoid using one. One interesting thing I read about Zippos though; it is the first device made in America that offered a lifetime warranty. I'm not surprised. This one is 40 years old and is still going strong.
Finally the Butane lighter. These range from cheap plastic ones to this fine example that Santa brought me 'cause I'm such a good and fine fellow! It is sleek, provides a great flame even in wind and rain, and one filling can last quite a while. The butane version has eliminated the fluid taste that comes with the Zippo, and I like mine. A lot. But damn! Be careful on sunny days because it is hard to see the flame. This is particularly important for any man or woman with a moustache.
So light up and enjoy a fine cigar today and sip some great whiskey.
Excellent, Diogenes! 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: It's Chilly Outside, Time To Make Chili!
—CBD
This is what winter is all about! What's not to love about crappy winter weather? it is an opportunity to stock the refrigerator and freezer with all sorts of stuff that requires a few hours on the stove or in the oven, and is deliciously warming and hearty.
Chili is particularly well suited for cooking on a cold and windy day, because it is easy, infinitely malleable no matter what your tastes are, and is a perfect way to use up those extra carrots and cans of beans!
Yeah...yeah... chili can be whatever you want it to be!
''When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.''
So the chili above has black beans and hominy, and a very pleasant hit of chipotle. The lead actor is of course beef, because I am not a savage, but pork would work in a pinch. And even chicken, though that changes things considerably. And I guess you could use lamb? Anyone ever make lamb chili?
One thing I do is saute the herbs and spices before I add the liquid. It seems to accentuate their flavors, and even if it doesn't, the house smells great!
Anyone have a particular trick they use to make their special, world-famous chili?
That's "Stracotto," from the kitchen of lurker "LF." Sorry about the small size of the photo, but it looks delicious, so I couldn't resist. It's Italian pot roast, but Stracotto sounds much better!
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It's official: commenter "Lin-duh" makes the best chocolate chip cookies on the planet. I make a solid one, and I have had the fancy versions from snooty bakeries, some of which were wildly overhyped...like Levain in NYC.
Lin-duh's are the perfect combination of buttery and cakey and chocolatey and, yes, salty! That is now a non-negotiable ingredient for me.
I first tasted them in October at the Texas Moron Meet-up; Lin-duh brought a huge box of them, and they were spectacular. I begged and pleaded for the recipe, and she was gracious enough to send it to me.
I won't link to it unless she approves, so be nice to her!
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What to make to go along with the chili way up top?
Well...cornbread of course, but I figured I could tune it up a bit with old reliable -- bacon! I had no idea how much to use, so I just winged it.
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And why not add some cheddar cheese? Is there a dish that is diminished by the addition of cheese? I think not!
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This is the end result, and it was...good. Not great. I used buttermilk instead of regular milk, because I thought the extra tartness would balance the richness of the bacon and cheese. But it overwhelmed the corn flavor, and while the bread was very moist, with a great texture, it was not what I had imagined.
But it looked good!
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This recipe is from an excellent website called Dad Cooks Dinner, to which I have linked many times. Actually, I am not too interested in Instant Pot Beef Ribs (Texas BBQ Style), because 1. I don't have an instant pot, and B) I will almost certainly never buy one. I do like beef ribs, and I really like the minimalist Texas style, which is pretty much just salt and pepper.
That's why I took a look. And he even adds one of my favorite chile powders: Ancho! But he has moved mostly into pressure cooking, and I just don't have much interest.
Anyone amongst the Horde cook with an instant pot/pressure cooker? I would love to hear your reasons!
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What the hell is that? It's a sourdough loaf I baked in a loaf pan instead of a Dutch Oven, and since it was experimentation day at Chez Dildo, I coated it liberally with "Everything Bagel" seasoning out of a bottle.
I forgot to cut the top, which is why it is a little squat, but it was mighty tasty, and the texture was excellent. It is also much easier than a traditional sourdough Boule, because the loaf pan supports the dough, so no need to worry so much about forming the dough and making it nice and tight.
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It's another four-panel cartoon, so it's impossible to see on the blog, but click it and you won't be disappointed! Calvin And Hobbes
******
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!
Obviously the solution is to find a finish carpenter who knows how to steam bend wood, and bend the hardwood floor to match the curve of the oriental rug.
[Seriously, that is a very old rug that I inherited. Hand made, and very nice...and large!]
Does The West Still Have The Oxford Martyr's Spark?
—CBD
Hugh Latimer was the Bishop of Worcester, and a convert to the ideas of the reformation, for which he was tried and convicted of heresy, and along with his friend Nicholas Ridley, burned at the stake in 1555. They, along with Thomas Cranmer, who was burned a few months later, are called "The Oxford Martyrs."
His final words are a testament to the strength and resolve of men of the West.
Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man, for we shall this day light such a candle in England as I trust by God's grace shall never be put out.
Whether that resolve remains in Great Britain remains to be seen, But Western culture is no stranger to religious wars. The Reformation sparked conflict for a few hundred years, and it was brutal. The 30 Years War killed off at least 5,000,000 people, and smaller but no less vicious conflicts spread across Europe.
Europeans once fought and died to protect their religions and culture. From our lofty perch in the 21st century, it seems almost quaint that they would disagree so profoundly about what many of us see as, simply, Christianity. Regardless of the reasons for the conflict, we must respect the fortitude that they displayed.
Is there that same fortitude in the current population of Europe? Yes, certainly, among the Muslim invaders! But it remains to be seen whether there is any fight left in the descendants of the people who bled and died for their faith, their country, their culture.
Who will be the men who light the candle that shows the West that our culture is worth fighting for...and dying for?
PS. This is not a forum for Catholic or Protestant bashing.
Sunday Morning Book Thread - 1-25-2026 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]
—Open Blogger
(Click for larger image)
Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading (for masochists only!). Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...
So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?
My cat Allie decided to relax on top of some of my books in my library. Like any self-respecting bibliophile, I no longer have any available bookshelf space, so I've simply been putting books on top of my bookcases in approximate locations where they would go on the shelves. In this case, I have several Alastair Reynolds books that are in my TBR pile that are sitting on top of my shelves. Allie seems to have appointed herself my literary critic and enjoys laying down on the books. I guess they are slightly more comfortable than the particle board of the bookshelves. NOTE: Right above Allie's head is my ticket stub from when I went to see Lord of the Rings: Return of the King in the theater many years ago. I think I found it in a jacket pocket.
QUICK HITS FROM THE MORON GALLERY
I've had several submissions from Morons, so here goes:
Just brilliant and so applicable to what is going on in the world today.
Sharon(willow's apprentice)
It's tempting to think that authors like C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien were prescient about today's world. I prefer to think that they were astute observers of the fallen nature of mankind. They knew that Man needed to be steadfast in the face of Evil, and that God was the only way that could happen. Removing God from our lives lets in all the evils of the world. We see that everywhere we look nowadays. The good news is that the pendulum does appear to be swinging back the other way.
I don't know if this will be worth anything, but I came across a fun little EweToob channel the Horde might enjoy.
It's called Bitesized Audio Classics. British actor who narrates Victorian and Edwardian short stories. Ghost stories, detective stories, various. I don't know if you've done anything on audio books, but I you ever do, this might be a fun inclusion.
Regards,
- RedMindBlueState
I don't talk about audio books much, mainly because that's not my thing. I do recognize that many Morons enjoy audiobooks and I understand their appeal. You can listen to them while working on something else. I guess it's not too different than turning on a television show and letting it run in the background while you do something else, which I have done frequently. I like this channel because it's a good way to get people interested in classic stories who might not be inclined to read them. The audio rendition with your classic British narration does add a lot to the retelling of these stories.
OrangeEnt Book Review:
All right. Finally finished a work recommended to me: Adrift in the Stratosphere, by "Professor" A.M. Low, as an example of pulp science fiction. It was published in 1937. It concerns three English lads just out for a motorcycle ride who come to an inventor's shed looking for tools to repair one of the bikes. The man has built a craft he plans to take into space. They sneak into the contraption, and accidentally launch it.
They don't know how it works, but they figure out how to do some things by sheer luck. Nearly every problem they get into is solved by sheer luck: learning how to control the ship, escaping Martian attacks, getting trapped in a strange place that forces the ship along a path that apparently ends in a number of jets of fire that they pass through basically unharmed, etc. The other races they meet are friendly and help them for no reason other than the story, I guess.
It seemed amateurish, like something a kid would write. A lot of exposition, with dull dialog, even with the generous use of exclamation points!!! The writer was a scientist and inventor--he operated the first radio-controlled airplane among other things, but was notorious for not finishing his projects. I don't find it memorable. In fact, it's slipping out of my mind although I just finished reading it today. If you're looking to see what early English scifi was like, eh, it may be worth a read. It's not very long. If you're looking for good science fiction, pass.
I've never heard of A.M. Low. The story does sound rather predictable and not terribly compelling. I suppose it can be looked at as an example of the state of pulp fiction at the time it was written. Quite a lot of it was terrible, but it paid the bills. We know of pulp authors from that era mainly because they were the cream of the crop. A lot of pulp authors have faded into obscurity, probably because they couldn't master storytelling like the authors we remember today.
Just read the book thread (1/18). Thought you might like to include this to avoid issues like the Ian McAllister broken spine. I still remember learning this in 4th grade. In the last millinneum when schools still taught useful Stuff. I can attest to the fact that it works.
A proud lurker who posts as OldToolFool once or twice a decade.
Note that this technique only works on "fresh" books, i.e., those books that still have a spine worth preserving. Many, many books on my shelves have the creased spines that we are all familiar with, either because of my own negligence or the negligence of the previous owner in the case of used books. I have noticed that book covers seem to use different paper or different bindings than many of the paperbacks from days of yore. I think this really helps in preserving the spines of books. I generally don't have issues with hardcover books, though I do have several where the binding has deteriorated a bit, requiring a judicious application of Elmer's glue to repair.
++++++++++
++++++++++
BOOKS BY MORONS
This is not my usual HF or contemporary comedy, but a Hallmark movie romance-style, and I wrote it on a dare from the other contributors at the Chicagoboyz blog. we were talking about the expensive uselessness of getting a college degree these days, and how many (especially young men) who skipped the whole college game and went into skilled trades are doing very well, economically - but aren't considered good prospects for marrying by college-graduate women. The culture has to change, we all agreed...and then one of the guys suggested that the culture might have to change to make this acceptable ... and one of the ways to do it was to generate books and movies with that theme. And at that point in the Zoom call, they all looked at me and chanted "doo eet! doo eet!"
So I did, and Sarah Hoyt did a cover for me that rings all the right beats for this kind of romance.
I snagged an early copy of Twelve Months by Jim Butcher on Friday from a local B&N. Finished it early in the morning of Saturday! Turned the book over to my daughter for her enjoyment. It's maybe my favorite Dresden Files book. The longer time frame of the book gives Harry a lot more depth and shows off his more intellectual side. Great twists, great emotional moments, just a 10 out of 10 for me.
Posted by: McDirty at January 18, 2026 09:07 AM (RWXeq)
Comment: Up until this point, the books in The Dresden Files have taken place over a very short period of time within each book--usually just a few days of non-stop action. One thing I've learned in my reread of these books is that they move fast. The pacing is just off-the-charts. There's rarely a moment where the hero (or the reader) gets to stop and take a moment to absorb what's happening before Harry is off to the next action-packed sequence. I'm curious how Harry will handle the downtime in Twelve Months, which sounds like Butcher is giving Harry some very necessary breathing space. I know Butcher has mentioned that he plans around 25 books in the series, so we still have a ways go to.
++++++++++
I have been reading The Unseen Realm by Michael Heiser. The author is an evangelical and this book is about seldom discussed scripture. It's all very strange to me and I am extremely skeptical of Heiser or anyone offering novel interpretations of the Bible. I had enough of that as a child. I picked up the book because Angela McArdle, former chairman of the Libertarian Party, mentioned it.
Posted by: Oglebay at January 18, 2026 09:33 AM (GPa4z)
Comment: A friend of mine recommended this book several years ago. I really enjoyed it because it touches on the most unusual aspects of theology that many of us don't really think about much. Heiser approaches the idea of an "unseen realm" all around us filled with spiritual creatures from a linguistic and historical perspective. To the ancient Israelites and other civilizations of the time, the "unseen realm" was very, very real. No one thought it was superstitious nonsense. You might have vigorous disagreements about whose gods were better, but no one disputed that the gods existed. That's the perspective Heiser brings to the conversation. There are a lot of strange passages in the Bible that tend to be glossed over by pastors in church. But those who compiled the books of the Bible must have had a reason for their inclusion. Heiser reminds us that the "unseen realm" is every bit as vast and complicated--if not more so--than the natural world we see around us. Earth is just a tiny, tiny flyspeck in the cosmos. The spiritual world is so much bigger and more interesting.
++++++++++
The Presidency of George Washington by Forrest McDonald is an excerpt of the great man's life, focusing only on Washington's two terms as our first president. Washington was chosen for his high moral standards and his military background. He was an excellent choice and a thoughtful leader. My favorite chapter was one that set the stage by giving a glimpse into the U.S. in 1789. This brief recap of the political, economic and cultural status of the new nation was enlightening. The new Americans thought of themselves as citizens of a region rather than as citizens of a nation. And these citizens continued in the occupations that had brought them survival and, to some extent, success as colonizers. The political parties are largely unchanged from then to now, and the politics of trying to ensure your state or group succeeds above all others remains unchanged. Recommend this book as an addition to your reading list on early American history.
Posted by: Legally Sufficient at January 18, 2026 09:56 AM (kB9dk)
Comment: Would America be America without George Washington? I've heard him referred to as the "Indispensable Man" of his time. I'm sure it did take some time before people accepted the idea of being an "American" versus being a "Virginian" or "New Yorker." Even today, we can see people who don't seem to accept that they are "American," instead preferring to refer to themselves a "Californian" or "Somalian," even though they live in the United States of America.
Jim Butcher's Twelve Months, the latest entry in his long running Dresden Files series, has just been released. It will be another week or two (or three) until I am able to read it, however, since I'm doing a re-read of the complete Dresden Files series from the beginning, including the two collections, Side Jobs and Brief Cases.
WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:
The Dresden Files Book 6 - Blood Rites by Jim Butcher
I finished Blood Rites this past week. We find out some of the secrets of the White Court of vampires, including the fact that Thomas Raith is Harry's half-brother. This will have enormous implications later in the series. I also realized that the White Court's plan for Harry may, in fact, not have worked even if they had succeeded, but we won't find out why until a few more books down the line.
The Dresden Files Book 7 - Dead Beat by Jim Butcher
The Dresden-verse is full of nefarious factions all vying for THE ULTIMATE POWER! One of these factions consists of acolytes of the notorious necromancer Kemmler. They are searching for The Word of Kemmler which will allow them to conduct the Darkhallow ritual, elevating one of them to godhood. Or so they think. Being a cult of evil warlocks, they are all jockeying for the spoils, backstabbing each other willy-nilly until one of them will rise to the challenge and claim the mantle. But Harry is their fly in the ointment. If you consider a reanimated T. rex a "fly" when it's stomping down the dark streets of Chicago, flattening zombies left and right, powered by the beat of a one-man polka band. (Seriously. I swear I'm not making that up.)
The Dresden Files Book 8 - Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher
Molly Carpenter, Michael Carpenter's oldest daughter, is all grown up and she has the hots for Harry. Harry is adult enough to know that it's a very, very bad idea to get mixed up with his best friend's seventeen-year-old daughter, no matter how smoking hot she might be. At first she brings him in on a case when her boyfriend (sort of) is arrested for beating up an old man while they're at a horror convention. Turns out the movie monsters are being brought into the real world by something called a "phobophage"--an entity the feeds on the fears of humans. Molly gets in way over her head and Harry and his friends have to bail her out, as she's possibly engaged in black magic of the worst kind. The punishment for breaking the Laws of Magic is death by beheading, administered by the Wardens of the White Council of Wizards.
The Dresden Files Book 9 - White Night by Jim Butcher
Someone is killing low-level practitioners of the Art, often making it look like a suicide. At first Harry thought it was only confined to Chicago, but there's a much larger pattern involved as the serial killer has been busy throughout cities across America. Harry's first love, Elaine, comes to Chicago to assist Harry in tracking down the murderer. Unfortunately for Harry, it looks like his vampire half-brother Thomas might be the culprit. Though it's always much more complicated than what it seems when the White Court gets involved. One of Harry's old foes from a couple of books ago might even be at the heart of the matter. Or is it the Outsiders?
The Dresden Files Book 10 - Small Favor by Jim Butcher
Harry's least favorite faction is back! The Order of the Blackened Denarius, among the most vile and evil villains Harry has ever faced are looking for a new "deal." They've kidnapped Johnny Marcone, Chicago's most notorious gangster and the Queen of Air and Darkness, Mab, wants Harry to find him. Marcone is unique among those who have signed onto the Unseelie Accords, being an ordinary vanilla human. He's also entitled to their protection, which is why Mab needs Harry's help. I'm not quite sure how or why the Order of the Blackened Denarius was allowed to sign onto the Unseelie Accords, since it's well known that they are less trustworthy than a Gazan with his fingers crossed behind his back. Now it's up to Harry and his companions to rescue Johnny Marcone and a bonus hostage from the most demonic forces Harry has faced yet.
The Dresden Files Book 11 - Turn Coat by Jim Butcher
Morgan, one of the Wardens of the White Council of Wizards, has been accused of murdering one of the leaders of the White Council. Which is strange considering that Morgan may be a dick, but he's also one of the most staunch defenders of the White Council and the Laws of Magic. It's not his style, despite the fact he was seen standing over the body with the murder weapon in his hand. Now Morgan needs Harry Dresden's help to find a traitor on the White Council who framed him for murder. Harry is conflicted considering that Morgan has been harassing Harry for years about breaking the Laws of Magic, but as usual Harry chooses to do the right thing. If only to spit in the eyes of the White Council, since Harry doesn't have much respect for them, even though he's a member.
This is also the entry in The Dresden Files where we meet Mr. Shagnasty, a shapeshifting eldritch abomination of indescribable horror. Just one glimpse of Shagnasty through Harry's magical Sight nearly turns his brain into tapioca pudding
Microsoft's Bitlocker is infamous for suddenly enabling itself without you explicitly going through the setup process so that neither you nor anybody else has any idea what the encryption key is, and you data is simply gone.
But if you do go through the setup process, it automatically shares your key with Microsoft so the government can ask for and receive your keys.
A Reddit user ordered a "resale" unit of an Nvidia RTX 5090 from Amazon - that is, a unit that had been return during the 30 day window - and received a box containing a towel and a bunch of rocks.
Well, scams happen. Not your fault.
Except this was the fourth time. It's Amazon's fault for not checking returns, yes, but it's also his fault for still believing that they do.
You could also just play Hytale which runs smoothly on Vega 8 laptop graphics from 2021 even at 2880x1620. Albeit on low settings, but low settings are almost identical to "epic" settings - the only visible difference is render distance.
Which, yes, means that your insurance company knows exactly when and how and how much you are driving.
It's also not quite clear what the actual reduction in your insurance rates from this would be. Half cost... But what component of the cost is directly attributable to the number of hours (or miles) driven?
This guy gets it. AI coding assistants aren't useless; they range from super helpful for churning through boring repetitive tasks, to actively dangerous.
Point an agent at a vague goal - "build me a tool that helps with X" - and you'll get something that looks impressive and rots in a folder. Point an agent at a specific task - "rewrite these 200 API calls to use the new authentication pattern" - and you'll save a week.
I had to perform a task with a particular piece of unfamiliar software with painfully poor design and documentation. I used ChatGPT and after a couple of days of trial and error I got something that was slow but worked - and it would have taken me at least a week to perform the same task myself.
The it turned out that the tool I needed to interpret the results was offline, possibly permanently dead. I found an alternative, which my company already had a subscription to... And found that this alternative solved the entire problem and the two days had been completely wasted.
One is generative theatre. The other is actual leverage.
The difference is tactical versus strategic deployment.
Where, in this case, tactical deployment is solving a problem that you actually have, and strategic deployment is solving a problem that nobody has.
Level 5: We are already making millions of dollars every day, thank you very much.
Level 4:We have a detailed multi-stage plan to become the richest human beings on Earth.
Level 3:We have many promising product ideas, which will be revealed inthe fullness of time.
Level 2:We have the outlines of a concept of a plan.
Level 1:True wealth is when you love yourself.
Fine so far. At the top, actually making money. At the bottom, idiot dreamers or possibly communists.
The big names are all at Level 5: OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, and so on.
Hold up.
OpenAI lost $8 billion last year, is expected to lose $14 billion this year, $40 billion next year, and as much as $74 billion in 2028 even if they meet revenue goals.
What a useful word, "luminaries". It covers equally objects that shine of their own right, and masses of stone and dust that merely reflect the brilliance of others.
On the one hand, Turing Award winner Yann LeCun, formerly of Meta, and genuine Nobel laureate Demis Hassabis of Google, who both say that current AI systems are nowhere near human levels and - at least in the case of LeCun - that current approaches can never get there and entirely new methods are needed.
On the other hand Dario Amodei of Anthropic and Sam Altman of OpenAI who say that their tools are approaching the level of Nobel Prize winners and you'll all be out of work by next week.
I think I'm going to go with the guys who didn't trash the global electronic supply chain only so they could burn a hundred billion dollars of investor money.
Musical Interlude
Disclaimer: You're just my type, dead and starting to smell funny.
A trucker walked into a roadside diner and said to the new waitress, "I'll have three flat tires, a pair of headlights and a set of running boards."
The waitress blinked. Once. Twice. Certainly something wasn't right.
She rushed into the kitchen and whispered to the cook, "There is a guy out there trying to order car parts for breakfast!"
The cook laughed. "Relax!
Flat tires are pancakes.
Headlights are eggs.
Running boards are bacon."
Relieved, the waitress put the order together and added a bowl of beans before heading back out to the trucker.
The trucker smiled when he saw the plate but frowned when he saw the bowl of beans. "What are the beans for?"
The waitress smiled proudly and said, "Well, I figured you're getting flat tires, headlights and running boards. While you're here, you might as well gas up too!"
-------
*****
Drink of the Night
Finishing out the fours in our deck of playing card cocktails
Given the reputation of Key West as a haven for a certain segment of the population, one might think a "Key West Margarita" may have an alternate meaning. The Club does not want to know!
Now, a team of 12 scientists from universities in Germany and the Czech Republic have come together in a unique study that observed 37 breeds of dog over a two-year period.
Exactly 1,893 defecations and 5,582 urinations later, the team reach one incredible finding: "dogs preferred to excrete with the body being aligned along the north-south axis."
Dogs join cattle, roe deer, red deer, hunting red foxes, red foxes, coyotes and grey wolves as yet another mammal to have a mechanism of "magnetoreception."
Although their altered behaviour was only evident under calm conditions, it's still a breakthrough in demonstrating measurable, predictable changes in dog behaviour in response to the earth's magnetic field.
*****
Club ONT Department of Fine Cinema
*****
Club ONT Performance art
In January 1978, William Shatner performed a spoken word rendition of the song ‘Rocket Man’ during the Saturn Awards pic.twitter.com/4ciwnSJWb4
Club ONT is not responsible for the condition of the parking lot. Slips, trips, and falls will be met with laughter followed by the requisite "Are you OK?" The Moose sees everything but does not shovel snow. We do not have jumper cables or extra ice scrapers. We do recommend back-in style parking and leaving your windshield wipers up. Growler fills are half-price when ordered using our app. Kitchen will close without notice. No refunds for orders not fulfilled.
Few directors have all-around strengths, the ability to see every aspect of a production from pre-production through sound mixing and determine what's best for the story, for the film as a whole. Most noteworthy directors tend to have groups of strengths, certain parts of the production where their attention and skill is most directly applied to their films. Wolfgang Petersen wasn't an all around strong director, but he did have one particular strength: the sequence.
The Sequence Director is actually really interesting because while scripts may end up having issues, the strength of the sequence done really well is its own thrill and joy. John Ford was actually a sequence director according to his own writers, not really understanding narrative form but understanding exactly how to put together a sequence for film. Wolfgang Petersen feels like a similar filmmaker, just without a strong studio system to back him up with a stable of quality writers.
Moving from German television to Hollywood and then getting hired from one job to the next in ever-increasingly large budgeted productions, Petersen proved that he was a man for the time. Taking simple concepts like a president needing to fight terrorists on Air Force One and delivering them with aggressive energy in clearly filmed sustained sequences, Petersen became one of the most powerful and sought-after directors in Hollywood for about a decade. I don't know if that's what he had dreamed of his career being, but he made the most of it while he was there.
Petersen began his directing career in the mid-60s directing for German television. Mostly television movies, he plugged away at these minimal budgets, finding collaborators along the way like Jörg-Michael Baldenius who was his main cinematographer in the period or, most famously, Jurgen Prochnow, the mainstay in front of the camera for many of these productions like the blackmail thriller Einer von uns beiden (One or the Other Of Us) or the gay drama Die Konsequenz. It was mostly solid work with minimal budgets to good result. The most important of this period may be one of his feature length episodes of the long-running German police procedural Tatort, the episode titled Reifezeugnis which starred Natassja Kinski in her first role.
Television is a hard medium to try and figure out artistic intent from anyone, especially in the 70s when productions were so cheap and quickly filmed, so I watched what I could find, noting my opinions on their qualities, and wondering when the real Petersen would peak out. Was it any of it? The somewhat comic adaptation of The Nixon Recession Caper, Four Against the Bank? The sort of French-like drama that was that episode of Tartort? The gay drama Die Konsequenz? Which one could be called...his?
And then he made the full leap to feature films (though...two of his earlier works were technically released in theaters) with Das Boot, the movie that made his presence known to Hollywood. It was originally released as a feature film, only later re-edited to a longer, multi-episode television edit, but the film's six Academy Award nominations (including for Best Director and Best Screenplay for Petersen as both director and writer) pulled him out of Germany. Well, sort of.
Early Hollywood
Petersen's first post-Das Boot job was The Neverending Story, the adaptation of the German fantasy novel that its own writer, Michael Ende, rejected after Petersen took the story in directions he felt were major deviations from the source material. What I find most notable about the film is the really impressive physical production. The sets are big. The costumes and creature effects are surprisingly detailed and believable. The miniature work is almost convincing. And Petersen made it in Munich. He wasn't ready to leave his fatherland just yet. A solid success at the box office, Petersen really should have been able to make what he wanted after that.
And yet, for reasons I can't quite explain, he took the salvage job of Enemy Mine. My confusion isn't about the quality of the movie but about the decision to take a disaster of a production that had already shot for a few weeks under original director Richard Loncraine, completely revamp the production including throwing out all footage and building huge sets in the same large tank set he had filmed the U-boats in Das Boot, and then spending another $25 million to finish it. The movie would have needed to have been a huge success to make up for those handicaps. It feels like the job for a hatchetman, not an up and coming director having just had his first Hollywood success, but he apparently just liked the script.
Well, the movie bombed, especially considering the sunk costs of its initial push at production which cost about $15 million on its own, and then Petersen didn't release another film for six years.
Biography
I tend to avoid biography when running through a director's work. I want the work to speak for itself, but I'm always interested in gaps in output. So, I tried to find out what Petersen was doing from the release of Enemy Mine in 1985 and the release of Shattered in 1991. I couldn't find much. I saw that he moved permanently to Los Angeles in 1986 and became an American citizen in 1987, but that's it. Surely he was trying to get some projects off the ground in this time, but what they were isn't readily available.
And then Shattered came out, and not only did Petersen direct it. He also wrote it. He also produced it.
I see that it's based on a novel, so surely this was just some flash in the pan novel from the time that quickly gathered interest, right? No, it's based on The Plastic Nightmare by Richard Neely which was published in 1971. Was...Shattered his passion project? Wash Shattered the movie he spent six years trying to gather together resources to make? Was it where he cashed in all of his goodwill in Hollywood? To make a middling adaptation of a ridiculous erotic thriller that lost money at the box office? If Shattered had been a financial success, would the rest of his career been erotic thrillers instead of action thrillers? Was Shattered the kind of movie Petersen wanted to make?
I'll never get the answer to that question because with the financial failure of Shattered, Petersen got the job that would define the direction of the rest of his career.
Action in the 90s
Since the 70s, Hollywood producer Jeff Apple had wanted to make a movie about Secret Service agents, especially with ties to the JFK assassination. He finally cracked the idea when he hired writer Jeff Maguire to write a draft and signed Clint Eastwood to play the central role. In contrast to Shattered, Petersen has neither a writing nor a producing credit on In the Line of Fire, but it was the first box office success Petersen had had in a decade.
If Shattered is the kind of movie Petersen wanted to make, what is In the Line of Fire? I think it really was just a director-for-hire job. A younger director with some obvious chops getting hired by a strong producer (Apple) with one of the major stars of the time (Eastwood) who were going to exert control over the production while Petersen managed the camera. And it was a rather large success, the kind of success where Hollywood looks at the director and says, "You will make more of this kind of movie again."
And that's what he did. From Outbreak to Air Force One to The Perfect Storm, he produced big budget action films with major movie stars (yeah...Dustin Hoffman could be qualified as one for a time, I guess) with lots of special effects and extended action sequences that he could deliver with a professionalism and style that never overwhelmed anything else. And he was hitting financial success after financial success after financial success.
Is there something of Petersen in these films? The military aspects of Outbreak, the confined, extended aspect of Air Force One, and the naval (if predominantly civilian) aspects of The Perfect Storm indicate, to me, an effort on his part (he was producer on all three) to find projects that appealed to him in terms of subject matter. Sure, the scripts could be uneven (Outbreak is like three movies in one that never gel and The Perfect Storm character storytelling is thin with caricature, but Air Force One is awesome), but they indicate to me that Petersen, at his height of power, was using the large scale blockbuster to tell stories that interested him while also finding room for the kind of action spectacle that he could deliver in sustained sequences for the masses and his studio employers.
The 2000s
The 2000s was when Petersen's career faltered. The Perfect Storm was a mild financial success considering its rather large costs, but critically it wasn't exactly loved. Still, critics don't mean much in Hollywood when money's still being made, so Petersen got the assignment to try and continue the sword and sandal epic revival started by Ridley Scott's Gladiator with his pseudo-adaptation of Homer's The Illiad, Troy. It seems like the general opinion on the film has risen decently since the film's release. Using the Wayback Machine, the film started with an IMDB rating in the high 6's and now has a rating of 7.2, a steady climb over more than 20 years. I remember reactions being more muted, especially its bloated nature, some stiff acting, and it being part of an overuse of CGI armies at the time that people were getting tired of.
Well, the film made money, but it was really expensive. Nearly costing $200 million, it only made a shade under $500 million. Combined with marketing costs which were at least $100 million and could have been as much as $200 million and the theatrical share of ticket prices, it's likely that Troy didn't make any profit for Warner Brothers at the box office. Combined with The Perfect Storm likely having a similar fate, Petersen seemed to be on thin ice.
And then the ice broke out from under him with Poseidon. A very expensive re-adaptation of the novel by Paul Gallico, it outright lost money (at least $60 million, and probably more) while meeting critical derision (I have a good time with it), and then there's another large gap.
Finishing Where He Began
As I said earlier, big gaps in a filmography interest me, and this second gap is bigger than the first. From 2006 to 2016, Petersen made nothing. There is a bit more information out there about what he was trying to get off the ground (notably an adaptation of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and a live-action adaptation of the anime Paprika) but nothing came to fruition. At some point, he seems to have given up on making another film in Hollywood and went back to Germany to make another adaptation of The Nixon Recession Caper, this time in more outright comedic fashion. It seems like almost no one outside of Germany has seen this film (I have, I thought it was pretty fun), but it was met with strong success in Germany while meeting no real distribution outside of Germany (European comedies rarely even try international distribution).
His final film completed, he lived for another 6 years and died in his home in Los Angeles in 2022. Did he try to get another project off the ground in his 70s? There's no indication that he did or didn't. I wouldn't have minded seeing one more from him, though.
Legacy
So...who was the real Petersen? I think the closest we'll ever get to the real Petersen, the artist he wanted to be in cinema, is going to be Shattered. Every indication is that it was his baby, the project that he shepherded, wrote himself, and produced for years before he got to set. If that had been a success, we would have gotten more lurid thrillers from him instead of action spectacles.
But it wasn't a success, and In the Line of Fire put him on his proper path: action director. And he was really good at it. Movies of Today
Das Boot (Rating 4/4) Full Review "I'd be surprised if I felt Petersen came close to matching this again. I've seen enough of what's to come to feel assured that this is going to be his crowning achievement." [Personal Collection]
The Neverending Story (Rating 1.5/4) Full Review "And yet, everyone seems to love this film. Ugh, I don't. I've tried, but no. This movie is bad." [Prime]
Enemy Mine (Rating 2/4) Full Review "I just find the actual story to be dull as dishwater. Still, I got some pew-pews at the end." [Library]
Shattered (Rating 2/4) Full Review "So, the film is not terribly engaging, but Petersen makes the experience slick with solid direction, the actors are all committed and doing decent jobs, and I get a kick out of the ending." [Plex]
In the Line of Fire (Rating 3.5/4) Full Review "It's a fun ride, and everyone does their job well. It's a good time at the movies." [Personal Collection]
Air Force One (Rating 3.5/4) Full Review "It's not the top tier of 90s action filmmaking, but it's honestly near the top." [Personal Collection]
Troy (Rating 2/4) Full Review "It's a mixed bag, one I wish I liked more (I'm a sucker for the sword and sandal epic), but this response to Gladiator's success is a good signpost on the road to why the genre died out again." [Personal Collection]
Poseidon (Rating 2.5/4) Full Review "Petersen might not have been a visionary, but I think he had an idea of what he was doing." [Library]
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My next thread will be on 2/14 and it will discuss the directing career of Park Chan-wook.
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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]
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Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, and an always interesting observer of the human and political condition, has died. RIP. [CBD]
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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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