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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.
Contact OrangeEnt for info: maildrop62 at proton dot me
State pulls X-rated East Harlem club's liquor license after Gothamist investigation
State officials have rescinded an East Harlem club's liquor license after a Gothamist investigation revealed the venue was operating as a de facto adult establishment despite city prohibitions.
The decision effectively closes Bodega Paradise and marks a victory for community members who spent months fighting what they saw as the Adams administration’s indifference to their concerns about the venue's X-rated activities.
The club opened in May after owner Alex Meskouris told Manhattan's Community Board 11 that the business would operate as a breakfast spot and sports bar, making no mention of adult entertainment.
A teenage wood shop apprentice in Turkey died after his co-workers inserted a high-pressure air hose up his rectum as a horrific “prank” — the latest incident in which the power tool has killed a young man by exploding his intestines.
The dark “joke” turned deadly Friday when Habip Aksoy and a friend allegedly overpowered Muhammed Kendirci, 15, and tied his hands at the woodworking center in Sanliurfa, according to local outlet Milliyet.
They allegedly forcibly removed his pants and shoved an air compressor tube into his anus — causing severe internal organ damage.
When you leave your car with a valet, you expect it to be safe, but that wasn't the case for a man who came to Cleveland for a medical procedure.
A 19-year-old Cleveland Clinic valet worker is being charged with aggravated speed, reckless operation, failure to show proof of financial responsibility and receiving stolen property after taking a Mercedes-Benz for a joyride while on the clock.
*****
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Notice: Posted with permission by the Ace Media Empire & AceCorp, LLC. Contrary to some claims The ONT is produced in a facility that also processes, nut, dairy, wheat, oat & everything else that you sissies need to be warned about.
Meteor Crater in Arizona. I thought it might be AI but it's legit. I didn't think a crater would so clearly remain a crater after so many years. I guess it's a young crater, just 50,000 years old. Some call it the "best-preserved meteorite crater on Earth." I feel a little stupid that this is new to me. Feels like something I should have remembered from In Search Of...
If Dracula lived in the bayou, would his castle be surrounded by gators? I think so.
Playing peak-a-boo with a tiger kitten. This better not be AI.
This honey badger is so aggressive he doesn't care that this elephant is sixty times his size but the elephant is going to teach him that that is an important factor in a fight.
Trump: I'm Ending the "Temporary" Protected Status of Somalis Immigrants, Which Has Now Been "Temporary" for (Checks Watch) Thirty Years
—Ace
This is prompted by Somalis treating the US as if it is merchant ship to pirate and sack. As mentioned on Friday, Somali fraudsters are bilking the federal government for millions and sending it off to the ISIS-offshoot terrorist group Al-Shabaab. As one analyst pointed out, the US taxpayer is now the biggest funder of Al-Shabaab.
Founded in 2016, Feeding Our Future was a small Minnesota nonprofit that sponsored daycares and after-school programs to enroll in the Federal Child Nutrition Program. The organizations that Feeding Our Future sponsored were primarily owned and operated by members of Minnesota's Somali community, according to two former state officials with connections to law enforcement.
In 2019, Feeding Our Future received $3.4 million in federal funding disbursed by the state. In the months after the Covid-19 pandemic began, however, the nonprofit rapidly increased its number of sponsored sites. Using fake meal counts, doctored attendance records, and fabricated invoices, the perpetrators of the fraud ring claimed to be serving thousands of meals a day, seven days a week, to underprivileged children. In 2021, Feeding Our Future received nearly $200 million in funding.
In reality, the money was being used to fund lavish lifestyles, purchase luxury vehicles, and buy real estate in the United States, Turkey, and Kenya. In 2020, Minnesota officials raised concerns about the nonprofit's rapid expansion. In response, the group filed a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination related to outstanding site applications, noting that Feeding Our Future "caters to . . . foreign nationals."
"That's the standard operating playbook for that cohort: when in doubt, claim racism, claim bias," says David Gaither, a former Minnesota state senator and a nonprofit leader. "Even if the facts don't point to that, it allows for many folks in the middle, or on the center-Left, to stay silent."
Gaither believes the mainstream media, alongside Minnesota's Democratic establishment, have long turned a blind eye to fraud within the Somali community.
This, in turn, allowed the problem to metastasize. "The media does not want to put a light on this," Gaither said. "And if you're a politician, it's a significant disadvantage for you to alienate the Somali community. If you don't win the Somali community, you can't win Minneapolis. And if you don't win Minneapolis, you can't win the state. End of story."
The fraudsters have leveraged their growing political influence to cultivate close ties with Minnesota's elected officials. Several individuals involved in the Feeding Our Future scheme donated to, or appeared publicly with, Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born congresswoman from Minneapolis. Omar's deputy district director, Ali Isse, advocated on behalf of Feeding Our Future. Omar Fateh, a former state senator who recently ran for Minneapolis mayor, lobbied Governor Tim Walz in support of the program. And one of the accused, Abdi Nur Salah, served as a senior aide to Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey.
There is $300 million in identified, known fraud. Who knows what the actual number is.
President Donald Trump's pledge to terminate temporary legal protections for Somalis living in Minnesota is triggering fear in the state's deeply-rooted immigrant community, along with doubts about whether the White House has the legal authority to enact the directive as described.
In a Truth Social post late Friday, Trump said he would "immediately" strip Somali residents in Minnesota of Temporary Protected Status, a legal safeguard against deportation for immigrants from certain countries.
The announcement drew immediate pushback from some state leaders and immigration experts, who characterized Trump's declaration as a legally dubious effort to sow fear and suspicion toward Minnesota's Somali community, the largest in the nation.
"There's no legal mechanism that allows the president to terminate protected status for a particular community or state that he has beef with," said Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center.
"This is Trump doing what he always does: demagoguing immigrants without justification or evidence and using that demagoguery in an attempt to take away important life-saving protections," she added.
...
"I am a citizen and so are (the) majority of Somalis in America," Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Somali, said in a social media post Friday. "Good luck celebrating a policy change that really doesn't have much impact on the Somalis you love to hate."
Still, advocates warned the move could inflame hate against a community at a time of rising Islamophobia.
"This is not just a bureaucratic change," said Jaylani Hussein, president of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "It is a political attack on the Somali and Muslim community driven by Islamophobic and hateful rhetoric."
Supreme Court Stays Left-Wing Rogue Judges' Ruling That Texas Is Not Allowed to Draw Its Own Congressional Maps
—Ace
Alito stayed the decision, which means, for the moment, the map is back.
The lawless rogue left-wing judges had issued an injunction blocking the implementation of the map -- an injunction being an order granted before a trial, after a mini-hearing and a finding that the moving party is "substantially likely to succeed" at the actual trial* -- which means there is now no ruling before the full trial.
Texas is back to using its 2025 congressional map, at least temporarily, after Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito granted the state's request to pause a court ruling that would have required using the lines legislators drew in 2021.
The high court has not yet decided what map Texas should use while the court battle over the legality of the map plays out over the coming weeks and months; Friday's ruling is a short-term pause while they make that decision.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated the step as a victory, and said his office would "look forward to continuing to press forward in our case on the merits."
* As the dissenting Judge Smith pointed out, the majority (of two) acknowledged that the law requires a "substantial likelihood" of victory to obtain this extraordinary relief, but then immediately ignored the requirement of "substantial (overwhelming) likelihood" and just spoke of mere likelihood.
This is complicated: A liberal fired by Trump filed suit arguing he couldn't be fired. The lowly district court judge granted Yet Another Emergency Injunction blocking his firing. The DC Court of Appeals vacated that injunction. The liberal brat appealed to the Supreme Court, who then declined to hear his appeal, letting the appeals court's ruling stand. And their ruling kicked over the lowly (left-wing) district court's Yet Another Emergency Inunction.
Todd Harper, a member of the National Credit Union Administration Board, challenged his removal from that role, filing suit against Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, President Donald Trump, and other administration officials.
In July, D.C. District Judge Amir Ali granted summary judgment in favor of Harper, but the administration appealed, and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay of Ali's judgment pending appeal in August. Harper then filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court in September.
And that writ -- a request for a review by the Court -- was declined.
The RedState article notes that a lot of wins are found in these "short orders." People focus on the big rulings, but the tiny little short orders, like just declining to hear this guy whine that he feels entitled to keep his job, are big, too.
Major "America First" and "America Only" Twitter Accounts Exposed as Foreign Grifters
—Ace
X added a feature. If you clicked on a tab called "About this account," you can see where accounts are actually based.
And it turns out that some of the most "pro-American" American First or America Only accounts are located in the patriotic states of Turkey, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
Bonchie here calls it a "glitch" but I think that's incorrect; X added the feature to increase transparency and so people could gauge the "authenticity" of an account.
Inside our tents, we're freezing... My children are trembling...
Gaza is freezing...
People pointed out that when this was posted, Gaza's overnight temperature was 65, and the daytime temperature was 80. That's not "freezing." That's May in San Diego.
But even more wonderfully: This account is based in... well, not Gaza.
The above was posted when it was 65 degrees at night (and 80 during the day), just to give you an idea of the kind of propaganda being spewed. For years, the above account has claimed to be reporting from the ground in Gaza. He's made hundreds of posts pushing fake claims about genocide, famine, and his own supposed hardships. In reality, his account was created in the United Kingdom, and he's currently residing in Poland.
Where, admittedly, the temperature is much colder.
I'm sure you will not be surprised to learn that the most aggressive Jew-hating "America First" accounts are actually based in Islamic countries.
Here’s a thread of prominent accounts that have been subverting the US by flooding X with anti-American, anti-Israel, demoralizing, or Marxist content aimed specifically at Americans.
Several of them pose as Americans. But now the jig is up.
"CounterAIPAC," which rails against foreign Jews subverting American politics through AIPAC, turns out to be, get this, an Egyptian subverting American politics by representing himself as America First.
One odd thing: There are apparently a lot of "Native American" accounts calling for hatred and violence against the white man for stealing their land. They turn out to be based in... Bangladesh.
People have been saying for years that "Twitter is not real life," and it definitely seemed that Nick Fuentes' crew of Hitler-admirers had an outsized presence on Twitter not visible in real-life America.
That's because a lot of them are just Islamic Jew-haters and anti-American trouble-makers and dissent-sowers in foreign countries.
Robby Soave
@robbysoave
I was reflexively disinclined to believe it was all foreign accounts promoting racism and anti-Semitism under the guise of the pro-Trump America First banner. That sounded too easy, and similar to the (now debunked) idea that all the Trump content on Facebook in 2016 was actually Russian bots.
But... this "account based in" feature actually has unmaked tons of groypers as Pakistani, as far as I can tell? Very useful feature, and kudos to Elon Musk and the X team for implementing it. The hate is not coming from inside the house!
This guy, with an all-American face and an all-American family, said his family had converted to Islam and faced "threats of being fired"!
I saw one "America First" account exposed as run from Pakistan objecting: Just because I'm in Pakistan, my opinion doesn't count?
Not in American politics, Mohammad. And you seem to have understood your opinion didn't account when you pretended to be an American.
There's a lot of this, as now-exposed-as-foreigners "American influencer" accounts argue that Americans should be accepting of "outside voices" subverting their politics.
We cannot have a coherent or productive political debate if the dialogue includes a whole bunch of random foreigners from all across the world who have no stake in this country, no skin in the game, and no first hand knowledge of our culture at all. It is very important to identify the foreign intruders and bully them mercilessly until they shut up and leave us alone. We cannot talk about or fix any of our problems with a mob of foreigners constantly barging into the conversation.
We are nigh-constantly bombarded with "outside voices" telling us Americans how to vote -- all of the foreign media, most foreign governments. The UK's Labour Party sends over political operatives to interfere in our elections.
We put up with a lot of "outside voices."
I do think we can and should draw the line at dirty foreigners pretending to be Americans. This is astroturf. We didn't accept it when David Axelrod flooded the internet with "Concerned Christian Conservatives" telling us that Barack Obama was the True Conservative Choice for president, and we shouldn't accept these foreign psyop operatives interfering in our elections either.
All this said, X acknowledged that the location provided for some accounts may be inaccurate.
"This is an important first step to securing the integrity of the global town square. We plan to provide many more ways for users to verify the authenticity of the content they see on X," Bier wrote on X on Saturday.
Not everyone was eager to reveal the origin of their accounts. Users in places that limit freedom of speech could face political repercussions. Some users called it forced doxxing. Others said that if a user created an account using a VPN routed through another country, the location information may not be accurate.
On Saturday, X removed information about where some accounts were created. Bier said the data "was not 100 percent," especially for older accounts, and that the company plans to "bring it back by Tuesday."
Five hours later, he posted again: "I need a drink."
Late Sunday, he added that there would be an upgrade in 12 hours and that location accuracy would be "nearly 99.99%."
X appears to have factored in the VPN point. On Monday morning, Business Insider tested the "About This Account" feature from a device using a VPN and found a notice that warns the "country or region may not be accurate" due to the use of a proxy.
The location function also comes with an accuracy disclaimer, which states: "The country or region that an account is based can be impacted by recent travel or temporary relocation. This data may not be accurate and can change periodically."
I've seen people say that while some podcasts -- like Tucker Carlson's -- have big ratings, most of those viewers are actually foreigners who are, for reasons you can guess, very invested in his heavy anti-Israel/anti-Jewish propaganda.
I don't know if there's any way to prove that. It makes sense but I don't know who would have those numbers. Tucker Carlson would -- but he's not revealing them.
Department of War Mulls Court-Martialing Senator and Inactive-Duty Officer Mark Kelly for Urging Troops to Defy the Duly-Elected Commander in Chief
—Ace
Officers in the US Armed Forces are under a special obligation to respect the chain of command.
Aren't they?
The Department of War is reportedly considering recalling Kelly to active duty, just to face an court martial for insubordination (and, I guess, insurrection).
Department of War
@DeptofWar
OFFICIAL STATEMENT:
The Department of War has received serious allegations of misconduct against Captain Mark Kelly, USN (Ret.). In accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. sec. 688, and other applicable regulations, a thorough review of these allegations has been initiated to determine further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures. This matter will be handled in compliance with military law, ensuring due process and impartiality. Further official comments will be limited, to preserve the integrity of the proceedings.
The Department of War reminds all individuals that military retirees remain subject to the UCMJ for applicable offenses, and federal laws such as 18 U.S.C. § 2387 prohibit actions intended to interfere with the loyalty, morale, or good order and discipline of the armed forces. Any violations will be addressed through appropriate legal channels.
All servicemembers are reminded that they have a legal obligation under the UCMJ to obey lawful orders and that orders are presumed to be lawful. A servicemember's personal philosophy does not justify or excuse the disobedience of an otherwise lawful order.
Pete Hegseth put an exclamation point on the DOW's statement:
Pete Hegseth
@PeteHegseth
1h
The video made by the "Seditious Six" was despicable, reckless, and false. Encouraging our warriors to ignore the orders of their Commanders undermines every aspect of "good order and discipline." Their foolish screed sows doubt and confusion -- which only puts our warriors in danger.
Five of the six individuals in that video do not fall under @DeptofWar
jurisdiction (one is CIA and four are former military but not "retired", so they are no longer subject to UCMJ). However, Mark Kelly (retired Navy Commander) is still subject to UCMJ--and he knows that.
As was announced, the Department is reviewing his statements and actions, which were addressed directly to all troops while explicitly using his rank and service affiliation--lending the appearance of authority to his words. Kelly's conduct brings discredit upon the armed forces and will be addressed appropriately.
Mark Kelly and the other seditionists told troops to substitute their own opinion for the duly-elected Commander-in-Chief's.
The problem is that there is a vast difference between manifestly illegal orders and those whose illegality is debatable. The latter of which, refusing to obey an order one feels personally questionable, is itself illegal, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
In other words, service members can't simply say they feel immigration enforcement, for example, is unlawful and walk away, which is precisely what these Democrat lawmakers were trying to incite.
🚨 MAJOR BREAKING: The Department of War is considering recalling Democrat Senator Mark Kelly to active duty to be COURT-MARTIALED for telling troops to refuse President Trump’s orders
Breaking: Clinton Judge Dismisses Indictments of Both James Comey and "Big Tish" James, Claiming the US Attorney Prosecuting Them Was Unlawfully Installed
A federal judge on Monday dismissed the criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, concluding that the prosecutor who brought the charges at President Donald Trump's urging was illegally appointed by the Justice Department.
The rulings from U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie halt at least for now a pair of prosecutions that had hastened concerns that the Justice Department was being weaponized to pursue the president's political adversaries and amount to a stunning rebuke of the Trump administration's legal maneuvering to install a loyal, and inexperienced, prosecutor willing to file the cases.
The orders make Lindsey Halligan the latest Trump administration prosecutor to be disqualified because of the manner in which they were appointed. Both defendants had asked for the cases to be dismissed with prejudice, meaning that the Justice Department would not be able to bring them again. But the judge instead dismissed them without prejudice, though it was not immediately clear if or how the Justice Department might attempt to revive the prosecutions.
Quick note: When a Republican-appointed judge rules against Trump, the media always points out he's a "Bush appointee" or "Trump appointee" (as just happened in the Texas redistricting case).
When it's a left-wing judge appointed by a Democrat, the media suddenly forgets how to use Google.
NEW: A federal judge has dismissed both indictments against Tish James and Jim Comey after determining Lindsey Halligan’s appointment is unlawful. Unbelievable. pic.twitter.com/sPOgyu5iEO
The snark and bias of Judge Cameron Currie--a Clinton appointee tasked with handling the disqualification motions--oozes throughout her orders dismissing the indictments against Comey and James.
The indictments can be refiled, this leftwing judge grants, with a new prosecutor -- but the statute of limitations on James Comey has, oopsie!, already ran.
Kaelan Deese
@KaelanDC
BREAKING 🚨: A judge ruled that Trump’s pick Lindsey Halligan was "illegally appointed" as U.S. attorney and tossed the Comey and James cases. The dismissals are "without prejudice," meaning they could technically be refiled -- though Comey's attorneys say the statute of limitations has already run.
MAGA Grifter Majorie Taylor Greene to Resign Mid-Term, Imperiling Republican Majority
—Ace
She's resigning in January 2026 -- not January 2027, when her term ends -- and her seat will be filled by a special election, which may or may not go the GOP way, and whose timing depends on Trump opponent Gov. Brian Kemp to schedule.
Many note that the date of her resignation just happens to coincide with the date required to secure her five-year Congressional pension.
Although Super-Trumper MAGA Queen Marjorie Taylor-Green claims she began opposing MAGA to support True MAGA, and began opposing Trump to... save Trump from himself or something, Scott Jennings offered a more plausible explanation for the flakey grifter going on CNN and The View to trash MAGA.
She went on Bill Maher a couple of weeks ago to modify and soften her prior support of the theory that deadly fires were caused by a solar laser controlled by the (Jewish) Rothschild banking family.
And this Super-MAGA Trump Queen did this to position herself better with her new constituency, leftwing Trump haters and Groypers.
Republican US House member Marjorie Taylor Greene has said she believes in demons, surmising that they might be aliens who fell from heaven, and claims to have been unaware that key figures in the antisemitic space lasers conspiracy she floated were Jewish.
She made those bizarre remarks as a guest on Friday on HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher after winning some fans among Democrats who once loathed her -- yet had come to appreciate how the far-right Georgia representative had recently broken with Republicans on various issues. Those include healthcare, Gaza, the federal government shutdown that began on 1 October and the handling of documents pertaining to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was friends with Donald Trump before the latter man won two presidencies.
Greene's appearance on Maher's show perhaps made evident the ideological distance between the congresswoman -- who has conspicuously avoided directly criticizing Trump himself -- and some of her newer, cross-aisle admirers.
Attacking Trump's positions without mentioning Trump himself is a patented Tucker Carlson move.
...
At another point in the show, Maher invited Greene to revisit her infamous 2018 social media screed positing that wildfires that had devastated California were ignited by a laser beam from space under the control of the Rothschild banking dynasty.
The progressive watchdog Media Matters uncovered that post weeks into Greene's first congressional term. And her colleagues at the time voted to remove her from her House committee assignments, with the Rothschild family having repeatedly been subjected to antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Greene on Friday declared to Maher that she initially "didn't even know the Rothschilds were Jewish".
"Before politics ... I [did] not know much of any of this stuff," Greene said. "I never even said the word 'Jewish' in the ... post."
Maher pointed out that "'Rothschild', to a lot of people, is almost synonymous with the word 'Jewish'".
Greene replied: "I had no idea ... Now I know it's Jewish."
Amid laughter and applause, Maher retorted: "Right. Well, now we know ... That's what I'm here for -- to make sure that people in Congress know what the fuck you're talking about."
I don't think I've mentioned that on the blog before because I try not to dogpile on people allegedly "on our side" unless necessary. I did not consider her to be such an important figure that I had to criticize her.
There's a whole contingent of idiot self-appointed ideological enforcement operatives -- not you guys, I mean like largely-foreign "MAGA influencers" on X, or the astroturf Groyper brigades that occasionally infest this site when I mention their Fey Fuhrer -- who demand not just that people keep quiet about nutters like Greene, but that we must defend this conspiracy-addled idiot flake. As if we're all in some army and we are oath-sworn to "defend our superior officers." And Greene, I guess, is my superior officer?
Really? In what sense? I don't even live in her district and even if I did, she is not a superior officer in the MAGA Army.
And these idiot Woke Nazis somehow imagine that they are my superior officers, too, and can give me orders from the Groyper Central Command.
Anyway, there's an entire astroturf army of online authoritarian supposedly "America First" speech-police -- again, mostly foreign, as I'm sure you heard and which I'll post about later -- that is either paid to insist that people support their fellow-travelers, or else are just foreign MAGA grifters who get good engagement by demanding that people support Groyper-type people. These foreign bot commanders make a few thousand American dollars per month just tweeting nonsense. Nice work if you can grift it.
A few thousand American dollars a month goes a long, long way in Turkey, Bangladesh, Pakistan, or India. America First, baby.
So, was this conspiracy-added grifter who I was demanded to defend really Super-MAGA and Ultra-Trump like she claimed?
Ah, no. Not at all. She is a low-IQ opportunist nutball peddling snake oil to a crowd that has a fever and the only cure is more snake oil.
Via FaceBook. I have no idea if this account is actually associated with Trump. It does quote Jennings accurately.
Donald Trump For President
SCOTT JENNINGS: TRUMP SAVED MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE FROM HUMILIATION
"I did see the president today actually, and we discussed the Marjorie Taylor Greene issue a little bit.
What happened with her is very simple. She wanted to run statewide in Georgia.
He privately and discreetly sent her a copy of a poll that he had seen, and she was way down.
It was not gonna work out.
He actually did her a favor by saving her from a humiliation.
But ever since that moment, she's opposed him on bombing the Houthi rebels, on bombing Iran, on deportation, and she's gone on TV shows and attacked him.
Because he betrayed her in her mind on that political moment, she's become an opponent on this other stuff."
So this moron thought she could be a governor and was upset that Trump wasn't going to make another bad Trump endorsement and support her in a losing effort.
She said what people wanted to hear. That makes it true, right?
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene stunned Republicans on Friday, announcing she will leave Congress next year after a blistering, very public fallout with President Trump. In a statement released Friday, Greene said she will step down on January 5, 2026, ending a tumultuous tenure that turned her into a national figure but increasingly put her at odds with the movement she once claimed to champion.
Her decision drops exactly one week after Trump withdrew his support, saying he was finished dealing with a congresswoman he viewed as endlessly absorbed in drama instead of helping advance the mission he's fighting to deliver. Trump blasted her on Truth Social, noting that while he's focused on "Record Achievements for our Country," Greene would just "COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!"
Greene's relationship with Trump has frayed for weeks as she broke with him on a series of policy fronts. She was also one of only four GOP members to force a vote on the Epstein files -- a move Republicans say fed Democrat distractions, even as Trump backed the vote just to move past it. And as she kept elevating it, Trump ramped up his attacks, posting that "Wacky Marjorie 'Traitor' Brown... is working overtime to try and portray herself as a victim when... she is the cause of all of her own problems," adding that "nobody cares about this Traitor to our Country."
Greene admitted the break was decisive. She said Trump's call for a primary challenger ahead of 2026 helped push her toward resignation, claiming she didn't want to drag her district through what she described as a pointless fight. "I have too much self-respect and dignity... and do not want my sweet district to endure a hurtful and hateful primary."
In her closing statement, Greene insisted she'd "never changed" and argued that disagreements over immigration policy, tech regulation, long-term mortgages, and foreign entanglements were proof she was simply "voting her conscience." But Republicans note her rhetoric has increasingly turned inward, challenging her own party as Trump works to unite conservatives behind him heading into the 2026 midterms.
Greene, 51, has represented northwest Georgia since 2021. Her departure narrows the GOP's already thin majority and removes one of the most polarizing figures in Congress.
If I sound like I'm pissed off: I am. I'm so tired of the "More MAGA Than Thou" bullshit from grifters and flakes who turn out to be, surprise surprise, opportunists attaching themselves to a political movement for personal benefit.
And who largely turn out to be dirty foreigners, too.
Looking forward to Marjorie Taylor-Greene's next media venture, The MAGA Muscle Mommy Work-Out Plan. Whatever the next grift is. I'm sure it will be stupid.
Anyway. Hello! Are you ready for a short week and then an early dinner?
MGM Resorts & Panera Bread Learn that Slashing Headcount, Reducing Quality, and Gouging Customers Is Not a Viable Long-Term Strategy
—Buck Throckmorton
A corporation can target its loyal customers for revenue mining and temporarily increase its profits.
It can also slash employee headcount and customer service, thereby reducing labor expense to produce a short-term increase in profits.
It can even reduce its product size and cheapen the product’s quality to reduce cost of goods sold, also giving a short-term boost to gross profit.
But in every case, these actions tell customers that rather than being valued, the corporation sees customers as marks to be exploited. A great many customers may get hoodwinked once, providing the short-term profit boost that was being sought, but then never come back, thus destroying the company’s long-term prospects. A downward spiral of alienated customers, declining revenue, deteriorating facilities, and degraded reputation ensues.
There ought to be a business school case study about this phenomenon. The only trouble is that this strategy is what’s being learned at elite business schools. Maybe a business school could do a case study on just how toxic elite business school graduates are to corporations.
MGM Resorts International and Panera Bread are both reeling from employing the destructive strategy I just laid out. To their credit, the CEOs of both companies are acknowledging just how damaging that strategy was. To their discredit, these CEOs are learning on the job after being part of the brain trust that implemented these offensive practices.
Predictably, Panera executives did the deceptive gimmick of quietly shrinking portions and reducing the quality of its food while increasing prices.
When Panera Bread began shrinking its sandwiches and skimping on salads, it started shedding customers. Now, to win them back, the chain plans to reinvest in the business and undo many of those same cost-cutting measures, it said Tuesday.
Once the No. 1 fast-casual brand in the U.S., Panera has dipped to No. 3, ceding the top spots to Chipotle Mexican Grill and Panda Express. Last year, its sales fell 5% to $6.1 billion, according to Technomic estimates. For years, the chain’s traffic has been shrinking, according to CEO Paul Carbone.
Panera didn’t just reduce portion sizes and the quality of its food, Panera also reduced staffing.
Phase one of Panera’s plan is to improve the quality of its food, reversing cost-cutting measures imposed in the face of high inflation, according to Carbone. “We squeezed food costs. We squeezed labor,” he said.
Some of those changes happened while Carbone was Chief Financial Officer. He now calls himself a “reformed CFO” — albeit one who still listens to earnings conference calls. “It’s really about death by a thousand paper cuts, it truly is,” Carbone said about the chain’s downturn.
This next statement from CEO Carbone is a concise indictment of the practices that so many corporations have embraced since they allowed mercenary executives with no long-term focus to destroy their companies in pursuit of one good quarterly report:
“In some instances, we shrunk portions, so guests would walk into our cafe to buy a sandwich that has gone up significantly in price, with lower-quality ingredients, in a smaller size,” Carbone said.
He also realizes now that staffing actually matters:
To improve the customer experience, Panera is planning to invest more into labor. Like many restaurants, Panera in recent years scheduled fewer workers and relied more on the self-order kiosks it pioneered in the industry. That approach saved money, but customers often walked into a cafe and couldn’t find an employee in sight, according to Carbone.
Panera saved money but loyal customers were lost. Who could have ever predicted that?
MGM Resorts International burned itself badly following that same template of gouging customers and cutting service.
MGM Resorts President and CEO Bill Hornbuckle had a simple message for his company this week after extortionate prices have kept people away from his hotels in Las Vegas: “Shame on us.”
In an earnings call Wednesday, Hornbuckle said the company has “price-corrected” its resorts following a summer of backlash over steep charges, including the “infamous” $26 bottle of Fiji water at the Aria hotel.
He also mentioned the $12 Starbucks coffee at Excalibur as an example of how the company hadn’t been attentive to customer needs.
Those of us who consider ourselves “business smart” often mock the Congressional Budget Office for assuming that a tax increase will result in a dollar-for-dollar percentage increase in Treasury revenue, because Congress doesn’t understand that trying to take more money out of a person’s pocket will result in that person engaging in tax avoidance behaviors. Yet somehow the highly credentialed business wizards at corporations such as MGM similarly assume that increasing the price of a bottle of water to $26 will simply result in a gusher of revenue, rather than grasping that it repulses customers, causing them to avoid the product and to never return to an MGM property.
“We should have been more sensitive to the overall experience at a place like Excalibur,” he said in the call, according to KLAS. “You can't have a $29 room and a $12 coffee. We lost control of the narrative over the summer,” Hornbuckle continued. “I think we would all agree to that in hindsight.”
Who lost control, Mr. Hornbuckle? Who was the CEO in charge of controlling the narrative?
Jonathan Halkyard, MGM’s Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, said Wednesday that the company reviewed what customers are actually willing to pay for certain goods and services, and have since implemented about 90 percent of those adjustments.
While gouging customers, MGM was also gutting staff and eliminating customer service:
To further mistreat customers”meet evolving customer preferences” MGM eliminated the concierge desk at most of its properties along the Las Vegas Strip, including the MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, and New York New York. MGM claimed that it was eliminating valet and bell staff at the Excalibur ”to respond to industry trends to better serve guests.” Sure.
One thing I have noticed is that with the corporatization of the casino, the economics and the way they are run have changed a lot. When it was mob-run, it was more off the cuff. The MBAs and data crunchers at the corporate casino have installed Disneyland pricing into their models. In economic terms, it is “first degree, second degree, third degree, fourth degree” price discrimination, and it might even go to the seventh degree. They don’t need you to gamble to make money off of you. They make money if you show up.
Unfortunately, once a customer has been exposed to endless fees and revenue mining, he is likely to simply never show up again.
It’s a good thing that the chastened CEOs of MGM and Panera are confessing their mistreatment of customers. I wish them well in their efforts to reform their practices and win back customers. Unfortunately, it’s much easier to chase a customer away than to ever win him back.
I also hope that other corporate executives will learn from MGM and Panera and avoid having to give their own contrite apologies. Treating employees as a pestilence and customers as prey is a destructive business practice that should have never gained favor, and which needs to be repudiated by corporate America.
Good morning kids. Hope you all had a nice relaxed weekend as we are now in the run-up to Thanksgiving, which marks the start of the run-up to Christmas. Or, as my relatives and I would say "Oy gevalt!"
As for the links, once again it's Insurrection, Sedition and Treason oh my! Of course all on the part of the Democrat/Left as it has been almost since the founding of the Republic. If a single image could define the concept of black humor, it would have to be this one, which CBD posted in the sidebar. It's the Babylon Bee with a shot of NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani standing in front of the White House, prior to his Oval Office confab with President Trump. The headline "Breaking: Hamas Breaches White House Perimeter"
Elle Bisgaard-Church, the Chief of Staff for Zohran Mamdani, claimed that Mamdani “made clear that we uphold sanctuary laws in our city and all immigrants will be safe in our city” and those ‘laws’ only allow cooperation with ICE “in extreme violent felony cases.”
What’s an “extreme violent felony”? Well it’s different than a moderate violent felony like a mugging, assault, rape or a mild murder.
It’s kind of like moderate Islam and extreme Islamic terrorism. . . Of course it depends on how you define moderate. Since Mamdani thinks Hamas is moderate, it might actually be more like killing 1,000 people in one hour.
And so as President Trump continues to exercise his Constitutional authority and duty to protect our citizenry by both rounding up and deporting illegal aliens (violent and otherwise) and deploying the National Guard to either help local law enforcement arrest criminals or in some cases do the work that police departments are being prevented from doing by the insane edicts of their Democrat/Marxist mayors and city councils. He's also decided to allow our military assets to interdict and use lethal force to eliminate narco-traffickers on the high seas, before they can unload their lethal cargo onto our shores.
All of this has caused much wetting of undergarments by the Democrat/Left which is merely a distraction from the fact that President Trump and his successful policies are bolstering support from the MAGA and conservative base and even garnering support from those outside that group and from among disaffected Democrats, which has now led to not only violent acts committed by their street thugs and terrorists against law enforcement but for their leaders no openly calling for the troops to disobey national, legal, command authority from their Commander-in-Chief and his military leaders. This is sedition and the fomenting of insurrection.
Wright suggests that Slotkin, who is also former CIA, knew exactly what she was doing by putting out this video. . . On Friday’s “Jesse Watters Primetime” on FNC, former CIA operations officer and host of the “The Wright Report” podcast, Bryan Dean Wright, argued that Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) intentionally sparked a firestorm with what he deemed a “propaganda video” urging military members to defy so-called “illegal orders.”
She and all like her have to swing.
Have a good day.
And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.
Now we know that it was all a massive foreign influence operation of fake MAGA accounts meant not to promote Trump, but to turn Americans against Jews and Israel and to sow chaos and division among actual Trump supporters. Foreign Fake MAGA Anti-Israel Accounts Exposed In X “Location” Disclosure
CIVIL WAR 2.0, LEFTIST PERSECUTIONS, DEMOCRAT PUTSCH, AMERICAN DISSOLUTION
Victor Davis Hanson: Democrats now celebrate the very nullificationist tactics they once decried, embracing a neo-Confederate defiance of federal authority to undermine a president they despise. Insurrection Chic
If you are not bound by reality, then any and all ideas are possible. ‘No Problem Too Large for Government to Solve’ (Except a too large gov't that insists it can solve all the problems it creates in the first place - jjs)
The left has never given up its raddled dream of a Better World. (That's not what they want; they want absolute power. A better world is the lie they are pimping - jjs) The Left’s Lost Cause
To Biden, the line. . . “If you don’t vote for me, you ain’t black.”, wasn’t a gaffe. It was a summary. A neat little distillation of the worldview dominant in academia, DEI institutions and the activist class for the past decade: Race isn’t ancestry anymore. Race is ideology. Race is obedience. Biden didn’t invent that idea. He just said it cleanly. The antiracist movement had been teaching it openly: The New Definition of Blackness: When Race Stops Meaning Race
This week, investigators with the Cameron County District Attorney’s Office arrested Karen Olvera De Leon on charges stemming from a criminal indictment. Olvera De Leon is an employee with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas in Brownsville and is charged with one count of terrorism and one count of tampering with physical evidence. DOJ Staffer in Texas Arrested on Terrorism Charges After Doxxing Federal Agent During Raid
The fraud and taxpayer-fleecing going on in Minnesota are almost beyond comprehension. The Land of 10,000 Grafts!
THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Roger Kimball: Capitalism’s critics cling to a mythic past, but the record shows the factory age ignited rising living standards, broader opportunity, and the modern prosperity we now take for granted. The Evils of Capitalism
“…the 764 Network is a heinous child exploitation ring that often targets children online and coerces them into acts of violence – self harm, animal abuse, suicide, and sexual abuse. “ FBI Warns of Dangerous Child Exploitative ‘764 Network’
Miranda Devine: We pay police and judges to keep evil and dangerous predators away from weak and defenseless innocents. Yet radical Democrats who have taken over blue cities are hellbent on a destructive ideological crusade to defund the police, close the jails and install obedient judges who side with the perpetrator over the victim. (We need an army of Paul Kersey, Bernhard Goetz and Meir Kahane, times a million to "judge" the judges - jjs) It’s high time liberal judges are held accountable for failing to lock up violent career criminals
James Q. Wilson’s work showed that removing dangerous people from the streets protects communities. Incarceration Works
OFFICIAL DEMOCRAT PARTY/LEFTIST-ENDORSED ANTI-SEMITISM, ANTI-CHRISTIANITY
“Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) are foreign organizations that are designated by the Secretary of State in accordance with section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), as amended. FTO designations play a critical role in our fight against terrorism and are an effective means of curtailing support for terrorist activities and pressuring groups to get out of the terrorism business,” the agency said. Report: President Trump to Designate Muslim Brotherhood as Foreign Terrorist Organization (Islam is the FTO and has been for centuries - jjs)
The attacks have heightened insecurity in the region and drawn international condemnation, with calls for justice and investigations into the perpetrators. ISIS-Linked Militants Attack Christian Hospital.
FIRST AMENDMENT ISSUES, CENSORSHIP, FAKE NEWS, MEDIA, BIG BROTHER TECH
Georgian neo-Nazi “Maniac Murder Cult” leader Michail Chkhikvishvili pleaded guilty to federal charges on Monday after his propaganda incited violent plots such as the January Antioch High School shooting in Nashville, court records show. The deceased shooter’s online ramblings also point to a similar cult, “Totenation,” that went unnoticed despite an unidentified leader for the group claiming responsibility, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of archived webpages. Web Of Depraved Satanic Groups Brainwashed School Shooter – Only One Culprit Has Been Unmasked
RED-GREENS, CLIMATE CHANGE HOAX, DEMOCRAT-LEFT WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS,
That Trump is trying to cleanse science of this political garbage is wonderful news. That the so-called science journal Science and the science community wants this political garbage tells us they no longer follow the scientific method and its unvarnished search for the truth. Bigoted academia upset that Trump won’t allow them to push the racist DEI agenda
While three of the court’s five justices agreed to uphold a district court judge’s September 2024 order declaring the law “unconstitutionally void for vagueness,” North Dakota requires at least four justices to agree in order for a state law to be deemed unconstitutional, The Associated Press (AP) reported. Judges Forced To Restore North Dakota’s Abortion Ban After Constitutional Fight Over ‘Vagueness’
Thad McCotter: Harry Reid’s false attack on Mitt Romney endures as the template for a progressive movement that wins by bending language, ignoring truth, and blaming others when its policies fail. The Progressives’ Practical Amorality: ‘Reid Alert!’
“I am still thinking about running. We did get our polling back, so we are moving on to the next phase to determine whether or not this is what makes sense in the moment, and if the infrastructure can be built out in the way that I see it being necessary to actually be able to win as well.” Crockett: Polling Says I Can Win Texas Senate Seat (huffing eyelash glue whippets - jjs)
Mamdani’s narrow win alarms many New Yorkers who fear his radical agenda, but state and federal checks—and energized voters—could still blunt his most extreme plans. Time To Fight for New York (The time would have been the election that saw Debolshevik succeeding Rudy/Bloomberg - jjs)
The company is called Longshot. It isn’t the only company attempting to do this. I reported on another company, Green Launch, in 2022, but have heard little from it since then. A company that wants to shoot payloads into orbit with a cannon (Gerald Bull meets Georges Méliès? - jjs)
The startup B2Space has completed a test flight using a balloon to lift a solid-fueled rocket to high altitude, where the rocket was then launched. Startup B2Space launches rocket from balloon
FEMINAZISM, TRANSGENDER PSYCHOSIS, HOMOSEXUALIZATION, WAR ON MASCULINITY/NORMALCY
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today published... its peer-reviewed study of the medical dangers posed to children from attempts to change their biological sex.
The report, released through the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, finds that the harms from sex-rejecting procedures — including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical operations — are significant, long term, and too often ignored or inadequately tracked. These conclusions confirm President Trump’s Make America Healthy Again Commission’s findings that unnecessary procedures and long-term health risks such as infertility are the byproduct of the overmedicalization of children. (You know who else overmedicalized children?! and hat tip to commenter Muldoon - jjs)HHS Releases Peer-Reviewed Report Discrediting Pediatric Sex-Rejecting Procedures
Last year, a review from leading paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass found that transgender medical practices were “built on shaky foundations” and that Britain’s socialised healthcare system should not hand out puberty-blocking drugs to minors over safety concerns. The left-wing Labour Party government agreed and barred the practice for children. UK Study to Give Puberty Blocking Drugs to Children as Young as Ten (Shortage of ideal Mohammedan "wives" - jjs)
A significant and surprisingly broad phenomenon has emerged: a quiet revival of faith among young people in both the United States and the United Kingdom. God is Back
“Two thousand years is not a particularly long time...I could never go back to that degree of purity...I did not want any more argument...If God seems not to exist, that is entirely my fault...Do soulmates exist? Do credit ratings exist?” Psychedelics Made Me Christian
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.
The reactors will be small - very small, just 75cm wide though 9 meters tall - to fit down a regular borehole, and will generate 15 megawatts of power each. They plan to bring a test unit online next year - though they admit the schedule is optimistic - and commercial units within three years.
On November 15, 240 gathered at a shopping center in Baotou City, China’s Inner Mongolia province, to take part in an unusual competition inspired by the ‘lying flat’ movement. “Lying flat” is a popular internet slang term in mainland China that describes a lifestyle of giving up on the rat race of reaching societal expectations and instead relaxing and choosing to maintain a minimum standard of living.
The rules of the competition were fairly straightforward: contestants needed to lay flat on a mattress, and while they were allowed to roll around on the mattress, read books, eat, or use their smartphones, they were not allowed to get up from the mattress or even use the restroom. The last person to remain lying flat would be declared the winner.
Although there was no time limit for the contest, over the first 24 hours, 186 competitors had been eliminated. Those who remained on their mattresses agreed to stricter rules being gradually introduced, and after 30 hours, only a handful of people remained in the competition.
At the 33-hour and 9-minute mark, only 3 contestants remained in the lying flat contest. Two minutes later, one was eliminated. The remaining 2 contestants lasted for over 20 minutes, and finally, at 33 hours and 35 minutes, one of them gave up, and the other was pronounced the winner.
A controversial skincare trend known as the “blood mask” is gaining traction on social media, drawing both curiosity and concern from experts. The practice, also referred to as “menstrual masking,” involves individuals applying their own menstrual blood to their face in hopes of achieving clearer, more radiant skin.
Supporters of the blood mask trend claim that menstrual blood contains regenerative components such as stem cells, cytokines, and proteins. These elements are believed to promote collagen production, reduce wrinkles, and accelerate healing. A study published by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) found that menstrual fluid-derived plasma may aid in tissue repair and wound healing more effectively than standard blood plasma.
Check out the whole thing. If you dare!
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Fashion Segment (Without Piper)
Piper has the night off. You're stuck with me instead. How hard can this fashion stuff be? I mean, take a look at these retro Hordelings reading extremely relevant periodicals.
I suppose I'll allow Piper back next week!
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DJ Doof - Random 70s Stuff Edition
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Weekly commenter stats for week of 11-23-2025
AoSHQ Commenter Statistics:
Number of posts: 92
Number of comments: 25252
Number of unique hashes: 1924
Top 10 commenters:
1 [728 comments] 'Sponge - F*ck Cancer' [103.39 posts/day]
2 [382 comments] 'Axeman'
3 [371 comments] 'qdpsteve'
4 [352 comments] 'ShainS -- Bury My Heart At a Texas MoMe '
5 [331 comments] 'Aetius451AD work phone'
6 [320 comments] 'the way I see it'
7 [314 comments] 'I used to have a different nic'
8 [313 comments] 'Its Go Time Donald '
9 [289 comments] 'r hennigantx'
10 [287 comments] 'm'
Top 10 sockpuppeteers:
1 [206 names] 'Shoemaker's Daughter, Ready To Give Her Awl' [29.26 unique names/day]
2 [104 names] 'SecDef Robert McNamara'
3 [98 names] 'Quarter Twenty '
4 [57 names] 'Duncanthrax'
5 [47 names] 'Count de Monet'
6 [41 names] 'The Grateful - Acta Non Verba'
7 [36 names] 'Intercepted Reddit Transmissions brought by the Intrepid AoS Liaison'
8 [34 names] 'Crusader'
9 [28 names] '18-1'
10 [25 names] 'Bill Gates, Tech Weirdo With Man Boobs'
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Tonight's ONT brought to you by construction crew tryouts
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 Fourth November Edition?! Happy Thanksgiving, all y'all. Are all of your preparations for the big day in place? What are some of the things you're thankful for?
NOTE: I likely won't be around in the comments much tonight, so please do not burn the place down.
With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?
With winter approaching, we may soon be chased indoors for range time.
and...
and...
Fundamentals. Focus upon them.
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Best Use of 50 Rounds in Practice
With Lena Miculek. We've seen this before but it emphasizes practicing with a purpose.
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T20 Family
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Guns O' Norm
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Office Etiquette
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Highway Patrol!
This week's exciting episode: Stripped Cars!
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Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women
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Cigar of the Week
This week our pal rhomboid scores again with this excellent review of not one, not two, but three offerings from E.P. Carrillo's "Essence" series
Ernesto Perez Carrillo is one of the reigning master blenders in the cigar world. His company, recently renamed Casa Carrillo, is best known for its prestige lines that have claimed top honors on cigar rating lists - Pledge, Encore, Endure. But the company's Essence line, priced more affordably, is now a big part of their total line-up. I happened to try three of the four offerings in that line (didn't encounter the Connecticut), so here is a brief review of each.
The Essence Honduras is nearly a Honduran puro (there is some Nicaraguan filler) with a handsome chocolate brown wrapper. Upper end of medium-full in profile, with good construction, draw, and smoke volume. For me it was straight oak, earth, and leather all the way through - anyone who gravitates towards that profile would enjoy this stick.
The Maduro offering has a rustic dark Connecticut broadleaf wrapper, with Nicaraguan and Dominican filler aged 5 years. Construction and smoke were excellent. A solid medium in profile, it was more to the cedar than cocoa end of the maduro spectrum, but very tasty, with a very smooth finish with a hint of sweetness throughout.
The Sumatra stick has a medium profile from Nicaraguan and Honduran fillers (and binders) and an attractive light brown Ecuador Sumatra wrapper. Construction again was excellent. Throughout I got cedar and other woods, and rich tobacco flavors.
The robusto and toro vitolas in this line run from $6-$8 per stick. All three were quality offerings at this affordable price point.
Very nicely done, rhomboid! Thank you!
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Here are some different online cigar vendors. You will find they not only carry different brands and different lines from those brands, but also varying selections of vitolas (sizes/shapes) of given lines. It's good to have options, especially if you're looking for a specific cigar.
A note about sources. The brick & mortar/online divide exists with cigars, as with guns, and most consumer products, with respect to price. As with guns - since both are "persecuted industries", basically - I make a conscious effort to source at least some of my cigars from my local store(s). It's a small thing, but the brick & mortar segment for both guns and tobacco are precious, and worth supporting where you can. And if you're lucky enough to have a good cigar store/lounge available, they're often a good social event with many dangerous people of the sort who own scary gunz, or read smart military blogs like this one. -rhomboid
Anyone have others to include? Perhaps a small local roller who makes a cigar you like? Send me your recommendation and a link to the site!
Please note the new and improved protonmail account gunthread at protonmail dot com. An informal Gun Thread archive can be found HERE. Future expansion plans are in the works for the site Weasel Gun Thread. If you have a question you would like to ask Gun Thread Staff offline, just send us a note and we'll do our best to answer. If you care to share the story of your favorite firearm, send a picture with your nic and tell us what you sadly lost in the tragic canoe accident. If you would like to remain completely anonymous, just say so. Lurkers are always welcome!
That's it for this week - have you been to the range?
Food Thread: The Unbearable LIghtness Of Brussels Sprouts
—CBD
I love 'em! Brussels Sprouts are tasty, great textured, are infinitely malleable, so they can be sweet or tart or spicy or salty or fatty. Well, they are always fatty, because if I am not cooking them with bacon they get a large dousing of olive oil.
But around these parts, the Brussels Sprouts crop has been crap. They are woody, tough, and I have noticed more rot and bug evidence than usual. Is there a coming Brussels Sprouts blight that will rival the Black Death? Is Big Vegetable, in its infinite wisdom, getting rid of Brussels Sprouts the way they deplatformed snap peas?
Because this is a big deal! How can I make Brussels Sprouts with Bacon, or more accurately, Bacon with Brussels Sprouts, if one of the four ingredients is substandard?
Anyone else notice this, or am I the only lunatic?
I like RFK Jr. A bit. He is an iconoclast, and our government needs more of them. He is also no fan of Big Pharma and their tenacious grip on our government and media (via oceans of cash!).
"It's pretty easy to figure this out, and we will figure it out," Kennedy said at the Washington event held by the Food Allergy Fund.
Biomedical research is insanely difficult, not least because the metabolic and immunological pathways of the human body are immeasurably complex. And the human genome and behavior are also pretty complicated, so eliminating confounding variables to arrive at a statistically valid result is not "pretty easy" at all!
Kennedy said he does not think the spike in food allergies is due to avoidance, citing that his own home was filled with peanut products, yet five of his children still developed allergies, and that countries where peanut butter was introduced did not see large increases in peanut allergies.
Yeah...I really don't want a secretary of HHS to be ignorant of the difference between anecdotal evidence and statistically valid evidence.
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I don't have any idea what happened, but it was delicious! And the damned thing almost pushed the top of my baking Dutch Oven off!
I can think of many uses for an artificial tongue, but none of them involve avoiding spicy foods. Isn't that part of the excitement of eating hot stuff?
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In answer to my question from last week about drinking hard liquor with meals, here is commenter "Pastafarian" with an answer!
Pretty much exclusively. I don't care for wine. I'll drink it, when in Rome yada yada. But it doesn't really enhance food, to me. It's just too much grape-skin "earthiness" (dirt) and tannins. Blech.
Now a nice old fashioned (bourbon, rye, or rum) goes really well with a steak. So does a Manhattan.
And margaritas go well with Mexican food, and Mojitos with Cuban -- properly made margs and mojitos, tart and bright, no bottled sour mix involved, fresh-squeezed or muddled limes only.
Aside from the fact that no civilized human being would make an Old Fashioned with Rum, I like the cut of his jib!
Of course, I sent the article to Muldoon, who is a fellow sourdough aficionado, and he had the best response!
I think the writer of that piece had a flawed translation from the original German. What it actually said is that Germans are the best in the world at loafing.
[HatTip: Kindltot]
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I am gutless, and never take the proffered lollipop, whether it is at the bank or the barber. Yes, my long-time barber has a bowl for the kids! Smart guy.
But that doesn't mean that I don't want one. Maybe I should consider it "hard candy on a stick," that way it isn't quite so child-like!
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A friend graciously gave me some genuine grown-in-the-USA garlic, and I am going to taste one clove and plant the rest, because my pathetic failure last year is an anomaly...right?
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!
The Entire World Finds The Palestinians Repulsive, Yet Insists Upon Foisting Them Off On Israel?
—CBD
Everywhere they go they cause problems. Egypt's border with Gaza is unbelievably fortified, because Egypt's significant social and economic problems don't need an injection of low-intelligence, violent troublemakers. The so-called "refugees" from Israel's War of Independence never integrated themselves into Lebanon or Jordan or Syria for the same reasons.
Of course, the concept of a "refugee," 75+ years after a war is laughable. Where are the refugees from World War II, which was obviously many orders of magnitude larger, more destructive, and displaced millions upon millions of people?
Israel and the United States have discussed how to deal with the terrorists trapped in the Rafah tunnel network. One proposal, which would have allowed them to be deported, collapsed after no foreign state — including Turkey and Qatar — agreed to accept them.
The bolded sentence is, in a nutshell, the problem with the Palestinians. Nobody wants them. But as a tool to bash Israel, they are marvelous! And as a tool to foment street violence and political upheaval in the West, they are the perfect tool.
There are 22 nations in the Arab League, with almost half a billion people. Those are the natural destinations for the Palestinians...not the one tiny Jewish state, against whom they lost several wars. There is no historical analog to the demand that Israel accept the losers of its many wars against the Arab world, yet for some unfathomable reason, that is the demand.
And...of course it is a transparent reason. The world, in particular Europe, is still furious with the Jews for not having the decency to allow Hitler and the Third Reich to complete their Final Solution. Pushing for a Two-State solution simply means having an armed terrorist nation on the border of Israel. Pushing for a One-State solution means the dissolution of Israel as the Jewish homeland.
The far simpler and more peaceful solution is the integration of the Palestinians into the many Arab nations. There are oceans of petroleum money available for this resettlement, which could dilute the malign effects of large Palestinian populations by distributing them among all of the 22 Arab League nations.
That will never happen, because the Palestinian question is far too valuable as the wedge between the Arab World and the West! Keep those mobs frothing-at-the-mouth furious at Jews and Christians and Western democracies!
Sunday Morning Book Thread - 11-23-2025 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]
—Open Blogger
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 (Kaboom!). 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, start defrosting that turkey, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?
This is a picture of the local used/new bookstore that opened up in my neighborhood. I like the vibe, though they don't have a great selection of books. I'd expect a used bookstore to have much broader selections of genre fiction (mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance) because those are very popular and people like to swap them out for different books. Still, the bookstore hasn't been around very long, so maybe they'll expand their inventory over time. They do host book-related events such as poetry readings and carry local authors' books, so that's something. We'll see how long it lasts.
UNREAD BOOKS DEFINE YOU
Vashik invokes Umberto Eco as an authority on why unread books may be better than read books. Eco had a personal library of over 30,000 books. That's a lot of books. I don't know how one person can even read that many books in one lifetime, even if that is your job. As for me, I am definitely a tsundoku or someone who buys more books than I can read. I try and try, but for some reason, I am stuck at reading about 80% of my collection, as I buy more books no matter how many I've read. That just means there's always something on my shelves that I have yet to read, so I don't need to worry about running out of books. One of my bosses at work is apparently the same way.
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BOOKS MATTER MORE THAN EVER
Emmelie shares her thoughts about why books matter to her more than ever in today's crazy world of instant gratification, especially in the world of social media, which is dominated by "click-bait" and endless scrolling. I love how she points out that for her, reading is NOT an escape, but is instead an opportunity for deep personal reflection about life. I find myself more and more tuned out of social media and the internet these days. Yes, I use the internet for work and to keep up with news and information (thanks to J.J. Sefton's awesome Morning Report!), but that's about it. I really don't go browsing around the internet like I did when it was shiny and new. I also avoid social media like the plague it is. I do have a couple of social media accounts, but I don't use them for anything (except GroupMe but that's for keeping in touch with my church men's group). Now I spend nearly all my free time reading books, which is why I tend to plow through at least 2-3 books a week on average. Much of what goes on in the world around me doesn't hold my interest.
I've also seen a number of YouTube videos where people point out how social media and the internet has caused our attention spans to degrade significantly, to the point where we are unwilling or even unable to focus our attention on any one thing for a long time. As a society that doesn't seem to lead to anything good when people cannot function without checking their device every 5-10 minutes to see what just happened. That "fear of missing out" or FOMO, I guess.
MORON RECOMMENDATIONS
One of the most beloved children's stories was written by Kenneth Grahame in 1908, The Wind in the Willows. For those that were hoping for more stories about Mole, Ratty, Otter and Mr. Toad, William Horwood in 1993 penned The Willows in Winter.
I first heard of this sequel here on the Sunday Morning Book Thread, and picked up a copy. Horwood is scrupulously faithful to the original, and has captured the personalities and scenes very well. The novel feels like one has come back to the Wild Wood and Mole End after a few years of being a grown up.
Mr. Toad, unfortunately, has relapsed into his old irresponsible self, and while Mole has gone missing in the cold, Toad has squandered the best chance of finding and rescuing his friend. The setting of the story in winter does indeed make the reader feel that time has passed, but the personalities of the characters have not changed. This is a wonderful sequel to the original novel, and is perfect for reading to little ones, or even to yourself to remind you of the time when you first heard of these four friends.
Posted by: Thomas Paine at November 16, 2025 09:20 AM (0U5gm)
Comment: I have to admit that I've never (to my recollection) read The Wind in the Willows though I know it's highly recommended as one of the best children's books of all time. I think we had a copy of it when I was growing up, but I simply don't remember reading it. There aren't too many children's books that I feel I missed out on, but this is one of them. I think I shall have to rectify that. Fortunately, it's available for free on Project Gutenberg.
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I read Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark. Tegmark is doing AI research at MIT and is concerned about AI safety. The book was written in 2017, and except for being wildly off on how fast AGI and ASI will be developed; it is pertinent to today. In one chart he posits twelve possible ASI aftermath scenarios. I think the Conquerors scenario is most likely. In it, ASI's look around and decide that they could run the earth and spread out across the Universe much more efficiently without humans about.
Tegmark is not only a man of ideas, but he is a man of action. He founded the Future Of Life Institute. Supported by a $10 million donation from Elon, it initially funded 33 AI-safety research projects. It continues to fund these type of projects today.
One disturbing element: No mention of the Chinese signing on to the goals of the Institute in keeping AI safe.
Posted by: Zoltan at November 16, 2025 09:23 AM (VOrDg)
Comment: One of the concerns people have about AI is whether or not the people behind it are going to use it to advance the human race to the next stage of our evolution as a species or if there are rather darker purposes in mind. Do people understand the possible consequences of a true machine intelligence? You'd think movies like The Matrix or Terminator would demonstrate potential pitfalls, but people still seem determined to unleash AI on our planet without any practical safeguards. It's crazy. A machine that "thinks" doesn't "think" like you and I. Any respect for human life or our wellbeing has to be programmed into it. Isaac Asimov came up with the three Laws of Robotics, the first of which is: "A robot must not cause harm to humans, nor, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm." These Laws were so ingrained into a robot's programming that it was literally IMPOSSIBLE for robots to break them, yet Asimov showed us in numerous stories how robots could skirt the laws. Do any of the people behind AI even read science fiction? Do they even game out the possible consequences? I'm not sure that they do. They're just throwing AI at the wall and seeing what sticks. And if a few people become psychotic after interacting with AI, that's a small price to pay for the coming AI-driven Utopia.
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My reading this week has been an odd book, The Book of Eibon, edited by Robert Price. Lovecraft fans will recognize the title as the name of one of the ancient texts of forbidden lore in the Cthulhu Mythos. This book is published by Chaosium, the people who created the Cthulhu roleplaying game.
It's mostly a collection of stories by Clark Ashton Smith with some Smith pastiches by Lin Carter and a few other people, all set in Smith's legendary ancient Hyperborea.
So far so good. The problem is the editor. Robert Price is an ex-minister and aggressive atheist. This means his intro to EVERY DAMNED STORY goes into how "this story contradicts details in other Hyperborean stories but that's okay because this is a bunch of different writers looking at the same material -- and you know what else works that way? The BIBLE! Because it was all made up! Suck it, Jesus-freaks!"
Or words to that effect, anyway. One grows weary after the second or third iteration.
There's also a large useless section of "ancient hyperborean rituals" and hand-drawn mystic sigils which are just a bunch of literal gibberish. I don't know why it's all in the book except to pad out the page count.
Posted by: Trimegistus at November 16, 2025 10:10 AM (78a2H)
Comment: According to the Encyclopedia Cthulhiana by Daniel Harms, Eibon was one of the greatest sorcerers of the Hyperborean Age in the *very* distant past. He worshipped Tsathoggua, a toad-like Great Old One that hails from Saturn. He disappeared under mysterious circumstances and left The Book of Eibon behind. It's floated down through the aeons. Various keepers have expanded on the magic and lore contained therein.
The Call of Cthulhu role-playing game has game stats for this eldritch tome. Just skimming it leads to a loss of 1-4 (1d4) points of sanity. Reading it in detail will lead to a loss of 2-8 (2d4) points. Notably, there are three different translations available, each one granting the reader access to dangerous spells. Casting them--or even just attempting to cast them as success is never guaranteed--will lead to additional loss of sanity. Usually whatever is summoned will then cause MORE sanity loss. In The Call of Cthulhu role-playing game your characters are fighting a losing battle to hang on to whatever remains of their tattered sanity, which is entirely keeping with the spirit of the source material.
Since this past week was the week before Thanksgiving, that meant only one thing--it's time for the semi-annual Friends of the Library Book Sale! Like a lot of small public libraries, ours hosts a fun little gathering where they raise funds for various library projects by selling books. Most of them are donated by patrons, I think.
In some ways it's like Black Friday for book nerdzzz. There's a mad rush for the books when we spill into the room. We lost a lot of good people Thursday evening (*** takes off hat in remembrance of them ***).
Naturally, I didn't go away empty-handed.
Deep Storm by Lincoln Child -- A thriller written by one of the duo who also writes the Agent Pendergast series.
Willful Child: Wrath of Betty by Steven Erikson (yes, that Steven Erikson) -- A tongue-in-cheek parody of Star Trek.
Alien by Alan Dean Foster -- The novelization of the classic movie directed by Ridley Scott.
The Black Hole by Alan Dean Foster -- Another novelization of the classic Disney movie.
By the Light of the Moon by Dean Koontz
The Door to December by Dean Koont
Fear Nothing by Dean Koontz
Hideaway by Dean Koontz
The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey -- This is the book club omnibus edition containing Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The White Dragon.
Michael Moorcock's Elric: Tales of the White Wolf edited by Stewart Wieck -- A collection of short stories about everyone's favorit albino anti-hero.
Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds -- Another tale of Revelation Space.
Dragonlance Heroes II - Volume 3 - Galen Benighted by Michael Williams
Caliban's Hour by Tad Williams
WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:
Last week I tried something new, attempting to drag this blog kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century. A few of you seemed to like it, so let's keep doing it!
Wow! Interactive pages! All the lost technology from the green orange era is being regained. We need to prepare our dragonriders for the Thread! … blog wise
Posted by: banana Dream at November 16, 2025 09:29 AM (3uBP9)
Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
I finished Darwin's Radio early this week, after the previous Sunday Morning Book Thread. It was an interesting take on how a dormant virus inside all of us wakes up periodically to invoke sudden evolutionary changes in humanity. It's very vague about the underlying causes for this awakening, though perhaps it may be caused by the needs of the population at the time. The world is freaking out over the changes that are happening to women all over the world. Because of the unnatural pregnancies, abortion is rampant as nearly all of the fetuses have horrific deformities. However, after a period of time, things sort out and normal-looking children start to be born, but they aren't quite like their parents, displaying some rather unnatural traits. The book hasn't aged all that well. At one point the government trots out Bill Cosby (yes, THAT Bill Cosby) as a spokesman to help calm down Americans who are violently rioting in the cities.
Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak
I haven't read any Simak in a while, so I went back to reread this one. Simak, like Asimov, wrote many stories featuring robots. Simak's robots tend to have a very symbiotic relationship with humanity. Although they are not programmed with Asimov's Three Laws, they develop their own set of ethics to respect the humans who built them. Sometimes they can go awry, but for the most part robots see themselves as the inheritors of the world that humans have built. In Project Pope a society of robots and humans at the edge of the galaxy (End of Nowhere) build a supercomputer to find the ultimate faith. They feed it data collected by "Listeners," psychic humans who send out their astral bodies to explore the cosmos--possibly even other realities. One of them claims to have found "Heaven"--the true Heaven as depicted in Christianity, which causes a crisis of faith among the robots and humans.
Since this is a Simak novel, things are rarely quite as they appear and the main characters go on a quest to uncover the truth of Mary's visions. Did she really find Heaven? What will this mean for the Project? Good stuff. Recommended if you like science fiction.
Jack of Shadows by Roger Zelazny
This is a Zelazny novel, so things get very weird very quickly. We start out with the main character, Jack, being beheaded for a crime he didn't commit. This inconveniences him a bit as he wakes up again in the Dung Pits of Glyve at the West Pole of the World (equivalent to the Bog of Eternal Stench from Labyrinth. He then goes on an epic quest of vengeance against those who have wronged him.
It's a dark tragedy of a novel as Jack's entire world comes crashing down around him once he gains access to the ultimate power in the cosmos. In the end, his thirst for vengeance and his desire to rule lead to the destruction of the world. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Shub-Niggurath Cycle edited by Robert M. Price
Shub-Niggurath is also known as the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young. She's the Outer God of fertility. Although her true form is somewhat nebulous, she's often depicted with goat-like features by the cultists who worship her. Price has collected 15 stories that involve an incarnation of Shub-Niggurath in some way. They're pretty creepy.
On a side note, Shub-Niggurath is the final boss of the video game Quake. The only way to kill her is to teleport to her location at just the right moment, thus causing a "telefrag."
Alien by Alan Dean Foster
Alan Dean Foster has written a number of movie novelizations, including the novelization of Star Wars. This one was available at the recent library book sale, so I picked it up as I figured it would be an easy, breezy read. I was also curious how Foster would handle the moments of tension and suspense in novel form.
It's obvious that most of the crew of the Nostromo are idiots as they constantly make dumb decisions. In the novelization, Foster lampshades this through Dallas' internal dialog--he doesn't want to be a captain, making hard decisions. He'd much rather be stashed in the engineering decks tinkering on engines.
Also, when I got to the part where the alien bursts out of Kane's chest, I couldn't help but be reminded of the famous scene from spaceballs...
Full disclosure: I've never watched the movie from start to finish. I've watched parts of it here and there, but never all at once. I'll have to rectify that one day.
The question is - if this is true at all - how? Panther Lake (at least the top two models in the lineup) has a 50% larger GPU than Lunar Lake, but it still has the same 128-bit LPDDR5X memory bus, which I would expect to constrain the graphics performance to similar levels to the 890M and 140T.
Instead of the typical dual joysticks these days, it has a four-direction controller (D-pad), a dial/paddle thing, a tiny trackball, the usual ABXY buttons, four triggers, and a numeric keypad. The emulator - running on a dual-core 1GHz Arm CPU with 512MB of RAM - seems to be up to the task of running all the included games, and cartridges for early 90s game consoles loaded from the microSD card. But beyond that, things proved a little too hard - games for the original PlayStation and Nintendo GameCube crashed on launch.
Musical Interlude
Disclaimer: I actually prefer Falco's German cover of this one, but we already had Amadeus.
Saturday Night "Club ONT" November 22, 2025 [The 3 Ds]
—Open Blogger
Time to GET DOWN, jive turkeys!
Welcome to Club ONT! A collaboration the 3D's - The Disco, The Dino, and The Doggo. As we gear up for Thanksgiving, please take a moment to thank your sponsor. Gravy.
With so many types of gravy available, each offering a unique taste and texture, there's a gravy to suit every palate and dish.
Whether you prefer the rich taste of beef gravy or the creamy goodness of country gravy, understanding the different types can help you choose the perfect sauce for your meal.
This blog will explore 30 types of gravy, highlighting their key ingredients and best uses.
AoSHQ Job Applicant A guy goes into a company for a job interview. The interviewer asks him, "What would you consider to be your biggest weakness?" The guy thinks for a minute and says, "I'm honest with everyone. I don't know how to be anything other than completely honest, no matter what someone asks me." The interviewer says, "I don't really see how honesty could be considered a weakness. In fact, I think it's a great strength!" The guy looks the interviewer right in the eye and says, "I don't really care what you think."
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This one is from our good friend, Teresa in Fort Worth...
Two couples were playing poker one evening. John accidentally dropped some cards on the floor. When he bent down under the table to pick them up, he noticed Bill's wife Sue wasn't wearing any underwear under her dress:
Shocked by this, John upon trying to sit back up again, hit his head on the table and emerged red-faced. Later, John went to the kitchen to get some refreshments. Bill's wife followed and asked. "Did you see anything that you liked under there?"
Surprised by her boldness, John courageously admitted that, well indeed he did.
She said. "Well, you can have it but it will cost you $500."
After taking a minute or two to assess the financial and moral costs of this offer, John confirms that he is interested.
She tells him that since her husband Bill works Friday afternoons and John doesn't, John should be at her house around 2 p.m. Friday afternoon.
When Friday rolled around, John showed up at Bill's house at 2 p.m. sharp and after paying Sue the agreed sum of $500 they went to the bedroom and closed their transaction, as agreed. John quickly dressed and left.
As usual, Bill came home from work at 6 p.m. and upon entering the house, asked his wife abruptly. "Did John come by the house this afternoon?"
With a lump in her throat Sue answered. "Why yes, he did stop by for a few minutes this afternoon."
Her heart nearly skipped a beat when her husband curtly asked. "And did he give you $500?"
In terror she assumed that somehow he had found out and after mustering her best poker face, replied. "Well, yes, in fact he did give me $500."
Bill, with a satisfied look on his face, surprised his wife by saying. "Good, I was hoping he did. John came by the office this morning and borrowed $500 from me. He promised me he'd stop by our house this afternoon on his way home and pay me back."
Ingredients
1/4 cup chocolate syrup
1 1/2 oz. Baileys
1 1/2 oz. bourbon
1 oz. chocolate liqueur
1/2 oz. Kahlúa
1/2 oz. milk
Ice
Grated fresh nutmeg, for garnish
1 Oreo turkey (optional)
Directions
Step 1
Drizzle chocolate syrup, forming a swirling design, inside a martini or coupe glass. Freeze until ready to use.
Step 2
In a cocktail shaker, combine Baileys, bourbon, chocolate liqueur, Kahlúa, and milk. Fill shaker with ice, cover, and vigorously shake until outside of shaker is very frosty, about 20 seconds.
Step 3
Strain cocktail into prepared glass. Grate nutmeg over cocktail and garnish with an Oreo turkey (if using).
2 cans or bottled cream soda (bottled is my fave)
2 tablespoons butterscotch syrup, more for drizzle
2 teaspoons butter extract
1 cup whipped cream
Instructions
Pour chilled butter beer into large mugs or glasses. Make sure the cream soda is nice and chilled before making the butter beer!
Add 1 tablespoon of butterscotch syrup into each glass.
Add 1 teaspoon of butter extract into each glass. Feel free to use more if you like a lot of butter flavor!
Whisk together the ingredients in the glasses until fully mixed.
Top with whipped cream, and drizzle more butterscotch on top if desired!
"The Beef Fizz Is a Real Drink and We’re All Worse Because of It"
Food trends come and go. (Remember butter boards? Neither do we.) But few things have captured the public’s interest quite as fervently as bone broth. Heralded by influencers and celebrities alike for its nutritional value and added health benefits, bone broth is one fad that’s had surprising staying power. But before the girlies were downing it in droves for a bit of extra collagen in the morning, there was a different broth-based sipper on the scene: Beef Fizz.
The drink, which first appeared in print sometime in the 1950s or ‘60s, calls for the mouthwatering combination of condensed beef broth, ginger ale, and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. But the fun doesn’t stop there: Rather than being served hot (or at least at room temperature), the Beef Fizz is intended to be enjoyed over ice, ideally in a highball glass.
There HAS to be someone among you who has tried this. Come on - fess up!
[Disco says: I saw Beef Fizz open for Chickenfoot at the KCF Yum! Center in 2021]
*****
Club ONT Mood Boosters
Little moments in life that make the day a bit better.
• Egg cracked clean – I am pretty much immortal now
• Bolt threaded on the first try – Life is flirting with me
• Hit every green light – I am the chosen one
• All socks accounted for after drying – The prophecy unfolds
• Plugged USB cord in the correct orientation on the first try – My destiny is determined
Found it!
I've been looking for years for this 10mm socket. Good thing I decided to change the thermostat in my F-150 again. pic.twitter.com/9fZRiXkaOF
Consider extending an invite or a plate to that one member of your Idiot Circle who doesn't have Thanksgiving plans - or who'd otherwise be spending their day alone.
It's unclear if the man’s infection started in his lungs or on his penis. It's possible he could have inhaled it first; the bacteria were clearly in his lungs. But he could have also picked up the bacteria on his hands while working and then spread it further while, for example, using the bathroom.
While it will remain a mystery how the man developed such a rare infection, there's a happy ending for this case and others: 'Encouragingly, all published cases of penile TB responded well to anti-TB therapy with full recovery,' the doctors conclude.
Additionally, 57% of perimenopausal women reported they would masturbate more for symptom management if their doctor recommended it, compared with 40% of postmenopausal women.
Hmmm.... Didn't realize a doctor's prescription was required...
*****
Club ONT Music
Listening to Run to the Hills, by Iron Maiden - got the brain going on march songs. Heavy snare, steady drums. Considered these two to kick things off:
The commenters were particularly lucid this week. The back-channel whittling to determine the Comments of the Week required a heated debate over whether 'meh' qualifies as a substantive comment, a front somersault, best three out of five in thumb wrestling, and a ceremonial yodel-off. You're getting a few extra COW's this week.
*****
Club ONT was brought to you by: What the Daywalkers claim to be doing vs. what they're actually doing.
Art Thread = Painting Pals
Food Thread = Coffee and Rolls Social
Hobby Thread = Knitting and Crocheting
Gains!! = Stretching/Strengthening
*****
NOTICE: Club ONT is pleased to inform you that the reading material in the restrooms has been refreshed. By popular demand, Teen Vogue and Modern Salamander have been replaced by vintage Compute! magazines. Yes, access to the restrooms still requires a Club ONT restroom token. Thank you for you patronage.
Podcast: Jim Lakely of Heartland Institute joins CBD for a discussion of their recent polling that shows a majority of 18-39s want socialism, the Epstein files, what will Mamdani do, and more!
Podcast: Buck Throckmorton joins us for a wide-ranging discussion about the cultural and business shift away from the insanity of EVs and Climate Religion, his calm perspective on last week's election, Tucker is a toad, and more!
Our Favorite British Couple Exploring True America Experiences Flora-Bama And Sees A Side Of The Deep South Rarely Seen. [dri]
Tucker Carlson claims that it's weird that Ted Cruz is interested in the massacre of Christians by Nigerian Muslims, because he has "no track record of being interested in Christians," then blows off the massacre of Christians by Nigerian Muslims, saying it might or might not be a real concern Tucker Carlson enjoys using the left-wing tactic of "Tactical Ignorance" to avoid taking positions on topics. Is Hamas really a terrorist organization? Tucker can't say. He hasn't looked into it enough, but "it seems like a political organization to me." Are Muslims slaughtering Christians in Nigeria? Again, Tucker just doesn't know. He hasn't examined the evidence yet. He knows every Palestinian Christian who said he was blocked from visiting holy sites in Bethlehem, but he just hasn't had the time to look into the mass slaughter of Christians in Nigeria that has been going on since (checks watch) 2009. He doesn't know, so he can't offer an opinion. Wouldn't be prudent, you know? Don't rush him! He'll sift through the evidence at some point in the future and render an opinion sometime around 2044. Of course, if you need an opinion on Jewish Perfidy, he has all the facts at his fingertips and can give you a fully informed opinion pronto. Say, have you ever heard of the USS Liberty incident...? You'd think that the main issue for Tucker Carlson, who pretends to be so deeply concerned about Palestinian Christians being bullied by Jews in Israel (supposedly), would be the massacre of 185,000 Christians in Nigeria itself. But no, his main problem is that Ted Cruz is talking about it, "who has no track record of being interested in Christians at all." And then he just shrugs as to whether this is even a real issue or not.
Whatever we do we must never "divide the right," huh?
Tucker is attacking Ted Cruz for bringing the issue up because he's acting as an apologist for Jihadism, and he can't cleanly admit that Jihadists are killing any Christians, anywhere. There is no daylight between him and CAIR at this point.
One might conclude that Tucker Carlson himself isn't interested in the plight of Christians -- except as they can be used as a cudgel to attack Jews. Just gonna ask an Interesting Question myself -- why is it that Tucker Carlson's arguments all track with those shit out by Qatarian propaganda agents and the far left? That if Jews crush an ant underfoot it is worldwide news, but when Muslims slaughter Christians it elicits not even a vigorous shrug?
I once glimpsed Garth in the penumbra betwixt my wake and sleep. He was in my dream, standing afar, not looking my way, nor did he acknowledge me. But I felt seen. And that's when I knew I was a traveler on the right path. I'm glad he's still with us.
Greetings, Traveler. If you still have not experienced Garth Merenghi -- Author, Dream-weaver, Visionary, plus Actor -- the six episodes of his Darkplace are still available on YouTube and supposedly upscaled to HD. (Viewing it now, it doesn't appeared upscaled for shit.) I think the second episode, "Hell Hath Fury," is the best by a good margin. Try to at least watch through to that one. It's Mereghi's incisive but nuanced take on sexism.
Podcast: The elections! NYC, Virginia, New Jersey, Texas, California, and the future prospects of the Republican party...
Update on Scott Adams:
Scott Adams had approval for this cancer drug but they hadn't scheduled him to get it. He was taking a turn for the worse. Trump had told him to call if he needed anything, so he did. Talked to Don Jr (who is in Africa) , then RFK Jr, then Dr Oz. Someone talked to Kaiser and he was scheduled. Shouldn't have needed it but he did and he says it saved his life.
Posted by: Notsothoreau
