The drink of summer is pickle beer

The United States Postal Service announced it will wind down operations, unable to bear the financial burden imposed by James obsessively clicking refresh on the service’s package tracking website. “We just wanted to deliver mail,” the CEO said in a terse statement. “But James wouldn’t let us.”

Lol (This is about Sapporo’s acquisitions of Anchor and Stone)

“Another country heard from” was originally “another county heard from” and referred to election results

Just realized that England is going to be fucking *lit* in 2066

It probably doesn’t say anything good about me that I’m one of those guys who is convinced he could have turned the tide at Hastings if he had, like, a modern rifle and unlimited ammunition

Barring an unforeseen setback in my life, I will never fly Spirit again, but I do fondly remember the banter of one of the flight attendants. “Thank you for flying Spirit! We hope you’ve enjoyed giving us the business as much as we’ve enjoyed taking you for a ride.”

Slopulism I could get behind: make it a federal crime to send a shipping notification when “a label has been created”

Thinking out loud. Half formed thoughts. Mute thread freely. Middlebrow can mean two basically opposite things. One is skillfully-executed, modestly challenging work. Often it is genre fiction, and it is unembarrassed about its status. Agatha Christie is a great example.

I really can't overstate this we saw a clear and truly absurd abuse of power from the Brooklyn Democratic Party today

turn off lane apples, painted by amanda almira newton, 1905

Not all who wander are lost some.of us justhad fofteen beers

A lot of y’all haven’t seen Dog Day Afternoon and it shows

The early warning sign for me was when Trump ordered them to open that dam in California and then pretended the water had alleviated a drought, when in fact it just flowed into the ocean He has always been stupid and demented but it is getting worse

The latest episode of One Iconic Beer. Agostino Arioli, Matt Brynildson, and I tell the story of Birrificio Italiano’s Tipopils, the beer that gave us Italian pilsners.

Vandevere apples are really interesting. This is from memory, so grain of salt, but as I recall they are EXTREMELY closely related to Smokehouse. Both are triploids.

Calling it now: the trend of the summer is pickle beer

finally, my masterpiece, now on Bluesky

Trump was probably thinking of the part in Infinite Jest where the scientists develop microscopic cigarettes to give to the cancer cells

Dwarf Fortress bug or outline of amazing fantasy novel?

parish priest: oh hey u guys are back early cardinal: pope’s soft on crime parish priest: what? cardinal: *loading a pistol and getting back on the rocket-ship* pope’s soft on crime

Rum, sodomy, and goulash

The year is 20XX You are a STRAIT RUNNER, brave tanker ship captains racing through The Blockade Swap your ship’s Shield Polarity to block shots of the matching color. Iranian ships launch Blue Missiles and American ships fire Red Missiles

This is from the same administration that unsanctioned ~140 million barrels of Iranian oil. So it’s legal to deliver Iranian oil but illegal to deliver, say, Kuwaiti oil. (The sanctions exemption applied to oil that was already on the ocean, so it would still be illegal to deliver new Iranian oil.)

Marathon's the one place you should have an advantage over Iran!

The recovery team sails to the reentry capsule and pries open the hatch. There’s no capsule in the capsule. Through the door they glimpse a forest of towering white trees beneath an emerald green sky

I'm sorry, but this woman posting photos of her dog at a religious event in Spain and then having to frantically clarify a few days later at their "supersausage_charlie" Instagram account is something out of a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode.

Weird that they picked the Strait of Hormuz for splashdown, but I guess how could they have predicted

This summer we are headed for a drought that is essentially unprecedented in scale and severity

A long time ago a friend observed that Trump’s political genius is to say a bunch of stuff, all over the map, and respond quickly to feedback from the crowd. It’s one of those things that you can’t unsee. Here he is fumbling about for a narrative that casts him as a winner in his war of choice.

the fundamental problem with law professors is that they have both lawyer brain AND academic brain, two of the worst brains imaginable

John Bolton, sitting in his jail cell, doing the Larry David face for hours at a time

Health Experts Recommend Standing Up At Desk, Leaving Office, Never Coming Back — theonion.com/health-exper...

If you like this (which I do very much) you should consider following @alexblechman.bsky.social who wrote it

On this Easter Sunday, I am reading about the death of Arius, and praying

Hi folks. As part of my reporting, I'd like to talk to middle-class households about their alcohol purchasing. If that's you, please DM. (Your name can be withheld if desired.) * I'll use the Pew definition of middle class, which is households making $56K-$167K.

Yes, well.

black tartarian imp. cherries, painted by mary daisy arnold, 1912

This is exactly what my base case unilateral TACO scenario looks like, fwiw. WSJ: “Trump told aides he's willing to end the [Iran War] even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed … likely extending Tehran's firm grip on the waterway and leaving a complex operation to reopen it for [later].”

Cool map from #$JPM showing dated oil flows from the Strait of Hormuz will stop arriving. Keep in mind that (excluding Saudi flows through Yanbu and Iranian flows) the gap in flows then continues forward by 4 weeks and counting + some further time to stabilize tanker networks.

TRUMP RUINED BAD TASTE John Waters at #NoKings in Provincetown (Pic via petermarietoto on X)

I have posted a little about the Iran War. This is simply a heartfelt post about what I see coming. I think the Trump administration is essentially incapable of strategic thinking. As such, I think we are headed for an economic calamity. This isn’t investment advice but:

This is kinda fab! (And no, it's not AI.)

An unforgivable human rights atrocity getting approximately 10% of the news coverage it deserves.