This ad on Google's YouTube hypes Google's new...well, I think it's their new all-AI-all-the-time search interface. The comments are even more brutal than I had expected. My fave: "You got huge balls keeping the comments on" m.youtube.com/watch?v=p6EB...

Google's Gemini seems to relate to my loathing for the garbage its corporate owners are trying to force feed us. These are all decent alternatives to Google's cluttered, impenetrable, and increasingly useless search results.

The son of the man shot and killed by ICE: I am Ronaldo Salgado, the oldest son of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. He should've been picking up the last of his guys before heading to finish up construction. Unbeknownst to all of us, my dad had been shot inside his van by ICE agents in unmarked cars.

I highly recommend this (short) video. It offers refreshingly sane & sweet natured alternative to how youth sports are commonly approached in the US.

This is the best summary of Trump's fireworks that I've seen. If you go, the Natl Park Service strongly recommends hearing protection & N95 masks. I'm a sucker for fireworks, but I'll pass.

Paul Fairie's threads about "kids of today" are wonderful.

On the Titanic, these fools would have made sure the band kept perfect time.

Most of these "simple life abroad" articles seem to feature couples that have buckets of money to facilitate that simple life. Nice to see one that doesn't. The language barrier is not trivial – you won't find many English speakers in smaller Italian towns (unlike, say, the Netherlands).

Today, we dive deeply into a similar pattern: The US, backed with billions of dollars in Trump-era federal funding, is pushing to expand the supply of critical metals for the Pentagon and American manufacturers. Paul Sonne, my colleague, visited the mining site. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/28/w...

It's so counterproductive. Democrats could move to the right of Pinochet and Republicans & all their media would still portray them as sports & motherhood hating communist child molesters. So why not actually take a stand on something?!

Assuming Affinity applies a 2 & 20 fee structure, these "Middle East investors" would be paying Jared at least $100 million per year to "manage" their money.

Or they could hang a pair of Truck Nutz from the back of a Civic & be done with it.

Partway through Bridget Read's unmissable chronicle of pyramid ("multi-level marketing") schemes, *Little Bosses Everywhere*, there comes a dual revelation: no one is selling any product to end-users *and* no one knows it: pluralistic.net/2025/05/05/f... 1/

Germany's winning World Cup team in 2014 included *German* players like Lukas Podolski, Jérôme Boateng, Mesut Özil, Sami Khedira, and Miroslav Klose. Maybe diversity works?

I like that they're really committing to this deadpan, dadaist comedy series. They never break character, and the costumes & makeup are wild. I wouldn't have credited the Bezos Post with this sort of subversive genius.

I recall getting a haircut in 2000 from a woman who, hearing I was in telecom, advised me to buy Nortel stock. It was a sure bet because "they're all optical," unlike their rivals. She seemed to pity me when I told her that they were neither "all optical" nor a sure bet. I wonder how she did?

I worked in Dresden in the first post-unification state govt of Saxony ('91). I was German-American kid with a suit from Sears who had strayed into a very weird job. A few months in, some local colleagues took me to a meeting of Demokratischer Aufbruch in Meissen.

The longer term and second-order effects really don't seem to matter to Rep. politicians & their voters. Far more pressing is the certainty that someone (presumably dark-skinned), somewhere, is getting something that they don't deserve.

If I had been a voting adult between 1945-75, I would have been a centrist on economic issues. Now that the pendulum has swung so far to the right (on economic issues), I find myself on the radical left. This illustrates the senselessness of fetishising being a "moderate".

It’s a pretty weird week when a guy who wants to be a trillionaire is simultaneously getting headlines for the economy-shattering IPO expected Friday and the racist pogroms he is accused of stoking — but these stories are viewed as separate and in no way connected or prescient of the future.

What does an “establishment wall” have to do with it? It’s just regular people.

Grifters, all the way down. Propublica's work is vital, but I fear Justice will never face real consequences.

Trump unveils $700 million coal support plan using emergency powers reut.rs/4avMwpI

My college age daughter has told me about the joys of job hunting, & trying to craft resumes & letters so they don't sound like they're AI generated, because that could cause them to be rejected by whatever AI resume screening tool the employer uses. For this, my 401k funds hyperscale datacenters.

After the tech bubble of the early 2000s, there was a lot of attention on the frauds & crooks. But what was even more fascinating to me (I was in the industry) was how many senior execs were True Believers, who held onto their stock all the way down, certain that this time was different.

We are seeing significant drops in longterm full-time employment, inflation-adjusted wages, normalised consumer spending, and disposable income, as well as substantial spikes in credit card usage and debt repayment delinquency/default because we are already in a Trump-manufactured recession.

You have to draw a clear line in the sand on this issue. If you equivocate, you're tacitly agreeing that trans people deserve persecution – you're just debating about how much abuse they should get.

You HAVE to focus on the moral & ethical issues; you have to draw clear lines in the sand. Otherwise, you're tacitly agreeing that trans people, immigrants & protesters deserve persecution, & that govt corruption is ok. You're just arguing about how much persecution & corruption there should be.

"...when we refuse to demand that they do better, we are in fact letting them off the hook." This is a key point. At the least, you will make Republican legislators own every corrupt choice they make.

Airline ticket prices are surging. A major culprit? Rising jet fuel costs due to Trump's Iran war. But there's also the underlying concentration in the industry. Airlines merged from 12 major carriers in 1980 to 4 today. Less competition makes it easier for the biggest players to price-gouge.

There's long been debate over the intentions of America's founders about the role of religion.

Trying to win elections with bigotry-lite candidates is awesome. You gain nothing, other people suffer and die, and all it costs you is your principles and your soul. Very pragmatic, very adult.

Thirteen new statues are now on display at Freedom Plaza in Downtown D.C., including a founding father known for enslaving hundreds of people.

Yet another "Not The Onion" news story, unfortunately. Imagine what a relief it must have been for MacKenzie Scott to rid herself of this pathetic pile of cringe. But we're all still stuck with him.

The UK is going to implement a national trans bathroom ban this week by fiat. archive.ph/aXsWh

These are people who think bipartisanship is a goal, not a means. They are incapable of understanding what is actually happening. They cannot comprehend that their "friends on the other side of the aisle" might be fascists. That simply cannot happen in the US.

Let me see if I get it: Citizen Trump sued the IRS, a federal agency that reports to President Trump, for $10 billion (about 85% of the IRS annual budget), over incomplete tax data leaked by a contractor in 2019, when Trump was also President.

Idiotic "story". But I read the name of Wiggins and my mind flashed to: Me and Earl was haulin' chickens On a flatbed out of Wiggins... youtu.be/X6LzWZYWpOU?...

So pissed off at Virginia Democrats for backing down, at the VA supreme court for sandbagging democracy, at the Roberts Court for its successful 13 year campaign to destroy the VRA, at the many many people who could have stopped it from getting to this point youtu.be/2itX6ip1MkE

The Federal gas tax generates about $36 billion/yr, which largely goes to maintaining & building the Federal highway system. Kill the gas tax & you would need to replace it with a new source of revenue. Do Dems want that fight? It's not just bad policy -- it's bad politics.

A thing I thought about recently is we have expensive necessities and cheap treats Things need to be exactly backwards

"As soon as Mosley sat down, Karp began reciting from memory, for several minutes, one of Oswald’s 1939 speeches demanding Britain seek peace with Nazi Germany. When finished, Karp executed tai chi moves and walked out without saying goodbye." nypost.com/2025/11/18/u...

Ok what makes this even more of one of the most spectacular displays of chutzpah in a long long time is that this guy probably almost never pays any federal income tax. Literally zero for years. 1/ www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/n...

They're so transparent. They fire or neuter every govt watchdog to ensure that nobody's documenting their smash & grab of the US government. I assume that they would have disappeared BLS, if they could have done so without infuriating a lot of investors who rely on BLS data.

"...the IOC decision is what female athletes want. The last time there was a large survey of female athletes was after the Atlanta Games in 1996." Seriously?! Just as attitudes towards the civil rights of African Americans were unchanged between 1934 & the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Reactionary movements reflect insecurity, not strength. This trend may, in part, reflect the fact that women are increasingly competing for what used to be viewed as "men's jobs" (the kind that the dads of GenZ kids had), even as those jobs are becoming ever less common & secure.

The cheapest ticket to any match in NJ (Norway vs Senegal) is currently $1800 per person. fifaworldcup26.hospitality.fifa.com/us/en/choose... But the TRAIN FARE is going to reduce demand?

DHS wants to ship deportees to Congo, while US State Dept warns: "Reconsider travel to the (DRC) due to crime, and civil unrest. Some areas have increased risk due to armed conflict." "Violent crime is common...Assailants may pose as police or security agents." travel.state.gov/content/trav...

I love Owls in Towels!

If there are any experts on futures markets that can offer more informed insights, or set me straight, I'd love to find out more!