My standard anti-Michael Steele rant, because too many people don’t know this story:

I lived in Maryland in the 2000’s, and in 2006, Michael Steele (who was lieutenant governor at the time, iirc) announced he was going to run for Maryland’s US Senate seat. He tried campaigning and, while he had some success in the more rural areas, he was heavily loathed in the cities, especially Baltimore; he was also heavily losing the black vote.

He tried to get volunteers to go into the city for him, but white people just got ignored or laughed at. He tried to get black volunteers, but only got a few; he tried hiring black people and got some more. But that turned out to be a losing proposition as well: as soon as his new recruits but cut streets, they got lectured on his real character and soon quit.

He also decided the best way forward was to hide his political affiliation. Soon the airwaves were filled with vague ads referencing the concerns of local voters - things he had never cared about (and actively worked against) in his term as lieutenant governor. All the ads prominent featured Steele “working with” and surrounded by smiling black “voters”, and ended with a firm voice saying, “Steele, Democrat.”

The yard signs and mailers were the same: Democratic Blue, no mention of actual party affiliation, and “Steele Democrat” in large white letters. (The mailers also had the smiling black people as well.) When challenged on the fact that he was not, in fact, a member of Democratic party, he claimed it was a “descriptive phrase” like “Reagan Democrat”.

Comes close to the election, and Steele really wanted people just outside the poll limits, handing out his “Steele Democrat” flyers and urging then to vote for him. Problem was, he couldn’t find any local black people willing to do that, and he really needed the flyer-people in Baltimore and some other areas to be black.

So he sent recruiters up to Philly, and the good people of Philly just laughed at him. So he turned to Philadelphia’s homeless population. He promised them that, if they came to hand out his flyers, they’d get a cool t-shirt (his campaign shirt), three meals that day, a hundred dollars cash, and he’d hire buses to take them down to Baltimore and then back to Philly at the end of the day. [When you’re homeless, intimate knowledge of the area you’re in and it’s resources are incredibly vital.]

So everyone gets bussed in, and I think they were given donuts and coffee for their first “meal”. They never got lunch, nor did get the dinner they were promised. End of the day, polls close and the promised buses never show up. Nor does the money they were promised. Michael Steele essentially trafficked a bunch of homeless people into Baltimore and abandoned them - or he tried to. There was a bunch of local uproar over this that started to build, I think it lasted a couple of days? And then suddenly Steele was there, great big smiling grin, flashing hundred dollar bills, claiming it was all a big mistake, paying people and sending them back to Philly. And I have absolutely no doubt that, if this hadn’t started to become A Thing, he would’ve left those people on the streets of Baltimore without a second thought.

Fuck Michael Steele.

Not mine, but the one where Michael Jackson is the love child of Diana Ross and Smokey Robinson caught my attention when someone posted it to reddit.

Fucking everyone wants Trump because he’s so fucking easy to manipulate.

she suffered sex discrimination in her employment because she is straight.

That’s not sex discrimination. Sex discrimination is when you’re discriminated against because of your sex - you know, like how they didn’t let women be doctors or lawyers or run marathons and stuff. This is (possibly) orientation discrimination, which is also absolutely a thing, but I feel like she should lose simply because she’s claiming the wrong thing.

Copying my reply to someone else:

What did they interrupt the episode for? Because a number of companies have adopted the policy that, if the interruption is promoting something else offered by the platform - say, a different program, or another tier of service - that those interruptions aren’t really ads, because the company isn’t actually getting paid to air it. It absolutely looks and acts like an ad to the viewers, but the companies are trying to redefine the word.

What’s a good YouTube downloader these days?

What did they interrupt the episode for? Because a number of companies have adopted the policy that, if the interruption is promoting something else offered by the platform - say, a different program, or another tier of service - that those interruptions aren’t really ads, because the company isn’t actually getting paid to air it. It absolutely looks and acts like an ad to the viewers, but the companies are trying to redefine the word.

How [not] nice.

Mauritius will also be able to begin a programme of resettlement on the Chagos Islands,

After 50 years of abandonment, they’re going to have to rebuild everything from scratch. And Wikipedia notes that the islands are “All are low-lying atolls”, so any buildings or infrastructure is going to be underwater sooner rather than later.

This is nothing but a PR move.

[When launched] Prime Video with ads was given a “very light ad load,” providing subscribers “gentle entry into advertising that has exceeded customers expectations in terms of what the ad experience would be like." The executive pointed out that Prime Video with ads doesn’t show commercials in the middle of content. That could change next year.

Planned enshittification a la boiling frogs.

“X-ray safety screwdriver”.

It’s the old Tacony-Palmyra Drive-In site. More fun facts: part of the area they’re building on used to be a landfill for Philadelphia, which is still contaminated - they’ve just paved it over. Oh, and the condos they’re building? They’re being used to fulfill the town’s low-income housing requirements (as required by Mount Laurel I and II). I’m sure the developers are being quite open with the residents that their lovely new buildings are on top of a munitions testing site and a landfill … :(

There’s already UXO in America. In just the past four years, WWII have been discovered and detonated on three separate occasions - and that was just in New Jersey, I have no idea about what’s gone on in other states.

Just two companies, actually, Baowu Group Xinjiang Bayi Iron and Steel, and Changzhou Guanghui Food Ingredients (aspartame maker).

Is it … carrying something in it’s mouth?

Here’s a much more detailed article on the conference. The UN news article notes that it passed with

a small group of just seven countries holding out, having failed to pass a last-minute amendment.

Apparently, Russia proposed a last-minute amendment that “[the UN] system shall not intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any State”. Agreeing with Russia were Iran, Belarus, North Korea, Nicaragua, Sudan and Syria. Apparently an additional fifteen countries abstained, but I couldn’t find a list of them.

A few years ago, near where my family lived in New Jersey, there was a small newspaper article mentioning that construction on a set of mid-rise condominiums on the Delaware River was being notably delayed, with the vague implication that there was some trouble with financing or construction or something. [To be fair, both of these were true, but for very not-obvious reasons.] But then you start tracing back through the history of the site:

They had selected the site for the condos because it had been the site of a large flea market from the late 1970s to early 2000s, so all they’d have to do was dig up the parking lots, lay in utilities, and compact the soil to be ready to build. The flea market was there because it was the site of a massive drive-in movie theatre built in the early 1950s, so all they had had to do was put up some cheap buildings that were eventually condemned and torn down. The drive-in movie theatre was there because the land had already been cleared and flattened by the US government, so it was cheap to put in a parking lot and big screen.

Why had the government so kindly cleared and flattened the ground? Well, the site was right next to a small bridge across the Delaware; on the other side of the bridge was Frankford Arsenal, where they produced munitions during both World Wars. And they had to test the munitions, so they’d drive over the bridge and test them at this site in New Jersey. And it turns out that sometimes they were either high or lazy or careless or something, because sometimes they didn’t bother driving across the bridge, they’d just shell New Jersey from across the river instead.

The shelling led to a bunch of unexploded ordinance being in extremely unexpected places, until it started showing up eighty years later, when the condo people actually started digging up the ground to lay in their utilities. Of course, the condo association was quietly and casually referencing vague construction delays, because if people knew it was a munitions testing site and they’d recently found a bunch of UXO, no one would buy the condos.

[Also, while trying to look up details for this comment, I discovered three other cases of UXO in New Jersey in the past couple years. This is all very weird to me.]

*Trump Senior had learned to pull out.

Congratulations, Jim! You were always so much better than you were given credit for.

Good for them!

The judge’s comments on the ruling are both savage and incredibly on point.