Maybe If It Was Made Of Bananas...

RaffiWas

RightVille


Well, well, well, whadd'ya know:

Earlier this year we noted how the Trump administration had cooked up a half-assed wireless phone company. Even calling it a “phone company” was being generous: the branding deal was basically just a licensing agreement and a lazy coat of paint on another, half-assed, MAGA-focused, mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) named Patriot Mobile, which itself just resells T-Mobile service.

What was supposed to set the venture apart was a “bold” new $500 Trump T1 smartphone.

To pitch the phone to unsuspecting rubes, the original press release had a badly photoshopped rendition of the device, peppered with claims the phone would be “proudly designed and built in the United States.”

It didn’t take long for the folks behind the phone to pull all the made in America claims from the website. And while originally the phone was supposed to launch in August or September, not long ago it was delayed until October 31. As November drew to a close, there’s still no sign of the device...

Hmmmm...

Would you like Trump steaks with that?


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The above is from Karl Bode writing for TechDirt.
Earworm in the header, of course...This!

Snark in the subheader?...This!



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A Bubble For The Shedding?

ThisAin'tNoPartyThisAin'tNoDisco

ThisAin'tNoFoolin'AroundVille


Depending on where you've been looking, you might have come across a story or two that questioning where all the monetization/growth will come from to support the hugely big investments in AI.

Well...

What if the overlords behind all that over investification don't give a hoot-in-heckfire about real growth because they have instead gone all in on the 'shedding'?

Patricia Cohen of the NY Times has been chasing that story (web archive link):

The stock market bounces in recent weeks are just one indicator of the profound uncertainty and heightened risks running through the global economy and financial system.

It’s not simply that the hundreds of billions of dollars flooding into artificial intelligence investments might turn out to be a bubble. Or that the use of cryptocurrencies in mainstream banking is spreading even as their values have plunged after soaring to record highs...

{snip}

...The stock market run-up — the S&P 500 is still up about 14 percent this year despite the recent shivers — could foreshadow widespread economic gains. But (Harvard economist Kenneth) Rogoff doesn’t think that is the case.

“A big part of the high stock prices is not a reflection of high future growth,” he said. Rather, it is a sign that A.I. is expected to boost productivity and shrink employment. “The firms all think they’re going to shed a lot of labor, and that’s why the profits will be high,” he said...

In other words...

Our over investified AI overlords may not actually be betting on economic growth, but instead betting on economic collapse.

Collapse for all of us who are not over OIAI overlords that is.


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Earworm not so subtly dropped into the subheader?...This!

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Advent Jukebox...Day 1...I'll Be Home

IfOnlyInOur

DreamsVille



This time around you don't have to listen to my spastic warbles.

Instead, you can listen to the real thing!


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Why?...Because it's a tradition - that's why!



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Nevermind The Pen Flip...

DaveHodgeHasNotBeenFired
OhlemyerCommunicationsVille


...Bring on the latest edition of Dave Hodge's top 100 songs of 2025!

The Spotify playlist is...Here.

You can hear Mr. Hodge talk about his century with Mike Boon which, in addition to the music, includes, as you might expect, unfortunately, just a wee bit of Toronto as Center-Of-The-Universe discourse...Here.

You can even watch a chunk of the Hodge/Boon back and forth...Here.

As for the actual music on the list?

Well, there's a whole lotta indie Americana/Canuckistanmikitaville-type stuff in there, which means that it's right in my wheelhouse (but maybe not yours).

As an added bonus, I also learned a bit about 'Snocaps', which is a kinda/sorta 'super group' indie project of the Crutchfield sisters and MJ Lenderman...This is a passel of young folks that my own personal talent scout for such things, littler e., had already sussed out. The upshot? The tickets have been purchased, and the tithe to the masters of all that is wrong with the modern day purchase of such things has been paid, so that we can go and see their show next spring.


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Subheader?...This!

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FIFA's (Own?) 'Goal'.

AllTheirBrandings

'RUsVille


Well, well, well...

It looks like the always above board, super-fine folks from FIFA have Vancouver city council in their back pocket.

Lisa Steacy of CTV News has the story:

A FIFA-specific bylaw was approved by Vancouver city council Wednesday, enabling $1,000 tickets to be issued for a range of infractions during next year’s World Cup.

The bylaw covers the period from May 13 to July 20 of 2026 and will allow city officials and police to issue tickets levying hefty fines for things like “distributing advertising matter on streets” and “defacing or postering furniture, light standards, poles on streets” and “placing advertising matter on vehicles on streets.”

The goal, staff said at Wednesday’s meeting, is to ensure “brand protection” and target bylaw violations that run afoul of the city’s contractual obligations...

Gosh.

One can only wonder what 'brand' specifically the super-finest of the fine folks from FIFA are trying to 'protect'

Is it, perchance...

This?


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And, perhaps the worst part of the new 'bylaw', especially for Bigger E?...They will also be curtailing street performing...Aargggh!



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Aux Champs Elysées (Bigger E. Cover)

Buskateering
EnFrancaisVille


Bigger E. spent the fall doing her thing in Montreal, see above.

Ain't that something!


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Pineapples Neither Upside Down Nor Caked.

WhatDidArtFlemingAndMervGriffin
KnowAnywayVille


Longtime reader and lyric purveyor, Dr. Beer 'N Hockey, did not agree with the thesis of a recent post in which we tentatively concluded that the world is getting dumber because of all that the internet has wrought:

...I don't know. Dude's thesis does not seem too far off the olden days parents' groups who saw Satan in every rock 'n' roll record. Similar arguments to his could be made blaming micro-plastics and wildfire fire smoke for our increasing dimness, if indeed it is increasing. Seems to me the unfettered ability of all of us listening to all of us might just teach us a thing or two about ourselves well worth knowing. I'm certainly paying attention. Could be we have all just taken too much acetaminophen after all...

Upon further reflection, I reckon Beer has a point.

Especially regarding the young among us. I certainly know that my own two kids, who are in the early stages of adult hood, seem to be able to use the digital interconnectedness to their intellectual advantage.

As for us olds?

I'm not so sure.

Cases in point, Jeopardy(!) and remembering the names of people that I run into but don't know so well....

I'm convinced I'm better at both when I've been off the box and its to connections to everything, everywhere all at once for awhile.


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Regarding Jeopardy - I am routinely trounced by both kids except, of course, if two of the categories are Watergate and sports trivia from the 1970's.



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Nevermind The Qualifiers.

US'ianDemocracyCannotBe
HalfFoxAndHalfFreeVille

Nevermind qualifiers like 'approaching' or 'adjacent'.

Why?

Because the 'ism' that we all fear, whether we live there or not, has taken root in today's United States.

Mike Brock, writing at TechDirt explains:

Mark Kelly—former Navy combat pilot, astronaut, sitting United States Senator—stated a simple legal fact on video: members of the US military can refuse illegal orders. Not as opinion. Not as political positioning. As established law codified in the Uniform Code of Military Justice and affirmed at Nuremberg when “I was following orders” was rejected as defense for war crimes.

The Trump Administration opened a federal investigation into him for saying this.

Jesse Watters praised the investigation on Fox News: “You have to make examples out of people.”

Slow down. Read that again. One more time. Let it register fully.

A sitting senator stated constitutional law. The executive branch opened an investigation into him for stating it. State propaganda praised this as making an example.

This isn’t approaching fascism. This isn’t fascism-adjacent. This is fascism—the actual thing, not the metaphor, happening in real time on national television while we debate whether calling it fascism is too divisive...

Put another way - there once was a time like, say, maybe two weeks ago, when the great majority of US'ians and all US'ian institutions apparently hated things like Nazis and lynching.

Now, even that is much less clear.

At least for the institutions.

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Subheader?...This!



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Pineapple Upside Dumb Cake.

SurvivalOfTheDumbest
NothingNaturalAboutThisSelectionVille


We all know it's happening.

The world is getting dumber every day.

But why?

Well, Lane Brown, writing in NY Magazine, makes the case that it is because we all have an ever growing and metastasizing babbling tower of dumbness inside our own house (web archive link):

...Not so long ago, the dolts among us were free to think their thoughts quietly to themselves with no easy way to share them. At worst, a person would usually just embarrass himself in front of his own family or bowling team. Bad ideas had a harder time scaling and reproducing, so lots of stupidity stayed local, and everyone else could happily overestimate the average person’s intelligence because they saw less of it. But then we connected everyone on the planet and gave them each the equivalent of their own printing press, radio station, and TV network. Now, even those with nothing useful to say can tell the whole world exactly, or more often vaguely, what they think...

It's pretty hard to argue with that I reckon.


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The Swedish Double - Down.

TheArtOfAnActual
MaybeKindaSortaSolidarityDealVille


It's no longer just an offer to build the Gripen fighter jet in Canuckistanmikitaville as a replacement for those 60 odd US'ian F-35's that we haven't bought yet.

Now the Swedes have further sweetened the pot according to Eric Reguly writing in the Globe (web archive link):

Swedish defence company Saab is intensifying its campaign to secure Canadian aircraft sales by offering to build the entire GlobalEye military surveillance plane in Canada if the Department of National Defence orders it.

In an interview at the Saab factory in Linköping, in southern Sweden, David Moden, senior sales director for the GlobalEye, said that building the entire aircraft in Canada would create 3,000 jobs. “We are offering a made-in-Canada solution by building and installing the plane’s sensors there,” he said...

Hmmmm....

If it were to happen, that sure would be some pivotal realignment away from that whole 51st state-type thing don't you think?

Regardless the ultimate outcome, just giving it a serious look, as the Carneyites have signalled they're doing, is sure to be a heck of a trade talk bargaining chip.


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Who You Gonna Call?

LeaveNoCaramelized
ChlorophyllUnturnedVille


Leaf Busters!


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Things Happen...

AlmostFree
PressGangVille


From Michael Grynbaum, writing in the New York Times:

President Trump assailed an American journalist in the Oval Office on Tuesday for asking Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, about the violent death of a Washington Post columnist at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. U.S. intelligence has said the attack was carried out on the prince’s orders.

“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” Mr. Trump told the journalist, Mary Bruce of ABC News, later referring to her query as “a horrible, insubordinate, and just a terrible question.”

“A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the murdered journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. “Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.”...

Things do happen, indeed.

Things like, say, dismemberment, presumably by bone saw.

Sheesh.

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Image at the top of the post?...This.

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I Read The News Today...

ThreeChordsAnd

AlmostAllOfItWasTrueVille

Well, actually it was Sunday.

And the news was lousy.

Because it told me that Todd Snider had died.

This, below, might be my favourite story of how great it can be me when you get to meet one of your true heroes, musical or otherwise...



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Otis Gibbs knew the man well...


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Casino In Pocket.

AllTheWorld'sALine
SkinnerBoxVille


From Reuters:

...The Turkish Football Federation suspended 149 referees and assistant referees earlier this month, after an investigation found officials working in the country’s professional leagues were betting on football matches...

{snip}

...One referee had placed bets 18,227 times and 42 referees had bet on more than 1,000 football matches each...

Gosh.

Not sure about you, but I'm pretty sure I haven't been so juiced about anything that it has resulted in me doing that thing 18,227 times in my entire life.

Unless, I guess, I were to count PCR reactions...

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The Land Of Satire As Propaganda.

NoMilkNoHoney
Propagannon'sTravelsVille

From Mike Masnick writing at TechDirt:

Over the weekend, the President of the United States fell for obvious satire from a website literally called “The Dunning Kruger Times.”

Donald Trump—a man with access to the best, most accurate information on basically any subject—posted to Truth Social a screenshot claiming that “DOGE halts yearly payments of $2.5 million to Barack Obama for ‘royalties linked to Obamacare.’ Obama has collected this payment since 2010, for a total of $40 million in taxpayer dollars.”

Trump’s comment on this fabrication? “WOW!”...

Gosh.

One can only wonder what would happen if...

Jonathan Swift flew in today?


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Subheader?...Low competence/overestimation of abilities, indeed.
Pseudo-subtle ear worm in the kicker?...This!



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