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?


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

Snark in the subheader?...This!



.

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.


_______

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!


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



.

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.


____

Subheader?...This!

.

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?


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



.

Aux Champs Elysées (Bigger E. Cover)

Buskateering
EnFrancaisVille


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

Ain't that something!


.

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.


______
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.



.

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.

_____
Subheader?...This!



.

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.


.

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.


.

Who You Gonna Call?

LeaveNoCaramelized
ChlorophyllUnturnedVille


Leaf Busters!


.

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.

_____

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

.

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...



____
Otis Gibbs knew the man well...


.

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...

.

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?


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



.

Are We, We Are The Scraping?

ForgetMeNots
AndSecondThoughtsVille


For most of its life, this little F-troop list blog has averaged about 30,000 page views per month.

In the old days, those numbers would swell considerably in the run-up to provincial elections, most notably in the Year of Horgan/Weaver (i.e. 2017).

Other than that it was pretty much a steady thing that went up and down somewhat depending on how often I posted. 

That all changed in early 2023 when bizarre things started happening (see above).

Initially, I deluded myself into thinking that large swaths of the online citizenry in places like France, Vietnam and Singapore had suddenly become interested in my morning bike rides and/or walks with the Whackadoodle II.

Of course, that was silly.

Because what was really going on was that the AI scrapers had arrived.

So.

If your large language model of choice suddenly starts spitting out faint praised phrases that describe the worst among us as super-finest-of-the-uber-fine-type folks?

Well...

You'll know where they came from.

OK?


______
Earworm in the slightly less obvious than usual machine?...This.

.

The Great Replacement Theory, Revisited (Part Deux)

GiveMeYourTiredYourPoorYourHuddledMasses
YearningToBeFreeVille


Zohran Mamdani is the new mayor of New York City.

A self-proclaimed US'ian Republican Party operative and 'reality' journalist responds:

Jack Posobiec posted a video purporting to be from the streets of Manhattan in 1993, showing mostly white members of the public, with the implication that the population had been transformed by immigration.

“NYC in 1993. Now exists only as a memory,” he wrote.

Gosh.

One can only wonder what that statue in New York harbour was all about from 1886, the year the statue was installed, and the ensuing one hundred and seven years.


_____
Tip O' The Toque to reader GarFish on this one...



.

Mr. Miller's Great Replacement Theory, Revisited.

MayorOfStatenIslandToo

FiveBoroughsVille

Zohran Mamdani is the new mayor of New York City.

A member of Mr. Trump's administration responds:

...Stephen Miller, the powerful and ultra-hardline White House deputy chief of staff, who has spearheaded Trump’ anti-immigration crackdown, posted a screenshot from New York City government website to imply that the Uganda-born Mamdani’s win had been brought about by immigrant votes.

“Almost 50% of New Yorkers live in family households with at least one immigrant,” the post read...

Yes, you read that right.

It's no longer the 'theory' that super-fine folks who look and think like the good Mr. Miller will be replaced by immigrants directly. Instead, the new 'theory' is that they will be replaced by people who look and think like their family members who are the actual immigrants.

Or some such ridiculously illogical thing.

Especially in a country of immigrants.

Sheesh.


.

Pudge And The Giraffe.

HeyBeantown!

DifferentBreedsVille

We only went to one Vancouver Canadians game at Nat Bailey Stadium last summer and my scorecard says we did not see Trey Yesavage make one of his four starts in Lotusland  in the middle of his meteoric rise from rookie league ball to the big leagues.

So, apropos of pretty much nothing at all, late one afternoon last week I was talking with a friend, a fellow old guy science-geek type, and we came to the conclusion that the last time we had seen a rookie who had been called up late in the season so dominate the play-offs was Ken Dryden back in 1971.

With this shared bit of historical wisdom that, to the best of our knowledge, had not been jammed down our throats by any of the 37,000 sports shows and/or branded content foisted on Canadians of all stripes by the Rogers Family Empire throughout the Blue Jays World Series run, we patted ourselves on the the back and headed for home.

Unfortunately, while Yesavage did get five outs and the hold in a relief appearance during Saturday night's Game 7, he also give up that 8th inning homer to Max Muncy which took a little shine off that rose.

However...

This got me thinking laterally in the most digressive, tangential way possible, as is often my want.

Which brings me to the connection between Carlton Fisk and Mr. Dryden.

First, here's an account of my not so close encounter with Mr. Fisk during his last season in the Big Leagues, which is more than thirty years ago now:

...I saw Carlton Fisk, for real, in 1993.

Which was a time when both baseball and American exceptionalism still meant a lot to me.

And on that particular day Fisk was toiling near the end of his career for the Chicago White Sox warming up a guy named Jeff Schwarz in the right field bullpen of Oakland Alameda County Coliseum.

Truth be told, I was actually more interested in Mr. Schwarz that day because, after 11 years in the minors as a draft and follow straight out of highschool, Schwarz was finally getting his first shot in the show. To put that in perspective, Schwarz made more in meal money in that, his only full season in the big-leagues, than he made in all of 1992 when he was toiled for the Vancouver Canadians.

How do I know this?

Because Schwarz told me so himself later that very afternoon as we sat in the bar of the Oakland Airport Hilton where Goose Gossage was holding court a scant six feet away.

Another interesting thing about Schwarz was the fact that he liked to loosen-up by long-tossing with both his right and left hands.

I never did find out what a crusty old customer like Carlton Fisk, who by then had been in the majors for more than 20 years and had caught more games than anyone else in baseball history, thought about Mr. Schwarz' feats of ambulatory ambidextriosity.

I do, however, know that Pudge hated watching himself on T.V.

In particular he said he never, ever, watched video of himself hitting that walk-off shot in Fenway Park during the 1975 World Series.

Why?

Because, Fisk said, he had his own memories of that moment and he didn't want the eye of the camera to turn them into something they were not...

So what, you may be asking yourself, does this have to do with Mr. Dryden?

Well, soon after he died earlier this fall,  Mike Boone had Steve Paikin and Bruce Dowbiggin on his podcast to talk about the former Cornell University goaltender, and one of the things they discussed was how Dryden refused to watch old videos of his games and highlights.

Dryden's explanation, as told to Dowbiggin:

"I have an image in my head of what I looked like, sounded like, and played like back then and I want that to be what stays with me."

Imagine that!


_______

Apparently, it was Greasy Phil who first called Dryden the 'Thieving Giraffe', although the future senator was also known as the Octopus and the Four Storey Goalie.

And here's an even crazier thing that also came up on Toronto Mike's very independent podcast...Dryden was originally drafted by Boston Bruins in 1964 but they traded his rights to the Canadiens when he did the then blasphemous thing and went off to the Ivy League to get an education while he went 76-4-1 at Cornell, back in the days when the world still allowed ties...

.

Believe It Or Not...

 

...There Are Things More Important To Canada Than The Fate Of The Blue Jays.


And, would 'a thunk that one of those things would be happening in the province of wild roses.

The following is from the invaluable David Climenhaga's latest:

When Thomas Lukaszuk said he could bring Elections Alberta pro-Canada petition forms signed by 300,000 Albertans in the three months allowed by the United Conservative Party’s “citizen initiative” legislation, there were many who said it couldn’t be done...

{snip}

...And yesterday, Mr. Lukaszuk and his supporters delivered 61 boxes containing petition sheets with 456,365 signatures to Elections Alberta’s modest headquarters in an Edmonton industrial park. That’s almost certainly enough to ensure Elections Alberta can validate enough to reach the 294,000 required by the law...

What's it all about Alfie?

Well, apparently, it's a concerted effort to beat the separatists at their own rigged game.

Imagine that!

****

And now on to a much more pressing matter, at least for the moment...

Given that the Hawk is already there, isn't it about time Dave Steib was ushered into the Hall of Fame?

.

A Couple Of Things...

NotNecessarilyTheBest
ButTheBestICanDoVille


A couple of things for a busy day job Monday...

It turns out there just might be one good tech baron out there who is most definitely not trying to take over all the means of production - Jimmy Wales...

Locally, in Lotusland, the city is considering a proposal for a massive box in the sky at Yukon and Broadway on a lot so skinny, our Eastside bungalow would hardly fit. The folks at CityHallWatch are on that one...

Enjoy the falling colours and the temporary respite from the rain today everybody!



.

One Republic Swims Against The Current.

TheyGaveTheirHeart
ToAGalwayGirlVille

The Republic of Ireland has a new president.

Her name is Catherine Connolly and she is an unabashed progressive and peacenik who believes in both empathy and compassion:

...As a teenager, Connolly became active in her community, volunteering with two Catholic lay organisations - the Legion of Mary and the Order of Malta.

This involved bringing meals-on-wheels to elderly people and cleaning their homes.

"The joke was that I was out saving the world and not doing the housework at home," she recently told podcaster Síle Seoige...

{snip}

...The mother of two was in her early 40s when she entered elected politics in 1999.

She recalls being encouraged to stand for the Labour Party by the outgoing President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins and his wife.

Her main reason for getting involved was an ambition to address Ireland's housing shortage which she has described as the "defining social crisis of our time".

Connolly served 17 years as councillor in Galway, including a one-year term as mayor of her native city...

{snippety}

...Connolly is an outspoken critic of Israel's actions in Gaza and has vowed to use her presidency to be a "voice for peace" in an increasingly uncertain world.

She opposes the increasing militarisation of Europe and has warned against a "building consensus" to weaken Ireland's policy of military neutrality.

She told BBC Talkback that when she canvassed voters, Gaza was "top of the list of their concerns" and was raised more often than any other issue, including Irish unity...

****

Lawyers, Guns and Money front pager Eric Loomis has a couple of thoughts:

One of the most remarkable political stories in my life is the transformation of Ireland from the most church dominated and one of the most conservative nations in western Europe to a secular nation with no time for the world’s bullshit...

{snip}

...The Irish remind me of the many ex-Mormons I have known in my life (this happens when you are from the West) who have been lied to their whole lives, know it, are angry about it, and have no time for your nonsense. Given how the Catholic Church treated the Irish people over the centuries and the sexual exploitation of children endemic to it, it’s like a national waking up and a determination to never go back to the old ways...

Interesting perspective from Mr. Loomis, and many Irish folks may actually agree with it.

However, given her own history, Ms. Connolly herself might not. 

Although, it is entirely possible  that Ms. Connolly might just take a wee bit of liberation with her brand of catholic theology.

Which would be a good thing I reckon.

________

Earworm in the sub-header?....This (from the place where. apparently, everyone is a buskateer)!

.

Ruthless Dictator Speaks Truth To (His Own Warmongering) Power.

Pressure
PushingDownOnHeVille


Vladimir Putin, responding to his own bought-paid-for-media's questions about how Russia will respond to new American sanctions against its oiligarchy (sic):

...“No self-respecting country ever does anything under pressure.” ...

Sure thing.

Go tell it to the people of Kyiv Mr. Putin.


_____

Earworm in the sub-header?...This!


.

It's Still The Best Thing About Blogging.

HaloscanKilled

TheCommentStarVille


Social media pretty much ended it.

But.

On the little blogs, where the posters actually pay attention and where there are no algorithms to be found, the comments are still the best thing about the whole deal.

To wit - Jodi Patterson recently posted about her efforts, engaged in on the OpEd pages of the Victoria TimesColonist, to discredit the notion that the best way to deal with the social crisis of the unhoused is to ditch all this 'compassion first' business and instead inject a little 'order first' into the deal.

The post itself is very much worth the read.

However, what I would like to do here, specifically, is draw your attention to the comment of some fellow named 'Danneau' who got right to the heart of the matter:

A proposal: Think in terms of all the time, money, thought and effort expended over the last half-century in destroying social safety nets, in disenfranchising and dispossessing a large part of the population, in misinforming and distracting anyone subject to swallowing the narrative and in building a whole infrastructure in both physical and legal structures to prevent effective resistance to the above, and you will have an idea of the resources necessary to address these questions, the time, the funds, the re-education, the legal re-jigging, the attitude adjustment, the patience, the tolerance, the intelligence and the fortitude to mend our whole civilization. As long as politicians are left to govern without consequence and independently of the informed consent of the population, we will flounder with mere attempts to look good for the next election cycle, and the results will be dire.

Enough said?


_____

Earworm in the subheader?....This.

.

HST Fridays...Leni Of The Dakotas.

PointingTowardRushmoreInBavaria
WarIsPeaceVille

From the media chop-shop known as 'Axios', circa 2025:

The most expensive political ad campaign of the year is being run by the Department of Homeland Security.

Why it matters: DHS disputes that its ads are political. But it has spent at least $51 million this year on ads thanking President Trump for securing the border, according to AdImpact...

{snip}

• The DHS ads promote Trump's mass deportation agenda in a series of direct-to-camera videos starring the face of the policy, Secretary Kristi Noem.
• They're part of a $200 million fast-tracked contract pushing self-deportation...

{snip}

• "President Trump" is the most mentioned phrase across all the ads.
• Three ads say: "Thank you, President Donald J. Trump for securing our border and putting America first."
• Another says: "President Trump has a clear message for those that are in our country illegally. Leave now..."

• Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — part of DHS — has spent an additional $10 million on a recruitment ad campaign, airing nationally and in several big city media markets....

From the super-fine media sane-washing operation known as 'Politico, circa 2020:

...In 2018, (Kristi Noem) told the Argus Leader, a South Dakota newspaper, that Mount Rushmore came up during her first visit to the Oval Office, when she was a candidate for governor.

"He said, ‘Kristi, come on over here. Shake my hand,’" Noem said. "I shook his hand, and I said, ‘Mr. President, you should come to South Dakota sometime. We have Mount Rushmore.’ And he goes, ‘Do you know it’s my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?’"

Noem said she started laughing, but added: "He wasn’t laughing, so he was totally serious."...

From the Woody Creek Colorado media mad-house known as 'Owl Farm', circa 2003:

"...We're the Nazis in this game, and I don't like it. I'm embarrassed and I'm pissed off.

Yeah.

I mean to say something and I think a lot of people in this country agree with me...'

Hunter Thompson speaking to KDNK Radio in Roaring Fork 

January 2003

From the original Ms. Riefenstahl, who discovered the face for her own, not so private, Bavarian Mount Rushmore after at a rousing 'rally' in 1932:

"...With indescribable joy, deeply moved and filled with burning gratitude, we share with you, my Führer, your and Germany's greatest victory, the entry of German troops into Paris. You exceed anything human imagination has the power to conceive, achieving deeds without parallel in the history of mankind..."

A telegram to A. Hitler from L. Riefenstahl, June 14, 1940

The day Nazis occupied Paris.

From the original Ms. Riefenstahl, revisioning a wee bit of Nobel Peace Prize-free history a few years later:

"...Everyone thought the war was over, and in that spirit I sent the cable to Hitler (in June of 1940)..."

L. Riefenstahl declaring that war is peace

Imagine that.

.

My Evening Ride...

...Road Hockey Sky!


Which takes me back to a red brick lined school ground, superblades, bleach bottle plastic goalie masks, runny noses, and RC Cola from the corner store.


______
And, just in case you missed it, Beer is writing pretty regularly again...Which is a good thing.


.

Cue The Gloria Gaynor...

Saving

CanuckistanMikitaVille



In an opinion piece titled 'Can Canada Survive Donald Trump' for Bloomberg News, Francis Wilkinson writes.

...In the household of North America, one inhabitant has taken the momentous decision to empower a lie-based political movement led by a career fraudster — long after his authoritarian ambitions and violent means were laid bare. Whether this act of political suicide evolves as a murder-suicide is of more than passing interest to the US’s northern domestic partner.

The consequences of US failure cannot be contained within US borders. As a direct result, African children who were alive on Jan. 19 are dead today. Summary executions, without even a pretense of law, have become US policy in the Caribbean Sea. Putin continues slaughtering Ukrainians while cashing dividends from a shrewd political investment. China is better-positioned for power.

Canada’s precarious state is not the direst consequence of US political degradation. But it’s an all-but-impossible one to rectify. Joined at the hip to the US, Canada can only hope that Trump doesn’t continue to hold its trade hostage, or spill authoritarian values and violence over the border...

 

Personally, I like the slightly more 'collective'  Cake version of the tune made famous by the incomparable Ms. Gaynor...

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Mr. Wilkinson's piece is good, deep and well researched... Essentially, his thesis is that our best chance of surviving, intact, is that the US itself does not completely collapse under the weight of the current authoritarian regime.

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My Morning Ride...

 

Fall-O-Rama!


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Just a thought, unresearched for the moment....As we increasingly have these cool nights that warm up to almost summer temperatures in October, I feel like Bay Area weather has shifted north to Lotusland.


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HST Fridays...History Is Hard To Know.

 

There's a lot of talk these days, some might call it hype for the merch machine, twenty years down the road, about re-investigating the good Docktor's demise.

Personally, I'm not sure there's much there, there.

Then again, as reader Lew E and I discussed on the thread to last week's post, and as HST himself once wrote....

...History is hard to know because of all the hired bullsh*t...

Fear and Loathing, The First Part, 1971

Not to mention the hangers on and the ten percenters.

Sod the streets at once!

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Just Around The Corner...

AllOurBehaviours
'RTheirsVille


Commenting on the last post about the AI Business Bubble, reader TB mentioned that what Mr. Orwell once envisaged about the year that 'Born In The USA' was released* is now just around the corner.

I, only half in jest, responded by saying that we might, ourselves, have already gone around said corner.

And then I read this, by Christian Hetzner writing in Fortune (web archive link):

George Orwell’s 1984 warned of a future where Big Brother watches every move. Today, modern technology is making that vision a reality, and Oracle founder Larry Ellison—the world’s second-richest person—sees a growing opportunity for his company to help authorities analyze real-time data from millions of surveillance cameras.

“Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on,” Ellison said in an hour-long Q&A during Oracle’s Financial Analyst Meeting last week...

Upshot?

I no longer have any jests to give whatsoever.


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*But not this....version.

Tip 'O The Toque to Eric Loomis writing at that WZevon monikered blog


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Unit Economics On The Soles Of Their Shoes.

AllOfTheirTechBubbles
'RUsVille


From Cory Doctorow's latest on the AI business:

...This isn't like the early days of the web, or Amazon, or any of those other big winners that lost money before becoming profitable. Those were all propositions with excellent "unit economics" – they got cheaper with every successive technological generation, and the more customers they added, the more profitable they became. AI companies have – in the memorable phraseology of Ed Zitron – "dogshit unit-economics." Each generation of AI has been vastly more expensive than the previous one, and each new AI customer makes the AI companies lose more money...

Doctorow goes on to make a convincing case that the already massive AI bubble is expanding so fast that the best thing we can hope for is that it bursts as soon as possible.

In other words, if folks like Mess'rs Doctorow and Zitron are right,  the crash is coming and the only thing still up for debate is how bad it's going to be.

And then there is the matter of how fast the libertarian tech lords who now rule us will start screaming about the need for a bailout bigger than Jupiter and all of its moons.

Or some such Mars means nothing to us now-type thing.

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Earworm in the header?...This!


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HST Fridays - Their Difficulty With Pants.

CrookedIsAs
CrookedWasVille



This was then:

"...Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning..."

Hunter Thompson, 1994

This is now:

...The charges (against the former FBI Director) were filed in the eastern district of Virginia only after Erik Siebert was forced out as US attorney (by Donald Trump) for reportedly finding no grounds to indict (James) Comey...

{snip}

...Trump has spent the hours since Comey’s indictment was announced insulting him on Truth Social, calling him “One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to” Thursday night and “A DIRTY COP” Friday morning...

The Guardian, 2025

That is all.


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My Morning Rides.

NoCakeNoRain(Yet)NoMelting
CarnarvonParkVille


A few podcasts I've really enjoyed on the morning ride into work recently...

Christopher Guest on Maron - it turns out that there really is a method in his mad(cap)ness.

Jonathan Goldstein and Heavyweight are back! - The first episode is a touching one about JG's longtime nemesis Gregor's Mom.

The MoCo's Frontburner, which is more often miss than hit for me, had an excellent recent episode on the incredible life and times, including how he's dealing with the coming end of his life with dementia, of Robert Munsch.

That is all for now, although, to be clear, I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and, despite the changing of the seasons, it is not dying.

The light I mean.

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As for the ear worm in the sub-header...Not going to touch that one.


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Saved By Younger e's Bell.

Something'sHappeningThere
AshevilleNorthCarolinaVille


No matter how much I tried to pretend it wasn't looming out there just over the horizon back in the dog days, I knew it was coming.

And when the first few weeks of the new term hit, it was like the madness of pre-tenure days all over again.

Luckily our youngest kid, e.,  had a plan.

Which was to give me Friday night off by taking me to Malkin Bowl in Stanley Park to watch a kid named MJ Lenderman do his thing.

And it was really great.

And now that I've tabbed out the tune and mangled it a few times, I'm pretty sure I know what a beach house in Buffalo is and, perhaps more importantly, what it isn't...

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The scene in Asheville?...This...Of course, once normoid geezers like me find about a thing like that it's likely already gone, or at least passing...

Off(ish) topic...Ya, I realize the trolls are afoot once again...I've just been so darned busy...I'll bring in the removal service once I get a little time.

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Hot Mic In Beijing.

NuclearError

IHaveNoFearVille


From Pjotr Sauder of the Guardian:

It was the stuff of Bond villains. Two ageing autocrats, their younger ally in tow, ambled down a red-carpeted ramp before a military parade in Beijing when a hot mic picked up a question that seemed to be on their minds: how long could they keep going – and, between the lines, might science allow them to rule for ever?

With advances in technology, Russia’s Vladimir Putin assured Xi Jinping via his translator that “human organs can be constantly transplanted, to the extent that people can get younger, perhaps even immortal”.

The Chinese leader replied: “By the end of this century, people may live to 150 years old.”

Nearby, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un – three decades younger than the two 72-year-olds – appeared to take note with a smile....

Gosh.

Does that mean that, when he wrote Neuromancer more than 40 years ago, William Gibson knew that...

Some of it was true?


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Earworm in the subheader AND the kicker?....This!



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My Afternoon Ride.

 

Came back across the Salish Sea this afternoon...

To the best of my knowledge the Wacky One was not at the helm of the fine Spirit Class boat we rode in on.

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The Accidental Parcel Post Solution?

UnitedWe(Can)
StandVille


The coming US'ian tariffs on goods travelling stateside from Europe has parcel post services across the pond in a paralyzing quandary.

Jon Henley, writing in the Guardian explains:

Postal services across Europe have suspended most parcel shipments to the US, citing widespread uncertainty about the impact of new import tariffs announced by Donald Trump.

 {snip}

...PostEurop, an association of 51 European public postal operators, said that if no practical solutions could be found before 29 August, it was likely that all its members would suspend the bulk of parcel shipments to the US...

Of course, this is a potential disaster for European businesses that export products, particularly in small packages, direct to consumers in the US.

And, hopefully, the parcel flow stoppage will be short-lived.

But.

Is it possible that this is an accidental, yet serendipitous, illustration of an important principle about how the capricious, arbitrary and often destructive actions of the Trump regime can be effectively resisted?

Which is to act collectively, both domestically and internationally, on a whole lotta levels.

In other words, what if the Ivy League US'ian schools stopped trying to resist alone and instead were to group together in an alliance.

Or if all Blue State governors formed an economic bloc (which is something that JB Pritzker of Illinois suggested the other day)?

Or if all Canadian soft wood lumber exporters agreed, with government support, to only ship to said Blue State Bloc?

Or if Canadian and Eurasian governments got together and did the same?

Heckfire.

I'm not even sure any of the still to be formed alliances above would even have to act - just the realistic threat of such collective actions would likely force the retreater-in-chief to do just that.

Retreat, I mean.

OK?


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The business of Canadian and European governments getting together to act in concert from a trade perspective is something  that our newly re-minted opposition leader apparently wants to shutdown from the get-go.

Tangential ear worm buried in the levels of the text of the post?...This!



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