It’s Time to not be nice, So That Happened, Stupid People are Stupid, and started with the Crazy, now we’re here. #podcast #elon #espn #france #rosannebarr #andreamitchell #marshablackburn
(AP) Amazon’s cloud computing unit Amazon Web Services experienced an outage on Tuesday, affecting publishers that suddenly found themselves unable to operate their sites.
The company said on its website that the root cause of the issue was tied to a service called AWS Lambda, which lets customers run code for different types of applications.
Roughly two hours after customer began experiencing errors, the company posted on its AWS status page that many of the affected AWS services were “fully recovered” and it was continuing to recover the rest.
**On a related note, I was window shopping on Amazon at the time. So, to paraphrase the words of the lady in the cafe’ in When Harry Met Sally, ‘I’ll have what Jeff’s having”.
CNN — White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre violated the Hatch Act for using the term “mega MAGA” from the briefing room podium, the US Office of the Special Counsel has determined, and has received a warning letter.
Jean-Pierre was found to be in violation of the Hatch Act, a law that is supposed to stop the federal government from affecting elections or going about its activities in a partisan manner, when she said “mega MAGA Republican officials who don’t believe in the rule of law,” according to a letter from OSC. The letter was addressed to Michael Chamberlain, a former Trump administration official and director of the “Protect the Public’s Trust” organization, after Chamberlain filed a complaint that Jean-Pierre used the phrase “mega MAGA Republican[s]” in an “an inappropriate attempt to influence the vote.”
“OSC has investigated your allegation and concluded that Ms. Jean‐Pierre violated the Hatch Act. However … we have decided not to pursue disciplinary action and have instead issued Ms. Jean‐Pierre a warning letter,” OSC’s Hatch Act Unit chief Ana Galindo-Marrone said in the June 7 letter to Chamberlain, who served in the Department of Education during Donald Trump’s presidency.
**I wonder what Mr. Chamberlain has to say about the numerous times Kellyanne Conway violated the Hatch Act during the previous administration. You know, the one he was also a part of. The OSC recommended to the former President that Conway be removed from office, which of course didn’t happen. You might remember Conway saying “If you’re trying to silence me through the Hatch Act, it’s not going to work,” and “Let me know when the jail sentence starts.”
Also, Protect the Public Trust seems to have an identity problem. It doesn’t know what to call itself, a non profit, an NGO, or something else. It also doesn’t want you to know how it gets funded.
There’s a word for a person that doesn’t want you to know the truth about them and has a shitload of money with no visible means of support, and since we’re not talking about anyone I’m related to…well, crook still applies. They’re a crook. Pay no attention to them.
[13 News] VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — It’s a contentious topic that has plagued Virginia Beach City Public Schools for more than a year: determining what to do with a proposed LGBTQ+ resolution.
The resolution, presented by school board member Jessica Owens, passed 6 to 5 around 2:15 a.m. Tuesday morning. The vote came after board members spent hours listening to around 100 people voice their thoughts on the resolution.
The resolution reaffirms Virginia Beach City Public Schools’ commitment to non-discrimination and anti-harassment when it comes to LGBTQ+ students and staff.
**No jokes here. I want to send out a shoutout to the kids—around 50—who have been speaking about this at every meeting since the school year started, because they played by the rules, they caused enough pressure on the board to put forth this resolution, and most importantly, because they did exactly what the performative bullshit artists did during the whole pandemic and monopolize the public comment time, they beat the clown show at their own game. IT WAS YOU DAD. I LEARNED IT FROM WATCHING YOU.
No doubt the bylaws are about to be revisited in time for the next school year so that this never happens again. I’d be surprised if they weren’t. But for now, hats off to the wonderful kids who stood up for their community and their friends. The kids are alright, and they’re going to save us from ourselves.
BERLIN (AP) — A German court says it is giving an 82-year-old man a “last warning” to avoid jail after he was found guilty of drug dealing, despite 24 previous convictions.
The retired seaman, who said he wanted to improve his meagre 800-euro ($855) monthly pension by selling marijuana, was handed a suspended sentence by a court in the northern town of Aurich on Monday.
German news agency DPA reported that prosecutors had asked the court to impose a prison term of 34 months in view of the man’s lengthy criminal record and an existing suspended sentence.
But judges said they would make an exception and classify the latest crimes as “less serious offenses” due to the man’s particular circumstances and recent health problems.
Dpa quoted the presiding judge telling the defendant that it was his “very last warning.”
(DEADSTATE) A disturbing video posted to Reddit shows an irate, likely intoxicated woman screaming the N-word at passersby and seemingly targeting random Black people to assault during her tirade.
While it’s not known what transpired beforehand, the video starts showing the woman screaming the N-word as another woman throws a drink at her, prompting the racist woman to scream, “Stupid n***er b**ch!” before she is punched in the face.
The woman continues to scream the N-word as she grows increasingly distressed and throws her phone at the person recording the video.
At another point in the video, the woman walks up to man and strikes him in the back. She then takes a swing at a woman walking by and attacks other people at random. One man who she attacked responded by giving her a kick to the behind.
All throughout the video, the woman continues to scream the N-word.
**It’s 2023. If you look up and someone is holding a phone in your direction, you’ve done something stupid. JUST. WALK. AWAY.
Referencing the Speech or Debate clause in the Constitution, Rep. Thomas Massie is claiming a right to read aloud from any document at issue in the Donald Trump indictment. Massie essentially threatens to read Top Secret national security documents aloud on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Those House proceedings, as all proceedings on the floor, would be broadcast on C-SPAN and available to anyone in the world.
From Massie’s Twitter: For what it’s worth, under the Constitution, no member of Congress can be prosecuted for reading aloud on the floor any of the documents Trump allegedly has copies of.
**Now, let’s be clear about something. Thomas Massie is not a serious person. However, he’s not THIS stupid. Even he knows that this is a no-go. But I must share with you the glorious vision I had. I watch C-Span a lot. No, more than that. EVEN MORE THAN THAT. You may not know this, but the cameras in the House don’t belong to C-Span, they belong to the House. There are a lot of static shots, and one of them is a medium shot of the Well of the House for when the Congressfolks come to the podiums to speak. I can just envision Rep. Massie really getting in the Zone reading all this stuff to own the Libs, when one of those really long hooks you’ve seen in cartoons or old Vaudeville skits slowly encircle Massie, and he gets yanked out of view Wile E. Coyote style, with his head being the last to go because he clearly wasn’t using it.
I am not a person who knows how to rest. My brain is constantly nagging at me that I should be doing something, and then when I get to bed, it nags at me about the stuff I didn’t get to. Still, even with the past couple of weeks I’ve had to look after the wife and kids, I’ve worked the full-time job after she came home and worked out how to start the blogging and podcasting again as a creative release, plus the usual house stuff and more. As you might imagine, it’s exhausting, yet I have the most significant problem acknowledging my exhaustion. So, here it is: I’m a wreck. I will lessen my load a bit over time, and one of the first things I can do to help myself is to stop duplicating effort. More on that at the end.
For now, let’s navigate to the meat.
Axios wrote an article entitled America The Single over the weekend, in which they note that the marriage rate has dropped 60 percent in the last 50 years. Also, The Hill has an article over the weekend that states that 60 percent of young men—in their twenties—are single, nearly twice the rate of young women. They then go on to mention the declining pay gap, the fact that more women than men are getting degrees, the fact that 1/5 of Gen Z identify as LGBT, more young women are marrying older men, and that, finally, more and more women don’t feel like they have to ‘settle’ anymore. This is the nightmare scenario if you are a white supremacist, Republican, evangelical, an incel, or all of the above. Honestly, I’m not sure who to point and laugh at the most, but I’m leaning toward the incels because they’re the ones that are most likely to have a meltdown over the realization that they will never get what they want unless they do the one thing they refuse to do: Level the fuck up. Sadly, the first part of leveling up is to admit that it’s no one else’s fault, and the vast majority of them have been led to believe they’ve done everything right; it’s someone else’s problem.
Expanding on the Incel problem for a moment, and I might be wrong on this, but that’s never stopped me: It would be easy for me to project the characters of Ducky, Brian Johnson, or any other nerdy guy in the iconic movies of my childhood that didn’t get the girl onto them, and they might even believe that they are some variation of those characters. I often wonder if those characters didn’t become problematic in the ensuing years, but I’ve never thought it was intentional. What is intended is the choices these incels have made since. We might be able to assume that Brian Johnson eventually figured out how to make that lamp. We hope that Ducky moved on and found someone else. Unfortunately, the incels don’t learn those lessons; they don’t evolve and expect others to come to their level, believing themselves near the top of the mountain instead of their actual location in their parents’ basement.
The more significant issue that the other subsets I mentioned—white supremacists, evangelicals, Republicans—they’re big mad because, for them, the result is that day in the future when whites are the majority *minority* in this country. If the marriage rate is declining, then the buried lede is that the birth rate is also declining, and I don’t know what to tell you about that. You’re talking about a culture there that would prefer to keep women stuck in the 1950s with none of the rights they enjoy today. That’s not a John Hughes problem that’s easily solved. I used to say that time and attrition would resolve this, but people like Nick Fuentes and Charlie Kirk exist in the world and are younger than I am. Time isn’t going to heal this, and I don’t know what does. Open to ideas.
File under” It’s not cancel culture if I can still hear your bullshit.” Scott Adams, the creator of the once quasi-funny Dilbert comic strip, went on such a racist rant over the weekend that I’ll be surprised if he still has a strip by the end of the week. Hundreds of newspapers have dropped him for a video in which he calls for what can only be described as a revival of segregation or White Flight Part 2, praying for Boogaloo. Right now, he’s telling people on his Locals that he’s exactly where he needs to be, but it’s early days. I’m sure it’s not about money for him at this point. It will be about him not being able to say whatever the fuck he wants without consequence, which is the part they leave out when they finally get to the whining bit. So I would say stay tuned, but not to worry; he’ll do his best to ensure you do.
I’ve missed a lot of my beloved soccer this year, so I took the opportunity to watch Chelsea v Tottenham (or, as I heard Marina Sirtis refer to them, “Ol Cock ‘n Balls”), and I have to say Chelsea guts me. This may be the first time in years I’ve seen them at the middle of the table, and they seemed just fucking demoralized at this point. Thomas Tuchel left, and Roman Abromovich had to sell the team because of the Russian sanctions; this new manager seems like a dope. Here’s how bad the group has become: They were beaten by Southampton, which is at the bottom of the table. A team that’s most likely going to get relegated. There are calls for this guy to resign, and I do not hate that idea. Chelsea needs to shake off this bad year and get a new manager that fits.
Related: MLS starts this weekend, and I am in heaven because it’s the first of two times this year where PL and MLS are playing simultaneously. Soccer is pretty much year-round, unlike other sports. Of course, MLB is in Spring Training, so I can watch the Mariners play during the day before the Sounders play at night if they’re on the West Coast. I got the MLS Ticket from Apple TV, so I’m looking forward to a lot of the Beautiful Game this year.
A bit more on the pickers of the social media low-hanging fruit I mentioned last week. Folks like MTG, Boebert, Cruz, and the right-wing media personalities either know this or have powerful media teams that do: Being controversial equals engagement. Engagement boosts their posts to more people, which equals more engagement. Engagement is their oxygen. They’ve learned how to weaponize engagement to keep their posts–to use a soccer term–at the top of the table. What can you do? That’s easy. You can either block them or choose not to respond to them directly. I mentioned the screenshot method on Friday, and I think that’s a valid method to get it off your chest without directly responding to them and increasing their engagement numbers. I keep hearing about ‘the ratio.’ if I understand that, it’s the ratio of comments to Likes and Retweets. The trouble with that is that it’s all engagement. ALL OF IT. The best thing we can do is not reply, retweet, Quote, Tweet, or like these folks.
Finally, a housekeeping note. Monday’s Podcast will not only be public on Patreon, but it’s also in the main feed to bring people over to the Patreon page. If you follow me on social media, you may see some clips of this in a few places for the same reason. Tuesday through Friday is still behind the curtain, and that’s how we will proceed for the foreseeable future or until I hit upon the key to making fetch happen. Or I hit the lotto. It’s one of those; I’m pretty sure.
Back after a little time off in which I explain that poison should always remain the name of a 90’s hair band and nothing you should accidentally do to yourself.
Also, a dear family member left us recently, I take a minute to sing her praises.
Finally, a little more about losing my way and trying to find my mojo again.
If you need to know this kind of thing, I write and produce this monstrosity, and the music is supplied by Epidemic Sound, Click on the Epidemic Sound Link at krisroley.com for more details about that and about anything else I’m doing.
World Cup: Proving once again that the USMNT can’t do jack diddly point shit.
So That Happened
Twitter Files
Alex Jones has to back away from Ye
Gov. Sourpuss has to save a little face re: Disney
A Requiem For The Living (Toxic Families)
Remember to like, share, review, slice, dice, chop, julienne, fold, splinter, mutilate, and head on over to krisroley.com for more of my flavor of crazy. Also, if you’re so inclined you can support that crazy on Patreon, link is at the website.