Author: Mark Alexander

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Tuesday Madness From Jeff Tiedrich

every Republican is giddy with glee today, because the President of the United States is coming to the Grand Opening of their latest exercise in abject cruelty: an actual concentration camp.

read that sentence again. then read it another hundred times, and ask yourself: what the fuck?

what the fuck is a question you’re going to be asking yourself a lot today, because just a few short years ago, none of this shit would have even been thinkable — and now, deliberate human rights abuses are official government policy.

what the fuck?

look, the visit is right there on Donny’s official schedule.

‘Alligator Alcatraz’ — isn’t that name totally adorbs? — is the brainchild of Florida Governor Ron DeSadist. he commandeered a decaying, abandoned airport in the middle of hot, humid, mosquito-, alligator- and python- infested South Florida swampland, hastily put up a few hundred tents, and declared that America’s newest concentration camp is open for business.

send us all those nannies and day laborers that ICE has been disappearing off the streets, and we’ll make sure their lives are as miserable as possible as they await being shipped off to who the fuck cares, just get them out of Dear Leader’s sight.

seriously, what the fuck?

you would hope that DeSantis would at least have the decency to be ashamed of what he’s doing, and pull all this shit under the cover of darkness. but nope, he’s super fucking proud of himself. last week, he gave a tour of the joint to Fox News.

“and then of course, you also have stuff for the staff here. so you’ve got laundry facilities, we’ve got showers, we’ve got— obviously, you see the shower and bath facilities.”

how awesome. the guards and staff get air conditioning, hot meals and bathrooms. the lucky inmates, however, are cordially invited to go fuck themselves. they get tents, on what used to be an airport tarmac, under the hundred-degree Florida summer sun.

what the fuck?

Ron put this whole thing together in a matter of days, so you know it’s going to be some shoddily-built piece of shit that’s going to be a nightmare to live in.

know where Ron got the $450 million to finance this abomination? from FEMA. think about that the next time a category-five hurricane devastates Florida and the government is all oh, so sorry, there’s no money to rebuild.

you’ll be shocked to learn that Donny has put his stamp of approval on this entire abomination.

“tomorrow, President Trump will travel to the great state of Florida, to attend the opening of a new illegal alien detention center located at Dade-Collier training and transition airport… the facility is in the heart of the Everglades, and will be informally known as ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’ there is only one road leading in, and the only way out is a one-way flight. it is isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife — an unforgiving terrain. the facility will have up to five thousand beds, house, process and deport criminal illegal aliens. this is an efficient and low cost way to help carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in American history.”

what kind of sick fuck brags about this shit?

the only way out is a one-way flight, because there’s no due process.congratulations, Stephen Miller is your judge, jury and executioner.

one minute you’re stocking the shelves of a Home Depot — and the next thing you know, ICE goons swoop in and rendition you off to Alligator Auschwitz. next stop, some hellhole slave-labor gulag in El Salvador. if you’re lucky.

what the fuck?

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I Hate People

THIS self-entitled douchebag…can’t even pull his penis extender all the way into the parking space. And oh yeah, no handicap plate or placard anywhere.

That explains it. (click to embiggen)

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Stupid Americans

Banger of a post by “tarltontarlton” on Reddit:

That same process is happening now with stupid people. They’re transcending their individual limitations, finding each other and becoming out-and-proud Stupid-Americans. […]

How individual stupid Americans are becoming the collective, self-aware group of Stupid-Americans is a great idea for a lot of very fancy journalism I’m sure. It’s probably got something to do with the internet, where stupid people can find and repeat stupid things to each other over and over and over again.

I believe it has a lot to do with the Internet, which has functioned as a terribly efficient sorting machine. It used to be that there were conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans. Both political parties were, effectively, shades of purple. Now we’ve sorted ourselves, and the result is the palpable increase in polarization. Low-IQ stupidity might still be spread across both sides of the political aisle, but willful ignorance — the dogmatic cultish belief that loudmouths’ opinions are on equal ground with facts and evidence presented by informed experts — is the entire basis of the MAGA movement. A regular stupid person might say, “Well, I don’t know anything about vaccines, so I better listen to my doctor, who is highly educated and well-informed on the subject.” An out-and-proud Stupid-American says “I don’t know anything about vaccines either, so I’m going to listen to a kook who admits that a worm ate part of his brain, because I can’t understand the science but I canunderstand conspiracy theories.”

If written language survives the next six weeks, we’ll be writing about Donald Trump for a thousand years. But whatever else there is to say, the most important thing about Donald Trump, the thing that is obvious from watching him speak for just 14 seconds, is that he is profoundly stupid. Whatever it is that he might be talking about or doing at any given moment, it’s clear that while he has a reptilian instinct for reading and stoking conflict, he has no real idea what’s going on and he doesn’t really care to. Stupid is what he is and where he comes from. It is his mind and his soul. Catholic was what JFK was. Gay was what Harvey Milk was. Stupid is who Donald Trump is.

And that’s what they love most, the Stupid-American voters.

Remember that sentence you heard at the beginning of all this in 2016? “He’s just saying what everybody is thinking.”

But see, not everybody was thinking that Hillary Clinton was an alien, that global warming was a Chinese hoax and that what America needed most of all was a plywood wall stretching from Texas to California. Only the stupid people were. And suddenly, in an instant, the most powerful man on earth was thinking just like them. With his clueless smirk and unstoppable rise, he turned people whose stupidity made them feel like nobody into people who felt like everybody.

That’s why he’ll never lose them. Because it was never about what he did or didn’t do. All that stuff is very confusing and the Stupid-American community isn’t interested in the details. They love him for who he is, which is one of them, and because he shows them every day that Stupid-Americans can reach the social mountaintop.

(Via Kottke.)

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Friday Madness From Jeff Tiedrich

Mad King Donny — the total obliterator who once totally obliterated five Atlantic City casinos — has returned to an old goal: to totally obliterate any dissent from the press. to accomplish that, he’s picked the Fox News chat show host who’s spent many a night totally obliterating his liquor cabinet on the way to getting himself totally fucking obliterated.

Donny commanded Pete Kegstand to hold a press conference yesterday, at the ungodly hour of 8am — totally obliterating any chance for Plastered Pete to sleep off his total obliteration from the night before.

Pete was not in a good mood. check out Old Yeller, as he totally obliterates any notion that he wasn’t up there performing for an audience of one: Dear Leader, who was back in the White House, watching it all on TV.

“President Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history, and it was a resounding success resulting in a ceasefire agreement and the end of the 12-day war.”

wait, Donny directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history?

fact check: true.

that’s right, Donny traveled back in time, like the Terminator, and nailed the shit out of D-Day.

D-Day, the June 6, 1944, Allied invasion of France, took a year of planning, involved 156,000 Allied soldiers and 195,700 naval personnel, and required cooperation of leaders from thirteen countries. It remains the largest seaborne invasion in history.

then he thanked everyone for their attention to that matter, and returned to the present in time to catch himself on Fox News.

Donny knows more about D-ing a day than all the D-Dayers — and you ungrateful fucks won’t give him one ounce of credit for it.

but let’s get back to our current shitty timeline — because we’re all trying to square in our minds this claim of absolute secrecy, when in reality, President Blabbermouth spent so much time yammering about US plans that Iran was able to move all their enriched uranium to who the fuck even knows where.

reporters wanted to know about that thing we definitely all saw: the satellite images of transport trucks lined up outside of Iran’s Fordo fuel enrichment facility.


even Fox News was all ‘hey Pete, how can you be so sure that Iran hadn’t moved and hidden all their enriched uranium?’

‘shut the fuck up,’ Pete helpfully explained.

Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin: “it’s about highly-enriched uranium. do you have certainty that all the highly-enriched uranium was inside the Fordo mountain, or some of it, because there are satellite photos showed more than a dozen trucks there, two days in advance. are you certain none of that highly enriched uranium was moved?”

Pete: “Jennifer, you’ve been about the worst. the one who misrepresents the most. intentionally.”

Griffin: “I take issue with that.”

here’s reporter Kyle Clark’s comment on that exchange.

“When an official responds to a question with anger and insults rather than an answer, that’s every journalist’s signal that they’ve asked a good question.”

by the way, the Mad King has his own explanation of what was going in those satellite images — and please sit down, because this is going to be one of the dumbest fucking things you’ll ever read.

“The cars and small trucks at the site were those of concrete workers trying to cover up the top of the shafts. Nothing was taken out of facility. Would take too long, too dangerous, and very heavy and hard to move!”

wait, what? concrete workers, doing what? covering up the holes in the ground? why? so the bombs wouldn’t go down the holes? the bombs that the Iranians didn’t know were coming, because the whole operation was the most secretive secret ever secreted?

does Donny ever listen to the shit that falls out of his own mouth?

tell me, do you think Donny came up with that bullshit story all on his own? or did Donny wave that satellite photo in the air and demand an answer, and one of the Sewer Clowns sat him down and made up that fairy tale, while Donny nodded sagely and took it all in?

now tell me, which is the scarier explanation?

oh, and Donny also knows who the leakers are.

“The Democrats are the ones who leaked the information on the PERFECT FLIGHT to the Nuclear Sites in Iran. They should be prosecuted!”

oh, okay. are the Democrats in the room with us right now?

Plastered Pete never answered Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin’s question about those satellite images — because he wasn’t there to answer any stinking questions. he was there yell, to hector, and, above all, to whine about how mean everybody always is to Dear Leader.

“because you — and I mean specifically you, the press — because you cheer against Trump so hard. it’s like in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump, because you want him not to be successful so bad, you have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes. you have to hope maybe they weren’t effective … and manipulate the public mind over whether or not our brave pilots were successful.”

for fuck’s sake, could this administration please stop trying to pretend this is about the bravery of the pilots. this is about knowing the truth about one thing only: is our country more safe, or less safe, as a result of this bombing?

don’t fucking lie right to our faces, because what’s at stake is our national security — which should be more important than stroking ego of the fragile shitbag in the Oval Office. but unfortunately, to this gang of fucksticks, it isn’t.

this incompetent fool has a lot of goddamned gall lecturing anyone about how to do their jobs. really, we should all be thankful that Fumblefingers Pete didn’t text plans for the Iran bombing to a journalist — or to his wife.

wait. how do we know Pete didn’t blab Iran attack plans to his wife?

by the way, nice hair, Pete. you’ve totally obliterated the notion that the makeup studio you built in the Pentagon wasn’t worth the thousands of dollars you spent on it.

oh, and Mission Accomplished.

“One of the greatest, most professional, and most ‘confirming’ News Conferences I have ever seen! The Fake News should fire everyone involved in this Witch Hunt, and apologize to our great warriors, and everyone else!”

it all just one big performative circle-jerk to these clowns.

here’s your hero of the day: the Netherlands’ Queen Maxima, who met Donny prior to Tuesday’s NATO meeting, took look one look at his rancid anus-mouth and totally mocked the shit out of it — because when you’re a queen, they let you.

uck yeah — let’s slow it down and gif that shit for posterity’s sake.

 

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Transplant Successful

As I mentioned a couple days ago, I had two more “junk” Minidisc players  arriving for my little project; one a rare sapphire blue MZ-E75 and a teal MZ-E630. At the time I said since the red E75 I’d received for my ahhhhrt project turned out to be fully functional and just too good to not use in my regular rotation of players, that if the blue E75 arrived and it wasn’t working I would simply swap the two shells since I have a sentimental attachment to that device in the blue color.

It turns out that indeed, that blue player (and indeed the other Sony I also received today) are both non-functional as advertised.

Win some, you lose some. But I remind myself I didn’t buy these to use, but rather to take apart.

So—while I continue to fancy myself a bit of a tech wiz (something based only on my experience troubleshooting PC hardware that has sadly not been borne out once I step outside my area of expertise)—and armed with the service manual for the E75 I removed the shells and successfully swapped them between the two units. 5 tiny screws were all that was holding them on, so as far as techie things go this was pretty damn easy.

That’s not to say I didn’t breathe a sigh of relief when I reassembled everything and the working mechanism transferred to the blue shell fired right up and played flawlessly.

 

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I Don’t Know If I’m Flattered Or Insulted

I threw a few very poor (they were shot on a Sony Mavica diskette-based camera) photos of me from 2000/01 and said, “Make photorealistic.”

I’m kind of surprised at the results. As you can see, some are certainly better than others. But like all AI generated images of humans, they still suffer from the “uncanny valley.” It’s art to be sure, and as good as they are, no one is ever going to mistake these for real photographs. There’s just something off about them.

I then asked ChatGPT to describe the person in these photos:

The man in these images appears to be a middle-aged adult with a friendly and approachable demeanor. Here are some consistent traits and observations based on the visual cues across the photos:

        • Facial Features: He has a round face, expressive eyes, and prominent eyebrows. His expressions vary slightly, but overall he maintains a warm and slightly amused look, often accompanied by a smile or smirk.

        • Facial Hair: The first image shows him with a goatee, while the others depict him with a full, thick mustache. This suggests some variation in grooming over time or for different styles/contexts.

        • Setting: All images appear to be taken indoors, in casual home settings — often with an aquarium in the background, indicating it might be his home or a familiar space.

        • Style: His attire is casual (T-shirts, flannel, casual button-downs), suggesting a laid-back personality. The “Roswell, NM” alien-themed shirt hints at a sense of humor or an interest in pop culture, sci-fi, or Americana.

        • Mood/Expression: Across the board, his expressions are relaxed, slightly playful, and self-assured. One photo features a tilted head resting on his hand, which gives a thoughtful, personable vibe.

Oh my.

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I’m An Idiot

So a couple weeks ago I decided I was going to start a new hobby, combining my love of minidiscs and of taking shit apart. No, I wasn’t going into the repair business (although I understand that can be very lucrative). No, I’m going to create ahhhhhhrt.

Inspired by this photo as well as a video from a few months back I can’t seem find anywhere now, I decided I’m going to try this myself. I’ll buy up a few cheap “non-working” or “untested” MD players, disassemble them, and mount them in a shadowbox like this. Hardcore Minidisc fans will lay out good cash for this shit…

TRUE NERD stuff, I know, but hey…it will at least temporarily get my mind off the decline and fall of civilization.

To that end, I found three players online that were cheap as dirt and at the very least “untested,” if not outright “not working.” Two of them, Sony MZ-E75s, were the first model of portable player I owned back in 2000. I got rid of mine in 2002 when the new MDLP (long play) format became available because discs were still relatively expensive and you could now double the amount of music you threw on one disc. (A real boon for those pesky double LP/CD recordings in your library.) . Through some black magic and voodoo known only to Sony engineers, you could now double or quadruple your recording length on any given minidisc—although it should be noted that the quadruple length mode was only satisfactory for something like the spoken word; it sounded awful when recording music because of the extreme compression use The LP2 mode sounded —even to my much younger ears at the time—indistinguishable from regular SP (standard play) mode. The only downside was that if you recorded a disc in LP2, you couldn’t play it on a non-MDLP player. It was not backward compatible; hence the reason I needed to throw everything out and start fresh if I was going to adopt it.

So back in the day, I sold both my MZ-E75 portable and my MDS-JE630 deck and upgraded them both.

I received the first of those two E75 players today (“no battery, untested”). The battery terminals on the device were pristine, showing none of the all-to-common corrosion from 20+ years of leaking batteries, so I figured what the heck? Pop in a battery and see what happens. I gingerly inserted one of my gumstick batteries, connected the inline remote and popped in a disc. Surprisingly, the player came to life and the disc was registering on the remote. I connected my headphones, pressed play, and…no sound. The display on the remote showed it was playing and even showed changes in volume, but it remained stubbornly silent.

Even though this was bought with the sole intention of tearing it apart and mounting its bits and pieces for display, I was still kind of disappointed because I was secretly hoping it worked and the seller really didn’t know what they’d sold me. I was about to get out my screwdriver and begin disassembly when I popped out the disc and looked at what I had been playing.

Suddenly it all made sense. It was Sylvester’s Greatest Hits (the disc I featured a couple days ago); recorded from a two-CD set onto one mindisc using LP2 mode.

No wonder I got no sound!

I popped in a disc I knew had been recorded in SP mode and…you guessed it. It played fine.

So now I’m in a quandary. I bought this to disassemble, but it works and is in near-mint condition. It’s far too nice to take apart but I really don’t need another player—especially one that only plays SP discs.

I will admit, however that to my utter surprise, this little nugget sounds good. Maybe even better than my MDLP players. Oh lord…am I going to have to go back and re-record everything in SP mode now?

But I think I’ll hold off deciding anything until the blue one arrives. If that one’s truly not working as well, I’ll swap the outer shells (because my original one was the blue color and it’s very, very rare to find one these days) and then mount the non-working guts with the red shell in the shadowbox.  If they’re both working, I’ll probably just throw the red one back up on eBay and hopefully get more money back than I paid for it because now it is tested and working.