They always telegraph their punches, so the bullshit letter warning of "criminal liability" for illegal voters is exactly what they'll attempt to stage.

They'll find a Swede without an accent who has overstayed a tourist visa and make a deal to not deport them (for now) in exchange for them to go try to register to vote in some two-bit rural Michigan county, just so they can arrest a whitehaired clerk named Doris and claim "widespread voter fraud."

Watch.

Think about this: stuff that is "free to you" are still things you don't want people doing a shit job on.

Schoolteachers.
Firefighters.
Postal services.
Air traffic controllers.

Many, many people don't pay directly for these services (shove your "my taxes pay for" indignation; no, they mostly don't) but still expect them to be performed adequately.

We just missed a moment.

Years unfucking computer systems and old Swedish cars taught me not to trust problems that seem to magically "fix themselves."

Things break for reasons, which means there must be reasons they appear to "fix themselves."

I would be perfectly ok if housecleanerdoid never touched anything made of cast iron again. This is what happens when you wash cast iron that didn't need to be washed, then stack it when it's still wet.

Or, just use an internal rechargeable battery and use USB-C.

No one has ever presented a cogent explanation of how a Ryobi screwdriver is so magically fucking specialicious that it couldn't use a DeWalt or Black & Decker or Stihl battery.

No one.

And tear them both apart, and the batteries internally are pretty much all the same shit internally. Everything else is just plastic.

I am glad the EU finally said fuckit, you WILL use USB-C.

Next up: somebody do power tools. I am not gonna fucking buy a completely different and incompatible set of batteries to use your shitty electric weed-eater. I have nine other tools that use green batteries. If your screwdriver means I have to use completely inaccessible red batteries, go eat red shit.

Portable radios figured this shit out over 80 years ago.

I like it when asshole agencies that shouldn't exist run out of money. All those new recruits will regret it when they don't get paid.

#fuckice

Periodic reminder, particularly if you're in the media or education:

Do not say "on a fixed income" when you mean "old and poor."

Say the hard words.

EVERYBODY is on a "fixed income." NOT everybody is on an adequate income.

How about "go fuck yourself, Yoplait?"

How about "don't make these stupid upside-down plastic cups, Yoplait?"

How about "crush your balls with a hammer to protect wildlife, Yoplait?"

Biodegradable wax paper normal-ass-up cups worked great for decades, Yoplait.

Amazingly, it works. I have not seen this Sony PDA sync to a computer in over 20 years. This was fiddly and not really reliable, mostly due to having to sync it to Windows 7 running in a VM (there hasn't been a Palm Desktop for Mac in decades). But it was able to talk.

Further testing makes me think the IR emitter in the TG50 is fuxxored, but the jury's still out on that.

#retrocomputing

After around 50 years of looking, I may have located a copy of the score of the late George Siravo's 1972 piece, "Fantasy On The Blues."

But it's in a library.

In the Alsace region.

Of northern France.

Hrrrrrrrm.

Anybody over there want a fun mission?

This onion has Ambitions.

Harriet would like you to know that that thing on the other side of the bed is a moron.

#catsofmastodon

Another somebody who never missed a pitch. Connie Francis' intonation was sometimes better than Sinatra or Elvis. She just died in July 2025, never needing Auto-Tune.

Connie Francis, "Among My Souvenirs," MGM Records, 1959.

This is the morning when NBC demolishes the coverage of the Thanksgiving Day Parade with endless inserted taped performances of who-the-fuck-is-this flash-in-the-pan "pop" singers, many promos for shitty NBC shows that will be canceled by easter, and 350 mentions of their App.

And that asshole weather guy, and possibly Mike Tirico.

Each marching band will get 2.2 seconds on screen.

"These kids worked hard all year to get here! let's not let you hear them play, and here's this NBC hit..."

Every time one of the characters in a Hallmark Christmas movie says, "honey, what's wrong?" I mentally finish it with "I'm in a Hallmark movie!"

In the pre-internet days, I tracked down an asshole who stole my identity and among other things racked up some felony driving tickets for which he never appeared. I found his past three houses, his old girlfriends, and where he was living.

This was 1992.

He's dead now. Died before I got a chance for him to meet my baseball bat.

Fuck you, Lloyd Joseph Baribeau, Jr.

I had so much of the score memorized, I could probably reconstruct it fairly accurately in MIDI. I suppose I could try contacting Siravo's family, but they'd be in their 70s now (he died in 2000 age 84).

All I have for sure is what's in my head and on an image of the original catalog card from the Copyright Office.

I am a good bizarre sleuth.

I once returned a lost class ring to a girl in New Jersey in 1980 based only on the information on the ring. She'd be 64 years old now. Hope so.

I had introduced myself and my quest, knowing she might not have even been born in 1972, and asked if they still had the score or the recording, figuring I'd never hear back and just get spamfiltered.

She actually had her band directors look through their libraries, and... they found nothing.

"I guess our band directors do sometimes throw stuff out," she said.

I had never figured I'd hear from her. I thanked her a zillion times.

And am stymied again.