With its recent attacks on 3 Russian data centers, Ukraine didn't just speed up the transfer of Yandex data to the cloud, they also interfered in the long-distance relationships of numerous incels.
#Ukraine #Yandex #DroneWarfare
Is the bankruptcy of Character.ai the fall of the first Ai domino, or a sign that the entire bubble is about to burst? Well, heck, why not both?
Will investors get the jitters when they realize that spending billions to make millions is no way to run a real business?
We live in the stupidest of times, so who can say?
https://www.404media.co/r/b773cd09
These cool early mornings are all the incentive I, for one, need to stay in bed on a Monday morning, which I can do since I'm retired.
Apologies 4 gloating, but I'm also passive-aggressive.
Bong hits 4 an ill-conceived and poorly worded Mastodon post.
I've seen some wonderful Silent Sunday photos posted, so it must be Sunday.
That's the good news.
The bad news is that means tomorrow it's Monday again.
This story has been reported by several news outlets, but you're getting THIS particular angle HERE first!
Secretary of Whatever he is today, Testosterone Pete Hegseth, announced aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln Wednesday that he plans to livestream the execution of the man convicted of murdering13 GIs at Fort Hood in 2009.
What others haven't told you is that tech bros Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos are currently competing against one another in negotiations with convicted felon Trump for the rights to live stream the firing-squad.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/lets-livestream-this-badass-execution
https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/what-kind-of-shithole-country-livestreams
#Satire #PublicExecutions #TechBros #ShitHoleCountries
I, for one, am counting on the Fediverse to keep posting.
Unable to sleep tonight.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Today is, "Donnie Didn't Get a Nobel Prize Day," again for those who celebrate it.
#NobelPrize
I can console myself about not getting my call from the Nobel Prize Committee with the certainty that Donnie hasn't gotten his call either.
#NobelPrize
Haven't gotten my call yet from the Nobel Prize Committee with the good news, so my hope is still alive.
How about YOU?
#NobelPrize
Here's another suggestion:
"It's the corruption, stupid."
#NoKings #NoKingsSigns
"No Kings, No Fools, No Trump"!
#NoKings #NoKingsPosters
I've got my cardboard ready for my poster for No Kings on Saturday, October 17, 2026 in the US. And I can use a bit of help from the Fediverse hive mind.
My board has 2 sides, so I can use up to 2 slogans.
I keep coming up with good ones, but I also keep forgetting them.
I figure if they're in my timeline, I'll be able to hang on to them.
Here's one I thought of recently" "Stop the madness. Vote."
I'm sure you guys can do better than that, though.
https://nokingsnational.com/p/october-17-the-next-no-kings-day
#NoKings #NoTrump #USPolitics
Let's end the old week and start the new one with a meme commemorating how Republicans are using the US Congress to beclown themselves with baseless conspiracy theories that crumble in the light of day.
Who votes for people who control all the branches of government yet spend their time in performative hurr-durr?
#USPolitics #JackSmith #CrazyConspiracies.
A person for whom I have enormous respect dropped a really obscure joke on us today on the Fediverse. So I'm going to use that as permission to tell this story:
(If you don't know who the actor Walter Brennan was -- Hint: That mule, old rivers, and me -- or what the show "The Real McCoys," was about, you may want to take a detour to Wikipedia and come back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Brennan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_McCoys )
I used to enjoy doing impressions of Brennan, who had a distinctive accent and delivery, especially in episodes of The Real McCoys. One of his tropes was to call out for the family's hired man, Pepino Garcia, played by actor Tony Martinez, to get him out of some jam he'd gotten himself into.
With Brennan's accent, the name "Pepino," sounded to me like the word "subpoena."
I'd get laffs from my family for the impersonation, which always included the name Pepino, and Brennan asking him to do something inappropriate.
I know this story doesn't appear to be going anywhere, so to wrap it up I'll let you know that doing that bit left me with a tic, so that every time I hear the word "subpoena" when watching a movie or TV show, I shout it back to the screen in Brennan's voice as if he's calling Pepino, but saying subpoena.
I'll close with this observation: You don't want to sit next to me during a "Law and Order," marathon.
#Impersonations #WalterBrennan #LawAndOrder
Wanting to add to a post of mine about Pete Hegseth's First Amendment violation of the separation of church and state, but unable to find it.
So, without context, here is a response from reader Susan to Lucian Truscott IV's recent article about Hegseth:
"Susan J 🗽⚖️💪
1d
I remember a dinner conversation, about 1962, my father, who as a Marine deployed to Korea aboard an amphibious assault ship, mentioned that religious services were mandatory. I asked, “why would they care ?” His reply was chilling and almost 7 decades later I still remember, “Because it is easier to send a man to die when he thinks he has somewhere to go.”
https://luciantruscott.substack.com/p/testostero-pete-thinks-hes-patton
PS: Truscott calls Hegseth, "Testostero-Pete".
Do you YOU sometimes feel like you're living , in a dystopia?
Do you wonder why the world is getting more and more authoritarian?
Hint: It's because "money" or "the economy" is more important than people and the people in charge think that's how things should be, so they enact policies to keep life that way.
Have YOU seen any of the "Purge" movies?
Then you already understand the basic concepts of Neoliberalism, the faux philosophy underpinning the fuckery.
Here, in video form, is your introduction to the economic system you're living in while not realizing it:
https://youtu.be/QMOpB5tSPVY
If you're using DuckDuck Player to bypass YouTube's surveillance, use THIS link:
duck://player/QMOpB5tSPVY
#Neoliberalism #Dystopia #Authoritarianism
The US Secretary of Whatever He's Calling it Today on Tuesday held a reprise of the preening daddy-issues insecurity fest that he invented a year ago.
All the top officers forced to attend last year had better things to do this time -- like a lost war in Iran -- so junior officers and NCOs were assigned to attend instead.
This shit stank so bad, a Canadian could smell it, and Dean Blundell summed up the latest national embarrassment thusly:
"In one afternoon, during an active war, the Secretary of War managed to insult his own troops, slur trans service members, accuse the free press of a capital crime, hand the future of American warfare to three men who never served, announce a vanity base with Greek columns, contradict his own religion stats by 13 points, and build himself a private hotline to the chaplaincy. He did it while bragging that he’s purged 10% of the most experienced officers in the country, and he promised to come back next year and do it again. There’s no scale for that. You’d need to invent new units. Pete would probably name them after himself and demand they be built in marble, but not before making another female intern sign an NDA."
https://deanblundell.substack.com/p/video-pete-hegseth-is-a-stupid-bigoted
#PeteHegseth #InternationalEmbarrassment
In an inspiring show of billionaire solidarity on behalf of free speech, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram (both owned by Meta); and TikTok, as well as Musk's own Shitter -- the everything app that used to be called Twitter -- have all declined to publish ads for Alex Gibney's new documentary about Elon Musk.
So as an act of public service, here on Mastodon is the film's trailer for your enjoyment.
https://paulwaldman.substack.com/p/the-billionaires-have-met-free-speec
It's not that I think that the things I'm posting on Mastodon today are that significant or noteworthy.
It's just that, for some reason, I currently lack all self-control and am avoiding every responsibility in my life.
Should this be concerning to me?
If your Mastodon banner art features flying saucers, I, for one, want to follow you.
Bong hits 4 extraterrestrial craft.