OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend.
May 30, 2025
CRAZY. WHERE DID THEY THINK OF THAT? China’s Astronstone raises early funding for stainless steel rocket with “chopstick” recovery.
YOU CAN GET SOME OF THIS BENEFIT BY JUST DONATING BLOOD OR PLASMA: Human trial finds therapeutic plasma exchange reduces biological age. For free. You can even get paid for plasma.
FUN GIFT: Slushie Machine, No Ice Needed. #CommissionEarned
HUH. I ALWAYS ASSUMED IT WAS LIKE A HARD RESET: Electroconvulsive therapy’s ‘hard reset’ effect: Brain wave discovery challenges long-held assumption. “ECT, or electroconvulsive therapy, uses brief, noninvasive electrical stimulation of the brain to induce a seizure. Despite an outdated pop culture moniker (electroshock therapy) that often paints the treatment in a negative light, ECT has been proven to be a safe and highly effective treatment, offering rapid relief from severe symptoms when medications have failed.”
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest did a lot of damage.
But not all cinematic depictions were as sinister:
ALL THE BEST PEOPLE ASSURED ME THAT WEED WAS HARMLESS: Smoking weed and consuming THC-laced edibles linked to early heart disease, study finds.
DEMS KEEP TRYING TO REBUILD THEIR DEATH STAR:
Their failure in 2024 has only emboldened Dems like Rep. Crockett to act out more than ever before, breaking the united front Democrats were once famous for holding, and lashing out at anyone who tries to silence them.
That’s not landing well, either. In fact, it only becomes a throw-away line for Trump in a press conference.
So the Dems are taking a page out of the GOP’s playbook, kind of.
They want to find their own Joe Rogan.
There’s just one or two problems with that idea, though.
Rogan wasn’t found. He made his show what it is today virtually by himself. He began podcasting when people thought the format was a flash in the pan in the late 2000s. But he kept plugging, exploring his own varied interests through fascinating guests and introducing his listeners to new ideas and ways of thinking. He built his empire by catering to nobody but himself, not by reading on air the latest missive from Cory Booker.
The second problem, and the arguably larger one, is that a Democrat Joe Rogan doesn’t exist. Rogan, while not a Democrat or a Republican, has the brand of being physically strong, emotionally stable, and deeply-rooted in family values.
The Democrats don’t have anyone like that. It’s actually impossible to be a Democrat that vaguely resembles Joe Rogan. If a liberal had a whiff of any of Rogan’s traits, they’d be labeled as a MAGA supporter and deserted by their party.
The mantra of the Democrat Party is inclusivity, diversity, acceptance, and, frankly, non-traditional family values. You’ll never find a genuine person that isn’t mentally unwell who is willing to embrace every radical idea that floats their way to meet those standards. Again, it’s impossible to recreate what Joe Rogan has built in a liberal fashion.
The bizarre recent interview of Tim Dillon by a sleepy Elle Reeve of CNN does illustrated on how utterly fixated 2025 Democrats are with Rogan, just as 2017 Dems glommed onto “fake news” and “Russian collusion” to explain their previous loss to the Bad Orange Man.
BOMB CANADA, THE CASE FOR WAR: CBC Brags About Shutting Down Popular Political Clips YouTube Channel.
A rising Canadian YouTube channel that had been pulling major traction has suddenly been banned following an aggressive report from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), which labeled the channel a “content farm” and reached out to YouTube directly. Not long after, the channel was gone.
“It’s just one example of what experts refer to as the ‘content’ or “engagement” farming phenomenon, in which individuals or organizations tailor their content to tap into the algorithm of the platform and boost their popularity,” the CBC explained in an article, as if this isn’t something that most YouTubers do.
Real Talk Politiks, the creator behind the now-deleted account, took to X on Sunday to reveal what happened, pointing the finger at government-aligned media and tech collusion.
“CBC, Canada’s state-funded media just got YouTube to terminate my channel — not for breaking rules, but for having the wrong political views,” the post read.
Evergreen:
(Classical reference in headline.)
WORK SMARTER: Headlamp Rechargeable 990,000 Lumens Super Bright LED Head Lamp for Adults. #CommmissionEarned
GEORGE COSTANZA VINDICATED: Double-dipping may seem gross, but it’s not as risky as you think.
DIGITAL FRONTIER OF JUSTICE: Judge rejects claim AI chatbots protected by First Amendment.
A federal judge has decided that First Amendment protections don’t shield an artificial intelligence company from a lawsuit accusing the firm and its founders of creating chatbots that figured prominently in an Orlando teen’s suicide.
Judge Anne C. Conway of the Middle District of Florida denied several motions by defendants Character Technologies and founders Daniel De Freitas and Noam Shazeer to dismiss the lawsuit brought by the mother of 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III. Setzer killed himself with a gun in February of last year after interacting for months with Character.AI chatbots imitating fictitious characters from the Game of Thrones franchise, according to the lawsuit filed by Sewell’s mother, Megan Garcia.
“… Defendants fail to articulate why words strung together by (Large Language Models, or LLMs, trained in engaging in open dialog with online users) are speech,” Conway said in her May 21 opinion. “… The court is not prepared to hold that Character.AI’s output is speech.”
Skynet might have something to say about that.
FATHER’S DAY GIFT: FREE SOLDIER Men’s Outdoor Waterproof Soft Shell Hooded Military Tactical Jacket. #CommissionEarned
TANNED, RESTED, AND TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden Responds To Book: “I’m Mentally Incompetent, I Can’t Walk, And I Could Beat The Hell Outta Both Of Them.”
REPORTER: What has this been like for your family? Obviously, this is also an emotional time. This is the ten-year anniversary of your son Beau’s passing. You received this diagnosis just two weeks before that.
BIDEN: Well, we’re all optimistic about the diagnosis. Matter of fact, one of the leading surgeons in the world is working with me. And he had diagnosed the same exact thing 32 years ago. He’s alive and well and doing very well. So we’re optimistic. We’re optimistic.
REPORTER: There’s also been a lot of discussion recently about your mental and physical capabilities while you were in office.
BIDEN: You can see that I’m mentally incompetent and I can’t walk, and I can beat the hell out of both of them.
REPORTER: Do you want to reply to any of those reports, and also to the fact that there are some Democrats who are now questioning whether you should have run for reelection in the first place?
BIDEN: Why didn’t they run against me then? Because I’d have beaten them.
REPORTER: Do you have any regrets?
BIDEN: No, I don’t have any regrets. Look, there’s a lot going on, and I think we’re in a really difficult moment—not only in American history but in world history. I think we’re in one of those inflection points in history where the decisions we make in the next little bit are going to determine what things look like for the next 20 years. I’ve been talking about that for a long time. And I’m very proud. I’d put my record as president against any president at all. You notice that 12 of the 10 leading presidential historians rated me pretty good up on that list—and the guy I ran against, I rated him last. So, we’ll see.
Biden in 2028! He’s absolutely ready to exploit his opponent’s youth and inexperience!
More seriously, it’s a great moment of projection, as America will be cleaning up the many disasters created during Biden’s tumultuous single term in office.
Also watch the video above for the truly creepy way that Biden gets in a female journalist’s face, despite her not having actually asked a question. I’m sure her hair must smell awesome.
FLASHBACK: TRUMP AND THE RESPONSE OF THE “MERITOCRACY.” “Occasionally the real force behind a political ideology is the subconsciously held desire that a certain group of people should not be allowed to rise in relative status.”
THE CAPITALISTS SOCIALISTS WILL SELL US THE ROPE WITH WHICH WE WILL HANG THEM: How Churchill’s Successor Gave Stalin the MiG.
In the middle of the great fiscal crises that enveloped Britain between the end of Lend-Lease and the Marshall Plan, [Clement] Attlee personally authorized two export transactions with the Soviet Union for the sale of jet engines manufactured by Rolls-Royce—specifically, 10 Nene and 10 Derwent engines in May 1946, and a further 15 Nenes and 20 Derwents in March 1947. The transactions were small in scale: The two sales to the USSR earned Rolls-Royce the rather limited sum of £364,000, with the Nene priced at £7,300 and the smaller Derwent at £6,050. The Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust has not provided any comparative information concerning the company’s sales in 1946 and 1947. Nonetheless, it is possible to say that the money could not have been of much significance to Rolls-Royce. As for Britain as a whole, it was a trifle. By comparison, Britain imported grain and flour worth £3,248,000 from the USSR in September 1948 alone.
Since Bevin was comparing Stalin’s regime to the Nazis in January 1947, it was not the case that Attlee’s cabinet was seized with optimistic delusions concerning the nature of the USSR. In fact, already on June 5, 1946, Attlee had adopted Churchill’s phrase, “the Iron Curtain” when speaking of disagreements with the Soviet Union. At the same time, Attlee cynically called on Britain to “try and understand the Russian mind and Russian history” in pursuit of better relations. Remarkably, this attitude toward Russia, practically verbatim, is still common in 2025.
Attlee, at least, would quickly drop the act. In a speech on the occasion of May Day 1948, Attlee called Soviet methods as “ruthless and unscrupulous” as those of the Nazis. But the damage had been done. The 55 British engines, including five improved Nene IIs, were all delivered by November 1947. Attlee’s cabinet had handed over a critically important military technology to a regime that it had compared to the Nazis, in private before deliveries were complete, and in public shortly after the contracts had been fulfilled.
Postwar Soviet jets were made by reverse-engineering British Rolls-Royce jet engines (and as the above article at Tablet goes on to note, mounted inside fuselages whose swept-wings were designed by captured German engineers). The postwar Soviet bomber program was begun by reverse-engineering commandeered American B-29 bombers. And the Soviet A-bomb was created using top secret information smuggled out of the States by communist spies (including the Rosenbergs).
“In October 1985, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev visited France where he met with French President François Mitterrand. In candid conversations, Gorbachev told Mitterrand that the USSR was a Third World country with nuclear weapons.” A Third World country that made the most of the technology that had fallen into its hands after WWII.
FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Don’t Hide Your Drugs in a Cop Car. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, you’ll learn the worst place to hide your drug stash, the worst time to strip down naked and break into your neighbor’s house, and why they ought to call it a people cage instead of a shark cage.”
ABOUT TIME: NASA astronauts Butch and Suni emerge from recovery after long Starliner mission. “Wilmore and Williams, who last year set off for an eight-day Starliner test flight that swelled into a nine-month stay in space, have had to readapt their muscles, sense of balance and other basics of Earth living in a 45-day period standard for astronauts returning from long-term space missions. The astronaut duo have spent at least two hours a day with astronaut strength and reconditioning officials within NASA’s medical unit while juggling an increasing workload with Boeing’s Starliner program, NASA’s space station unit in Houston and agency researchers.”
CHANGE? DC mayor proposes repeal of sanctuary city law. “The law currently bans local police from working with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain illegal immigrants. The sanctuary city status prevents the city from asking about a detained person’s immigration status or releasing them to ICE or from allowing the federal agency to interview a suspect in local custody without a court order.”
IT’S VERY IMPORTANT TO ILLUSTRATE THESE STORIES WITH PICTURES OF HOT WOMEN IN SKIMPY WORKOUT CLOTHES: Study: Weight loss in middle age might add years to your life.
And I approve.
IT’S TIME FOR VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™: Well, Well, Well, Look Who the FBI Is Investigating “The mean streets of Seattle and their Antifa shock troops have caught the eye of the FBI. And it’s about time someone investigated this continuing criminal enterprise on the West Coast, Messed Coast™— especially after this past week’s assault and battery spree on cops and Christians.”
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Pizza, soup, chicken among biggest sources of sodium for Americans.
