Mist, Principles, Sense – get some

Here’s a radically interesting thing – in the Atacama Desert of Chile, the driest non-polar desert on Earth, people are growing vegetables and fruit with water milked from the air.

Amid barren rocky hills and dry, white sand, the system works by using a mesh suspended between two poles that intercepts the small amount of moisture in the air, turning it into droplets that are collected and stored in water tanks.

"We are able to collect 1,000 to 1,400 liters of water in these inhospitable places, where we are clearly not favored by nature in other ways," said Rojas in a region where lemon trees were also growing from the collected water.

"We have the potential for life, which is this water resource. Once we learned about this project, we haven't stopped because it is vital for human subsistence.” (source) 

The Atacama Desert is so dry it makes Steven Wright’s comedy seem like a mash-up of Richard Pryor and Robin Williams. Atacama looks so dead that scientists are studying it in the hope of finding secrets to life on other seemingly lifeless planets, like, fer instance, Mars. 

That’s wicked cool and all but, hows ‘bout we use this wild science shit here first. Ya know, fix this joint up before we hare off to the Red Planet.
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As you probably, undoubtedly already know, Slava Ukraini means Glory to Ukraine. I just learned there’s a reply – it’s Heroiam slava and means Glory to the heroes.

So the full phrase, the call and response is "Slava Ukraini! Heroiam slava!"  
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HEY, did you know? Woody Allen is still alive AND he’s headlining Moscow’s International Film Week festival.

Egocentrically clueless and tone deaf as always, he says:

“When it comes to the conflict in Ukraine, I believe strongly that Vladimir Putin is totally in the wrong. The war he has caused is appalling. But, whatever politicians have done, I don’t feel cutting off artistic conversations is ever a good way to help.” (source) 

Yes, yezzz…lovely, except for the part where participating in the festival shows support for a murderous regime currently bombing the shit out of an independent country, stealing that country's land, slaughtering its citizens, and raping its countryside. 

Would Allen headline an Israeli film festival as Netanyahu and his criminal government commit genocide in Gaza?

Would he headline a festival at Pedo Prez’s Kennedy Center (soon to be renamed the Trump Center, I'm sure) while his Gestapo creeps round up innocent brown skinned people, beating, imprisoning and otherwise abusing them? OF COURSE he would.

Woody Allen doesn’t give a shit about principles, justice or standing side by side with the oppressed. He was quoting Emily Dickinson when he defended his incestuous relationship with his step-daughter Soon-Yi Previn by saying, “the heart wants what it wants.” 

Allen wants what he wants and everyone and everything else is immaterial.
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Following up on Kiandria Demone’s explanation, here is Brandon Frankel’s definition of woke:

Being “woke” means you have common sense and aren’t a piece of shit.

Simple and easy to remember, no?

Another bit of fact sharing from Frankel:

Just FYI - despite Cankle McYamTits signing an executive order saying you can’t burn the American flag- you absolutely CAN. It’s protected per the FIRST AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION, and there was a court case that ruled it so in TEXAS V JOHNSON.

So yeah…I know, he hates the Constitution, but it’s protected free speech. Sorry, bitch.

Yup. 

I realize our horrors won’t be over once the deranged orange hellbeast croaks but MAYBE the constant parade of banjaxed brained bullshit bozos will slow up a bit.

Questions

I saw a bunch of good questions online – thought I’d take a stab at ‘em.

1a)  Where are the homeless people who got rounded up in DC?  

I can only guess. 

• They went to “live” on a “farm upstate”? 
• Stephen Goebbels Miller sent them to one of his obscenely named concentration camps? 
• They’re in one of those for-profit prisons and being used as slave labor to pick the produce that the immigrants are no longer here to pick?

1b)  Why are we spending more to arrest and/or dump them all somewhere than what it would cost to shelter them?

Chronic homelessness costs taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars per unhoused person per year and much of that money is wasted through high-cost policies that arrest and incarcerate unhoused people. A report from Los Angeles, California, for example, found that the city spends $100 million annually on homelessness, with $87 million of that amount devoted to law enforcement, leaving only $13 million for housing and services in the city with the largest unsheltered homeless population in the country. Salt Lake City, similarly, spends 85% of its homeless services budget on policing, according to a state audit. (source) 

2)  Why did Putin arrive to Trump clapping like an excited toddler on the tarmac, with soldiers kneeling to roll out the red carpet while European leaders and Zelenskyy were met by a Deputy Secretary of State?

Because Stinky’s in fanboi awe of Putin. He also owes Vlady serious spondulix AND Putin has MAJOR dirt on the orange pedo. Trump’s caught between hero worship and being scared shitless. The European leaders? They’re just adults, not mobsters. President Pedo isn’t impressed.

3)  Why does everyone pretend that Republicans are any fucking good at budgets, the economy, reducing the goddamn deficit or basic math? Clinton, Obama, and Biden were the only three presidents in the past 50 years to reduce the federal deficit. 

Let’s look at some facts, k?

...the deficit was $78.9 billion in 1981, the first year of Reagan’s presidency, and $152.6 billion in 1989, the year he left office....

Similarly, George H.W. Bush oversaw a deepening of the deficit to $102.4 billion.

Clinton then took over and presided over a deficit reduction of $383.3 billion during his eight years in the White House. This culminated in a budget surplus.

George W. Bush, who followed Clinton, led the country into two wars: one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan,...By the time he left office in 2009, it had grown by more than $1.5 trillion.

Obama, whose administration led the recovery from the financial crisis, left office in 2017, when the deficit had shrunk by...$747.2 billion.

Trump’s first term,...the deficit had grown by $2.1 trillion compared with 2017.

Much like Obama’s, Biden’s administration then oversaw the recovery from the pandemic. By the second half of 2024, for which the most recent data is available, the deficit had dropped by $942.5 billion. (source) 

4)  Why has J.D. Vance taken eight vacations in seven months ON THE TAXPAYER’S DIME? This includes his late July/early August kayaking outing in Ohio when he had the army corps of engineers raise the water level of the Little Miami River to make kayaking conditions more ideal.

Because he's useless in this administration. NO ONE likes him, he's stupid as hell, and he needs to keep some distance from Stinky's criminal antics so he can claim ignorance when the old orange one is either busted or dies.

5)  Why is Cosplay Kristi living for free in a house that should be occupied by the top admiral of the Coast Guard?

“Federal government coffers are not Noem’s personal piggy bank, and Coast Guard service members are not her servants. Noem must pay her part. If she requires accommodations for her security, she should brief Congress and request appropriate resources—not take over property from the Coast Guard,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in a statement. (source) 

ICE Barbie certainly loves freeloading off our tax dollars and snatching every passing goodie that appeals to her greedheaded ass. She also put in a demand for a second $50 million Gulfstream 5 for her personal travel. I only mention it.

6)  Why is Pedo Prez allowed to sell Crypto, cars and such from the White House? Is there a Trump Gift Shop there now? Why... YES, yes there is! He’s set up a corner of the West Wing to display his own tacky MAGA wares. Between this, the grotesque proliferation of gold painted filigree and assorted garish gilded fripperies, and Stinky’s relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell (FPOTUS – First Pimp of the United States) and Melania (FOSWOTUS – first official Sex Worker of the United States) the White House is now a few levels below a Regency era bordello. 

I have more questions, seemingly unending questions. Very little makes sense anymore. For now I think I’ll just go take a shower, pat my very good cat, Cake, start a new book (Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir), and eat some truffles.

Xenomorphs or ICE? Tough choice.

In the sphere of escapist entertainment, I’ve got two words for ya – Alien: Earth. It’s a new teevee show, set two years before Ripley and Jonesy become the only two survivors of the xenomorph infestation on the Nostromo.

Alien: Earth has hints and elements of:

• Blade Runner with artificially intelligent beings known as Synthetics. Think Roy Batty and Pris (faster, stronger, and more durable than the average human) but Alien: Earth’s Synthetics aren’t used as slaves. At least not so far.

• Old Man’s War – John Scalzi’s novel where the consciousness, the minds of physically frail elders, whose minds are sharp and solid, are downloaded into young, fit, enhanced human bodies. In the show, it’s children, dying of incurable diseases, whose minds are uploaded into improved, upgraded, young adult synthetic bodies. They’re called Hybrids.

• Peter Pan – In the book, Wendy is a mother figure to Peter Pan and his Lost Boys. They go on to have magical adventures and battles. Wendy is the name of the first Hybrid in Alien: Earth. Her fellow Hybrids are called the Lost Boys.

The show, so far, is true to the Alien franchise while expanding on the creepy/horror factor. The atmosphere – the sets, lighting and general vibe give off major Ridley Scott. He is an executive producer after all.

While Alien:Earth isn’t funny or infused with a tasty, arch wit it IS intriguing, edgy, engaging, and, so far, I like all the characters – even the villains have an admirable quality. They’re not two dimensional. Unlike our current real life baddies.

On that note, this comes as absolutely no surprise:

An investigation is underway after two men wearing ski masks and claiming to be police were shot and killed at a home in southeast Houston Friday night, according to the Houston Police Department.
 ~~~
At some point, police said the men shot at the homeowner through the door, prompting the homeowner to return fire. (source) 

The “cops” (ICE?) are both appropriately dead despite their bulletproof vests. They also wore some sort of badge around their necks. Very ICE-like.

Meanwhile, here’s a headline I was abso-fucking-stunned to read:

Marjorie Taylor Greene joins Bernie Sanders in urging US to end Gaza famine

 This is what Bernie said:

“Let’s be clear: President Trump has the power to end the starvation of the Palestinian people,” … “Instead he is doing nothing while watching this famine unfold. Enough is enough. No more American taxpayer dollars to Nethanyahu’s [sic] war machine

This is what Marge said:

“The innocent people in Gaza did not kill and kidnap the innocent people in Israel on Oct 7th,” … “Just as we spoke out and had compassion for the victims and families of Oct7, how can Americans not speak out and have compassion for the masses of innocent people and children in Gaza?”

“I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to pay for genocide in a foreign country against a foreign people for a foreign war that I had nothing to do with,” … “And I will not be silent about it.”

There’s an election coming up next year. She’s stupid but not so much so that she can’t see the writing on the wall. Stinky and his sycophantic, asslicking, renfields are less popular than broccoli farts in a packed elevator. As long as those of us opposed to the current fascist regime keep our eyes on the ball, we can focus on/work toward the goal of voting out every last greedheaded, power-mad, tyrannical, bigoted and misogynistic Republican. 

We’ll never be rid of them all but the goddamn dam’s got a zillion major cracks in it now. We’re on the edge of a majorly brutal, loose-stooled shitstorm. Marge is just saying what she thinks will keep her in her high paying cushy job. 

I'm betting that, IF she wins reelection, she'll go back to being death's cheerleader. 

Pics and a few 'toons

Walter

The Immortal Grind

Sadly, can't find the creator of this 'toon.

Pat Bagley

Zebra Day

In the UK a crosswalk is called a zebra crossing. A “zebra crossing” specifically refers to a crosswalk with white stripes (not to be confused with the band, thenkyouveddymuch). I love this but I’m rather disappointed to see that the crossing stripes look nothing like a zebra’s fluid, trippy, undulant streaks.

A crosswalk like that would be way more fun, wouldn’t it?
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Some good news, a ray of hope anyway, from Concentration Camp Land. Looks like the hellhole in the Everglades will be shuttered in 60 days. 

A federal judge in Miami late on Thursday ordered the closure of the Trump administration’s notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail within 60 days, and ruled that no more detainees were to be brought to the facility while it was being wound down.
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The ruling is a significant victory for a coalition of environmental groups and a native American tribe that sued the state of Florida and the federal government. (source) 

That tribe? The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. They brought the lawsuit along with Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity.

Dumbshit DeSantis, unwilling to be denied his right to be considered more cruel than Killer Kristi, announced that he’ll open a second immigration jail at an old prison near Gainesville. He’s calling it Deportation Depot.  How folksy. NO. Your marketing instincts are evil.

The man (and I use the term VERY loosely) who thinks that Hitler and Stephen Miller were/are too nice immediately filed an appeal to the judges decision and issued a statement which he undoubtedly thought was peak clever:

“The deportations will continue until morale improves.” 

I'm guessing here that this was Governor Kinky Boots' attempt at wit. FAIL. Authoritarian fools just can’t compete when it comes to humor. 

Now then, these aspirant despots just can't bear to be treated the way they treat all those they deem inferior. It confuses and frustrates them. They NEED to always be in control, manipulating, playing the master. 

Being mocked drives them 'round the bend. Being publicly, widely, consistently ridiculed totally disrupts their control kink. They’re out of the driver’s seat, destabilized, and they don’t know how to deal with that. It breaks their game.

So let’s keep it up – expand on Jasmine Crockett's dry, cutting wit and Newsom’s team’s tart, spot on parody. Go with Governor Walz just plainly calling the fuckers weird. They ARE weird! Fight the assholes with fire but add in a heavy dose of derisive ridicule, ragging, and mockery. Hell, pants the motherfuckers!
~~~
Just in case you were wondering, THIS is what the word “woke” actually means:

Kiandria Demone is an author, activist, creator, and marketing guru in Atlanta, Georgia.
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I want to see as a long-term goal that we do not have political gerrymandering in America. That would be my preference…but we cannot unilaterally allow one of the two major parties to rig the game.
~ Barack Obama 
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There’s some movement on the whole Epstein File business. The first wave of the files are being sent to the House Oversight Committee today.

“After months of stonewalling, calling Epstein files a hoax, and telling people nothing but porn exists in their possession, the administration now admits the files exist, and agrees to release some of them,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said in a social media post this week. “Americans want transparency though, not smoke and mirrors.”

Massie, with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), has been leading the charge to force a floor vote on a resolution that would compel the release of the Epstein files…
   ~~~
Democrats are also signaling they won’t be satisfied by the DOJ’s game plan and will continue to make the issue a political headache for Republicans.

“Releasing the Epstein files in batches just continues this White House cover-up. The American people will not accept anything short of the full, unredacted Epstein files,” Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said in a statement. “We will keep pressing until the American people get the truth — every document, every fact, in full. The administration must comply with our subpoena, by law.” (source) 

So, it’s not a dead issue. Not yet anyway. There’s still a chance to expose and punish these millionaire and billionaire predatory, pedophiles – these monsters who mistake themselves for gods.

Yeah, fuck that shit with a rusty, disease infused spork.  BRING THEM ALL DOWN!

Concentration Camp America

Did you know?

The Governor of Nebraska did some kind of a backdoor deal with the Orange Nazi administration to get an ICE prison built. They’re calling it the Cornhusker Clink. Makes me wanna hurl Godzilla sized fetid chunks.

Making a game of nicknaming concentration camps is pretty damned depraved, wouldn’t ya say? (The answer to that rhetorical question is YES, fucking well YES, of course it is!)

I wonder what name the treasonous bastards in Texas will come up with for the concentration camp they slapped together at Fort Bliss, in El Paso. It’s supposed to hold up to 5,000 people and is a tent camp. Maybe they’ll call it the Lone Star Sauna or just go straight for reality and call it the Texas Torture Plantation.

Opened at the height of the Texas summer, where temperatures regularly soar above 100 degrees and sandstorms are frequent, detainees are at serious risk of heat-related illness and other harsh conditions.
   ~~~
Built behind the walls of a military installation and away from public view, the facility is a calculated move to militarize immigration enforcement, reduce transparency, and fast-track deportations with minimal accountability.
   ~~~
Fort Bliss has long been used to carry out government policies rooted in xenophobia and racism. During World War II, it was one of several Texas military bases used as internment camps for people of Japanese descent, as well as German and Italian immigrants. During the Mexican Revolution more than 20 years earlier, the base served as a temporary holding site for thousands of Mexican refugees, many of whom were kept in military tents and exposed to toxic chemical delousing agents. Some of the chemicals were later used in Nazi gas chambers. (source) 

According to the Cato Institute 65% of the people abducted by ICE have no convictions AT ALL and 93% don’t have so much as a single violent conviction.

As of June 14, ICE had booked into detention 204,297 individuals (since October 1, 2024, the start of fiscal year 2025). Of those book-ins, 65 percent, or 133,687 individuals, had no criminal convictions. Moreover, more than 93 percent of ICE book-ins were never convicted of any violent offenses. About nine in ten had no convictions for violent or property offenses. (source) 

I’m guessing that most people who come to the U.S. are hoping to lift themselves and their families out of harder lives, greater poverty. Possibly they’re escaping harsh, crushing persecution and/or wild political instability. Maybe they come to join family who’ve already created a life here. 

The crime they’ve committed? Hope. They dream of a better life for themselves and their families. Dat’s it. That’s the crime. Oh, and having brown skin. The orange skinned beast and his pasty white lizard, Stephen Miller, really don’t like it when humans don’t have white, white skin. Maybe they can’t digest brown as well…should prolly see a good gastroenterologist about that, eh?

Back to the camps though…you can give nazi concentration camps all the cute little names but they’re still nazi concentration camps. Calling them Cornhusker Clink, Speedway Slammer (Indiana), and Alligator Alcatraz doesn’t make them fun, cheeky, sitcom/primetime/family-hour ready. It doesn’t sanitize the suffering and barbarism or in any bloody way make them remotely humane. They’re still cruel and astoundingly disgusting. 

Did Trump and his band of viciously racist scorpions think they could use a little Disney marketing magic to razzle dazzle the masses into not thinking about all the lives they’re destroying? Clearly, yes. They think we’re all rubes who are so easily duped by grade school level sales efforts.

Marketing, in case ya hadn't picked up on this already, is just lies wrapped up in sweet-talk and pretty, soothing, sexy packaging. In 2014 the Nebraska Tourism Commission rolled out their new ad slogan – Nebraska Nice. 

Yeah...right. That’s obviously a big fucking lie.

Glow in the Dark Bar Snacks

In case you hadn't heard, we now have radioactive shrimp. They're available at your local Walmart (another good reason to boycott the joint, if you can).

The Food and Drug Administration is warning the public not to eat, sell or serve certain Great Value raw frozen shrimp sold at Walmart due to possible contamination with Cesium-137, a radioactive isotope. (source) 

Waddayaknow, the Food and Drug Administration falls under the aegis of Health and Human Services. And who runs Health and Human Services, boys and girls? Why, that’d be the old, worm eaten brained, dead bear cub desecrating, whale corpse violating, dog eating, heroin addict and inveterate liar Robert F. Kennedy Jr. You remember him don’cha? The man so incapable of basic human decency that, instead of getting his wife and the mother of his four children help, he had affair after affair after affair. Blatantly even. He kept a diary detailing his 37 affairs. I only mention it but they were only married for 16 years. This breaks down to, on average, 2.3125 affairs per year. DAMN!

Bobby Brainworm’s treatment of Mary was heinous. 

In Bobby’s telling, here and in the press, he was the victim, enduring a mentally disturbed alcoholic wife who, at a low point in their divorce, was found passed out at the dinner table, face down in her food.  

The funeral, though — that was elegant. The service ended with “America the Beautiful,” a nod to all that the Kennedys have given their country.  

One week later, in the middle of the night, without telling Mary’s siblings or obtaining the required legal permitting, Bobby Jr. had Mary’s coffin dug up from the Kennedy family plot in Massachusetts and moved 700 feet away. When reporters found out and asked why, Bobby, through a family spokesperson, said he failed to realize how crowded the Kennedy family plot was (source)   

WHAT a colossal puke.

Everyone in Trump's orbit, the whole lot of them, just LOVE to proclaim themselves the real victim, the poor oppressed ones, while being the instigating, assiduously assholian waste products the entire time.

Bad enough that his callous, self-centered behavior inspired the mother of his four children to off herself and prompted a small island of people to NOT get vaccinated for measles (leading to 5700 infected and 83 deaths), Brainworm Boy is trying to kill the rest of us with his stone idiocy.

In late May it was revealed that he’s just making up scientific studies and research papers out of fantasies, delusions, and wishes. 

There’s been a 31% cut to cancer research. 

He just pulled out the rug on federal funding for mRNA vaccine research. This also effects cancer research.

In June he fired all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control’s vaccine advisory panel – they recommend the vaccines Americans should get. That’s pretty damned important don’cha think? To make matters even worse:

Two days later, he named eight new people to the influential panel. The list included a scientist who criticized Covid-19 vaccines, a leading critic of pandemic-era lockdowns and someone who worked with a group widely considered to be a leading source of vaccine misinformation. (source) 

Fer fuck's sake! Is it any wonder I rarely leave the house anymore and, when I do, I mask up.

I have a seriously bad case of existential exhaustion.

A Few Absurdities

Stinky claims to have ended six wars since he became president. Sure, bud.

Trump and his administration have claimed to have helped settle the conflicts between Israel and Iran, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, Cambodia and Thailand, India and Pakistan, Serbia and Kosovo, and Egypt and Ethiopia. (source) 

And yet... 

• Violence continues in Democratic Republic of Congo.

• If you recall, Fuckface had his drunk, rapey toad Kegseth carry out strikes on Iran on Netanyahu’s behalf. That doesn’t sound like peace to me. You?

• India says Trump had fuck-all to do with the ceasefire deal reached with Pakistan. 

• There’s no deal between Egypt and Ethiopia. 

• As far as I can tell, all the bloated bloviator did re: Thailand and Cambodia was make a phone call and drone on about tariffs.  (and pronounce Thailand as Thighland)

• And Serbia says they never had any plans to go to war with Kosovo despite Stinky, ultra weirdly, taking credit for preventing this imaginary war.

Naturally none of the “reporters” in Bloated Boy's little staged press conference asked him to name one war that he’s responsible for wholly, absolutely ending – one ceasefire that he’s negotiated. Why didn't they? The White House dictates who gets into the press pool so there aren’t any actual, real journalists there. They’re all already in Donnie Demento’s putrid pockets.

“I've settled 6 Wars in 6 months, one of them a possible Nuclear disaster.”  

Motherfucker, this isn’t your cheesy golf course where everyone humors you while you lie and cheat your titanic ass off. Real news outlets know and report.
~~~
Elsewhere, a Republican candidate to be the Representative for House District 14 in New Mexico was sentenced to 80 years in prison for shooting into his opponent and other state and local lawmakers homes.

Four men conspired with Peña, who is accused of paying them cash to carry out at least two of the drive-by shootings in stolen vehicles, while Pena “pulled the trigger” during one of the crimes, Deputy Police Commander Kyle Hartsock said. (source)  

Solomon Peña, the Republican, said the election was “rigged.” Gee, wonder where he got that notion from.
~~~
Laura Loomer argued with a Speak and Spell about whether she’s clinically mentally unwell, thus proving the toy’s point.

I wonder – is she at all aware that she’s yelling at the equivalent of an Easy Bake Oven?

“TAKE IT BACK GROK!” she screamed at her iPhone.

I wonder if Melania and Tiny are still planning to sue Hunter Biden for bazillions. Has anyone told them about depositions and discoveries yet?