I’VE GOT A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Review: Time Is of the Essence in a Sequel That Gets Old Fast.
UPDATE: Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a franchise murderer — and Indiana Jones is her next victim.
https://twitter.com/TimothyNerozzi/status/1659180602015326208
READER FAVORITE: JLHT 40X60 Monocular Telescope High Power Monocular for Adults. #CommissionEarned
FALLOUT: U.S. won’t block Europe’s exports of F-16s to Kyiv. “Washington’s decision not to block allies from sending F-16s to Ukraine comes after Zelensky’s repeated requests for fighter jets, including from the Netherlands, which has the aircraft. In February, Ukrainian officials said they had made significant progress in persuading Dutch officials to send F-16s, but Washington’s approval is necessary because of third-party transfer agreements associated with the purchase of the U.S.-made jets. The transfer would also require the sign-off of the chairs and ranking minority-party members of relevant U.S. congressional committees.”
THE UNIVERSITY OF AUSTIN GEARS UP FOR ITS FIRST INCOMING CLASS IN 2024. If they can pull it off, the opportunity is huge. Simply hiring any professor thrown out for badthink would give it a first-class faculty.
I’LL WRITE HER A CHECK: Cori Bush Wants $14 Trillion in Federal Reparations.
BLUE CITY BLUES: Uber will lease out entire office building in San Francisco. “Rumors that Uber was abandoning one of its new office buildings in Mission Bay have been circulating since 2021. This week, CoStar News finally confirmed it was true and that the entire building at 1725 Third Street is for lease.”
Just last month: You Won’t Believe the Fire Sale Price on This San Francisco High Rise.
LET’S WATCH AN AI CHATBOT CANCEL A NEW YORK TIMES SUBSCRIPTION:
Here is a DoNotPay GPT-4 bot negotiating with the New York Times to cancel my subscription.
It is ridiculous you have to chat with a customer service agent to cancel.
Fortunately, A.I. will end dark patterns, because it doesn’t give up as easily as a human! pic.twitter.com/lUNqtJQ9Pb
— Joshua Browder (@jbrowder1) May 12, 2023
Related: “ChatGPT plugins just dropped. This update is like the new App Store of AI. Here’s 8 plugins that’ll easily 10x your productivity.”
Meanwhile at the Gearspace forum: Three Predictions for Music AI.
CONSEQUENCES ARE DOLED OUT BY RACE: Auburn won’t say if black students will be punished for anti-white slurs.
Everyone knows they’d be responding differently if the races were reversed.
ROGER SIMON ON NASHVILLE AND THE STONEWALLED TRANSGENDER SHOOTER MANIFESTO:
Meanwhile, without public access to the “manifesto” and other documents, not to mention the most important of all, the toxicology report (I will explain), Gov. Bill Lee will convene a special session of the Tennessee General Assembly on Aug. 21 to, in the official word of TN.gov., “strengthen public safety and preserve constitutional rights.”
Covers its bases, no? Sounds good. But what’s really behind this is an attempt to push through Lee’s version of a so-called red flag law and probably some form of gun control, both of which most of those who voted for him would never subscribe to, and neither of which have ever been shown to be effective.
Indeed, with gun control, as in Chicago, it’s arguably the reverse. The more control, the more corpses.
At the same time, the two activist assemblymen that caused the original mishandled ruckus in the Assembly are apparently planning to raise the ante in August with yet-greater demonstrations that benefit no one but themselves.
But it’s worse. This is all being done, as I indicated, without the public knowing what really happened. In the case of the hidden toxicology report—which the police want us to believe hasn’t yet been finished after all this time—this could be lethal.
Many are justifiably upset over what may or may not be in the “manifesto.” More rumors are flying around this city than country music star Morgan Wallen has hits. And I am not against protecting some of the privacy concerns involved here.
But whatever happened or didn’t, none of it, past or present, justifies Audrey Hale’s rage killings.
Nope. And none of it justifies withholding evidence while claiming that we must act right away, with such urgency that it demands a special session of the legislature. If action is urgently needed because it’s a crisis, then fully informed action is urgently needed because it’s a crisis. Otherwise it just looks like an effort to stampede people into something they wouldn’t do if they knew the facts.
SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! Esteemed medical journal calls for segregated med school.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: More Americans are struggling to make ends meet NOW than in the aftermath of the pandemic – new survey shows nearly 40% of US households can’t pay expenses.
Roughly two in five Americans are still struggling to make ends meet, new federal data has shown – more than the amount seen in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The revelation comes from the Census Bureau’s latest household survey, released Wednesday, which shows some 38.5 percent of adults – or 89.1 million people – experienced difficulty paying their bills between April 26 and May 8.
The number is up from a year ago, when 34.4 percent of Americans reported they were undergoing budget crunches and comes as a near-50 percent increase from the 26.7 percent recorded in 2021.
That means the Biden cabal’s economic plan is working.
THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST:
When you show up for Casual Friday but it’s only Thursday https://t.co/U0En62gfJQ pic.twitter.com/NNoNwNyaSc
— Magills (@magills_) May 18, 2023
Related:
ELI5 except Fetterman doesn’t explain it TO a 5 year old he explains it AS a year old https://t.co/tIJ2hzMtd7
— Magills (@magills_) May 18, 2023
It might seem cruel to mock Fetterman this way, but the man is a United States Senator, at least sort of. And mocking him is more about mocking the press — and the medical “experts” — who told us he was fine. Now the same people who told us he was entirely able to serve in the Senate complain of “ableism” when people point out that no, he really isn’t.
SPACE: SpaceX launches 22 next-gen Starlink satellites to orbit, lands rocket at sea.
There’s another launch scheduled for a few minutes from now.
UPDATE: Last minute abort on the second launch. They’re still trying to run down the glitch, so they’ll try again tomorrow.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The Dumb Joe Club — Biden Is Chatting Up Scarborough Late at Night. “There was a time when this would have been hush-hush. Now, the MSM hacks don’t care that we know they’re biased, even though they continue to deny it. They’re just rubbing our noses it in now.”
LIGHTNING DEAL: NORTIV 8 Men’s Steel Toe Work Boots Safety Industrial Anti-Slip Tactical Boots. #CommissionEarned
OVER AT MY SUBSTACK, reflections on life, death, and the final frontier.
The polls are back: The prospect of an actual election between Biden and Trump or Biden and DeSantis looks fairly even, with it basically at a tie. But in the Republican primary, it’s not so even. . . .
This is why CNN is still melting down over their Trump town hall, in which the audience laughed and cheered for The Donald. Christiane Amanpour this week is talking about how she hopes the audience’s trust in CNN is “shaken, but not shattered,” and CNN media writer Oliver Darcy was scolded by his boss for his overly emotional post–town hall display, yet he continues to tweet about what has become #townhallgate.
They’re panicked with good reason: Trump is well and truly back, baby. But if you remember CNN’s ratings during the Trump presidency, then you know that quivering you see among the talking heads now might not be rage so much as thrill. More like the quivering you hear about in romance novels. There’s an unholy but unstoppable union, a love hidden but never extinguished kind of shake—yes yes yes!—it’s the story of Donald J. Trump and cable news.
I’m hoping for Trump/DeSantis winning in 2024, followed by 8 years of DeSantis in the White House. DeSantis would be a good VP for Trump because he has the government-managerial skills that Trump didn’t display last time around, with a strong corps of trusted underlings, which Trump also didn’t have. That’s also a good argument for making DeSantis the nominee, but the polls show that Republican primary voters aren’t sold on it, at least not yet. Then again, at this point in 2007, I believe Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton were neck-and-neck in the polls.
UPDATE: People in the comments note that Trump and DeSantis are both from Florida, and the Constitution requires the President and VP to be from different states. I’ll just note that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were both from Texas, until they weren’t.
FALLOUT: Disney Scraps Plan for $900 Million Florida Campus, Closes ‘Star Wars’ Adventure Hotel.
Walt Disney Co. increase; green up pointing triangle has canceled two major investments in Florida, including reversing course on a potential $900 million office park, amid a high-profile dispute with state lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The company is halting plans for a new corporate campus in Florida that would have relocated more than 2,000 employees, mostly from its theme parks division, to the community of Lake Nona in Orlando.
Josh D’Amaro, head of Disney’s Parks, Experiences and Products division since 2020, said the Lake Nona project is dead. In an email to staff Thursday, he announced that employees will no longer be asked to relocate from Southern California.
The move to Orlando was supposed to be a cost-cutting move, now given up out of political spite. Given how badly Disney shares have performed over the last two years, you have to wonder when shareholders will revolt against the company’s petty and self-destructive decision-making.
BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Chris Christie to announce 2024 presidential run ‘in the coming days:’ report.
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PUT CROOKS, GRIFTERS, AND INCOMPETENTS IN CHARGE: Just so we’re clear – New York has “No Plan B” for the power plants they’re shutting down. “The power plants that take the edge off of the peak times/events when loads are heaviest – literally called ‘peakers’ – are being shut down or driven into intentional disrepair by the state of New York in concert with the EPA.”
Power plants should never be closed down until after there’s full replacement capacity actually online. But remember, making ordinary people’s lives worse isn’t an unforeseen consequence. It’s a goal.
DON SURBER ON CHINA: Ukraine took our eye off the threat.
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