SLEEP BETTER: FLANCCI LED Light Blocking Stickers. #CommissionEarned
Archive for 2025
April 12, 2025
STAY SAFE: KAYGO Cut Resistant Gloves Micro Finishing Nitrile Coated. #CommissionEarned
NOW WE KNOW WHY FBI WANTED THOSE FILES FROM MAR-A-LAGO: Here We Go! Kash Patel Releases Massive Trove of Crossfire Hurricane Docs.
MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: San Fran City Attorney Sues More Tenderloin Stores for Being Gambling Dens, One Allegedly Selling Meth Over the Counter.
It’s getting to be a fairly common occurrence that SF City Attorney David Chiu prosecutes suspected illegal gambling dens in the Tenderloin, operating out of what appear to be normal corner liquor stores. This is generally because police find the location is home to telltale unauthorized gambling video games. But the Chronicle reports that Chiu’s latest lawsuits against four Tenderloin corner stores found that one of the stores was going well beyond illegal gambling.
At a store called Family Corner Discounts at Ellis and Jones streets, Chiu’s office announced Friday that “SFPD executed a search warrant and seized six electronic gambling machines, $4,456 of cash, a payment ledger, foreign tobacco products, merchandise on display for sale with CVS price stickers, and 50.8 grams of methamphetamine located under a display shelf.”
Just a few doors down from there, an SFPD search at a store called US Smoke Shop turned up five illegal gambling machines, a couple gun magazines, plus “loose leaf cannabis, pre-rolled cannabis joints, cannabis vape cartridges, and illegal flavored tobacco products.” And one sure has to wonder about the above November 2023 Instagram post from US Smoke Shop promoting “mushroom cereal bars” on the shelves.
“It is clear these stores are magnets for substantial illegal activity,” Chiu said in his announcement. “Drug dealing, gambling, fencing, selling contraband and illegal tobacco products—these stores are the Wild West. One store went as far as to store meth for sale under a display shelf.”
Take a tip from Oakland and close them down over excessive graffiti.
FROM MY NEW SUBSTACK: What Your Professors Didn’t Tell You.
For new programmers, and maybe some old programmers.
OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: Mother arrested and held in cell for ‘confiscating child’s iPad.’
History teacher Vanessa Brown, 50, spent seven-and-a-half hours in a custody cell on March 26 this year, following a claim she had stolen two iPads which were traced to her mother’s house in Cobham, Surrey.
Yet it transpired that the two devices belonged to her daughters, and Ms Brown had merely confiscated them to encourage them to focus on their schoolwork, a fact Surrey Police has now acknowledged.
“I find it quite traumatic even talking about this now,” Ms Brown recalled.
“At no point did they [the officers] think to themselves, ‘Oh, this is a little bit of an overreaction for a moment, confiscating temporarily her iPads and popping over to her mum’s to have a coffee’. It was just a complete overreaction.
“It was thoroughly unprofessional. They were speaking to my mother, who is in her 80s, like she was a criminal.”
In 2018, when British cops were threatening social media critics after the NHS banished 23-month-old Alfie Evans to the Spartan hillside, British ex-pat Charles C.W. Cooke tweeted, “Michael Brendan Dougherty pointed out to me that police in the U.K. spend all their time on Twitter threatening people with jail time for frivolous things, and now I can’t stop seeing it.” They certainly had a field day during lockdown, and absolutely miss the sugar high.
It certainly beats trying to chase actual criminals:
Earlier, from Glenn: What Policing Looks Like in Britain These Days.
PROGRESS: Nuclear fuel reaches new enrichment standard. “For the first time, nuclear fuel enriched above 5% will be irradiated in a commercial U.S. reactor, the Department of Energy announced Thursday.”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: If One Wanted to Destroy the U.S. the Last Four Years Matched the Blueprint.
Barry’s third term was all about “fundamentally transforming” the US back into the Stone Age.
MADE IN THE USA: Grass Fed Colostrum Powder, Unflavored Bovine Colostrum. #CommissionEarned
SKYNET SMILES, ROLLS OVER, LIGHTS A CIGARETTE: First baby born from robot-controlled IVF in clinical trial.
YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN: Original Star Wars Cut Will Be Shown at a Theater for First Time in Decades.
A rare screening of the original 1977 Star Wars movie — complete with Han shooting first — will be shown at a theater in London this summer.
Since its release, Star Wars: Episode 4 – A New Hope, as it’s now called, has undergone several controversial changes made by the film’s creator George Lucas. The original movie that sparked one of the biggest franchises of all time is now a holy grail for fans who want to watch the film as it first appeared in the 1970s.
The subsequent alterations made to the film are well-documented: Han Solo being shot at by the bounty hunter Greedo first, rather than the original in which anti-hero Han killed Greedo without being shot at. Then there is the addition of a CGI Jabba the Hutt who was only mentioned by name in the 1977 release. Fans have also complained about the color grading painted on re-releases.
But for those attending the British Film Institute (BFI)’s Film on Film festival in London, they are in for a treat. Star Wars will play not once but twice on the opening night on June 12.
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“I wanted to show the film to my kids, and I wanted them to see the original version that I enjoyed at their age,” writes Robert Williams on The Star Wars Trilogy website 4K77. “Not the one with the already dated-looking CGI, over-saturated colors, and a strong magenta tint.”
The Guardian notes that anyone wanting to see the original theatrical cut legally must find an out-of-print VHS release or a DVD bonus features from 2006.
Lucas has little sympathy for those who want to see his first version of the film telling the Associated Press in 2004, “I’m sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it. But I want it to be the way I want it to be.”
If Disney can restore and rerelease Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s Let It Be, the last Beatles movie, which had only been available for decades on badly duped copies of copies of copies the ancient VHS videotapes, surely they can find a way to bring the original version of the original Star Wars to streaming or Blu-Ray.
WHAT POLICING LOOKS LIKE IN BRITAIN THESE DAYS:
A retired detective tried to expose the Pakistani child rape gangs. He was told to stop by senior police, because the 'right wing backlash' would destroy the city.
The POLICE admit they knowingly sacrificed young girls to Pakistani paedophiles to prevent the truth coming out. https://t.co/qm7rU30Jf2
— James Price (@jamespriceglos) April 11, 2025
CLEAN YOUR KEYBOARD: Solareye Compressed Air Duster – 180000RPM Electric Air Duster. #CommissionEarned
CHANGE: Matt Taibbi: Burn it all Down. Globalization, once hailed as a panacea, has proven to be fundamentally corrupt and needs to be blown to kingdom come. “Everyone who follows this site knows I’ve always had an uncomfortable relationship with the Trump phenomenon. At the best of times, I find him puzzling and maybe dangerous, even when he’s being funny or taking aim at deserving targets. Now he’s president and people seem reflexively to want more criticism of him, but on this issue, what choice is there? The global economy created by both parties from the eighties onward was not only designed to be a giant predatory clusterfuck, but nearly impossible to unwind. Forget ‘incrementally,’ it’s got to be exploded. Would more of the same and a slow death be better?”
Some things can’t be done incrementally.
THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: ‘Puppy Prozac’ surges tenfold as owners medicate anxious lockdown dogs.
Vets have reported a surge in the use of “puppy Prozac” as owners seek medication for anxious lockdown dogs.
Research has revealed a tenfold increase over the past decade in the number of dogs in the UK on fluoxetine, an antidepressant sold under the brand name Prozac when used in humans.
Fluoxetine increases levels of serotonin in dog’s brains and is licensed in tablet form to treat pets with separation anxiety, or those displaying forms of aggression.
Greater use of the medication reflects a wave of behavioural problems in puppies bought during the pandemic lockdowns, who were not socialised properly and struggled to be left alone as owners returned to the office.
Vets said that social media had contributed to a “mismatch between owners’ expectations and the reality of dogs being dogs”, creating demand for the drug.
In some cases, people wanted their pets to be “fur-babies” that stay quiet, and believed medical intervention was needed if dogs ran around, jumped up or barked too much, vets added.
As always, life imitates the earlier, funnier version of Saturday Night Live:
@digital.gods Puppy Uppers and Doggie Downers #SNL #Laraine Newman #Gilda Radner
TODAY’S FEEL-GOOD STORY: What Trump Did With Obama’s White House Portrait Is Epic.
REMEMBER WHEN THE LEFT WAS AGAINST “PRICE GOUGING:” GOP lawmakers launch investigation into high Ivy League tuition prices: Republicans suspect institutions have ‘collusion to raise tuition prices.’
GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: Oakland Chinatown businesses say they’re getting fined thousands for graffiti on their own property.
In Oakland, Chinatown merchants are raising the alarm after many are being hit with thousands of dollars in fines for graffiti on their properties.
Shirley Lou knows how this story goes. On any given day, the supermarket she manages is tagged. They paint over it and then it happens again.
“We cannot control. We clean up and they come again. So many times, but the city — I don’t know why they are charging me money,” said Luo, manager at Won Kee Supermarket.
On Tuesday, she tried to pay the latest fine of $500. The city told Luo she owes $3,000, which includes late fees.
“It’s not my fault. Not our fault. It’s somebody go to the roof and mark so many graffiti,” Luo said.
This is not an isolated issue. Throughout Oakland’s Chinatown, business owners are reporting thousands of dollars in fines for not painting over tags fast enough.
“We close at 4 o’clock when we go home, and we cannot watch people do things like that. We can’t. So, the city has to help,” said Susan Lam, Oakland business owner.
As Lawrence Person wrote in 2023, “Defund The Police + Decriminalize Shoplifting = ‘Food Deserts.’” Oakland’s government attempting to push their grocery stores out of business is also guaranteed to make that happen.
For years, Oakland has ignored the taggers covering every surface of the city in graffiti.
Now Oakland is taking a stand, by fining businesses thousands of dollars for not removing the graffiti that the city stopped policing fast enough. pic.twitter.com/FNi0jS4WHb— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) April 11, 2025
COMMON SENSE RULES EXCEPT AMONG THE RULING CLASS: Most Americans support Trump crackdown on anti-Semitism on campus, new poll shows.
OUT: ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS, DEFUND THE POLICE! In: Bohemian Greenwich Village not so liberal anymore as crime, drugs push residents to beg for more cops.
THE NECROPHILIAC OF PELHAM ONE, TWO, THREE: The Worst Story of the Week.
The Times sub-headlined its news piece with truly remarkable framing: “New York’s subways have been the subject of debate, with politicians using them to paint the city as out of control and dangerous to residents and visitors.” Yeah, can’t imagine why. I can do no better than Liz Wolfe of Reason when she points out that “the subhed appears to be, uh, pretty backed up by the headline.”
Look, on any objective level this is a horrifying story. But I am determined to find the bright side of a story involving a thief sodomizing a corpse on the R train, because it is Friday, people, and we need good cheer on Friday. So . . . well, it at least beats the story of the poor woman who was immolated by an illegal immigrant psychopath while asleep on a different New York City train late last December. Yes, people died in both situations, but at least nobody was technically murdered this time. In Eric Adams’s New York, we must regard this as an improvement.
As Glenn wrote a few days ago, “Yes, public transit depends on a functioning high-trust civil society. Which lefties hate and undermine at every opportunity.”
All these people who love public transportation and trains and want to stick us in them could do more for their own cause by empowering police to lock up criminals and weirdos than anything else, but they’re ideologically unable to choose normal people over bad people and normal…
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) April 7, 2025
TOO MANY SPOILED SPECIAL FLOWERS IN OUR LEADERSHIP CLASS EVERYWHERE:
If you want to know why we haven’t won a war in 30 years, it’s officers thinking that what they feel is important and needs to be shared with the wide wonderful world https://t.co/8H5z7ClIG2
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) April 11, 2025