IT’S TIME FOR VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™ — Psychos, American Psychos, and Seattle Mayoral Candidates.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
October 31, 2025
ERICK ERICKSON: Did You Not See What I Saw? “Bill Kristol, yesterday, endorsed Zohran Mamdani for Mayor in New York — a man who claimed the boots of the NYPD were laced up by the IDF. There are no enemies to Bill Kristol’s left anymore. None of us should be like him.”
THERE’S BAD, AND THEN THERE’S CRAMER-LEVEL BAD:
He's so bad his inverse beats actual insider trading. https://t.co/v8GFtJJaji
— think like a real estate appraiser (@ThinkAppraiser) October 30, 2025
FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Stupidest. Credit Card Thief. EVER. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn who the police can depend upon to ID a suspect, how not to thank a lady for a ride, and when Michigan Man committed one of my favorite crimes.”
I’M SORRY, DAVE. I’M AFRAID I CAN’T DO THAT: Shopify merchants left angry and confused as company goes big on AI support.
One merchant who spoke to The Logic described an “endless back and forth” with Shopify’s AI support chatbot as they struggled to get through to a human, despite paying for a service that promises round-the-clock help and a dedicated customer support representative. On Shopify’s support pages and on social media, scores of Shopify merchants have been venting about how difficult it has become to speak to a human as AI takes over.
Speaking to The Logic on condition of anonymity, former Shopify staffers said that the quality of merchant support had been deteriorating for years, adding that an over-reliance on AI was partly to blame. According to one former staffer, an early version of Shopify’s AI support chatbot seemingly made merchants so angry that developers created a feature that connected them to human help faster if they started swearing.
Shopify declined to answer specific questions about the changes to merchant support, though Ben McConaghy, the company’s director of communications, said its human support staff were “using AI to get merchants unstuck faster” and claimed “satisfaction and service levels” were “steadily climbing” as a result.
“The AI is just not there when it comes to customer support,” said Olivia Sawyer, CEO of Kush Queen, a CBD boutique. Kush Queen pays Shopify tens of thousands of dollars a year for access to 24/7 help and its own Shopify support person. She said that the level of support from Shopify had fallen sharply in recent months.
AI is cheaper and can’t actually do anything. I suspect Shopify relies on it to frustrate merchants into giving up and just accepting shoddy service. That’s basically what FedEx’s India-based call center does, albeit with human beings. How much longer they’ll have humans remains to be seen.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN: A candy engineer explains the science behind the Snickers bar.
Related (From Ed): Seen on Facebook; parents, check your kids’ candy carefully tonight, lest they contain highly addictive 64th note electric guitar solos and complex irregular time signatures!
YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is Boston Cooked?
The assessment case is ongoing, and it’s just one illustrative example among many of Mayor Wu’s broader approach to governance: prioritize the interests of your supporters (whether they be voters or private interest groups) above the economic health of the city and the rule of law within it.
In the narrow sense of winning elections, this approach is working. Wu beat her 2021 mayoral opponent by 28 percentage points and her 2025 opponent by 49. In the latter race, Wu spent almost no time discussing Boston’s stagnant housing production, dismal educational outcomes,2 or worsening crime situation. Instead, she chose to make her opposition to President Trump’s budget cuts and immigration enforcement the centerpiece of her campaign.
Playing to your base while neglecting the broader health of the city isn’t new in Boston; it was the defining element of James Michael Curley’s four non-consecutive mayoral terms.3 Curley, an Irish populist, used the power of the office to make life as unpleasant as possible for his predominantly English opponents in the hope that they would emigrate to the suburbs, thereby leaving him with a more favorable electorate. In the process, business activity dried up and the city was driven to the brink of bankruptcy; its recovery took decades of concerted work by city and state leadership.
Wu, who studied economics under Ed Glaeser, author of the famous paper that formalized the “Curley effect”, is no doubt aware of this history, yet4 her approach to governance is remarkably close to Curley’s: help your friends, punish your enemies, and don’t worry too much about where the city will be a decade or two from now.
Ultimately, this is on the voters who choose to enable Wu.
LEFTIES ARE SPOILED, VIOLENT CHILDREN: Death Threats to ICE Increase 8,000%.
CHANGE: This Is What We Voted For: ATF Removes CLEO Notification Requirement From NFA Forms. “Part of the process of making an NFA item like a suppressor — either as a manufacturer or an individual — includes filling out an ATF Form 1 an d notifying your local chief law enforcement officer or CLEO. It’s a ludicrous holdover from the early part of the twentieth century that has zero practical value for anyone involved in the process. The good news is it’s about to go away.”
GLEICHSCHALTUNG:
BREAKING: California’s UC system now requires students through an online TEST to affirm transgender ideology to stay enrolled. Under the SHAPE program, refusing to use trans pronouns or objecting to males in women’s restrooms is labeled “harassment.” Fail the quiz, and you’re… pic.twitter.com/ZUtRB8QNiX
— Amy Reichert (@amyforsandiego) October 30, 2025
HEH:
BREAKING: It appears that hackers have taken over the University of Pennsylvania computer systems, calling the college a “dogshit elitist institution full of woke retards” and threatening to release evidence of its discriminatory admissions practices. pic.twitter.com/3eNg05t7ZF
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 31, 2025
Maybe their official communications should be so forthright.
NO COMETS REQUIRED: Large quantities of water are created as a natural consequence of planet formation, experimental work demonstrates. “Previous mathematical modeling research has demonstrated that interactions between atmospheric hydrogen and iron-bearing magma oceans during planet formation can produce significant quantities of water. However, comprehensive experimental tests of this proposed source of planetary water had not been performed until now.”
I ALMOST WENT WITH “LOL, DAVID FRENCH,” BUT HIS SCHTICK STOPPED BEING FUNNY A LONG TIME AGO:
You attended a rally last week that flew Palestinian flags and hosted tents celebrating Charlie Kirk's assassination.
You purposely sugar coated and ignored that. I have defended you against these attacks going back 10 years.
The influencer/pundit right has an antisemitism… https://t.co/OfFUPGbl15
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) October 31, 2025
Plus: “David could have said no thanks, to both sides, like a lot of us did. He could’ve chose the wilderness but he didn’t. There’s not really money or financial security in doing that. He’s ultimately in the end no different than Tucker Carlson.”
THE “FOR YOU” TAB HAS ALWAYS SUCKED: Jennifer Welch Is Proof the New X Platform Algorithm Is Messing with Conservatives “It’s been more than a month, and more than a few conservatives have been complaining about a major algorithm shift on the X platform. Instead of seeing posts from people they follow or may like, the ‘For You’ feed is serving up to conservatives all of the most hard-core leftists who didn’t take their ball and go home when Elon Musk bought Twitter.”
WELL SAID:
You can take any entity Elon owns and each one of them would be a lifetime achievement for someone else.
As an example, this year 90%+ of all payload launched into space worldwide will have been launched by SpaceX. This is a historic achievement by itself, but he has a half…
— The Hegemony™ (@OneHegemony) October 31, 2025
WELL, GOOD: Moms for Liberty activist beats defamation suit by DEI employee over ‘woke,’ ‘white savior’ jabs.
Moms for Liberty activist in Wisconsin described a onetime “social justice coordinator” in the local high school as a “white savior” and “woke” woman with a “god complex.”
She said the employee is emblematic of diversity, equity and inclusion specialists who earn more than the district’s teachers, “woke lunatics … bullying you into silence and compliance,” and should “forfeit her job to a person of color” if she “really wants to promote equity.”
Scarlett Johnson spent nearly 1,100 days defending herself against a defamation suit by the coordinator, Mary MacCudden, before a divided state appeals court cleared her name this week, overturning a lower court that said a jury should consider whether Johnson’s hyperbolic language implied factual assertions about MacCudden.
The duration of the litigation shows the ongoing legal and financial peril for parental rights activists who criticize government employees using language typical of conservatives against those they consider progressive, authoritarian and hypocritical.
“The defamation lawsuit against her was meritless and should have been promptly dismissed,” Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty deputy counsel Luke Berg, whose group represented Johnson on appeal, said in announcing Tuesday’s verdict, three years to the day after MacCudden filed the complaint in Milwaukee County Circuit Court.
If anything, Johnson was overly generous.
CONSTITUENT SERVICE: Virginia County Released Illegal With 19 Criminal Charges.
FALLOUT: A ‘war room’ mentality: How auto giants are battling the Nexperia chip crunch.
Global automakers are once again bracing for production disruptions due to a potential shortage of automotive semiconductor chips, this time sparked by the Dutch government amid geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China.
Honda Motor became the first known automaker this week to reduce production due to the problem that involves chips from Netherlands supplier Nexperia, which is owned by Chinese company Wingtech Technology Co.
The industry was hopeful that a meeting this week between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Asia would provide some relief, but no resolution on the chips issue has been announced.
Volkswagen on Thursday reportedly said it has until at least next week before its supplies impact production, while other major automakers have said they are monitoring the situation around the clock, attempting to mitigate disruptions.
“The chip situation from Nexperia, we have a cross-functional ‘war room’ in the building where I’m sitting that has this as [a] primary job,” Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa told investors during a quarterly call Thursday. “And every day we are pushing actions and projects to extend our period. There is a day-by-day management of what is an industrywide global issue.”
Developing…
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The Trump Effect — Thune Loses It on Shutdown Dems. “Honestly, Thune has surprised me. He was Mitch McConnell’s righthand man, which is why he got the job. McConnell had gotten squirrely again and I worried that we would get more of that once his closest confidante took over for him. We’ve been spared McConnell 2.0, though, and we can obviously thank Trump for that.”
“A TRUE SPACESHIP.”
HLS interior. A true spaceship. But here's my mindblowing take. This is by far the worst Starship interior we will ever see. I think this is a very bare bones cladding that will be blown out of the water by their LETS lander, and standard crew variant.
🧵 pic.twitter.com/JEf9xGw03m— Ken Kirtland IV (@KenKirtland17) October 30, 2025
Can you imagine what the Apollo guys would have done with all that volume?
HMM: Convicted would-be Trump assassin Ryan Routh requests imprisonment in state with assisted suicide.
Routh, who was found guilty on all five counts in September, told U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that he is a “constant failure” and asked to be imprisoned in a facility where assisted suicide is permitted, The Hill news outlet reported.
He said he “still hold(s) out hope” that he may be traded for U.S. prisoners being held by a foreign adversary, which he suggested ahead of his trial and claimed he had made requests to “countless Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” but has found his recommendations to be “ineffective.”
“Trade me for a Palestinian prisoner in Israel to have my spot in Hawaii, or a POW of Ukraine suffering in Russia or any prisoner anywhere that is suffering,” Routh wrote. “I’m unaware of prisoners in Sudan, Haiti, Myanmar or all the other places of conflict but trade meanywhere (sic).”
“Do not let me take my own life and it have zero benefit for humanity or mankind,” he added.
He’s nuts.
ICYMI, IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: What in the Actual Hell Is Wrong With the Democrats? “Democrats have done everything but write assassination into the party platform. Seriously, what in the actual Hell is wrong with them?“
AND THOSE ARE THE BETTER PARTS OF HIS LEGACY: Biden’s autopen presidency inked a legacy of failure and coverups.
“As President Biden’s health declined, Biden White House staffers usurped presidential authority by executing decisions without the president’s awareness — including misusing the autopen and bypassing proper documentation of decision-making processes,” says the report.
It paints a grim picture of a president cocooned by his wife, Jill Biden, son Hunter Biden and three Svengali-style aides — Anthony Bernal, Jill’s chief of staff whom she reportedly called her “work husband,” Annie Tomasini and Dr. Kevin O’Connor, the White House doctor who gaslit the American public with “grossly misleading” medical assessments and “recklessly never conducted a cognitive exam” of Joe.
All three invoked the Fifth Amendment when called to testify to the committee.
Comer has submitted the report to the Department of Justice to conduct a review of “every executive action issued during the Biden presidency” and referred O’Connor to the District of Columbia Board of Medicine to review “any potential wrongdoing in the medical care of the former president.”
When you watch the videos of their congressional testimony, it’s striking how slow-witted and unimpressive Joe Biden’s brain trust was.
A players hire A players. B players hire C and D players.
Biden surrounded himself with F players.