Category: The Current Situation

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funny Spicy The Current Situation

Pictures aplenty for Sunday, September 18, 2022

Maybe the Queen’s will said “In the event of my death, the corgis should go to the groomer” and they misinterpreted the request.

Can we please make this the official logo for cryptocurrencies? And while we’re at it, American healthcare?

(Cough, cough)Ron DeSantis(Cough)

If you’re really a “Little Mermaid purist,” you should insist on the original way-more-gruesome version. Remember, it was written by Hans Christian Andersen, who was not only a nightmare writer, but also a nightmare houseguest.

Brett Favre is guilty of at least two heinous crimes:

Maybe it’s just unfortunately sign placement, but you might think twice before getting the beef jerky.

A guy once tried to fight me after I said that The Star-Spangled Banner is in 3/4 time (possibly because he thought all 3/4 songs are waltzes, and he believed that waltzes are wimpy).

But it is in 3/4 time. You could either just listen to the song and count, or you could consult the sheet music.

Once again, an important public service message:

A reminder for those of you who believe there’s a “War on Christmas” and who were upset about Pride Month earlier this summer.

As the gas prices continue to drop, I’m posting this as a reminder to you dolts who posted or bought into the Biden “I did that!” stickers we saw on gas pumps all summer.

Also:

Seriously, are you even good enough to qualify for impostor syndrome?

Whoever wrote this doesn’t believe in the God-given right for every American to have a gun and diabetes. “The beeping actually helps — it’ll cover the sound of me reloading!”

“Hey, it’s a 9-millimeter gun! That’s metric! See? I USE THE METRIC SYSTEM!!!”

Listen to this doctor…

…and not this one:

At last, the reason I went into tech instead of medicine like the rest of my family.

Once upon I time, I used to associate an American flag on your social media profile as meaning “having a can-do attitude.”

These days, it’s more often than not that it means this instead:

It’s an iron-clad law of humor that the butt is always funny:

It would appear that way.

As a super-social guy, the incessant “I hate going outside and dealing with people” posts drive me crazy, but this one at least made me chuckle:

And finally, let me leave you with this blessing:

 

Categories
Florida The Current Situation

You know who Ron DeSantis doesn’t shoo away? Nazis.

Black-clad white woman “sieg heils” the camera while holding a swastika sign as other black clad people wave Nazi, SS, Florida, and “DeSantis Country” flags in the background.
Tap to view the DeSantis Nazi fandom at full size.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ political stunt of flying two planes of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard speaks volumes about his cruelty, but so does the story of the people that he doesn’t even shoo away from his rallies: Nazis.

Nazis hold racists depictions of Jews, with one holding a sign that reads “It’s the Jews, stupid” as Nazi and “DeSantis Country” flags fly in the background.
Tap to view the DeSantis Nazi fandom at full size.

When the far-right-wing student indoctrination group Turning Point USA held their Student Action Summit at Tampa Convention Center in July, DeSantis was one of the keynote speakers, and his Nazi fanbase showed up.

Nazis hold racists depictions of Jews, with one holding a sign that reads “It’s the Jews, stupid” as Nazi and “DeSantis Country” flags fly in the background.
Tap to view the DeSantis Nazi fandom at full size.

Despite the very bad optics, the organizers didn’t shoo them away, and neither DeSantis nor his spokespeople attempted to distance themselves from these people, who were waving “DeSantis Country” and State of Florida flags side by side with Swastika and SS flags.

Black-clad Nazis wave Nazi, SS, Florida, and “DeSantis Country” flags outside the Talking Points USA conference at the Tampa Convention Center.
Tap to view the DeSantis Nazi fandom at full size.

It would’ve been a very simple matter for Turning Point USA or DeSantis to send security to go to the Nazis and say “Hey, we appreciate your fandom, but you’re not pushing the kind of message we want to promote.”

It wouldn’t have cost taxpayer dollars to do that, unlike flying two planes of people to Massachusetts. They didn’t even have the decency to let the people at Martha’s Vineyard know that two planeloads of migrants were coming, requiring people there to scramble to set them up with shelter.

Black-clad Nazis wave Nazi, SS, Florida, and “DeSantis Country” flags outside the Talking Points USA conference at the Tampa Convention Center.
Tap to view the DeSantis Nazi fandom at full size.

The Nazis stayed, because they’re the people DeSantis and company don’t mind staying.

They and their sympathizers are the base now.

That wasn’t even the first time THIS YEAR that DeSantis refused to condemn Nazis

Oh yeah, there was that thing in January, where DeSantis refused to condemn some Nazi demonstrations in Orlando.

You’d think it would be easy and automatic to do that. In my Green Card interview, I reflexively, automatically, and happily denounced the Nazis — something that both DeSantis and the former president* have trouble doing.

The best DeSantis’ office couldn’t even bring themselves to put some distance between them and the Nazis, but try to blame others. DeSantis’ Press Secretary Christina Pushaw tried to put the blame on Democratic “crisis actors” in a tweet she later deleted:

Recommended reading

Categories
Stranger than Fiction The Current Situation

Oh, my sweet summer child…

Tweet — Person 1 asks “How can Charles be King and head of the church after cheating on his wife and divorcing her? Does that not go against what the church stands for?” / Response features picture of Henry VIII with the text “Man do I have a story for you”
Tap to view at full size.

Here’s the text:

Tweet 1: How can Charles be King and head of the church after cheating on his wife and divorcing her? Does that not go against what the church stands for?

Tweet 2, with picture of Henry VIII: Man do I have a story for you

Need an easy-to-read snarky version of that story? The Real Reason Henry VIII Created the Church of England has you covered.

If you don’t know what happened to each of the founder of the Church of England’s wives — all six of them — here’s a merry tune that explains it all in just over two minutes:

Categories
Tampa Bay The Current Situation

Tampa’s announced “Airside D” terminal will ruin my favorite TPA joke

The good news: Tampa International Airport (TPA) is already a delightful and efficient airport, and it’s now adding a new terminal: Airside D.

The bad news: Now my favorite TPA joke is ruined — or at least it will be, when it’s completed in 2027.

The joke (which I’ve managed to pull a couple of times) goes like this:

Unsuspecting victim: I see that there’s an Airside A, C, E, and F. Why’s there no B? Or D?

Me: I don’t know about B, but an Airside D would be insane.

Unsuspecting victim: Insane?

Me: Everyone knows that…D’s nuts!

Categories
Geek The Current Situation The More You Know...

It’s “FURTIVELY fired,” not “Quiet fired”

Screenshot of headline that reads “5 Signs You Are Being ‘Quiet Fired’ From Your Job”
Tap to read the original article.

The person who came up with the phrase “quiet quitting” took the effort to incorporate alliteration, which made the phrase catchy. You’d think the author of the article 5 Signs You Are Being “Quiet Fired” From Your Job (shown above) would have put in a few seconds to do the same for its employer counterpart, but instead, they took the lazy route and simply replaced “quitting” with “firing.”

In my opinion, “furtively fired” — and its noun form, “furtive firing” — sound much better, are grammatically correct, and employ an underused word.

Categories
It Happened to Me The Current Situation

You might want to cut back on socializing for the next couple of weeks

Photo of Joey deVilla and friends at “The Sail”, a completely open-air patio.
The scene at The Sail on Monday, July 25, 2022. Tap to view at full size.

Two weeks ago, on Monday, July 25, I attended a send-off party for StartupBus Florida. Despite being in an open-air location on a breezy evening (there was a thunderstorm later that night), five people who were there ended up sick and testing positive for COVID.

Here’s a photo that shows how open-air the party location, The Sail, is:

I’d hoped that an open-air location would reduce the odds of anyone catching the latest COVID variant, which was proving to be very contagious. Here in Florida, the incoming reported cases had remained steady since the beginning of the summer:

Most of us were there for about two and a half hours. Near the end of the gathering, one of the guests mentioned that they’d started their throat had started feeling scratchy and they were feeling a little ill, and I suggested that they go home and test themselves.

And as a result, 5 people got sick. Two tested positive the following day, another got ill a couple of days later, and another a couple of days after that.

My recommendation: You might want to cut back on socializing in larger groups for the next couple of weeks.

 

 

Categories
Money The Current Situation

Someone’s sitting pretty in this economy

Some noteworthy facts from a recent post in Jordan Uhl’s newsletter, I Hate It Here And Never Want To Leave:

  • I’ll open with a direct quote from the newsletter: 75% of middle-income families say their wages are falling behind inflation, according to a new report from Primerica and Change Research. 77% say they’re expecting and preparing for a recession, with 71% already cutting back on spending to help make ends meet.
  • Corporate profits are at 70-year record highs. Since 2020, the after-tax profits made by corporations who aren’t in the business of finance have grown by a trillion dollars:

    Chart: FRED’s “Nonfinancial Corporate Business: Profits After Tax (without IVA and CCAdj)” chart, showing corporate profits since 1970, with the big leap in the years 2020 - 2022 highlighted.
    Tap to view at full size. You can also see this graph at its source.
  • There was a record level of stock buybacks: $882 billion! A stock buyback is the act of a publicly traded company (one that issues stock to the public) using cash to buy its own stock on the open market. This reduces the supply of the company’s available stock, raising its price, which is what shareholders like.
  • The rise in global food prices…
    …has created 62 new “food billionaires” in the past two years.     If you combine the energy-for-biologicals industry (food) with the energy-for-machines industry (what we call “energy”), they’ve grown their fortune by nearly half a trillion dollars in the past two years.
  • I’ll close with another direct quote from the newsletter: “The average S&P 500 CEO received $18.3 million in total compensation in 2021, an increase of 18% in one year. During that same period, average hourly earnings for workers fell 2.4%.”

At the same time, you’ve got the hue and cry from the executive class, with that same old “nobody wants to work” refrain. It’s nothing new, and suggests that the current situation isn’t a labor shortage, but a wages and worker treatment shortage: