1/ Absolutely fascinating and frankly frightening article from the New Yorker about Kaiser Wilhelm II
Of Germany and how similar he was to Trump....and how he caused World War I....
One of the few things that Kaiser Wilhelm II, who ruled Germany from 1888 to 1918, had a talent for was causing outrage. A particular specialty was insulting other monarchs. He called the diminutive King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy “the dwarf” in front of the king’s own entourage. He called Prince (later Tsar) Ferdinand, of Bulgaria, “Fernando naso,” on account of his beaky nose, and spread rumors that he was a hermaphrodite. Since Wilhelm was notably indiscreet, people always knew what he was saying behind their backs. Ferdinand had his revenge. After a visit to Germany, in 1909, during which the Kaiser slapped him on the bottom in public and then refused to apologize, Ferdinand awarded a valuable arms contract that had been promised to the Germans to a French company instead.
Not that this deterred the Kaiser.
2/ Excellent column from Andrew Sullivan on the appalling cruelty of the Trump policy of arresting children and separating them from their parents.....
Keep a list, they tell you. Notice the little landmarks that tell you that authoritarianism is making headway.
It’s worth making a note, then, when a president goes out of his way to declare he has an “absolute right” to pardon himself, and anyone else, if he so wants, for any reason, including protecting himself and others from possible charges of conspiracy against the United States. Yes, there are legal details here that make this remarkable constitutional claim a little more more complicated than it sounds, as in: Can the Executive branch obstruct itself? Yes, we’re also told that the president has no intention, you understand, of pardoning himself right now, he’s just musing, as he so often does, on various unrelated constitutional conundrums; and yes, he’s pardoning friends and allies, as other friends and allies face a special prosecutor. But just take a note. You’ll be amazed how swiftly this recedes as the latest provocation occupies your soul.
And it’s also worth taking a note when a near-universal norm of human decency is thrown out of the window, with a sudden change in procedure.
3/ Trevor Noah on the disgusting and dangerous Scott Pruitt.....2 minutes....
“Nobody in Washington has been as consistently caught up in scandal as EPA Chief Scott Pruitt,” The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah said Thursday night after a day in which it was reported that Trump’s most corrupt cabinet member has been making staff members fetch him protein bars and special Ritz-Carlton lotion, among other luxuries.
As Noah put it, Pruitt’s scandals have nothing to do with the work he is doing to “destroy the environment,” but rather from his “little side hustles.” And every new revelation has just made him go, “Wait, what?”
4/ Haven't heard much news about the UK in our constant deluge of Trumpism, but Britain is not doing well.....
In the eight years since London began sharply curtailing support for local governments, the borough of Knowsley, a bedroom community of Liverpool, has seen its budget cut roughly in half. Liverpool itself has suffered a nearly two-thirds cut in funding from the national government — its largest source of discretionary revenue. Communities in much of Britain have seen similar losses.
For a nation with a storied history of public largess, the protracted campaign of budget cutting, started in 2010 by a government led by the Conservative Party, has delivered a monumental shift in British life. A wave of austerity has yielded a country that has grown accustomed to living with less, even as many measures of social well-being — crime rates, opioid addiction, infant mortality, childhood poverty and homelessness — point to a deteriorating quality of life.
5/ Stephen Colbert on Trump and the Philadelphia Eagles.....a very good seven minutes.....
At the top of Tuesday night's Late Show episode, Stephen Colbert argued that the players weren't actually anti-flag or anti-military, despite what the president said.
"Here's the thing: no Eagles players took a knee or stayed in the locker room during the anthem last season," Colbert pointed out. "So Donald Trump is blaming a group of black guys for something they didn't do. They'll have to rename the Eagles the 'Central Park 53.'
But Fox News never lets the truth get in the way of a good story, so they ran a segment last night on the disinvitation (sic), alongside images of the players taking a knee," he continued. "Eagles tight end Zach Ertz pointed out on Twitter that was actually footage of him 'praying before games with his teammates well before the anthem.' Come on, look, look. It's an honest mistake: Fox News also thought this picture was Jesus calling a touchdown!"
/www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kxeA
6/ An honest commercial from "Visit Puerto Rico"......painfully amusing, 2 minutes....
7/ Matt Taibbi with some insightful observations about how worthless corporate apologies are.....
Three of America's biggest companies – Facebook, Wells Fargo and Uber – have been offering up vague apologies via television commercials in recent weeks. If you watch the Cavs-Dubs game tonight, you'll probably catch one or all of them.
Have a bucket handy.
Have a bucket handy.
All three entities are apologizing for recent scandals, all three are pledging to change their ways and all three are basically rolling out the same script:
Hi, America. We were awesome for a long time. Here are some culturally representative shots of people like you smiling and enjoying our services. After repeated denials, we recently had to admit to violating your trust, but the unelucidated bad thing doesn't have to come between us. We promise: we fixed that shit. You will now wake up feeling refreshed in 3,2,1…
8/ Tom Tomorrow.....
9/ Elon Musk is a legendary figure to most of us [especially if you own a Tesla], but Bret Stevens in the Times is having none of it....
Elon Musk at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala in New York this month.
He is prone to unhinged Twitter eruptions. He can’t handle criticism. He scolds the news media for its purported dishonesty and threatens to create a Soviet-like apparatus to keep tabs on it. He suckers people to fork over cash in exchange for promises he hasn’t kept. He’s a billionaire whose business flirts with bankruptcy. He’s sold himself as an establishment-crushing iconoclast when he’s really little more than an unusually accomplished B.S. artist. His legions of devotees are fanatics and, let’s face it, a bit stupid.
I speak of Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, the Donald Trump of Silicon Valley.
Not long ago, a wise friend with an enviable Wall Street reputation wrote me to describe his astonishment with Tesla, calling it “a situation unlike anything I have ever seen.”
“The stock market valuation of a well-known company is stratospheric,” he said, “while at the same time its bonds are viewed as junk.”
10/ John Oliver on Kim Jong Un's propaganda coup....2 funny minutes....
“This week, the June 12th summit between the U.S. and North Korea was suddenly back on after Trump met with a North Korean envoy who’d brought him this gigantic, comically-oversized letter from Kim Jong Un,” said John Oliver. “And as if smiling while holding a letter from a dictator were not enough of a propaganda coup for North Korea, the president then raved about the letter to the press.”
On Friday, President Trump met with North Korean envoy Kim Yong Chol at the White House, with the official indeed hand-delivering a huge letter from Kim Jong Un before posing for photos with a smiling Trump. After the hand-off, Trump announced that their summit was happening again after pulling out of it on May 24 via letter.
Addressing a gaggle of press following their meeting, Trump said, “It was a very interesting letter… At some point, it may be appropriate… I’ll be able to give it to you, maybe.”
11/ Honest Trailer's take on "The Princess Bride", one of our favourite movies.....clever and funny.....
12/ Do you faithfully put out your recycling bin every week? You're probably doing it wrong......
We have all done it: a greasy pizza box, a disposable coffee cup, the odd plastic bag. Sometimes, we want things to be recyclable, so we put them in the recycling bin.
Waste managers often call this wishful or aspirational recycling. But, unfortunately, putting these objects in with the rest of the recycling can do more harm than good. While rules differ in every municipality (check your local recycling website to find out what’s acceptable), we have picked out some key offenders to keep in mind.
Too many of these items will contaminate a batch of recycling. That means waste managers might not be able to find buyers for the materials — especially now that China, one of the world’s main importers of recyclable waste, has said it will reject shipments that are more than 0.5 percent impure. Contaminated loads could be sent to the landfill instead.
13/ Best TV shows of 2018, so far.....New York Magazine.....
This list has been updated to include May releases.
In the past, Vulture has traditionally shared a list of the best TV shows of the year so far at around the midpoint in the 365-day calendar. Last year, we did the same thing but continually updated the list on a monthly basis, both as a service to readers and also to help us keep our TV clutter properly organized. (The shows that didn’t “spark joy,” Marie Kondo–like? Those didn’t make the cut.)
For 2018, we’re making another change: We’re starting the process earlier by publishing our “best TV shows so far” list at the end of April. Why? Because, as illustrated by the fact that the summer movie season basically started while it was still snowing in parts of New York, traditional methods of marking time have lost all meaning. So we may as well go ahead and get this thing started.
14/ Good TV coming this summer......Daily Beast.....
This summer, the chicest new sunscreen on the market is a Netflix subscription. Of course, there are necessary accoutrements to the UV ray-shielding regimen: an Amazon subscription, Hulu account, YouTube premium access, a full cable package, a DVR, and enough hours in the day to maintain them all.
With the idea of a traditional fall-to-spring TV season so 2013, there are more TV series than ever vying for your attention during the summer months.
In addition to returning favorites like GLOW, Queen Sugar, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Younger, The Affair, and more, there are dozens of new series wooing you back inside to the air conditioned bliss of your couch. We’ve surveyed them all: a Ryan Murphy dance musical with a historic LGBTQ cast, a Stephen King multiverse, Amy Adams’ TV debut, ’90s Nickelodeon nostalgia, John Krasinski’s take on Jack Ryan, and more.
Here, we’ve culled the 30 shows most worth your attention.
15/ And another viewpoint from the Times.....this summer's TV....
In “American Woman,” set in 1970s California, Alicia Silverstone plays a housewife whose world is upended when she discovers her husband is both a philanderer and a fraud.
Summer, once the dumping ground of television, is now the season with a little something for everyone. Want popcorn? Summer 2018 brings high-profile adaptations of the work of Tom Clancy, Stephen King and Gillian Flynn. Want critical darlings? New seasons arrive of lauded series like “Better Call Saul” and “Humans.” Want something new and different? Try HBO’s “Random Acts of Flyness” or AMC’s “Lodge 49.” All those shows and more are included in our list of summer highlights.
Contains spoilers for returning shows.
Awwwww.....
If this doesn't touch your heart, then you just don't have one. This is an incredible story of luck, life long Happiness and inspiration!Can you believe it? This guy, Ade Bufford Taylor, wins $181 million in the lottery lastWednesday, and then finds the love of his life just 2 days later!Talk about luck!!!!! |
Todays clever jokes
The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.
Here are the winners:
1. Cashtration: The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Intaxicaton: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
3. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
4. Bozone: The substance surrounding people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
5. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high
6. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
7. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
8. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease.
9. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
10. Decafalon: The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
11. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
12. Arachnoleptic Fit: The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
13. Beelzebug: Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
14. Caterpallor: The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.
The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.
And the winners are:
1. Coffee (n): The person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted (adj): Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
3. Abdicate (v): To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Willy-nilly (adj): Impotent.
5. Negligent (adj): Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
6. Lymph (v): To walk with a lisp.
7. Gargoyle (n): Olive-flavored mouthwash.
8. Flatulence (n): Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
9. Balderdash (n): A rapidly receding hairline.
10. Rectitude (n): The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
11. Pokemon (n): A Rastafarian proctologist.
12. Oyster (n): A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
13. Circumvent (n): An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men
Here are the winners:
1. Cashtration: The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Intaxicaton: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
3. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
4. Bozone: The substance surrounding people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
5. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high
6. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
7. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
8. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease.
9. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
10. Decafalon: The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
11. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
12. Arachnoleptic Fit: The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
13. Beelzebug: Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
14. Caterpallor: The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.
The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.
And the winners are:
1. Coffee (n): The person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted (adj): Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
3. Abdicate (v): To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Willy-nilly (adj): Impotent.
5. Negligent (adj): Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
6. Lymph (v): To walk with a lisp.
7. Gargoyle (n): Olive-flavored mouthwash.
8. Flatulence (n): Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
9. Balderdash (n): A rapidly receding hairline.
10. Rectitude (n): The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
11. Pokemon (n): A Rastafarian proctologist.
12. Oyster (n): A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
13. Circumvent (n): An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men
Todays retiree joke
I was in Starbuck`s recently when I suddenly realized I desperately needed to fart.
The music was really loud so I timed my fart with the beat of the music.
After a couple of songs I started to feel better.
I finished my coffee and noticed that everyone was staring at me…
And suddenly I remembered I was listening to my iPod
…and how was your day?
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