Sunday, August 14, 2022

Davids Daily Dose - Sunday August 14th

 

1/. Ron DeSantis, the dangerous mini-Trump.....is seizing the moment of Trump's weakness....
Ron DeSantis is touring Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio and Pennsylvania, ostensibly in support of Republican primary candidates.Ron DeSantis is touring Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio and Pennsylvania, ostensibly in support of Republican primary candidates. Photograph: Lynne Sladky/AP


The Florida governor has been dubbed a ‘mini-Trump’ and was once boosted by the ex-president but a potential rivalry in 2024 has turned relations sour

As Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, packs his suitcase for a five-day trip to campaign for Trump-endorsed candidates, he might afford himself a dastardly chuckle.

The trek, taking in Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio and Pennsylvania is nominally aimed at boosting Republicans’ chances ahead of November’s crucial primaries. For DeSantis, however, there is surely a grander design. Each of the rising Republican star’s destinations is a swing state, key to winning the 2024 presidential election.




2/. David Wallace-Wells on Europe's energy crisis, and how bad it could get....

I don’t think many Americans appreciate just how tense and tenuous, how very touch and go the energy situation in Europe is right now.

For months, as news of the Ukraine war receded a bit, it was possible to follow the energy story unfolding across the Atlantic and still assume an uncomfortable but familiar-enough winter in Europe, characterized primarily by high prices.

In recent weeks, the prospects have begun to look darker. In early August the European Union approved a request that member states reduce gas consumption by 15 percent — quite a large request and one that several initially balked at. In Spain, facing record-breaking heat wave after record-breaking heat wave at the height of the country’s tourist season, the government announced restrictions on commercial air-conditioning, which may not be set below 27 degrees Celsius, or about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. In France, an Associated Press article said, “urban guerrillas” are taking to the streets, shutting off storefront lights to reduce energy consumption.





3/. Bill Maher with a "New Rule" on acting and actors, not a heavyweight piece but still amusing....




4/. Matt Taibbi on the Trump search warrant, and the implications for not just the campaign but the stability of the country. 
Much as we loved to see this happen, the politics of it are immense....
Note - an alert reader has pointed out that for some of Taibbi's articles you need a subscription to open them.....which is $5 a month.....
This is happening a lot now because the way we get our news is changing.....and writers need food on the table too....

We’ve reached the stage of American history where everything we see on the news must first be understood as political theater. 

In other words, the messaging layer of news now almost always dominates the factual narrative, with the latter often reported 

so unreliably as to be meaningless anyway. Yesterday’s sensational tale of the FBI raiding the Mar-a-Lago home of former president Donald Trump is no different.





5/. Umair believes we are truly living at the beginning of our extinction....

I have an admission to make. I was wrong.

I thought — and I wrote — that it would take probably until 2030 or so. To get here.

But let me let the people on the front lines of this calamity speak to you directly themselves.

““There’s nothing left to eat,’ one farmer, Laurent Roux, told the local radio station France Bleu. ‘The terrain 

is so dry that in places, it looks like ash. It’s dust.’

“‘Our vines are suffering,’ said vintner Xavier Collart Dutilleul, who, with his wife Pascale, runs Château Mazeris 
Bellevue near Saint-Emilion in southwestern France. Lacking rain, the organic vineyard’s parched clay-rich 
soil is ‘almost as hard as cement,’ he told Yahoo News, and he predicted that his harvest, which typically 
yields enough for 35,000 bottles, will be down by 30% this year.”




6/. Jordan Klepper interviews MAGAs at a Wisconsin Trump rally, and this video is a doozy. 
These people are beyond belief......it's painfully amusing though....




7/. Jessica Wildfire is bored with Trump, and that's a good thing......

The FBI finally raided Trump’s beloved Mar-a-Lago.

I almost don’t care.

Sure, my lack of emotion surprises me. I thought I’d feel the slightest sense of vindication. In truth, we’re 

crossing into an era where “I told you so” and being proven “right” really doesn’t matter anymore, because the 

stakes are too high. I just watched a video of a flood sweeping hundreds of cows down a river. To me, that feels like news.





8/. Matt Taibbi on the week's news....definitely some stories that will be new to you..

America This Week: August 8-14, 2022

A historic search warrant SNAFU, Covid corruption, journalists strike, a Ukraine arms scandal, Apocalypse Watch, 

"Experts Say," Three Finance Headlines and more






9/. Fascinating story about the Kentucky floods, the political response and how people lost everything because of the abuse 
of their environment from the coal companies' strip mining....
Good journalism, very insightful read.

LAST WEEK I GAVE A RIDE TO A GUY NAMED CHRIS who’d been helping out with flood relief in the town of Neon. 
Chris lived about two miles down the road from Neon, next to an abandoned carburetor shop that was now wrecked 
by floodwaters. His house had miraculously escaped destruction. But the trailer homes at the bottom of the hill 
were all gone. In their place sat a solitary shed, mostly intact and settled comfortably into the mud like it now owned 
the place. It had floated all the way downstream from Neon on the Kentucky River—two entire miles. That really 
confused the hell out of us. We pondered it for at least ten minutes. Two miles, and the thing was still intact? 




10/. This book is advertised on NewsMax.....to the very stupids......




12/. Interesting.....a follow-up to last week's article on what settings to turn off so they don't track you - this one 
is which ones to turn on to make your device work better.....


Many default settings buried deep inside our technology make us share superfluous amounts of data with tech companies. In my last column, I went over how to shut those off.

But not all default settings do sneaky things with our information. There are also some that need to be 
activated or disabled to make our devices more enjoyable to use.



13/. Interesting movie review - "Fall", sounds like an exciting B-movie.....in theaters now...
An image from Fall.An image from Fall. Photograph: Lionsgate

Pre-release debates over the title of Jordan Peele’s patchy summer hit Nope were settled last month when the secretive writer-director revealed that no, it wasn’t an acronym for “not of planet earth” but was something far more simple. It was, as others had expected, a nod to what many audiences are accustomed to wearily shouting at the screen during a horror film. Investigate that unsettling sound coming from a barely lit basement in a remote house late at night? Nope! Accept a lift from a creepy stranger in a blood-spattered pick-up truck? Nope! Climb up an ancient and abandoned 2,000ft radio tower without support, food or alerting anyone else first? Nope!

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/aug/10/fall-review-wildly-effective-survival-thriller-delivers-seat-edge-suspense



14/. This looks interesting....."The Princess", a bio of Princess Diana....HBO Max...

The first clue that “The Princess” will not be your standard-issue Diana Spencer documentary is that the 
director is Ed Perkins. Perkins’s last film, “Tell Me Who I Am” (2019), which was also his first feature, told a 
painful true story of identical twins whose lives were upended by abuse and memory loss. While its perspective 
was compassionate, its revelations were presented in a way that could best be called unsparing.



15/. Did you know there's a new Beavis and Butthead movie? Some of you will care.....
A still from Beavis and Butt-Head Do the UniverseA still from Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe: television’s densest duo. Photograph: 

Anyone seeking a window into the absurdities and stupidities of late-20th-century life could do far worse than the original televised misadventures of Beavis and Butt-Head. Of course, Mike Judge’s animated sensation, which disguised its high satire as the lowest of lowbrow comedy, was something of a mirror, too. Who were its eternally apathetic, horny and destructive adolescent heroes but boardwalk caricatures of the teens watching from home? With Beavis and Butt-Head, MTV lampooned its own audience – a whole generation of fellow tittering coach potatoes – alongside the countless other American stereotypes that passed into the pair’s orbit over seven seasons.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jun/22/beavis-and-butt-head-do-the-universe-review-mike-judge



Today's Pizza Joke
A man calls Pizza Hut to order a pizza...
CALLER: Is this Pizza Hut?
GOOGLE: No sir, it's Google Pizza.
CALLER: I must have dialed a wrong number, sorry.
GOOGLE: No sir, Google bought Pizza Hut last month.
CALLER: OK. I would like to order a pizza.
GOOGLE: Do you want your usual, sir?
CALLER: My usual? Do you know me?
GOOGLE: According to our caller ID data sheet, the last 12 times you called you ordered an extra-large pizza with three cheeses, 
sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms and meatballs on a thick crust.
CALLER: Super! That’s what I’ll have.
GOOGLE: May I suggest that this time you order a pizza with ricotta, arugula, sun-dried tomatoes and olives on a whole 
wheat gluten-free thin crust?
CALLER: What? I don’t want a vegetarian pizza!
GOOGLE: Your cholesterol is not good, sir.
CALLER: How do you know that?
GOOGLE: Well, we cross-referenced your home phone number with your medical records. We have the result of your blood tests for the last 7 years.
CALLER: Okay, but I do not want your rotten vegetarian pizza! I already take medication for my cholesterol.
GOOGLE: Excuse me sir, but you have not taken your medication regularly. According to our database, you purchased only a box of 30 
cholesterol tablets once at Lloyds Pharmacy, 4 months ago.
CALLER: I bought more from another Pharmacy.
GOOGLE: That doesn’t show on your credit card statement.
CALLER: I paid in cash.
GOOGLE: But you did not withdraw enough cash according to your bank statement.
CALLER: I have other sources of cash.
GOOGLE: That doesn’t show on your latest tax returns unless you bought them using an undeclared income source, which is against the law!
CALLER: WHAT THE !!!
GOOGLE: I'm sorry sir, we use such information only with the sole intention of helping you.
CALLER: Enough already! I'm sick to death of Google, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and all the others. I'm going to an island 
without the internet, TV, where there is no phone service and no one to watch me or spy on me.
GOOGLE: I understand sir, but you need to renew your passport first. It expired 6 weeks ago...


Today's philosophical jokes....

♦ I read that 4,153,237 people got married last year. Not to cause any trouble, but shouldn't that be an even number?
 
♦ I find it ironic that the colors red, white, and blue stand for freedom until they are flashing behind you.
 
♦ When wearing a bikini, women reveal 90% of their body. Men are so polite they only look at the covered parts.
 
♦ Relationships are a lot like algebra. Have you ever looked at your X and wondered Y?
 
♦ America is a country which produces citizens who will cross the ocean to fight for democracy but won't cross the street to vote.
 
♦ You know that tingly little feeling you get when you love someone? That's your common sense leaving your body.
 
♦ Did you know that dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish?
 
♦ My therapist says I have a preoccupation with vengeance. We'll see about that.
 
♦ I think my neighbor is stalking me as she's been Googling my name on her computer. I saw it through my telescope last night.
 
♦ Money talks ... but all mine ever says is good-bye.
 
♦ You're not fat, you're just easier to see.
 
♦ If you think nobody cares whether you're alive, try missing a couple of payments
 
♦ I always wondered what the job application is like at Hooters.. Do they just give you a bra and say, "Here, fill this out?"
 
♦ My therapist said that my narcissism causes me to misread social situations. I’m pretty sure she was hitting on me.
 
♦ My 60 year kindergarten reunion is coming up soon and I’m worried about the 175 pounds I’ve gained since then.
 
♦ Denny’s has a slogan, "If it’s your birthday, the meal is on us." If you’re in Denny’s and it’s your birthday, your life sucks!
 

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