Those look like they could be Alstromeria.

Have you seen the show The Good Place? One of the themes in later seasons is about the difficulty of buying anything without, in some way, contributing to human misery and evil. Trying to be an ethical consumer is impossible, but also still worth the extra effort.

Minting their challenge coins to definitively answer the question "Are we the baddies?".

While I do agree that "we are experiencing a complete breakdown of the political information system" I think that applies to almost every other issue far more than it does with inflation.

The other issue with inflation is that this month's price increases are not as relevant to a voter as the cumulative inflation since the last time that voter got a pay raise. The 8% jump in prices in 2022 continues to hurt consumers' finances even after subsequent years have had lower inflation.

Inflation is one of the few metrics that voters can directly observe in their own lives, where inflation metrics are regularly trailing consumer understanding. So we're now back up to 3.3% for March, so maybe voters weren't misinformed to think it's still a problem.

I bet Ro Khanna has ~1% name recognition among independents. Outside of California and terminally online progressives, I don't think he's well known at all.

GOP governor candidate explodes at Black voter: 'You should be lynched!' A viral clip posted to X on Thursday showed Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate James Fishback blowing up at a Black voter and telling him he should be "lynched" for asking about the allegation...

"Last month, his campaign was banned from every Waffle House in the state of Florida."

www.rawstory.com/james-fishba...

He had his slop generated using 1970's pseudo-scientific manipulation techniques, and was proud of it -- just announcing to everyone "I'm manipulative, but also gullible, old and lazy!"

I had a conversation with a business owner who was really into AI, and he told me that one of the secrets for getting it to write good marketing copy was to tell it to use NLP.

Photo of Simon & Garfunkel taken by Richard Avedon

Today's album of the day is Bookends by Simon & Garfunkel, released on this date in 1968

I had to check to make sure this wasn't some April fools satire. The "30%, well below the market rate" line is brutal.

Price of Eggs by Carsie Blanton and The Burning Hell YouTube video by Carsie Blanton

Americans care about kitchen table issues. 🎧
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhCi...

This new workplace comedy is so relatable, even to someone like me who is not, currently, circling the Earth at 20,000 MPH.

dunno who needs to hear this but transphobia still isn’t cool even if you’re taking the piss out of Kristen Noem, who is a terrible person and that is completely unrelated to whatever her husband gets up to. his behaviour is irrelevant here. she shot a puppy

I had to show my wife the Leroy Jenkins clip as the only good way to describe what's about to happen in Iran.

The AMA is calling out The New York Times for errors in their reporting, and of course those errors just happen to line up with NYT's long history of building a narrative in opposition to gender affirming care for trans people.
theonion.com/it-is-journa...

They left off the list how your neighbors will hate you when they find toxo cat shit next to the otherwise perfect vegetables in their garden.

Remember when Ursula K. Le Guin savaged J.K. Rowling in a 2004 Guardian interview? “I have no great opinion of [JK Rowling’s writing style]. When so many adult critics were carrying on about the “incredible originality” of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed a lively kid’s fantasy crossed with a ‘school novel’, good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.”

Let’s not forget what Ursula K. Le Guin had to say about JKR and Harry Potter.

A message of hope:

If I log into some small business website and see a dozen other users from a bunch of different companies, I know I'm in for some seriously unproductive billable time with no clear problem to solve or objective beyond stroking the owner's ego.

After 30 years in business for myself, I've developed quite an extensive list of red flags to identify clients I won't enjoy working for. One that seems to be exclusive to older men is Guy Who Mainly Wants an Entourage.

Clusters of pink flowers, each with five petals.

Flowering currants are blooming! These grow wild in the wooded part of our backyard.

Ted's wife Catherine getting hassled by TSA after Yusef Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) criticized the Bush administration is one of my favorite GWB era stories.

I wonder if ICE's presence might further antagonize TSA agents. ICE is getting paid, and also got those generous signing bonuses that were never offered to TSA. Having to train well compensated replacements without a paycheck is going to sting.

Pilot Believes He Found Amelia Earhart’s Long-Lost Airplane Through Google Earth. Here’s Where He Thinks It Is Earhart went missing on July 2, 1937, after attempting to become the first woman to fly across the world

Which gets found more often by amateur researchers, Amelia Earhart's plane or Noah's Arc?
www.yahoo.com/news/article...

The wrapping paper they included with their holiday edition was pretty great too.

I want fully staffed public pools, and libraries that are cathedrals to public goods and a society where walling yourself off with money is viewed as sociopathic.

Afroman - Lemon Pound Cake (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO) YouTube video by ogafroman

I have work to do, but also the Afroman defamation trial is hilarious and brilliant, as are the songs. Lemon Pound Cake is an instant classic. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xxK...